The Straight White Man's Guide to Feminism and Social Justice

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Yep, you read the title, you saw the thumbnail, you know what this video is about. If you’re asking yourself why you should listen to a straight white guy mansplain feminism to you, odds are, you’re already sold on the idea. You don’t need to be convinced that social justice is a valid cause, so this video probably isn’t for you. It’s for my fellow straight white guys who are on the fence, maybe they say things like “I’m not a feminist, I’m an egalitarian.” Disgusting! Or they go to commentary channels on youtube to laugh at ridiculous SJWs. I’m gonna do worse than give you a one star. You’re gonna be on Gawker, heh. Don’t get me wrong, those people probably deserve some ridicule, but just as you don’t like being related to every tiki torch guy, these people don’t represent all feminists. So the hope is to arm you with a few more facts about feminism and to understand the logic of social justice warriors. And I know that just talking about these things, even if I don’t necessarily agree, is going to get me called all of the leftist sjw libtard names, so I might as well look the part. This video was brought to you by Skillshare. This video is going to be a little different from my previous moderate’s guides. While I will be referencing some laws and studies, there are no scientific papers I can hold up that flat out say “Toxic Masculinity exists” or conclude by saying that this definitively proves that White Privilege is a thing. No study just says that in black and white, which is what I assume you’ve come to expect. But no study ever comes to a definitive conclusion – I wouldn’t trust them if they did – instead, they study some tangential aspect of a problem and leave it to us to infer the rest. And the best way for me to help you make those connections it to tell you how I did it. Let’s start with White Privilege, like many of you, I immediately get defensive whenever someone says I’m privileged. I certainly don’t feel privileged. I don’t get a break on my taxes, a check from the government, or a discount at Walmart simply because I’m white. Economics is the first thing people think of whenever they hear the word “privilege.” And in that respect, I’ve certainly never been privileged, in fact I’ve had a pretty hard life – I know what it’s like to hope that my paycheck enters my account before my landlord cashes the rent check I already gave them. Assuming Youtube doesn’t demonetize me, this will be the first year I ever get to say I’m middle class. Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve had some really dark times in my life, some darker than others – some I brought on myself, while others were just bad luck. Like many of you, I was unemployed during the recession. So I’ve certainly never felt like I’ve ever had any tangible privilege or advantage in life. But that’s because I was thinking about privilege in the wrong way. I’ve always thought that what I have is the standard – those people are privileged, what I get is just the same basic package that everyone gets. But everyone doesn’t get it. Were I anything but a straight white man, those dark times I experienced would have been significantly darker. Were they easy? No, not even close. But they were comparatively easier than a woman or a black person in the exact same situation, though I didn’t feel that at the time. Privilege isn’t an extra that you’ve earned, it’s more about what doesn’t happen to you. Like I said, I was unemployed during the recession, I applied for what must have been hundreds of jobs before I finally got one. And then less than a year later I was laid off, because the charter school I was working at shut down. So I had to go through that entire process all over again, only this time I kept track of it in an excel spreadsheet – yes, I am that kind of nerd – I applied for 67 jobs over the course of two months, all while struggling to make ends meet. Thankfully, I’m white and I have a white sounding name. I don’t know why there’s a debate about this every time I say that, but I’m definitely white. All four of my grandparents are European. And just to get ahead of the inevitable jokes, sometimes when I look in the mirror, for a fraction of a second, I see my dad and I’m terrified. Not because he’s not a good-looking guy, he is, but ah! But because of my straight male whiteness and my white sounding name, I only had to apply to 67 jobs rather than hundreds. Yes, there are studies that show that job applicant discrimination still exists against queer people, women, and black people – sometimes all it takes to have your resume tossed in the trash is having an ethnic sounding name. So while I thought I was getting the same basic package as everybody else, and it just sucks for everyone, there are a lot of people who aren’t even getting that. And that is a privilege that I didn’t even know I had. If I were in an emergency situation like a burning building, I’ve never been there before, I don’t know the layout, and a woman stands up and says we should all go out that door. But then a man stands up and says no, we should go out that door. Knowing nothing else about the situation or who these people are… I’m probably going to listen to the man. And studies show that statistically, so would you. Does that make me a sexist? Maybe. But the fact that I recognize this Male Privilege and recognize the fact that it’s a problem is a step in the right