Misogyny Against JK Rowling (& Transphobes) Hurts Us All
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- Опубліковано 4 вер 2024
- UA-camr Vaush raised a question... is it morally justifiable to sexist to transphobes?
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Pretty wild to see someone on the one hand argue that the left needs to unify and gain supporters and saddened that they are "not accepted by other leftists" and then with the other hand completely alienate 50% of potential viewers or honestly even just casual colleagues. He has said in the past this "tactical misogyny" is useful to attract people from the right and/or the casual misogynist... but then you have to be aware that that is who will also be joyfully and maliciously repeating your "joke" *un*ironically in women's DMs, comments, and even IRL.
Then when he doubles down and says it is "justified" that only tells his (self admittedly) slightly agro audience members that THEY TOO can justify their misogynist beliefs, as long as they don't like the target... which is this case is obviously going to be other women.
I have found most people who are able to make "jokes" like this, especially this aggressively, at the very least do not understand or care about the gravity of the issue. It feels like they are making light of real, tangible, and unending pain that they themselves do not have to experience and most likely never will!
On the whole, it's usually those in the most privileged social positions that have a severe lack of empathy for what does not affect them personally, not that the people who ARE affected "can't take a joke" or are "too sensitive."
i feel like you may be missing the larger point in general, but it’s also worth mentioning Vaush doesn’t really call for left unity. he’s pretty gatekeep-y to those he deems useless to leftist causes. furthermore, he’s not really hated because he’s “problematic”, he’s been on the receiving end of an immense libel campaign from the online left for years, calling him a pedophile among other things.
That's a good point: even if we take everything Vaush said in defense of his misogyny at face value (we shouldn't) then that means that he believes it's acceptable to be misogynist against women that "deserve it." Hmm... I wonder which women "deserve it" according to people who make misogynistic jokes. 🤔🤔🤔
+
I like Vaush and I think he's based
@@johndough6225 lol uhh okay I dunno what that has to do with my comment
Jessie, if you keep shouting me out, I'm going to need to start a payroll just to put you on it.
Haha the only way I’ll stop shouting you out is if you stop continuing to make excellent work, so I don’t think it’s gonna happen
Thank you both for the great content and insights!
Jose and Jessie collab when?
@@someonerandom8552 I have no idea, but it would probably involve Star Trek.
jose and jessie crossover.
When I was in school, there was a gym teacher that everyone hated. She bullied elementary schoolers (to the point my best friend’s mom threatened the school to do something about) and was generally unpleasant.
A few years ago I heard about her again because my sister nannies some of her students. I learned two things: she was a lesbian and she was still a bully. Being a lesbian myself, I called her a d-slur (not to her face, but to my sister in private). I thought it would be ironic but both my sister and I froze. It felt gross and we both agreed that wasn’t the thing to say, even as a joke.
Insulting someone using bigoted language criticizes the wrong aspect. Instead of critiquing her actions, I critiqued her for her identity. She can grow from being a bully, and she can’t - and shouldn’t have to - stop being gay.
i'm another lesbian who had a lesbian pe teacher-bully. i only wish people would understand that we also think this behavior is shameful, i am not going to defend another person just because we have the same identity
Well put!!
It puts me in mind of something I heard once about the different portrayals of gay people, that being gay doesn't determine your personality essentially and what is held in common with all humans is the same - I think the quote was along the lines of 'Some people are idiots, whether they are straight or gay. If you’re an idiot you’re still an idiot you just happen to be a gay idiot'. I agree its not ok to attack someone with an aspect they cannot change (their gender, sexual orientation, skin colour etc) but there's a grey area on calling them out for being an ass. Though I mostly hold to my grandmothers school of thought that hate should not be fought with hate, when a bully calls you a name, give them a smile - it really puts them off and you don't stoop to their level.
As a Jewish teenager I once made a pun about Kristallnacht. Then I paused and said "I think I just offended myself."
I’m starting to wonder if lesbian gym teachers are common. Lol my elementary school gym teacher was also very mean and rude, and I learned later was also a lesbian!
Put bluntly it is wrong to be sexist. It's a bad thing to be regardless of who it is being used against. We can disagree with Rowling and not use sexism to do so.
Right? It’s just like being racist towards racist white people.
Being sexist is wrong
Be sexy instead
This metaphor truly has escaped from me and I don't know where I was taking it
@@whysocurious7366 it's extremely difficult to near impossible to be racist to a racist white person
@@jeveritt8398 I’d say it is impossible
He would claim it was ironic sexism, a joke
I absolutely love this video, and the analysis, but honestly the answer to “is being sexist to [person I don’t like] okay” is pretty simple. If you get mad at a trans person, it’s STILL not okay to use the wrong name or wrong pronouns. How can anyone think that attacking someone’s identity is “justifiable” in any instance? You can’t pull out the sexism when your girl is pissing you off, same way you can’t suddenly become racist when your black friend does something you don’t like. It ain’t that complicated. There’s a basic human level of respect that everyone deserves. You don’t get to take that away.
hell yeah! I see a lot of people online DO this though :/ they start misgendering some creator on twitter with 5k followers they hate. Suddenly their views on respecting pronouns is now conditional. Imagine your best friend doing that and you're trans. Now you know if you two ever end up in a bad place, they may just start deadnaming you to "win".
Vaush reminds me of a rioter I saw during the BLM protests. The man threw a rock and broke a window and was asked by a Fox News reporter “why are you being so violent?”. He responded “oh I can be WAY more violent” but then he thought for a moment and asked the reporter “But why don’t you people ever ask the cops that question?”
I agree with everything, except that there's a basic level of respect that everyone deserves.
no. reactionaries aren't not respectable.
Furthermore, it also really shows that more people really do think respect is conditional of sharing beliefs, which is the reason why politics and everything except the most facile of stuff will be cartoonishly controversial.
If we are supposed to “move on to better debates”, respect should be the first thing, whether the person you’re criticizing is bigoted or not. Bigotry should not be an invitation to disrespect because that is the non-conservative’s form of exclusion. I mean, it should not go any further than respecting identity, but when you do attack a person based on identity any point you make is lost.
And obviously, legitimate transphobes that are TERFs will come and use your words as “proof” that women are still being mocked as this video shows.
"How can anyone think that attacking someone’s identity is “justifiable” in any instance? You can’t pull out the sexism when your girl is pissing you off, same way you can’t suddenly become racist when your black friend does something you don’t like." This! Yes!
I love how you talk about things
omg it's cj the x
Same!
Hi CJ!
This comment section is already poppin. Top tier creators here. Love to see it. Thank y'all for the art.
Me too. I think most of this video was good, but the part about “giving them ammunition” seemed a little too civility politics.. imho, we all need to be unapologetically mean/vitriolic to misogynistic billionaire bigots.
So happy you made that point about Dave Chappelle. I immediately thought of that as a clear example of this was wrong.
Right? But still we got folks in these comments...
I think it depends on the person that its being said to, what exactly is being said, and how is it being said.
@@darryljack6612 no
Keep in mind you are, without actually saying it outright, in a thread with two Black people telling at least one of them why it should be okay to be racist in certain circumstances.
Like you hear yourself, right?
@@BellamyJay I myself am also black and if that's the qualifier for the validity of the discussion, then no it would not be wrong depending on the context of the situation.
I think that depends on the context of the person, that said ironic racist thing is being used at. Dave is more so (which still should be called out to its fullest) insanely stupidly ignorant with how he understands trans women, than he is truly self aware of himself being transphobic than the likes of J.K. Rowling. And there really isnt any racist saying that i (as a black person ) can see being thrown his way that is also applicable to the discussion.
But lets say if something racist was being ironically said in the direction to Candace Owens. If she has said something transphobic and then lets say Jessie or any other white Trans youtuber (or even Vaush himself) had said something along the lines of... "She should stop worrying about trans people and keep trying to act more white". In a vacuum would that be racist (from and ironic sense, yes. But is it wrong, no. That is literally what she is, the pick me archetype to white conservatives and she actively is aware of it. And you would be saying it on the notion of her as a person, not her as a BLACK person.
As a cis Woman, this "i can be sexist because she's transphobic" Take is... Tiring. Because i can Tell exactly how this will Go down. Even If you Take Out the Sentiment of keeping to the highground instead of descending to the same Level of bigotry... Being sexist against a transphobic Woman will Just achieve the opposite of what you Claim to Fight for. You wont make the transphobic cis Woman any less transphobic by being sexist. You Just give her ammunition to Point the Finger at the people who criticise her. It reinforces her worldview that the trans allies hate "real" women. You make her double down. And whats worse, you make other people take her side. I dont want to defend jk Rowling, but then someone swoops in with sexism and suddenly i have to waste energy on:
A) addressing the sexism
B) Point out, once again, that wanting to Help trans people does NOT equal hating cis women
C) this helps to Turn the attention away from the transphobia and to the sexism
D) "innocently misogynistic" is... Such a smart white Guy Thing to say...
Seriously, can we please Not give more weapons to bigots?
Vaush reminds me of a rioter I saw during the BLM protests. The man threw a rock and broke a window and was asked by a Fox News reporter “why are you being so violent?”. He responded “oh I can be WAY more violent” but then he thought for a moment and asked the reporter “But why don’t you people ever ask the cops that question?”
"You don't get to take away someone's humanity to score points in an argument."
I don't usually care for authoritative maxims, but that is spot on.
Thank you, Jessie, for pointing out how jokes do not exist in a vacuum, but actually are one way we reaffirm "in group" beliefs that are often harmful and/or discriminatory. People love to hide behind "it was just a joke!" and that's just disingenuous (or willfully ignorant) about the way jokes function in our society.
someone on here referred to it as "splash damage" and I really love that. Its still damage even if its not what you intended to hit.
late night on collective suicide watch
"I was just shitposting" is no excuse for throwing out dehumanizing expressions into the public sphere. Even if it's directed towards someone who is, themselves, making dehumanizing statements. Vaush's statement, even being directed at JKR, didn't use language which targeted her. He phrased his "shitpost" with broad language. Which is something that both allows those who align with JKR's position to take out-of-context, *and* harms everyone caught under the broad terminology. It was a heated statement made in reaction to an ugly provocation and it played right into JKR's narrative. When you have to use a term that includes shit in it, the post might not be a helpful one.
Respectability politics is never going to win the kind of change we need.
@@LitchAustin And posting cringe online will?
@@LitchAustin TERFs don't care about what the left says. Neither do fascists nor diehards on the right. Insulting them just gives them ammo. Being reasonable gets ignored. fine! Best we can do is be respectful of one another. Speak truth. Call the TERFs out. But don't make our own sibs collateral for the sake of expressing outrage.
@@superpheemy we are not going to agree.
I see value in edgy humor, I particularly see value in edgy humor that makes an enemy uncomfortable.
This speaks to an audience that doesn't include you, an audience that might enjoy vulgarity and shocked reactions. Heaping scorn and vitriol on an enemy we want folks to feel that way about is valuable.
@@LitchAustin Weaponizing common misogynistic sentiments against women (be they bigots or not) is bad, and saying that it is bad to use any form of bigotry has nothing to do with respectability politics. Bigotry is not praxis. You don't have to respect someone who is hateful as JKR or be respectful towards her or other bigots. It harms other people who are NOT those bigots but are part of the marginalized group that are affected regularly by that flavor of bigotry. The collateral damage is not worth it.
Go after people for their trash ideas and actions, not their identity or appearance. This is not respectability politics, it's just basic decency for the marginalized amongst our own group.
It's basically "is it ok to be Transphobic to Caitlyn Jenner because she sucks". It's not. It reveals something not about the person you're addressing, but about you, when you attack something specific about them. Especially when that specific thing isn't the Bad Things they do, but just who they are.
"It reveals something not about the person you're addressing, but about you" is the best way ive ever seen this put
Is Caitlyn Jenner equally transphobic as JRK? I'm not trying to snipe your point, but I do think "because she sucks" is not the same as what JRK is doing. Also, I don't know much about Caitlyn Jenner, other than she's frowned upon, so maybe I'm missing something.
For a better argument, substitute Jenner with Blaire White being transphobic, and you should be good to go.
Maybe it's just me but I'm pretty sure transphobia is not "just who they are". Did I misread that? What?
