[Voice Over:] Content warning: the following video contains a frank discussion of transphobia and non-binary erasure. Thought Slime also gets unreasonably sweaty. Viewer discretion is advised. Hi! I'm the Slime Goblin. Today we're gonna talk about cartoons again. I know we just did a video about cartoons, but I'm rip-roaring mad about cartoons again. So here we go! [She-Ra Theme Music] If this Vimeo channel, Mind-Brain, had an editorial policy before this it would have been: no response videos. I don't want to be one of those people that just gets in weird arguments with internet losers all the time. I have a hard enough time BEING a weird internet loser, I don't want to deal with other ones. But today I'm gonna break my one rule. I'm gonna argue with a weird hateful buffoon. Why? Because it's apparently a good use of my time. [She-Ra Theme] The Quartering is a YouTube channel on youtube.com. When he's not defending white nationalists from crimes that they pled guilty to in court, he's, and I quote: Talking about issues many of us care about in the gaming industry, comics, and the world at large. What type of things do... do people care about, in the world at large? Well, evidently it's She-Ra's tits. Quartering is very mad that She-Ra, a toy mascot from the 80's, is being rebooted by Netflix and her new design is not, in his view, sufficiently feminine. The first video is called --and I'm not even exaggerating. This isn't a joke, I made, to make fun of him-- The Fall of Beauty. Beauty no longer exists in the world, because they changed the design of a cartoon character. [Quartering:] Over the weekend, there's a bit of a hubbub about the She-Ra reboot on Netflix. She-Ra, if you don't know, is He-Man's twin sister. He-Man was my jam when I was young and She-Ra obviously, not really. Other than you know, my sister you know, liked She-Ra. [TS:] He makes sure to get that out of the way at the beginning cuz he doesn't want you to think that he cares about a girl cartoon. He's not a girl, he's a boy with a wiener. He then moves on to a montage of She-Ra pictures which he refers to as "The Original Beauty from the 80's" Apparently oblivious to the fact that one of his examples is actually the cover to a comic book released in 2014 with a significant redesign to the character. And another one is a little toy that they released last year. With also a lot of liberties taken with the design. Now for some reason, he doesn't find these redesigns objectionable. What is the difference between those and the one he doesn't like? And I wonder what it could be!? He even complains that She-Ra is no longer called a princess which he assumes, based on nothing, is part of an insidious feminist agenda to defeminize She-Ra. They're trying to take away traditional female aspirational figures like princesses who are not featured in the media AT ALL anymore. [Q:] It went from a... princess! Right? Cuz that was okay back in the 80's, femininity, you know it was okay for women to be women. Now it is that's different, right? We want all of our women to be... androgynous or... male-like. [TS:] Pretty damning stuff if you ask me. Except that the new cartoon is literally called She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Implying that there are, if anything, more princesses in this version of the show. Why am I so fucking sweaty? Now I understand that that's a little quibble of a detail, who has time to notice the title of the show that you're criticizing!? When it's printed in front of you... in two places... wh-while you're talking. Then he complains that She-Ra is an orphan now [Q:] Notice now now all of a sudden she's an orphan! uh... Why? Who knows? [TS:] Actually Quartering, I do know why! I know why! It's because she always was. She was in the first cartoon too. She was kidnapped by Hordak, that's the inciting incident of her whole story. Maybe if you like, looked at the Wikipedia article for the character that you're talking about that might have been mentioned in one of the first sentences. His whole argument about She-Ra's backstory being "defeminized" is just made up whole cloth based on the assumption that the word princess had been removed from the show, which is demonstrably wrong. He claims that you can tell that the show is trying to manipulate kids by taking a strong, aspirational, empowering female character and turning her into, in his words, "an androgynous male-lesbian." Who is responsible for this horrible crime, that is apparently a thing we're supposed to be mad about!? [Q:] But is it any surprise that a boyish looking...uh...lesbian takes THIS and turns it into this!? [TS:] Is it- are you serious!? Are you gonna criticize this person's appearance? Is that- is that really what we're doing!? [Q:] Now I'm not saying-- I think she's, she's cute. [TS:] Ah, no. Good. Cool. You managed to insult her but sexually objectify her at the same time. That's... very cool, very cool thing to do. So first of all, how is this character at all masculine? Is it the long eyelashes? Is it the beautiful flowing hair that you conveniently cropped out of the drawing that you made? Is it the frilly skirt? Is it the fact that she has the word "She" in her FUCKing name!? Secondly, how is it that a short-haired woman is too masculine to create a feminine version of She-Ra? But two MEN are not!? Because the original creators of She-Ra, Larry DiTillo and J. Michael Strehtherathirsdza... They're both men! Thirdly, even if we accept the idea that the new She-Ra is masculine, which to be clear: I do not! So what? Who cares? Oh God who cares? Why am I talking about this? How did I let this asshole trick me into talking about this? [She-Ra Theme] Quartering doesn't give a fuck about She-Ra. What he cares about is women being exposed to the idea that it's not their job to appear fuckable to men. That's pretty clear when you consider what he's saying with any level of critical thinking. But in