Sept. 29, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
30:57
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| Hey, look at that. | |
| Sargon Classic. | |
| But this video isn't about me, it's about He for She, which has recently celebrated its second birthday. | |
| So let's catch up with professional feminist activist Emma Watson and see how things have been going. | |
| Gosh, I'm so overwhelmed. | |
| Thank you to everyone that has shared their story tonight and has contributed to what has been the most heartwarming moment of my year. | |
| Good evening. | |
| Being a part of He for She for the last two years has been an incredible learning experience for me. | |
| There have been some really hard moments and a lot of amazing ones. | |
| Ones I never could have imagined. | |
| Well, it's nice to know she didn't give up acting. | |
| Go on, Emma. | |
| Tell me about who you've got on board. | |
| The UN Secretary General, the entire EU Commission, the NATO Secretary General, the President of the International Olympic Committee, numerous heads of state and politicians from around the world, including those that you've heard from tonight, and everyone from Usain Bolt to Tom Hanks, and now all he for she. | |
| Wow. | |
| With a crew like that, you'd think you'd really be able to get something done, wouldn't you? | |
| So why don't you tell me, Miss Watson, exactly what he for she has achieved in its two years of existence? | |
| We've crashed the UN website on multiple occasions. | |
| Sorry about that. | |
| We have lit up the Empire State Building, seen He for She in Times Square, and made it a term in the Urban Dictionary. | |
| Call me a cynic, Miss Watson, but have you actually helped any women? | |
| Because what you've just described there is naked self-aggrandisement for a millionaire S pet project. | |
| And look at your term in the Urban Dictionary. | |
| Just look at this. | |
| The top and only definition for he for she is a new word for the male feminist. | |
| Popularized after a speech by actor Emma Watson went viral. | |
| He for she is the global social movement initiated by UN women that calls for men and boys to support women and girls in the fight for gender equality. | |
| Obama, Matt Damon, and many more male celebs have pledged their support of the new feminism through he for she. | |
| After watching Emma Watson's UN speech, James decided to support women and girls in the fight for gender equality as a he for she, which sounds like a movement for men who are going to become transgender. | |
| But you'll notice it's written by he for she on March 29th, 2015. | |
| It's the most ridiculous, normie thing I've ever read, and I honestly cannot see the good that he for she is doing for anyone. | |
| After 2 billion media impressions, 1.1 million pledged he for she's have made practical commitments, as have some of the world's leading universities and companies, to make gender equality a priority in their work and within their communities. | |
| It's the most condescending thing I have ever heard. | |
| If I were a woman, I would hate he for she. | |
| Surprisingly, though, it was during the hard moments that I made the best discoveries about what it means to be part of this movement. | |
| There is genuinely a spectrum of amazing feminists out there. | |
| I hope you're listening to this, Mike. | |
| I hope you are listening because out of love of you, I'm not making a joke about the spectrum of feminists. | |
| I'm not going to do it. | |
| But look how perfectly she's setting it up. | |
| Come on, just you can't be mad at me, surely. | |
| Who have not only given me invaluable advice, but also broadened my perspective and reinforced my belief that we are all linked. | |
| That's like so profound, man. | |
| Let's have the privileged millionaires, white actress, go in front of a room with some of the most powerful people in the world and tell us about how we're all linked. | |
| We all belong to a long history of people who have made sacrifices, some groups much more than others, in order to make indefinably large contributions to our modern lives. | |
| How right you are, Miss Watson. | |
| Some groups have made much bigger sacrifices than others. | |
| Do you think that chap at the front who's ducking down to avoid bullets whizzing by ever made it home? | |
| We've seen seismic shifts in culture recently. | |
| I couldn't believe my eyes when I turned on the TV to see that Bud Light was plunging gender equality and equal pay as part of their current advertising campaign. | |
| That's absolutely fascinating. | |
| I'm sure that's helping women all around the world. | |
| We already have some amazing things happening, some amazing female leaders, but I don't know if I would have believed you if you had told me two years ago before I made my he for she speech that we might have the first female president of the United States. | |
