Laci Green details her journey from a Mormon upbringing to a feminist icon, explaining how her 2007 YouTube channel evolved into over 300 educational videos before severe depression forced a hiatus. She critiques the weaponization of labels like "homophobe" and "transphobe," arguing they alienate rather than educate, while defending due process in rape accusations despite supporting survivors. Green advocates for factual sex education in middle schools, challenges the biological basis of gender gaps, and urges reclaiming feminism by rejecting shame-based censorship, ultimately suggesting that many anti-feminists actually align on core social issues like gay rights. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, people, we are live on the YouTube and the Facebook, and joining me today is a sex educator, a YouTuber, and apparently a very controversial person.
And for the record, you did say to me before we started that nothing is off the record.
We're just gonna talk it out.
Alright, so for the people who have no idea who you are, for the non-sort-of-YouTube crowd, who the hell is Laci Green and how did you get here into that chair?
Yeah, uh, well I'm a sex educator, so, you know, the basic story is I grew up Mormon.
My family is... was, it's less so now, but was very religious.
And I grew up in a very religious, insulated community, and as a teenager I had a lot of problems around sexuality stuff, with sexual identity stuff, and safer sex, not getting pregnant, you know, making good decisions, trying to be... I was trying to be safe and healthy, and there were no adults in my life that I could ask about this stuff, and I carried around a lot of sexual shame and guilt.
About who I am.
And so, you know, this was around the time that YouTube started becoming a thing.
2005, 2006.
So in 2007 I hopped on YouTube and just sort of started ranting to my camera about Mormonism and about, you know, how messed up I think it is.
And that sort of grew a following and that evolved when I went to Berkeley to get my degree.
I started focusing more on Helping teenagers like myself who are in these really insulated environments, had no one else to go to, who are hopping online trying to find people and information, you know, to deliver that information to them, to be a friend to them, and build a community around that.
That was sort of this retreat from these very, you know, oppressive religious environments.
In retrospect, does that seem like a crazy time for you that you had all these feelings and it's one thing to have those feelings and share it with your friend or share it with, you know, a therapist or whatever it is, but you jumped on YouTube of all places at the nascent time of YouTube.
It was kind of a, it was a crazy time in my life, but it was also when I look back on it, it's like, wow, that was really cool.
You know, I just sort of was using what was available to me, and I really like what I've built.
You know, I've been able to build a library of over 300 videos that explore all kinds of facets of sexuality, and met young adults all over the world, and really have this amazing experience connecting with other people, and in doing so, really healing from a lot of the stuff that had hurt me.
There's an interesting, it's sort of like a rollercoaster, but there's something, your comfort level when talking about the sex stuff.
Because even though I think because of the internet people are much better about talking about this stuff in general, there's still a lot of awkwardness talking about sex stuff.
Oh, God, I'm embarrassed that I can't remember this because it's such a critical juncture for me
in my YouTube journey. It's the good old days.
It's the good old days, yeah.
Yeah, but I want to say it was about when people would say, no homo.
It was like a silly little rant about, no homo!
You know how silly it was that people had to say they were not gay in talking about any sexuality stuff.
Anyways, YouTube featured this thing and it blew up and it got over a million views and that was the first time I actually started making some money on YouTube.
I was 18, I was taking out loans for college and I was like, I can pay for college!
I can pay for this year of college with this video!
Yeah, so we're gonna talk about some of the controversies and some of the stuff that's happened in the last couple months, but do you, oh yeah, we're gonna talk about it.
But do you remember the first time that you got sort of pushback against one of your videos?
Like the first time you realized that the mob was out there?
Because I was talking about religion, and you know, this is sort of my journey from Mormonism to atheism in the beginning, and I was, Really angry about religion.
I was very unapologetic.
I said some kind of problematic stuff, you know?
I stand by it, though.
You know, I stand by how I feel about it.
And if people get offended, that's fine.
But, you know, that's how I feel.
And, um, yeah.
I got pushback from the religious community first.
And always.
Because the sex ed stuff isn't exactly...
You know, friendly to a lot of religious stuff.
And then I started getting pushed back when I started talking about the intersection of sex and being a woman and sort of my experience being a bisexual woman and like the ways that I have experienced sexuality.
And that sort of led me to the feminist stuff.
And that was a much bigger backlash, I would say, against the feminist stuff.
Did you have any sense that it was becoming, that even though you were just talking about sort of a sliver of this through feminism, that it really did represent this whole other political thing?
I mean, I was talking about, like, being empowered in the bedroom.
You know, like, feeling okay, if you're a woman and you want to have sex or whatever, the key is that it needs to be safe and consensual.
Slut-shaming is bullshit.
You know, you shouldn't be telling women who they can sleep with, how many people, whatever.
You know, the bottom line for me in helping young women It's helping them understand that their body belongs to them and no one else.
And then there's the government, and there's all these people, their peers, you know, there's their parents, there's religion, there's all these people, these forces, telling everyone.
But for me, as a young woman, you know, that lens was how I experienced it, telling me how to experience sexuality.
Because when I watched the old videos, even to the new ones, even though you've had an evolution, you always struck me in all these videos as you know what you think.
So even if that line of thinking has changed, you just always struck me as confident, this is what I think, this is who I am.
And even in the early, it didn't strike me as particularly judgmental either, which is what I think a lot of the people who now fight against feminists think they're all so judgmental.
But your early stuff didn't hugely strike me that way.
I don't want to go too far into the Mormon thing, but I do want to do it a little bit because one of the things that I find interesting, and I've had several Mormons on the show including Glenn Beck, one thing I find interesting about Mormonism is it's the one that you're always allowed to make fun of.