case you don't want to do that, take a look at this clip where he outright admits it. [Q:] But you wonder what little girls if, if they are viewing this and, and it's, it's sold to them as like this female empowerment thing and and all that. What do they have to look up for, look up to? And you wonder what the young men's generat-- the young men of this day are gonna have to look forward to in women if this is, these are their icons, you know? [TS:] Did you catch that? Underneath all of the bluster about how She-Ra is an empowering character what he really likes about her is that she teaches little girls that it's important for them to look beautiful. He wants little girls to grow up with the idea that it's their job to be attractive to men. Anything which contradicts that narrative is subversive and dangerous to him. Now if he made a video saying that: saying "Hey ladies, look pretty for dudes!" Most people go "Shut up dickhead! G- go away!" Reactionary dump-lords have gotten really good about pretending to be talking about one thing while actually talking about something else. You might have heard this referred to as "dog-whistling," an analogy I don't understand, because dogs don't have lips and cannot whistle. Regardless, the tactic still works for two reasons: Reason number one, you can hijack the conversation people are already having. Are people excited about a new cartoon? Or Star War [sic]? Or video game? You can go in there and you can talk to them and make it look like your fringe political views are actually just a discussion about the things they already like! It is difficult to address a group of strangers and talk about how women today are too uppity because they want to decide how they get to dress and behave. People don't really want to hear that because it's a shitty opinion to hold. Hey, you know what people do like talking about? Weird pop culture stuff from their childhood. People are passionate about weird garbage from their childhood. You can disguise your talking points as concern for the way that the franchise is headed. It's no skin off my nose if women want to act more masculine, that doesn't hurt me at all and you're not going to be able to convince me that it does. But, if you can convince me that they're taking something away from me, even if it's something frivolous like a cartoon, suddenly there are consequences for ME personally. Because for better or worse people are passionate about media properties. And sometimes that passion gives them a kind of false sense of ownership over those properties. It's easy to make them think that it's been taken from them in service of some nefarious Feminist Agenda. Suddenly they're mad at feminists! "Hey feminists! Give me my cartoon back! I wanted to watch that cartoon, I liked it!" The second reason that it works, is it means you never really have to defend your opinion, because you don't have to say your opinion out loud. Say for example that I wanted to talk about how authoritarianism is bad and if there was media that glorified it, that would be a problem. One of the things I might do is I might make a video about "Is Batman an Authoritarian?" and I wouldn't discuss whether or not authoritarianism was bad. I would just take it for granted that you believe that, and kind of manipulate you into agreeing with me on that point without even having to establish it. Ain't I a stinker! Because when you address an argument, you have to address what it takes for granted. Quartering takes it for granted that drawing women to be "more masculine" is bad. He doesn't really tell you WHY, he just assumes that you'll agree with him on that. That's why all of his arguments are about establishing that it's trying to do that, not establishing that doing that would be wrong. He can't defend that position. Lucky for him, most of the responses he's going to get from this are people saying "No you dipshit! They're not trying to do that! It's a, it's a CARTOON! It's a girl. What do you, why are you being weird!?" Arguing about whether or not the cartoon is attempting to masculinize women concedes the point that if it WERE trying to do that there would be something wrong with doing that. And bingo! You've done the work for 'em. YOU'VE established that it's wrong for women to be masculine. He didn't have to say it. The other tactic people might use is they might say, "Hey, it's a cartoon! It's not for you! Stop having strong opinions about it you weirdo." And if that's your view of the subject S-stop it! You're not helping. You're making him look like a harmless doofus. "Look at this GROWN-man, concerned about cartoons. What a fool!" But he's not whining about cartoons. He's whining about little girls being told that there's more than one way to look. He's whining about women not being told that their primary concern in life is being sexually available to weird comb-less internet toy collectors. That women don't exist for the pleasure of men. More to the point, when you attack him for caring too much about cartoons, you're not hurting HIM. He doesn't care about the cartoons. The people you're HURTING are the audience that he's attempting to cultivate, because they actually do care about the cartoons. And when he tells them "Hey, these SJW's are trying to take your cartoons away!" And then you respond, "Well, you shouldn't care about the cartoons at all!" You're kind of proving his point. People actually don't choose what they're emotionally connected to, especially weird shit from their childhood. It might be fun to dunk on people for caring too much about a cartoon but, it's actually FINE to care too much about a cartoon. That doesn't hurt anybody. I mean it's kind of a waste of time, but it's harmless. What is most certainly NOT fine is parlaying that excitement, that passion for a cartoon, into convincing people to be more bigoted. This was never about She-Ra. This was never about Star Wars or ethics in video