I would flip this slightly to say that "explaining as labor" is one of those concepts that critics often claim is obnoxious SJW idiocy, when what they really mean is it's a valid idea that has been taken to absurd extremes or used in unethical ways.
Because we can all intuitively recognize and sympathize with the core complaint that the "explaining as labor" folk are making. Think of your own life, of those times when someone operating in bad faith, or perhaps just from a position of incuriosity, imposes on your intellect.
Just as we can recognize the core validity of concepts like intersectionality, "words as violence", cultural appropriation, or identity politics.
The IDW et. al. critics of the "SJW Left" have a consistent and very annoying habit of mistaking the poor application of a thing for the thing itself. I try to get at this problem here.
It's sloppy thinking and it gets them into all kinds of trouble, like when they have to explain why the Selma-Montgomery March (which was good!) wasn't *really* ID politics (which is bad!), or how civility is the sign of a healthy society but PC is the mark of a diseased one.
The point: instead of rejecting ID politics, PC, or whatever tout court, do the hard analytic work of showing why *this specific instance* is bad. Much less satisfying, to be sure. But much more useful and much more honest.
