It makes me twitch a little that these two at one point seem to want to convince males to change from disgusting sexism and personal attacks to other tactics in their attempts at getting laid, instead of changing because they actually respect women and want female "vloggers" to continue posting their videos. I guess maybe that's just too much to hope for?

In any case it's great to see that people are bringing attention to this problem, and that not all women are scared off the internets by some anonymous loser's derogatory and sexist comments.

They seem to have their hearts in the right place, but they're basically appealing to harassers' self-interest when discouraging them from making sexist comments. Why does it always have to be "sexist comments aren't gonna help you get laid!"? It should be "sexist comments are wrong, whether or not you get laid."

For the one or two of you who remember when I was posting (semi) weekly video posts, this is the amin reason I stopped. I got tired of deleting comments about my boobs, and my hair, and my face, etc.

From ones like this (saved b/c I wanted to remember the exact wording):

"You are a stupid ugly fuck. And a bad fuck too I know. Go practice blowjobing instead of talking"

While I appreciate the creation of the word blowjobbing, not impressed. Others were less coherent:

"the way you speak with the lilting voice and your quirky eye movement tells me that your not talking naturally: its as if your putting on an accent your not comfortable with.... which absolutely everything you say feel like a turd falling into my coffe cup... please stop breathing."

And of course, at least 3 people would post just "fat bitch" every time. Clear, but not creative.

Oh my god, Jen. That's terrible. I had no idea that's why you stopped. I liked seeing your face and hearing your voice. That's so fucked.
It really seems like there's a very big effort on the part of (some) men to push women out of the public sphere.

Oh Jen, please start those video posts again! Fuck those morons!

Gah... already with the crappy comments in YouTube for that one, including (my favorite) the one that completely misses the point:

"It's the cold, hard truth. The girl is pretty but isn't particularly gifted as a journalist. She's weather-girl material, no more. She knows this unconsciously, as she banks on her looks (m aybe unconsciously, but she does nonetheless). Women have to relaize that they'll be taken at face value depending on which front they present first. You can't demand to be appreciated for your brains, but fall back on your looks for an extra edge whenever it's convenient for you."

I've long since given up on YouTube's comments sections having anything decent or worthwhile to say.

And by "fall back on your looks" he means "fail to disguise your attractiveness." I mean, what is a pretty woman supposed to do? Ugly Betty herself up in order to be taken seriously? Otherwise you're "falling back on your looks?" We can't win.

to the youtube comment glossolalia posted:

ugh. god forbid she be pretty AND have something to say. when will she learn?

comments like that, the ones that actually attempt to reason in that awful condescending tone, are the ones that make me want to adopt 1000 babies and raise them to be better people. either that or remove myself entirely from society.

Just so you know, it applies even to older women - tho the comments are not sexual. The comments I get question my gender or some rant about women being stupid and wanting too much.

You just have to know that silence will never make it stop. I belive that this is all about male entitlement. Until women are properly represented, paid equally, advanced equally, as a matter of course, some men will feel threatened. The worst of them rape. Another tribe sits at their computers beliving that they really are extending control through internet comments.

Hey, its way too late guys, women are on the rise, best to get used to it and better to make peace with it.

The comments section in youtube is a frightening place to see the level of racism and sexism that are prevelent in society. If any one ever says to you that racism / sexism / etc no longer exist just point them in youtubes direction.

Would one solution be for women bloggers to just do a voice over and not show their faces? Show some images relating to their topic?

Many male youtubers do so (see liberalviewer)

That really fucking sucks, Jen. I miss your videos, and I had also wondered why you stopped. I never saw those comments. But yeah. That would certainly deter me, too.

They need to allow video authors to disable comments, they serve no purpose, a fact recently lampooned by xkcd.com:

"Fun game: try to post a YouTube comment so stupid that people realize you must be joking. (Hint: this is impossible)"

@Marcus- Youtube does allow disabling of comments.