Such a good point. I'm actually okay with the idea that we might sometimes, in a targeted way, invoke the specific bad behavior of people in the opposition and really dig in deep on that. I actually think it may be a rhetorical tactic in the upcoming years to keep pointing out to conservatives that they were defenders of treason in 2020 and that they never again get to act sanctimonious about patriotism after Trump. (Not that they ever really could, but now we have the optics to do it).
But that's because it's for things they did. Not who they are.
Vaush could even have salvaged his point, and made a complex intersectional argument (though I still would disagree), if he said "billionaire women need to stop talking and start apologizing" or "TERF women need to stop talking and start apologizing" or "conservative women need to stop talking and start apologizing", because then at least we could be discussing how utterly disingenuous JK is being. (Notice how that would have actually captured his underlying views better while still being a shitpost).
It's worse that Vaush can't even argue that he was just doing what JK was, because... JK doesn't shitpost. She says awful shit, but it's all sincere. I have had some success with the 4chan type of just getting really cruel with their own approach and really making it personal, robbing them of the anonymity while keeping the shitposting rhetoric up, but it only even in theory works because they publicly told everyone that was the game they're playing.
@@Azusartcorner Caitlyn isn't Transphobic though she definitely shares views and side with those who hold Transphobic views - IE Republicans, the same ones trying to criminalise supporting trans kids in the USA. She sucks but there's a world of difference criticising her politics and just refusing to see her as a woman, because the latter is bigotry whereas the former is legitimate criticism.
I really thought the idea that identity based bigotry like sexism does not actually just effect the specific person it was directed at was something people understood by now.
It's easy to say something like that in the abstract and rather different to remember that as a tactical consideration in the moment, especially when you're white or male or cis-gender or in any privilege group. As a white cis-gendered American straight male, you could have caught me anytime after high school and asked me about the risk of splash damage and I'd have noted it because people like Chomsky and Albert and Wise trained me to be attentive to it. But the idea that me debating neo-Nazis might just lead to them acquiescing publicly and then throwing a temper tantrum at women of color wouldn't have occurred to me.
Thank you! I don't get how people still believe they can just act a fool and hide behind the fact that they're leftists or receipts or whatever.
Like sorry, a sexist joke is a sexist joke whether you are personally sexist or not.
I see this a lot with dudes who think they're safe because of the crowd they hang around.
Sexism isn't safe around us, sorry bro.
+ Women online talking about """men""" and assuming all of us are straight guys. Very painful to read.
@@jpgextinction Does it matter? Gay men can be misogynists. Trans men can be misogynists.
@@fredericchristie3472 TW SA, abuse, sexual harassment, homophobia, fetishisation, transphobic, misogyny, internalised misogyny
Gay men can be misogynists, but cis/straight women, whether consciously or not, often harm queer men in the same ways they've been harmed by the patriarchy. Its's a slap in the face when women can fetishise, sexually harass and rape queer men yet you as a gay trans man are treated as either a sexual predator or not truly male just because of the actions of the same men who also oppress and threaten you on a daily basis. Saying 'cis' or 'straight' when it's relevant is important. Seeing misogyny as a distinctly male problem also kind of excuses internalised misogyny and when women do things that harm other women. It's everyone's problem. I think that while everyone should be able to express anger at being oppressed, because women are right to feel angry, it's important to avoid punching down at other oppressed people or ignoring the systemic nature of oppression and how we all contribute to it, not just privileged people.
It was such a terrible take of his. As a black woman I despise Candace Owen, but if a white person was racist against her it's still wrong. But interesting discussion
That's not the point of that argument though, the argument is that Rowling is similar to Candace Owens, that being a precarious person in terms of their identity coopted by conservative movements to undermine the rights of the very groups they fall under.
That being said, Owens seems very aware of her grift (therefore being all the more despicable being consciously aware of the damage she causes), while Rowling seems more guided by her own trauma in a very unfortunate way (which doesn't excuse her actions, but does make for a more tragic figure).
Anyway, just wanted to clarify, have a good one.
@@RatsAndLiqour if I made a racist joke about Candace Owens but I preface by saying that she’s an awful person it doesn’t make the joke okay. The same goes for Vaush’s tweets. You don’t get to claim immunity from your comments because “that wasn’t his intention”. If your joke can hurt people it shouldn’t even be considered. There is literally nothing that joke added except misogyny. It has no benefit to your argument. If I was criticizing Vaush and then made a joke about an immutable characteristic of his it only weakens my points. It would give him ammo to dismiss anything I said as me being a Vaush hater. It only serves to reinforce his preconceived notions about me. Just how it reinforced Rowling and her fans/peers ideas about trans people and our “Allies”
@@anamoose461 Wooosh....
I was not talking about the tweet, nor do I wish to discuss it. Is it problematic, sure, but that's as far as I'd go.
You see, it's like an onion, it has layers, and the particular layer that person above us commented upon, was, from my perspective at least, misunderstood by that person. No vitriol, no hard feelings, I would just like there being as few misunderstandings as possible.
As to whether or not we agree on the actual argument, I don't know, can't say, but please address what has actially been said (by me in this case) rather than going from your own extrapolated gut feeling.
Also, in my world at least there's quite the distinction between edgy ironic humor and actual racism/sexism/whatever, context does matter..
Then we get to the question of being responsible with your large platform, recognizing that most people are not "in on the meta-joke" and so on. But I've already used way more energy on this than I'd like, so I guess I'll call it quits now.
Sorry if i caused you any offence, and have a good one.
@@RatsAndLiqour My issue is that especially with edgy ironic humor is it needs to be so obviously and over the top a joke that it can be absolutely understood by everyone that it is, in fact, a joke. In the case of Vaush's tweet I don't think that happened. For his loyal followers it may have come across as the joke it was intended to be, but especially in combination with the previous tweet against JKR it can be very easily misread as actual misogyny.
@@frozenyogurth if you know who vaush is (and don't hate him), it was very obviously a joke, the biggest problem with the joke is that Vaush is so enmeshed in left wing and feminist rhetoric that for him "Stand Up, Speak Up, Stop Apologizing" is a statement everyone is so familiar that the inversion was obvious.
But for folks who are less familiar with that rhetoric the inversion was less obvious and the statement was left obviously ironic.
So the problem is vaush is too feminist.
The way my eyes rolled back when he says "oh I can be WAY more misogynistic"
Vaush reminds me of a rioter I saw during the BLM protests. The man threw a rock and broke a window and was asked by a Fox News reporter “why are you being so violent?”. He responded “oh I can be WAY more violent” but then he thought for a moment and asked the reporter “But why don’t you people ever ask the cops that question?”
Same, I was like "uh.. really? And that's a good thing WHY?" I get that it was a joke but it was very tasteless😒
@@whysocurious7366 i feel like its a bad analogy because we always criticize jk rowling and other regressive people, whereas the mainstream media DOESNT criticize cops. Misogyny should be criticized no matter where it comes from, whether its conservatives or people like vaush.
@@botanicalitus4194 you might also criticize Rowling, but a lot of people dog-piling on Vaush don’t. I think the channels that exclusively condemn BLM protests for being violent, and never criticize police for being violent, are actually not anti-violence, they’re perpetuating it. In the same way, people who criticize Vaush for misogyny, and never JK’s misogyny, are not anti-misogyny, they’re perpetuating it.
@@whysocurious7366 but as the watchers of jessie gender and herself we do really critize jk rowling often. A better analogy would be if a supposed blm protester said the n word and when another asked "why are you being racist", that person were to reply with: "oh yeah? Why aren't you asking that question to the police?? I was just being ironic!! Be thankful for my allyship! The left is eating itself!!"
Misogyny helps no one. Trans women don't need the misogyny of cis men to tackle transphobia. The fact that Vaush's fans are silencing and attacking trans women who have an issue with his approach is truly nauseating.
It's important not to overlook the fact that some of the responses Vaush has gotten have been borderline abusive. Like Kat Blaque's -- which still does NOT justify retaliatory cruelty sent her way. Keep in mind the individual actions that are sometimes overlooked to protect marginalised identities.
@@fruitygarlic3601 But what Vaush is dealing with extremely pales in comparison to what trans women have to deal with online. Vaush will be ok.
Wait a second, who is even being silenced right now?
And really revealing about where their priorities actually are. The fact that Vaush literally went on to talk down to a black trans woman and paint her as overly aggressive and irrational when she pointed out how very not helpful and unnecessary she found this act? Tells me everything I need to know about him. Like he antagonized her and then literally made her out to be the stereotypical angry black woman sjw when imo, she correctly sniffed out his BS and said so in a snarky way. Some ally.
Guys like this remind me entirely too much of a certain type of cishet white dude atheist who talks a big game about how religion I'd bad because of the violence and prejudice it has fueled. Yet whatever their intentions, they sometimes seem like they're publically dunking on religion more to Pwn people and contempt for Superstition, than out of anything more than a surface level concern for those they claim to care about. And they act as if they could never have ANY sexist, racist or homo/transphobic cultural baggage of their own just because they shed Christianity and in their heads that more than proves how smart and evolved they are.
@@margaretgibbs6673 Also, if that's how Vaush responded to an actual trans person saying they don't feel helped by something he supposedly did on behalf of trans people, did he really care about helping trans people? Or did he just like using trans people to make himself feel virtuous.
The cishet white dude atheists you're taking also frequently seem to accuse other people of "virtue signaling", but they seem more than happy to virtue signal themselves when the opportunity comes along. And their own virtue signaling is usually much more narcissisticly smug and insufferable than anything said by the people they accuse of virtue signaling (a trait they have in common with conservatives, including conservatives who are conservative because of the religious beliefs that these types of atheists like to dunk on).
I wonder if it would be helpful to have a shorthand label for such people. MRAs (marginalizing radical atheists) perhaps? AJAs ("anti justice atheists", derived from their own meaningless label "social justice warrior")? Or maybe name after some of their more prominent exemplars by calling them "Maherites" or "Sargonites"?
I agree, you don't need to drag yourself down in order to call out people and their bad behavior. There is no need to use sexism, bigotry, racism, etc. You can slay them with wit. And like you say, it just fuels their defense.
It’s exactly like being racist towards racist white people.
A turtle approves of this take
@@TurtleChad1 I love your name
@@kieransky same here
I definitely agree that Jesse should keep doing this because Jesse is very good at it. I also, so far, support Vaush in his actions because I think he's doing the things that are effective for him. I'm still pondering the damage to aid ratio, so I am happy to hear more ideas on this and hope Jesse's post fosters more discussion. Most of all I think both are arguing in good faith and are open to listening and maybe an excellent result would be Jesse and Vaush sitting down to discuss together!
A lot of focus in Vaush's circles is also that they've cultivated their audience from ex-gamergate or deradicalized young men, coming from a movement with a lot of misogynistic or sexist jokes. By defending or even making use of these "edgy ironic" jokes and pairing them with leftist rhetoric allows for an audience that supports certain progressive issues and disregards others. Pair with this that a lot of leftist spaces have a very surface-level understanding of feminism, and additionally that Twitch as a platform has a culture and an interface that has been perpetuating misogyny, the whole debacle just seems in bad taste.
Yeah it's very questionable how much he's supposedly "deradicalized" them. Vaush isn't that different from the anti-SJW crowd that came before him.
I definitely felt that as someone who used to be more intimately involved in his community and tried to speak about feminism, a lot of these guys learned to not be racist but still haven’t overcome their implicit biases towards women and other minority groups. They still largely benefit from a lot of the things that harm women and these minority groups so they are largely unable to critically examine these implicit biases. They will make empty statements about trans rights but asking them to listen about stuff like feminism almost always gets turned into a conversation about how bad men have it. Same in some ways of you even joke about straight people or white people they get up in arms about how bad they have it too. They probably are still largely uneducated about this but it’s not like Vaush focuses on it or even platforms many people who actually know what they are talking about.
@@guy-sl3kr I think that crowd just rebranded, I don't think they've really "deradicalized" at all tbh
@@guy-sl3kr I would say that he's different, but not as different as he would like to believe.
There are certain lines for what is and isn't acceptable. The anti-SJW crowd drew a dividing line, and the "de-radicalized" anti-anti-SJW crowd drew a line closer to us.
The similarity is that both of these groups feel that the people who get to draw those lines... is *themselves*. They get to decide how feminist to be. They get to decide how anti-racist to be. They get to decide how to promote trans people. And so on.
