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I just watched this after seeing a few of the guy's other videos on other topics, which seemed to be intelligent and well-researched.
This video, however, is bizarre:
I had to comment on it and couldn't be arsed to make a YT account. I thought I'd post it here and see what you lads think.
Forgive the essay but this was honestly truncated from the original.
1 - 'Privilege'
This was the most convincing part of the video, largely because of the cognitive biases at play.
Nobody denies a minor collective statistical advantage certain groups may have, but it is a mistake to assume that these are impactful - with legal controls - from the individual perspective.
Add to that, each privilege was assessed independently - what happens if you combine every possible ground for unfair discrimination? I doubt we'll ever see, but everyone is discriminated against by everyone in some way or other. We are equal in our disfavour.
Regardless, play it idealistic? How do you solve this? Forget racism, sexism - discrimination, however petty, is a universal in human nature.
There is no solution beyond the legal controls we already have.
This does not support his argument for feminism/social justice.
2 – Videogames
Oh boy, this is when it gets good.
‘It took us a long time to get here’ This is just transparently stupid. Videogames and art are not real life, women are not being disadvantaged because some people are too prejudiced to provide them with adequate clothing. It’s an artistic decision, just as how ‘The Division’ chooses a realistic approach in its art.
This is not the good produce of ‘the feminist movement’, they’re different art styles.
Regardless, how is this a ‘good thing’? It is not helping anyone, and it was not hurting anyone. The feminist approach to art is to limit and censor, which most people would realise is not a good practice for art.
3 – The Branding Problem
‘Feminism is about equality.’
Feminism doesn't have a good definition at all these days.
Is it a political movement? Not without practical goals.
Is it a philosophy? With a single identifying belief 'Women and men should be equal'? You need more than that. Plus, that kind of defies the etymology.
It's clear that most active feminist - the likes of which people dislike and this guy somewhat seems to dissociate with: want supremacy, not equality.
So then, who do you judge the movement by? What ‘most feminists’ think is irrelevant if all it takes to be a feminist is to agree with a vague statement that doesn’t seem to relate to what the leading, active figures seem to promote.
(Balancing forces) Or maybe it’s the other way around. The ‘equality’ argument is used to motivate what is actually disproportional power allowances. In fact … the stronger argument lies exactly there.
3 - The Gender Pay Gap
Statistics are not good for understanding complex systems. There are innumerable ways by which these variances may be explained and … guess what, the idea that nasty men are deliberately paying women slightly less because … they don’t like women … is not a good explanation.
It’s quite transparent that people are approaching these statistics with an agenda. ‘You cannot give a good explanation for this minimal gap that remains … therefore it must be evil men.’ No.
4 - Biology
(But society has far outpaced biology, we are beyond the natural order and primal instincts)
Actually no. Really, really, no. We are not at all beyond that. This is a huge misconception that is far too widespread. Just because we are capable of language and complex thought at a level beyond other animals does not at all equate to being ‘beyond primal instincts’ or even worse ‘beyond biology’. Just because we are capable of high level reasoning in applied contexts such as mathematics and fields of science, does not mean that even the ‘smartest’ among us can use that reasoning to override their biology. This is OBVIOUS. Do you really think there is even on person alive that is even consistently rational in their life and behaviour?
There is no argument the guy makes for this assumption and yet it’s effectively the lynchpin of his larger argument.
5 - The Third Wave
There is no ‘third wave’, it has no body or substance. A ‘wave’ needs to have some consensus or collective goal. Once ‘feminism’ achieved all of its substantive legal goals that actually promoted ‘equality’ it collapsed. Now ‘feminism’ is millions of women and men who … call themselves feminists. That’s it. That’s the only unifying factor.
(Third wave feminism is about inclusivity) Well … it isn’t. ‘Inclusivity’ is not an attribute for a movement. Literally, third wave feminism is just a movement that says, ‘equality for women … anyone can join.’ That’s not a movement, a philosophy or anything identifiable with the first and second waves.
