2010s Pop Feminism: A Painful Look Back
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- Опубліковано 6 сер 2024
- Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: nebula.tv/videos/lilyalexandr...
In the early 2010s, feminism was poised to take over the world. So, uh... what happened?
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Content warnings:
No major content warnings for part 1. Will add if requested!
Part 2 contains discussion of sexual abuse, including in a medical context, and one mention of intimate partner violence.
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Sources: I used too many to fit in the description. Instead, they're compiled in this Google doc docs.google.com/document/d/1m...
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Further reading/viewing:
Costanza’s video “why we use feminism against each other” • why we use feminism ag...
Hanna Brooks Olsen, Everyday Feminism: 4 Critical Reasons Why Unions Are a Feminist Issue everydayfeminism.com/2016/12/...
FORCE via Bitch Media: The Link Between Oil Pipelines and Sexual Assault www.bitchmedia.org/article/li...
My video about being assaulted by my doctor "Trans Youth: When Our Doctors Hurt Us" • Trans Youth: When Our ...
Audre Lorde - The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism www.blackpast.org/african-ame...
Danielle Mackey, Lux Magazine: Rape and Reparations in Mexico lux-magazine.com/article/rape...
Jean Chen Ho, Lux Magazine: Strip Down, Rise Up: On the Picket Line with Dancers in North Hollywood lux-magazine.com/article/star...
Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, Lux Magazine: Where the Sidewalk Ends: Meet the Rednecks Running a Mutual Aid Auto Repair Shop in Alabama lux-magazine.com/article/mutu...
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Table of contents:
0:00 Those 4 years where feminism was cool
4:09 PART I: The King's Haircut
39:15 PART II: Nevertheless, She Persisted
1:06:02 Announcements, sponsor, & credits - Фільми й анімація
All I can think of when thinking about girl boss pop feminism was when Eric Andre asked if Margaret Thatcher had girl power
I don't know if this a joke, but I'm taking it like it is and lmfao it's so sad it's funny
@@wen6519Eric Andre is a comedian, so yeah
Thatcher was a snake so she probably would've loved being called a girl again
Asking a former Spice Girl if Margaret Thatcher effectively utilized girl power by funneling money to illegal paramilitary death squads in Northern Ireland will forever be one of the funniest things a human being has ever done.
@@booksvsmovies The person who also destroyed unions in the UK while signing away Hong Kong cause she was scared.
You took something away from me with that "beatboxing" clip.
I've carefully crafted my life to minimize the amount of LMM I hear. This has significantly increased the total amount and has thus reduced my quality of life.
I read this comment before I got to it, man was I not ready. Did not realize a thirty second clip could me a tummy ache
@@r_bear what or who is LMM?
@@Diogenes_ofSinope Lin-Manuel Miranda, mostly known for being the creator of Hamilton, the guy who freestyled about feminism in the clip with Emma Watson, intensely cringe individual
@@sarahmaryja9762 I see thanks
I feel like so many people forget that the Bechdel test was never meant to be a guide on how to be a feminist. It was a silly punchline in a comic about a game a lesbian played while going to the movies. That’s what all of this felt like: people taking surface level stuff and trying to turn it into a something deep and meaningful, but without any of the work required to find real meaning and cause
Agreed!! Although I would say it's perhaps less silly than it's usually interpreted. To me, the comic has always been both a joke and critical satire - it's about how alienating it is to watch mainstream movies specifically as a lesbian. Think about it: the character in the strip says she likes to watch movies and pretend the characters are lesbians, and yet she almost never manages that - because even when there are two women in the movie who speak to each other (extreme bare minimum for a viewer, perhaps just as a fantasy, to come up with a lesbian ship between them), their conversation will inevitably be about a man (hence rendering them unrelatable to a lesbian, especially if the man is a romantic interest). While it's definitely a joke and not a "feminism test" for media like you said, I do think it's important to note that it's a satirical commentary on a very specific lesbian experience (that I, for one, find super relatable even when going to the movies today).
I think it shows how people want to have something easy to apply everywhere without thinking about it. People just take things like the Bechdel test and throw them on movies without thinking about why they are doing so. But if you ask thel what is the idea behind the Bechdel test, there have no clues. And they are doing it for everything : they will categorize a stereotype as sexist without thinking about why. And so they are unable to really recognize sexism when they see it.
I also think that while it is not much, it is useful when dealing with big datasets. People make fun of it by pointing examples of sexist movies who pass the test and non-sexist ones who don't, but trying to gather as many films as possible, from different countries, time periods and genres, and calculating the rate of movies who pass the test tells you something. The bar is so low that almost every movies should pass it, yet, many don't, and some countries have more issues with it than others, some genres are also worse than others, and the older a film is, the more likely it is that it doesn't pass the bar.
Will it solve all the sexism issues in the cinema industry ? Absolutely not ! At the same time knowing the unemployment rate of disabled people in a country won't solve employment discrimination and accessibility in the workplace, but it is still an interesting metric, a single, small indicator that something is not quite right, and that there are efforts to make to change things, and no one ask it to be more than that. @@WillCoherty
Ghostbusters 2016, Wonder-Woman, Captain Marvel, etc.! The list is endless; and yes, I 100% agree. It was a literal disaster of the highest umpteenth degree and they knew it all the way back in 2016! There was absolutely NO excuse for this kind of crap in the first place!
Like a lot of cringey 2010s libtard webcomics, it was very obviously meant as a hamfisted vehicle for progressive ideology and rarely had any kind of punchline or joke at all
“The belief was that patriarchy exists because many men thought that patriarchy was good, and it would cease to exist if we could convince enough men that it was bad.” Best one-sentence description of the Barbie movie I have heard so far!
Ultimately this is somewhat true though. Conceptually you need to, in democracy at least, create a strong system of prevention of systematic misogyny. This is done through voting so you have to keep a strong majority. So you have to convince a large portion of men to participate in a feminist mindset. Furthermore if you want cultural change that's real and not just based on legal enforcement you need at least 80% of people to believe in feminism as a culture norm and that's not done without convincing men that the patriarchy sucks.
The ironic thing is, it does suck for them. That's what I think the Barbie movie actually does well. The Ken storyline pretty effectively shows that being an Incel can't be solved with patriarchy.
@@janedoe3043 Never gonna happen if you dont eventually start addressing mens issues because theyre much more galling and it makes you look like a bunch of cult like hypocrites who dont know what youre talking about.
@@janedoe3043 Hey, can you tell me in a simple, applicable way what patriarchy is? I'm not looking for a fight or anything, I really just want to know what people mean when they say the word, otherwise I really can't participate in these conversations with how common the word is.
@@skeptic_lemon Predominantly men rule in multiple aspects of day to day life. The opposite end to it would be a matriarchy. I’m greatly oversimplifying it, and the implications it brings with it, but that is a basic gist.
@@fudgen.a1249 Thank you for the definition! Could you provide me with a couple examples of patriarchy in modern life? Most presidents are men I think, but other than that? I won't argue if you don't want to.
I think another issue with pop feminism was the idea that women weren’t sexist when the reality is that women often times are those that enforce patriarchy. The idea that “supporting women” meant supporting women individually led to issues when it comes to women who are sexist.
exactly, patriarchy would not function without the literal billions of women in history enabling them. it's the women who practice FGM, enable their abusive husbands because they think they're competing with their kids, boy mums, etc.
Seriously, the vanguard and zealot that killed the ERA was Phillis Schlafly. A woman.
The staunch, rigid refusal for the movement to recognize women as an enemy as great as any man.
"The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed."
@@RicochetForce And one of the staunchest supporters of the ERA was Harlan Ellison.
You couldn't have said this in 1990 without risking a bomb threat. But a lot of feminists that era were not only sexist but sexist _qua_ feminists. I don't mean ostensible reverse sexism; I mean plain old anti-woman sexism. So in 1870 women were emotional earth mothers incapable of logic. In 1990, women had become goddesses with superior ways of knowing through the body who reject logic as a patriarchical trap. It was the same stereotype with different paint.
@@deadman746 Very, VERY good point. And you're absolutely right that things like TERFs really should not have been surprising considering what you mentioned and that the separatist and lesbian camps had been saying this shit earnest since the 90s. And unchallenged it grew until it metastisized into what you described: Feminists repackaging anti-woman bullshit under gender esseentalist beliefs that it made them superior to men justifying their rise to power.
My take away here is that pop feminism had the drive, but neglected to address the power; so, despite staying hungry, it failed to devour. It put it the work, put in the hours; however, resultant of the aforementioned shortcomings, failed to take what's ours
i love this comment
you are a genius
holy shit
Isn't this that The Rock song?
@@nathanalexander8468 yes
What is this!? CLASS CONSCIOUS FEMINISM?! In this economy!? I really appreciated that twist. Thanks you. I am really glad how more and more people are arriving at the conclusion that we actually need to change things to improve the world.
Why is communism the end result of most modern liberal movements? This should worry you. Who is running and funding these movements? They’re manipulating us en masse. They promise utopia- anyone who promises you utopia is a fucking liar.
If the current economic system, capitalism, is dependent n sexism and attacking it would be attacking the cause of sexism why then sexism has existed LONG before capitalism?
Sexism has more to do with human nature, Islam has been around for a thousand years, look at the women in their societies (and even parts of Europe now), they all cover themselves. This has nothing to do with capitalism, it has to do entirely with RELIGION, in fact Islam is the biggest threat to feminism because it completely opposes it.
@@JohnnyLynnLee It is a male capitalism with men piling up all the money, only possible becasue of sexism. I agree capitalism is not the cause for sexism, only profiting from it in it's male-dominated form. (But it is harmful to the world in many other ways of course.)
@@JohnnyLynnLeeBecause naturally the characteristics of men are more suited towards leadership and other roles like hunting that would make them be perceived as a sort-of 'ruling class'. Of course, we live in a different society today, without women a class-conscious movement is nothing. I dislike feminism not because i dislike women, but because of capitalism's co-opt of it.
"Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening."
-Chico Mendes
What is feminism without class struggle?
Absolutely nothing.
Girlboss aesthetic
Lady Grantham and "Miss" Crawley gossip sessions F O R E V E R what do you think mileyCyrus meant when she said "violet" haze
Thank you, amazing quote ❤
Not feminism.
