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(introductory music)
Good morning, lovelies, and welcome to Camsplains, my new video series which
is about feminism, feminist concepts, and social justice concepts, and it's
hopefully going to be a little bit more accessible for those of you who aren't
so familiar with the feminist community. And I know that we tend to use language
and in-jokes and terms that are really not familiar to those of you who are,
haven't been so much part of it, and that can be a little alienating. So I'm gonna
try and break down those barriers. And I'm going to start by explaining: what is
feminism anyway! That's a big topic to address in five minutes. I don't know
if I can do it, but I like a challenge, so here goes. Most of you are familiar
with the Merriam-Webster definition of feminism,
which is, and I'm going to have to read this definition, because I can't remember
it" "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes". Sounds
simple, right? Er... When is anything I ever talk about simple? There's a second
definition in the same dictionary which complicates things a little bit, and I
think it's kind of more accurate when it comes to describing feminism, which is"
"organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests", because real
feminism - " real feminism" - is about being active, and actively working to promote
equality between the sexes. But you know I can't just leave it at that, because
that would be too simple. My brand of feminism, and the brand of feminism of
most of the people I know, is called intersectional feminism.
Intersectionality is a word that was coined by a civil rights activist,
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, in I believe 1989. It's gained a lot of more popularity
in recent years - it took enough time - and it basically means recognizing that not
everyone faces the same form of inequality. It recognizes that racism is a thing,
trans and homophobia is a thing, poverty is a form of inequality, and all
these other horrible things. It recognizes that these affect
different people in different ways, and that people can face multiple forms of
oppression, but also, you might not be oppressed in a certain way, you might be
privileged in a certain way, while still facing oppression in another way. For
example, I obviously don't face any form of racism, but I have been a victim of
transphobia, of misogyny various, forms of oppression - these are terms, don't worry, I
will explain in future videos if you struggle with what they really mean. So
if this is the case, why do we still call it feminism, if we're talking about all
these different forms of inequality? Why feminism? Well, it's a good question. A lot
of us nowadays use "social justice" as kind of an interchangeable term with
"intersectional feminism". Most people still call it feminism, because that's
kind of where, for a lot of us, this activism started. But social justice is
also a commonly used term, and if you hear that, you know what it means now. So
the next question I hear a lot is: "but isn't feminism just about white women?"
Well, mainstream feminism kind of is, and that's a problem for all of us. It puts
the focus on women who are white, and wealthy quite often, and often thin and
very feminism... very feminism? and very feminine, and it leaves out a bunch of
other people. And that could be really alienating for people of colour, can be
really alienating for queer people, poor people, and this is a real problem
that we need to face as a feminist community. I have no problem
admitting to that issue, because if you don't acknowledge that you have an issue,
you can't fix it. No one could ever claim that feminism is perfect. In an ideal
world, feminism is about fighting for justice for everyone who needs it. It's
about a fighting against structural oppression and big issues, that not only
harm women or people of colour, but can also harm men. For example, the way men
are taught to repress all their emotions as a form of
masculinity that leads to heightened levels of male suicide. And I know a lot
of people think of feminists don't care about that, don't care about men, but in
reality, feminism is about breaking down the systems that cause these problems,
which is good for everyone. So I'm not sure why that would be a problem, but
hey. The last question I get asked real quick is: "do we still need feminism in
the West, in places like Australia or the UK or America or Canada?" Well yeah, we do,
because we all still face these forms of oppression. They have improved in recent
years, through the strong and powerful activism of various social justice
activists, through things like the Stonewall Riots, through Civil Rights movements, and
all these other wonderful movements and people who've created a better place for
us. But the world is still pretty unjust to a lot of people. People are still
forced into poverty, people are still murdered and victims of violence, just
because of certain aspects of their identity, and we really care about that
and want to make things better for everybody. So next week's video is going
to be about oppression, and the week after will be about privilege. These are two
terms that are pretty central to social justice activism, and they're also going to
be really hard to explain in five minutes.
I know Einstein said if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand
it well enough, but why...? So this series is a challenge for me as well. If you like
this video, don't forget to let me know by pressing the like button. You can
subscribe to my channel, you can follow me on all the social media, I'll put my
links in the description. Until next week, keep being awesome, and I will see you
then. Bye!
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