Yeah, that's true.
It's one thing for you as a Mormon to do it, right?
Because everyone's allowed to make fun of their own religion, so Jews obviously make fun of Judaism, Christians can make fun of Christianity, etc, etc.
But it seems like Mormonism everyone's allowed to, and not only is everyone allowed to, it's celebrated.
So the Book of Mormon is the biggest hit on Broadway.
I think there is something interesting about Mormonism in that, you know, it's not a proselytizing religion, even though that's kind of their reputation.
Their whole thing, at least how they talk about it is.
They have the missionaries, but their whole thing is you let people have their faith, right?
And so we believe we have the one true faith, but if other people don't see that or believe that theirs is the one true faith or whatever, the idea is you don't impose it on other people.
And so maybe that's where that comes from, but I also think it's acceptable to make fun of it just because it's like such a new religion, you know, so it's not had all this old history and Mormons are still trying to establish their place in the Yeah, so when you started doing these videos and your family's Mormon and I got what you said, they sort of weren't aware.
But we have, I mean, I've been doing it for 10 years now.
So there's been an evolution there.
And I, you know, I've grown up and I've, you know, grown into this a little bit more of a like, I don't really care what anyone else does or thinks, including my own parents.
You know, I used to be mad at them.
I'm not really mad at them anymore, and I think that makes it easier to have a relationship, and we connect over things that aren't religion, because, you know, I'm an adult now, so we have a more adult-parent relationship, which I think is easier than the kid-parent relationship sometimes.
Yeah, exactly, and that's how it did, and that's, you know, things are fine and great now, but there's a little bit of, you know, some pain in the past.
So I think this is a common misconception about this whole situation,
is that I didn't think these things before.
I did.
I thought all these things before.
All of the things that I have said and will continue to say that are going to piss some people off are things that have always been in my brain.
And if you look at my old videos, this is what I was saying in the first video I posted, if you look at my old videos where I'm talking about religion and stuff, It's always been there, right?
But what happened was being in this environment where I'm suddenly very, very hyper-aware of making sure that the first priority is the people in my audience, the first priority is making sure that they have a support, you know, support and information about sexuality stuff and that it's empowering, I sort of got I don't know, like, moved into this sphere of people who I am not necessarily politically aligned with.
Like, I am, but I'm also not.
You know, like, I don't adhere to this super, super lefty stuff, and I never have.
It's heresy, and I felt a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure from around the world, from people to sort of maintain this peace and calm and just sort of go along with it.
And I did as long as I could, you know, with the politics, with the gender politics stuff.
That's really what I got swept into, is by being like a sex-positive feminist.
Right, and I want to unpack a lot of that stuff, because I'm even watching what's going on on Twitter now with people that you've been debating or talking to, and there's so many of the words that go over people's heads, I think, and confuse people.
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to go too far into it because I'm sure nobody cares, but it isn't actually a medication.
I found out that I have a genetic mutation which causes my body to process folate differently.
And to produce prolate differently, I should say.
So it was about fixing, she basically looked at all the chemical cycles that make your brain be happy, and filled in the blanks of the things that I was missing to make those chemical reactions happen.
So now I take a handful of pills every day, and I am so happy and fine, and I feel like myself again.
To prepare yourself for what was to come, which I think... You have to.
Yeah, but I think so many people, especially online people, we sort of go from like one crisis to the next one, or one news cycle to the next thing, or... You could have done a really great spit take right there.
unidentified
That would have been... I'm gonna keep it classy today.
The depression and then all the pressure from all the political environment, all the pressure I was under as a YouTube feminist now somehow managed to become the face of feminism on YouTube.
And I was like, how did this happen?
I can't handle this, I'm a mess.
I am a mess and I gotta sort this out.
Otherwise I gotta quit YouTube.
And that's when I started telling myself, I'm quitting, I'm done.
So just to show the way you've evolved, the night of the election, I think, when you were still sort of, I guess, on the other side of this, so to speak, you tweeted something about the evil white men of America.
Yeah, yeah, and a little bit after that, I think I did publicly invite you on the show, and things got lost in the shuffle and all that, and you were going through your own thing and blah, blah, blah.
There's a lot, yeah.
But I think it's interesting, because even for myself, it's like, here I saw someone say something that I obviously disagreed with, but that need to always attack everybody.
There might always be this low level, but I feel like people are like, we're always going to have this problem, therefore we shouldn't talk about it or address it because we can't get rid of it.
And I would agree that to some extent, it will never be completely gone.
Yeah, I don't mean that, look, yes, and you're right, maybe we can get it to just be whatever its lowest number could be.
Yes, let's lower it.
Let's lower it as much as possible.
But when you saw the reaction to that type of tweet, because I do see a lot of the people that are in this new space you're in, they hate the way now sort of white people are being, like it's just so easy and boring to attack white people.
And it, you know, there is a time and a place for that sort of analysis, but it isn't the time and the place that it's often used online, I think, including that tweet.
It's kind of changed my life in the sense that I'm like, who can I really talk to about these things that I'm not ready to just go full out public with yet?
I'm still a human and I need to process these things.
Yeah, your question was about... Well, basically, so you do the work for yourself, you take the time off, it costs you money, like you actually did what you had to do for yourself.
Well, like in the video, I talked about how people have tried to physically intimidate
me in person.
People who are feminists, who I agree with on stuff.
You know, maybe not 100%, but like 90 maybe, I don't know.
And people who try to gang up on me, who threaten to rape me, who threaten to, you know, I had this group of people at a, it was like a group of trans activists folks who threatened to punch me in the face when I was in a parking lot.