Thanks all, I might get back to it soon, we'll see. The problem is, you want comments so people can, well comment. But even just deleting the awful ones is rough.

No one who knows me would ever say I don't have a thick skin, but damn. A constant barrage is still hard to deal with. Not that you can't deal, but it's hard to make it seem worth it, will all the other bullshit we deal with every day.

Certainly my mother harassing me about going to grad school and getting married are harder to take than someone on the internet claling me ugly, but I can't delete her comments (if only).

Certainly my mother harassing me about going to grad school and getting married are harder to take than someone on the internet claling me ugly, but I can't delete her comments (if only).

I hear ya about the mother part :) My parents are ultra conservative Republicans, and I'm a feminist liberal who lives in sin with her boyfriend. I'm atheist too, but not openly in front of Mom. I think the only thing left to make her truly hate me would be if I were a lesbian.

Sorry didn't mean to derail the discussion, but...ugh, MOMS!

Mary B,
I think the recipe for creating a bad-ass feminist woman is as follows:

2 conservative Christian parents
+
strict discipline
+
narrow gender roles

Seems like every feminist I talk to lately has been raised this way, haha. Myself included. I'm atheist too and my mom insists on emailing me stupid Jesusy fowards.

Jen, I LOVED your videos! In my Pollyanna way, I thought that perhaps you were taking the summer off. Perhaps you could have one of the other Feministing women delete the rude comments before you go through them? I'm pretty outspoken and badass, but if I had to read ten comments criticizing me for my fat-arms (my personal body issue), I'd feel pretty low. No need, just have a self-esteem editor so that you can read the dialogue without the red-carpet banter...

"They seem to have their hearts in the right place, but they're basically appealing to harassers' self-interest when discouraging them from making sexist comments. Why does it always have to be 'sexist comments aren't gonna help you get laid!'? It should be 'sexist comments are wrong, whether or not you get laid.'"

Doesn't appealing to your audience's self-interest make your audience more likely to actually listen to you, no matter who your audience is and what you're asking the people in it to do?

"Seems like every feminist I talk to lately has been raised this way, haha. Myself included. I'm atheist too and my mom insists on emailing me stupid Jesusy fowards."

My family's been secular Muslim for 2.5 generations and I've been feminist ever since I was a little kid and learned that feminism meant girls and boys can play with the same toys. :)

Sarah,

I was raised in a fairly liberal environment, and my mother expected me (read: pushed) to be a businessperson of some type. Of course, I'm a big hippy and the idea of living in a cubicle depressed me, so I rebelled against that. But yeah, huge feminist, never been Christian, gender roles weren't too expected of me.

But Mina, it's not like Internet harassers actually think their harassing comments are going to get them laid by the harassee. The well-meaning people in this video assume that's the motivation behind sexist harassment on the Internet. It makes no sense. But "it won't get you laid" is always thrown at guys in an attempt to get them to change their behavior. Who cares whether or not it'll get 'em laid? It hurts and silences women (I think that's the goal anyway). I don't see how it's possible to get them to stop what they're doing.
--
And I know not all feminists were raised that way. I was just making a joke; like maybe there's hope for all the little girls out there being raised in a conservative environment.

Sarah, I had to laugh when I read your recipe post. It certainly worked for me! ;)

Although, I lucked out with Mom. She's gotten relatively more liberal -- I like to think, in part thanks to my influence ;) She is accepting of the fact that my sister lives with her boyfriend (in fact she confided in me that she was worried because it DIDN'T bother her, and did that make her a bad mother? It was really cute) and she likes my openly gay friends and, when she's met them, their significant others.

Not necessarily, SarahMC. Seeing as my parents were both liberal atheists. But my stepmother was abusive. Maybe that's the key.

Absolutely agree with the gentleman in the video regarding it goes beyond the sexism. Imagine talking about the border, Chicana Feminism or Chicano Art on your blog and you get comments on you tube about how I should not support "illegal immigration" or videos that can empower a Latino. People can discredit you for any reason, but as she said, its not just about having thick skin, i think its also just knowing your values well enough to know that what you care about is correct and the people being negative are really just jealous or always going to be negative no matter what.