It's interesting around the same time pop feminism died transphobia began to gain political momentum.
I noticed that as well. Although I first remember transphobia getting popular in 2016, whereas pop feminism died around 2018 or so
To me this sort of tracks cuz pop feminism being a thing and getting a boom was how a lot of people even learned trans people exist. How deep you get into things and then who you’re interacting with will send you down different pipelines. And if you don’t get too deep you’re just stuck with “transness is a thing” and so when people started up ticking transphobia and misinfo about trans people it was easy to get a lot of others to go along with it
The pop feminism is still there we just call it the TERF movement nowadays
Trans identity politics was not a thing core feminists talked about in the early days of me looking at Jezebel from a safe distance. It was all about "sexyface" being bad and them hating Ryan Lochte wile also craving his seed. It was pretty funny, actually.
Blaming penis users of the caucasian type for everything bad in the world was, is and always will be a constant however.
@@SebastianSeanCrowI spent a lot of time around feminism and prejudice in general, as well as the upcoming trans spaces as an ally from 2014 to 2021.
Because of sites like Tumblr being a bit eccentric, you got a lot of lolcows before it was as mainstream in general. Transgender rights have suffered the most some years later tho, about 2018, coinciding with the focus on safe sex work and obviously lolcows which became low hanging fruit at the time.
It is a bummer that these political movements never quite worked out, often showing people becoming more bigoted. Looking back, these movements could've been done a lot better, but here's to hoping that the next movement will be done better and without the fuck-ups.
Ah yes, the infamous buzzfeed feminism era. Ya had to be there
I was there for that and the gamer gate bs that was happening at the same time
The foreign man has entered the room...
Still waiting for the Spice Feminist term to catch on. (I'm joking but after the atrocity that is girl boss being used for a Facist leader unironically I want to be the first to shoot that term down, stupid since the word tween died last decade)
Also Cracked was better in the golden years
I was there, it was something.
"It's like we were trying to fix a world fundamentally less broken than the one we actually live in."
That statement resonated with me so well, it's an idea that was scratching at the back of my mind I just didn't have the words for.
This is the cognitive dissonance I feel watching liberal entertainment (West Wing, Morning Show, insert quippy IP with a “message” here). The struggle itself becomes consumable and escapist in how low stakes the problems as presented seem in proportion to the real world. Instead of giving us tools to take back into our lives, it draws us into a fantasy where we live out the emotional catharsis and get to remain unchanged and free of responsibility to do anything.
The "you're already a hardcore feminist" messaging bugs in the exact same way "dislike nazis? Then you're already antifa" does. The distance between caring about something and taking action on the streets is a vast gulf
The handle and the tip of the spear is a much better analogy. If you're sympathetic to a certain cause, you're potentially part of it. You don't need to be the tip of the spear (ie be in the streets yourself) to help, but you also can't be just hypothetically supportive. The key is that the handle helps the tip, not itself. If you're not going to the protest yourself, you at the very least shouldn't be saying that you agree with the goals but not the methods. If you do that, you just feed the narrative contrary to the cause.
So maybe you can't/won't go to all protests, but still show up at some. Make noise on social media about them. Focus on your local issues, and if you see someone talking about them, signal boost them. If they're arrested, take part in fundraisers for bail money. And stuff like that.
That crowd actually hates when you genuinely take action, speaking as a trans male Japanese immigrant who literally still suffers from TBI from fighting Nazis and lives in an infested dump. I even tried to make a GoFundMe because of lost means due to the TBI. But only a couple people I knew personally donated.
I continued on for a good few years doing my best in a career in homeless services, but all those Dumbler Virtue Signallers love only those like them who only care so long as the cameras are on, and I wound up leaving a 19-year career because there was no end to the pattern of violence, including physical as well as segregation, against ALPOC clients and workers alike. Not to mention that no government agencies will step in or care, nor will they do so when trans men are speaking up because "oNlY sOmE cOlOuRs ArE PEOPLE" paired with "TrAnS mEn ArE bAd BeCaUsE mAn BaD" (which was part of the Dumblr anti-trans men purge/"uwu confused wittle softboi girl" and generally the only time we're allowed to be counted as men is when it can be used against us--and San Francisco/Alameda County area has basically the exact same politics as Dumbler)
@@kamiyama-chairdesklampi will admit that tumblr did have a problem with that in the past, but i feel like a lot of people on there have now wised up and realized how stupid gender essentialism is. radfem ideology has mostly phased out on there as people realized most radfems were just transphobes in trench coats. the general consensus on tumblr these days is that gender essentialism is not suddenly "woke" just because you've decided to include trans people in your warped perception of gender roles. your gender identity is in no way an indicator of your moral character, and any ideology that supports that line of thinking is a harmful one. like i said i know tumblr has held such beliefs in the past so i cant fault you for your distaste for the site, but i do feel that most people on there these days have realized that line of thinking really sucks and have since grown from it.
@@gristen thanks for the solid response. I've heard it's gotten better from friends still on there, but I've gotten burnt by so much of that and also so much anti-ALPOC racism by people pretending to not be racist in the same proverbial breath (as well as, as mentioned, local politics being very similar to former Tumbler ones), that I guess it's hard to conceive? Also, I got so much hate done to me by people that then gaslit me about it (locally and on Tumbler/social websites) and frankly, I've never really got that acknowledged by people who weren't my allies to begin with ? So I get stuck on it, I guess. And your image of a place, be it your old country or a given website, naturally gets stuck at when you left it, and I left Tumbler when it was that way because of that. I've considered going back, because people that were allies to begin with are (in different circles) on there and say it's better, but it's unfortunately pretty hard. Thanks for the honest and kind answer ❤️ That's also not something I'm used to online (particularly/mostly in English speaking spaces), so I really appreciate it. :)
@@gristen yeah the radfems are all on Twitter now
One thing that always bothered me about the whole 'we're not angry hairy bra-burning lesbian manhaters!' shtick pop feminism tended to champion was how it threw women who did fit any of those descriptors under the bus. By constantly trying to reassure people that "we're not manly hairy lesbians, that's a stereotype, we just want equality!", you're implicitly implying that being anything of those things is bad and worthy of scorn, and as someone who is in fact a masculine hairy lesbian, it always made me feel ashamed and alienated.
I felt this way too back in the day!!! Even back then I was someone who didn't wear makeup and was very hairy and the specific vilification of just Existing with body hair made me very self-conscious about my body as a teenager.
Im bisexual and only sometimes i woman now, but it's taken me up to This Year to feel comfortable in my own skin being hairy.
@@obscure1543 This is so funny to read juxtaposed with one of the comment threads above it. Anyway, I think that ideally, as someone who also fits this description, I'd like us to progress to a point where we simply stop thinking about ourselves so much, at least in terms of value judgements. Body neutrality is the way forward IMO. This shit should only be thought of insofar as it's used as an excuse to treat us badly.
Not like other girls energy
I mean, shave your legs, but leave the rest - please.
@@falconeshield Huh? This isn't even the correct context where that phrase applies. NLOG refers to women/girls who try to put themselves above other women/girls because of their self-perceived "uniqueness" from the "generic" crowd. All OP is saying is that gender nonconforming women don't deserve the ridicule they get just for being who they are.
I am pausing very early in this video to profess-as a slightly older person- a profound sense of deja vu. We did this already. We did this fifteen years earlier, with Girl Power and Spice Girls and Destiny's Child and the Heroines of the Disney Renaissance. Girls didn't get their own nerf guns but they did get magenta YakBaks and did you see Bring It On girls get to have attitude now and everything! We were selling feminism to a new generation, and girls were going to rule the world on their own terms and it was all supposed to lead to... something.
But all we got out of it were some multi-million pop singers who put their money into clothing lines and who profoundly failed to change the world.
We learned nothing from that failure, it seems.
What I mean is those of us who grew up with a huge crush on Christina Ricci have repeatedly found ourselves disappoint by the egalitarian promises of our childhoods.
I'm so glad you mentioned this, I was thinking the same thing after watching this video. I don't think there really was a fourth wave of feminism; the 2010s pop feminism boom was just third-wave liberal feminism again, just with a little Internet as a treat. It's been thirty years, nothing has really changed in this way of thinking, and everyone has forgotten the history that led us here...
@@SamRandolph Precisely. The third 'wave' of feminism proved more of a semi-seasonal flood, where the waters rise, make everything damp, and retreat again without leaving any lasting effect but a mold line.
Like everything nominally progressive that emerged into the mainstream after the 70s, it was an attempt to bring about change without any of that discomforting radicalism: centrist liberality by incrementalism. Naturally, of course, it produced nothing but sloganed t-shirts, pink-handled 'Strong Enough for Her Needs' razors, and a lot of female politicians who get celebrated for trailblazing to nowhere and earning rich speaking fees. (And a lot of headlines about male politicos being 'destroyed' by cutting feminist speeches and rhetoric, a destruction that strangely fails to prevent the destroyed man from getting up the next day and being just as power as he was the day before.)
"But all we got out of it were some multi-million pop singers who put their money into clothing lines and who profoundly failed to change the world."
Because, unfortunately, that's all Feminism (TM) ever was. It was only ever created to benefit certain people and certain agendas, even if it sells itself as a big tent movement. I'm not a feminist at all, but I do think it's tragic that actual issues women face and need addressed are wrapped up in such an obvious hoax.
There's a reason why Conservationists and Environmentalists are two entirely separate groups of people, even though their expressed goals are essentially the same. The people in both are passionate about protecting the environment, but while Environmentalist movements have almost only ever benefited politicians and corporations (most of whom are doing most of the environmental damage) and hardly benefited the environment at ALL besides certain one-shot projects, Conservationists have brought entire ecosystems back into balance, saved hundreds of species from extinction, balanced ecologies and animal populations that were at risk or falling apart, and replanted so many trees in the Americas, they've essentially terraformed the continents. The difference is that one of these movements was started at the ground level by people with a genuine interest in protecting the environment, and the other started as a political marketing campaign in order to appeal to a wide audience so they can get the support they need for accomplishing their own particular political and business goals. Feminism is really no different than the Environmentalist movement in this regard, and it's trapped millions of women, who want to actually change things, into this Ponzi scheme, all the while telling them "you're making a difference".