His story is super fascinating, but he's also sort of this, like, gender-bending, you know, sexuality, just sort of a fluid, interesting person around that stuff, and I found that empowering, you know?
And so I was a really big fan, and I made this fan video to him, and at the time, Chris had called himself a T-word.
And I regret it, but at the same time, it's like, oh my God, how many times
do I have to be sacrificed at the altar for this?
And yeah, I've had a lot of experiences like that, just moving through the feminist world
and just being shown no mercy.
Nobody ever wants to assume that you are just a person who means well, you know?
You always mean the worst.
It's always that you're a bigot, you know?
You are just a racist.
You are just a transphobe.
That's who you are, and we hate you for it.
And that's kind of been my experience moving through this world, even though my whole thing is like, I don't think people should hate people because of Their skin color or their sex or their gender identity or whatever.
So even though you said a couple times that you always sort of had these feelings, was there ever a moment for you that you really were in it like that?
Like, did you ever, because it becomes, you can almost become drunk with power in a way when these people are going, you know, when they're backing you.
I know, but they never backed me, and I've never thought that behavior was okay.
You know, if I've ever said anything that came off that way, it was purely accidental, or being pressured to talk about it that way, because otherwise I would be, you know, on the firing line.
But I've never, I've never condoned the SJW stuff.
And I've never, even though I've said and done a few things that are regrettable, you know, I don't feel that on the whole my work embodies any of that.
I think it is very different than that.
And I'm very opposed to it.
I think it's really toxic and destructive and very hypocritical.
I want to talk to people because I think things have gotten a little out of control in the feminist sphere.
It's super pro-censorship.
Like, overtly.
Like, we are going to campaign to get you censored.
You know, and I actually had a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, this is actually, I'm still processing it, a good friend of mine who, you know, is campaigning, after I came out with this stuff, a good feminist friend of mine, we had planned to go travel together, and we've been, we've traveled a lot together already, who decided to, who wanted to make a petition, you know, to shut my channel down, or I don't even remember exactly what it was, but I was just like, what the hell?
This is someone I'm pretty good friends with.
It's very overtly, we don't, the goal is to silence.
No other opinions should be heard because it's oppressive.
So even though you intellectually knew that that thing existed, Were you shocked when it became that personal?
Because I had the exact same thing, even though for me it wasn't talking about feminism, but when I started talking about what I saw wrong with the left and the speech stuff and the authoritarianism, I lost a ton of friends.
coworkers of mine stopped talking to me, but friends, I mean, people, some people
And the reason I'm asking you this so specifically is because, and I'm sure you do too, but I get a ton of email about this, that from my audience, when they start talking about this stuff or they share clips or whatever, that suddenly friends are blocking them or de-friending them and all that stuff.
It's such a bizarre, arbitrary high bar, and it's not a good precedent for friendships and relationships, and I never liked it.
I never felt connected to those people.
There was maybe only one Or two people that I really felt like we had a connection who turned on me publicly.
But then, like, all these people that are internet friends of mine, who I've never met in person or anything, but who, you know, we share each other's work, we talk online, whatever, also turned on me.
So it's been sort of this ripple effect as people just sort of, you know, cast me out of the club, and that's been very revealing, you know?
If this is what gets you thrown out, then fuck you, throw me out.
It's like you have this community that is organized around moral principles, And you feel really repressed and shamed and restricted whenever you commit a thought crime, and you have to confess, and you have to apologize when you make a mistake, but your apology is never really good enough.
You always are, deep down, an original sinner.
And you have to be cast out.
You're gonna be excommunicated if you make too many mistakes.
Yeah, so okay, so you lost friends, your audience had all sorts of issues dealing with New Lacey, all of this stuff, but so let's get away from the bad for a second.
Let's talk about the new community that you've been welcomed into.
Because now you're in the community that on the online side of it, the YouTube side of it, it's mostly the people that I love, like this great community.
And I saw you were at VidCon with a lot of these people.
Well, I went into it prepared to forgive him, even though I would say, you know, Carl has been the root of a lot of the pain from the anti side for me.
Not just because he goes around claiming things like I lied about being sexually assaulted.
You know, that really, that's a really shitty thing to do.
But also because when I was getting bomb and shooting threats at the schools that I was visiting, we had like traced where some of these people were coming from and they were big fans of Carl.
So, you know, there was just sort of this proximal connection to him as well, with a lot of online harassment and the real world threats that I was getting were mostly coming from his little corner of the internet.
You know, I have had a lot of trouble with Carl's stuff, with the way that he's talked about me, with the way that he has portrayed me to people, you know, sort of lying about things, distorting things I've said.
But my, in my mind, like, there's a context, you know, I think that I don't know.
I'm still making sense of it, but I don't, I don't want to hold on to any of that, you know?
And I know that people have been telling me, like Chris had been telling me, even when this all started, I was like, I'm absolutely not forgiving Carl.
Like, I just can't.
I can't do it.
But after talking to people and, you know, I actually talked to Carl first online.
I reached out and I was terrified and I did it and it was fine.
I mean, I think there's a lot of people out there.
I'm referring to the specific genre of content online, right?
Like all these people who make this type of videos online had come up and were going out for a night, you know, in LA.
And so I joined them and I just sort of ran into Carl on a street corner as we were moving our party elsewhere.
And that was the first time that I had met him.
And we just sort of stared at each other.
And he held out his hand to shake hands, and I was like, wait, you're not going to give me a hug after all this shit you put me through?
I think you owe me a hug.
And he hugged me.
He's a really big guy.
I'm kind of a shorty.
He's just like this big teddy bear.
He hugged me, and he just sort of leans down to my ear and says, I'm really sorry.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I regret it.
