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Hi welcome to feminist Fridays a new show where we use a lot of f words. You know what
I'm saying. You know what I'm saying. I love it when I make a video stressing an important
issue like abuse or misogyny and I get the inevitable commenter saying "I don't care".
Well let's give it up guys because my prime audience, YouTube user Mr.Zorg, doesn't care.
A lot of stuff has happened in the last week. Goodwill ambassador Emma Watson gave a speech
to the UN stressing the importance of gender equality and feminism. She launched a campaign
called 'he for she' in which she urged men to join the movement and stand up against
sexism and misogyny. It was a really beautiful speech and I may have cried a little bit.
There were a lot of things that the speech did really well and I think its gonna be important
considering how much attention it got from the mainstream media. Emma Watson argued that
there's no country in the world that has achieved equality. Which is important to acknowledge
because there seems to be this widespread notion that sexism no longer exists in the
western world and unfortunately that still isn't true. Emma Watson also did something
really great in this speech which is acknowledging her privilege as a wealthy white woman. However,
that doesn't mean that the speech was completely free of flaws. Some people argue that because
the speech was given by a rich white woman, its receiving more attention and recognition
than if it was given by a poor woman of colour, which I think is a valid point. Historically,
feminism has been dominated by straight, rich, white woman, and they basically become the
face of feminism, or as many people call it, 'white feminism'. Another criticism of the
speech is that by focusing so much attention on allowing men into feminist spaces they
may dominate and speak over other women in the conversation. To be honest, a lot of the
time when men cone out as feminists or feminist allies, their opinion is valued over that
of women. I'd like to know what you guy's opinions on Emma Watson's speech were because
I still haven't fully formed an opinion on it. In an almost completely opposite vein
from Emma's UN speech, I'm sure a lot of you have seen or heard about Sam Pepper's fake
hand ass grab prank. In the first video Sam Pepper went around grabbing random women's
asses on the street which you may know is legally defined as sexual assault. Also just
morally super icky. The response to this online video was huge and many prominent youtubers
and online viewers spoke out about this publicly. Several days after the first video went viral
and received a shit ton of attention, Sam Pepper decided to release two other videos.
The second video was a gender reversal where a woman went around grabbing other men's asses
on the street, which also is assault and not ok and many people were very vocal about that
as well. In the third video Sam Pepper explained that it was actually a social experiment and
he tricked us all. Because we're all stupid peasants and Sam Pepper was able to geniusly
trick us all. What a clever guy. Thank you Sam Pepper for taking the time to teach us
all a valuable lesson that sexual assault is in fact wrong. Literally none of us would
have known this otherwise. You really pulled a fast one on us you quirky prankster. I especially
liked how you made us all think about sexual assault by seemingly sexually assaulting random
people on the street with no disclaimer on the video. Man imagine how many people must
have seen that video and thought that you were actually assaulting those women and that
it was a really funny prank. You really got em good. Of course the problem with this is
that you don't raise awareness about sexual assault by sexually assaulting people. I think
the was the most unsettling about the video was how hard Sam Pepper was laughing and how
funny he seemed to think sexual assault was. Also the first video didn't have part one
of three in the title which led everyone to believe that it was kinda just damage control.
And nowhere in his third video does he actually apologise for anything. In the third video
Sam Pepper implies that people weren't upset about the man getting assaulted in the second
video which just isn't true. A large portion of people were very upset and acknowledged
that was just as much sexual assault as the first video. Sam Pepper uses this false evidence
to prove an ultimately bullshit hypotheses. Sexual harassment and assault are largely
gendered and even though they can and do effect men, they effect women to a much larger degree
and pretending that men and women are harassed equally and in the same way you're ignoring
the patriarchal nature behind this harassment and assault. There's a lot more to talk about
and a lot more stuff that's happened involved in this but for now I'd like your general
opinions and reactions in the comments because I think its important that we talk about this.
It doesn't seem like this kind of behaviour is going away anytime soon but our response
to this has already been so much better than our previous responses to bad behaviour on
YouTube and I think by talking about it we're making things a little bit better.