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July 14, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
29:09
Egalitarianism as Interpreted by a Feminist
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In the domain of man there are many laws.
Mostly we consciously interact with the ones constructed, maintained, and when we are very lucky, revised to uphold this fragile thing that we call not complete and total chaos.
Yeah, it's this guy.
Has anyone else noticed how the PBS channels are such a clusterfuck of ideology pushing?
Laws provide, or at the very least provide the promise of a safe and equal framework for our collective experience of day-to-day life.
They describe ideal behaviors.
The problem is that different things are ideal for different people, and depending upon where you live, the people making the laws might have some pretty messed up ideas about ideality.
Do laws describe ideal behaviors or are they there to mitigate transgressive ones?
Laws are sometimes descriptive, describing what we generally understand one should or shouldn't do, but sometimes they are prescriptive, telling people what they should or shouldn't do.
Jesus Christ, what fucking sophistry.
A, thou shalt not steal is prescriptive.
That is telling you what you should and shouldn't do.
And B, man-made laws are not descriptive.
They do not describe how things happen.
They are prescriptive.
They describe what should happen.
And that's why we have punishments for them.
It's not like anyone's ever been punished for breaking the law of gravity.
This relationship between laws stating what is the case or describing what it should be exists in other, maybe unexpected places as well.
Well, maybe it's me, because I can't think of a single example of a man-made law that is descriptive.
At least not in the context in which you have begun this conversation.
Because what you have done is address this as if these are man-made laws we are talking about.
But the thing is, I already know that this video is about laws of human nature, which in my opinion would be a lot closer to natural scientific laws than prescriptive legal ones.
Like in the sciences, whose laws describe events or processes that appear to necessarily occur based upon a significant amount of empirical observation.
Like, you probably know about the law of conservation of mass.
It describes the fact that the mass and energy of closed systems remains constant regardless of whatever processes occur.
We've watched lots of processes.
Mass is always conserved.
This law describes what appears to be true, science.
You know what?
Why don't you try giving me a prescriptive natural law?
Because like you, I'm just a layman.
I'm just some guy who makes videos on the internet.
Personally, I prefer the law of conservation of jazz, which states that in a closed club, regardless of how much you want to go home, the amount of jazz will remain constant.
Just kidding.
I love jazz.
At least you have the decency to look embarrassed by that joke.
Anyway, regardless of their possible contingency, laws have some power.
Some of those written civil laws might not be right, but that doesn't mean that they're not enforced.
And after figuring out what's going on, we use scientific laws as ciphers for descriptions of what must happen because it always has.
Yeah, these laws are not the same thing.
It's rather a shame they share the same word.
The second law of thermodynamics necessitates that, and so on.
Which is to say that laws provide authority, not certainty.
What are you fucking talking about?
You literally just told us.
The second law of thermodynamics necessitates that.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm no scientist.
But it strikes me that everything that we have technologically is entirely based on the idea that scientific laws are constants that can be relied on.
You seem to be completely conflating what scientific laws are with man-made laws.
Man-made laws are authority.
They're not certainty.
People can break them, which is why we have punishments for doing so.
But scientific laws are not like man-made laws.
The fact that they share the same word is clearly very misleading.
If you happen to be a scientist who's watching this and you're sitting there going, no, no, you don't know what you're talking about, please feel free to correct me in the comments, but fucking, that sounds crazy.
This is true in scientific law, legal systems, and even on the internet, which is what we're going to spend the rest of this video talking about.
So you are conflating man-made laws with scientific laws.
The internet has its own set of laws.
No, not those.
Those are rules, not laws.
What is the difference between a rule and a law, apart from the punishment received when breaking one?
I'm talking about the laws which have unveiled themselves as people from all walks of life converged onto technologically accessed public feeds of any kind to have cool, calm, and collected conversations where everyone is civil and respectful.
I'm just kidding, I mean where people are terrible and want to argue.
Yes, so you are equating internet laws to natural laws.
Fine.
That's fine.
Please stop equating them with man-made laws, which they are clearly not.
And just as a personal request, is there any chance you could be slightly less insufferably smug when you're being so fucking wrong?
The following laws predict the behaviors of people using the world's greatest technological achievement to bicker.
But each also has a purpose, an authority, if you will.
And probably the most well-known law in the set is Godwin's Law.