And, you know, we can spar out our differences, but I had no idea the pain that I had caused you.
And that, to me, was just, like, earth-shattering, because I had dealt with so much shit, you know?
And to be there, and to be on the street corner, you know, just being hugged by this person who I had been terrified of, and to realize, okay, it's not so scary.
He's a perfectly fine person, and everything's gonna be okay.
Was really... I will never forget that moment for the rest of my life.
It's just crazy because in this community, in the leftist stuff, the whole idea is we let people handle their problems however they like.
There's no right way to deal with being harassed or whatever.
That's a feminist mantra.
You do you.
Right?
Should be the feminist mantra.
That's my feminist mantra.
You do your thing, I'll be here for you.
You know, just don't hurt people.
But no, for me to deal with what I had dealt with in my life and then to forgive him, other people, I think what happened, other people took that as, oh well now I have to.
Give up my grudge, or whatever.
unidentified
I have to forgive him for... Which is great, actually, if you can challenge people, right?
I mean, I have made so many new friends that are just really cool, really smart, interesting people.
You know, we don't necessarily agree 100%.
I'd say like a lot of us, we agree maybe like 70% as opposed to 90.
I'm perfectly okay with that.
I don't even care if we agree 0%.
Well, we have to have some very basic agreements, I would say.
But, you know, it's so much—my world has changed, not just, like, healing from the depression stuff, but—and healing from, like, letting go of my pain around this stuff, but also now realizing that there is a place that I can be happy, people that I really enjoy, that are hilarious, and laughing more than I, like, ever have.
Like in the last five years.
They're so funny.
I just, I'm so happy with these, with this community.
But I'm like, the thing is, people assume, oh god, she must be like a total freak or something.
And like, sometimes.
But for the most part, it's like, yeah, you gotta live.
You know, I feel comfortable with my sexuality.
And I know, like, the mechanics.
I know, I'm like a textbook person.
You know, there's a difference between the textbook and the real life experiences.
The textbook helps me navigate the real life experiences, but I'm just a normal person, you know, just like everyone else.
Not to get too TMI, but with people I've been with in the past, there is sort of this weight on the relationship that's like, oh, you teach sex ed to millions of people.
Well, with trans folks, specifically, I'll talk about gender dysphoria, because I think that's actually one of the defining elements here that is easiest to understand.
Gender dysphoria, sex dysphoria, is where people are in their own body, and they are experiencing their genitals, and they feel, I don't have this, so I'm just sort of quoting from what people have told me, right?
Don't get mad at me, Internet.
They feel deep discomfort with their genitals, and this is a real thing.
It is a mental health issue that people struggle with, and it needs to be treated by a psychologist, and possibly by a psychiatrist, and that is just a condition that some people have.
And so, the treatment in that circumstance is for someone to transition their sex, to feel more comfortable in their own body, Right, to feel like their gender and the world around them matches how they see themselves.
And they can transition their body.
That's the medical transition.
They can transition socially, which is where they're like, OK, I'm going to call myself a man or a woman now, right?
And I'm going to change my name.
And then there's the legal transition, where you change your driver's license, all these things, right?
So there are different ways to help people move through the world in a way that's more comfortable for them.
And, you know, a lot of people get all freaked out about it, and I think the whole, like, you need to sleep with people who have genitals different than what you prefer, it flames that paranoia.
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's fine until, you know, you told me who I need to sleep with.
Yeah, yeah, wait, let's pause on that, because I want people to understand that.
So there is this sort of contingent of people who think that even if you're okay with trans people, That you should still be okay with sleeping with someone who doesn't have the genitals you like, otherwise that in and of itself shows some sort of bigotry.
And not only is it about what you're telling me to do, it's about what you're saying about who I am.
That I am a bad person for having different sexual preferences.
And this comes back to the shame.
It comes back to the sexual shame.
And I'm like, the whole goal in the gender and sex positive movements is that we don't shame people.
We don't make people feel bad.
Even if their preferences are problematic.
There are some applications of that, like the more extreme stuff, like the pedophilia and the bestiality, which are different contexts.
But even, you know, stuff that is like, oh, you know, you are transphobic, or you are, you know, a little bit sexist or whatever, like that kind of stuff, The solution isn't to shame them.
The solution isn't to make them feel like their sexual preferences are bad.
Because sexual preferences aren't something you just choose in your head.
You know, they're a way you feel.
And people feel like that's sort of outside of their control, and it is.
You know?
So telling them you need to control this, otherwise you're a bad person, when we're talking about safe and consensual sex, is an incredibly problematic message to send to people.
For me, as a sex educator, who wants people to feel comfortable and okay?
I don't think every person, even right now in 2017, as I tell you this as a married gay man, I don't think that every person in America, a Christian conservative who lives in the middle of the country, that isn't okay with gay marriage yet, and maybe never will be, I don't think that inherently makes them What do you think a better word would be?
I would like to show them that gay people are like everyone else.
I wish that they would be a little more open-minded or something, but this word phobia or transphobia
that you fear them, I feel like it's not the right word.
And this is where we all get lost in labels and all that kind of stuff.
But I think when you put the phobia thing on it, I think it just pushes those people the other way.
And I know, look, I think every gay person knows this, when you come out to people, even your friends that maybe were a little weird about gay people or whatever, that's how you change them.
Because I think a lot of these things stem from fear.
A lot of our Like a tribalist sort of fear, I think is what some of it comes down to.
The problem for me is calling you a homophobe or a transphobe or using this as a shaming device instead of a device to help people understand how their perception has been shaped.