At no point are they willing to give up that privilege of deciding *what* the fight is about. They can be allies, but because they define the battle lines they're fighting for, they're not *reliable* allies. Though perhaps well-meaning, their stumbling around will always cause some collateral damage.
A good ally needs to recognize that the people they're ostensibly fighting for are the ones who will be hurt if they do it wrong. And therefore those people need to be the ones who define the parameters of the fight. This is why "centering minority voices" is such a critical part of allyship.
@Doom Posterior We want *everyone* on the left. We should welcome and embrace those who have been de-radicalized, who have seen the taint of fascism and are ready to act against it.
But we really need "on the left" to actually *mean* "on the left". That is, we don't want people to want to claim leftist status but still hold so many right-leaning elements of their beliefs.
If they want to be part of the movement, they need to understand that they're not in *charge* of that movement. Not exclusively. And that they may need to submit some personal attitudes to the will of those most affected by them.
"On the left" has to mean more than just "against the right".
His tweet doesn't work without a lot of context and it just plain doesn't work as a joke. You should always criticize someone like Rowling about their actions, not their identity.
Yeah, I think that's the part that causes the most problems. The joke only works if you're a pretty avid viewer of Vaush and know that ironic misogyny, whether you like the joke or not, is a relatively common thing. It's made doubly worse by the fact that he tweeted it instead of saying it on a stream. While they're both public in which anyone can stumble across it, a tweet has far more reach than a stream, as streaming relies on a core group of fans to comprise your audience.
On top of that, saying a joke and writing a joke are two different things. Writing doesn't have the same ability to reflect tone and inflection, so just writing a joke that you'd normally say in person doesn't hold the same weight as the intention doesn't translate perfectly.
Ironic misogyny isn't ironic.
Also, Vaush's defense that he didn't know his tweet was going to be taken out of context is a flimsy one. He is an extremely popular political youtuber posting on one of the most public social networks in the world.
Everything he does is purposely supposed to be as wide reaching and popular as possible, he can't complain that this results in people who don't know anything about Vaush running into his content and reacting.
I hope Vaush admits he fucked up and apologizes instead of doubling down on his fuck up. I like a lot of what Vaush says but this is a cringey look on him.
@@tylerbrown9797 "Everything he does is purposely supposed to be as wide reaching and popular as possible"
Have you ever watched Vaush, like at all?
Your respectability politics is ugly and you need to do better.
@@LitchAustin I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: saying bigotry is bad even when used against your opponents =/= respectability politics.
I can't believe this is even a question. Is it okay to be racist to a transphobic black person? NO. Is it okay to be transphobic to a racist trans person? NO. Same thing with misogyny. It's NOT OKAY to use tools of systemic oppression and violence to prove your point. You're not insulting just the person you disagree with. You're insulting the entire oppressed group (who is likely, in the majority, on your side).
Fighting transphobia IS fighting sexism.
There's no exceptions.
We must ALWAYS be anti misogyny anti transphobia and obviously anti racism.
yup.
Exactly!
But don’t you have necessarily to be sexist to be transwomen or transmen? You can be transgender without sexism, but transwomen and transmen are necessarily sexists. Right?
Just to clear my view a bit, surgeries were always icky to me personally, but I was biased to protect any minority. I agree with “the left” on most things. But the more I hear transgenders, the more I realise how paradoxical they are, mainly if gender and sex are separate (i disagree), why change your sex to be the same with your gender? They can be misaligned and you’ll still be a validated human. Also, body modification is mostly aesthetic and don’t really change anything. The more I hear trans and pay attention to this issue, the more I am a Terf, tbh, not by listening to terfs, by listening many trans.
yes, laws against sexism already cover 'trans' people.
@@globalist1990 well it isnt paradoxical, im a trans person to clarify,
to put it simply, when something is misaligned (your gender to how your body reflects it), you are gonna want to fix it - and you cant actually change your biology, and trust me if i could i absolutely would, but you can change your secondary sex characteristics. and thats what trans people are wanting to do (but some not as much as others - its a spectrum), simply realign a painting thats askew (change their appearance to reflect what they feel like)
These calm and “rational” explanations of why sexism is (sometimes) okay is why I’m so done with debate bros
I prefer the flashy/flamboyant/dramatic explanations of why we probably shouldn’t.
It’s also bad to use homophobic images to laugh with Putin
I used to watch vuash bc most of the time he has valid takes but this stupid bullshit he did on a whim and then tried to defend made me unsubscribe. Like cmon man
As someone who didn't know Vaush existed before this video, seeing this tweet basically demonstrates all the issues with social media: I don't know him or his beliefs, I can't see his face or hear his tone of voice, and there is nothing here to signal his ironic intentions to a total stranger. Therefore, I took it very poorly. With context added, I've gone from angry to resigned, but I still don't think that it's a) funny or b) somehow not freaking obvious that no matter how good an ally you are, you don't have the same voice as a person of the population you're trying to speak for, and you don't get to say anything you want just because you feel clever.
It might have helped if you were more familiar with feminist rhetoric. For people who know the phrase "Stand Up, Speak Up, Stop Apologizing" the inversion is much more obvious.
@@LitchAustin That is likely. However, while I may not have been as angry, the rest of my comment would probably not have changed.
Vaush using an ironic inversion of feminist rhetoric actually makes it bother me more. Splash damage on important ideas like that is not good.
@@fredericchristie3472 Yeah, and from someone who found out that it's supposed to be an "inversion", it still doesn't read like it. Maybe the capital letters gave it away, but I still feel a bit like Vaush should really realize that a dude saying this stuff doesn't exactly look innocent.
@@justjess6636 Of course not! And even if he is, he gives some cover to an actual shitlord.
im just tired of facing misogyny l. I thought at least in leftist spaces I would be treated with respect regardless of my gender, but no. Misogynists exist even in the left, and it makes existing as a woman exhausting
"She doesn't really care about misogyny" but also, "Well, if I hadn't been misogynistic, she wouldn't have cared."
“JK Rowling doesn’t care about misogyny”
like no dude, but I do, so I’d appreciate it if it wasn’t weaponized in the name of protecting me as a trans person please and thanks
vaush makes it sound as if he were in a small chamber with just rowling herself, and not, i dont know, a massive fucking platform of millions, some of which, are affected by sexism, transphobia etc??
Bingo. We don't need to give the fascists more reasons to send us to death camps.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Of course she does. That’s what a terf is.
Being sexist to her is EXACTLY what she wants, she shouldn’t be engaged in debate cause she’s not going to change or say anything compelling to prove her point since she’s already explained exactly how she thinks. She has built her stance around believing anyone who is trans-supporting or transgender themselves is inherently against “true feminism” and the sanctity of biological women and are willing to tear down someone like her for “just speaking her mind.” And all anyone who is in favor of her will do is say, “see look at poor JK Rowling getting treated with misogyny for speaking her mind!”
Yeah, she's basically a lost cause
Something very interesting here is that Vaush didn’t tag Rowling with the @ in those comments. Rowling was explicitly searching those types of comments to play victim.
@@melaniey.5596 My impression of her goes down every time she pulls these stunts cause it's so sleazy. She tries to make herself look like a poor, defenseless woman barraged by unfair criticism. But she actively seeks out people to spotlight to play like she's victimized by trans people, when her words are harming a group already treated badly.
I'm even inclined to go as far as to say this behavior makes me question the legitimacy of her claims of past victimization/abuse. People can hate on me for that, but I just CANNOT take her at face value anymore when she languishes in this narcissistic routine this time using strangers being critical of her online and rightfully calling her a TERF. She's got some toxic manipulation/self-victimization going on and I'm getting Gone Girl vibes here.
Yeah she feeds off of all criticism and JK just shouldn't be interacted with. Her narcissism is too deep seated.
@@Nightman221k It also leads to the question, if she actively goes looking for these kind of post, isn't it better that she chooses Vaush who can at the very least defend himself and put a case forward against her. I bet the number of people watching his videos has increased after being platformed by her.
Having this question brought up at all is very interesting, having Shaun's video on Harry Potter coming out earlier this month.
He mentioned how in the Harry Potter universe, there aren't good or bad actions, just good and bad teams. An action that is considered horrid if done by "the bad team", is completely justifiable in Rowling's world if it is done by the heroes, or "the good team".
I haven't watched the video yet and this isn't about Vaush necessarily but just a general stance on Leftist spaces. I feel there's something rather uncomfortable or even morbid, lowering oneself to that level. Of using horrid actions, because she's on "the bad team", and therefore abuse is "justifiable". We're on "the good team", and so we can't do wrong.
What is the line between being a good person using questionable (to put it lightly) methods to achieve good, and just being an abusive person?
The issue is that this line of thinking has been used for generations in order to make sure that black people are polite, passive, and civil against (usually white) slingers of overt racism, hate speech and threats of violence. Because they should be examples of "good black people" and not stoop to the level of their aggressors.
Plenty of people attach themselves to a good cause often to fuel their own superiority. Being "right" and being assholes to people who "deserve" it can be a helluva drug.
@@Paroex While similar words have been used for the purposes you outlined, I think the differences between the example case and the ones you're talking about are pretty clear. Indeed, what you're talking about has been used for centuries against women, keeping them "polite, passive, and civil against (usually male) slingers of overt sexism, hate speech, and threats of violence". Indeed, it's a specific sexist narrative that women are best seen and not heard.
This isn't a general tone policing argument. It's a specific question of whether it's OK to use a bigoted narrative against a bigot. And no, it isn't. We can express our anger at someone's bigotry just fine without using bigoted narratives against them.
@@GeneralBolas I get your point and it's a good distinction.
How do you feel about Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance, where a tolerant society has to protect itself from intolerant ideologies rising to power, by not tolerating them?
This is not a "gotcha", I'm simply curious as to whether to you feel it's NEVER morally acceptable to fight fire with fire.
If you watch Vaush's response to the controversy, he definitely favors this sort of thinking.
It is a sort of understandable perspective since Rowling is not a good faith actor (she has a habit of searching out vitriol and highlighting it, even if the accounts are tiny) and would engage in crybully behavior regardless.
He could have just tweeted "(transphobic) billionaires shut up and apologize challenge" and would have been ok.
Yep. I had the same thought. He even could have tried "(transphobic) female billionaires shut up and apologize" if he really, *really* had to and it still would have worked better because it would have done exactly what he said he was arguing. Your formulation would be the correct one because it would *only* center the right messaging and made the intersectionality central, but if he just had to invoke the faux-misogyny, he could have just done it another way.
Or just address her by name!
Tone police out in force
And if he did, Rowling wouldn't have picked it up, and it wouldn't be drama. Also it wouldn't be a joke.
except it would not have been as obviously an inversion of a foundational feminist slogan "Stand Up, Speak Up, Stop Apologizing" on international women's day.
My take: Misogyny hurts all women, not just the woman you're being misogynistic to. Similarly, queerphobia (of all kinds) hurts all queer folk, and racism hurts all people of colour. It's impossible to be sexist to just one person because that sexism hurts all marginalised genders. Therefore, not ok to be sexist to the billionaire.
Also it's such a lazy place to pull a joke from. I mean, seriously, there are so many better jokes you could make about billionaire TERF Rowling, it's just uncreative to go the sexist route!
Exactly! This is why some people push back against those "Zuckerberg is a robot" jokes. Yes, he's a billionaire, yes, he fucking sucks, but the things people are mocking him for are all things that make him come off as autistic. I'm not sure if he is autistic, but speaking as an autistic woman, seeing jokes about his flat or weird delivery, or that his staring off into space isn't "normal", those things are harmful. Ableism against the wealthy is still ableism.
But can I still be prejudiced toward the French?
@@Haverlock as long as you are okay with all of France being prejudiced against you.
@@q-tip9962 What are the frogs gonna do? Spout some incomprehensible insult in their babbling incoherent tongue?
@@Haverlock yes. I’m prejudiced towards them as well brother. That and the d*sgusting British 🤢
Me before watching the video: in no way it’s justifiable to be sexist
Me after watching the video: in no way it’s justifiable to be sexist and I love you Jessie
Hey Jessie, I'm a Vowsh fan, and I'm only about 5 minutes in, but I would like to say right now that I greatly appreciate the framework you're going into this discussion with. So many responses to Vaush's hot takes are intentionally designed to misrepresent him that it's hard not to be automatically defensive about it. Looking forward to watching the rest of the video.