6 - Social Justice
(Social Justice is right … because Social Justice Exists) This is a ridiculous argument. You don’t think a political movement could exist if what they believe is wrong? What about … I don’t even want to give examples, just think – Jesus Christ.
7 - Patriarchy
Only the ‘secret shadow council of men’ is a good representation of the bias applied when people look at ‘issues’ through a feminist lens. Sure, they aren’t LITERALLY imagining this evil council, but there is a cognitive bias that seems to be invoked that leads back to the assumption of a ‘evil male’ force at work behind the scenes. The pay gap statistics being a good example: present an unknown? Evil men are the explanation.
8 - Gender Roles
(Men have more power in society: biologically, socially and legally)
Ok, this is bad.
‘Biologically’ doesn’t really mean anything in this context. What, because they’re a little physically stronger – is that really a substantive social power?
‘Socially’ is a tautology. He has yet to properly demonstrate a significant social power advantage that men have; much less so in comparison to the advantages that women have.
‘Legally’. This is really stupid. Women are legally equal, and he accepts this ‘on paper’. The law is ‘on paper’, what the fuck?
Then he counters this, ‘what happens when women try to take legal power,’ this doesn’t make sense … and uses Hillary as an example … holy fuck. So much wrong with this part I don’t even know where to start, or if there’s a point. When women want to take political power they campaign and they get elected, or they don’t – the same as men.
‘A lot of the arguments made against her were due to her being a woman’ the fact of her being a woman was the leading reason used to promote her campaign, and one of the reasons why such a terrible candidate was almost elected – and certainly the main justification for her fans.
His ‘third debate’ part was basically irrelevant. ‘If she was a man we wouldn’t even be bringing this up’, what? If she was a man, married to a sex offender? What does this even mean?
(‘This is what happens to women who try to break traditional gender roles’) No, this is what happens when a shit candidate runs for office.
(Traditional Gender Roles)
Why is one male and the other female? Where do you think we got this from? This evil primal force only referred to as ‘society’? People assigned these roles, likely to themselves, and they have arisen similarly in every separate culture because … they relate to biologically endowed behaviour.
9 - Toxic Masculinity
‘That violent aggressive reaction is toxic masculinity’
No, the ‘masculinity’ in question just sounds like pride … or social standing, depending on the context, and the ‘violent aggressive reaction’ is some manifestation of cognitive dissonance. This is not a male thing it’s a person thing.
(Energy, Risk-taking, Leadership – none of those are exclusively male qualities)
No they aren’t, it’s a generalisation associated with men that is promoted by our biology. But yet you’re perfectly happy with describing basic pride and insult-reaction as ‘toxic masculinity’?
(This is a branding problem)
The word ‘toxic masculinity’ implies an inherent problem associated exclusively with men – you can’t see why people take issue with that? And no, saying ‘it is not a critique of masculinity as a whole’ is not true either, because it very often is. It’s also used in a way to suggest ‘collective guilt’, making you feel bad about being born a man just because some men have done bad things.
(Gillette, political messaging in marketing)
‘Other companies have done it, therefore it’s fine’. It’s bad business and it alienates people for the reasons above.
(The Gillette advert)
Again, the broader issue is that it is implying that these ‘bad’ behaviours are due to their birth sex – thus that they must make a particular effort to dissociate with it and the bad associations through guilt.
1 – ‘Play fighting’. The implication is either that (play) fighting is wrong, or that masculinity promotes bullying – both are silly.
2 – ‘Mansplaining’. This is a strawman scene that relates to a concept that has long been ridiculed.
3 – ‘Talking to women in the street’. That’s not the body language of someone about to tell someone else to have a nice day, no, that’s the over-the-top body language indicating a straw man scene.
10 - Safe Spaces / Trigger Warnings
Here they guy tries to make people feel bad for taking the piss by using outdated and dramatic understandings of the terms.
People take the piss because both terms are associated with people who are not trauma victims but the unbearably hypersensitive and immature, who are looking for an echo chamber.
11 - LGBT
In this segment he dismantles his own earlier arguments, which were - truth be spoken - really bad arguments, for opposing these various issues. He doesn't however mention any of the better and more common arguments.