So, you know, if I'm dealing with a guy who's, you know, talking to me in a pretty sexist way, which happens, you know, he's like staring at my boobs, he's like, you know, treating me in this way that I'm like a piece of meat that he's gonna try to like round up and take home, you know, and it's like, oh my god, give me a break, right?
I'm not gonna be like, well, you're a sexist.
Even though I'm like, this is sexist, right?
That's not going to help him understand why this approach that he's taking to talking to me at this bar is not working, right?
I'm going to say, well, right now I feel like my experience of this situation right now is this, this, and this.
And this is why I don't think it's a good thing.
If I was going to sit down and explain that to him at a bar, I wouldn't.
But if it's like a guy friend of mine, right, and he's behaving in this way that's like, you know, kind of putting women off or being disrespectful, I'm going to explain why it's disrespectful and, you know, have a conversation about it and hopefully try to understand where he's coming from so that, you know, we can have a good productive exchange to sort of chill out that behavior, if indeed that is a problematic behavior, right, and he can dispute my claim that it's sexist or whatever.
But that to me is the approach.
You know, the approach is not to name call.
And these terms, sexist, racist, homophobic, these have meanings, right?
And they have a place, they have a time, but I think they should be applied more to systems, like referring to systems stuff.
Like this law that says gay people can't get married is homophobic, or whatever.
As opposed to this individual person is uncomfortable about blah blah blah and they are homophobic.
Well, like, yeah, when people say, oh, you need to sleep with someone who has genitals that are different than you prefer, and if you don't, you're transphobic, I would say that's not transphobic.
unidentified
Yeah, I would say that's actually... And in fact, you're homophobic.
But every now and again, because their stuff is so sort of base level, you can use it against them pretty effectively, I think.
Even though it's not the pawn that I prefer to play in, or the game that I want to play in.
All right, so one other thing, and then we'll take a quick break, and then we'll do the Q&A.
As you're talking about this, I'm curious, I don't know that I've seen you do anything on the men's rights stuff, but do you think, or first off, have you done anything really on the?
Not on the men's rights movement, per se, but I have done stuff about men's rights, particularly around sexuality stuff, like male sexual assault and circumcision are the two issues that I've tackled, because that's in my sex ed sphere.
not necessarily the stuff that is more broadly men's rights.
I think that there's too much, like, telling people what to think and shaming them for thinking things instead of sort of, if you think what someone says or does or thinks is wrong, You should talk about that and not just, I don't know, come bring the band hammer down.
Well, that's why your adventure, and when you started coming out, so to speak, I was like, I've got to talk to her, because I was like... Because the thing that you're going through now, that I've been through, and it never stops, really.
Like, there's no moment where you're like, oh, it's over, and now we're clean and clear.
But so many people are going through this in their own lives.
Please ask Lacey about whether she thinks prescribing children puberty blocking drugs that will affect them for the rest of their lives is a good idea.
No, I think one of the main things that people need to do is really, everyone, even people who think they're committed to the dialogue, need to really be checking themselves to make sure they're actually behaving in ways that promote dialogue and be open-minded.
I mean, that's really what it comes down to.
You can have your own opinions and you can be very passionate about them too, but you can also respect that there are other opinions A person might have an opposite opinion and be very
passionate about that as well.
We should try to understand that.
I think a commitment to listening, a commitment to questioning our own beliefs, a commitment
to hearing other people's perspectives and really deeply considering them, and also making
sure you fully understand your own opinions as well, all of those things would promote
I'm going to have my guys cut that one minute, and those are going to be Laci's rules for fixing the universe!
We've sort of discussed this one a little bit, but Patreon, why do there have to be two sides?
What about the center?
So I've been talking about this new center thing for a while, and I think it has a really wide net, and sometimes you're going to get caught with some people that you strongly disagree on some things, but I think if we can get the basics of people that want to live in a logical, decent, tolerant society, then we've got a pretty good center.
Well, just like I had a little bit of anxiety about dating a sex educator, which is fine, but I think it becomes pretty clear right away that there's no need to be freaked out.
And that's what I was saying about the moral systems stuff.
I think that anytime there is sort of this community that is organized around values, morality, there is the possibility, not always, it's not to say we shouldn't organize around our values, we should, but it lends itself to the possibility of becoming sort of zealous.
And the question for me is how to keep that in check.
The tribalism, not so much, I would say, in terms of the moralizing stuff.
Like I don't know that religion is, my experience of religion was tribalist necessarily.
Yeah, well, it's funny the way you describe that, because people always say, well, how could you be a left libertarian?
But I think you kind of hit it there, that you're for the maximum individual freedom, but you want some controls over corporations and... Yes, over business and...
With all the pronouns, I think that language is meant to be pragmatic.
It's meant to communicate, you know, a lot of information quickly.
So I take a more... I understand, for me, in a sex-ed classroom or in any of these contexts that I work with individuals and teenagers, I will use whatever words they want.
I don't care how silly anyone thinks it is.
I will defend it to the grave that when you're in an individual context where someone needs to feel respected, you know, I'll use whatever words you need.
All right, and don't get mad at me if I mess it up, right?
Because that's where it gets like, because I might mess it up!
But in terms of like, legally, I don't think that makes very much sense.
There are healthy ways to incorporate it into a relationship if both people want to.
That needs to be like a mutual thing.
But I think there are unhealthy ways to use it.
I think some porn can be, you know, my main concern with porn is that I hear from 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds who are seeing hardcore pornography as their first experience with sex.
You know, that's the first sex ed they get.
That's not porn's fault, necessarily.
It's like a lot of things, and I think one of the biggest things is that we don't have, like, real conversations about sex with young people in this country to equip them to deal with things like porn, to deal with things like sexting, or, you know, even just basic relationship stuff.