SarahMC - I've got to agree with Mina (and the two folks who made the video) here.

If you want to stop sexist YouTube participants from posting abusive sexist comments on the posts of women vloggers, you are NOT going to make any headway by lecturing them about "It hurts and silences women" or "sexist comments are wrong, whether or not you get laid."

But I think you already know that - it appears that you've resigned yourself to the idea that there is no way to convince these guys to stop.

I disagree.

These guys really don't care about hurting women's feelings.

They DO care about not scoring with women.

Convince them that making abusive comments on women vlogger's posts will directly impede them getting dates/sex with women, and they are far more likely to stop.

gregory,

I think there is a time and a place for appealing to self interest as a stop gap measure. YouTube is one such place.

The problem however, is that they don't make such comments in order to get laid - not exactly, anyway.

They make such comments in order to get male approval....and sometimes to reassure themselves that women suck and they way cooler simply by virtue of having a dick.

Telling them that random people they will never meet won't want to sleep with them because they are assholes online won't do jack shit. Because that's not how it works and they know it even if they don't analyze it.

Making stupid comments makes them cool. Being cool helps them score. The fact that the types of stupid comments they make also help to keep women too scared to venture an opinion both makes their lives easier and helps them pressure women into having sex. Therefore, being an ass does help them get laid and not being an ass won't.

However pointing out how completely idiotic such comments are may eventually make such comments less cool. Thus toppling the whole dynamic.

So telling people they are being jackass is appealing to base self-interest, albeit in a roundabout, but still more productive, way.

SMC, if I can join your raised-by-rabid-fundies club, I'd be the happiest guy on the board. It took my parents a zillion years just to accept the fact that I was...

vegetarian! *the horror!*

My mom got more conservative over the years. I'm a liberal feminist because of her, but now she supports the recent late term abortion ban and watches the 700 club. How is this possible?

The only angsty teenage mother daughter fights I had with her were about politics and philosophy, since I was so lame that there was rarely anything else to fight about. Now that I live on my own, we've found common ground. I discuss her bible study with her and pretend to be religious around her friends and she often asks for my opinion as an Atheist.

This got rather off track.

Mickle - so you're saying that being sexist WILL get them laid!

Or, to put it more directly in the spirit of your comments - making mean sexist comments about women vloggers makes them cool among their male peers, the guys thinking they are cool directly translates to women thinking they are cool...AND sexually attractive and consequently they get laid.

That's just sad - maybe there's a deeper problem with young women involved here...

If they think that sexist men are cool and sexually desirable, that will encourage even more sexist behavior among young men.

Perhaps it might be useful to reeducate the young women so they would be attracted to NONSEXIST guys and would deny sex to sexist boys.

TLF: yeah, my mom freaked when she found out my boyfriend and I were living together. Then she found out we...shared the same bedroom! (although I pushed the beds apart during her visit, but that didn't help). Now she tells me that she doesn't want me "flaunting" the fact that we "play house" together and that we are not truly committed because we are not married. GUH!

I was raised on Rush Limbaugh and diatribes about the "lib-ruhls". So, it's nice to know that there are others like me who escaped! (I wish my mom didn't think feminism was just about "trying to be a man".)

But to try to stay on topic:

Perhaps it might be useful to reeducate the young women so they would be attracted to NONSEXIST guys and would deny sex to sexist boys.

But to teach women that would be to go against mainstream culture. Nowadays, it's "empowering" to be objectified by men. Many young girls and women define themselves by how sexist men are towards them, because that behavior is rewarded in our culture.

Besides, I don't think it's the fault of the women. It needs to be taught to men that objectifying women is unacceptable because women are human beings and it is just wrong to treat anyone like that.

"It needs to be taught to men that objectifying women is unacceptable because women are human beings and it is just wrong to treat anyone like that."

