[boozy intro] I guess I should cut back on the drinking, but it makes me feel good. I mean, I can only sleep for two hours at a time and I do not get erections anymore, but other than that it’s fine. Come on, I’m going to go stand in front of books so you’re subconsciously reminded that I’m smart.

When I first heard the term “social justice warrior,” it immediately made sense to me, because I thought it referred to the kind of person who writes angry Facebook posts because a white guy at a university two thousand miles away has a culturally appropriative hairstyle, or who can’t sit through a movie without constantly complaining about how sexist the characters are. 

Like, he’s the villain of the movie, you’re not supposed to like him. Of course he’s fucking sexist. AHHH.

But then I came on YouTube and discovered that SJW just means anyone to the left of Hitler, so I guess I’m an SJW. But I didn’t use to be. I mean, I was always pretty progressive about race issues, but it did take me a long time to warm up to feminism.

I think it might be interesting to discuss how I transitioned from misogynist shitlord to feminist mangina, since debate about this topic often feels futile. For the feminists out there, I’m proof that it’s possible for people to change their views. And for any shitlords watching, you may want to listen up so you can understand just how the brainwashing happens.

[what a bunch of fucking drama queens]

So when I say I used to be a misogynist shitlord I don’t mean I was raping people. You know, it was the little things. In high school English class I loved Homer and hated Jane Austen, though I’d barely read either, pretty much because Homer was about war, which is a man thing, so I assumed it was serious and profound, whereas Jane Austen was about engagements, which is a woman thing, so I assumed it was effeminate and therefore trivial.

At my lowest point—this would be about six years ago—I believe I actually uploaded a YouTube video called “Questions for Feminists,” which was a disingenuous “gotcha”-type video that I’m now thoroughly ashamed of. I mean, you’d have to be a real piece of shit to make a video like that these days.

[oh]

Anyway, I went to college and studied first music and then neuroscience. I’d taken a bunch of science, statistics and philosophy classes, but I was required to take an English class as part of the core curriculum. I wanted to take the Shakespeare class, but that was full, so I looked for an alternative and came across a class called “Introduction to Critical Methods.”

I read the syllabus and thought it looked like a bunch of namby-pamby leftist gibberish, but I decided to take the class anyway because I’ve always been eager to understand people I disagree with, which is probably why I’m so obsessed with YouTube shitlords now.

Anyway, I went into this critical theory class basically for the purpose of making fun of it. On the first day, I quoted in my notes a bunch of the professor’s phrases and buzzwords that I found ridiculous. I like opera a lot, so when the professor mocked it as a “bourgeois spectacle” I got super mad.

Opera isn’t bourgeois! It’s universal! Everyone likes it! 

[Even Charlene!]

The pivot point happened when we got our first reading assignment, which was this book, Ways of Seeing, by John Berger. It’s a work of Marxist/feminist art criticism that describes the social role of oil paintings and advertisements. This book made me really angry when I first read it, but it also led me to this kind of epiphany. It seems like such an obvious and trivial point now, but it had actually never really occurred to me that so much historical art basically celebrates the particular perspective of rich white men. 

Like, before I read this book I thought of the white male perspective—my own perspective—as being the default, universal perspective. Somehow I never thought to consider that paintings like these elevate that perspective, and that women, or, for instance, Africans might view things differently. But once I had this realization I changed my outlook, and I started noticing white male dominance in all sorts of things: movies, books, video games. It made me question what had been this implicit white male supremacy that I’d carried with me all my life, and I became much more willing to listen to the perspectives of women and other kinds of people, even when they seemed counterintuitive to me.

Anyway, the same year I read this book I had another experience that changed my perspective on feminism. I was walking down the street, and a woman with really nice legs walked past, and I didn’t say anything—I’ve never catcalled anyone in my life—but I kind of side-eyed down, because she had really nice legs, and what was I gonna do, not look at them? I’m sure I’d done this a hundred times before, but this woman actually confronted me about it. She makes this gesture like “hello, I can see you!” And yeah, I was embarrassed, but I was more shocked. Like, until then it actually hadn’t sunk in that she could see me just as well as I could see her, and that she wasn’t just a passive object, and I wasn’t just an invisible agent. Again, it sounds trivial and obvious, but for a lot of men, including me, it’s apparently not.

And what’s funny is she probably went home after this and was like, “What an asshole. Some men are just hopeless.” And she’ll never know that I went home and completely reexamined my life.

[what have I done?]

So for a while after that whenever I would pass a gorgeous person on the street I would lock my eyes straight ahead and think, “eyes front and center, private, or I will unscrew your head and shit down your neck.”

But that became untenable pretty quickly, so now what I usually do when I walk into the subway is ah jeez…

[Ah jeez, are we doing this? Alright. I’ll just look at everything so that it seems normal. Looking at the tile. Looking at the bag. Looking at the floor. Looking at the electrical box. Looking at the book. And now… but I’m not staring, I’m just glancing, and that’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with glancing, I glanced at everything, even this guy’s butt. I glanced at the tile. It’s completely non-discriminatory. It’s like, equality. Isn’t that what feminists want?]

I’m not like those other creepy guys. I’m a cool feminist guy. I was looking at the tile! Tell me I’m a cool guy who understands feminism. Validate me. Tell me I’m a nice guy you goddamn bitch!

[“nice guy,” not a real feminist]

 This is not going well. Let’s get back on track here.

I guess the upshot is if you want to avoid becoming a feminist, don’t go to college. I guess you probably think it’s just a bunch of leftist brainwashing, and yeah, it kind of is, but isn’t brainwashing just education you disagree with? I mean, I went in prepared to mock all of this, and it’s not like my spirit was broken and feminism was forced upon me. I just kept a somewhat open mind and read some books.