Okay in this video
Hi, Internet. I'm back. Did you miss me?
Don't answer that if you're me. I certainly missed you guys. It's been a few months since I've been on YouTube
Longest break I've ever taken, but it was, uh, very much needed and I feel so good
I think the social media detox is very nice, so I wanted to fill ya'll in on some stuff
that's been going on since I've been on break
I haven't been completely removed from the internet if you are active in the conversation about feminism and
social justice warriors you may have noticed that I've been talking to and hanging out with some
anti-feminist YouTubers.
This is apparently really confused people. There have been thousands of tweets and emails and people
freaking out like what is going on! After all, I, Laci Green, and the very pinnacle of a social justice warrior my
SJW-ness has been memefied with statements like everything is problematic and there are more than two genders and
America is racist. But now at pro-Trump Rallies, I'm told by reliable sources
There's talk that I'm being
red-pilled - in the Matrix sense, not so much the pick up artist sense. The red pill is a meme that refers to this realization
that the world isn't nearly as simple as you thought it was. The question of course is - what is the truth?
*Echoing* What is the truth
And how bad do you want to know?
In some sense, I took the red pill a long time ago
It's why I do what I do. My YouTube stuff has always been about the pursuit of forbidden knowledge
And while yes, I am a feminist,
I wouldn't describe myself as the
ideologue the people sometimes make me out to be. I feel that things tend to be messier than that
And frankly, that's the way I like it.
So let's get messy
So here's some context about me. I used to be Mormon pretty intensely
so you know when I was 12 years old there were adults telling me that my
Spiritual destiny is to be perpetually pregnant cute, right?
I am also half Iranian. Funny enough my grandparents were
political rebels in their day, speaking truth to power during the revolution in 1979.
It's actually pretty badass, and it makes me feel like rebellion runs in my blood, but as a teenager
I got a little bit lost in all of this as you do
So my first YouTube channel that I started when I was 17 was about skepticism
and philosophy. Then when I was 19, I created a series called sex plus
Which is dedicated to helping young people who like me had been told their sexuality was bad or wrong
That they're less than because their gender or sexual orientation and so forth
So this is the type of stuff that forms the core of my feminism, which I would describe as
Intersectional, sex positive, and skeptical.
Skeptical, as in not easily convinced of stuff
Science is my rubric wherever possible because we're all prone to human error - science isn't perfect
But it helps reduce those errors by a lot.
At the end of the day, we all have true beliefs, and we all have false beliefs
Skepticism is about acknowledging that. It's questioning even the seemingly
unquestionable. and being willing to adjust our beliefs as we get new information.
In truth, I want to engage with criticism, but it's really hard to do online
There's a lot of hostility, things escalate super quickly, people don't really seem to be listening to each other
It's just a shit show. So I went down the rabbit hole of anti
SJW videos, and I found that some are pretty disrespectful, but that's not all the channels
I've recently found anti SJW channels that are well cited and reasoned, you know make some interesting points
Sometimes I'm like yeah, I agree with that or huh?
I didn't really think of that. And sometimes I disagree in which case you know I still feel it's beneficial for me to
listen and consider another perspective helps me learn. So I decided to reach out to some and
you know I was pleasantly surprised. People have been pretty kind to me, and you know I'll be honest
I didn't really expect that. No judgment, no vitriol
I even feel like I have a really good connection with a couple of new friends
But not everyone is so hunky-dory about it. Um, good friends of mine
Feminists have been a little bit skeptical of me. They expressed the opinion that
talking to antis or problematic people is
you know not going to be worth the time, that it won't be fruitful, that I'm
engaging with bigots and validating the perspectives, that I'm offering a platform to bullies, things like that. While I can appreciate this
perspective, I fundamentally disagree with it. So let me go down another rabbit hole here
Social Justice communities lately have been arguing that bigoted ideas
You know this harmful speech should be suppressed because it allows the bigotry to spread and to be
Validated and thinking of campaigns to get people to Twitters banned
You know book deals canceled, talks canceled, things like that
Ironically this sounds very similar to the logic that is used by the right to censor sex ed
Information about sex has been deemed too harmful to hear. It'll encourage immoral behavior and
speed social decay. Two sides of the same coin?