EDIT: Good video. I found the points in the middle about how we wouldn't be racist towards Dave Chappelle or transphobic towards Kaitlyn Jenner especially compelling, because then the question becomes why is being sexist towards JK Rowling different, then? And there isn't really a good answer to that. This gave me a lot to think about, thanks Jessie.
EDIT2: This wasn't covered in the video, but it did get me thinking about it: Vaush has often said that he's not a fan of the ironic anti-men jokes you often hear in some spaces on the left for precisely the reasons you say, that it's bad to do those kinds of jokes because they can reinforce negative behaviors in an audience you don't intend on. It seems weird to me, then, that he would hold that position and also the position that ironic misogyny jokes are fine at the same time.
To be fair to the "hot takes", not only are there incentives to do that, but also Vaush himself has structured the way he reasons that way. I have routinely seen Vaush say something inflammatorily stupid, then when he explains at length it just becomes ordinarily wrong or poorly reasoned, but he didn't do the groundwork to prevent that. When you're deliberately thorny and non-diplomatic, you don't get to be surprised when people stop giving you charity.
Well said, I'm also a fan of Vowsh!
I think Vaush said in a different stream that anyone calling out the ironic misogyny jokes is valid to do so. His general point seemed to be that he acknowledged what he did was wrong, but he did it anyways just to stir the pot and get people talking about it, if I understood correctly.
i would have left this exact comment, so thanks for framing my thoughts for me haha! I hope he takes this criticism well ultimately
I appreciate as a Vaush fan that you came in with an open mind and gave the points in Jessie's video some fair consideration! That's awesome. :) I watch Vaush here and there because I think he's well informed and has some interesting takes, but as you alluded to in in your own comment, he sometimes demonstrates (at least for me) a hypocrisy and arrogance/lack of self awareness about his own potential faults and blindspots, and that's often a big turn off for me in terms of wanting to continue to watch him, or engage with his content. As well as him making jokes or employing tactics like the ones you mentioned here, and how we wouldn't justify it in other circumstances. Anyway, long comment aside lmao I just want to say I appreciate your open mindedness, and I agree with everything you wrote in your comment. i hope you have a good day!!
Is it me or is "edginess" just a more socially acceptable synonym for punching down? It's starting to feel more and more like "ironic" jokes are actually "your oppression/systemic hardships are funny to me, laugh."
When done badly, they are
How does a mid-tier youtuber punch down on a world famous billionaire?
@@LitchAustin he wasn't punching down on JKR by saying "women shut up challenge". He was punching down on cis and trans women with the statement's wording. Other people are hurt in the crossfire when "jokes" like these are made.
@@notshardain he wasn't replying to other women (and why do you feel the need to distinguish between cis and trans women here? Kinda sus) he was replying to a TERF Billionaire.
@@LitchAustin But in that moment he wasn’t targeting her as a TERF or targeting her as a billionaire (things which aren’t inherent to her as a person or historically discriminated against) he was targeting her as a women. If I said something offensive about some aspect of Vaush’s identity that had historically been discriminated against because I knew that he would likely be hypersensitive to it and it would be most likely to cause him pain, it would be wrong for me to shirk responsibility for my actions by saying something like “he’s a famous streamer and I am an anonymous nobody, I can’t possibly be punching down on him, therefore it is fine for me to say whatever I want”. The same principle applies.
Vaush is wrong on all counts here. It IS bad for optics, but it feels gross to reduce this to an "optics" issue. It's not about looking good, just...BE good. Don't use bigoted language and you can't be caught doing it.
100%
To bad he only cares about optics if your from a margilised group and you disagree with him watch all the racism/homophobia ect come out his mouth
The moment we declare, "This is the bar you must meet behaviorally to be considered worthy of respect," we create a space for dehumanization. And the social system we live within *encourages* that type of gatekeeping, because any such dehumanization promotes infighting *within* the system by the oppressed as opposed to *challenging* the system itself. That's why I won't stand for the misgendering Jenner, racist comments against Chapelle, misogyny against Rowling (or even intentionally mispronouncing her name), or homophobic comments about Buttigieg, etc., etc. Their invalidation of the humanity of others doesn't give me the right to invalidate them. They may be awful people in numerous contexts, but I'm going to treat them as people, damnit! Condemn their actions, challenge their falsehoods, and do it while respecting their humanity/identity!
I think Vaush is giving himself too much credit in saying JK was "triggered." On the contrary, I think she likely is excited when she finds tweets like that which make it so much easier to cast herself as a victim of a misogynistic hate mob
Maybe not excited...but vindicated and validated, absolutely.
Yeah, I really don't like it when people ostensibly on the left use the same kinds of rhetorical tricks that the right uses against us. In this case, mistaking "she responded to me" with "she was triggered".
She could have an internet addiction.
Not saying this excuses her actions. I just think if you name search yourself or hunt for posts about you, you kinda need to talk ro a professional about insecurities.
She almost certainly would fill the category of what the internet generally positions being "triggered" as. She is actively choosing to doom scroll and search specifically for things she dislikes to make herself out a victim. This is not normal behavior and textbook crybullying.
@@FloorFerret except I don't think she's "doom scrolling," but instead just looking for ways to prop up her bad faith arguments and is likely pleased when people make that task easy for her
Hey Jessie, I'm actually a fan of both you and Vaush, so I'm actually glad you made this video. You raised a good point about how the conversation about trans people, as it plays out in major media, seldom involves the views and arguments from actual trans people. That's a valid frustration.
I'm a fan of both of them and I agree with you on this video.
Trans girl here who agrees with Vaush over not being civil with our oppressors. But I still cringe over him engaging in ironic but NOT funny sexist jokes.
UGH there isn’t any winning for trans issues and the left in general, at least it feels that way. We L L all the time. We’re playing into civility optics but the people we’re against, do not care at all about those optics. This is why they just laugh at the left.
0.7% of the country is trans.
The OVERWHELMING majority of people who are going to talk about trans issues are not going to be trans.
@@EmmsReality vaush is not oppressed by transphobia. He is a cis guy wielding sexism towards a woman, reproducing systems of thousand years of dehumanization of women, which also affects you as a trans woman. It also doesn't matter if his jokes are funny, they're sexist. That's reason enough to be not "cringed out" but angry. He has no fcking right to disrespect women (yes, all women) like that. Women shut up and apologize is directed toward all women. I hate JK Rowling but if the only response he can come up with against transphobia is sexism maybe he should shut the f up.
Same!
I like Vaush most of the time, but it's frustrating how he feels entitled to play with misogyny like a personal toy. For some reason, he really finds it funny, and I genuinely cannot understand why. His attempts at ironically misogynistic humor are never clever or funny, it's always just a carbon copy of the same lazy dismissal of women that has done real harm to me my whole life. Then, when topics like abortion, something that is commonly associated with (though, of course, not limited to) cis women, he immediately gets "bored". While he does ultimately support women's rights, it's in a more superficial way than with other forms of civil rights and liberation. It almost feels like he knows misogyny is a real form of bigotry, but views it as less important than all the others, so he feels it's ok to be exceptionally irreverent about it. Then, because he frames pushback almost entirely as personal attacks against him, or as somehow illegitimate, when people do speak up in chat or comments, there is clearly a subset of dedicated fans who run around doing the, "Just a joke, bro. Can't take a joke? Come on, no one cares about jokes" bit. Intentionally or not, he has allowed to build up in his audience this attitude that people need to be on board with edgy ironic misogyny in order to be accepted, and should take any disagreement with it as an attack against them from an outsider. It's unfortunate, because at the end of the day, I think Vaush is usually so much more well reasoned in his views, but on this topic, he just can't let go of the idea that being a shitposting edgelord is cool.
What's most frustrating about this is that this type of humor makes vaush hard to distinguish from an actual bigot. The point of an edgy joke is to highlight the problems with some form of bigotry and to mock that bigotry for being ridiculous. Repeating the bigotry verbatim, with no further context, is therefore not good edgy humor. The mockery is not apparent, it's not there at all, frankly. And this is a principle vaush _seems_ to understand in other contexts. He chastises, derides, and mocks conservative humor precisely for its inability to distinguish between mockery of bigotry and the propagation of it. He mocks conservatives for being unable to understand the progressive messaging contained within media - how the punisher is anti police, as an example. Yet he seems unable or unwilling to do so here. He's too stubborn to.
"While he did ultimately support women's rights"
But does he? You can't truly support the rights of a group of people you clearly don't respect.
i totally agree! & honestly i probably wouldn’t care if the joke was actually funny or made a point lol
@@chillin5703 Maybe Vaush is hard to distinguish from an actual bigot because he is actually bigoted. Because if mocking conservatives is all it takes to be a leftist, then being a "leftist" doesn't mean anything. Especially when these supposed leftists behave identically to the conservatives they claim to oppose.
@@guy-sl3kr don't think you read my comment and also think you're a spam acc. Legit no reason to think he's actually bigoted imo.
This "I'm just shitposting" and "it's just a casual misogyny" feels kinda icky to me, even if it's used to bully a multibillionaire bully. Like, even if you're "joking" you're still perpetuating misogynistic stuff
Yep, it's the same excuse we've heard all our lives. Never been a time when we weren't told "I was just funning, and you should get a sense of humor." Or "I was saying it IRONICALLY." Yeah, no.
@@SplotPublishing lmao exactly! Almost every "make me a sandwich" joke I was told was claimed to be "ironic" or just a joke or that the women were just being too sensitive. Outside of xbox live that is. When its anonymous they can just say it with no cloak of irony.
If someone argues, "sexism is bad, except in this very specific context that just so happens to apply to me!", then they're arguing that sexism is at least sometimes okay. Which... NO! That's a bad take!
As for the idea that ironic sexism for laughs is justifiable-if it ever is justifiable, it's really not something Vaush (or virtually any man) should touch with a ten-foot pole. The targets of sexism have a much more intimate, sophisticated sense of what would truly be funny and what would just cross the line. That's something you miss out on if you systemically benefit from sexism. It's kinda like what ContraPoints says in "The Darkness", how cis people just don't know how to do trans humor, because cis people don't know what's actually funny, and what's just a tired variation of one of the same five transphobic jokes that everyone tells.
A leftist UA-camr tweets out a parody of a well known women's rights mantra on international women's day. What makes it funny is that Rowling is also disingenuous in how she invokes misogyny. She doesn't care about women, she cares about transphobia.
Its notable as well that vaush did literally severely sexually harass a woman and yet feels comfortable making these jokes. Lack of introspection to a pretty impressive degree
@@user_.b oh shut up. That was four years ago and he's addressed it several times since. Something that requires introspection existing isn't evidence of a lack of it.
@@Scroteydada except he still tries to minimize what he did, his initial response was very bad (to the point the woman he harassed still hasnt returned to public internet life) and he *continues to say and do sexist shit*. I don't want "ex" sexual harassers to be "ironically" sexist. Also the idea we should all just forget about it is *wild*. He did a thing that will affect his victim for a long while and we should just forget about it because he "apologized" because you dont care about holding men accountable for their actions. More sexism from you to defend your parasocial daddy and his sexist jokes. Him not respecting the boundaries of women in the past is very relavant to him not respecting the boundaries of women today and I'm not going to shut up.
Bottom line for me: You don't get to attack me, and everyone in my group, to get to one person. If you want to criticize, tease, attack, or engage JK Rowling... USE HER NAME! Don't call out her gender. WOMEN didn't do anything to you, or to trans people. I am a feminist mom of a terrific trans person. I've long found there to be no conflict between feminism and support of trans women. But that self-congratulating mouth farter, Vaush decided it's legit to make me collateral damage in his war on ONE, just one, bigot. Just because that bigot is a woman, that doesn't make her "women." If that's confusing to anyone, it's because people like Vaush love to over intellectualize and use 20 dollar words to confuse the issue and turn it into a debate. it's not. We've decided this ages ago. It's not ok to be a bigot. It's not ok to use racism to attack one person of another race. It's not ok to use nationalism to attack one person of a different nationality. It's not ok to use classism to attack one person of another class. It's just not ok to be a bigot. JK can jump in the nearest lake. But, if he's going to continue this defense of the indefensible, so can Vaush.