games journalism or whatever the issue du jour was. [She-Ra Theme] While I was working on this video something happened. Quartering got assaulted in a bar. He says that somebody walked up to him and punched him in the back and he might have been concussed. When he talks about it, he talks about this feeling that he has to look over his shoulder. Like he's not safe, like people aren't looking out for him. And that sucks! Genuinely. I mean dude, I don't like you, but you shouldn't have to go through that. I know what that's like. You know when I was a kid I used to love She-Ra. I liked She-Ra more than He-Man. I used to, I used to watch the cartoon every day, I would rush home from school. I would watch She-Ra. That was great, but I couldn't tell the other kids at school. They wouldn't understand. They'd, uh, they'd bully me. They'd pick on me. I had to keep it inside. Then I got a bit older and I really liked Sailor Moon. I was like 10 or 11 and I used to draw a little comics with all the characters and I would draw this version of myself that was a Sailor Scout, "Sailor Earth" And he would wear little shorts cuz you know, obviously I wasn't gonna wear a skirt. Kind of like the new She-Ra has little shorts. Obviously I couldn't tell anybody about that stuff. They wouldn't get that. They would have beaten me up. Then I got a bit older than that and I liked all sorts of girly stuff. I loved Powerpuff Girls, the Spice Girls I love Daria, I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I just got this sense that I didn't like the normal things. I wasn't like the other guys. And I got a bit older than that. I realized I really like to wear makeup. And dress in women's clothing. And when I was really honest with myself, when I really looked deep inside, I wasn't sure if I was a man or a woman or both? I don't exactly expect you to sympathize with that. I don't even expect you to really believe me. Maybe you think I'm crazy or looking for attention or chasing a trend or just... a pervert, who likes dressing like a woman. Maybe. I don't know. I can't prove you wrong. I don't even know for certain that you are wrong. Maybe, maybe that's true! I can't prove it! I can't hook myself up to a machine that measures my feelings and decides whether or not they're the right feelings, whether or not I've earned them. But it doesn't matter why I feel the way that I do. What matters is that I feel this way! And I get to decide how to act on it. Nobody else. It doesn't affect you, so, take a deep breath It's fine. Shit-for-brains gender morons like to talk about gender as though it's a binary. You're either a man or a woman and there's nothing in between, and nothing you can do can change that. But, they don't believe that. If they did it wouldn't matter to them if men acted feminine or women acted masculine because they couldn't change anything anyway. Let 'em go nuts! Go perform whatever gender they want! At the end of the day they're gonna be the same thing. What they mean when they say that is if they're angry enough, and they're loud enough, and they scare people enough, they can FORCE gender to be a binary. They can make everybody else conform to the standards that make THEM comfortable. Allowing people to express themselves in ways that complicate the very simple dynamic that they've been repeating to themselves since preschool Frightens them and has to be resisted at all costs. Truthfully, I've never been hurt by liking cartoons for girls. I've never been hurt by feeling kind of like a girl. I like that about myself. That's something that makes me happy inside. I have been hurt by people telling me I'm wrong to feel that way. I have been hurt by the expectation that people that don't conform to the gender that was assigned to them at birth should be mocked, or bullied, or abused, or isolated. But I'm an adult now and I'm comfortable with myself almost 1/3 of the time and I get to make my own decisions. But that pain is always going to be there and I'm always going to be unpacking it and the way that it affected me. That might sound dramatic but I don't know any other way to put it. And once you've experienced a feeling like that, you don't want anyone else to feel like that, especially not kids. But I know how the world works and I know that for now at least, kids still will feel like that. Kids who don't fit neatly into a blue box or a pink box are gonna be bullied. They're gonna be assaulted. They're gonna be isolated. They're gonna be traumatized. They're gonna be made to feel like they're wrong for feeling like who they are. They're gonna feel... They're gonna feel alone in a world that... doesn't care about them. Not the way they... They're gonna feel alone in a world that doesn't care about them the way that they see themselves. And a truly heartbreaking amount of them will never make it past that crucible. Trans and non-binary people have a frighteningly high suicide rate. 45% of trans and non-binary people between the ages of 18 and 24 have attempted suicide. Do you know what might help just a little? Role models. People that look like them, people that behave like them, that are on TV in books and movies. That are heroes! Strong characters that THRIVE in their environment that aren't victims or or something we should scorn! They're normal people. And look man, I GENUINELY don't think that the new She-Ra is masculine. But if there's a masculine little girl or a feminine little boy that thinks that she is and draw some strength from that and feels a little bit less scared and a little bit less alone because of that I think that's great. I think that's something worth celebrating and I think it's worth fighting for. It's not about pandering to SJW's or being politically correct. It's about telling stories that help people understand each other better. And it's gonna save lives. And it doesn't change anything! I didn't feel feminine because I watched feminine