| Please don't let me down, America. | |
| That's literally her only appeal to you, isn't it? | |
| Vote VAG 2016, signed Emma Watson. | |
| Why? | |
| Because it's about time there was a vagina in the White House that wasn't sucking a dick. | |
| A female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. | |
| Whose politics you probably deeply disagree with, but that literally doesn't matter as long as she has a vagina. | |
| Well, it's too nil up for the Conservatives. | |
| And possibly, for the first time in history, a female UN Secretary General. | |
| Wow. | |
| That's so meaningful. | |
| While women still only make up such a small percentage of political leadership, to quote the awesome Michelle Obama, because of these women, girls and boys all over the world will have real-life examples that women are leaders. | |
| It's so cute that she kind of flurbs her jaw and grips her fist like they will see that women are real leaders. | |
| You could have mentioned Angela Merkel. | |
| Why didn't you? | |
| Is it because she would be a terrible example of a female leader? | |
| In the last two years, if I have learned anything, if they have shown me anything, it is that nothing, nothing is impossible. | |
| And that's why tonight, as well as saying thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done, I ask you to recommit yourself to be a part of gender equality. | |
| I genuinely feel that we are closer to a gender equal world. | |
| Certainly closer than we were two years ago, and I know that each and every he for she has played such a huge part in that. | |
| I am proud to have been part of lots of amazing things in my life. | |
| But there is nothing that I am prouder of than being part of this. | |
| Thank you so much. | |
| Have a wonderful night. | |
| Well, that was fascinating. | |
| I do love hearing how Emma Watson feels. | |
| Let's see how Justin Trudeau feels. | |
| Shinzo Abe, who had to leave, he and I sit around the G7 table challenging each other on who can be better feminists. | |
| Oh, to be a fly on the wall in those conversations. | |
| But come on, Justin, let's hurry this up. | |
| We haven't got all day. | |
| Gender equality, gender equality. | |
| Man up. | |
| So on behalf of all the men and women and boys and girls of Canada, and indeed on behalf of all people in all nations, I thank all of you for your incredibly hard work. | |
| We are all so much the better for it. | |
| Jesus fucking Christ, Trudeau. | |
| How big is your ego as to think that you can speak on behalf of everyone on the fucking planet? | |
| You fucking lunatic. | |
| So this has all been fun and games, but I actually want to talk about Samuel Stanley, the president of Stony Brook University, who also gave a speech there. | |
| Here's his little bit. | |
| Now, before I let you take the stage, so I think this is really admirable. | |
| A lot of people don't know this, but Stony Brook University is the only campus in the United States that houses a center for men and masculinity. | |
| And this is truly exciting because he for she is working closely with the center on redefining what masculinity looks like. | |
| And honestly, I'm sure that Mr. Stanley will have some interesting thoughts on that. | |
| So it is an honor to introduce you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Isn't that interesting? | |
| The only university with a center for men and masculinities. | |
| We'll have a look at that in a minute. | |
| We'll just go through his little speech first. | |
| So I'm really honoured to appear here tonight in support of you and women's movement for gender equality. | |
| We had a press conference today. | |
| And at that press conference, I mentioned that this is a matter that really matters to me very much personally. | |
| I've developed a deep commitment to gender equality that's really rooted in my knowledge of the obstacles and barriers faced by my wife Ellen in her career as a physician scientist. | |
| The same career I had, she faced obstacles and barriers that I never faced at all. | |
| And now, one generation later, I'm seeing those same obstacles and barriers being confronted by our two daughters as they progress in the medical sciences. | |
| Would you care to name just one of these barriers? | |
| I mean, why are you running a clearly sexist university? | |
| What is preventing these women from going into any of these things? | |
| Like you said, they're in the medical sciences. | |
| What more do you need? | |
| I'm not willing to wait another generation. | |
| I don't think we should be either. | |
| We need equality now. | |
| See, people don't seem to realize, I think, how scary it is when you raise a concept like equality to be the highest concept that you're fighting for. | |