Also, f UA-cam and their bots who won't let us say the word that JK labels herself, as if it were a slur, rather than a factual definition of what she is. If we can't say the T word, we shouldn't be able to say "white Supremacist" or "Nazi" or "homophobe," yet you can say all of those, and worse. UA-cam, shame on you! You continue to arm and defend the people who make your platform so hostile and unwelcoming, and then wonder why it is so widely defined as unwelcoming and vile. Well, der. You give them freedom to attack others in more explicit by "polite" terms, and prevent people from adequately and accurately expressing how horrible their attacks are. So, good job on aiding the bigots.
This is an old comment, so apologies for the necro, but "...love to over intellectualize and use 20 dollar words to confuse the issue and turn it into a debate" is something I'm fuckin' stealing. Thank you, beautiful human.
I would be lying if I said I had never thought "Oh my god! Just shut the f up!" at JKR... Actually that's my first reaction almost every time she says something horrible on Twitter.
I've been saying for years that she needs to shut up about her opinions on trans people. Vaush's first tweet is word-for-word what I have said. But the second tweet definitely rubbed me the wrong way, and I really enjoy Vaush's content.
I agree. But her needing to quiet down has everything to do with what she chooses to say and nothing to do with her being a woman. Jumping on the chance to make a joke towards all women was tasteless of V.
@@justrachel4496 Yeah, I agree on the second part.
Agreed. She should shut up, not because she's a woman but because she's a transphobe
I get sick of seeing her or HP in literally everything, like a bad smell that won’t leave me alone.
Even with channels I love to watch sometimes I just need to step away from them, but I’m learning to deal with it better
You did a great job communicating an idea that I've had for a long time but haven't quite found the words for before today. Dehumanizing someone to make a point or win an argument is just... morally icky? I'm like 4 different intersections of minority at this point and it always scares me to see people whip out sexist/racist/transphobic/homophobic insults at the drop of a hat to make a point or a joke. It's like... where did that come from? How did you think of that so easily?
My first instinct is to educate when I see something like this, but it really sucks when people double down or get defensive and basically signal to me that whatever "extra minority" thing I am isn't important to them or their community. We should really all be in this together because the only way every minority community can overcome adversity is through allyship. I am hopeful for the future at least because even in the past 2 years I have noticed my own communities becoming more welcoming and intersectional, but we do have a long way to go!
Thanks for the video, I think this is an important conversation to have and I always appreciate hearing your thoughts. :)
Yeah, I feel that. Vaush doing "Ironic" sexism is just telling women in his audience that his respect for them is conditional. Your identity, your rights are dependent on you being a good person in his eyes, whereas the humanity of cishet able-bodied white people isn't. Marginalised people must conform to his standards of respectability in order to not be discriminated against.
Also, like, does he realise that trans women are women? like, telling women to shut up includes trans women and if he didn't mean trans women then maybe he should've said so? Vaush seems to be the genre of "leftist" whose main reason for being on the left is that it lets him express bigotry while also feeling morally superior because he's reserving it for the bad people. Fucking exhausting.
@@sleepinbelle9627 I see it as him mirroring her own views on the subject. Ask yourself who here J.K.Rowling or Vaush believes in traditional gender roles. Who here buddies up to Conservatives that believe the words Vaush put there.
You are claiming that he is telling women to shut up. But that is a reading of the literal use of the words not of the intent behind the word. Which, I agree may not be obvious to the casual reader. But I don't think is unreasonable to understand from the tone.
@@TheRodentMastermind no, I get that it's "ironic" bigotry, but it still fucking sucks. You can play whatever 4d chess games you want to justify it, but he, a man, made a flippant misogynistic joke because he felt like he could get away with it. It's not hard to not be a misogynist, there are so many other ways to dunk on jkr. If it were a male terf he were responding to he'd be able to make fun of their position and the contents of their arguments.
Regardless, its exhausting that the struggle for my right to exist has to get sidelined so that two cis people can snipe at each other. I shouldn't have to settle for allies that will still tell me to shut up if I step out of line. He took a human rights issue that doesn't affect him and turned it into a fucking twitter beef and if he really cared about trans rights then he would see why that's completely fucked.
@@TheRodentMastermind I mean, I've watched enough of Vaush to realize he's just gonna say what he wants to say and hopes people will "get" the joke.
This just seems shitty. Like I don't think he actually believes this, but I don't think that matters when his actions don't look all that different than any other white dude saying derogatory stuff online.
Do people just not realize that actions and consequences still matter whether you're on the left or right? I've had plenty of men defending this stuff soooo much to the point where they are actually serious in calling you a bitch because in their mind, they're leftists! I have a guy screaming at me about how much he "understands" women's problems but still thought sexist humor was just okay off the cuff. It's just fucking sexist, ironically or not.
@@sleepinbelle9627 damn that was so well said. That was honestly where my mind kept going. Why am I watching two cis people fight overtop "trans rights". afab enby here, I felt exactly the same that I wouldn't trust that person to not make a shitty joke at my expense if we disagreed. That doesn't make me feel so confident in an "ally". I can only imagine my cis guy friend making a joke like that and I would tell him "dude, thats fucked up. Yes I agree fuck jkr but you don't get to make that joke, its shitty no matter who its against." especially because his joke was not at JUST her. There are people other than her that it hurts and when an "ally" doesn't give a shit bc its an acceptable risk just to attack jkr on twitter... idk how much of an ally that is.
If Jessie is able to find a shred of empathy for wash & JK then hennything is possible 😮💨
For me, JK the misogynist billionaire, is hard to sympathize with when she retweets random TINY (compared to her) youtubers’ shitposts.. but it’s EASY for me to sympathize with making a random shitpost telling a billionaire misogynist to stfu and apologize..
Jessie is one of the most kind and compassionate people I've seen on social media.
@@quinndawsonosgood5261 me too
Can you be racist to racist white-people? Can you be misogynistic to a misogynistic cis-woman?
Some people don't deserve such empathy. It's dangerous to be *too* empathetic and forgiving.
I feel that no matter how disgusting a person may behave, they should be ridiculed for their garbage views and not things out their control (ie gender, looks, the circumstances of their birth)
Also, I feel the need to point out that he could've said "the celebrities being quiet challenge" instead, which would've made his point without being misogynistic.
Vaush reminds me of a rioter I saw during the BLM protests. The man threw a rock and broke a window and was asked by a Fox News reporter “why are you being so violent?”. He responded “oh I can be WAY more violent” but then he thought for a moment and asked the reporter “But why don’t you people ever ask the cops that question?”
That would've been a different point, because the misogyny he employed was a central part of his point.
@@Eladelia still, it was kinda mean to be misogynistic to the billionaire misogynist.. it’s like if Bezos was constantly spewing racism, would that make it ok for someone to call him a “cracker”? X.x
Or better yet, the "don't make an ass of yourself" challenge, which Vaush himself failed.
Vaush is frustrating because so often his rhetoric is on point but then he slides in to just general white ignorance and privilege and just say shit that gets under my skin that can be seen as racsit or sexist and I just can’t let it go
He really needs to cut down all the edgy bullshit if he ever wants to have a more positive impact online
From what I understand, this is partially because he has been misrepresented so much he's jaded about ever having a good public image and just the vague potential that someone will listen to the expanded version of his argument is enough, since people would consider him vile whether he stays silent or engages in 'tactical bullshit'.
@@littleredruri You act like he does it all the time. You are a good three years too late for that.
His whole persona of ironic asshole-ery and exaggerated ego tends to come off as him just being an egotistical asshole. Oh well, give him a few months and he’ll probably at least tone down the ironic misogyny and admit to some fault. Just like he did with kink at pride, or with his stance on neopronouns
A turtle approves of Vaush but doesn't approve of this action of his.
Thank you. I have dropped several leftist channels because misogyny against leftist women is widely denounced but the same men and women engage in "ironic misogyny" against right wing women. It's still sexism and signals to liberals that sexism is still okay.
As a trans woman, I was APPALLED by Vaush's explicitly sexist tweet. Misogyny has no place in trans rights.
If it was a joke, it was the worst timing for a such a "joke". If you can't defend trans people without being misogynistic, then stay out of it.
I mean... he can... he just makes edgy jokes cause he doesn't understand his reach and isn't responsible with it.
@@littleredruri he is just a pseudo leftist version of rightoids
@@Lucy-cl2qk oh my God I thought I was crazy for thinking that! He's definitely..... a Bro...
@@solisinvictus4238 why can't i see "lucy"s comment, what is this
@@littleredruri it's my bank account number, sorry 😞🥴
As for Dave Chappelle and jk rowling I think the real problem is that mainstream media on the left and center focuses on hurt feelings and talk of cancelation, but doesn't spend enough time debunking what they are saying. So much of the nonsense goes unchallenged.
"I'm just a small youtuber and making comments for my own audience" has the same energy as Joe Rogan's "I'm just a comedian"
I’m a Vaush fan and came here from his reaction stream of this video.
The one good thing to have come from all this messy internet drama crap is that I discovered your UA-cam channel. I’m really enjoying watching your previous videos! It’s like stumbling into a hidden cave full of treasure. Star Trek treasure!!!! 🤩
The more Vaush speaks on trans issues, the more I see not every ally has the best optics.
*Misogny is bad, period. I don't care if the target is a scummy person, blanket discrimination of any kind is bad. Reaching for excuses on why it's okay, instead of owning up to how terrible it is, is doubling down on a terrible action.*
Well, it's obviously not blanket
This entire topic reminds me of a conversation I had to have with some cis friends of mine at one point. I was the only trans person in the room, and a friend was venting about a person who had treated them horribly that was also trans.
Another friend misgendered the person in question while trying to support the venting friend (used the wrong pronouns deliberately etc), and then tried to defend it by saying that the person in question had been awful and abusive so it was okay to misgender them.
I had to explain why that wasn’t cool At All. And the explanation I ended up using (and the conclusion I came to about why I felt their behavior was wrong) is that just because someone is horrible or bigoted to you, doesn’t excuse being bigoted in return. There are better ways to insult someone than bigotry-which hurts more people than just the person you’re aiming at.
This entire topic just reminded me of that conversation, and it still feels very…poignant to me, is all.
I never understood "shit posting" or trolling. "Winning points" may be self satisfying in a brief moment, but ultimately does nothing to affect change. Also, the point of fighting for equality is just that, and inherently means not oppressing or othering people in the process. What's that quote? "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" Audre Lorde.
I never understood throwing rocks. Vaush reminds me of a rioter I saw during the BLM protests. The man threw a rock and broke a window and was asked by a Fox News reporter “why are you being so violent?”. He responded “oh I can be WAY more violent” but then he thought for a moment and asked the reporter “But why don’t you people ever ask the cops that question?”
Shitposting is a whole other thing than trolling. It seems like Vaush genuinely expected his post to be seen only by people who know his politics well enough to interpret it as a serious point about Rowling's social media blunders contrasted with parody, low-effort sexism. Trolling would be if he wanted her to see it, and chose sexist language specifically to be upsetting. Shitposting is what he was doing for his audience, whereas trolling is how the post read to Rowling and everyone who then found it through her.
I may agree with you about this particular instance, but not about shit posting or "winning points" in general. The point is often to make another person look bad, and if that person is a nazi or fascist or incel or gamer gater or whatever, that's kind of a good thing, right? They need to have a spotlight shown on their toxic shit, and sometimes that means going for the jugular and being mean. I think it's way too idealistic to assume we'll be able to hold our ground against people who want nothing more than to put bullets in our heads so long as we concern ourselves too much with civility.
Fascists are a social virus and a threat to... pretty much all life, to be honest. And if a situation presents itself where calling them a bitch will cause more damage for their side than calling them a coward? I'll call them a bitch every time. That doesn't mean it's a good thing to use that word in general. It isn't. But their ilk gained a lot of ground over the last ten years and were only really kept at bay by leftists who illustrated just how insane, destructive, and hateful the opposition was. Sometimes, sure, that was done in the form a video essay by a soft-spoken and polite twenty-something with bisexual lighting, and that's great. A win's a win. However, sometimes they lost ground when someone on our side employed some edgy humor to appeal to the opposition's base and weaken it from within. That's also a win.