So the porn sort of exacerbates a problem in the sex ed world that's already there.
And I'm anti-censorship, so I say make whatever porn you want.
And kids, literal children, you know, eight and nine-year-olds.
I think there was, I can't remember the statistic, but an alarming number of nine-year-olds are finding hardcore pornography.
And yeah, I worry about that.
And then I've also talked to a lot of men who, because of the way that Well, we think.
This is sort of controversial science still, but, you know, we have this increasing threshold in the brain.
You know, are we sort of desensitizing ourselves to the more common sexual experiences that people have because of this highly stimulating, like, super, super stimulating imagery?
If you see super stimulating stuff all the time, does everything else sort of get moved?
I think that, you know, creators do have some sort of an obligation to discourage it.
Like, if you see an angry mob forming because you're upset about something and you share that with the world, and then people, you know, the frothy mouths come out, it is time to say something.
Be like, yo, calm down.
Like, let's all bring it down a notch because you are the, you're sort of a leader in the community, right?
So if you see the community getting a little crazy, Maybe say something about it, but ultimately it's not my responsibility what people in my audience do.
It's not Carl's responsibility what people in his audience do.
And it wouldn't be fair for me to be like, this is your fault.
You can be as angry as you want online.
And that's the thing where I disagree with feminists.
It's like, well you need to tone down your rhetoric or you need to chill out because you're making people mad.
And it's like, well, you know, that's a slippery slope because a lot of things make people mad now.
I'm curious, when your channel was really growing, like I've noticed that my audience, especially on YouTube, when my channel was smaller, like the comments were a lot cleaner and on point and things like that, then we hit some threshold that I think most channels grow, most hit, where then it started getting bananas.
And if right now we were to look at the live chat, of course, it's completely insane.
And by the way, if everyone knows I'm a free speech, I'm as hooligan as they can all say whatever they want.
But do you happen to remember a moment when it went from like,
oh, these are my core people following me, to now like, there's something else going on here.
Like, I think the context is... Well, that I think that the... I guess that the hysteria and the war on words and political correctness has now made it so that people are afraid to laugh.
Right.
Or that even if you're 100% for trans people, but you can still be afraid to make a joke that then, you know, they pin you.
No, I think that that is a side effect of this problem.
That's actually a big side effect because people need to laugh.
People need to relax and have a good time.
And even if they say something that's like a little bit fucked up, stop acting like that's causing genocide.
You know, like it's not, we go from zero to a thousand, like so quick, and it's like, look, I agree that jokes, like something I've talked about a lot is rape jokes, right?
I agree that there's sort of this insidious thing that can underlie some jokes, like jokes that are like, ha ha, you got raped.
You know, for me, as someone who has experienced sexual violence, it makes me uncomfortable.
I don't think that people should not be able to say rape jokes, or that they can never be funny.
I just think, you know, one, don't expect everyone to laugh all the time.
But also, let's lighten up a little bit, because sometimes the comedy can be healing, you know?
I'd say the campuses were, like, one of the main places that I started to see a lot of this stuff.
Campus and online.
Okay, online is the main place.
I should correct that.
But campuses, yes.
You know, there's a really high level of sensitivity and it made me really nervous to, like, say anything or do something wrong.
Some of these schools that I've walked into that have very, very ultra-left reputations have been terrifying and they've some of these students
have treated me like dog shit like absolutely and it's like wow i'm here like talking about
the things we both care about you know these students have attacked me just like crazy
stuff um i i am worried about that because academia is a place to question
It's a place to really be pressed, you know?
And to really be pushed on how you see things, to really learn how to think.
That's what college is about.
It's not about what you learn.
It's about learning how to critically evaluate information.
You learn how to do research, you learn how to argue with different ideas, you read different philosophers and things that are wild and out there.
And you learn how to think about, you know, evaluate what they're saying.
If we don't do that in academia anymore, if that's discouraged in some way because we can't hear a speaker because it might hurt some feelings, might be controversial, if that isn't happening anymore, what the hell is the point of going to college?
And I don't think this is a really widespread problem.
And yet, in a bizarre twist, a school like Evergreen State, that's a lefty, lefty, lefty school, is now having all of these free speech problems and racial problems and all that.
He prepared for it to eat his soul.
Right, exactly, there you go.
I think you answered this, but it's very pointed here already.
Like in sex ed, we talk about people who are gay and people who are trans, right?
I would say middle school is a good time, but the key is not to, one of the things that I've seen rightful panic happen on the more right side of, the politically right side of things, is like the imposition of, like suggesting to kids that you are this, Like, that's where I think the real fear comes from.
And good sex ed is not, it's not that at all.
It's just like, hey, some people are gay.
You know, they have dicks and they like dicks.
And some people are, you know, straight and they, you know, have penises and vaginas.
Yay.
And some people are trans.
This is just a thing.
So when you see someone who's holding hands with a man in public, don't freak out.
I have a great idea for a YouTube video that you have to do.
You need to do a video of something like, like the sex ed teacher who's over it.
You know what I mean?
Like, just like who has said this shit so much that it's like, yes, some people have dicks and they are dicks and she likes vaginas, what do you want me to do?
But that, in a way, it's the kind of funny thing of what you do, because these issues, and there's always gonna be new young people that need to learn about these things.
You can only find X amount of new ways to say them and all that kind of stuff.
I'd say generally not, but I will acknowledge that there is more nuance to these issues.
I just think it's really difficult to figure out how to navigate all of that.
But I do think in general, when someone comes forward about sexual assault, it's not my place to doubt, question, or probe them.
Be the arbiter of the truth.
