A Response to #Feminists4Autism

hello there this is a video about youtuber sargon of akkad and in particular his video entitled hashtag feminists for autism now I'm somewhat of a newcomer to this whole YouTube thing and until very recently I didn't have any clue who Sargon was but a few people recommended I take a look at Sargon after I recently made videos about the amazing atheist and funder foot and including someone on Twitter who asked for a shout-out so there you go at nap c7 for free so let's take a look at Sargon now when I'm first looking at a new video I find it helpful to ask a few simple questions about the argument the person is making in it and the means by which they do it so what's the ultimate point of Sargon's video that's to make fun of feminists by what means does he do that calling them autistic which Sargon does at about 8 minutes into his video by running down a list of common signs of autism and applying them to what he thinks feminism is number 6 if you are socially challenged and have an inability to read facial expressions and body language for example if you can't tell when a consensual sexual encounter is being initiated without the explicit use of verbal cues you might have autism and he does that until the end of the video and I'm in familiar territory here because I've seen a lot of this sort of thing before alright so we're basically 30 seconds into the video and she's already proven to you me science pretty much everybody that she's a complete [ __ ] okay all jokes aside what the [ __ ] is this [ __ ] on any level whatsoever so she's basically [ __ ] insane you crazy [ __ ] mug this [ __ ] is just dumb period like they are actually [ __ ] [ __ ] because after all that's all Sargon appears to be doing in his video really the only difference here is the presentation the point is still that feminists are dormant bad and you're clever for not liking them and you might be thinking what about the first eight minutes of Sargon's video what does that contain it could be a series of well researched points supporting gun lead to his conclusion maybe this is what sets argon aside from being just another misogynist ranting about feminists on the internet or is it just a random assortment of unrelated arguments that only makes sense if you stretch the meaning of the word feminism to an absurd degree well gee I wonder which it's gonna be so let's take a look we're gonna go through Sargon's video up to his feminists are all autistic bit and look at each of his points in turn a but first just a brief note about his intro now the first 15 seconds of Sargon's video is unintentionally rather funny let's take a watch first off I love the little title sequence in the desert thing it's like I'm playing a game a sieve or something I'm watching The History Channel you know what am I going to be learning about today and then that established tone is immediately on the cup by this juvenile silliness first question who is this person Sargon uses this image here and also made it the foam nail of the video so it's natural to assume this person features in the video or is at least representative of something that Sargon is talking about but aside from the full nail in the introduction this person never features again so what's going on now if we google for this image we see it posted in a mocking fashion by the meninist Twitter account meninist tweet which posts a lot of lovely content like laughing a man calling a woman a [ __ ] urging people to drink bleach and worst of all posting clips from Family Guy and funnily enough calling feminists artistic and Sargon follows this account so I'm just gonna assume that this or somewhere like this is where he got the image from I'd wager neither Sargon nor his viewers actually know who this person is I know who this person is because I went and checked and I read back through a lot of their social media posts and never once saw anything directly relevant to anything that Sargon talks about in his video so my conclusion here is that this person has nothing at all to do with Sargon's arguments they're only here because they were being used as the face for that day's anti-feminist two-minute ate so we're only 15 seconds into the video and we're hardly off to a good start but maybe it'll pick up when Sargon starts talking let's take a listen but I will note here that Sargon presents his whole video sarcastically which is quite helpful for us really as it gives us an insight into what he thinks feminists think if you're a feminist like you're probably aware that we live in a patriarchal now for those who don't know a patriarchy is a highly oppressive social system that benefits men at the expense of women and this social system also oppresses men as well by giving more money to women's health care for example women in London live up to 12 years longer than men and that might sound like a good thing but remember that's 12 more years of slavery that women have to endure they are simply not allowed to die it turns out that the patriarchy will spend almost 2 million more pounds on women's health care than men's to ensure their suffering lasts well into their 80s of course professional m-ras like Alan white professor of men's health at Leeds University and lead author of the recent you reports into men's health told the bureau that there was a real lack of initiatives directed at the male population presumably because men's lives are so awesome they simply don't need these initiatives and has agreed at the last international