direction. And it makes me wonder… how many times have I been that guy? How many times have people just accepted my authority or even my opinions simply because I’m a man and not because I was correct? People rarely ask me for my credentials, it does happen, but it’s rare. I never get told that I must be lying about my degrees or my profession because I’m black. Yes, these are real comments from a friend of mine’s channel. It’s the same for women, along with the usual sexist garbage, their credentials are always in question. Most people just take my word for it that I have the degrees I say I do. The only thing I do get questioned on is my military service – yes, I still get these comments almost a year later. Whenever I show this picture I always get accused of being a POG. I’m used to it, the military is a constant dick measuring contest. Yes, my uniform is clean, it’s almost like I knew that and that’s why I asked to have my picture taken. Yes, I’m wearing a face mask, it was actually freezing that day. I still have that mask, here I am wearing it in my second video ever. But here, a video of me in Iraq, no face mask, no clean uniform while wearing my armor with all the bells and whistles. See, this is easy, because I know I was there and I have pictures and videos to prove it. Most of you probably accepted that I was there without having to be shown any of that or asking for my DD-214 or my degrees or transcript – not because I’m trustworthy, but because I’m a man. Imagine if I wasn’t a man, and I didn’t have pictures or video, and I was trying to prove something significantly more serious. My goal with this video is not to completely sell you on feminism and social justice. In all truth, that’s probably not possible. But I do want you to understand what these terms actually mean, rather than going with your initial defensive gut reaction. The same reactions I used to have. Maybe you’re down here in your level of understanding, while someone who has studied it for years and has made a career out of it is up here – you don’t want to be up here, nor could I get you there. I am not an expert, this channel isn’t called Knowing It All. But I can help you bring your level of understanding up a bit, this isn’t meant to be the one and only video you ever watch on feminism. But I do hope that it’s among the first. As a result, I am going to simplify a few things in order to help you understand that social justice warriors don’t want to destroy the world as you know it – or even video games. They just want to make it more equal and inclusive. I’ve been playing Division 2 a lot lately and it took me a while to realize that the female characters are wearing just as much gear and armor as the male ones. You might be thinking “yeah, obviously, why wouldn’t they?” And I’d remind you that that wasn’t always the case, it took us a long time to get here. The fact that you thought that or didn’t even notice that Division 2 characters were dressed the same is because of people like Anita Sarkeesian and the feminist movement. Feminism, and the left in general, has somewhat of a branding problem. Phrases like White Privilege, Male Privilege, and even Black Lives Matter lend themselves to misinterpretation and defensiveness. Even the word feminism has the same problem. When you hear the term, you probably think it means that women want power over men – and while there are probably some people who want that, they are not representative of all feminists. What most feminists want is equality, what many of you would call egalitarianism – and what many of you think we already have. While they do have the vote, and they do technically have legal equality, for now, you’re just going to have to take my word for it that when it comes to societal power, women have less than men – we’re just not there yet. So, feminism is the balancing force, the upward motion, pushing towards equality. The reason you think women want power over men is because you think we’re already here, so the upward force is pushing imbalance. The same could be said for Black Lives Matter, you think we’re here – where all lives matter, which would be great, but we’re not. So, the balancing force is Black Lives Matter. If you believe in egalitarianism and that is what you truly want for society, you already share a lot of common ground with feminism. You’re probably just hung up on the label because to you, it comes off as bad branding. If you want to convince people of your ideas or bring them over to your side or even sell them something, you need good branding. And I would argue that Social Justice does that once you look below the surface – so let’s do that. The first thing to understand is that feminism is not a single monolith, there are several groups within feminism who don’t always agree with each other and want different things. There is no way I could sell you on the one and only true Feminism. If you agree with the liberal feminists that gender is a social construct, you’ll be going against the radical feminists who say it isn’t. Just like any political movement, there are internal disagreements. So if I were to ask you to define feminism, I’m going to get a wide range of answers, much like I would with… socialism. So the definition we’re going to use for this video is “the push for gender equality.” That seems to cover most everyone’s definitions. Some people add a but… but it has been obsolete since or has morphed into. Some people add a by… by changing laws or changing cultural