Question is, what counts as harm? To some harm is a problematic opinion
Harm is hate speech. Harm is inciting violence
The other pole of this issue is the perspective that there is no such thing as harmful speech, that speech can't hurt you.
Therefore all speech should be permitted no matter what. I fall somewhere between these two perspectives. My opinion
is that speech can be emotionally harmful if it causes pain or shame or dehumanizes you. It can also be
physically harmful if it incites or advocates violence against someone. But these two harms don't pose the same amount of threat
to an individual in the context of political speech, so they shouldn't be treated as equal forms of violence.
You know if we're going to say a slur is just as violent as punching someone in the face
to me that minimizes the egregious miss of punching someone in the face.
So I tend to agree with the interpretation by a lot of human rights organizations
which is that harmful speech starts where incites or advocates violence.
You know I think the definition of harm is being pushed too far in regard to political speech. That this heightened
level of sensitivity is actually resulting in some censorship. Not as your like government
censorship, the technical definition of it
But de-facto censorship, you know, in practice, by shutting down platforms for speech and driving it underground or making
ideas too taboo to be allowed to talk about. I also feel like this approach doesn't very well promote social justice.
For one thing when you think about it suppression of speech is just a band-aid. It doesn't really address the systemic
inequality or the mentality that lies at the root of
these problems. It just sort of shuts the conversation down. It also has a clear backfire effect - it makes those poor
censored voices more sympathetic to a moderate audience. You know case in point
Milo Yiannopoulos. The way I see it, the internet t already gives everyone a huge platform
You know, much bigger than a university can offer. They're already on the internet, they're gonna be there
We should talk about it. I think we should address things head-on through open dialogue
We can parse out ideas and really see what they're made of and in response everyone else has free speech, too
They can dissent, they can protest, they can ask critical questions. They can counter the narrative, they can you know highlight
fallacies and moral failings of the argument. So all of this comes to a head in a
brutally bizarre spectacle that happened last week amongst feminist scholars who appear to be
cannibalizing themselves as usual.
It all started with a feminist philosopher's publication in the philosophy journal Hypatia
About trans racialism. So in the paper
She examines arguments that are used for transgender equality and basically finds that that logic can be applied
to race as well, she highlights some of the
logical inconsistencies
And weaknesses and arguments that are used against someone like Rachel Dolezal
It's a controversial topic and a controversial conclusion, and you know she may well have some things wrong
But instead of refuting her arguments on their logical merits the academics penned an open letter
claiming that the paper needs to be revoked citing its various harms. Including
you know using the wrong word
Degrading trans people by comparing them to Dolezal.
And having read the paper the accusations that are made in this open letter
Are a complete misrepresentation of her argument.
To an extreme degree which really makes this whole ordeal all the more troubling
These are not grounds to censor an academic paper
They're not grounds to ruin someone's academic reputation. I mean, what's the end goal here?
Is that you know only a very specific perspective can be heard in a philosophy journal?
Exploring feminisms like that strikes me as very contradictory. And more generally should publications
you know, reject papers that don't agree with majority opinions? Like it makes no sense
So this is a pretty big concern of mine
And you know I've felt this way for a long time.
It affects my work, it affects my - the way that I can interact with people, the things I can talk, about the people I can talk to
This is not to say that censorship doesn't occur on the right because it
Absolutely does they just tend to censor different issues.
So where does this leave us? I want to continue these conversations
Which is why, soon, I'm going to be launching a series of live debates with feminists and anti-feminists in the comments
Let me know if you have an idea of someone that I should invite on, or
If you have ideas of topics that we should debate. And as for that red pill
Well,