(‘All you have to do is look to the past, to see how this will play out’)
This honestly sounds like a slippery slope argument … but used in the positive. Society will accept trans people because they’ve accepted other … people in the past? ‘Society eventually comes around’ What is this trend? What comes after trans people?
(‘Recycled propaganda’) Don’t these propaganda pieces seem uncomfortably similar to some of the anti-male strawman pieces we’ve seen recently … like, uh, the Gillette video?
(LGBTQQIP2SAA: If you’re rolling your eyes, stop!) Yeah, I can’t get behind any other examples of language censure either. But when people do, it’s usually a widely acknowledged and prescribed social norm, not something dictated by a tiny minority of hyper-sensitive individuals. Typically if a cis person was to demand you address them in a very particular and changeable way – we wouldn’t speak to them
12 - Sex and Gender
I can only speak conjecturally on this but I don't believe that people’s understanding of sex and gender are truly distinct.
When a trans person is transitioning I am not convinced they believe they are only changing their 'gender', but in a meaningful - albeit non-scientific - sense their entire sex. It's a delusion and quite a fragile one. They can only hold the 'sex is just chromosomes' idea for so long, before they realise they've dug themselves into a hole with nothing at the bottom and no easy way back up.
(‘Trans people are not mentally ill’)
The guy's argument here is all over the place. First, he accepts 'gender dysmorphia' as a mental illness - affecting a majority of transgendered people, but then counters with 'not all'.
As to whether something may meet the diagnostic for a mental illness is basically irrelevant when the theoretical definition is very vague, but it can be said that transgenderism is rarely socially accepted and is co-morbid with other mental health conditions. It could easily be considered a mental illness, with the implication that it should be 'treated' rather than encouraged.
(‘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)
This is really odd. Having a mental illness doesn’t make you a non-person.
Yet he did concede that a large portion of transgendered people have 'gender dysorphia' which is a mental illness.
The implication is, however, that they are not the ‘gender’ they propose to be, they are normal people with a mental illness. Nobody wants to make these people disappear, only that they are registered with their birth sex.
(‘Gender is a spectrum, you’ve always known that’)
No. We have definitely always seen human beings in a binary – where do you think these ‘social constructs’ came from? Minor variations in behaviour do not alter our perception of gender. Nobody perceives a ‘tomboy’ as being literally a ‘manlike-woman’, this is more superficial than our interpretation of gender – this is a social concept not a sexual one.
People make fun of it because it a list that seem to be on course to list every possible arrangement of social and sexual and personality traits and ascribing a unique ‘gender’ to each one, ad infinitum, complete with silly pseudo-scientific nomenclature. Then, at its heart, we all realise that this is an exercise in narcissism conflating with a desire to relate. People want to feel special – with their own gender identity – but not isolated, so they pretend it’s a ‘real category of person’ shared with a few others in the world.
It also starts to look like the ramblings of a child, or a schizophrenic, completely disconnected with reality.
(Trans Controversies)
People aren’t concerned that Trans people are cheating the system, only that they do have a sizable advantage that is unfair to others.
It is plainly wrong that ‘all of the biological differences between men and women can be changed with HRT’. There are physical vestiges even if the treatment is ‘perfect’, and yet – it most certainly won’t be, and treatment plans will vary. If it gave them no advantage, why do you think they keep winning these events so consistently?
(‘Affirmative Action’)
Affirmative Action IS discrimination. As to how a guy could once have apparently understood this, only then to change his mind – is beyond me. Affirmative action is legally guaranteed discrimination on unfair grounds, to the ostensible purpose of correcting conjectural social discrimination. A white man MAY have had an advantage, in affirmative action he is GUARANTEED by LAW a disadvantage – it’s the most explicit form of discrimination.
Strange that the guy barely covered this one though.
13 – Conclusions
(‘If you want to live in an egalitarian society, feminism and social justice is how we get there’)
The guy has made no decent argument for either in the course of the entire video.
He has failed to give a good explanation as to what current feminism even is, what their practical goals are, and how they intend to achieve them. Even more so for social justice.