views. That’s fine, but everyone has the same root definition: the push for gender equality. So how are they going about that? The first wave of Feminism started in the mid-1800s and was focused around voting rights and the suffragette movement. It was also linked to the abolitionist and temperance movements, but again, not everyone agreed. Over time, several individual states gave women the right to vote, but the movement faded with the passage of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote federally. And I suppose that’s where a lot of people think feminism should have ended. But the second wave, which started in the 1960s, accomplished a lot of things that we would consider necessary today. This was the Women’s Liberation movement, which pushed for legal equality. It was in conjunction with the Civil Rights and anti-war protests at the time. Though, like the first wave, they didn’t always overlap. Women had been trying break out of the traditional housewife role since World War II, with all of the men off fighting, women took jobs in the workforce and actually kind of liked it. And for some reason, wanted to keep doing it. But they soon realized that they weren’t being paid the same as men for the same work and passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Which was supposed to end the gender pay gap… but didn’t. The act made it illegal to pay people differently for equal work, requiring equal skill and responsibility, based on sex. But it did allow for different pay based on seniority, merit, quantity or quality of production, or any differential based any other factor other than sex. Much like how you’re not allowed to discriminate based on race, you can discriminate based on… well I just didn’t like the way they carried themselves. Having loopholes perpetuates the problem. You’ve probably heard that women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes and you’ve probably heard the many counter arguments to that – some more valid than others. That statistic is based on the average earnings of all men versus all women. There are obviously problems with doing it like that, some women have different career choices, some women take time off, some women work fewer hours. You think researchers have never considered confounding variables before? Even PragerU, in their videos about the gender pay gap, says that when you control for those variables, comparing a female to a male who both work the same profession for the same amount of time – there is still a gap. Now, there are exceptions, but most workplace pay gaps narrow to the point of vanishing when one accounts for all of these relevant factors. Even a study by the American Association of University Women, a feminist organization, shows that the actual wage gap shrinks to only 6.6 cents when you factor in different choices men and women make. And the key word here is choice. I mean 6.6 cents isn’t really narrowed to the point of vanishing, if I were to reduce your pay by 6.6% you’d notice. The small wage gap that does exist has nothing to do with paying women less, let alone with sexism. It has to do with differences in individual career choices that men and women make. Okay no, she literally said on the previous slide, that when you factor in individual choice, it exists. But that’s not the only study she mentions that controls for choice. The Department of Labor paper concluded that once these differences are accounted for across all professions, the unexplained wage gap is somewhere between 4.8 and 7% - almost identical to the 6.6 percentage gap found by the AAUW. PragerU attributes this “unexplained wage gap” to other choices that weren’t taken into account. But no, these were apples to apples comparisons. A female bank teller with one year of experience versus a male bank teller with one year of experience, living in the same area with the same education, no kids, no extra hours. I used to be a pay gap denier. If women didn’t make as much as men, it was because of career choices or hours worked or they didn’t negotiate their salaries as hard or… pregnancies… eventually you run out of confounding variables. And at some point you just have to accept the results. It is illegal to pay someone less based on sex, but that’s where merit and any differential based on any other factor other than sex comes into play. The gender pay gap exists – it’s not 23 cents – but it does exist. The second wave helped make it possible for women to live independent of men. Women were now allowed to have their own bank accounts and credit cards. Something you would have thought has always been the case, but no, 45 years ago, a woman couldn’t get a loan without having a male co-signer. Even if she was a single millionaire, a man had to sign off on it. Women weren’t allowed in many educational institutions or to participate in school sports until Title IX was passed in 1972. And then there was Roe v Wade, which… I’ve talked about in another video so we’re just going to set that aside for now. They also campaigned against sexual harassment, domestic violence, and even marital rape, which- in many states, it was legal to rape your wife until 1993. It’s easy to think that all of this was in the past, but I was alive in 1993. So a lot of these things that we just accept as obvious weren’t always… until very recently. But not everything that the second wave wanted to accomplish came to pass. The Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, would have guaranteed equal legal rights