| It's not truth, it's not justice, it's not freedom. | |
| No, no, no, it's equality. | |
| a lot can be done to people in the name of equality that is a very very bad thing to have done to you. | |
| So that's why it's so important to me that Stony Brook University be at the forefront in the struggle for gender equality. | |
| And being one of the 10 he for she university champions provides a powerful platform to achieve that goal. | |
| And like with all of these speakers, they will never tell you what they are actually going to do in the service of achieving that goal. | |
| I have to tell you that I'm invigorated every day by the work our students, faculty and staff are doing to surmount and eliminate those barriers and obstacles as we try to move to a more promising future. | |
| At Stony Brook University, we're taking bold steps towards closing the gender gap in matriculation and graduation rates, integrating gender equality into all of the academic and the social experience. | |
| So correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like infesting every curriculum in your university with SJW bullshit. | |
| Am I correct on that? | |
| And as Trevor mentioned, building upon the outstanding work that's coming from our Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities to help drive a global understanding of the role of men in achieving true equality, helping them recognize that it is so beneficial to men that men benefit more than almost anyone in the drive to true equality. | |
| Well that's a big claim. | |
| I think we'd better look at the outstanding work that's coming from your center of men and masculinities. | |
| I'm sure it's going to be tremendously helpful for men. | |
| And it's not going to be some sort of Tumblrite SJW bullshit at all. | |
| Stony Brook University's Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities sponsors a blog called Masculinities 101. | |
| Masculinities 101 is a forum for activist scholars in the field of men and masculinities to draw connections between social science research and everyday life. | |
| We aim to support activist work by providing a scholarly context to contemporary issues of gender, race, sexuality and class. | |
| We promote critical race and feminist explorations of men and masculinities in order to engage activists and scholars in necessary conversations for social change. | |
| My balls are tingling at the very thought. | |
| I'm particularly looking forward to seeing about the scholarly work that's going on here in the realm of critical race and feminist explorations of men and masculinities. | |
| I mean this isn't going to be accusatory at all, is it? | |
| So let's check out some of the editors of this blog. | |
| Let's see just what kind of career paths they've embarked on. | |
| Amanda Kennedy is a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University. | |
| Her BA is in women's studies and feminist science and technology studies from the Harriet L. Wilkes Honours College of Florida Atlantic University. | |
| Her main areas of interest are race, gender, sexuality and the body, issues she approaches from a critical race slash post-colonial feminist perspective. | |
| Her dissertation focuses on the interactivist movement in the United States. | |
| Through interviews and content analysis of organizational materials, she is exploring the gender dynamics of a movement aimed at ending male circumcision. | |
| She is also actively studying feminist engagements with pornography. | |
| She teaches courses on race, gender, sexuality, media and technology. | |
| She has been a teaching assistant as well as a managing editor for the Men and Masculinities Journal. | |
| Now there is a biography that just screams impartiality. | |
| Marcus Gerk is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Stony Brook University, working primarily on issues of race, class and gender and masculinities more specifically. | |
| He completed his undergraduate work at George August University in Göttingen, Germany, and is also in the process of finishing a master's degree at York University in Toronto. | |
| His MA thesis deals with constructions of middle-class white masculinity in newspaper articles about the so-called boys' crisis in education. | |
| In addition to the issues of gender and education, his work also explores the intersections of whiteness and masculinity in right-wing politics in the US and Germany, as well as the intersections of masculinity and sports. | |
| These bios are brutal. | |
| Honestly, these are just the worst advertisements for anyone on anything ever. | |
| Tara Fannan is a PhD student at NUI Galway. | |
| She received her MA in sociology at the University College Dublin. | |
| Her main research interests are gender, disability, and the body-self connection. | |