cartoons. I felt feminine and that DREW me to those cartoons. And those cartoons made me feel happy, made me feel good about who I was. And I felt happy when Netflix rebooted She-Ra! And then, when a bunch of hateful doofuses turned that into something... And then when a bunch of hateful doofuses turned that into a vehicle to express disgust at people like me, it brought up a lot of feelings that I had really tried not to... a lot of feelings that I had tried to hold back. For a long time. So, forgive me but it's a little frustrating that people look at this discussion and think that it's a conversation about a cartoon because it's not. The cartoon is a smokescreen that obscures what's actually being discussed here. These people aren't mad that a cartoon looks different, they're mad that women are being TOLD that it's not their JOB to be sexually gratifying to men. They're MAD that non-binary people are being shown in a positive light. They're mad because they think that people like me are out to brainwash their children. And they think if you see something like that you have to fight it. You have to stand up and FORCE non-binary people out of the public eye and back into the closet. That's not harmless! Even if it's presented in a very frivolous way. Now I've been out of the closet for, I don't know like, three minutes but I can tell you people like me are never gonna stop existing. You can kick and scream all you like about it. You can make our lives difficult, but we'll always be here and we always have been here. You could go to the most ludicrous extremes imaginable, you could gather all the Infinity Gems or Dragon Balls and wish that all the non-binary people didn't exist in the world. And more of us would be born tomorrow. There is nothing you can do to get rid of us. Want to know how I know that for certain? Because people like you have been trying for as long as there's been people like me and it hasn't worked. There are still people like me out there. Granted, not as many as there should be, because we lost WAY too many of them. But there's still some of us. And guess what dickheads! We're gonna keep reminding you that we exist. We're gonna keep making art that reflects our experiences and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. I mean, come on! Don't you ever get tired of losing this fight!? Don't you ever just want to be on the right side of history, just once!? The way I see it, there are two ways you can look at this going forward. You can accept that not everybody falls into the simple dynamic that you're used to; move on; realize it doesn't really affect you in any way and it doesn't hurt you and just be an adult about it! Or you can stay mad for the rest of your life, piss and moan like a petulant child, and die bitter in a world that's moved past you. I don't believe in telling people how to feel so I'm gonna leave that choice up to you. But I expect that you'll probably make the wrong choice. Because, you're a mean person. With a bad heart. One last thing, if you feel like you're in crisis, if you feel like you have nowhere to turn there are numbers you can call in the description and if you can, please consider giving to some of those organizations that are in the description because Together! We can beat them at their own game. And we can turn their toxic, hateful conversation into something positive. Hey, did you know I'm a big sellout phony with a Patreon and I'm very conflicted about talking about it in this episode? Anyway, here's some of the innocent people I've grifted this July. But mad big-time ups to Jen Anders Bremer, Siobhan O'Leary, Morgan Clark Chuds Mackenzie, Cole Bean Money, Queen Maxine, Jordan Hoxie, Dash of Week and Erin B. What an emotionally taxing episode to make. I'm gonna have a nice relaxing afternoon. Drink a nice cool cup of soy water and go to my favorite website youtube.com and see all the nice things people are doing. [Carl Benjamin:] Hey folks, I thought it would cool this quick video about She-Ra while I'm on hold everyone else is having a nap and doing other things so I have some free time and I've seen a lot of people arguing about this new She-Ra character. Okay! Well, I guess we're going to start the video over again! Hi! I'm Thought Slime Sargon of Akkad is a little bit--
I almost stopped watching and I'm so happy I didn't. I did not expect the conversation to go in that direction.
This is actually very insightful and worth a watch.
For those of you wondering, it's NOT about She-Ra, that's just a lead in to a larger discussion about gender issues and how they are discussed in the media.
It starts out very youtubey, and then meta-youtubey...which is very boring. BUT, wait a few minutes and it gets a LOT better.
The problem is that transphobia is inherently illogical and immoral, so transphobes dont really care if it is logical or moral. They depend on the facade of reason so that they can pretend to be intellectually honest, but ultimately they dont care that they are wrong, they're just looking for a reason to hate. Doesnt matter if it's a terrible reason, as long as they can convince themselves that its good enough of a reason. Show them they are wrong and they dont give a crap. They don't want to acknowledge they contribute to the senseless hate toward minorities that make life a living hell.
How is this an enjoyable mealtime video?
Top-notch writing.
The most powerful part of the final section is that the obvious is left unstated:
"Because of people like you."
I make the mindful decision to state it here, because the people who need to hear it most are experts at Not Getting It.
It's basically an ELI5 about how dog whistling works.
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I gotta say, it isn't a problem for me, but the new she-ra really does look like a dude in a dress. Not an issue even if that was the intention, but my brain put that pic firmly in the "guy with long hair" box.