for everyone regardless of sex, effectively getting rid of the legal distinction altogether. It passed both houses of Congress, was signed by the president, and was ratified in 35 of the required 38 states. But then conservative women, rallied against it, specifically citing that women would be eligible for the draft and lose the upper hand in custody and alimony disputes. They actually called themselves anti-feminists. So every time a mens’ rights activist or modern antifeminist complains about how unfair divorce is to men in this country… Yeah, and feminists wanted to get rid of that. Every time you bring up Titanic or combat death numbers in order to show some hypocrisy about reverse sexism… Yeah, feminists wanted- well, I assume they would prefer that nobody die, but yeah, they wanted to make that equal too. Feminists wanted equality, even at the cost of the relatively few advantages they had. It’s strange to think that MRAs have a lot more in common with second wave feminists than they’d ever be willing to admit. But the ERA didn’t get ratified and likely never will. It only would have brought about legal equality though, nobody is denying that men and women are biologically different. I don’t know any serious feminist who denies that. On average, men have more upper body strength, larger hearts, larger lungs, and denser muscles and bones. There are even perceptual differences. Male vision is typically better for tracking motion and distance while female vision is better at differentiating color, these differences exist. But society has far outpaced biology. We are beyond the natural order and primal instincts, nobody is worried about the neighboring tribe coming over to rape and pillage- Well, almost nobody is worried about that. If you’re watching this video, you’re not worried about that. Just because that’s the way it is or always has been, doesn’t mean that’s how it should always be. You’re probably upsetting the natural order right now. Physical strength isn’t nearly as important as it used to be, if you have asthma or you wear glasses, under the natural order of things… you’d be dead. Certainly not procreating. So if you think that hierarchies are natural because they are in other species – we’re well beyond that and have been for a long time. It was the antifeminists who fought against equality, who wanted to keep the current structure, and even invented the man-hating feminist myth. By saying things like “happy women aren’t feminists.” In 1968 there was a protest against the Miss America pageant where women threw away things that objectified them. This turned into the bra-burning myth that actually never happened. Feminists became viewed by the general public as lesbian man-haters, a stereotype which would last until… well still, really. The third wave sought to break that myth. They openly embraced femininity and girliness in order to break the pantsuit wearing stereotype. This is when punk and pop girl power bands started. This is when girls embraced pink – the color had always existed and was usually associated with girls, but now it was theirs and it was even marketed that way. Second wave feminists didn’t really like this trend. They had worked hard to be taken seriously as women and as equals to men, so they saw the push towards girliness as regressive. But later waves have their problems with second wave feminists too. As I said before, women’s movements often took place alongside other movements like anti-Vietnam, abolition, or Civil Rights. But never really included them, which later waves saw as a mistake. There is some debate as to whether we are still in the third wave or we’ve transitioned into the fourth wave, but the hallmark characteristic of today’s feminism is inclusivity and intersectionality. Which is why the term Social Justice is more commonly used, it includes everyone. Social Justice Warrior or SJW has become somewhat of a slur online for anyone who complains about stuff that doesn’t really exist. I used to laugh at Social Justice Warriors. I’ve kept a running list of future topics for my channel and Political Correctness and Social Justice were on it before I even made my first video. Though my intention at the time was to laugh at it. Like many of you, I thought that SJWs were just people looking for things to be outraged about and even making up reasons to restrict free speech. But you only need to look at the fact that this movement exists to prove that wrong. Imagine if you were a peasant and you went to your lord and said hey, you have more than we do – you have more rights, more land, more food, more everything. And the lord turns to you and says please, we all have an equal chance, trust me. Obviously the hereditary lord is wrong, obviously slavery is wrong, obviously they should be able to vote, obviously they should be able to have their own credit cards and get paid the same. What are the odds that this is the first time the people saying they aren’t equal are just making it up? People like to point to the past to say “that was real racism” or “that was real sexism”, it should have gone away and it did, what you’re going through isn’t real oppression. That’s not even mentioning that there are people who are actively trying to roll back the advances made during the 60s and 70s. What do you think is going to happen in fifty years, when the future version of you has a youtube channel? What are they going to be saying about current day feminism and social justice? What will they be saying about