You can double down with the same political ideology that made Feminism into the hoax it is by going on and on about class consciousness if you want to, or you can examine the actual roots of the issue. If you want to actually fix the issues you want addressed, I'd recommend the latter. Otherwise, you're just spiraling into the same trap they have you in, over and over. Break the cycle.
@@SamRandolph Nothing did change? Dunno, I'm 30 now, able to be finally be screened for autism cause it's now recognized it women too and able to study electrical engineering, so yeah. Came a long way from the goddam incescious, religious small village. But I'm living in germany can't really speak for any other country.
Being a teenage girl in the 2010s geek culture scene and the pop feminist scene was absolutely crazy. I’m not really sure what my point about it was other than pop feminism and geek culture had an extremely toxic marriage
I blame Joss Whedon
@@jultejock7185most - if not all - things bad about 2010s geek culture can be traced back to joss
And then gamergate happened..
so real, it was a really wild time in a wild internet niche
@@chromesucks5299 Gamer-gate was what prompted me to take a permanent hiatus from the gaming forums as it was then I realised I was tired of being so invested in a hobby that didn't like me back.
The rise of pop feminism coincided so precisely with my college years it's insane. In September 2013 I entered art school as an evangelical conservative, in December 2016 I graduated as an atheist lesbian. It's laughable now but back then my brain was so dazzled by the shallow feminism I was somehow still immersed in neck-deep, I genuinely believed the most powerful feminist icon of the 21st century to be Nicki Minaj. Part of this was my naive coming-of-age (and out of faith,) but so much of it was also the faux-revolutionary zeitgeist of the Obama era. I don't even know what to say about it
The beatboxing took YEARS off of my life how could you do this to me
The pussy hat march was the EXACT moment I knew we had lost the plot. We were absolutely doomed and that was the nail in the coffin
You sure? It was a decent march. Too bad those same women stayed silent when trans people started to get their rights removed as early as 2017. Dreamers and Muslim women too
To me it was less the march, but the fact that millions of women did actually think that all it took to stop christofascists leading all branches of government is a big protest once a year and some badly crocheted hats. It's like all they ever heard about the civil rights movement was the march on Washington and nothing else. And that's supposed to be high information liberal voters 🤷🏻♀️
They've got hats for them? I'm trying to imagine a bowler hat partially covering a thick bush, but I'm guessing that they're more like those fancy toppers Eugenie and Beatrice wear to the royal events.
As an Indigenous Woman, once I saw the pink hats, I knew it was just another white feminism. In some ways I was relieved because they told us in a way that was really easy to call out.
The WHAT?
At this point, you just brought it on yourselves. You created the mess and now you're stuck in it
the term "no movement for asthmatic twinks" killed me lol
I am a 55 year old feminist that was a feminist long before girlboss feminism. I do not like the way most people frame feminism. To me feminism is a movement I equate with anti-capitalism and a foil for what I consider toxic masculinity/patriarchy. For me capitalism IS toxic masculinity and patriarchy. I don't simply want to take people with penises out of positions of power and put people with vaginas in them. I want to upend the entire pyramid structure of power that has what most people would consider "masculine" values. It isn't that masculine traits have no value or place in society, but it is so out of balance that it is "toxic".
For example: I think competition is fine, and a worthy pursuit in life. But modeling your entire economic system around dog eat dog sort of competition where the winners own everything and the losers die from starvation is an ideal way to run an economy. I do not think that we can attach a monetary value to pursuits that add to humanity and make us better. My sort of feminism actually questions what we value, instead of making women more like men so that they can achieve greatness, I want to think of the things that are considered "feminine" as great. I want the people we value in society to be caregivers and nurturers, not captains of industry. I want cooperation elevated to competition, a balance between these things. And this isn't about what gender the individual embodies, all bodies deserve respect for their contributions to society.
Toxic masculinity is probably the wrong word. Don't take this as a baseless criticism i just can't think of the right adjective for masculinity that fits better here.
@@gollossalkitty I try to envision a word that would encapsulate whatever toxic femininity would be, but I can't because most of the things I think of as toxic with femininity are a response to toxic masculinity. Things like passive aggressiveness, women who pretend to be powerless to manipulate, etc etc, those things are almost always a response to patriarchy. I think that masculine qualities in and of themselves are neutral. Being aggressive isn't bad. ing competitive can be good, it is when these things permeate a society to the point that cooperation and flexibility are almost impossible. Take Eastern culture and martial arts, for example, some martial arts are all about using strategies that are considered feminine to fight. Yin and Yang. So if I was to think of a society that was overly "feminine" it would probably be a society where the individual and their desires was subsumed by the community, which leads to a different sort of authoritarianism. That is the only example I have come up with of a possible "toxic femininity". I get your point, I just don't know a word to express it better.
While I don't agree with all your points, I understand your perspective, and I think you make some very strong points. Thank you for sharing your views with us. 🏳️🌈
@@karenholmes6565 I agree with your points and opinions
Beautifully said!
Fun trivia fact, I'm the one who designed that infamous "Angry liberal feminist killjoy" badge. You know the one, with the white text in a circle with vintage florals in the background. The very lazy design that blew up around the mid 2010s. It's pretty peak cringe now, but I'm still glad I made it. The best part is that JUST NOW, like, within the past year or two, I'm seeing big name conservatives picking up the design to criticize it. Like, you sweet summer baby child, that nearly decade old design was made by an entirely different person at this point. I haven't identified as female or liberal in years. It's like picking up a Bill O'Reilly book and shaking at the camera like "DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS? DID YOU KNOW THESE PEOPLE EXIST?" Yes sweaty we are well aware of the cringe factor of early millennial feminism, it's more embarrassing that y'all are this late to the game tbh.
Absolutely based I hope ur doing well
I think everyone has moments in their life that they don't want to be who they are. I could think of at least 10 things I'd rather be than just boring old me. But I'm me. And that's life. And as much as I might identify as Brad Pitt, I'm not him, and never will be, no matter how many times I say I identify as him. Best of luck.
youre iconic i love you
Ur a hero
Based
"surely a feminist has more to offer than supposedly empowered choices that don't affect anyone else on earth" oh my god you summarized the problems of pop feminism and internet activism SO WELL. I will be thinking about this forever, cheers
when i was younger i had an anti feminist anti sjw phase and later realized it was because i felt like pop feminism didn't represent my experiences as a neurodivergent woman/girl and that it didn't truly get to what the problem really was or had any interest in critical examination of society and gender. i'm cis but "i am a trans woman, i am in the closet, and i am not coming out" by jennifer coates explained my thoughts on pop feminism perfectly, and since then reading the works of trans feminists and feminists of color (bell hooks especially) even though im a white cis girl has deeply resonated with me, and has helped me articulate some of my thoughts on feminist topics
oy vey, that article DESTROYED me emotionally. i think i read it about six months before i started hormones
Yeah I had a phase like that too. It is because everything is presented in such a shallow way. I know that I never felt like there were jobs I could not do cause I was a woman, but that was these movies were all about. And the saddest part is : some jobs are closed to women. I've heard the story of a student who were unable to find a stage and then a job as an electrician or something like that because "we have no girls in ours company, we don't know how our male employees would react", eveb if she was gifted at the job. So she created her own company to work. But stories like that are made in such a shallow ways on movies that it speaks to no one.
as a trans woman, that article is transmisogynistic hot dog water and i will have beef with Jennifer Coates until the day i draw my dying breath
Every time people think that someone being a different colour will add a perspective to an argument my stomach churns. It is so idiotic and harmful to think that, we are not going to move on from racism if the so-called 'liberals' keep discriminating based on colour. And i come from a place with a religious conflict where thousands died, and it was very recent. The only way we've been moving on is forgetting our differences, not highlighting them like western liberals do. I'm afraid you have created a generation of very angry white men, and the results are never good.
surprisingly, class consciousness and materialistic analysis of power relations is ONCE AGAIN the tool to dismantle discrimination. i am starting to sense a pattern 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Sexism has more to do with human nature, Islam has been around for a thousand years, look at the women in their societies (and even parts of Europe now), they all cover themselves. This has nothing to do with capitalism, it has to do entirely with RELIGION, in fact Islam is the biggest threat to feminism because it completely opposes it.
Yes, even religion is a byproduct of evolution.@emptyshogun6194
The more you read about the Haitian self liberation the more you realise just how much of a cultural shockwave it sent out across the world at the time and how much was done to minimise them.
Without that revolt, the US wouldn't have the Louisiana Purchase which hugely increased its controlled area, Napoleon really needed money to fund his wars across europe.
From an economic perspective, basically the entirety of French pastry and other European baking culture was underwritten by the cheap sugar the plantations provided for bakers all over. Soul food culture wouldn't exist the way it does, and the music, Louisiana was the breadbasket for those plantations.
Culturally, Zombies are a Haitian invention and it still makes to pop culture rounds well passed the point of parody and minstrilised Vodau practices are still weirdly popular for a country for most of my time alive is seen in popular discourse as the pauper country utterly unable to help itself no matter how much "help" they receive.
The literal workers seizing the means of production and organising in to a legitmate self governed nation capable of trade and self determination.....I believe the industrial powers have kept them in financial bondage for as long as they have for that reason, to keep the boot on them as a reminder that worker run nations can never happen.
Just to recognise them as they were/are and what they pulled off is kinda terrifying to the powers because if they can do it in some of the most vicious of conditions well... a narrative that can't be allowed to exist....
To helping them revive and return their spirit to them....would send off similar shockwaves all around.
The Haitian Revolution also had the first country in history to outlaw slavery, the first instance of a large scale slave revolt actually being successful, and the lower class successfully outmaneuvering their own elites politically, militarily and economically.
It really was a major shake up of everything that had largely been accepted for millennia. The abolition of slavery and a "people's republic" had been talked about but most attempts hadn't gone far enough or failed to materialize entirely. Haiti and Brazil have to be some of the biggest "what ifs" in the Americas.
So basically Black Ppl are the blueprint.
Too bad Dessalines fucked it up by ethnically cleansing all the white people in the island. The previous leader who Dessalines betrayed was far more moderate and would most likely made allies with the USA. If only.
I think it's vital to remember that, like feminism requires anticapitalism, anticapitalism requires anti-imperialism.