This video, however, is bizarre:
I had to comment on it and couldn't be arsed to make a YT account. I thought I'd post it here and see what you lads think.
Forgive the essay but this was honestly truncated from the original.
1 - 'Privilege'
This was the most convincing part of the video, largely because of the cognitive biases at play.
Nobody denies a minor collective statistical advantage certain groups may have, but it is a mistake to assume that these are impactful - with legal controls - from the individual perspective.
Add to that, each privilege was assessed independently - what happens if you combine every possible ground for unfair discrimination? I doubt we'll ever see, but everyone is discriminated against by everyone in some way or other. We are equal in our disfavour.
Regardless, play it idealistic? How do you solve this? Forget racism, sexism - discrimination, however petty, is a universal in human nature.
There is no solution beyond the legal controls we already have.
This does not support his argument for feminism/social justice.
2 – Videogames
Oh boy, this is when it gets good.
‘It took us a long time to get here’ This is just transparently stupid. Videogames and art are not real life, women are not being disadvantaged because some people are too prejudiced to provide them with adequate clothing. It’s an artistic decision, just as how ‘The Division’ chooses a realistic approach in its art.
This is not the good produce of ‘the feminist movement’, they’re different art styles.
Regardless, how is this a ‘good thing’? It is not helping anyone, and it was not hurting anyone. The feminist approach to art is to limit and censor, which most people would realise is not a good practice for art.
3 – The Branding Problem
‘Feminism is about equality.’
Feminism doesn't have a good definition at all these days.
Is it a political movement? Not without practical goals.
Is it a philosophy? With a single identifying belief 'Women and men should be equal'? You need more than that. Plus, that kind of defies the etymology.
It's clear that most active feminist - the likes of which people dislike and this guy somewhat seems to dissociate with: want supremacy, not equality.
So then, who do you judge the movement by? What ‘most feminists’ think is irrelevant if all it takes to be a feminist is to agree with a vague statement that doesn’t seem to relate to what the leading, active figures seem to promote.
(Balancing forces) Or maybe it’s the other way around. The ‘equality’ argument is used to motivate what is actually disproportional power allowances. In fact … the stronger argument lies exactly there.
3 - The Gender Pay Gap
Statistics are not good for understanding complex systems. There are innumerable ways by which these variances may be explained and … guess what, the idea that nasty men are deliberately paying women slightly less because … they don’t like women … is not a good explanation.
It’s quite transparent that people are approaching these statistics with an agenda. ‘You cannot give a good explanation for this minimal gap that remains … therefore it must be evil men.’ No.
4 - Biology
(But society has far outpaced biology, we are beyond the natural order and primal instincts)
Actually no. Really, really, no. We are not at all beyond that. This is a huge misconception that is far too widespread. Just because we are capable of language and complex thought at a level beyond other animals does not at all equate to being ‘beyond primal instincts’ or even worse ‘beyond biology’. Just because we are capable of high level reasoning in applied contexts such as mathematics and fields of science, does not mean that even the ‘smartest’ among us can use that reasoning to override their biology. This is OBVIOUS. Do you really think there is even on person alive that is even consistently rational in their life and behaviour?
There is no argument the guy makes for this assumption and yet it’s effectively the lynchpin of his larger argument.
5 - The Third Wave
There is no ‘third wave’, it has no body or substance. A ‘wave’ needs to have some consensus or collective goal. Once ‘feminism’ achieved all of its substantive legal goals that actually promoted ‘equality’ it collapsed. Now ‘feminism’ is millions of women and men who … call themselves feminists. That’s it. That’s the only unifying factor.
(Third wave feminism is about inclusivity) Well … it isn’t. ‘Inclusivity’ is not an attribute for a movement. Literally, third wave feminism is just a movement that says, ‘equality for women … anyone can join.’ That’s not a movement, a philosophy or anything identifiable with the first and second waves.
6 - Social Justice
(Social Justice is right … because Social Justice Exists) This is a ridiculous argument. You don’t think a political movement could exist if what they believe is wrong? What about … I don’t even want to give examples, just think – Jesus Christ.