If you're not comfortable doing that, I think that's perfectly reasonable. It would be weird to expect everyone else to be willing to wrestle in the shit with a bunch of people wearing swastikas on their arms. That's exhausting and even dangerous. Still, though, I think it's shortsighted to write off the approach altogether. And again, before you think I'm spittin apologia for Vaush, I am not. He was wrong in this case and I think he's just been defensively grasping at whatever arguments gets people off his back the fastest.
@@whysocurious7366 Bleh. That's not entirely a bad point on the part of the rioter. Sometimes, people feel justified to throw rocks and that may or may not be a good thing (depends on how well they substantiate said justification). Also, it is kind of a weird thing that the media doesn't tend to ask the cops why they act the way they do, isn't it? Maybe it's because the media and the cops are on the same side - the state. The media acts as its propaganda wing, regularly manufacturing reasons for why the cops are in the right for the hundredth time they've killed a black person. Outside of interviewing the occasional leftist (interestingly, they always find the ones with the least amount of media training), mainstream news agencies don't seem to have much interest in criticizing law enforcement to any significant degree.
He doesn't even realize that being sexist to her only is gonna confirms her biases
When I was a little kid i would sometimes be sexist to annoy my sister when I was mad at her even though I didn't actually believe that stuff. Then when I was like 10 I learned i was abusing my privilege and it wasn't okay to be sexist ever, even if you don't actually mean it, so I stopped. I'm not sure why Vaush as an adult man can't understand that.
Ultimately though and I've said this before. The best way to fight JK Rowling is to weaponize Harry Potter against her. Harry Potter is littered with incredibly strange and problematic stuff, like defending slavery for example. If knowledge about Harry Potter's weird elements became more widely known about, not only would it hurt Rowling financially, it would damage her credibility. If people knew she defended slavery in her book with a talking point straight out of the Confederacy days, people are going to take her opinions on social issues much less seriously.
Not disagreeing, I just can’t remember where she defended slavery? Mind sharing what book/passage that was in?
@@queendiscord5973 House elves. Extra yikes because the fantastic beast movie made house elves black-coded...
@@queendiscord5973 Can't remember the exact line. But it was Hagrid in I think the Goblet of fire saying to Hermione that "Serving Humans is just in their nature and freeing them would be doing them a disservice" in relation to a house elf who became alcoholic after being freed. Trying to imply of course that its wrong to free the house elves from slavery cause its "just in their nature".
@@neoqwerty Really!? Oh man, this whole franchise is a pile of dried tinder and gasoline just begging for a lit match.
@@sarahnade8663 yeah, then there is also the whole entire thing with Umbridge and the centaurs. And like the centaurs call Hermione out for manipulating them but don't punish her like they do Umbridge because she is still just barely a child. And we all know Umbridge lost her mind after that scene in the Forbidden Forest since she wasn't found for months afterwards. And mythical centaurs aren't known for their caring nature in the Greek myths. Firenze is a parallel to Chiron who was a doctor and a centaur, the other centaurs are clearly written as parallels to the far less savoury centaurs in the myths.
And the alcoholic elf was the one who got blamed for the Dark Mark appearing at the Quidditch cup right? Like having her be a scapegoat was probably the bigger issue influencing her behaviour, like the house elves we see are notoriously abused: Dobby and Kreacher, but prior to that incident, she seemed a lot more stable as an individual than Dobby or Kreacher ever was.
Not to mention Kenneth Branagh's character, Gilderoy Lockheart or whatever, and how his mind gets melted but he is nothing but a footnote and no guilt or what-ifs are ever talked about by Harry or Ron even after seeing him again at the wizarding hospital. Like yes they were the victims but some complex thought would be appreciated.
And also the amount of time Moaning Myrtle commited sexual harassment of Harry was disturbing. She followed him into the bath! And it's played as normal quirky traumatized ghost teen girl behavior. Like no. Stop it. For someone so obsessed with people being in the "wrong" bathrooms, Rowling had no issue having a ghost teen follow her crush into a bathroom and play a peeping Tom repeatedly. Like what?! Ugh, JKR just stop.
Of course Vaush, who still justifies his use of the n word in debate spaces, would not understand
+ Voosh is a PDF File
On a similar note, I hate how Vaush and other leftist men have sexualized Abby Shapiro and said misogynistic things about her. Just because you don’t like her doesn’t mean that you can make “jokes” about her boobs. It’s never ok to do that to any woman.
Wrong. Vaush and "the other leftist men" are not leftists. They're just liberals pretending to be leftists (and fail while doing so)
and no, liberals are not leftists
Wrong. Vaush and "the other leftist men" are not leftists. They're just liberals pretending to be leftists (and fail while doing so).
And no, liberals are not leftists.
Vaush is not a leftist
In the grand-scheme of political discourse talking about Abby Shapiro’s tits is the non issue to end non issues
"I respect all women until that women disagrees with me politically."
- vaush probably.
Yeah.... mysogyny isn't cute... and honestly it seems like this is in bad faith. Like "We respect women but we make them the butt of the joke as 'satire'" isn't it. We are the left, we hold ourselves to high standards.
Exactly!
Oh my god, I haven't watched the video yet. But I'm really excited that you have a response to Vaush
A turtle approves of this response
This is less than a response to vaush and more a response to responses to transphobia. Personally, I loved that tweet
@@januarybaker5406 good for you. I find the joke tasteless. And counterproductive.
Being sexist against JKR compounds against the issue with her in particular because it allows her to use her DV & past physical aggression she experienced as a shield . Him saying I did it for a reason vibe serves no purpose .
And the "Whoever would have thought she would see it" line falls afoul both of the fact that Vaush is actually getting some real notoriety (and Vaush knows that JK is on the hunt for smaller people with platforms she can bully) and that JK's audience are doing the same.
At worst he should have at least made it private and ensure none of it leaks out. I mean, the best point is to never insult a swath of people when you meant something more specific but given how Vaush functions he will never stop doing that except by luck.
My ex-girlfriend was an abusive POS who added onto my trauma and cPTSD, but that still does not give me the right to misgender or deadname her just because she’s trans. If I can respect my ex’s identity when she literally abused me, you (dear transphobe) can respect every trans people’s identity and pronouns no matter how “good” or “bad” they are. Thank you for the video Jesse, lots to think on!
Because you are the gold standard right? Because you choose to do it, everyone else must follow your example right?
"I'm making tweets for my own audience" it doesn't matter. It's twitter. It will be seem by not just your own audience so to defend it by saying "it's only for my audience" doesn't really work
Then it's their fault for interpreting it in such a dumb way. One glance at his bio and you know how politics.
I really feel like there was no way he could have planned for this. she hadn't interacted with any poltiical content creators, to my knowledge, at that point. there's a *lot* of edgier jokes shared by people in the trans community that could have looked way worse.
@@Scroteydada The principle of charity doesn't extend to the point of assuming that someone who sounds like an asshole must not be because they are sometimes able to be an asshole against the right people. We earn trust. We cannot assume it.
And it's super silly right now when he is getting mainstream attention as a result of other topics.
@@Scroteydada someone can be against bigotry and still fail to see their own bad behavior. If I can tell its a far left person I share most my opinions with, but then they make a really uncomfortable joke that makes me feel alienated... I would either think they had some conflicting beliefs (as humans often do) or would at best assume its a really bad joke that he should be more than willing to walk back.
There's no reason that joke would make me think the person was being ironic, it just reads as someone telling women to shut up in a way they think is clever. It doesn't read as him telling terfs to shut up. Its not a lack of intelligence, the dude just made a shitty joke that made women, including his own fans, uncomfortable.
"I had the kid gloves on, I could be way more masoganistic than that. Give me a better platform and I'll show you."
- Definitely a Feminist
I really like vaush and I agree with him like, 7 out of 10 times. But I’m honestly just tired of his “ironic misogyny” in general.
I get that he says that it’s weird that left leaning people get away with talking shit about men, but I don’t think the answer is to retaliate with “ironic misogyny”.
Like, I’m afab non-binary. All the crappy jokes he says about women aren’t clever and I’ve heard them a million times before. That’s almost the worst part about it. I can sometimes respect a bad taste joke it it’s funny. But there’s nothing funny about telling these jokes we’ve all heard before.
Eh, he's like that about basically everyone tho. Humor is subjective, making how funny a joke is the bar for if it was a bad thing to do or not doesn't really work. I think the joke was fine, mostly because the butt of the punchline wasn't transactivists, or even women in general, but himself first and JK Rowling second. The way I read it, he was pointing out the irony of both telling a woman to shut up on women's day, and that JK Rowling was using her massive platform to attack women herself. Plus, it wasn't even really directed at Rowling. It's not like he @'ed her, it's just that she literally has no life outside of malding over transpeople and namesearching on Twitter. But, I can see it makes people uncomfortable, everyone's threshold for this stuff is different.
“Femoid” was funny for two minutes. And while I understand where he’s coming from with this “drama,” ultimately a principle is a principle and being sexist is bad. The target is irrelevant.
@@Fusseliko usually the “joke” isn’t aimed at “bad” women though. Usually when he says these shitty jokes it’s just aimed at random women. And I’m not the only afab telling him the jokes aren’t funny either.
@@TheSlipperyNUwUdle also to add to the slippery slope - any women is "bad" to the right man - so this simply justifies misogyny whenever a man thinks 'he's in the right' (which i guess he is but not in the sense he thinks eyyyyyy)
@@Fusselikothe joke says "women shut up" its really not aimed well, its easy for it to read as a shitty blanket statement. Humor is subjective. A man joking about telling women to shut up just hits weird to plenty of women who agree with him til that joke. If a woman made the same joke it may have hit different but its just not clear he is aiming it at terfs.
I do also feel like vaush can escape some of the criticism as a white cis man. As Jessie says, if she had said something sexist towards Rowling and or racist towards dave chapelle she would get far more criticism than vaush in my opinion
While I agree this is a great opportunity to discuss sexism, Vaush has a history of hurtful statements veiled as shock humor and activism. They are typically directed at marginalized groups he's not a part of. In my opinion, another question worth asking is: why does he seem to be jumping at the chance to say harmful things whenever he can find an excuse to do so? And why does he typically descend into whataboutism and refuse to take responsibility when the affected groups speak up about how his statements hurt them?
Hey, im actually both a racial/ethnic minority and an occasional vaush watcher (double whammy if you will), so I think this comment is one I can adress.
I feel like your framing of Vaush's behavior, as "insulting comments veiled as shock humor and activism", is a bit disingenuous. I have _never_ got the feeling that Vaush is bigoted or eager to espouse bigotry (as your comment implies), nor do I think his continued viewership is, resultantly, the legitimization of a bigot. Rather, I think he's an immature person who is stubborn about admitting when he's wrong (as he clearly is here; this was undeniably a bad use of edgy humor). And I kind of "get" why he's like this - it _can_ be hard to parse out who is genuine and who is not when thousands of people criticize you at once. But even if I think the fault is one shared by multiple content creators, it's a fault nonetheless. Dave Chappelle doesn't get a pass because a lot of criticisms directed at him were poorly constructed and unnuanced arguments that he simply "hated" trans people - as a person with a platform, it's his job to parse through all of that and to figure out where people are coming from. "Why do people think I hate trans folk?" He should have asked himself. "What have I said that gave people that impression? What do the people who criticize me think I should have done differently?" In vaush's case, the issue was a poor use of edgy humor which made him indistinguishable from a bigot to anyone who didn't already know he wasn't one. The point of an edgy joke is to mock the thing being joked about - to mock racists, sexists, and so on by pointing out how absurd their beliefs are, and vaush failed to do that here.
Sorry, that was pretty long.
@@chillin5703 I feel as though vaush is more receptive to intellectual criticism in some ways but has very strong set in beliefs about ethics/language that are harder to get at. There's good and bad in every creator, vaush just has a particularly loud way of expressing both
Yeah I think there’s more than enough evidence now that Vaush is just trying to maintain a brand. And there are endless fans with defences at the ready - he’s not usually like this, he has said some pro-trans/anti-racist/anti-sexist things, he didn’t think it through, he donates, don’t alienate influential allies etc etc and on and on. Plus endless intellectualizing about what he is actually *trying* to say, actually. Meanwhile real people are hurting while he publicly fumbles through it all for likes & subs. It’s all so frustrating & frankly disgusting.
