Diversity in Space

so what's the most important thing about contacting aliens you might be thinking well making sure that the aliens can identify that there was some kind of intelligent life behind what they have received so they can in fact recognize it as a message it might well end up looking something like the Pioneer plaque that was designed by Carlin Linda Sagan in the 70s back when a man and a woman were a fairly normal representation of the human species of course thanks to the miracle of social justice we now know that this plaque was inferior because it failed to send aliens modern messages of Earth's equality and diversity according to scientists and as reported by the Pulitzer Prize winning Guardian and for conference in Leeds this week a group of British astronomers and philosophers who form the UK research network for SETI the search for extraterrestrial intelligence agreed to enter a competition organized by the breakthrough initiative to devise a message to send out into space on behalf of the world to whoever might be listening however discussing the likely content of the message at the British Science Festival in Bradford on Thursday the need to revise our previous portrayals of life on Earth was raised the need Jill Stuart's an expert in space policy at the London School of Economics pointed to the plaque that was placed on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft launched in 1972 intended to convey the origin of the craft and to impart information about the inhabitants of Earth Stuart observed that to modernize the pictorial message presents some issues to anyone who's not familiar I think that what this is a long form way of saying that the Pioneer 10 plaque is problematic and it's problematic because the plaque shows a man raising his hand in a very manly fashion while a woman stands behind him appearing all meek and submissive she said we really need to rethink that with any messages were sending out now attitudes have changed so much in just 40 years well I can't help but agree I mean it seems to me that they're standing side by side as equals and the man is simply raising his hand in a gesture of greeting the plaque also portrays the human figures as white and Stuart added I would be uncomfortable sending out any images or messages that include Western dominated material personally I don't really see why these people have to be white I mean I suppose the hairstyles themselves precludes certain ethnicities such as maybe sub-saharan African but can we really be sure that these people are white and not say South American or Chinese do we know for sure that these people aren't Indian or Arabic the answer is of course yes yes they were wise if they weren't white this wouldn't be newsworthy if they weren't white the Guardian probably wouldn't be reporting on it because as Jill Stewart says as reported by the Guardian attitudes have changed so much in 40 years so how exactly have attitudes changed what exactly is this call for diversity what are they calling for diversity of are we talking the hair styles nail polish favorite Shakespeare play they just don't seem to specify so what I did is I just I had a browse through the Guardian and just just to see what I could find and it seems that there is a very heavy focus on gender and racial identity if you can believe it with a particular focus on straight white men which I find particularly baffling because straight white men tend to spend very little time talking about their race their gender or their sexuality they make what they are less important than who they are and who they are is remarkably important for example they command entertainment media straight white men control Hollywood according to the Guardian and of course they celebrate their straightness whiteness and maleness with the Oscar celebrations which this author and ironically says is a phallus holding a phallus most of the leading captains of industry a straight white man and it's mostly straight white men who are keeping law and order and that's when straight white men aren't trying to save the planet quotes without the rest of us and this is when straight my men aren't busy monopolizing philosophy atheism or homosexual sex so the Guardian has at least proven if nothing else that if you focus less on your racial sexual and gender identities you have more time to focus on things that are actually productive things that will actually land you an interesting career that doesn't rely on what you are and only relies on who you are of course Guardian authors can't understand why judging people for what they are instead of who they are is making all the straight white men so angry now I don't know either so I figure what we could do is just look through some more Guardian authors and see what their solutions to the straight white male problem are I mean what about Jessica Valenti's radical fix to the world's wage gap of simply just paying men less I mean sure we aren't judging them based on what they are something out of their control rather than who they are something that they deliberately chose to be unfortunately for Jessica she was informed that this would be illegal and a violation of the Equal Pay Act which is indeed as she says a bummer because the alternatives don't seem to be working which is of course completely true to many straight white men are focusing far too much on who they would like to become instead of what they already are and it's this kind of get-up-and-go attitude that's turning women into second-class citizens in fact it's turning them into victims victims of oppression because denying that women are a victimised class is simply wrong what else would you call the segments of the population who are systematically discriminated against in school work and politics and that's completely true the systems are designed to discriminate in favor of who you are and not what you are and it turns out