patriarchy meeting that money would be better spent oppressing women ha ha ha now I knew that Sargon put foot wrong here when he sight at a university professor but we'll come back to that in a moment let's take a look at his point and it's easy enough to understand some areas of London spend more on health initiatives aimed at women than health initiatives aimed at men the question here is why is Sargon mentioning this what does he think this challenges or contradicts well he leads into the point by talking about patriarchy as defined by feminist theory so we'll assume that he thinks this challenges that idea and this is something you tend to see from a lot of anti feminists when talking about gender equality many male anti-feminists in particular tend to focus on topics where men seem to be disadvantaged for example in custody education or in particular here health care their idea of a patriarchal society is one which favors men absolutely in every circumstance so to challenge the idea they start citing exceptions to the rule and it would be a perfect argumentative strategy if that definition of patriarchy was the same one that feminists use but it's not mainstream feminist footsies patriarchy as oppressive to both men and women which is something you'd think Sargon would understand since he said it I'll be it sarcastically addressing men's involvement in gender equality by only stressing men's disadvantages leads to very simplistic and misleading assumptions and that's not me talking there that's professor Allen white who in a study called the role of men in gender equality --zz says involving men in gender mainstreaming and gender equality strategies bears the risk that gender is framed within certain terms in traditional sex role theory mainly reflecting topics where men seem to be disadvantaged for example custody education or health opening up anti-feminist discussion addressing men's involvement in gender equality by only stressing men's disadvantages will lead to very simplistic and misleading assumptions therefore one important preconception guiding the study is to link profam inist progressive and critical men's policies and studies to gender equality policy while rejecting a male discrimination perspective pursued for example by men's rights groups and those fairies linked to this approach so Sargon to helpful hints from me to you firstly when you're doing your anti-feminist bit do not cite university professors especially ones who specialize in gender studies because they are nearly always pro feminist secondly in particular do not cite university professors who have published material that gives your exact anti-feminist argumentative strategy a swift kick in the bollocks and before we move on let's just briefly take a look at this Health Initiatives report that Sargon is quoting from he presents it as though the reason certain areas of London have a large disparity in life expectancy between the sexes is solely down to the amount of money spent on health initiatives but this is actually contradicted by the report when Sargon quotes women London live up to 12 years longer than men he's talking about an area of London called cathedrals in Southwick which is the ward which has the largest disparity which is 12 years however as the report points out self-work spends nearly 5 million pounds more on men's health initiatives than women's they have the largest disparity in life expectancy despite spending nearly 3 times as much on men's health than on women's health now what that says to me is that the Health Initiative funding is reactive not the direct cause they're spending more on men in that area because men have worse health in that area and the report does go into some reasons that men have lower life expectancies in the more deprived areas of London the economic climate depression suicide a low level of council funding for health in general social stigma against men showing vulnerability and asking for help and that last point is a perfect illustration of the feminist understanding of how patriarchy is harmful to both men and women and this point comes up again when Sargon brings up the disparities in the homeless rate and the suicide rate just because three out of four homeless people and suicide victims are men that doesn't mean we need to talk about this I mean have you considered that one in four homeless people and one in four suicide victims are important now I didn't think you did did you mr. entitled what a misogynist you are so let's take a brief look at the sources Sargon took these headlines from the homelessness headline comes from an opinion piece in The Telegraph complaining about a Press Association article published in The Guardian which itself was about a homelessness audit carried out by the charity homeless link peel that onion now the PA article chose to focus on the audits findings that homeless women are more likely than homeless men to use drugs like heroin and cocaine and more likely to suffer from mental health issues which according to the Telegraph opinion piece or for Glenn Poole was the pro-feminist Guardian being lazy biased and sexist against men now whatever we think of that in the course of writing his piece Glenn Poole contacted homeless link and got a response offering one explanation for why the majority of homeless people who don't receive support are male and the homeless link spokesperson said homeless men are more likely than women to say they don't need support now the suicide headline is taken from