Feminism - WHY YOU NEED IT! - A Response to Chris Ray Gun

hello everyone I'm going to change it up today and make a video that isn't absurdly long now if you've seen the title of this video you might be thinking ah here we go Sean and Jen have finally hoisted the old feminism flag they've come out of the feminism closet and they're about to start spouting feminism all over the place and will yes and now this is a response to Chris Reagan's video feminism why you don't need it but before we get into that I'd like to briefly talk about some of the trouble I have with arguing feminism on the Internet and I'm going to describe a scenario that I imagine we've all seen before two people are arguing about feminism online both using the term feminist however one person is talking about women fighting for equality and equal rights you know from the suffragette movement for voting rights all the way to the various issues of the modern day and the other person is using feminists to mean modern women who are critics and anti free speech and want a censor media that they don't like and force everyone to think like they do and as a result the two people talk past one another now I certainly have my own opinion as to which of those two definitions is closer to reality but you know that largely doesn't matter when I'm talking to someone who is rather strongly attached to another definition language just isn't good enough for conveying meaning in a lot of cases but you know that's a topic for a smarter person and this is why I often open my videos with a bunch of waffle you know like now defining terms and trying to make sure everyone's on the same page before we move forward so where does Chris Reagan come in well I picked his video to respond to here because to his credit he seems to have had something close to this in his mind when he was writing his video his main argument is that feminism used to be necessary and purposeful but having achieved its goal of equal rights for women it's now useless and it's just aimlessly inventing new reasons to carry on and I'd encourage you all here to go and watch his video it's not very long and again to his credit it's much less bombastic and in so moulting than your average video by a first person shooter playing dude talking about feminism on YouTube so from now on I'm gonna assume that everyone watching this video has watched all of Chris Reagan's video okay so again in short feminism was a worthwhile cause before women had equal rights book that goal has now been achieved and now feminism is just an ideology inventing new reasons to perpetuate itself and modern feminists focus on menial things that don't matter like the gender pay gap and women's representation in media you know old feminist activism good new feminist ideology bad and so here's my solution to the problem of arguing over differing definitions of the word feminism I'm gonna argue against Chris Reagan's position but using his definition of the word feminism I'm gonna play devil's advocate and accept that everything that Chris Reagan said is true so okay the gender pay gap doesn't matter it's not a valid issue women's representation in media in films computer games and so on that's pointless it doesn't matter they're not feminist issues now again I don't really believe these things but just for the purpose of this video we're gonna argue on Chris's terms so I'll agree with all of Chris's points with one exception and that's that feminism is no longer needed because even using his definitions I think there's several ways to argue that feminism is still relevant unnecessary and here's the first at no point in his video does Chris Regan specify that he is exclusively talking about any one location you know where is feminism no longer necessary and who no longer needs it there are plenty of countries in which women still do not have equal rights and legal protections and in which the oppression of women's much more shall we say obvious just look at Malala yousufzai Baer said that wrong getting shot in the head for wanting girls to be able to go to school and that's something that we in the West might take for granted but it was not always the case now I doubt very much that Chris would say to someone like Malala or other girls who were prevented from doing you know something as simple as getting an education that they don't need feminism you know women's legal equality even for issues that we think along settled in the West is still a contemporary issue in certain places like it was less than a year ago that women in Saudi Arabia voted for the first time ever and now of course I'm being unfair here I understand that Chris probably wasn't talking about Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or places like that I imagine he was just talking about the West and America in particular but as far as I know Chris does not limit his videos to only being viewed in America and I know from looking at my own YouTube analytics that you occasionally get views from places that you really wouldn't expect I've had views from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and the likes and chris has a lot more views than me so I imagine he's had even more views from places like that where women do not have equal rights and so this is the first problem with Chris's arguments it's seemingly from an exclusively Western American perspective and so okay let's limit ourselves just to talking about the West and here's the second problem I have with Chris's argument it assumes a linear view of social progressivism increases view women didn't have the vote and feminism was therefore necessary then women got the vote and now feminism is not necessary and that's the end of that story what he's missing is that the current situation is not fixed and well maybe it's unfair to say he missed it because he does mention this feminism is a set of values based on decisions that have already been decided and that very few if any people are actually contesting you know a small amount of people who disagree with women having equal rights and I personally can attest to that I've recently been in some pretty shady places on the internet filled with dudes who would love to take away women's right to vote and you might argue that these people don't have very mainstream views and what they want will never happen but hey who me and Chris grew up during a time of what's largely been social progressivism but of course things can swing the other way and that's one more argument for the continuation of feminism I think it's not enough to just win your rights as long as there are people out there who would take those rights away from you they have to be defended and we've thus far been talking about women's right to vote and all the relatively uncontroversial things like that what Chris doesn't mention are any of what we'll call the more borderline cases now I doubt anyone would argue that reproductive rights are not a feminist issue and well there are people running for the highest office in America right now who are saying that they will overturn Roe vs. Wade and this isn't ancient history this is an actual contemporary political reality that could have real legal ramifications for women who are alive right now Chris says that he believes in women's equal rights but he calls it a Galit arianism not feminism and I think the abortion issue is one good argument for the use of the word feminism in place of something like a Galit arianism because it's an issue that disproportionately affects women it would be a quality in one sense for nobody male or female to have access to abortion but that wouldn't tell the whole story would it there's a specifically gendered aspect to the issue and to understand it you really need a framework that specifically addresses gender inequalities like feminism now I'll admit that I've only watched this one video of Chris Reagan's but he doesn't seem here to be that bad of a guy in fact he doesn't seem that far off from being a feminist himself he's just stuck using what I would deem a very narrow-minded definition of the word and look were back to arguing definitions of words again so it's probably time to wrap up anyway thanks a lot for watching I hope you were able to take something from this and I think I might make a few more shorter videos like this before I get back to the big guys and I just like to mention and apologize here for my awful terrible Devils advocacy you know being a straight white guy in you know relatively sheltered from a lot of issues does give one a somewhat detached and dispassionate perspective and you know the ability to pretend to hold views that one doesn't for the sake of argument in a way that I understand can be quite annoying to people who are more affected by the actual issues and what am I saying there's nothing inherently rational or intelligent about being detached and unemotional okay someone more articulate than me please explain what I'm trying to say in the comments okay like subscribe or laughs just see it

Channel: Shaun

Views: 270,209

Rating: 4.4629502 out of 5

Keywords: chris ray gun, feminism, shaun jen

Id: DqlD3ISx--Q

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 05 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/KiloYankee5E1F]

Typical bluepill cuckery. Feminism is a sorority-like cult for ridiculously entitled females and misandrists that feign egalitarian values as they actively campaign against men and ostracize females that don't subscribe to their particular brand of psychotic dogma, and they collectively dismiss females around the world that actually have problems. They're petulant, illogical, myopic Stalinists and soycialists that just want to control everything. Feminism, for the last several decades, has been nothing but a series of Pyrrhic victories that no one can even definitively say has been good for women in the West who are indisputably the most privileged demographic in the history of our species. It's a false equal rights movement peppered with a handful of well meaning but irrelevant ladies that just need to distance themselves from that sunken ship.

[u/KiloYankee5E1F]

Oh Jesus.. your whole trope is based on feminist alternative facts and far-reaching rhetoric that has no consequential baring on what we're discussing. You're scrapping the bottom of the barrel for excuses to defend something so obviously slanted by design. No one cares that you're gay so it doesn't bother you.