that having a ridiculously expensive degree in gender studies isn't helping your career so simply being for example a woman is no good at all and this of course is a system of oppression against people who are concerned only with what they are which is as I'm sure you've noticed throughout this video a common theme with many Guardian authors let's take for example Julie bindle a veteran feminist author for The Guardian who recently wrote an article about a village when men are banned only women are allowed to live in umoja julie bindle visits the Kenyan village that began as a refuge for survivors of sexual violence and discovers its inhabitants are thriving in the single sex community and she really sells it to especially the very last line which is Mary shows me a handful of dried beans that she'll be cooking soon for dinner we don't have much but in emoji I have everything I need I suppose in the same way that we have different definitions for the word oppress we must have different definitions for the word thrive as well Julie bindle was also friends with Andrea Dworkin the famous feminist firebrand who was her eras bravest most galvanizing and polarizing feminist ten years after her death her sheer courage and hatred for the men who hate women continue to inspire it's interesting that she'd focus on who these men are they are the men who hate women not simply what they are the men I am sorry to tell everyone that Andrea died 10 years ago this week she had become famous in the early 1980s for the ordinance that she and the legal scholar Katherine McKennon had drafted for Minneapolis to recognize pornography as sexual discrimination and a violation of women's civil rights I think Dworkin can be best summed up by this obituary by Susan bright in which she says that's quotes about Malcolm X is apt as Malcolm pointed out the problem is white people Dworkin said the problem is men now normally I would say there is some validity to the idiom you can judge the character of a man by the company he keeps but we are of course talking about women and therefore this does not apply and it certainly doesn't supply to the rad femme collective and their interview with Guardian writer Julie bindle they described Julie as an outspoken journalist tireless radical feminist activist and political lesbian and she's been at the forefront of our no platforming campaign which aims to tackle the no platforming of radical feminists by organizations who seek to silence our voices no platforming will also be the topic of Julie's talk at the rad frames resist conference organized by rad femme collective which is taking place in September in central London Julie's new book straight expectations examines the gay and lesbian movement in the UK and the ways in which being gay has increasingly come to be seen as a no longer a political and personal choice but something that is biologically predetermined from birth in the interview below she talks about the depoliticization of sexuality the importance of dismantling gender and her current work surrounding prostitution and its perceptions around the world so it sounds like we're in for a wild ride so let's get on and read this interview so the rand femme collective asks what role does political lesbianism play in women's liberation - its Julie answers I think political lesbianism has a crucial role because it tells women that sexuality is political under a system of male supremacy it tells us that sexual acts are all political and then none of them are without meaning and it also clearly defines the fact that equality and meaningful sexual pleasure can be achieved far easier with women than it can be with men under this system I'm actually really bad at being a political lesbian so I'm gonna have to take her word for that the rad femme collective asks how do we dismantle gender - its Julie answers we have to get rid of it there is no point looking at reforming it it would be like saying we could reform the Tory Party we just need to abolish and obliterate it and you know what we actually know what that's going to look like gender is a social construct being genderqueer with a feminine body I'm a dude today come on not a girl not a girl not a girl not a girl not a girl not a girl not a [ __ ] girl not a goddamn [ __ ] but you look like not a girl but you certainly not a girl but just like not a girl gotta go guess what I'm not a girl we still call me a girl I'm not a girl not a girl but you like a food not a girl but you have a feminine voice not a girl not a girl you look like a girl what you talk like not a girl but you have so there's a boy wake up when I pray that when I look down I don't have few more parts but yeah I'm gender-neutral but are you a boy or a girl some men have vaginas some women have dicks respect people's pronouns you a nerd pricks may lurk you'll know how about pizza rolls [ __ ] you grandmother just told me that all I talk about is trans rights and that I need to focus on something more important [ __ ] so my sister called me a mama's boy earlier and my immediate response was I'm no boy or girl I am an immortal bod are you a boy or a girl I'm the supreme yeah but like what's between your legs magic lives matter white lives don't matter this scum don't matter I came out here to have a good time but then somebody called me a girl so I'm going home this people be like are you a boy or a girl and I'm like no so fun this morning about trans remember the punch is basically haha they're actually men and now I'm gonna punch everybody in the whole world in the face this do that a bubble tea shop said oh I like your hair man and I [ __ ] cried are you a boy or a girl I don't know are you stupid or just a dick shout out and all the really cool edgy people commenting she on my vine where I ask people to use they/them pronouns I'm currently trying to install the sims 2 Jean Dubai girl you're beautiful things but I'm not a girl