You know it!! Love to see a comment like this one
The fact that the label “girlboss” has stuck should have been telling. They were bosses so they were still perpetuating capitalism, and not only that, they were “girlbosses”. As it was fundamental to point out that these women were like girls. The term reveals a lot. Women can be empowered, but they are still lesser than men, and they still uphold the patriarchy and capitalism.
how does feminism and anticapitalism correlate at all
I mean that's mostly what the video in question addresses. The argument comes across something like: capitalism oppresses most people; half of most people are female, therefore capitalism oppresses most women. Or another way to put it could be like, for females to break out from a system of oppression, they must have power, which comes from not being oppressed by a capitalist system.
@@gerbilpmc There's a school of thought in intersectional feminism that postulates capitalism must be dismantled for the goal of feminism to be achieved since the structures of capitalism initially benefitted almost exclusively men, and thanks to how capitalism works, this accumulation of wealth also means accumulation of power and agency in society, including the power and agency to strip others of theirs through policy, economics, and social stigma. I disagree with this framing, long before and long after capitalism we will be dealing with sexism, but I get where it comes from and it's not entirely without merit despite my disagreement.
I feel like the MeToo movement actually did have a profound effect, even if it's not obvious. Dating culture absolutely shifted after MeToo, for better or worse. There's a lot more focus on consent now, so at least we have that going for us.
Yeah, like we might not have another timeline to compare too, but I did a lot of work with underage people who suffered assault and harassment, and I can tell ya that forcing a public pop culture discussion on these things had a big positive effect in letting young people circumvent the often stifling religious culture that halted their emotional recovery.
Much like how lgbtq kids suffer when we withhold the language and understanding of their identity from them, the same holds true for those who are victims of traumatic abuse when we withhold the language and information they would need to contextualize their experience.
50% of men aren't dating or looking.
I think part of why that worked was that it wasn't actually gender-exclusive. Any victim could speak up. Division wasn't really anywhere near the goal.
I think this is different to pop feminism. MeToo worked and is working. Popfem didn't.
@@isaacdalziel5772 MeToo cost women tremendous opportunities
Many years ago I remember briefly having a bit of a "but trans women haven't suffered the same things I have!" feeling. I soon realised that (among other issues with that attitude) defining womanhood by suffering was awful and really not what I wanted. I think that realisation helped me to understand that what I actually wanted was to see a real change in the world that meant that nobody has to suffer because of unnecessary prejudice or the system working against them.
they have tho.. and still do
this is really a complicated answer because while no movement should be defined by suffering, we still shouldn't forget or ignore that the suffering actually exists, and that suffering only exists because of factors that cannot be controlled. And I am someone who cannot relate to being cat called because that's never happened to me! But I'm still not gonna deny that it's usually women who do get cat called and deny the power dynamics that exist within that.
Also I'm pretty sure that no two 1970s terfs suffered identical oppression anyway.
It's funny that that's even the angle that they're going for, because most of the issues women face are just amplified with trans women.
Being sexualized yet hated by the patriarchy, experiencing lower wages and more sexual assault, being called emotional, new-agey, and weak when we advocate for change, having all our issues chocked up to "just being in our heads", and we're simply viewed as an incomplete, lacking version of a man...
The exact ways these manifest have differences, sure, but the underlying problems are the same ones, and just made more extreme for trans women.
It's... very disappointing, when a TERF shows a graphic pointing out that women experience more sexual assault and their point is All Men Are Violent And Trans Women Are Bad, when one in 2 trans women are likely to be victims of sexual assault.
One in two. My people's odds to avoid being raped are a coin toss, and yet they still think we are the victimizers and not the victims.
It hurts so much, every time I have to have that conversation, but it does usually get them to back off on that angle... at least until the next day, where they say the exact same thing.
@@justseffstuff3308 no shade to the OP, but yeah, it's so unbelievably depressing when cis women are like, "you haven't suffered as much as us"
like, uh, maybe not in the exact same ways, but I don't think the average white cis woman has to deal with a concentrated effort from the right to literally begin a genocide...?
oppression olympics are disastrous, to be clear - my distress comes from the fact that most cis people have NO FUCKING IDEA how bad things are for trans people
That beatboxing clip was an assault on my senses. I'm suing you for damages.
23:41 This is my mother in a nutshell. She hasn't moved on from second-wave feminism and thinks that I need to stop taking hormones and make myself more manly (or at least androgynous, and god forbid I paint my nails or wear dresses) in order to get raises and access the advantage men have in the workplace. She says "It's unfair, but that's just how the world works!" The kind of feminism that was kind of about being a girlboss, but also about getting rid of the "girl" and just being a boss 😢
Twinsies on parents giving terrible trans job advice!!!!!
It might have been how the world worked but I think it is changing! I have hope.
That really sucks. And pretty ironic, since a lot of second wave feminists actually fought for the deconstruction of "masculinity" and "femininity", and questioned gender. Perhaps you can gift her a feminist book on the topic? Second wave feminism is very different from girlboss feminism. In fact, I think in depth reading of "old school" works by the great women who fought hard for our liberation, is a pretty good antidote to the empty, vapid, capitalist girlboss narrative.
Your mother is right
was second wave feminism really about... complying with patriarchy???
I have a hard time with Roxanne Gay. Im trans. I met her in person and we talked for a while. I saw her speak at the local university. At her Q&A I asked what her vision of feminism had to say about trans women getting murdered. I asked because someone had tried to kill be about a week before. She said that she didn’t have an answer. Later, when I talk to her privately afterwards, she said that it wasn’t an important question for feminists to try and answer. She said that it was rediculous that I would want her to try and say something at all. She then proceeded to talk shit about me to a lot of other professionals and activists in my at area who had brought her in to speak.
Honestly, it broke me.
I’m not trying to say we should cancel her or discount anything she’s written. I was there because the writing spoke to me. But still. The way she treated me, and also the way she treated my friends who were darker skinned than her while she was there, made it hard for me to accept much of what she had to say after.
I wish it was easier to reconcile these things. She’s a good writer and she has good ideas about some stuff. I appreciate her. But I also had my life personally hurt, and saw the lives of multiple other people hurt, by her actions. She ended up being banned from speaking at my university for the way she treated us, and I don’t think that was good, and none of us ever asked for it.
I’m… appalled that this happened to you. I’m so sorry. Your life is more important than anything I’ve seen her advocate
JFC, what a piece of shit. I'm so sorry you went through that. Thank you for naming her. I won't be touching her stuff with a 10 feet pole. What an unsympathetic psychopath!
I'm honestly curious, most of the news stories about trans women being assaulted or killed, including stories covered by Black Gen Z Mindset, were sex workers. It wasn't random attackers. It seems to have been men they picked up on dates .. sometimes gay men. Not raging MAGA types killing trans nor TERFs, but customers and associates. That's a dangerous profession .. some of it enslavement, such as the LOTTO Gang busted for sex slavery by the FBI.
Did your incident involve a raging homophobic Trump supporter, or someone "in the community" so to speak?
Fascinating that you skipped entirely over the Bernie/Hillary debacle of 2016. This was the pivot point for me from neoliberal feminism to socialism. The neoliberal feminists reduced any character/political argument against Hillary to sexism. It seeped into basically every ostensibly liberal social circle here in Los Angeles and I think it obliterated a lot of good will - from both men and women - towards the feminist project entire.
yeah, definitely could've used that as an example but covering that election cycle would've been long and exhausting lol
That's true. A half hour after leaving this comment, I realized just how much work that would've been and how much possible hate you'd get from it. Also, Sheryl Sandberg is an easy insert for Hillary. But I will say that I think that election did break a lot of people. It might be a video all on its own. I'd credit a lot of what made the"BreadTube" massively popular is due to the frustration of that election cycle. @@lily_lxndr
There was also the Bernie/BLM incident, where they forcefully snatched the mic, took over the stage, and didn't let him speak. That's despite Bernie being part of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. I'm curious if it had any impact on both of your views towards BLM or anti-racism?
Speaking as a non yank who was living here at the time. A vast, vast majority of yank men I met HATED Hilary. If you asked them why they'd make up excuses, but honestly couldn't answer you. They had no actual mechanism for voicing their disdain. It was sexism. Clear as day. Because after a few drinks, it's all "ugly bi*ch" this and "stupid pu**y" that. How dare a woman think she can run for president.
For bernie it was the typical communism stuff that yanks yell when someone shows them a bus. And screaming about jews. But they HATED Hilary because she's a woman. I hated her because she's a right wing hyper capitalist, which is the right reason. But sexism did play a massive role, so it's easy to get defensive about it and maybe, maybe over compensate.
But I'll never forget a guy telling me he voted for Trump because he always wanted to work at a concentration camp. So, honestly, you're probably better off just never trusting what a yank man tells you at first. Cos they can be relentlessly gross.
@@babyqueenxo tbh they were right to snatch the mic and Bernie was right to stfu and let them talk.
It's such a relief to hear criticisms against pop feminism. Most of the "feminist" discussions I see online these days is STILL just empty reassurances like "You can be a feminist and be traditionally feminine/shave/love pink/love makeup" etc. The concern seems to revolve around validating people's identities as feminists instead of proposing any sort of meaningful action we could take to make things better for women. All women.
Seems like ppl are much more concerned about cis, white, gender-conforming and (most often) straight women feeling "valid".
It's interesting for me as an Elder Millennial raised in a gently feminist household who has frequently been focussed on worker liberation, anti-capitalism and 'practical feminism,' I intersected with online, pop-feminism, but vaguely assumed it was so present in superficial spaces because the work we were doing on the ground was finally spilling into the mainstream. I guess I never really realized it wasn't leading most people to dig deeper. I guess being an early internet adopter, I didn't really realize that most people weren't making internet content as passion projects and in fact there was often a money making motive involved
People are much more viciously sexist towards stereotypical girly girls than tomboys, nerds, hipsters, goths etc, so I can't really share your disdain. There are a lot more tenets of feminism that deserve attention but it's grossly negligent to act as if we don't treat conventionally feminine women like shit, and where do you get that these assurances aren't covering any woman like this, not just the white/straight/etc ones? -Signed a former NLOG girl who forwent wearing long flowy skirts to be taken seriously.
@@bespectacledheroine7292 Who's "we"?
@@iseeundeadpeople9 I use we because using ~society~ all the time has become too much of a meme. But yes society.