Godwin's Law states that the longer an argument goes on, the more likely it is that one side will call the other a Nazi or compare them to Hitler.
And there's a corollary too, that the person who has perpetrated the comparison automatically loses the argument and the conversation should cease.
The corollary is rarely respected.
I cannot be the only person who finds these PBS guys insufferable, can I?
Mike Godwin coined his law in a 1993 piece for Wired called Meme Countermeme, which incidentally is also one of, if not the earliest popular public usages of the word meme to describe behaviors on the internet.
I'm going to cut out his long waffle about Godwin's Law.
You already know it, and I've gotten a particular comment on it.
One might create memes which counter, deconstruct, discourage, disincentivize other memes.
Meme?
Counter meme.
Why are you saying this like it's such an unusual thing?
A meme is an idea expressed in a certain way.
Of course there would be counter ideas that would also be expressed in a similar way.
Arguably that's the point of something like rare pepes where people make endless variations of Pepe the Frog memes in an effort to quote flood the market and depreciate their value.
Who are you quoting?
The value of Pepe images, that is.
Their value.
What?
Their value in contributing to an argument or mockery.
In the same way, Godwin's Law depreciated the value of calling someone a Nazi.
Unsure when it was first done on the internet, when two people were having a relatively civil conversation, and one turned around and said, hey, you know, you're just a Nazi.
The other person was probably quite taken aback.
But I mean, in the flippant, contrarian present of popular memetizing, it's a good bet that memes made to counter meme will only ever do the opposite.
Incur a meme.
Heck, maybe it's even a law.
Telling people to do or not do something on the internet is a guarantee that the opposite will happen.
Yeah, but that's because people generally don't like prematurely balding hipster 20-somethings telling them what they should and shouldn't do.
Which I guess actually is kind of already a law, at least as far as conversations about feminism are concerned.
Now we get to the good stuff.
Lewis's law, coined by English journalist Helen Lewis, states that the comments left on anything about feminism will, quote, justify feminism.
Circular logic argument will not be entertained.
This is where things start getting good.
Which is important and necessary because women are not equal citizens.
What?
They're not equal.
What laws discriminate against women?
I mean, if they're not equal citizens, then you can surely show me how legally women are being discriminated against, can't you?
And I know about egalitarianism.
Wow, A, I don't think you do.
B, doesn't that just sound like someone who has had this thrown up in their face after declaring feminism to be the one true equality movement?
And then suddenly they're like, oh, shit.
Shit.
Okay, there's a movement called egalitarianism that doesn't actually focus entirely on one gender, which is what you would think you would need from a movement for the equality of the genders.
So, hmm, crap.
But the thing is, I am a died-in-the-wool fucking feminist.
I have been born and raised a feminist.
There is no way I can think of not being a feminist, therefore...
At its best, egalitarianism is another word for feminism.
What?
Wow.
Egalitarianism is now just another word for feminism.
That is terrifyingly Owellian.
I don't know.
Why don't we just do the sensible thing and, you know, check.
Let's use the dictionary definition of feminism, which feminists will so quickly point you to.
Feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
By its very definition, feminism assumes that men have superior rights to women, which is what justifies feminists advocating solely for the rights of women.
By contrast to this, egalitarianism is a philosophy that states that people should be treated as equals and should treat one another as equals and should relate as equals and enjoy an equality of social status of some sort.
Egalitarianism does not emphasize one gender over another.
It does not only exclusively deal with the rights of one gender.
It is fundamentally a humanist philosophy.
And this is in contrast to feminism as a supremacist ideology.
And I can tell that that's the case through several reasons.
But we'll just quickly go through why you think feminism is a supremacist ideology.
But at its worst, it is a diversion, responding to fears that by giving women more power, that means men will have less, which is not the case.
Nonsense.
Egalitarianism is in no way concerned with power.
It's concerned with treatment and rights.
You are concerned with power because you are a feminist and feminism is a supremacist ideology.
Feminism, you have no idea what people are responding to.
So don't presume to tell me you know that people are responding to fears of losing power.
That's what you think.
Nobody else thinks that.
What they see is a supremacist movement that is focused entirely, pathologically, on half of the human race at the detriment of the other half.
And they think, no, that is wrong, no matter who you are doing it for or what the reason is.
This is what we call a principle.
But you're not finished being crazy yet.
