In the early 90's, the phrase "politically correct" or "political correctness" or simply "PC" came into the national consciousness. It was commonly used as a pejorative to describe the editing of speech to remove words, phrases or actions that might be deemed offensive, but it was also picked up by the other side as well, and I can clearly remember criticisms leveled at politicians and celebrities, calling them out for racist or sexist speech. Even in the thick of it, though, it never seemed like there was any meat to this thing, that it was anything like a movement. By the end of the 90's, the impression that I had was that most people had simply stopped caring and moved on.
It's difficult to say if the social justice warrior (SJW) movement is a direct descendant of political correctness or just a distant relative. Certainly, there are some similarities. Racist and sexist are routinely hurled against supposed transgressors by SJW proponents, joined now by a litany of new descriptors, words like misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and transmisogyny. We also have ideological terms like privilege, intersectionalism, and rape culture that existed before but have gained a much wider audience outside of academia. My own opinion is that this current of ideological thought never really went away, but continued to stew, primarily on university campuses, until the time was ripe to emerge again.
"Problematic" is another word that has emerged from a relatively obscure existence in academia and has pushed quietly into the mainstream. It is an odd choice of word for the meaning that it has taken on. Originally, it was meant to convey simply that a thing, such as an undertaking, was difficult or uncertain. An ex-convict might find getting a job to be problematic, for example.
The word can now be used to describe speech or media that could potentially cause offense. Why not simply use racist/sexist/-phobia? Because the point is to denounce without clearly defining what is being denounced. A SJW can claim that the depiction of women in X is problematic, and the reader who is familiar with the term will automatically fill in "sexist" or "misogynistic".
If you pay close attention, though, the word is actually used when those terms are too strong. Most people have some pretty specific ideas in mind when someone says the word "sexist". Generally, we think of people who believe that women should not enjoy the same rights as men. We think of places and times where women could not own property, could not vote, and were barred from working. Only a select few people would see sexism in a video game where the objective is to free a princess from captivity by a reptilian monster. Instead, the plot of Super Mario Brothers is deemed "problematic".
Besides the ambiguity, the word reeks of academic elitism. Racism and sexism are such pedestrian words where "problematic" sounds so suave, so smug. It also signals your virtue as one of the good people who doesn't hate everyone who doesn't look or act just like you. Using it makes you part of that special club who knows what's really going on in the world and has all the answers for how to fix it.
The road ahead will likely be difficult for those of us who choose to speak out because we believe in free speech, we understand basic economic concepts and we strive for rationality and logic. We are faced with the shrieking rhetoric and convoluted narratives of the SJWs, and they will huddle in their safe spaces and clutch desperately to the lies they have been telling each other. Truth, as always, will eventually win the day, but getting through the current dark age of anti-intellectualism may prove problematic, at least at first.