I believe that’s because of young conservative women who act like the world is attacking them for being feminine. Anytime I ask these people who has made them feel this way they say online spaces… So no one influential on their everyday life… Some people are obsessed with looking for something to be upset about and it holds us back.
your Perfect Feminist section got me thinking about the arguments people have about presenting as the Perfect Trans Person and how it ultimately didn't prevent or stop the current wave of transphobia in the US.
It was one thing to witness the policing and gatekeeping of the term 'queer' during my time on Tumblr in the early 2010's. Its a whole lot more depressing seeing the same tired arguments on Twitter and TikTok today, meanwhile my state bans child trans healthcare...
Early 2010s Tumblr was a big reason why I thought I couldn't be queer, and concepts like nonbinary weren't even considered most of the time
If you mean hormones and surgery with trans healthcare i agreed with banning it. Helping Them via Psychotherapie untilbthex are really capable of making such lifealtering decisions For themselves should bei the Standard. I dont mean trans Kids dont exist. They do but until a childs brain ist atleast mostly formed they cannot consent top suchbextreme decisiins
it's unbelievably frustrating dealing with other non-cis people who argue in favor of appearing "proper"
righties will hate us and murder us no matter what we do, trying to fit into a nonexistent ideal "acceptable" trans identity is inherently nonsense
You mentioned the problem with "man spreading" in the context of pop feminism isn't its annoying, its that its not going to appeal to men to stop as much as shame about capitulating to it requests to stop. And it not being practical to make every man stop it. I think its actually a really good example of what was wrong about 2014 pop feminism. People became obsessed with relatively irrelevant things like this. Even though it wasn't a topic that had any data/studies done on it: to prove the thesis that men took up more space because of their masculinity, and not for more obvious reasons like narrower hips, more muscular upper thighs and, well, balls. Or that its even a problem and it takes up more space than feminine ways of sitting like crossed legs. The world was told to accept the theory and the perceived injustice/harm and make a change and it was seen like a feminist "gotchya" that alienated more than it solved.
One of the main generators of feminist gripes is when men don't understand (or care to understand) the female experience. The feminist furore over manspreading was the inverse, women not understanding (or caring to understand) the male experience. The feminists were so primed to view inconvenient male behaviour as a deliberate attack upon women that they never once asked men why they sat that way.
Ladies, did you really think that I sit slightly diagonally in my aisle seat, with one knee in the aisle, because I want to take up more space and appear dominant? I don't feel dominant when my knee gets struck every time an unobservant fool breezes past, every time a suitcase gets wheeled by, and every time the food trolley gets pushed up the aisle. No, literally any man could tell you that I'm sitting that way because it feels uncomfortable when my scrotum sticks to my thigh in a train carriage where the heating is turned up too high.
Testicles are the only organs that feel more comfortable when they are lower than body temperature; testicles evolved to hang outside the male body specifically because low temperatures are better for sperm. If I sat in the knees-together feminine prim and proper way that you expected me to sit, then it would probably lower my sperm count. The real villain in this story is the train manufacturer that made the seats too narrow for men.
it's been a new hobby of mine to find websites and blogs that stopped updating in around 2018 like everyday feminism, there's a surprising amount of these sites and I think it's a sign that the internet has been in a stage of minimizing how many sites are being used. It's almost become a graveyard of abandoned websites, morbidly fascinating
I would read your blog analyzing these dead blogs.
Same here but instead of blogs I've found old video game/anime fan sites/forums that are abandoned that i find interesting. Especially ones that were made before websites had a standard way to be designed and it was just passionate people making a website they thought was cool
Represents its increasing concentration around capital if you ask me. The internet isn't what it once was
hahaha wow, everyday feminism stopped in 2016. that's incredible. jezebel lives on though.
That’s just the nature of the Internet. Nothing special happening; most of the Internet is a wasteland. A tiny minority of it sees the vast majority of traffic…and yes, a lot of that is porn… o.O
Sadly, my brother and I were in our edgelord atheist phases in 2015. I remember being so passionate that people like Anita Sarkesian was wrong about feminism until I watched her videos and was shocked because she and I had really similar opinions.
But now looking back on some of these videos as an unshaven lesbian…man, they really didn’t like me either. 😅 cannot believe we got back to the lavender menace 40 years later.
Time revealed that many of her worst critics were not only in bad faith, but came from views they kept well hidden until later. Like a lot of them claimed to be in the left, but later we found out they never were.
Lesbian... man?
@luchirimoya Don't think they're calling themself a lesbian man. More like they're saying "as a lesbian...(pause) man, they didn't like me either huh?"
Man being a transitionary word, basically an entire other sentence
I feel like the 2010s just kind of tried to shove all the gender non-conformity, and messy emotions that come from living under patriarchy, out the door, in an effort to die on the hill of respectability politics. Therefore, making feminism much more marketable and docile.
Until Trump got elected and reminded women in 2017 why men like him shouldn't be presidents in the first place. Too bad some have forgotten their trans sisters
as if many of them remembered afterwards.... @@falconeshield
*docile* is the perfect word for how they prefer us to be.
Yup, I always saw respectability politics 24/7.
We failed to learn from history, so we repeated it. The very first feminists distanced themselves from black women in order to prevent their movement from being harmed by association. Capital will favor the weaker movement. Not necessarily due to any distinct, disingenuous plot. But, because everyone with a pink hat on the mall in DC had the resources to be there, in proper regalia all at once. The people who needed change at that moment were working rolling schedules for minimum wage or getting hassled at an already hostile border.
Anyone who can reach enough people that quickly is too privileged to be responsible with promoting lasting change among underprivileged populations. Which is why progressive movements need to figure out how to have change without relying on privilege. Starting with those who need change immediately would be more efficient. There are faaaaar more of us and we have passion for centuries. Millenia even. But who needs change influences who believes they need change. Centering comfortable white feminists allows those who do not identify with the authenticity of their struggle to dismiss all feminists who are not present.
At their core, all the structures many groups have been fighting are ableist in nature and carried out utilizing the same tools of legal obfuscation and casual, cultural terror. I strongly believe that the ideals of many groups can be used to support progress among many groups. Those of us at the center of a great many intersections are sick of getting run over repeatedly as the lights change for a few different movements to make progress at a time, only to be held up when the next few get their turn.
For whatever consolation it might bring: The same flaws that undercut Pop Feminism's effectiveness also destroyed the prospects of the so-called Men's Rights Movement doing much to uplift those who were in need(both men AND women)in any tangible way. During The 10s, everyone prioritized theatrical gestures over sincere sociopolitical engagement out on the ground, where it really counts
Oh god, don't remind me of 2014. It was a special... Era of teens and young adults thinking feminism was formulate a belief, and then absolutely bully the crap out of anyone who disagreed with you. So much yelling and so little discourse, because we thought there was power in Twitter Receipts and Dragging. That whole era is why for so long I felt disenfranchised by the label Feminist and walked from it, because it was simply a prop for Teen Mean Girls to be mean.
You guys burnt a lot of bridges it sounds like.
Imagine being 30 in 2012 and your 21-year-old work friend is always saying "I am SO not a feminist" and you're like ugh but also you're drinking the koolaid at Shakesville. The koolaid wasn't feminism but how the cult of personality got really weird. You kind of had to be there for the latter. Has anyone made a video on that?
As an old, I guess 2010s pop feminism was definitely *something* at least after the wasteland of the Aughts. I just sat here for a couple minutes with a thousand yard stare thinking about the Aughts lol. Some people were trying but too much time putting up with boyfriends who defended to the death the right to say "that's so gay" as the tip of the iceberg.
Exactly this!
Pop feminism was a response to the extreme misogyny, bro comedy, and homophobia of the early 2000s.
It wasn’t perfect. But the word itself “feminist” was still a dirty word worthy of scorn. 2nd wave feminism was over the top and strange.
We had silly little boomer bait shows like Mad Men, that patted us on the back for being “ so much better than we used to be”, every goddam episode. Women were trying so damn hard to be taken seriously and reclaiming the word was a big part of it.
The movement had its pitfalls for sure.
But we really believed that if we just educated people and said the right words they’d join us.
We had yet to criticize capitalism, we had yet to face racism and grapple with intersectionality. We were babies, trying to change the world with pink nail polish.
Yep I agree with this. One thing I commend 2010's feminism for is raising awareness around slut-shaming, which was so rampant in the aughts (see: how so many female celebrities were described then). It still wasn't perfect in the way it went about it, but this commentary along with MeToo is some stuff I'm grateful for.
Remember the man show?
As a man I’ve often found it difficult to talk about my opinions and the “issues within feminism” because I feel like I’m being taken as a man who’s saying that all feminists are bad people, obviously I don’t think that and I would consider myself a feminist too. Thanks for making this video btw, it really educated me on some things and it helps to have my opinions reinforced so well
Same. It is also the reason I've never identified as such even when overcompensating for my own self perceived inadequacies that got mixed up with all of it. Too much aggro. People are disappointing
Same reason I avoid talking about the glaring problems I see (or downright hatred), my circumstance of birth.
But people who are so steeped in their own gendered ideology that they can’t handle criticism from someone because they’re the wrong gender aren’t worth wasting one’s breath on anyway. It’s not unlike trying to reason with a steadfast racist when you are a target of their scorn. You just won’t get anywhere useful because they’ve already shut-off their reasoning faculties.
While pop feminism didn’t do much on its own, I think it set up a lot of people to embrace more radical ideas and actions because it thoroughly mainstreamed the idea of being feminist
I also remember the exact point when I personally saw how it had all failed: The Postcards. I felt torn, but at least emotionally energized by the march. But when we were literally writing pointless postcards destined to end up in the trash of conservative senators, the spell broke for me. There was a moment where I wrote something spicy with demands, aiming to at least make a postcars that had some kind of direct bullying of conservatives? And the women I was with chastised me for it, saying that would never work. I remember just sitting there and thinking, "Then why do this at all?" and it clicked into place that it was all a terribly misguided distraction away from anything effective. It was all just the white women I was with being upset, but not too scared, and certainly not with enough conviction to actually stop anything that might come to pass.