| Her dissertation research uses feminist disability theory to investigate narrative accounts of identity and diversity, specifically the ways in which blind and visually impaired men claim, contest, and adapt dominant masculinity and disability narratives to construct a sense of self. | |
| Why? | |
| Tara teaches courses on contemporary society and sociology of health and medicine. | |
| She's the acting news editor letter of the Disabilities Division of SSSP and occasionally contributes to Metro Iran, Thesis Talk, Endangered Bodies Ireland and Endangered Bodies NYC, where she served as a board member and chief blog editor. | |
| And she's on Tumblr, of course. | |
| Okay, so let's start getting into the meat of what they're really doing on this blog. | |
| Let's remind ourselves exactly what the centre's meant to be doing. | |
| And as Trevor mentioned, building upon the outstanding work that's coming from our Centre for the Study of Men and Masculinities to help drive a global understanding of the role of men in achieving true equality, helping them recognize that it is so beneficial to men that men benefit more than almost anyone in the drive to true equality. | |
| So with that in mind, let's take a look at a few articles. | |
| Only fags bottom. | |
| Recreating toxic masculinities in queer communities. | |
| No fats, no femmes, mask for mask, sane only, clean only, no blacks, Latin pappies plus plus, discreet, daddies, bears, twinks, PNP, top bottom, verse. | |
| Don't know what any of that means. | |
| If you've frequented hashtag the apps, geosocial networking applications are often used for men to find partners to have sex with, like Grinder, Jack, Scruff, oh yeah, constantly on them. | |
| You may be familiar with the phrases I listed. | |
| However, in a world where yes, queen is appropriated by everyone, cringe, and hashtag the apps are featured on primetime television, see how to get away with murder, terms like top, bottom, and versatile are gaining mainstream notoriety. | |
| Vocabulary that was once shared amongst the queer community has now taken on broader recognition. | |
| Just like there are hegemonic standards of performing straightness, so too is there a standard way of performing queerness. | |
| Queer masculinities in the 21st century still maintain a very tenuous relationship with sexual position. | |
| After all, queer men are still men, meaning that the masculinities of queer men are just as easy to challenge as those of heterosexual men. | |
| Sexual position and notions of passivity or activity define masculinity among and outside of queer men. | |
| Regardless of their physical build, intelligence, achievements, or gender expression, the act of bottoming is seen as passive. | |
| People strip men of their masculinity because of the way we construct the sexual role of bottom as passive. | |
| Further, passivity often translates negatively to femininity, and femininity often translates to weakness despite the falsehood. | |
| Well, this is some outstanding work that is really applicable to the millions of men in society who are feeling disenfranchised and don't really know what to do with their lives because they're being told that they're obsolete dinosaurs. | |
| Moving forward, we must think about how to practice healthier masculinities as queer men. | |
| Masculinities should not be rooted in our sexual behaviours or our gender expression. | |
| Wait, but masculinity is gender expression. | |
| This kind of thinking serves as a duplication of sexist power dynamics most commonly discussed in the context of heterosexual people. | |
| And honestly, such rigid definitions of masculinity stifle the opportunity for sexual exploration, sexual gratification, and an all-round fulfillment in life. | |
| I guess someone's tired of being told that he's a passive bottom. | |
| So, moving on then, let's see if we can find something that's a bit more relevant to men's concerns in the 21st century. | |
| It's a man's world for talking dogs. | |
| More of that outstanding work, I am sure. | |
| The following is cross-posted from the Vegan Feminist Network. | |
| Jesus fucking Christ. | |
| First, animals for whom we do not know the sexual gender we often presume to be male by default. | |
| Second, canines in particular tend to be masculinized. | |
| However, the predominance of masculine voices in media is well documented. | |
| Human or non-human, it really speaks to the patriarchal dominance of public spaces and experiences. | |
| Feminine voices only seem to be consistently ascribed to non-human animals on television in dairy commercials featuring farm cows. | |
| These voices are often matronly, as well, likely in an attempt to frame the product as something that is nurturing, healthful, and familial. | |
| How is this helping men? | |
| How is this helping anyone? | |
| Why does this exist? | |