So please carry on.
The only way that we reach equality for men and women is by elevating the status of all women.
Women of all races, sexual orientations, and genders.
Oh, fucking spare me, man.
Jesus Christ.
Women, they're just so terribly oppressed, which is why Hillary Clinton, pictured here on a private jet, needs more assistance and aids to be raised up to the level of this disabled homeless man.
Fuck off, man.
Seriously.
Think about what you've just said in terms of individuals.
Because what you just said does not accurately describe the experiences of every person in the categories you are talking about.
Your ideology is inadequate to describe the nuance of the world in order to represent it as it actually is.
And because you have been so conditioned to believe an ideology that actually says that Hillary Clinton is being oppressed by a homeless blind man, you go on to say this.
Now this, I just want people to prepare themselves for the dumbest thing anyone could ever say.
And it is truly Orwellian because I think he genuinely believes what he's saying.
This is the most quintessential example of doublethink you could possibly have.
Egalitarianism is a men's rights project.
Feminism is a human project.
Let's hear that again.
Egalitarianism is a men's rights project.
Feminism is a human project.
To say that an ideology that deals exclusively with the rights of women is a human project, in contrast to a philosophy that deals with the rights of both men and women, is to think that men are not human.
It is to think that women are the only people in society who have any value.
Egalitarianism is a men's rights project.
He says this purely on the basis that egalitarianism considers that men might have problems too.
Of course, this is anathema to feminism.
They're busy painting all men as the oppressors of all women.
And if they can't do that, then it really undermines what feminism is built upon.
There.
Now this video will provide examples of Lewis's law.
Maybe, but more importantly, you have just made yourself look like a man who cannot think.
I mean, you've already been dumb enough in this video anyway, but this is insanity.
I mean, rarely do you hear such crazy nonsense from feminists.
But look, I can show you how we know that feminism is not synonymous with egalitarianism.
This is a distinctly anti-egalitarian report, but it is entirely feminist.
To say that equal opportunity is not enough to ensure gender equality, according to groundbreaking report from UN Women, instead governments must commit to social policies that treat women differently in order to help them achieve economic parity with men is entirely un-egalitarian.
Just listen to this paragraph.
It's the global version of what Cheryl Sandberg has been saying all along with Lean In.
Women will never be equal unless workplace policies are just to fit their needs and men need to step up to help at home.
The report highlights the gap between the laws that protect equal rights for women and the realities of inequality in most of the world.
The way to close that gap, according to the report, is by implementing social policies that provide paid work opportunities for women, protect domestic workers, provide affordable childcare, and establish paid leave for working mothers.
Removing legal barriers to female employment is not enough, the report says, noting that we also need measures that free up women's time.
All of this completely ignores the humanity of men.
They're being treated like some sort of fucking slave caste, which is why a lot of men are choosing to simply not get into relationships.
They don't want to be treated like second-class citizens, which is what feminism is doing.
And if we operated in a system that was so hostile to feminism, why would this be presented at the UN?
And probably also eventually Godwin's Law.
Lewis Law comments justify feminism in ways particular to each individual situation, but the paradigmatic example is outlined in Alice Marwick's wired opinion piece, Dunglegate, why the tech community hates feminists.
Well, that's easy.
It's because they're lazy and arrogant and wants to complain and try and get people fired over jokes that weren't even aimed at them.
Nobody likes people like that.
The inciting incident here is the internet conversation surrounding complaints about sexist jokes told at PyCon 2013.
Lots of people felt these jokes illustrate the rampant sexism of the tech industry, while others thought that it was just ladies trying to suppress the rights of men to their frozen peaches.
Liar.
What it was was two guys just having a joke.
None of Adria Rich's business.
She decided to listen in and surreptitiously take a photograph of these two guys and then tweet it with the complaint along with it, which then led to a social media shitstorm getting one of these guys who has kids fired from his job for telling a joke.
It's nothing to do with men's rights or any other disingenuous bollocks that you want to trot out.
It's everything to do with feminists being massively unpalatable people.
When we read such comments, Marwick writes, we see lots of people arguing but not really engaging.
While feminists believe it's important to call out people for sexist remarks and address structural gender inequality because they understand the power of the Twitter hate mob and they have been conditioned to find emotional gratification in bullying people for saying something a feminist didn't like.