you? Not all feminists are social justice warriors, but pretty much every social justice warrior is a feminist. Because of the cornerstone fourth wave idea of intersectionality. The idea that different forms oppression intersect, whether it’s sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, or classism. These movements have always existed along side each other in the past, so they should work with each other in the future. As a result, modern feminism is far more inclusive, men can be feminists, queer people and even trans people can be feminist. It’s also more sex-positive. Porn stars and other sex workers are no longer seen as working against feminism, they are part of feminism. Though there are the occasional exclusionary radical feminists. This intersectional oppression exists with a hierarchy, white over black, rich over poor, cis over trans, and yes, men over women. Though that specific hierarchy is often called the Patriarchy. Whenever we hear the term Patriarchy, we think of some secret shadow council of men controlling everything behind the scenes, which is obviously ridiculous. But men do have more power in our society. Biologically, socially, and legally – even though on paper women have the same legal rights, look what happens when a woman tries to take legal power. Say what you want about her policies. But a lot of the arguments I heard about her during that election were specific to her being a female. Predictable things, like what’s going to happen during that time of the month? But even subtle things, like what happened during the third debate, when Donald Trump packed the audience with women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. Which I happened to be livestreaming – you can see the exact moment it dawned on me… This is one of those things that I hate that I have to say… this campaign is really turning me into one of those social justice warriors. I never in a million years thought I would say this word – or this sentence. If she was a man, we wouldn’t even be bringing this up. This is what happens to women who try to break traditional gender roles. Some gender roles are rooted in biology, men are obviously better suited for hunting and combat while women are better biologically equipped for child rearing. But what about stuff like cooking and cleaning? Or yardwork? What even is yardwork aside from cleaning but … outside? Why is one male and the other female? One involves pushing a machine that has a spinning thing that sucks stuff up from the ground and puts it in a bag. And the other is vacuuming. What is raking aside from sweeping, but outside? Why is a man better suited for one but not the other? I personally hate yardwork, a traditionally male role, and enjoy cooking, a traditionally female role. Does that make me less of a man? When I see this video of someone not understanding how to use a hammer, I immediately think that his man card needs to be revoked. But I don’t know how to weld – does that mean I’m not a man? I’ll tell you what, nothing makes me feel more like a man than fixing things that most people would pay a professional to do, whether it’s plumbing or even my car. When I turn the key and it works? Feeling masculine is fine, whether you’re strong, smart, respectful, chivalrous, whatever it means for you. But when you have to prove your masculinity through intimidation or putting others down – that’s toxic. Slurs reinforce the idea that whatever is lower on the hierarchy is bad, black people, gay people, women, whatever else. It doesn’t really work in the reverse direction. You can hurl insults at me all you want – jerk, dick, cracker… none of that really affects me. But limp dick loser? And I’m ready to throw down. Attacks on my masculinity, sexuality, or sexual ability are likely to set me off, and that violent, aggressive reaction is Toxic Masculinity. Feminism denigrates masculinity in men, by relentlessly calling us toxic for our flaws, rather than appreciating our natural qualities of energy, risk-taking, and leadership. Okay, aside from the fact that none of those three are exclusively male qualities, and we just talked about what happens to women who try to be leaders – This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Toxic Masculinity. Again, this is a branding problem, most men get defensive when they hear the term, but not all men or masculine qualities are toxic. It’s specifically the need to prove your masculinity through aggression or intimidation. It isn’t calling you toxic for your flaws, it’s calling the flaws toxic. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one. So when Gillette released that ad, they weren’t denigrating all men, they weren’t trying to make you less masculine, they were trying to make you better men. Or at least think about how you can be a better man. Before you say something dumb like what does a razor company have to do with manliness, companies have tried to insert themselves into social and political issues forever. Here’s a gun right’s video, advocating for concealed carry – from a coffee company. What does coffee have to do with the second amendment? Gillette is the perfect company to be talking about the transition from being boyhood to manhood. I remember cutting my face while pretending to shave as kid, because I wanted to be like my dad. But there are three parts to that ad that numerous people made response videos about. Specifically this one, like oh no, we’re not allowed to play fight anymore? These kids aren’t play