7 - Patriarchy
Only the ‘secret shadow council of men’ is a good representation of the bias applied when people look at ‘issues’ through a feminist lens. Sure, they aren’t LITERALLY imagining this evil council, but there is a cognitive bias that seems to be invoked that leads back to the assumption of a ‘evil male’ force at work behind the scenes. The pay gap statistics being a good example: present an unknown? Evil men are the explanation.
8 - Gender Roles
(Men have more power in society: biologically, socially and legally)
Ok, this is bad.
‘Biologically’ doesn’t really mean anything in this context. What, because they’re a little physically stronger – is that really a substantive social power?
‘Socially’ is a tautology. He has yet to properly demonstrate a significant social power advantage that men have; much less so in comparison to the advantages that women have.
‘Legally’. This is really stupid. Women are legally equal, and he accepts this ‘on paper’. The law is ‘on paper’, what the fuck?
Then he counters this, ‘what happens when women try to take legal power,’ this doesn’t make sense … and uses Hillary as an example … holy fuck. So much wrong with this part I don’t even know where to start, or if there’s a point. When women want to take political power they campaign and they get elected, or they don’t – the same as men.
‘A lot of the arguments made against her were due to her being a woman’ the fact of her being a woman was the leading reason used to promote her campaign, and one of the reasons why such a terrible candidate was almost elected – and certainly the main justification for her fans.
His ‘third debate’ part was basically irrelevant. ‘If she was a man we wouldn’t even be bringing this up’, what? If she was a man, married to a sex offender? What does this even mean?
(‘This is what happens to women who try to break traditional gender roles’) No, this is what happens when a shit candidate runs for office.
(Traditional Gender Roles)
Why is one male and the other female? Where do you think we got this from? This evil primal force only referred to as ‘society’? People assigned these roles, likely to themselves, and they have arisen similarly in every separate culture because … they relate to biologically endowed behaviour.
9 - Toxic Masculinity
‘That violent aggressive reaction is toxic masculinity’
No, the ‘masculinity’ in question just sounds like pride … or social standing, depending on the context, and the ‘violent aggressive reaction’ is some manifestation of cognitive dissonance. This is not a male thing it’s a person thing.
(Energy, Risk-taking, Leadership – none of those are exclusively male qualities)
No they aren’t, it’s a generalisation associated with men that is promoted by our biology. But yet you’re perfectly happy with describing basic pride and insult-reaction as ‘toxic masculinity’?
(This is a branding problem)
The word ‘toxic masculinity’ implies an inherent problem associated exclusively with men – you can’t see why people take issue with that? And no, saying ‘it is not a critique of masculinity as a whole’ is not true either, because it very often is. It’s also used in a way to suggest ‘collective guilt’, making you feel bad about being born a man just because some men have done bad things.
(Gillette, political messaging in marketing)
‘Other companies have done it, therefore it’s fine’. It’s bad business and it alienates people for the reasons above.
(The Gillette advert)
Again, the broader issue is that it is implying that these ‘bad’ behaviours are due to their birth sex – thus that they must make a particular effort to dissociate with it and the bad associations through guilt.
1 – ‘Play fighting’. The implication is either that (play) fighting is wrong, or that masculinity promotes bullying – both are silly.
2 – ‘Mansplaining’. This is a strawman scene that relates to a concept that has long been ridiculed.
3 – ‘Talking to women in the street’. That’s not the body language of someone about to tell someone else to have a nice day, no, that’s the over-the-top body language indicating a straw man scene.
10 - Safe Spaces / Trigger Warnings
Here they guy tries to make people feel bad for taking the piss by using outdated and dramatic understandings of the terms.
People take the piss because both terms are associated with people who are not trauma victims but the unbearably hypersensitive and immature, who are looking for an echo chamber.
11 - LGBT
In this segment he dismantles his own earlier arguments, which were - truth be spoken - really bad arguments, for opposing these various issues. He doesn't however mention any of the better and more common arguments.