a guardian article and that's the same guardian who were dishonest pro-feminist shills about 15 seconds ago but here are being presented as a legitimate news source The Guardian article is about the disparity in the suicide rate between sexes in government statistics and it also talks about the launch of an investigation into the causes of suicide by the University of Bristol and the Charity Samaritans and they quote the head of policy and research at Samaritans on the reasons they believe men tend to be higher risk of suicide than women in particular here talking about working-class men they will grow up expecting by the time they reach midlife they'll have a wife who will look after them and a job for life in a male industry in reality they may find that they reach middle age in a very different position Society has this masculine ideal that people are expecting to live up to lots of that has to do with being a breadwinner when men don't live up to that it can be quite devastating for them and the Guardian article goes on to say additional factors were the perception that it was more acceptable for men to turn to drink or other risky behavior to cope with difficulty and men being often reticent about talking about their feelings so are gone the issues you're pointing out that you think contradict feminist arguments are themselves feminist issues feminists don't deny the fact that men are more likely to commit suicide or be homeless you know they're not delusional they believe that one of the factors contributing to those disparities is a difference in societal expectations of the genders in particular here it's seen as less acceptable or appropriate for men to seek help when they need it this fixed notion of gender roles is one of the things that feminists generally want to see changed so then let's somewhat reluctantly move on to autism because the problem is that we really don't understand autism and girls and that's a problem for example when the large new study finds significant deviations in brain structure and behavior between boys and girls with autism you can tell that they are in fact total misogynist pricks who are deeply anti-feminist and of course by definition anti-woman dr. Vinod Menon a professor of misogyny and oppression at the Stanford School of Medicine and one of the study's authors told The Huffington Post that girls with autism display autism symptoms differently and this may lead them to be under diagnosed or may make it hard of them to get the most appropriate treatment as if his single study overturns 30 years of feminist scientific research establishing that there are exactly zero differences between men and women on both a biological and social level in this study while the boys and girls had similar IQ scores as well as comparable social behaviors and communication skills the boys showed significantly more repetitive and restrictive behaviors than the girls did because traditional science or Sirhan's is a patriarchal male social construct specifically designed to exclude women and ensure that men always score better in anything that they do and it's this very same surance that goes on to show that the analysis of the brain scans reveals that autistic boys have different brain patterns in regions associated motor function and the planning of motor activities what this is is a patriarchal conspiracy so at this point in the video I started wondering who Sargon is actually arguing against he's reading out a neutral voiced news report about a scientific study from the science section of the huffington post and just inserting sarcastic jabs at feminism seemingly at random just personally as a new viewer of Sargon's I had no idea what he was talking about here there's no actual mention of feminism in the article and Sargon doesn't mention anyone who actually agrees with what he's sarcastically saying maybe it's just my ignorance but I have never seen a feminist ever argue that males and females with autism have identical biologies and brain patterns you know that school of feminist form must have passed me by I don't think I've ever even seen a feminist argue that there are zero social differences between the sexes I fought feminism existed because of these social differences in an attempt to redress the imbalance you know who is the person who actually said the things that Sargon is sarcastically arguing against was it this person or how about this person now I don't really know who this person is it's Steve shibez I only really include him here because Sargon took a pop at him earlier in the video so I went and watched Steve shives video and he doesn't say anything about autism either however reading the comments on Sargon's video made me realize what he was doing having no actual person to argue against he's simply inviting his audience to invent one imagine a feminist scientist who's so stupid and irrational in their crusade for gender equality that they want more women to have autism just to be equal with men imagine how stupid that person is who I just invented or have I spoken too soon I'm going to level with you and give you the absolute truth of the matter autism is a feminist issue one out of every 68 children today in the United States receives a diagnosis of autism and of course one out of 42 of them is male and 100% of them have a tumblr account and many people think that autism is the fastest-growing developmental disability in the US and there's no cure for autism so this piece that Sargon's coating from is by Esther Nelson