Another group believes calling out sexist remarks is just another example of women exaggerating harm, censoring reasonable behavior, or demanding special rights beyond what men have.
It is all of those things.
End quote.
Lewis Law comments justify feminism in that they illustrate the very discourse and attitudes that feminism hopes to address but to censor.
You do not want to address them.
You want to prevent them.
And no, I don't think feminists should be allowed to prevent people telling jokes, no matter how off colour.
Not in any way, and not while I can fucking have a voice in the discussion.
So I've got a joke to you.
In fact, I was going to tell you a joke.
I was going to tell you a rape joke, but I thought it'd be a bit forced.
But um.
Also, because of their one-sidedness.
People should be able to say what they like, and women shouldn't get all bent out of shape.
Are you a woman?
Because you've placed yourself in opposition to this as well.
Or is it more accurate to say feminists shouldn't get all bent out of shape?
Feminists just haven't done their research, but egalitarians and men's rights activists have.
Oh, no research necessary.
It's just the objection to the modern-day Puritan hate mob who take to Twitter every time they hear something they don't like.
Feminists don't want to fix anything.
They just want to kill all men.
And furthermore, if I could politely inquire as to the sources you've used for determining that the wage gap is real.
Isn't it male feminists who wear the fedoras?
mean why would you else tip and say m'lady is that not it's weird this fedora thing isn't it Because I really don't know who you're supposed to be taking the piss out of, but I mean, I know you don't have any sources for the wage gap, so I wouldn't inquire as to that.
I mean, you would just assert it without evidence.
Madam.
What?
I thought you think that men's rights activists are misogynists.
Why would they be so polite to women?
If they hate women, I don't think that what you're doing makes any sense, but then why would I expect you to make sense, Mr. Egalitarianism is an MRA project?
Lewis' Law comments justify feminism by virtue of the fact that they illustrate an inability to meet feminism on its own actual terms.
No, Lewis's law is a fallacy called begging the question.
This can essentially be boiled down to, I need feminism because people disagree that I need feminism.
No one is obligated to meet feminism on its own terms if its own terms assume the correctness of its position without proving it.
Which now someone will comment is exactly the problem with feminism's relationship to its counter-arguments, thus proving my point.
Jesus Christ, are you serious?
What you're saying here is that feminism is beyond criticism, because any criticism of feminism has to come from within feminism, thus reinforcing feminism.
There can never be a time when feminism isn't valid in your mind because you are mental.
It is not sound reasoning to say that the existence of counter-arguments to feminism that do not engage and operate within feminism prove feminism.
That is insane.
Ironically, what you're doing by using fallacies is inherently disproving feminism not on its own merits, but because it's not internally consistent and it cannot be relied upon to be rational and to reach logical conclusions.
Any ideology that was this unreliable would have to be discarded as a matter of course.
You couldn't rely on this to reach sane conclusions if you have to jump through such mental fucking gymnastics as to say any criticism of feminism that does not deal with feminism on its own terms and therefore validates feminism is not valid criticism of feminism and I can dismiss it.
You are insane.
Unlike Godwin though, Lewis is not a counter meme, at least not explicitly.
No, it's a logical fallacy.
Lewis's law doesn't highlight the vectorization of the supremely disappointing misunderstanding of feminism meme in order to address it.
It's more like, hey, writers, brace yourself.
Jerkbags are coming.
Did you forget the part in this video where you tried to portray anyone who criticizes feminism inherently as being, I don't know, neckbeard, fedora wearing douchebags who for some reason are really polite to women?
I mean, you may forget what you're doing in a short space of time because you are clearly a fucking moron.
Well, that's not true.
You're clearly a sophist.
You are trying to posit arguments that on the surface might sound reasonable, possibly due to your excessive verbosity.
But really, when you break them down and look at them in a tight logical framework, you know, one that actually makes sense, they are complete nonsense.
Even if anti-feminist commenters aren't a perfect certainty, Lewis's law is a helpful, authoritative reminder that it's best to assume that they are ben root.
Ideologue attempting to maintain an echo chamber by using a logical fallacy to preemptively dismiss any criticism at all.
I'll tell you what, I am loving this logical fallacy referee.
This guy, this guy can stay.
An assumption which is useful in another way for those writing at, say, The Onion.