fighting… Well I mean, kinda since they’re actors, but you do know that real fights happen, right? It’s a segment about bullying, bullies exist and sometimes it gets physical. Or this segment… What I actually think what she’s trying to say… oh so we’re not allowed to explain things anymore? That’s not innocent explaining, that’s mansplaining. How do I know? Because it’s in a video about how we talk down to and belittle women, use your context clues. And then of course, this segment… oh so we can’t talk to women on the street now? Of course you can, but that’s not the body language of someone about to tell someone else to have a nice day. This is a video about how we harass women, again, use your context clues, we all know men like this. Even if they’re a small minority, they still exist. While I know I’ve never had the confidence to do something like that on the street, I do know that I’ve said things, thinking I was flirting or being nice, that were probably not cool. And looking back, it makes me feel sick. I can and have apologized to women for things I’ve said in the past, but I was probably just a drop in the bucket compared to everything she’s ever heard. The damage to her self esteem and trust in men is done. All I can do is try to remember that and be a better man going forward. Which is exactly what that ad was trying to do. Instead, it made everyone retreat to their safe spaces and make videos and reddit posts reassuring each other that it’s okay to be a man. Safe spaces have a legitimate purpose. It started as a way to protect domestic violence victims, having a female-only space to begin recovery and allow them to feel safe. It later expanded to LGBT people. Having a safe place to discuss issues important to them, their identity and community, without having jerks telling them that they shouldn’t exist. Sure, some college students take the idea of a safe space to the extreme. But I can think of several reasons as a straight white man, that I might want a safe space to discuss issues important to me without fear of ridicule. Issues related to my being a veteran, for example. The very first time I heard of a trigger warning, I was working at a residential treatment facility for at-risk youth. Kids with drug problems, gang violence, and abuse issues. Working there is why I... People ask me all the time why I do my threes like this, and it’s because of ASL, it took me a year to program myself to do it like this, so going back to this would be weird. Because this is actually six. But anyway, it makes sense that you’d want to watch what you say or even wear, because you wouldn’t want to trigger any cravings or bad memories. You should want to avoid accidentally hurting someone. A while back I tweeted about how I loved the show Bodyguard on Netflix, it’s about a veteran who becomes a cop. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil any of the plot. But there are two scenes in the show that affected me to the point of crying… and those are PTSD triggers. Should they have put a trigger warning at the beginning of the show? I probably wouldn’t have paid attention to it if they did, they might have, but I knew what the show was going to be about and I wouldn’t fault anyone for wanting a warning. Do some people take trigger warnings too seriously? Maybe, but it’s not like it’s censoring anything, it’s just warning people that the content might affect your recovery. Like many of you, I used to make fun of trigger warnings. And maybe it’s emasculating to admit to you that I was triggered by a tv show and I could use a safe space full of only other veterans to discuss that. Asking for help goes against masculinity, especially in the military. Breaking military tradition is probably the hardest thing you could ever do, I don’t know any organization that clings to historical tradition more strongly. But in truth, the military is probably the most forward-thinking part of our society. They enforce vaccinations, they believe climate change is real and are preparing for it, and they’ve integrated every minority group I’ve talked about in this video. Well before the rest of society did. Women, black people, gay people, and yes, even trans people. They’ve been in the military for years without any of you noticing or caring. How we treat LGBT people and specifically trans people is very likely the civil rights issue of our time. All you have to do is look to the past to see how this will play out. Whether it’s women’s right to vote, black people’s right to vote, interracial marriage, or gay marriage, society eventually comes around. I used to be against gay marriage. My opposition came from the presumption that there would be bad actors – that people would fake being gay in order to get married and get the tax benefits. It sounds ridiculous now, doesn’t it? But how is that any different from saying that people will fake being trans in order to go into a bathroom to rape people? Trans bathroom paranoia is just recycled gay paranoia. What Jimmy didn’t know was that Ralph was sick. A sickness that was not visible like small pox, but no less dangerous and contagious. A sickness of the mind. You see, Ralph was a homosexual. Which itself was just recycled anti-black propaganda. We’ve seen this movie before, we know how it ends. Watch out, they’re are coming for your precious women and children. Truth is, LGBT people are far more likely to be the victims of sexual violence than the perpetrators. Who are usually straight men, which kinda makes