from the website feminism and religion so is this person the real irrational feminist scientist that Sargon appears to be arguing with well let's take a look at her article the first thing to note here is that it's speculative note the question mark in the title indicating it's intended as a question and not as Sargon said a statement of absolute truth now nowhere in this article does Nelson talk about how autism manifests differently in boys and girls nor does she talk about the statistical disparity between the sexes except to mention it as a statement of fact the rest of the article is about behaviors impossibly undiagnosed high-functioning autistic adult males and patriarchal interpretations of those behaviors ie she's coming at this from a totally different angle and Sargon she's certainly not arguing for increased diagnosis of autism in women so we can cross her off the list of possible suspects for whoever Sargon is arguing with so this raises a question why is her article in Sargon's video it doesn't seem particularly relevant beyond being generally about autism a cynic would probably point out that if you google feminists and autism it's you know one of the first links that comes up so it being in there is probably more to do with convenience than relevance however this is where Sargon pulls his list of common signifiers of autism from let's watch him run down the list and just a note of warning before he begins here you might want to hold your sides lest they split there are eight major signs of autism that you can identify in your friends your family your colleagues your co-workers perhaps even your business or your organization or even a social movement you happen to identify with the first is an X dream sensitivity to criticism if you feel that a different opinion makes you want to block that person and everyone who has ever spoken to that person possibly values of a block bolt on social media you might have autism the second one is that you have rigid thinking you think that things are either right or they are wrong and there is no gray area between for example you might say that you're either a feminist or you're a sexist if you reduce everything to these binary criteria you might have autism number three is that you are easily distressed when things aren't right meltdowns loss of control often happen for example if you need safe spaces to be able to discuss anything that might slightly upset you you might have autism in fact I think I'll spare you the pain and we'll just fast forward the rest of them because he does this for a very long time and it's very tedious so there we go we have finally reached the point of the video calling feminists autistic so what was all that other stuff that came before it you know all the misrepresented or misunderstood news stories and studies none of that has anything to do with this but it does serve a purpose for Sargon and it's this it's to trick his audience into thinking they're not watching this so she's basically [ __ ] insane you crazy [ __ ] mug this [ __ ] is just dumb period like they are actually [ __ ] [ __ ] because they are watching that and to close my video here I'm just gonna briefly look at this list myself but before I do please understand I would never consciously use autism as an insult to describe people who disagree with me I think it's crass and childish and insulting to people who actually have autism what I'm about to do is show how easily Sargon's stretched interpretations of these behavioral signifies can be turned back on him I'm not calling him autistic offensive and lazy maybe but not autistic extreme sensitivity is a criticism for example if you're so afraid of criticism that you refuse to listen to arguments that criticize your beliefs because they're too you might be sargon of a cab endless talking about or bulldogging a subject usually in a monotone for example if you find yourself endlessly talking in a monotone about how stupid feminists are you might be Sargon of a cat often highly intelligent but actually this one doesn't count lack of empathy for example if you think it's okay to use a developmental disorder that real people actually struggle with as an insult for people you don't like if you think it's okay to use a photograph of an unrelated person as a clickbait thumbnail on a video calling people autistic if you defended elliot rodger and yes Sargon defended elliot rodger no it's not all men who act this way but you know what its way to in many which is ironic considering that before your stupid social justice feminine [ __ ] it didn't happen on this scale it's crazy this is a disease of the modern age you are responsible for perpetuating it by disenfranchising these poor [ __ ] guys who don't have any options left when someone takes the option of absolutes insanely last resort you have to wonder what kind of system is producing them and I tell you what Lacey it is a [ __ ] feminist system that's doing this if you defended elliot rodger well you get the point now I know there's going to be a few people who comment on this video saying it was a joke Sargon's just joking it's a joke video it's not meant to be taken seriously it's all a joke my response to that is no it's not

Channel: Shaun

Views: 484,227

Rating: 4.5765309 out of 5

Keywords: shaun jen, sargon, sargon of akkad, sargon of akkad feminism, feminism, #feminists4autism

Id: _YqC3zV3WDQ

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 02 2016

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