@@chillin5703 Perfect explanation.
i know this isn’t necessarily the point but it’s so wild to see vaush’s condescending and self-important explanation of what happened and why he’s right mixed with yours (and others’) nuanced and empathetic approach at discussing it with their audience. i honestly don’t get how his fans can handle being talked down to so much
In general, from the comments it seems that Vaush is specifically for those who like edgy humor which is generally a right-wing thingy and an apolitical thingy. Therefore, most of the time people would be on board with his actions because he is humorously combating those who need to be censured and he is otherwise a role model in that he understands humor and how conservatives use it badly and that he donates and he know his enemies; this is one of the times where even a good amount of his fans admitted he messed up, thus his justifications which Jessie is reviewing.
Still, from this very comment section it is shown he tends to take to misogynistic jokes, so it’s not really an excuse or a good explanation as to what he does.
You've made an art of preemptively addressing possible misunderstandings and misrepresentations of your words. It's marvelous how clear, organized, fair, and sober your communication is. I can't imagine the amount of people twisting your points you had to endure to sharpen this skill to such a masterful level.
absolutely! when i watch a Jessie video i always feel like i should be paying for a class. (which i s'pose is the purpose Patreon serves haha). but yeah the elegance and airtight arguments is a sort of art form with some video essayists for sure.
Allies have a privilege we need to recognise: our actions do not typically reflect on us. They reflect on the trans community. We can leave whenever we want; if we collectively destroy the public perception of trans people, nothing keeps us in that community and we can bail. We can join whatever side is least difficult to be on. We can disavow our previous statements in support of the community, and the transphobic hordes will cheer and applaud and hold us up as examples of their own success.
The trans community doesn't get a choice. Our garbage lands in their yard, and if we really want to be allies we should not only clean it up ourselves, we should try to bring as little of it as possible to the conversation in the first place.
Wonderfully put!
Yes, and surely if we are allies there is some reason as to why we chose to have the views we have. Sexism is so inherently wrong that surely it should feel incredibly weird to wield as a weapon in any instance.
@@billhicks8 You don't have to have those views, tho. You just have to want to hurt someone. No matter who they are, there is a slur that will hurt them, a phrase that will resonate. It has nothing to do with your views. It's just the right tool for the job, if the job is to hurt them as much as possible.
That's, uh... not the job.
@@cdarklock I know, but hidden in what I'm saying is that the desire to hurt by choosing that method, suggests one might have unresolved issues with sexism in the first place.
@@billhicks8 Yes, but you don't know there's a desire to hurt with that method. You only know there's a desire to hurt. The method could have been selected for any reason, and it might indeed have been for THAT reason. But it might just as easily have been for any other reason, or no reason at all.
This creates a problem, because when you say "hey Vaush maybe you have unresolved misogyny issues" you have introduced a brand new argument. We had two arguments: JKR saying transphobic shit, which is right there where you can see it... and Vaush saying misogynist shit, which is also right there where you can see it.
Now we have three, because you have introduced Vaush actually BEING a misogynist, which is IN HIS HEAD where only he can see it and there's no way to know whether he is telling the truth about it. Vaush will of course prefer this argument, since he is the world's leading expert on the subject and you have no qualifications at all. He is almost certainly going to win.
And that third argument doesn't mean shit. It just distracts from the other two. It is the opposite of productive.
My favorite thing about Jessie is that, even if I disagree with some of her points, I always feel like I still have a lot to agree with her on, and I feel like disagreement is invited. I also have a ton of respect for how she structures her videos. She's one of the better video essayists I've seen.
Anyways, I appreciate the level headed discussion about a divisive topic from a divisive figure and all of the criticism was really good faith
Right? On an Internet full of bad faith, Jessie always brings good faith. It does my heart good.
Same: we don't see eye to eye on a lot, but I enjoy her perspective and it often expands my own understanding of matters. Jessie is always very thoughtful and does her best to consider the nuance in complex situations.
And, most crucially, her empathy is genuine, not a convenient shield from criticism or some kind of ego accessory.
I also really like how Jessie are encourages good faith disagreement. Honestly, if people don’t talk about disagreements with an open mind, they won’t be able to find room to grow.
My boyfriend and I disagree on plenty of things but we also discuss those things and either gain an understanding of the other person’s values or we work together to refine our opinions into something better.
As a white cis dude, I get that insulting someone based on characteristics seems to scritch some kind of primal itch that can feel satisfying.
Still makes it wrong tho.
It is right imo to defend JK Rowling from sexist attacks in the same way it is right to defend transwomen from JK Rowling's attacks.
No-one should be making people feel bad for things they cannot control
Speaking as somebody who enjoys edgy humor, there's no amount of gen-z irony that can make something as hackneyed as "women talk too much and should be more submissive" funny. Cavemen said shit like that. Sadly, Vaush's ego is invested in the stupid Twitter argument, so I doubt he's going to realize he looks like an obnoxious child any time soon.
its a joke that only works after a long time of establishing that no one whos part of the conversation is a misogynist. my friends and i would say something like that privately to clown on rowling, and all understand the absurdity.
@@AlienZizi I'll tell you that even in friend circles, if my guy friend said that it might make some of the girls in the group wince. Its just not his place. If a straight guy makes a joke about "gays need to go back in the closet" but was ironic about it... it would be weird. I'd give him a look and say woah okay bad joke man. If my gay friend said it to me, a gay person, yeah it could be funny.
This was not his joke to make. Plus women told him it made them feel weird (many who were his fans) and yet he doubled down instead of checking himself at all.
@@AlienZizi except as someone who has been a fan of vaush for a long time up until like a few months ago, he HASNT established that he and his audience are not misogynists
@@brigade7678 Nice point. I could see this actually being a bit funnier if it was a cis woman making the joke. The punchline also requires you to know a feminist slogan though, so the small bit about it that's funny/clever is also arcane. Without any context or knowledge of this it just looks like a man telling a woman to stfu simply because they're a woman. There's nothing funny about that.
I typically watch Vaush, but when he began covering this video I couldn't take the solid five minutes of him refusing to just concede that someone can fairly criticize him for his behavior. I decided to hop to this video so I could watch it myself without him spending ten minutes refusing to budge. Thanks for your thoughts on the issue! They're well constructed and I agree, esp. as a trans person when you brought up the Dave Chapelle converse (I've used the "what if Dave Chappelle was white and attacking black people" argument before).
Ironically.... When I originally read Order of the Phoenix, I believed Dolores Umbrage wasn't actually in Voldemort's "camp"-- just yet. I thought she genuinely believed Harry was a liar & "clout chaser", and felt he was doing harm by lying about Voldemort's return. So she was punishing him horribly... but believed her cruelty was righteous & justified. We know how that turned out: by the time Voldemort returned to full power, Umbrage had been completely radicalized into supporting him. Those 'mean little mudblood children' had convinced her that Voldemort was right.
But Umbrage was *never* actually, ahem, RIGHT about any of this. It was her own mistaken choice to oppose Potter, that led to her downfall. So now, I don't see JK as 'Voldemort'..no; Voldemort is the guy with the dollar-store spray tan.... conservatives are the Death Eaters. JK is Umbrage.
Based on that... I can see, to an extent, that JK probably actually DOES believe all her critics to be misogynists. She's WRONG, of course... but I would bet that's her genuine view. Just as I would bet that Dolores Umbrage believed folks like Harry, Hermione, and Ron who vocally used Voldemort's specter to criticize HER, were hateful radicals & threats to the 'natural order' of the Wizarding World.
She thinks trans people in bathrooms will 🍇 everyone in there, because she was assaulted in a bathroom (and not even by someone trans). EVERYTHING about her is her failing to realize that she's the outlier and her experience isn't the norm.
@@neoqwerty For someone assualted in a bathroom, Rowling has no clue how having Moaning Myrtle (murdered in a bathroom herself) following Harry into to the men's bathroom isn't just creepy but completely antithetical to her stances.
@@kraziiXIII You forget Moaning Myrtle is on the good team so when she does it it doesn't count. According to JKs logic at least.
@@kraziiXIII I think in her mind, that makes sense. Rowling is very gender-essentialist, so look at it from that perspective.
Harry is a man. In her mind, he can't be "assaulted" in the same way she was. He might feel a bit uncomfortable, but that was purely about being seen naked by a girl.
This kind of thinking is why TERF rhetoric frames transwomen as inherently dangerous and not transmen. The fundamental TERF screed around these ideas basically goes like this: women are safe, men are dangerous, and anything that mixes up the two endangers women.
@@GeneralBolas Basically, this. I think it goes for Rowling even more than for most other TERFs due to how blatantly all of this is due to her own personal badly dealt with trauma.
If Vaush had made only the first tweet, his message would be clear. By adding the second tweet, he completely changed the meaning of the first... 🙄
As a person with a decent online presence, he should've learned a long time ago that bluntness is VERY easy to misinterpret, especially when it comes to heavily politicized topics such as trans issues. The saying "Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequence" applies to all sides of the political spectrum, right?
To be honest, even the first tweet is kinda problematic. Rowling's problem is not that she needed to "shut the fuck up". It's that she needed to not be a bigot to trans people. We don't need her to not speak; we need her to speak things that aren't hurtful.
@@GeneralBolas You are right. There's a big difference between not speaking hurtful things and not speaking anything at all.
I agree. I know of Vaush but there are so many people who express these sentiments earnestly that it's hard to tell if the misogyny is being ironic or not. Because I know who Vaush is, I went "huh that doesn't seem right" but I'm pretty sure people who don't had no reason to believe he wasn't being serious. That's the problem in this. Ironic sexism/misogyny needs to be *clearly* ironic.
@@GeneralBolas she's done enough to no longer be charitable towards and telling her to shut the fuck up is fairly tame
@@GeneralBolas exactly,His original tweet basically just implied that it would have been fine for Rowling to be a transphobe if she was just didn’t bring attention to the fact that she’s a transphobe instead of the fact that she’s transphobic. If you’re the only person that knows that you’re a nazi you’re still a nazi. There isn’t a sliding scale for acceptability of bigots.
Your nuanced thoughts on this situation are so important Jessie - I’m certainly being educated and made to think hard about how “ironic misogyny “ cannot help us in any way. Thanks for tackling this human rights issue by diving in to it
as you do with courage❣️
I love how vaush just constantly doubles down to defend every shit take he makes ever. May as well just say its okay to call black people the n-word when youre mad at them.
Apparently he has some type of neurodivergency, and given how stubborn he can be for the oddest reasons, I can actually see that being the case.
He has legitimately argued that it's ok for him to 'tactically' use the n-word in debates
@@alisonpurgatory85 OH SHIT I REMEMBER THAT. I couldnt tell if he was being a shit edgelord or what
@@kazikek2674 ASD is overrepresented in trans people. Our familiarity with ASD by way of members of the trans community means we understand the limits it imposes. Taking as a given that he has good intentions, if his neurodivergence compromises his ability to be an effective advocate, he should be prepared to recognize that and desist in those situations. It's simply not an excuse.
@@kazikek2674 that makes sense but it’s not an excuse. He’s been criticized for saying misogynistic and racist things, so he should learn from that and stop doing it
This reminds me of people making fun of Trump's looks (hair, weight, fake tan), when there's so much awful stuff that you can legitimately criticize him for. Judge people by their actions, not by sex, gender, orientation, race, looks, etc.
His hair is a choice, not a trait and so is his fake tan. There's nothing wrong with a good insult, as long as its not your critique. He insults other people's looks, so a bit of the barb back is 100% grist for the mill.
If your support of a marginalized group is conditional, it's not real support.
This!
It's extremely frustrating, as a person who watches vaush, to see him even attempt to defend himself here. Vaush's tweet demonstrates absolutely no understanding of the principles which make edgy humor good, principles Vaush has historically been keen to highlight in his criticism of conservative "comedy". Edgy humor is supposed to:
- highlight the real world issues through satirization and mockery of those issues and the ideologies that perpetuate them
- to clearly demonstrate that those ideas are bad
- most importantly, it is supposed to clearly be satire, ESPECIALLY when projected from a large platform. Because if your satire isn't _clearly_ satire, it is going to be indistinguishable from real bigotry to _a lot_ of people. And this is exactly the fault Vaush fell into here, and it's _exactly why_ his criticism of JK Rowling is going to be lost on a lot of people who are going to see his comments as legitimizing her narrative.