me doubt their straightness. You’ve heard me refer to the community several times as LGBT, it’s short, and it’s the acronym most people know. Though the full acronym is LGBTQQIP2SAA. Like me, the first time you saw this, you probably think it’s ridiculous and way too long. But if you can keep track of all of the houses in Game of Thrones, you can learn what this stands for. LGB stands for lesbian, gay, and bisexual, most people understand what these mean: a man attracted to another man, a woman who is attracted to both men and women, easy. The T stands for trans. Trans people is how you should refer to them, if you insist on making it longer, transgender is fine. Transsexual on the other hand, is not. Mostly because the pornography industry has taken that term and twisted it into a weird fetish. If you’re rolling your eyes right now about how they keep changing the acceptable terms, stop. You’ve changed your language to be more acceptable many times without issue. It’s the reason we don’t say midget or retard anymore. It’s the reason I keep saying black people – not African-Americans, because what do you call a black person from France? We used to call them negroes and coloreds… and a number of other unacceptable terms. You’ve changed your language for these other groups, so it shouldn’t be that hard for you to do it for trans people. But the name has also changed because sex and gender are separate. Sex is your biology, the parts you have, the hormones in your blood, and your genetics. Gender is more cultural. How you dress, how you present yourself, how you talk, and perhaps more importantly, what you feel like. This is why some people say gender is a social construct. A trans person is someone whose biological sex doesn’t match their gender identity. So sometimes, they change what they can. You can change how you dress and carry yourself, you can change how you talk, you can change the parts you have and even the hormones in your blood. You can’t change your chromosomes, which seems to be what a lot of people get hung up on for some reason. These same people like to claim that transgender people are mentally ill – and there is a mental illness known as gender dysphoria. But not every trans person experiences dysphoria, because a main component is that you feel significant distress or impairment. They used to think homosexuality was a mental illness too. Trans people exist, they’ve always existed, and they will continue to exist, you don’t get to write them off as a mental illness. They are valid people. A trans woman is a woman who was born as or assigned biologically male, you’ll sometimes see the abbreviation MtF, male to female. And FtM is a trans man. Think of trans like the word “to” – a trans woman is someone who went to a woman. While cis means still. A cis male is still a male. These aren’t terms made up by SJWs to add more complicated identifiers to make them feel special, they’ve existed in science forever. Here I am using the terms cis and trans in a video about GMOs, these are scientific words. The two Qs often get flip flopped. One of them means questioning, meaning you’re not sure what you are yet, you’re still figuring yourself out. And the other means queer. Queer is somewhat of a catchall phrase for the entire group, you’ll sometimes hear the phrase “the queer community.” It used to be a slur and to some people still is. Can you say it? Well I just said it a bunch of times so I hope so, I assume as long as you’re not using it in a derogatory way you’ll be alright. The I stands for intersex. This is the new, politically correct term for hermaphrodites, a concept you’ve known about forever. Sex is not binary. If we go by the parts you have, some people have male parts, some people have female parts, and some people have both. Though they usually only make sperm, eggs, or neither – there is no in between. So right off the bat, there are at least three options, which isn’t binary – it gets even more complicated when we look at chromosomes. The thing that every argument eventually devolves to. Males have XY, females have XX, and then there are all sorts of combinations that exist on a spectrum in between, they are rare, but they’re not as rare as you think. It’s a narrow spectrum, but it is a spectrum. Depending on which combinations you count, between 0.36% and 1.7% of the world’s population are intersex, which is close to how many redheads are in the world. You might even be intersex and not know it. Either because it never manifested physically or because people have always treated you as the gender you were assigned or identify as. The P stands for Pansexual. This is the answer to that common joke about “well if there’s more than two genders, why are they called bisexual? Doesn’t bi mean there’s only two?” Being pansexual means that you are attracted to everyone along the spectrum, regardless of sex or gender identity. 