Laci Green is one of the most popular feminists on the internet. Her YouTube channel has 1.5 million subscribers, she has made videos for MTV, Discovery News, and Planned Parenthood, and in 2016 Time magazine named her one of the 30 most influential people on the internet. Green, who describes herself as “the pinnacle of a social justice warrior,” could have easily spent the rest of her career doing nothing but creating uncontroversial videos aimed at an audience already inclined to agree with her, but recently she’s decided to do something a lot riskier and a lot more important.
Over the past few months, Green has started dialogues with critics of feminism and the social justice movement, including participating in a two and a half hour debate with prominent antifeminist Blaire White. On May 11, Green released a video titled “Taking the Red Pill?” where she explained her thought-process behind this move:
“My YouTube stuff has always been about the pursuit of forbidden knowledge, and while, yes, I am a feminist, I wouldn’t describe myself as the ideologue that people sometimes make me out to be. I feel that things tend to be messier than that… At the end of the day, we all have true beliefs and we all have false beliefs. Skepticism is about acknowledging that…
I went down the rabbit hole of anti-SJW videos and I found that some are pretty disrespectful, but that’s not all the channels. I’ve recently found anti-SJW channels that are well-cited and reasoned and make some interesting points…Sometimes I disagree, in which case I still feel it’s beneficial for me to listen and consider another perspective. It helps me to learn. So I decided to reach out to some and I was pleasantly surprised. People have been pretty kind to me, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t really expect that. No judgment, no vitriol, I even feel like I have a really good connection to a couple of new friends.”
There is a lot of fear-mongering on the left these days that fraternizing with the “enemy” will not only render you ideologically unclean but will also inevitably lead to nothing but a tirade of life-shattering abuse. While still acknowledging that abuse does occur, Green expertly cuts through both elements of this scare tactic. I especially applaud Green for saying that she now considers some anti-SJWs to be her friends. For many in the social justice movement, there is no greater sin than becoming friends with someone of a different political persuasion, so Green’s statement is far braver and more groundbreaking than it may appear on the surface.
Green goes on to criticize the social justice left for using counterproductive tactics such as no-platforming to shut down speech:
“Social justice communities lately have been arguing that bigoted ideas… should be suppressed because [otherwise] it allows the bigotry to spread and to be validated… Ironically this sounds very similar to the logic that is used by the right to censor sex-ed. Information about sex has been deemed too harmful to hear. It will encourage immoral behavior and speed social decay…
I think the definition of harm is being pushed too far in regard to political speech, that this heightened level of sensitivity is actually resulting in some [de facto] censorship… I also feel like this approach doesn’t very well promote social justice. For one thing, when you think about it, suppression of speech is just a bandaid. It’s doesn’t really address the systemic inequality or mentality that lies at the root of these problems. It just sort of shuts the conversation down. It also has a clear backfire effect. It makes those poor censored voices more sympathetic to a moderate audience…
The way I see it, the internet already gives everyone a huge platform, much bigger than what a university can offer. They’re already on the internet. They’re going to be there. We should talk about it. I think we should address things head on. Through open dialogue we can parse out ideas and really see what they’re made of. And in response, everyone else has free speech too. They can dissent. They can protest. They can ask critical questions. They can counter the narrative. They can highlight fallacies and moral failings of the argument.”
These are ideas I’ve touched upon in my own writing, so it is incredibly heartening to hear someone as influential as Laci Green express the same sentiments. Green continues by calling out the recent harassment faced by Rebecca Tuvel over her academic paper on transracialism (another issue I’ve also covered):
“It’s a controversial topic and a controversial conclusion. She may well have some things wrong. But instead of refuting her arguments on their logical merits, the academics penned an open letter claiming that the paper needs to be revoked, citing its various harms… And having read the paper, the accusations that are made in this open letter are a complete misrepresentation of her argument to an extreme degree, which really makes this whole ordeal all the more troubling. These are not grounds to censor an academic paper. They’re not grounds to ruin someone’s academic reputation.”
Given how much backlash I’ve faced for talking about these things, I can only imagine the viciousness directed at someone with Laci Green’s platform. Green has virtually nothing to gain from making these criticisms and plenty to lose. Even if you completely disagree with her, the strength of her convictions and courage she displays by expressing them is profoundly commendable.
Two weeks after her first video was released, Green made a follow-up titled “Caught between extremes. [Red Pill 2]” wherein she discussed the reaction to the first video and some of the personal experiences that inspired it:
“On the anti-[SJW] side, I’ve read some very elaborate conspiracy theories about betrayal and greed [and] sex, and from the feminist side I have seen a similar tone-deafness…
[On the feminist side], there have always been people who seem determined to misconstrue what I say no matter what, people exaggerating, spreading lies and rumors. I watch these same people go on campaigns to try to get people fired or rejected from their community for relatively minor infractions. This is disturbing to me… Because in my book this is not feminism, this is bullying. And on a few occasions, it has made me scared for my physical safety. There was this one time I was at a conference, and I’m walking out to the parking lot and these three people, feminists, shout me down… then they threatened me, they threatened to ‘kick my cis ass’… I have other stories like this…
I will always be a feminist. I believe in social justice. I believe in the issues that I’ve talked about and the causes I’ve campaigned for. That is why I’m here, because I know who I am and what I stand for and I know that this kind of shit isn’t it.”
It is never easy to stand up to bullies, especially when they’re from your own political camp. Anyone who’s spent time in feminist circles knows that bad behavior isn’t uncommon, and just acknowledging that can be enough to get you branded a traitor. However, it is exactly this kind of behavior that leads otherwise sympathetic people to shun feminism. (I’ve struggled with that myself.) Green sharing her experiences of harassment while at the same time reaffirming her commitment to feminism and social justice sends a powerful message to anyone who’s felt forced out of the movements by the toxicity of the extremist fringe.
Green then addresses the anti-social just side and her reasons for not reaching out to them before now:
“I experienced that [anti-SJW] side of the conversation in the context of pretty intense harassment and anything I so much as hinted about this to this crowd… people have slammed me and accused me of playing the victim and trying to garner sympathy [by] being manipulative...
It’s not my delicate sensibilities or my dogma that have prevented me from engaging. It’s that people have threatened to violently hurt me at public appearances… [and made] threats against my family. [There have been] situations where I’m teaching students how to put a condom on properly and I have to be accompanied by police… I couldn’t even answer emails from my viewers without having to go through a stream of graphic rape threats…
YouTubers are not responsible for crazy shit their audience does… but if the goal genuinely is dialogue, people need to be condemning this stuff when they see it and be thoughtful not egg it on…
I’ve seen a lot of the same stuff coming from both sides and both sides see the other doing it but they don’t really want to acknowledge it within their own camp.”
Green ends her video with a call for empathy and for both sides to imagine each other more complexly:
“We shouldn’t just assume the worst of people or that they can’t change or that we fully understand them based on one of their opinions… Good people do toxic shit sometimes across the [political] spectrum, myself included. I believe there is great value in try to understand someone’s intentions, not just their impact — trying to understand the context of their beliefs, who they are, [and] why they feel this way. And hopefully going out on a limb making good faith gestures between each other to work towards mutual understanding.”
Green is continuing the conversation through her Twitter and Ask.fm accounts and is currently working to facilitate debates between members of the social justice and anti-social justice communities. Leaving our ideological bubbles and having open dialogue is the only way the conversation ever moves forward, and Laci Green should be applauded for using her platform to facilitate real positive change. Only time will tell if her efforts are successful, but for the first time in a long time, I am hopeful about the future of feminism, and if for no other reason, I’ve very grateful to Laci Green for that.