I think there's also something to be said for when and where Vaush is comfortable making these kinds of jokes. He complains about how progressives are "too willing" to attack white people and men with this type of humor, yet is unwilling to see why similar jokes about women are unacceptable. He wouldn't be so defensive if the joke was about a black man's race. He'd admit he was wrong and move on.
--
For an example of good satire, the Onion did a sketch where they mocked news reporters for knowing nothing about Africa. In it, they refer to a president of Africa, mix up multiple countries, and very clearly have next to no idea about what they're talking about. The point of the sketch is obvious to anyone who can think critically: news reporters don't know enough about areas outside of the US, and they often perpetuate bigotries. It illustrates these points through a demonstration of how stupid and ignorant its news reporters are. We are supposed to laugh at these guys for their foolishness, and then perhaps reflect on whether or not we, ourselves, may engage in similar behaviour that the reporters do. We're supposed to go "haha, look at how stupid they are" while they do things that are, to us, apparently stupid, and then we are supposed to reflect when they do something that _we_ ourselves would do. "Huh, I never thought of it that way."
It's a parody of a feminist mantra tweeted out on international women's day, to a woman who most people understand is herself a misogynistic liar.
Where's the optical failing, again?
@@Scroteydada hey, so how likely do you think it is that people actually read vaush's comment like that? There is no obvious parody in the comment: he directly repeats the sexist language used to attack women and does so with absolutely no hint of irony, right after a very serious criticism of Rowling without any indication he has changed tone or countenance. If I said "this black content creator is really stupid and needs to stop putting this stuff on the internet", and then followed it up with a tweet saying "black people need to shut the h* up and get back in their place", I can reasonably expect people to receive that poorly, because I've repeated racist dogma verbatim and provided no indication that I've transitioned from seriousness to irony. It doesn't matter if I'm doing it on MLK Day. That's not people being oversensitive, that's people responding how you should expect them to respond to basic situations. So while someone like you or me may be able to understand the joke as it was intended, one needs to either be: very familiar with the conditions you provided, very familiar with niche internet "ironic humor" specifically, or very familiar with Vaush's sense of humor, to understand this comment as Vaush intended and _not_ as direct sexism. And most people _dont_ understand JK Rowling to be a misogynist, because, I'll be frank, most people don't view anti trans bigotry as an extension of misogyny, so that important piece of context? Most people don't have it. Most people don't understand she's a liar, or are somewhat biased in her favor and are thus more excusing of that lying. Another piece of missing context, or context people don't appreciate. And most people view Rowling as a respectable public figure, which means they're more likely to bias towards and be persuaded by a perspective _she_ decides to highlight. If Vaush is going to speak to such a high profile individual, he needs to make sure that his comments are tailor made _perfect_ in order to persuade people, especially given that since he's arguing against a well respected public figure, he's _already_ fighting an uphill battle here. As is, Vaush set himself up for Rowling to broadcast him to an audience as a confirmation of her beliefs, and to an alarming large lay population as a justification of their biased support of her.
@@Scroteydada it's a misogynist tweet on women's day, aimed at a woman who many people actually like and respect (unless you live under a rock)
By your logic - does this mean I can quote Martin Luther King in a racist parody, on like, a day of black celebration, and then pat myself on the back when people rightly call me out for it?
@@Scroteydada the things is, that "feminist mantra" was born from subverting things sexists usually say to women. So by subverting the subversion you get back to square 1. Which is...yes.
@@katy2176-p3m If it's targeted at an anti black racist, and is a follow up to another tweet that exposes their hypocrisy so that they can't respond without showing their own ass, yes.
You know, I've watched Vaush on and off for over a year, and for how often Vaush argues that he actually *isn't* sexist, he really does spend a considerable amount of time justifying sexist "jokes" and comments. It seems like the least harmful thing to do would be to just not do the sexism.
I can take the "joke" excuse a few times, particularly based on the severity of the comment, but this seems like a trend for him and leaves me, as a woman, with the impression that I don't really belong in that community.
At the end of the day, vaush in an ally. But he’s an edgy dude. Maybe not 4chan edgy. But he likes being edgy. And he won’t listen it women tell him they don’t like it.
I think the biggest crime, as an afab enby, is that his “ironic misogyny” isn’t even funny. He’s not bringing anything to the table and saying anything new. It’s the same ten jokes women have heard for their whole lives.
💯
@The Slippery Noodle I think I mostly agree. The comments often don't even directly offend me, it's just more of the same stupid shit I've had to hear my whole life. It's the same ignorant shit, the same shit I have to still hear if I choose to be around certain relatives. It's the kind of stuff that, when I hear it, especially a little *too* often, it just sounds like another person that doesn't really like women.
That said, I do think Vaush intends to be an ally and I appreciate him talking about horrifying anti-abortion legislature popping up around the country. Just wish he'd leave the other stuff out.
@@TheSlipperyNUwUdle For me its like, ironic misogyny in general isn't even funny and still upholds the hierarchy regardless of how many wink wink nudge nudges he throws in there. Intention is absolutely worth consideration here but at the end of the day "Edginess" and the activities that make up "being edgy" feels like another word for punching down at this point? Its "misogyny, racism, transphobia, etc but laugh because I tell you its funny" kinda thing. Makes me glad I never watched this dude
@@TheSlipperyNUwUdle I don’t know if I’d even consider him an ally. He can claim that he is all he wants but comments like the ones in this video will contribute to violence against trans people. I may be wrong and maybe Vaush has done some actual activism in his past but making tweets like that and then claiming to support trans people is about the same as Kamala Harris wearing Kente cloth to support Black Lives Matter and then supporting extra funding for cops.
99% of the men I’ve met who say misogynistic jokes almost always are deeply sexist and have never challenged any of these biases and feel like they’re actually so undeniably unbiased that they can make jokes about women. People who have biases to groups that make ironic jokes are always the hardest to call out because them making the ironic jokes means they’re so comfortable and deep in the belief they couldn’t possibly do anything wrong. And same for anyone not in a minority making ironic jokes about the group
The phrase 'Two wrongs don't make a right' springs to mind
Yeah... Vaush... Intentionally being problematic doesn't help the cause. Even when I agree with him (not here), it's difficult to support him because he's adopted so many dogwhistles in a meta-ironic pantomime that poisons his own well. I sometimes watch his content, but more often nope out because he mirrors the same toxicity of the right while unsuccessfully excusing it as comedy.
And sometimes not even as comedy as his genuine defense of "triggering" as a tactic here. That is literally just promoting right wing toxicity tactics unironicly.
yess
Before I watch.
I assume the answer is "obviously no". My reasoning is that, why would I ever want to sexist in the first place?
Caitlin Jenner is the perfect counterpoint here. Misgendering is wrong in all circumstances, just like sexism or racism. That's just not a valid response to have, and it weakens or outright invalidates any argument one may have.
The fact that Natalie called him out and he contemplated bringing up her SA abuse in a rebuttal tells me all I need to know about what kind of person this is...
Is that in the video or did u see that on twitter?
Dave Chapelle's reasoning is so aggravating!
"I'm black, so I'm allowed to be transphobic (and misogynist)."
Does that mean I'm allowed to be a xenophobe because I'm a woman?
How does that work? You get one pound free bigottery for every pint of marginalisation?
Be black has been a bigger struggle that l g b t q stop comparing the two there difference he also makes racist jokes
It’s always frustrating to find the sort of attitude Vaush expressed here because it misses the larger issue facing progress in the world.
To be sure bad actors and their movements like Joanne and TERFs are a significant problem that have to be opposed. But more than just people and movements, it’s the ideas they espouse and that form the bedrock of their ideologies that create such resistance to positive change. We have to fight not just the misogynist and transphobe in the street but the ones in our heads, and we must be able to be fierce and unyielding without rebuilding those same concepts and structures among ourselves.
Thank you! We can't build a better system without dismantling the current one. To change others' minds, we have to be willing to change our own.
And he's not even going to beat JK herself by doing this, let alone the broader goals.
You can't use damnable tactics against someone you don't like and maintain the high ground. You can't be sexist against someone who has done or said something transphobic. You can't harass someone who you believe is a harasser. You cannot bully bullies. At least you can't if you want to avoid throwing your whole point out the window and your transgression taking center stage.
If you disagree with someone, keep it on the disagreement. Otherwise you're just shouting into the void and the only people who can hear are those who already agree with you.
i like vaush and i watch most of his content, but he literally doesn't give a fuck if ironic misogyny is harmful and is too stubborn to admit that it was wrong. like the tweet wasn't even funny lmao
He's good when he's debunking, he's stupid when he's trying to be edgy/funny. Honestly, he should probably take his own advice and shut up outside of debunking and direct debates.
It wasn't really intended to be funny.
@@quinndawsonosgood5261 Is that supposed to make it better?
@@theimplications635 is ironic misogyny supposed to be funny?
@@quinndawsonosgood5261 if it's not supposed to be funny then what is it for?
It rubs me the wrong way how, in his video defending the tweet, Vaush argues that he could have been way more misogynistic if he wanted to. The entire point of being a trans ally and being on the left in general is fighting prejudice in all its forms. It's disappointing how he doesn't realise that misogyny also harms trans women and that disagreeing with someone or disliking someone doesn't mean that bigotry becomes justifiable.
It's frustrating that he frames this stuff as "strategy" in some kind of battle that has sides, and not as a matter of the morality that the left is supposed to be concerned with. I grew up with a lot of friends that used 4chan in high school. I know where this whole "irony" road leads.
Ugh, each clip you play of Vaush leaves a bad taste in my mouth, partially because there's a big glaring thing he always seems to be missing. But also because the "haha, ironically going to be shitty about a group" has always been a key recruitment tactic by hate groups. He's missing the key optics of people who fall into the pipeline like JKR, which is that trans people are harming cis people and lgbt people. And these are optics being used to recruit people who aren't conservatives.
Love your nuanced, thoughtful take as always! I think the Dave Chapelle comparison is very apt--I would also compare it to people making fatphobic jokes about Trump. The point isn't, "Oh no, what if Trump sees this joke and feels bad??" the point is, "Hey, isn't the implication here that being fat is inherently shameful?" Trump won't be hurt by the joke, but ordinary people who see the joke will. It implies, "Fatness is something to be ridiculed, but we will be nice and refrain from ridiculing fat people we like." However, I completely empathize with some of Vaush's frustration--I don't think it's reasonable to expect every tweet you make will go viral and be weaponized by the worst of your enemies.
The trouble with Vaush is that he can't seem to shut off the "debate bro" part of his brain, so when he makes a mistake, it's everyone else's fault for not understanding his true intent. The I see it, he could defend his position AND ALSO admit that he crossed a line, but he just won't get out of his own way.
@@Peasham when he uh... Stops making mistakes
I think the "Debate Bro Brain" is part of his autism so I don't think it is going away.
One of the most important parts of feminism to me is I find that I have to defend women who, despite my absolute objections to their bigotry and hurtful ideologies (and being cognizant that they would never defend me), I will stand up to any and all sexism and misogyny when it happens.
When that poor excuse of a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg (may her memory be a blessing) was nominated for the SCOTUS in the fall of 2020, there were people who insisted she could not be on the Supreme Court because she was a mother of multiple children under the age of 18.
I had to defend her (while choking back my bile for her) because I *knew* this question would never be asked to a male nominee for the SCOTUS. The world still regards women as mothers/wives first (and renders single and childless women at a disadvantage) and workers second is deeply sexist and reductionist, because women can be more than one or two things at the same time.
It makes me angry that Vaush was so comically anti-woman it made me defend J. K. Rowling because of what he said was inexcusably misogynist about “women being silent”.
The TERs and “gender critical” consistently mention that they are being “silenced“ by trans people or (whoever they consider) trans rights activists whenever they get criticism for them spouting out transphobia on a daily basis. However, they have a wider platform due to the main stream media trying to remain “objective“ by allowing them to say their transphobia!
Just because someone is a terrible bigot in one regard does not mean you have to fight fire with fire and be bigoted in return.
J.K. Rowling and other wealthy, white “feminists” who feel say they can punch down on other women who aren’t them (see Campion, Jane), which is why I dislike the second-wave feminism that doesn’t care about intersectionality. Feminism without intersectionality is absolute garbage.