you're right you're a lady I wish my parents would accept me for who I am being gender fluid and all that's really annoying are you a girl or a boy gender fluid you a [ __ ] are you a girl or a boy I can't tell good I feel like having a dick today I feel like having a vagina today I feel like having both or nothing at all this is our daughter Carly hi I'm not a [ __ ] girl but you have not a girl what you sound like while you're trying to scrape your brain back together and put it back into your head I'm going to thank common filth for these vine marathons there's a link to his channel in the description but anyway this is the world that the anti gender activists like Guardian writer Julie bindle are fighting for the rad femme collective asks how important do you think the Laura's in women's liberation to which Julie replies I am Pro police because I know that we are being raped murdered abused and sold into slavery and having our genitals sliced open which is horrible I hope Julie gets the justice she desperately deserves but this last question that we'll go over is probably the answer to the Guardians question of who are all these straights whites men and why are they all so angry rant FEM collective asks well heterosexuality survive women's liberation and I'm not even going to comment on this answer on it's gonna read it verbatim it won't not unless men gets their act together have their power taken from them and behave themselves I mean I would actually put them all in some kind of camp where they can all drive around in quad bikes or bicycles or white vans I would give them a choice of vehicles to drive around with give them no pawn they wouldn't be able to fight we would have wardens of course women who wants to see their sons or male loved ones would be able to go and visit or take them out like a library book and then bring them back I hope heterosexuality doesn't survive actually I would like to see a truce on heterosexuality I would like an amnesty on heterosexuality until we have sorted ourselves out because under patriarchy it [ __ ] I am sick of hearing from individual women that then men are alright those men have been shored up by the advantages of patriarchy and they're complacent they are not stopping other men from being shared I would love to see a women's libber that results in women turning away from men and saying when you come back as human beings then we might look again straight white men have committed the cardinal sin of not focusing on what they are but instead focusing on who they are because in the mind of at least this feminist men are not human beings they are human doings they are not being a thing to her and she does not consider them human while they are not focused on their own personal identities and this very same person wrote an article last year entitled feminism is in danger of becoming toxic the person who just declared that half of the human race weren't actually human and should be relegated to camps as if they have done something wrong by merely existing as straight white men is calling out feminism for being toxic what a time to be alive interestingly though the Guardian poses all of the questions when it also has all of the answers take this article for instance straight white men they never think of themselves as a group when playwright young Jean Lee decided to write a play about identity politics it was a very different kind of minority she had in mind just as it can describe most plays in the Western theatrical Canon the banner straight white men can also apply to politicians corporate leaders novelists radio hosts and so on as the recent onslaught of think pieces which might as well have all been called calling out straight white men illustrates all over the Internet with every misguided debate of the existence of white privilege or demand for sexual assault victims to prove they didn't consent the straight white male population is put under an even stronger microscope they've even earned their own racial slur which is the word douchebag and was coined by Gawker forever at the laughing edge of inventing new racial slurs but Lee says she always makes herself right the play that she least wants to do and the newness of the straight white male as a social identity made it an obvious choice as her next subject because this is what has happened to straight white men evidently being the sorts of people who base their value on what they do instead of what they are would naturally be the mortal enemies of people who want to base their value on what they are instead of what they do instead of what they can provide for others a system like this is going to inherently be bad for them because they don't do anything they are something and this is the reason they have ranged themselves as enemies against straight white men and the thing is if you don't understand all this then you can't really understand why there is a demand to change the Pioneer ten pluck why it's no longer acceptable to simply have a man and a woman standing next to each other with the man raising his hand in greeting I feel like I should apologize to the ghosts of Carl and Linda Sagan your original Park was a very good attempt but you didn't know what the future is going to be like you didn't know that merely describing human beings wasn't going to be enough it was in fact going to be problematic and like all things it's been left to a cisgendered heteronormative straight white male to put things right one of the privileges of running this YouTube channel is that I get to commission artwork and I commissioned the cartoon loon to design a new modern version of the Pioneer 10 plaque one that I'd like to call the diversity plaque please enjoy

Channel: Sargon of Akkad

Views: 337,882

Rating: 4.9395194 out of 5

Keywords: funny, stupid, feminism, mra, news, comedy, politics

Id: tOG3exyb_aY

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2015