Mary B, that's not very realistic.

If men who objectify women are rewarded by social acceptance from their male peers and sexual success with women, why on earth would they want to change?

Unless, of course, you intend to offer them a reward to change their behavior, or very strong sanction if they continue with the same behavior.

That is, if men knew that being sexist towards women was socially unacceptable and would make it difficult or impossible for them to find a woman, they might think about acting differently.

Why else would they even bother with changing their behavior?

"It needs to be taught to men that objectifying women is unacceptable because women are human beings and it is just wrong to treat anyone like that."
Mary B, that's not very realistic.
How is it any less realistic than trying to change women’s conditioned behavior of thinking that a man that does this is a “real man�?
First, I don’t know many women that actually “reward� this kind of behavior. I don’t know any women who date a man who treated her this way, but I certainly know a lot of women who stay married to or stay in a relationship with them. Do you really think that calling a woman a “fat bitch� or “ugly� gets a man laid? I highly doubt it. It might, however, reduce a woman’s self-esteem to the point that she can’t leave a relationship she’s already in.
Second, can we stop with this ridiculous idea that women have some sort of “power� over men when it comes to sex. It’s a bizarre notion and all evidence is to the contrary (ie: men can take sex from women forcibly with very little retribution or pay a 3rd party to have sex with a woman).
So, how about we hold men responsible for their actions? You know, treat them like the rational, logical human beings they say they are.

I'm a product of a feminist marriage. My parents are liberals. Hell, my father was the primary caregiver, my mom was the primary breadwinner, and they both marched for the ERA before I was born. Dyed in the wool feminists, who raised me to be a feminist, too.

(Yay, parents!)

But get them started on the topic of grandchildren, and ... ::eyeroll::

"Mickle - so you're saying that being sexist WILL get them laid!"

I'm saying that privilege benefits men and that getting laid is only one of those benefits. So concentrating on just that - assuming one wants to appeal to base interest rather than morality - is unproductive. Especially since the issue isn't so much getting laid, but getting laid with minimum sacrifice. Giving up one's (imagined) superiority would be considered a sacrifice, and one made for dubious long term self interest - at the risk of losing less dubious short term self interest.

As far as why this does sometimes translate into getting laid, it's not so much that women think such men are cool - although that does happen as well - but that many women don't see themselves as being in a position to determine coolness among guys. Especially compared to the other way around - guys, or what it's assumed guys want - determines women's hotness - and women are supposed to be hot, not cool. :)

"Perhaps it might be useful to reeducate the young women so they would be attracted to NONSEXIST guys and would deny sex to sexist boys."

That does need to be part of the equation, but that has problems as well. You are expecting women (or more often, girls) to show confidence that many of them don't have and that you are asking women to sacrifice once again, while (if you only go with the women need to change route) asking no sacrifice of men. That hardly changes the dynamic or makes people question the fundamentals. After all, it's not like many women sleep with men that are constantly assholes to them, usually it's that women look for men willing to treat them as the "nice" part of the virgin/whore myth.

Mostly, though, as shelby was saying, the whole point is that women's individual actions don't matter to such men - so the idea that women have the power to change men through saying "yes" or "no" to sex is inaccurate and not helpful.

The best solution (sadly) is for more videos like this one - and similar comments. Despite their bringing up the plastic carrot of "you won't get laid" the more times that men denounce such actions, the less cool sexism will become in the eyes of other men. That isn't to say that women's voices aren't important, just that if you want to reach the no apologies assholes, you'll usually need to make sure that large chunk of the voices they hear are male, or else they will ignore them.

***

oh, and another liberal kid from liberal parents here.

I think it's more along the lines of allowance/education/working as a kid and class that we were having over at The Hathor Legacy. If it worked for you, you keep going with that. If it didn't, you don't.

I love watching young dudes starting to figure out sexism. Like little baby deer learning to walk.

But why the f is he wearing a bluetooth earpiece?

Why, why, WHY do they insist on referring to women as "chicks???"