| But okay, so he for she are promoting a center for the study of men and masculinities that appears to be absolutely pointless. | |
| But that's okay. | |
| Being pointless is not the worst thing in the world. | |
| I mean, being pointless is at least not harmful to other people. | |
| It's not like actively accusatory, right? | |
| Wrong. | |
| Of course it is. | |
| Nine months of hashtag masculinity so fragile. | |
| Women, cis and trans, femmes of all genders, gender non-conforming individuals, and more all over the world resonated with the hashtag that had gone viral by the morning of September 23rd, 2015. | |
| But this is the internet, where opinions are often louder and faster than in person or in the classroom. | |
| Meninists or men's rights activists, I love it. | |
| claimed that angry feminist women created the hashtag to disparage men. | |
| Well, didn't they? | |
| Social worker Dave Dubay astutely pointed out that the construction of blank so fragile is inherently a taunt. | |
| Publications ranging from BuzzFeed to Al Jazeera covered masculinity so fragile, but in the process of trending, the hashtag shifted from a conversation around the violence of misogyny to a conversation on gendered products and male egos. | |
| Just listen to this. | |
| Activists discuss gender and some academics discuss gender, but the violence of gender is not considered nearly enough for public discussions. | |
| Three recent incidents highlight this clearly. | |
| First is against trans people with the HB2 bill in North Carolina, and the second is the recent bombing of a trans-inclusive target bathroom. | |
| Even more recent is the attack on the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. | |
| When we discuss the hypocrisy of legislators praying for queer people, but not addressing American imperialism, hyper-masculinity and queer antagonism that leads to violent consequences against queer and trans people of colour, we are doing ourselves a disservice. | |
| In order to combat cis-heteropatriarchy, we must first recognise it. | |
| Literally the feminist equivalent of name the Jew. | |
| A hashtag that is described by the feminist writing about it as a taunt is the least accusatory thing you'll find on there. | |
| Masculinity is killing trans women. | |
| Masculinity is killing trans women, and more specifically, trans women of colour. | |
| Because they matter more. | |
| The concepts of masculinities and femininities are not themselves killing trans women. | |
| Okay, so, okay, you just contradict yourself a little bit there. | |
| or gender non-conforming people, it is instead the reproduction of toxic masculinities by folks who feel threatened by transgender women. | |
| This is not just an observation, but a statement that is proving more and more true with each murder of trans women. | |
| However, reported statistics do not accurately reflect the actual number of trans women killed every year. | |
| This is probably something to do with that cis-hetero-patriarchy I've heard so much about. | |
| I mean, it obviously can't be because the number of actual trans women that exist isn't very high. | |
| But I think that this was my favourite article on the whole blog. | |
| The most misandrous thing you can imagine. | |
| Risk in fieldwork as a young female academic interviewing men. | |
| Yes, this is exactly what you think it is. | |
| This is the danger, the inherent danger of a female, a young woman, interviewing men. | |
| Because of course, men are inherently dangerous and they're probably going to fucking rape her. | |
| My academic thinking is often prompted by very simple questions from friends, families or colleagues. | |
| Last week, I was talking about the fieldwork I have just started, involving going to men's homes to interview them about their care responsibilities. | |
| My sister asked me, is it safe for you to go into men's houses on your own? | |
| Come on. | |
| Come on, this is actually there. | |
| I swear to you, I didn't make this up. | |
| I'm not joking. | |
| I promise you, look. | |
| Raised by entering men's homes has been discussed in the academic literature about feminist methodology and reflexivity. | |
| Lee, 97, for example, emphasizes the issue of researcher research vulnerabilities and the importance of choosing where to interview. | |
| An emphasis on interviewer vulnerability sits very uneasily alongside feminist interviewers' ethical responsibilities to interviewees. | |
| For while interviewing a man in his own home may place women interviewers in potentially dangerous situations, conducting interviews in public places raises difficulties for male interviewees who might not want their experiences to be overheard, or might just want a private venue to brutally rape the feminist interviewing them. | |
| Seriously, this is literally what feminist academics discuss. | |