I have very mixed feelings about all of this. I'm a feminist, not a girl-boss feminist, but a let's bring down patriarchy feminism. But whilst reading more about it I fell into a TERF hole and I only managed to get out because I noticed how much their arguments resemble far-right ultra-conservative view points, and that has always been a no-no for me. I just don´t know where this is going to end, because there is a rift within feminism, between feminists that think trans-women are women and trans people exist and deserve human rights, and those who believe the penis is evil, even if there is no penis anymore, the evil lingers and the only liberation for women is to live in a convent. I had some very frustrating arguments on twitter due to a discussion about bathroom access in Mexico, and that's where they're at. Biological essentialism, women are angelic, men are evil, and we should live in separate spheres like the victorians. How did we get to this point? We had separate spaces, we had laws against "men" wearing "women's" clothes, we already lived in a world where our genitals dictated who we are and what we can do. How did feminism, with all those radical scholars came to the conclusion that what we left behind is the way forward?
would recommend reading bell hooks "feminist theory from margin to center" & alice echols "daring to be bad"
Because they deep down resent all men, but, especially in the case of whites women, often need to hid behind men to gain gain power and faux respect, so they resort to transphobia, racism and homophobia to get said power and faux respect instead.
@@snfnorp I’d add the book “whipping girl” on top of that list, it’s the best read on transmisogyny i’ve found yet
I can't wait for the term girl boss to die. I'm just a boss. A badass one.
This video + what you described is basically why I feel incredibly disillusioned with the state of mainstream feminism
don’t want to watch this vid bc i know it will probably make me sad but i’ll watch it anyway because ur takes are always good
As someone who grew up online and was in this feminist space, 2020 was such a wake up call for me. If there’s no action behind the activism we are just doomed to be under the oppressor’s boot
'rich people exploit poor people, and most people are poor, therefore, rich women exploit most women' is such a necessary take
the personal fantasy aspect is spot on especially for the older cis women who participated. I don't think they're even aware of how delusional they are about the impotence of it. I can't clear the clouds from my mom's or friends moms eyes. they don't understand what to do without faith in the system
I can't believe how much 2015 feels like both last year and 3 generations ago! 😱😭
Edit: the ending was truly amazing🙌👏
It really does feel like 3 generations ago. Especially with regards to feminism
@@SarastistheSerpentvery true!
Covid wacked everyone's time perspective
I definitely feel the negative gaze from not meeting feminine expectations. I’m AuDHD and don’t like the feeling of makeup and I’m not the most lady like. When I’m home I feel fine, but I definitely feel it when I’m in public spaces and I’m the only one without makeup and nails and hair all done up. I definitely can tell it changes the way people think of me. I had much better experiences in public when I was younger and all dolled up.
I’m also AuDHD. I no longer meet feminine expectations. My mom tries to spruce up my wardrobe. My BFF slipped up and joked about me looking like I don’t care about myself at all. I feel the judgment, too. It’s annoying but I want to be comfortable. It feels like another thing I’m judged for because I’m AuDHD.
@@momoshiggles3631 yep!
I'm a (mostly) cis bi man, and I don't really like makeup on women.
AuDHD here, it's highly regional. In some areas people were weird to me about makeup, but in CA it's just not a big thing, and makeup is seen as a personal hobby that some people happen to enjoy, like wearing sweaters you knitted yrself. Like "oh cool, I see yr wearing really fancy makeup! my best friend is into makeup too!"
@@SpecialBlanket I could totally see that! I could never imagine women in Colorado spending six hours on makeup before backpacking the Rockies lol. I’m in the South and women are expected to be done up. A good side effect of the pandemic I’m noticing more and more women are letting that go and I am here for it!!
In discussions like these, I'm always reminded of Joyce's quote from Disco Elysium where she says that capital always subsumes critiques of it into itself. Pop feminism defangs feminism and makes patriarchy out as a problem that can be solved by consumption. Read our garbage articles, buy our garbage books, buy our "girl boss" merch -- that solves everything. Meanwhile, the problem swells as issues affecting the lion's share of women get worse.
I’m only 1/3 of the way through, but this video is fantastic. Thinking back on early 2010s feminism is weirdly nostalgic. The world seemed so much simpler back then
Honestly for me while I get the nostalgia I def had a different experience lol
But also this was the time where I went from being a sheltered child into and older teen/about to graduate high school and started learning about like how complicated the world was and everything wrong with it
It was Obama time and Trump becoming prez was unthinkable. But the age of spite was just getting started and today everyone is just about being in a bubble and hurting other bubbles as much as possible. And endorfins going "puff" as a result, i guess.
Nostalgic? Were you a kid? It was not a good time if you were in your 20s
@@falconeshield Disagree, was in my 20s and it was great
The world seemed simpler bc we were less educated and more naive. That being said, I also feel a sense of nostalgia. I think pop culture feminism was a simplistic but useful stepping stone for many people, including myself, to be introduced to the movement.
1:04:30 I would disagree with you that white privilege discussions don’t make any difference. White guilt absolutely is useless, but white privilege. examination absolutely is needed more in queer spaces. I’m a non-white queer woman and I have met way too many white queer people who think that they being queer somehow makes them invulnerable to racism, and I’ve even met people who told me to my face “Oh, I don’t benefit from white privilege because I’m queer” or “I became less white, because I am queer” which makes no fucking sense. It was a failure on mine to expect that white people who happen to face oppression on account of their queerness to overcome their taught habits of whiteness to be better advocates and activists and honestly we should expect white queers to know better and not coddle them.
I hadn't heard the phrase "white privilege examination". That does sound much more useful than white guilt.
@@phoebegee54 I think so too. I’ve just witnessed way too many examples of white queer activists stepping on the toes of or outright ignoring/brush away of their nonwhite and especially Black comrades to think them having to actually examine the privileges they still have as white people wouldn’t make a difference or at the very least reveal they’re not actually comrades but rather wannabe right wingers who only align with the left because they personally gain from queer activism and would run to the right if they ever explicitly welcomed white queer people. Like I no shit met a trans “activist” (her words) who genuinely believed the racist myth 13/50 was real(!) and when she got pushback retorted with basically “but it’s from the FBI” (different discussion but that number has been debunked and rebuked since the mid 2010’s)
I'm 15 and unschooled and don't have the best understanding of words, genuine question, am I wrong to dislike statements like "all white people have white privilege but some have less due to their gender/sex/sexuality etc"? Aren't those sort of things better described as a separate disadvantages than less white privilege?
@@electricay that’s the thing,
You don’t have “less white privilege” you have or you don’t. By that logic if a white person is “less white” because of another avenue of oppression like queerness, what happens to nonwhite queer people them? We’re already nonwhite and it’s not like we become somehow more nonwhite. I’d recommend reading some of James Baldwin’s nonfiction work but at the very least check out his village voice interview where he speaks about his frustrations as a gay Black man in America.
“A black gay person who is a sexual conundrum to society is already, long before the question of sexuality comes into it, menaced and marked because he’s black or she’s black. The sexual question comes after the question of color; it’s simply one more aspect of the danger in which all black people live. I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly. Their reaction seems to me in direct proportion to the sense of feeling cheated of the advantages which accrue to white people in a white society. There’s an element, it has always seemed to me, of bewilderment and complaint. Now that may sound very harsh, but the gay world as such is no more prepared to accept black people than anywhere else in society.”
Yeah this is such an important conversation. I'm an openly trans activist in a conservative part of the US and I've experienced a ton of oppression as a result - but to suggest that I experience life the same way as trans people of color, or even cis people of color, is absurd. Like, yeah, I'm an activist and an increasingly influential voice in my local community, but I wouldn't be able to do as much as I do if I was a trans person of color here. My whiteness absolutely helps my voice get elevated. Like, there's so much intersectionality there.
I feel like a big issue with pop feminism is it reframed feminism in terms of what it can do for you as an individual, which was great for recruitment but instilled a belief that feminism is about what it can Give you and so people were inevitably driven away or drifted off when feminism asked things of them. Its not to call those people selfish, but when you frame something as one side constantly receiving it can be hard to then ask for that side to suddenly give
I think the buzzfeed feminism era was the beginning of people using sociological terms in the mainstream without understanding them :/ and as much as liberal feminism has always existed, perhaps it’s because a lot of people on either side didn’t actually do ANY actual academic study on feminism it ended up feeling kind of shallow.
[i hope I don’t sound elitist. of course not everyone had the privilege to study sociology in hs like I did.]
Was really disappointed when I went on social media thinking people actually knew what feminism was, but was instead met with guys asking, “since you’re a feminist, would you pay on the first date.” girl wtf…
This makes a lot of sense to me!!
Only if you wanna be consistent@@eltiospike7672
@@eltiospike7672the point
You
A woman and a man generally pay off their own food (especially on a 'first date') but sometimes the woman might and sometimes the man might.
being a “liberal” is already shallow.
I also had a short antifeminist phase in highschool before I knew I was trans. I was like being feminist is something "women" do and I didn't want to be seen as doing "woman" things.
the number of trans men I’ve met who went on the exact path from “I’m not like other girls” to “I’m not girls”
@@IsaacMayerCreativeWorksas a trans guy I've always felt I wasn't treated like other girls. I feel like people can tell. In the way I speak, the way I hold myself, stuff like that. I believe.
Ayo same
This was me except I’m not trans. I am definitely a bit more of a masculine woman though lol.
holy shit, actually me. i absolutely loathed any reminder of my assigned gender and couldn't fathom that other people didn't feel that way and did in fact feel comfortable talking about how their life experience differed from their male friends and wearing pink pussy hats and stuff like that. i think anti-feminism appeals to a lot of young trans men because it's a rejection of being openly feminine/female, an endorsement of masculinity, all while gaining approval instead of rejection from male peers.
Omg I was JUST binging your channel earlier and settled into watch something now. This is SO perfect I can't wait.
"It's like we positioned the guillotine wrong and instead of beheading the king we gave him a nice new haircut."
Hot damn that is some good shit right there.
"Movements that value visibility over actionability will trigger backlashes they're not equipped to handle". Thanks for this!!!!!
I want to watch this video, but I just… I don’t think I can bring myself to look back on my time as a “male feminist.”
Even if your pfp wasn't what it was, I could guess what you meant by the main Neil Cicierega subscription
And I can't bring myself to look back on my time as male anti-femist
@@pisssoakedbombaslmao
Then how will you better yourself?