As a crisis counselor, you know, someone who's worked in rape crisis counseling centers and these kinds of things, we listen and we believe what they're saying.
We do what we can to support them.
Of course, due process is very important.
Of course, you know, all these things that are in place to ensure the delivery of justice in our system should be there.
Yeah, and in a day and age of Twitter and everything else, that is a huge piece of this.
misuse of the system, and I think that it should be a punishable crime to lie about these things,
You know, like, maybe I'm giving them I don't know, sometimes they go to the internet because they don't know where else to go.
It's really complicated, you know, it's really complicated stuff.
But of course these issues are always, you know, there's many, there's many things to consider and I try to do that the best I can without being an asshole to rape survivors, you know.
Superchat, do you think that the similar suicide rates for pre-op and post-op trans people indicate that perhaps such methods of therapy are not effective or beneficial?
I have no, there's honestly been so many hit pieces about me at this point, calling me an outright Nazi, calling me a white supremacist, calling me a transphobe who hates black people.
Like every, every liberal, like every liberal hammer that could be nailed has been done.
Literally, the first thing I saw when I looked at my phone this morning was a good friend of mine who's been a guest on the show said, oh, this guy who we both know wrote a hit piece about you this morning, and he didn't link me to it, and I was like, whatever it is, I don't care.
Yeah, I mean, why would I care what some randos on the internet have to say about what I have to do?
Obviously, if you think that's true, you're not paying any attention to what I'm saying or doing at all, and in that case, you're not educated, you're ignorant, you're hate-mongering, and I don't care what you think.
So you're a post-op transsexual, meaning you've transitioned from, let's say, a man to a woman, and now you're the man, let's say it's a heterosexual relationship, the man now thinks that you were always, my language is not good, you were always a woman, or what would be the better way to say that?
But we should not, we should tell things, before you have sex with someone, you should tell them the things that may potentially make them uncomfortable.
That's sort of my policy.
And all people should be talking about stuff.
If you have had any STIs before, or, you know, maybe you're into something that's a little weird, don't just spring it on me!
Like, tell me first!
All those things should be talked about first.
And I think that if we create a world where it's more acceptable for trans people, it's more acceptable for them to move through the world and be seen as legitimate, valid human beings, it'll be easier to talk about.
Because you're not scared of someone violently attacking you.
Because they are transphobic.
And that's what transphobia is, right?
Is the violent attacks.
Because you feel like you have been threatened by their existence.
Because there's so much, because they do turn, they don't, it's not a SJW fest, which you, When I started watching it, I was like, oh, I'm going to end up hating this because they're going to be pushing all this stuff and all the language stuff.
Ah, my buddy ThatGuyT, he says, hi babes, do you believe that the hyper sexualization slash objectification of women in hip hop to be sex positive or sex negative?
I think what's sex negative is if the only place for women in hip hop is to be a sexy background dancer.
Right?
Like if we have all the hip hop and it's always like the dude at the center and then sexy ladies dancing around him, that's where, you know, the problem lies.
Because obviously not every single woman is going to want to be a backup dancer.
Have you changed your stance on the wage gap, given the overwhelming evidence pointing towards perfectly reasonable and non-sexist systemic or otherwise factors?
I still think, the research still shows a wage gap, but it does show that there is a much more complicated picture than the sort of 77 cents to a dollar Okay, this is super chat, this one seems to be going deep.
From a biological perspective, how to intersex conditions invalidate the sex binary classifications any more than trisomy 21 invalidates homo sapien classification, a disorder doesn't do that.
Yeah, so I think they're asking, they're saying intersex is not a third sex.
You know, you have sex, it's these two poles, you have male and female, and intersex doesn't say that there's not a sex binary any more than, I think, is it Down syndrome?
Any more than like different conditions say something about humans.
Patreon, how does Laci feel about all the research that shows a clear relationship between people who engage in promiscuous premarital sex and cohabitation are far more likely divorced as adults?
Is there no place in education for morality, particularly sex education?
Do you have no obligation to modify your advice if it's doing harm?
And if it is, we have to contextualize that research.
People are getting divorced more now, period.
When women earned the right to initiate a divorce a few decades ago, divorces went way up.
There's all these things that affect that.
And I think people see marriage as less sacred than they may have before.
People are more willing to prioritize their happiness.
If they're not in a relationship with someone that they like, They get divorced.
And the people who cohabitate, in this instance, they've been together for a while, they may eventually realize that they're not, you know, the ones who cohabitate are probably more likely to split up if they're not happy.
They cohabitate first, they've already been together for a while.
It makes sense that they might have higher divorce rates.
It doesn't mean it's because they're morally failing, in my opinion.
I just think that's an overly simplistic way of thinking of it.
Whereas I would see it as, well, people are just doing what they want more.
Berkeley has always had a strong history of protest.
You know, it's very much a part of student life.
If you have a problem or you want to talk about politics, we protest.
And it's beautiful.
It's like, you know, you get together on the weekend and you protest.
Whatever, you know.
But the problem, I think, now is that people are using Berkeley as a sort of site of their own political, like outside people are coming to Berkeley and are using it as a, I don't know, they're using it to their advantage.
When the students Students don't support that shit.
They don't want their university torn up anymore than anyone else does.
Nobody wants to be blocked off of the whole quad because some assholes caused a lot of graffiti and damage.
People did that when I was there, the Antifa people who live in Oakland, the city over.
They come over to Berkeley, they do the shit, and it always pissed the students off.
Or even the police sites, sometimes you see these people burning things, cops standing right in front of them, and it's like, why aren't you guys doing something?
Right, and that's like, does everyone have homosexuality deep down within them?
And it's like, no.