(‘All you have to do is look to the past, to see how this will play out’)
This honestly sounds like a slippery slope argument … but used in the positive. Society will accept trans people because they’ve accepted other … people in the past? ‘Society eventually comes around’ What is this trend? What comes after trans people?
(‘Recycled propaganda’) Don’t these propaganda pieces seem uncomfortably similar to some of the anti-male strawman pieces we’ve seen recently … like, uh, the Gillette video?
(LGBTQQIP2SAA: If you’re rolling your eyes, stop!) Yeah, I can’t get behind any other examples of language censure either. But when people do, it’s usually a widely acknowledged and prescribed social norm, not something dictated by a tiny minority of hyper-sensitive individuals. Typically if a cis person was to demand you address them in a very particular and changeable way – we wouldn’t speak to them
12 - Sex and Gender
I can only speak conjecturally on this but I don't believe that people’s understanding of sex and gender are truly distinct.
When a trans person is transitioning I am not convinced they believe they are only changing their 'gender', but in a meaningful - albeit non-scientific - sense their entire sex. It's a delusion and quite a fragile one. They can only hold the 'sex is just chromosomes' idea for so long, before they realise they've dug themselves into a hole with nothing at the bottom and no easy way back up.
(‘Trans people are not mentally ill’)
The guy's argument here is all over the place. First, he accepts 'gender dysmorphia' as a mental illness - affecting a majority of transgendered people, but then counters with 'not all'.
As to whether something may meet the diagnostic for a mental illness is basically irrelevant when the theoretical definition is very vague, but it can be said that transgenderism is rarely socially accepted and is co-morbid with other mental health conditions. It could easily be considered a mental illness, with the implication that it should be 'treated' rather than encouraged.
(‘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)
This is really odd. Having a mental illness doesn’t make you a non-person.
Yet he did concede that a large portion of transgendered people have 'gender dysorphia' which is a mental illness.
The implication is, however, that they are not the ‘gender’ they propose to be, they are normal people with a mental illness. Nobody wants to make these people disappear, only that they are registered with their birth sex.
(‘Gender is a spectrum, you’ve always known that’)
No. We have definitely always seen human beings in a binary – where do you think these ‘social constructs’ came from? Minor variations in behaviour do not alter our perception of gender. Nobody perceives a ‘tomboy’ as being literally a ‘manlike-woman’, this is more superficial than our interpretation of gender – this is a social concept not a sexual one.
People make fun of it because it a list that seem to be on course to list every possible arrangement of social and sexual and personality traits and ascribing a unique ‘gender’ to each one, ad infinitum, complete with silly pseudo-scientific nomenclature. Then, at its heart, we all realise that this is an exercise in narcissism conflating with a desire to relate. People want to feel special – with their own gender identity – but not isolated, so they pretend it’s a ‘real category of person’ shared with a few others in the world.
It also starts to look like the ramblings of a child, or a schizophrenic, completely disconnected with reality.
(Trans Controversies)
People aren’t concerned that Trans people are cheating the system, only that they do have a sizable advantage that is unfair to others.
It is plainly wrong that ‘all of the biological differences between men and women can be changed with HRT’. There are physical vestiges even if the treatment is ‘perfect’, and yet – it most certainly won’t be, and treatment plans will vary. If it gave them no advantage, why do you think they keep winning these events so consistently?
(‘Affirmative Action’)
Affirmative Action IS discrimination. As to how a guy could once have apparently understood this, only then to change his mind – is beyond me. Affirmative action is legally guaranteed discrimination on unfair grounds, to the ostensible purpose of correcting conjectural social discrimination. A white man MAY have had an advantage, in affirmative action he is GUARANTEED by LAW a disadvantage – it’s the most explicit form of discrimination.
Strange that the guy barely covered this one though.
13 – Conclusions
(‘If you want to live in an egalitarian society, feminism and social justice is how we get there’)
The guy has made no decent argument for either in the course of the entire video.
He has failed to give a good explanation as to what current feminism even is, what their practical goals are, and how they intend to achieve them. Even more so for social justice.