2S stands for Two-Spirit. It’s a Native American term for people who identify as both genders, but it’s place in the acronym stands for anybody who doesn’t conform to the gender binary. Because gender is also a spectrum. The thing is, you’ve always known it was a spectrum, think back to when you were a kid – what would you call a girl who only hung out with the guys and liked guy things? A tom boy. Sure, her biological sex is female, but she’s kinda boyish, you probably also used the term butch. Or called someone a girly man. By using those terms, you were passively accepting that the lines between the genders are blurred. Almost like it’s on a spectrum. So when someone says they are non-binary or genderqueer, they are saying that they aren’t strictly boy or girl, they’re somewhere in between. Genderfluid is someone who moves along the spectrum. People like to make fun of the 71 different gender options on Facebook or Tumblr, but once you actually look at the list – they aren’t hard to figure out and you’re probably familiar with most of them already. The two As at the end stand for multiple things depending on your source. Some say it stands for androgynous, the gender equivalent to intersex, not conforming to a single gender. Others say it stands for asexual or aromantic. Someone who doesn’t really have any interest in sex or romance. And others say it stands for allies, which I guess could include me. But because this acronym is a bit unwieldy, you’ll often see it shortened to LGBTQIA, LGBTQ, or just LGBT, sometimes with a plus to signify everyone else. Again, it’s a branding issue. An issue you can learn about by going to skl.sh/knowingbetter7. Skillshare is an online learning community with over 25,000 courses taught by experts their field. Take this course in developing your brand. If you want people to listen to what you have to say and be convinced by your arguments, you need a solid brand position. Or this course in transforming your brand into a product – who knows, you might even start selling tshirts… or notebooks. You can learn this, and much more for less than $10 a month. But if you go to skl.sh/knowingbetter7, you can get 2 months of unlimited access to all of Skillshare’s courses for free, you’ll also be supporting the channel when you do. LGBT rights and specifically trans rights, are the civil rights issue of our time. Allowing trans people in the military is just “don’t ask don’t tell” – but twenty years later. We had the same arguments about female firefighters. As long as you can pass the same physical tests, and you want to do that dangerous job, who cares what you have under the hood? We’ve also heard all of the trans athletes arguments before. Trans women are not men in dresses – nobody is faking being trans in order to win medals. Hormone replacement therapy has come a long way. All of the biological differences between men and women, aside from your chromosomes, can be changed with HRT: muscle mass, bone density, hemoglobin count, and of course, testosterone. Trans women often have lower testosterone than cis women. So whenever I hear that some poor white girl lost a medal to a trans woman, what I really hear is – They took our jobs! Do I feel bad for her? Sure, kinda, in the same way that I feel bad for a white person who doesn’t get a job because of affirmative action. I’ve been that white person. And while I was bitter at the time and even wrote a paper about how affirmative action is reverse racism and should be abolished. I was thinking about it the wrong way. Making sure she gets her medal isn’t worth excluding an entire group of people. Making sure I get a job or into college, isn’t worth holding back entire groups of people. You have to look outside of the individual cases. Worrying about people faking being gay in order to get tax benefits or faking being trans in order to rape people in a bathroom is just a way to withhold rights. Dreaming up ways that people might abuse the system isn’t justification for not changing the system and excluding people. If you want to live in an egalitarian society, feminism and social justice is how we get there. If you think we’re already living in an egalitarian society, you’re wrong. You’re the one in power telling others that they’re equal. If you want equality and you consider yourself to be an egalitarian, you’re probably already on board with a lot of the ideas in feminism. You’re just hung up on the label – feminist. Which is the same reason this guy denies that he’s an atheist every chance he gets, even though he agrees with the ideology, he doesn’t like the negative connotation. But if he’s being honest, deep down, he’s an atheist… and you are probably a feminist. This shouldn’t be the last video you ever watch on feminism and social justice. Take what you’ve learned here and go watch others. Hopefully now, you’ll understand the terms and concepts, because now, you know better. I recently set up a website, knowingbetter.tv, make sure to check it out and pick up the knowing better merch I showed off in this video. I’d like to give a shout out to my newest legendary patron, Andrew. If you’d like to add your name to this list of libtards, head on over to patreon.com/knowingbetter. And don’t forget to manspread that subscribe button, follow me on twitter and facebook, and join us on the subreddit.
Info
Channel: Knowing Better
Views: 751,078
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: knowing better, politics, feminism, social justice, feminist, social justice warrior, sjw, white privilege, discrimination, sexism, gender, straight white male, egalitarianism, terfs, equality, toxic masculinity, gillette commercial, equal pay, gender pay gap, gender wage gap, transgender, lgbtq, intersectionality, inclusivity, mens rights, antifeminists, second wave, patriarchy, gender role, safe space, trigger warning, privilege, mansplain, women, social construct, equal rights, trans, cis, female
Id: DMB785atM7k
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 40min 29sec (2429 seconds)
Published: Sun Apr 28 2019
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