Like, some people are gay, some people are straight.
That's why the transphobia in the bedroom stuff is so silly, because it's like, you're gay or you're straight or whatever, and there's a little fluidity there, and people sort of discover themselves as they age and have new experiences, but...
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's like a deep-seated truth about homosexuality so much as it is a deep-seated truth about sexuality, period.
Have you ever done anything on sort of the way the gay community has changed?
Because I've seen a huge shift in the gay community just in the last, you know, I came out late in like my mid to late 20s.
I'm 41 now, and when the gay community, when I first was sort of going to gay bars and things, like, it was all about this, like, over-the-top political incorrectness, like, craziness, all the drag queens, all that stuff.
I never liked any of it.
I always thought, because I thought drag queens were basically bad comedians and I was doing stand-up, so, like, I never was into that, but, like, the political incorrectness and saying crazy shit and doing crazy shit.
That was encouraged.
It was encouraged, and now it's very much kind of fallen lockstep, believe what we believe politically.
There was a horrific article written about six months ago, written in either The Advocate or one of those things, about how Peter Thiel is not really gay because he doesn't fall into our political beliefs, that it's somehow a political ideology.
I mean, I've been talking to some older trans people who are like in their 40s and 50s, and it's really interesting because, you know, the trans movement has evolved in a similar way, it sounds like, to the gay.
I mean, they're kind of side by side, where, you know, people have, their feeling is, people's feelings are hurt way too easily, it's too politically correct now,
it used to be about fucking the system, now you become the system, this whole thing.
So, I don't know how I feel about it exactly, but my initial, you know, I've thought about it a lot, and my initial thing is, why would you want to give money to people who are, like, don't recognize your union, you know, who are assholes?
Now, you know, just go to a different bakery.
But, like, we live in LA.
Like there's nine million bakeries, right?
So you have a lot of choices so you can vote with your dollars and your cents.
Where I get a little bit more confused or conflicted is maybe there's only one bakery in your whole town that makes wedding cakes.
And now because you're gay, you can't have a wedding cake.
But either go to the town over, Or order a cake on Amazon, or leave that town.
These are all hard choices.
I don't say these things with any degree of like, this is the way it should be, or any of that.
But I think forcing a private company to do something, which then extends the state power over a private business, I just personally wouldn't want that.
I know it sucks, it's not fun, people give me shit for it, but I just don't think We live in a different time.
This isn't 1940, where that may have been the only baker within 50 miles.
And even if you live in a remote place, Amazon does deliver everywhere.
And just more excuses for state power.
This is somewhere where I definitely veer a little more libertarian on that, but I understand the good intentions, by the way, of the people that don't agree with me on that.
All right, we'll do this again and you can give me a fully thought out answer.
Superchat, given that we're a sexually dimorphic species, how likely do you think it is that the remaining achievement gap between men and women is biological?
So the question was, given that we're a sexually dimorphic species, how likely do you think that the remaining achievement gap between men and women is actually biological?
And I know this can be pretty controversial to some people.
I am of the—the reason why I'm a feminist is I am of the opinion that, you know, while men and women do have differences—males and females, I should say—do have biological differences that can—that lend themselves to slightly different behavior, with testosterone being slightly more aggressive and, you know, the The oxytocin and the bonding with the baby being the more nurturing hormones, things like that.
I do think that there are a lot of things that are being, a lot of inequalities for men and women that are being caused by our social environment.
So I don't think we're there yet.
And the reason I believe that is because when you look at other countries, it's different.
Which to me says, this isn't just like, because biology is across the world.
One more and I think this sort of will encapsulate a lot of things we've been talking about.
This is from Patreon.
Why has third wave feminism turned into this devastating tsunami of unreason?
Why has it so successfully taken over the PC media discourse the way that it has and how do we fight the unreason and get back to sanity?
This is hurting young people especially.
We've sort of talked this out already, but just this whole thing, the way feminism relates to media, relates to online and everything, just give me your best antidote for that.
I think feminists and leftists need to reclaim their causes.
And you need to stand up to people who are trying to bastardize and distort what we're actually fighting for, who are using shame, censorship, anti-science, manipulation, bullying, all this kind of bullshit to push a political, a radical political agenda.
I think people who are not down with those kinds of politics need to step up and say something about it.
Even though it's scary, you might lose friends, you might, you know, have to make sure you're in a place to deal with it, just like my own story.
Make sure you can deal with it, but do it because Look what's happening!
This is not going to help liberalism.
This is not going to help feminists.
I don't care what they say.
I do not see this helping anyone.
All I see is alienation, people getting angry and hostile to things they actually do support.
All of the antis, every anti-feminist that I've talked to so far, agrees with me on this basic shit about social issues.
They agree on the, you know, the trans stuff.
They agree with me on gay rights.
They agree with me.
And that's not to say everyone will, but a lot of people, this is just to say, a lot of these outspoken figureheads are turning against this bullshit, and in the process, the real base causes what we're fighting for is being lost.
And that's why I felt like I had to say something.
Ultimately.
It's because, holy shit, all of these people who were all in this together are now fighting over things because of these crazies.
We gotta distance ourselves from that.
It's gotten too out of control.
For a lot of reasons, but...
I would, my advice is to say something, be polite, be respectful, be willing to question that you could be wrong, be willing to check your privilege, alright?
But at the end of the day, you know, stand up for what is good and right, and what will actually make this world a better place.
And I knew that I was going to enjoy it, but I love seeing someone that the personal part of this matches up with the public part and someone that's on there.
That's on their own adventure too, that's what it's all about, and can show some vulnerability and want to figure out what the best way to go forward is.
We're gonna do five more minutes just for patrons.