Poe's Law, our last law for today, states that on the internet, unless the author's intent is very clearly communicated, parodies of extremism will be mistaken for earnest extremism and vice versa.
Egalitarianism is a men's rights project.
Feminism is a human project.
Idea Channel experienced this a couple years back when we made that short episode about Vine being the future of cinema.
We thought that an April 1st upload date was a clear enough communication of our intent, and we were very wrong.
Our extremism seemed earnest to a lot of people.
Well, I really hope this video was an example of it.
Maybe you got me.
Maybe, maybe saying that egalitarianism is a men's rights project was a huge joke on your part, and I was just completely sucked in.
Let's continue watching.
Poe's Law is named after Nathan Poe, who coined it in 2005 in response to a debate about creationism on a Christian message board.
He wrote that, quote, without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake it for the genuine article.
This incidentally is almost exactly why Scott Fallman proposed the smiley in 1982 as a quote joke marker, and it's why the percontation slash irony mark exists, which I really do think that I would use a lot if it were actually on my keyboard.
Anyway, you might think that a headline by The Onion or Click Hole or The Daily Current would be sign enough.
Can't stop here.
Parodic extremism country.
But, you know, it's the internet, so no.
The most interesting cases are the ones where Poe's Law and Lewis's Law collide, where people mistake extreme feminism or women's rights parody as sincere, and then leave comments which justify actual feminism.
This happened when Louisiana Congressman John Fleming mistook an Onion article about a planned parenthood abortion plex as earnest.
Or on this Onion article about a woman deciding not to support feminism if it means killing all men.
And just like the creationist, you don't really think that this should be a signal that you should re-evaluate your ideology.
You just think that it's just other people that are the problem.
You're not thinking.
it's amazing you're not thinking that okay just because people actually legitimately can't tell when someone when someone says look we're going to create an abortion plex or if we're actually going to kill men i don't support feminism you They can't tell that it's a joke.
You don't think that reflects in any way on feminism.
But I bet you would indeed think that the jokes about creationism reflect on creationism.
Importantly, Poe's Law doesn't say people believe what they read, but rather people believe parodies of extremism are earnest.
Sort of like the case with Lewis's law, Poe's Law is an effect of the way people tend to engage with the things they don't like.
No, it's not.
It's a way of expressing how things that are extreme, like creationism or feminism, are very difficult to discern from their own parodies.
This in itself should be a warning to those extremists who follow these beliefs, but for some reason, it's not.
Our impressions of extreme positions tend towards caricature because by virtue of our relationship to them, we don't possess nuanced understanding.
Poe's law works because in our minds, extreme positions are always already like parodies.
So when an actual parody comes along, our natural response is to be like, of course, look at these clowns.
Well done for making feminism and creationism almost the same thing.
People are thinking, yes, look at these clowns.
This is exactly what a feminist would say.
Just like a creationist.
And I'm sure that the creationists are like, no, no, look, you just don't understand the nuance of the position.
Or when we're confronted with actual extremism, one gut reaction is to think, ugh, you have got to be kidding me.
This must be a joke.
The authority Poe's Law has is not to curtail behavior or to remind writers.
People writing for Click Hole know exactly what they're doing, but to highlight the extreme positions which are easy and maybe even a little dangerous to take less than seriously.
The laws of the internet, like the laws of science, are not ones that you must follow, but rather ones that will be followed anyway, it seems.
Sort of like Ragneta's Law, which states that no matter how long and thorough a YouTube video is, there will always be at least one person who is, quote, really disappointed that I didn't mention their favorite thing, which I have somehow never heard of.
What do you guys think?
I think you have a disturbing level of ideological bias, which will allow you to morally justify thinking yourself in circles using various fallacious arguments to dismiss legitimate criticism of the way you have been brainwashed.
I can't believe you think egalitarianism is an MRA philosophy.
Well, in fact, I can think that I can understand that you believe that.
I really can, actually.
You think that because it doesn't express the shit on the rights of men, that it must be an MRA philosophy.
It's not an MRA philosophy.
I mean, I don't even know if there is such a thing as an MRA philosophy.
As far as I'm aware, the men's rights activists just want legal rights equal to that of women, which they, in some cases, demonstrably do not have.
So if that is a problem, then you are just confirming that you are part of a female supremacy movement.
And being a balding beta mangina, I don't, we need a nicer term for this, really.
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