I posted a video response to this video (my youtube handle is the same as on here "Katiedivina")
My usual response is to ignore sexist comments as I suspect that deleting them turns into a game of whack-a-mole. Although I block people if they post more than one hateful comment.
I don't see a real solution to this problem in deleting hate--but I do think that if more women who get out there and make real videos--and the women already on the tube support each other--then more women will feel comfortable getting started on YT. It sucks very much to feel like you're one woman overwhelmed by 300 scary comments--but when you know you aren't alone...
I also suspect that if the lady vlogging community grows and sexist comments are unsuccessful in shutting us up, the problem will peter out.

I felt brave enough to get on youtube because women like faintstarlite, theresident and MelissaJenna were out there making interesting commentary in spite of a hostile environment. I hope more "chicks" will see youtube's potential and join in.

Also, "chick" is definitely meant to be tongue in cheek.

"I love watching young dudes starting to figure out sexism. Like little baby deer learning to walk."

Haha, yes!

There are multiple comments to that video on youtube insinuating that if women would just stop making themselves attractive or stop being beautiful ("try being ugly for a day") then they would not get harassed with sexist comments. It's unbelievable.

I agree that this video is for the most part well-intentioned. While the conversation may not have been phrased the same way I would have done it, I don't think the vloggers should be faulted for it. What's important is that the sexist parties hear the message these two vloggers are trying to convey. Even if that means putting it into somewhat sexist 'terms' (e.g., sexist comments 'won't get you laid', offending women means 'less chicks out there') so they are willing to listen, and hopefully, so they understand it.

For some reason this video cuts off for me at only about 2 minutes in.
I have several videos on YouTube, most of which have nothing or almost nothing to do with feminism, and I usually mark comments on them for my approval. Comments on my videos only go up if I say they can go up. And I block spammers and haters on site.
I think YouTube twerps do regular site searches for the word "feminist" just so they can post hateful, stupid, and irrelevant comments. They need more fresh air and sunshine. And perhaps a responsible parent or two.

BTW I think they also do the same thing with race. Videos with black people in them or with tag words like "race" get a lot of seemingly obligatory racist comments too.

I've got to say, my first impulse when I heard them use the "sexist comments won't get you laid" argument was to compliment them on their angle. As the late great Robert Heinlein said, "Never appeal to a man's better nature--he may not have one. Better to appeal to his self interest."

And yes, sexism isn't the only thing. Racism, xenophobia and anti-semitism are also big fan favorites. *guh*

Sexism just comes up a lot because there's a lot of 12 year old boys on youtube with mommy issues and insecurity in their masculinity. Basically, everything I'm glad my own brother bypassed. :)

I don't think that sexism is what is driving negative comments towards women in the internet. I have known men that wrote articles and opinions on the internet that would get plenty of negative and nasty comments. If there wasn't a comment section then the jerks would send negative emails instead.

Using a sexist comment is just a lazy way for a guy to make a negative comment to a woman. The same goes for negative comments about how a person looks, it is so much easier than actually formulating a cohesive thought with constructive critisizm or with logic and reasoning.

I found it striking that the woman in this video said a few times that - although she personally wasn't bothered by it, and so on - she still found it weird that these kind of comments arise from people (i.e. men (mostly)) about how they look and all. So she wasn't bothered but still bothered to make a six minute long YouTube video about it? Come on! I don't buy that. She sounds like people (women) who say: "(just to make sure) I'm not a feminist, but I really want to say that I get annoyed that girl scouts have to go to beauty spas", or some other example that gives a nice feminist point-of-view. In a way, by saying that she's not offended/annoyed and all, she seems to already apologize for what she says. Why? What's wrong with feeling offended by it?

"I have known men that wrote articles and opinions on the internet that would get plenty of negative and nasty comments."
Really Dave? So how come comments about men’s articles videos whatever never mention their fuckability or lack there of? If you don’t see the sexism there you should be reading the Feminism 101 blog and not Feministing.