@@bkolumban pretty sure she already did! X3
I remember in 2015 I was also in high school and I was basically a liberal but the first time I ever heard about feminism was via angryjoe because he did a top ten video on gaming controversies of the year and number one was gamer gate and the treatment of Anita Sarkisian. The algorithm then suggested amazing atheist videos and other anti feminist videos and I started to fall for them. I tried to argue why we don’t need feminism with my sister at the time and I realized nothing I said sounded right. I then explained to her where I got my ideas and she explained why it wasn’t a good rebuttal and I became a feminist.
that's how you _really_ know the algorithm is busted, cuz Joe was defending Anita and co. and thought all the people crying about feminism and "ethics in games journalism" were a bunch of babies. you can't even look at ANTI-GamerGate content without the rabbit hole sucking you in.
I find it wild how Amazing Atheist ended up on the correct side of "trans women are women", while most of the UA-cam New Atheists became reactionaries... and mostly left atheism for reactionary Christianity etc.
@@TheGrayMysterious It's not a bad thing to see different points of views. It's bad to just sit and listen to one side of an issue, assume you've been given all the angles, parrot it, and become self-righteous based on that. This isn't me saying that all views/opinions are equal though, but you don't win a war without knowing your enemy. I'm not saying UA-cam is particularly good at this either.
@@Akin42 Compared to a lot of other edgy atheists at the time, who are now right-wing Christian handshakes, AA has a long history of being against not just religious nutjobs but maaany concepts from right-wingers such as homophobia and white race superiority (but of course still instilled some of their ideas which is why he was the father of YT anti-SJW content), while some of the other edgy atheists seemed to be more against just the Christian reactionary section of the right being forced upon everyone and actually didn't care much about or even agreed with their opinions on feminism LGBT and race but just thought the right went too far. Which is why AA eventually stepped away from anti-SJW atheist spaces while others ended up further into it.
What would you say the goal of feminism actually is? When I was in grade school I had many friends that were female I never saw situations where the males had any advantages. In my young adult life, none of the interactions I had with fellow men featured any superiority. Now I'm mature and in the healthcare setting surrounded by female management. After years of watching media humiliate masculinity, I wonder if feminism no matter the degree is bigotry. If a male group sought to be segregated from women we would be bigots.
I was closeted around that time and didn't feel seen as a black trans guy, though I lacked the words to describe that feeling or my identity back then. However I do owe this movement an increased discourse around the difference between sex and gender (in German we use the same word for both, Geschlecht, which made this even harder to understand) at my uni and that ultimately helped me understand my dysphoria, though I didn't transition until years later.
We should always be open to criticism. Life is much more complex than our small slice can comprehend.
That line about going for the kings head and missing giving him a new haircut so he is more relatable to people is so brilliant. We really did just kind of change the way patriarchy establishes itself. It's like we took the mask of all the petty interactions off and now man spreading is annoying but telling women that they are designed to be subservient is totally cool.
"privilege theory is pretty appealing to the most privileged"
I remember realizing how ineffectual a lot of my “spread awareness :D !” beliefs were when I read about the Alaskan fishermen in the 90’s who blocked oil tankers with their boats in protest of all the oil spills that had destroyed their livelihoods and their local environments. Meaningful protest requires actual consequences.
Oooof I'm not ready! Now I know how my parents felt when VH1 did those retrospectives on their teen years
Same. This is my millenial cringe 😭
I'm not American so lol press play
I will never stop saying it: your voice is one of the best thing that has happened to UA-cam. Im 5 minutes in and im already relaxed. Your content is also great, I hope your channel continue growing as it has been.
I have a terrible attention span 😂 but her voice always keeps me focused on what she is talking about
One thing I have noticed about pop feminism is that it tends to focus heavily on the idolization of celebrities who "champion" the feminist movement. These celebrities often do the bare minimum, while actively being harmful towards the feminist movement by hoarding wealth, creating huge amounts of pollution, or perpetuating negative body standards. Pop icons like Taylor Swift and Beyonce claim to represent the feminist movement because it is beneficial to their brand, and they know that they can make more money by advertising themselves this way. But then they do nothing to benefit real activism, champion causes, or donate their money to organizers.
Before I keep watching.. I want to help contribute to the conversation. Back when Pop-Feminism was new and hot, I was working my first year as a teacher. One of my colleagues, a self-proclaimed pop-feminist, accused a ten year old boy of very inappropriate things. This boy later spiraled hard into inappropriate things down a few months later after being removed from her class. He failed summer school for something inappropriate.
He had to repeat the grade I was teaching. I received this student this time (We had three teachers per grade. It was a NJ city school.) Day one.. the fidget the first teacher was referring to was an esoteric fidget that increased in rapidity if his concern wasn't addressed and remedied. He was trying to signal he needed help without looking weak. If his concern wasn't addressed by five minutes, his fidget increased in rapidity so much that only then he "exploded" and acted out inappropriately in class. After I found this out, he was perfect the rest of the year. The fidget was not originally inappropriate. But if anyone said anything, she'd declare social war on us. So this boy was clocked all those things that year until another teacher not afraid of being unpopular and didn't have that kind of feminist bent took over. It caused this boy real harm that one year until it was remedied with socioeconomic conscious responsive practices contrary to the insistence of that one woman's particular brand of pop-feminism.
I wanted to support pop-feminists so badly back in those days. But I unironically saw it used by bad actors using pop feminism as the excuse. Not to mention how a lot of the African American community in that urban sector I was teaching didn't appreciate random white people noise. So I constantly needed to prioritize the local parents' and kids' concerns over the feminist ideals seen as esoteric to the community around them at the time. (I'm saying "esoteric" but I'm really saying is it wasn't popular at all with certain portions of the local populace)
Granted, I KNOW I'm a neurodiverse and vigilant individual who just focuses on protecting marginalized kids from the horrors of bullying, creating a neurodiverse-positive atmosphere, and "going local" at this point (in addition to my various other duties and responsibilities), so that makes me quite unusual and myopic. But part of this saga is why I have such a hard time relating to millennial+ women and their own insistence of their own esoteric reality onto individuals who had no idea what they were talking about. (In addition to my physical damage from childhood torture so I resort to communicating differently but whatever) It was... a brow-beat feminism towards individuals raised in different environments and impacted healthy relationships between many individuals and caused even further trauma, if I felt like daring enough to say that. (Granted, I know I'm totally gay and only think of stuff from a guy's perspective at times. So, that also makes me a bit unpopular at times. Say what you will.. but I at least see the blind spots most others aren't aware of. I'm pretty good at catching perspectives most others don't see or value. So, balance out all that before trying to understand me. 🤕
I hope this message is received well btw. I'm not trying to start an argument. This video just reminded me of that moment. Also, I tend to type through a pedagogical perspective. So.. hopefully some people understand this. lol
Very interesting read on the nuances, thanks. When a stimming behavior gets misread as "bad behavior" based on gender prejudice, things can escalate where it could have been handled positively. Especially when an overwhelmed child goes into meltdown. The author Ash Banks recently published an interesting book "When the world hurts too much: Identifying and managing neurodivergent stress, anxiety, and trauma (Neurodivergence unpacked)". It's about how to know oneself and set boundaries as a neurodivergent person. The author also did an interview about this book on the Irish Neuro Pride channel.
@@MinomeEslindeThank you for the comment. Maybe I need to look up Neuro diverse channels like the one you suggested. I'm having a hell of a hard time trying to find people to talk too except an autism app while also rebuilding the mask I've been using for work. It's part and parcel with the perils of working my position in upstate New York. lol
I'll also read that book. I'm currently reading Catch-22 but I'm having a hell of a struggle with the vibe of it.
Great video! Was just wondering if you saw the Barbie movie. All critiques mentioned in this video can be applied to this film.
It seems a lot of fans forget about the working class women creating dolls for Mattel who this film negates despite its “universal” appeal.
Pop feminism appears so much in this movie and whenever I speak up about these issues I get backlash about not supporting feminism due to being lumped to conservatives who genuinely have faulty critiques of this movie!
Barbie is a really fun movie, but it's not the best as a socially critical film.
My father had the same issue where the movie called out a lot of social and personal problems but didn't really allow itself to dive deeper into them, so it just gets a mention and we move on...
Working class women in exploited countries, especially.
@@naolucillerandom5280 to be fair thoguh, barbie felt like a beginner's guide to feminism. the movie is directed towards young girls (12-13 age) so maybe they felt like they had to dumb it down a bit, which is sad, i feel like they could have done more with it. i wish we saw more of HOW patriarchy affeced barbie in the real world and we weren't just told everything. i love barbie though - but it could have been better 100%.
As a guy, interested in the movement, especially in the same years you're referring to, and also being from Montreal, the biggest backlash wasn't from my manly manspreading friends but from the entire suburban wing of women in my life, from old school friends to cousins to close family. I often think these conversations should pivot, at least momentarily, to consumerism and education and how it affects social progression in brutal, alarming fashion. I'm very much aware of the corporate power that is subjugating progressive movements, but even moreso afraid of the suburban people and how their violent disregard for anything but furthering their pile of new things is affecting every progressive movement.
this is why intersectionality is so damn important. misogyny goes hand in hand with capitalism and racism. that, and having people understand it’s less about individuals and more about long-standing systems of power.
the idea that having a luxury consumerist lifestyle is the goal of feminism is wrong wrong wrong. but it’s the easiest thing for us westerners to grasp…
I have a weird personal gripe about the 2017 women's march, so this video was strangely cathartic.
Most millennial heavy social movements suffer from problems like this, not only are they not the hyper leftists we’ve been lead to believe, millenials are only slightly less conservative than the generations that came before. Millennial social movements wear the skin of some kind of revolutionary action, but they challenge nothing about our system and achieve very little
They're a generation of narcissists who are not remotely conservative. This is why they are especially vulnerable to identity politics.
I know I know "on brand" but I legitimately own a Tina Belcher "I'm a smart, strong, sensual woman" early 2010s shirt in the style of Rosie and much as I feel like wearing it puts some kind of target on my back it's still something I expect to be buried in or with I'm not too fussy on the details.
I have the same shirt! Tina is iconic, tina is forever
@@ruliak You're preaching to the choir, you know that right. 😆
Tina is a feminist icon I can get behind! A friend of mine has my number saved as "boob punch" in her phone. 😊
@@annjepsen1621 My sister isn't enough of a fan to want to be the Louise to my Tina but I am Dirty Dan on her phone and she's Pinhead Larry on mine. 😆
You'd already won me over with your display of class consciousness, but your comments on the importance of collective action in social movements, as opposed to individual behavioral change, is spot on, and is not easy to find even among left wing intellectuals. I also have a massive crush on you. There.
yeah, communists are just fucking hot man. dunno what to tell ya. It's a curse 😔😮💨😔
so real
oh man, I read feministing like the newspaper back in the day. I think even with the limits of what it was, pop feminism was huge in helping me find my way to socialism. Even as a lot of of the project feels pretty hollow in retrospect, I think it really did set my political radicalization in motion.
The reason I don’t consider myself a feminist is because I haven’t found a feminist trend that wasn’t serious about revolution which means isn’t pacifist or isn’t separatist. Often if they aren’t hyper constructionist they are essentialist.
Very informative video. That said, there is one (possible) correction, I seem to recall that the Me Too movement was not started in Hollywood, but by a black woman from New York City named Tarana Burke in 2006. Nevertheless, thank you for sharing!
That is my understanding of the history as well, thanks for the comment.
Definitely started by her but picked up by Hollywood (I think Alyssa Milano?) and I think that’s were most people think it started
that and the term 'woke' is AAVE which originated specifically in black communities to describe consciousness c. systemic r*c*sm!
I'm going to be stealing that "not a girl, not yet a woman" line. Iconic. Fire.
Same.
It's moments like these when I question the presence of eggshell on my person...
A fleeting and illusory feeling, unfortunately. For me, there is no alternative beyond walking away from Omelas completely. My future isn't female.
That song hit me so hard when I was 12 lol. Not an egg but I get it
girls nowadays are so insecure. But instead of working on themselves they blame men
Thank you for sharing your story of being systemically sexually abused as a trans person in the Canadian Healthcare system. I grew up in Quebec, most of my friends and loved ones have faced sexual abuse as teenagers when seeking hormones in the Ottawa Healthcare system. A lot of silence goes into people who are "success stories" of the trans healthcare system, silence of the sexual abuse that is presented as a necessary for seeking treatment
Really love and appreciate this essay. Even though I live in Lebanon, and grew up in a conservative Arabic speaking city, I still grew up on the internet and my into to feminism was online, first through tumblr and then a lot of the content you mentioned. It was exciting as hell, but only after being involved in organizing spaces that things started to feel like there are two different worlds of feminism happening in parallel. With covid and everything returning to a digital world again, the last few years I've found it hard to not be embarrassed to be associated with that brand of feminism that felt disconnected and so focused on terminology and identity. It has no material impact on the lives of self identifying feminists and their surroundings whatsoever.
thanks for this comment - absolutely, two parallel worlds. i bet you'd enjoy the articles on Lux! i hope you and your loved ones are safe 🇱🇧❤️
@@lily_lxndr I will check them out, thank you! also thank you for the last sentence, I really, really appreciate it
1:29 I remember everyday feminism. Learned a lot and I still follow a few of the writers from them on Twitter. They had a very diverse group of writers.
They were sort of my introduction to class consciousness and learning about systemic racism. It was also pretty instrumental for me discovering my sexuality
On the one hand, 2010s pop feminism failed due to a failure to meaningfully change the actual conditions of the world for women. On the other hand, at least a lot of people got really good at applying eyeliner "sharp enough to kill a man,"
The women's march really showed me first hand that protest that does not disrupt power, that follows every traffic law and doesn't make anyone mad, does not do anything
Okay, so I was like "2014?! When was that? Where was I? Why don't I remember much of this?" Turns out when you're a single parent of a 10 and 5 year old and you only use a flip phone, you don't know what's going on in any given year🤣 Glad some people remember it and can deep dive into it.
That’s like most of us tho. We have to work and take care of everything so, we just end up experiencing without knowing even tho u kinda know. Idk it’s weird out here 😂
This is very good analysis. Kudos to you!
I would say there's still a lot of pop-feminism about, especially on social media. Especially in comment sections. Or well, It tries to market itself as feminism, but oftentimes it is just there to make fun of masculine women and to call them pick-mes just for existing. It assures itself that it is ok to be a woman who follows all the societal norms around femininity. I'm not saying it is bad to follow those, and there is some critiques to be made of pick-mes, but the discussion has really gotten out of hand when butches are told they are "playing into patriarchy" and "oppressing feminine women". And besides all that, it is so tiring that we're fighting over wether it makes you a pick-me to never have watched Twilight when Roe V Wade got overturned last year.
Oh yeah, one thing I dislike abou the video is the idea that Pop Feminism is somehow... gone. As you said, it absolutely has not.
I just watched Khadija Mboe's latest video and it is a classic example of 'pop feminism.' Their channel held so much promise in the beginning... now I'm thinking of unsubscribing. So much fluff; bandwagon-jumping.
However I'll always be grateful for their video breaking down Critical R*ce Theory.
"Since woman’s greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly."
-Emma Goldman
“It’s like we were trying to fix a world less broken than the one we currently live in.” Wow that hit hard, and perfectly sums up my disillusionment with feminism in general. When I was in my peak feminist era I was more miserable than ever, trying to suppress parts of myself I enjoyed because they weren’t feminist enough, which amounted to absolutely no material changes in reality. The fundamental problems I face now are those of class, not gender. It’s hard not to feel like 2010’s feminism was targeting a massive red herring, not to say gender relations were/are fine but I think the importance of those issues compared to wealth divide issues have been massively overstated.
It’s sad, during this period I was 15 years old and in highschool. My only real exposure to this was, like she has mentioned, media. But my brother’s then girlfriend was a self described “rad fem” she was anti-trans, anti-sex work, vehemently distrusted men (she was a victim) and would repeatedly use me as a means of trauma dumping and venting
On top of that, she also sexual abused me. I was 15, she was 30. It’s still hard to this day, I’m a guy so no one really takes it seriously outside the group friends I have and trust. She was awful, and by her actions set me in stark opposition to the movement and everything it stood for, for a long time. Using a teenager’s sexual interest against them, getting naked with someone and then flipping the fuck out when I got aroused was, to put it lightly, irreversibly damaging to my self perception.
Idk what you should take away from this. That’s my memories from that period 2010-2012ish. I guess I needed to vent
Edit: oh yea I forgot you were Canadian. Well in that case, her name is Karlie Cotton(sometimes Wild), she’s still an activist in Vancouver.
Hot f*ck! That is horrible!
Thanks for sharing this tho, this is a very wonderful comment.
Wow that's awful, strenght in your path to break the cycle. I have a specific interest on radfem alienation and the link between trauma and neocon ideologies, more broadly, but it's the first time I'm seeing a testimony oh all the "usual patterns" happening in such a direct and awful way.
Hope you can build over and heal.
Phenomenal work as always Lily 💜
Your segment where you identified the problems, causes and solutions to issues covered by these feminist blogs was so enlightening, honest and helpful. I really appreciated that because the segment, along with this video reinvigorated me to get out of the checked-out slump I've been suffering through since high school and pursue avenues for active material change.
I’m so glad to hear this! Always what I’m trying to do. Thank you :)
Fantastic content. I've been a "feminist" Through at least 3 iterations of the ideas.
I was introduced to feminism through reading the Second Sex. I mostly didn't understand the content deeply, but did understand the trauma of being female in the 70's and 80's. Sexual assault, harrassment, and extremely limited representation in music and culture bugged me. I loved being a woman, but hated being "bitch slapped" for expressing ideas in mixed company.
Currently, I Have come to the understanding that the only answer to sexism and all the other issues is to critically break down the structures that oppress not only women, but men and everyone.
So I guess I'm a socialist now with a pessimistic outlook on how we can move forward.😢
But you youngsters inspire me to hope❤
This was so great! Left me with a lot to think about.
Also speaking as someone who's done gig app dog walking, I regret to inform you that going for walks can absolutely be spun off into a side hustle
This is such an incredibly well done video, I watched already on nebula but just commenting here for the algorithm
The bechdel test wasn't meant as a win loose metric. It was meant as a tool to check balance in the zeitgeist
Edit: whatever you consider the "origin" to be. The best use I've ever seen was to point out how many Oscar winners had recently failed it
Right like a movie can pass and be sexist as hell. If the women only talk about shopping or even in boss babe buzzwords. It's more so there to show how many movies fail, passing is not the badge of honor it can be treated as.
@@bespectacledheroine7292plus it was sometimes grossly misapplied. I remember that Fire Island movie was called sexist for failing the test, when the film is literally a story about a group of gay men. The author of the piece that criticized it had to apologize later on
@@SarastistheSerpent Putting aside the insanity of all that I've felt for awhile the requirements ought to be changed a bit because honestly? I don't think women talking about men is the problem, it's only talking about them from a love interest vantage point. What if two characters are talking about corrupt men, or the disabled brother they're trying to help? I think the test is very unremitting as far as this.
I mean originally it wasn’t even meant as a serious test. It was just a lesbian called Alison Bechdel who made a comic about what criteria she has for movies she watches. She joked that she only watched movies that live up to those criteria, because that would make it easier to find characters she could headcanon as lesbians. It wasn't meant as a bigcritique of systematic erasure of women in movies. It only became a big discussion when people realised how few movies actually lived up to such a low bar.
No, it was meant as a metric for whether you could pretend the characters were lesbians lol. The comic it came from was "dykes to watch out for", so there's a subtext of specifically wanting to see lesbians in everything that ppl reading it out of context don't see. Basically it bemoans the lack of movies you can even pretend there's lesbian subtext in.
That's why when ppl joke that harem anime passed the test when the girls compared boob sizes in the hot spring episode the test is still working perfectly, they're just not using it right. It's not about judging how feminist a movie is, it's about whether I can imagine the girls kissing and harem anime (for example) often makes it *very* easy to do that
This video was BRUTAL-and oh, so necessary to watch. Definitely something I'll be sharing around. Thanks a lot, Lily! ☺️🖤
You can see a lot of the seeds that pop-feminism sowed taken to their logical conclusions in social media "activism" these days, where having the right beliefs and (more importantly) right identity is more important than behaving right. Where talking about social issues is the extent of the action 99% of the times and where getting someone else (through whatever means) to parrot the same beliefs you think are right is seen as the height of collective action. The focus is basically *only* on individual behaviour.