| They're like, well, I mean, I'd love to interview men, but I can't really go into their own homes because, I mean, they're men. | |
| Look how dangerous they are. | |
| I mean, good thing we've got the center for men and masculinities. | |
| And to the credit of this particular author, they do say this. | |
| After waffling on about herself for ages, she says, I am also uncomfortable with the assumption that men are always a risk. | |
| And it's also important not to make assumptions too readily about male participants because they might not be a rapist. | |
| This is from a 2015 video where Stony Brook University president pledged Stony Brook University to the He for She campaign. | |
| And this will sound familiar. | |
| He for She calls on men to pledge their support of equality for women and to stand together against gender discrimination and violence. | |
| As one of 10 He for She University champions worldwide, Stony Brook is committed to creating lasting change alongside our He for She partners. | |
| We pledge to close the gender gap in matriculation and graduation rates. | |
| Integrate gender equality into the academic and social experience and continue building upon the existing work of Stony Brook Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities to help drive a global understanding of the role of men in achieving true equality. | |
| At Stony Brook University, we're taking bold steps towards closing the gender gap in matriculation and graduation rates, integrating gender equality into all of the academic and the social experience. | |
| And as Trevor mentioned, building upon the outstanding work that's coming from our Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities to help drive a global understanding of the role of men in achieving true equality. | |
| Yes, it is basically the very same speech, but I don't really care about that. | |
| I care about the content of their 2015 video and just the way these men view women. | |
| Equality is a challenging concept. | |
| Respect is a challenging concept. | |
| Thinking about where it is that you can listen and care about someone else's thoughts, opinions, and emotions. | |
| Where it is that you can work toward understanding of yourself. | |
| And those are things that are very easy to do if you spend the time to think about them. | |
| I'd say one of the best ways you could help right off the bat in just a small way is just think before you speak. | |
| Think about who you're talking to and think about where you are. | |
| But more importantly, think about how someone might react to what you're saying. | |
| Try to gauge the situation. | |
| Gender equality is important to me because I am really focused on making it important to other people as well. | |
| So it doesn't just end with me caring about women's rights or all people's rights, really. | |
| It's really about getting other people on board and caring as well. | |
| And that's why I really like the he for she movement because it's a movement for solidarity that invites not only women but men and all people from all walks of life to come and get on board for gender equality. | |
| I think some people hear gender equality and they think that they need to change themselves and they only think about how they themselves can change their own actions. | |
| But something else that Sunbrook students can do is look for opportunities that they can be a bystander and intervene in situations. | |
| If you see someone that is being either harassed or just treated unjustly, you can step in and stop that yourself. | |
| So really looking out for opportunities that not only can you change your own actions but change other people's actions and experiences. | |
| We all have a vital role to play in this battle. | |
| When we empower women and when women have equal rights, we all win and that's something we all benefit from. | |
| So I think it's very important that every single person commits to action. | |
| This is a fundamental part of human rights and this is something that every person needs to fight for. | |
| Male students can start getting involved with he for she by being aware of what they're saying. | |
| So for example male students should try to make a conscious effort to avoid using gendered stereotypes or anything that would further propagate discrimination. | |
| Not only is the entire premise of this campaign to control and restrain men, if you think that women can't handle being spoken to in a certain way, then you don't think women are the equals of men. | |
| This is a kind of passive soft sexism that is for some reason just being roundly accepted. | |
| It's anti-egalitarian and it has been from the start and that was my complaint at the very beginning of the he for she campaign and it's still my complaint now. |
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