Signalling my virtues loud and fucking clear

Getting me some of that sweet, sweet, feminist pussy…?

I’ve been accused of “virtue signalling” in the past.

One time it was in a debate about something to do with how male actors have long careers, but their love interests are always women within a narrow range of young and beautiful. Apparently my stance that Hollywood might have somewhat sexist conventions means I was “virtue signalling” that I am some kind of bleeding heart beta male cuck, licking the boots of feminazis who dictate my ethics to me on Tumblr blogs.

That’s what I took “virtue signalling” to mean. Maybe that’s an exaggeration?

I’m trying to parse what it really means. Clearly, on the surface level, the problem I’m being accused of is that I’m putting my social and political stances out there for all to see, and this is bad behaviour. I’m not just having beliefs, I’m telling everyone, and apparently there’s something nefarious about that.

Far as I can tell, it’s not necessarily the specific ideals themselves that are at issue, in that the term could be levied against potentially any kind of ideology. There’s no reason a racist couldn’t “virtue signal” by openly declaring that they hate other races. But they tend not to do that. People with certain views know they don’t have the support of mainstream society, so what they do instead is called “dog whistling”. That’s where they try to make their views known without saying their ideas clearly, so that it can pass by mainstream criticism but still get the message out to allies. “Dog whistling” involves codifying your terms into paraphrasing that appears to mean one thing while actually saying another.

So is the problem with “virtue signalling” a kind of frustration at the imbalance in what is considered an acceptable viewpoint? Maybe for some people, but I’ve been accused of “virtue signalling” by people I don’t think hold views that couldn’t be expressed as much as mine, so I don’t think that’s the real problem. When I’ve been accused of “virtue signalling”, it’s often from people who think they’re the reasonable ones in a world gone mad because social justice warriors are taking potentially sensible ideas and going way too far to the point where they become absurd.