Laci Green is a YouTuber running a number of sex education channels in which she covers a wide range of topics that are arbitrarily considered taboo by many curricula across the world. Although she had a few rough patches early in her career with some unintentionally cissexist remarks, she has improved significantly over the years. Her work in the past year or so has been absolutely top notch and potentially expands access to sex education for those unlucky enough to not have it. I have an enormous amount of respect for Laci, and the importance of her work cannot be understated.
She is also a feminist.
Philip DeFranco, another YouTuber who I’ve already criticized for unironically using the term “Social Justice Warrior” as a pretext to dismiss arguments he dislikes, apparently has some kind of vendetta against Laci Green. There are at least two videos on his channel mentioning her by name, and as we all know, critical videos from cishet white men with large followings tend to create harassment campaigns which they seldom if ever acknowledge or even try to reign in.
The crux of what happened was that Laci asked YouTube to launch an inquiry into the use of her face in photoshopped imagery from a third YouTuber, self-styled “free speech absolutist” Roaming Millenial. The image in question ‘shopped an Indigenous headdress onto Laci’s face. Because Laci is white, and not an asshole, she likely would have been concerned with the integrity of her copyright. RM made a video accusing Laci of censorship–and (CONTENT NOTICE ALL THE TERRIBLE) Youtube’s favourite atheist assweasel goonsquad followed suit.
If you want to dive into that mess, you can find Laci’s response here where she tries to explain the situation.
…Never mind that even if the inquiry results in the Roaming Millenial having to take down the image, it would be YouTube enforcing Laci’s copyright, not Laci herself.
Now it seems Laci has a dedicated hate squad that go on to her videos, just to dislike them and spam the comments with trash. This can affect the visibility of her educational videos–and indeed, searching for Laci Green on Youtube now pulls up, on the first page: 1) Roaming Millenial’s whinging; 2) Bearing; 3) thunderf00t; 4) Sargon of Akkad; 5) Philip DeFranco; 6) Mark Dice; and 7) MrRepzion. And thanks to the comments, accessing her material is also like stepping into a boobytrapped tomb of internet nastiness.
In other words: Her content is now interspersed with misogynistic anti-feminist YouTube vomit drumming up an outrage machine over Laci asking her employer to review a potentially copyright infringing thumbnail–a right which all YouTubers have, including the anti-feminists–whilst accusing feminists more generally of drumming up outrage machines over unimportant things.
Yeah. Just… yeah.
Watch Laci’s below, which taught me a lot of things about Human Papilloma Virus. I did some cursory fact-checking and haven’t found anything that contradicts the videos numerous statements. Is there any content in that video that is reasonably objectionable? Now look at the number of dislikes. You’ll see that across most of her videos.
Do me a favour: Support this amazing sex educator and go out of your way to give her a few likes. Subscribe, show her some appreciation. Evidence based sex ed is so hard to find and we need to support that.
If nothing else, help push back against the tide of anti-feminists that are so popular on YouTube.
-Shiv
The abusive right wing is trying to destroy all that is good.
Laci Green dreams of a world where people know their own bodies and are comfortable with them. A world where people know and respect other people and their bodies. A world where people communicate, cooperate, and conscientiously avoid taking advantage of or shaming others. She is willing to spend time and effort to get the facts right and produce a series of videos promoting this world view.
Resistance seems to come mainly from two points of view:
People who enjoy, or wish to enjoy, privilege and the opportunities it provides to get what they want by using others as objects. Women having knowledge and control over their bodies is scary for many of them. The woman might say no. Lacking any positive attributes some men might never get laid. They could, if they really wanted to, learn respect and grow a personality. But that takes time and demands introspection and hard work … so no. Privilege and emotional violence is sooo much easier.
There are also people who simply hate the idea of someone clearly and openly wanting a better world and working toward it. Someone joyfully and enthusiastically fighting the good fight and being able to make changes makes their nihilism, depression, negativism, and sloth look bad. Big tough guys hiding in their mommas basement afraid to step out and work for a better world are getting shown up by a girl. That’s gotta sting.
A subset of this group are people who “get their kicks stomping on a dream”: