CW: Transphobia, self-harm, cannablism, suicide.

I wanted to talk to about bodily autonomy. I made this post a while ago about why I think that the argument for trans people being able to change their bodies is basically the same argument for cis people to change their bodies: https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyTube/comments/1umjzb6/the_argument_for_transitioning_really_is_just_the/

In short, I'm cis and I have the right to alter my body in some pretty extreme and unalterable ways. Trans people have the same moral right as I do. Therefore if I am allowed to make these kinds of changes, but a trans person is not, then that means trans people are not treated equally. Which is both unjust and arbitrary, so it's bad. It's a very Enlightenment-esq pro freedom idea. But because I like philosophy I want to... if not problematize it at least bite the bullets that come with this idea.

Basically, while I'm sure that most of you agree with that post I linked this idea can go very far beyond people transitioning. If we are the masters of our own bodies and our lives, then that means we have the moral right to do very extreme things to ourselves.

These are the things that I think, you let me know where you think this goes too far and why:

1: People have the right to tattoos. Whatever the age you pick for coming of age (16, 18, 21, whatever) you have the right to get any tattoos wherever you want. Yes even if the first tattoo you want to tattoo the name of a boy or girl you just met across your cheek in big bold letters, you have that right. A responsible tattoo artist also has the right to refuse this job, but if they say yes and accept the money they have committed no civil or criminal wrong doing.

2: People have the right to do drugs, even very dangerous drugs. Yes even if these drugs ruin lives. Alcohol also ruins lives and bodies. Hell, alcohol and smoking also kill people who don't choose to do the drug (car crashing and second hand smoke). I really don't see a compelling reason for not putting heroin in the same kind of category as these drugs (which do have laws surrounding their use and those must be kept in place, ie; drunk driving)

3: People have the right to mutilate (and I'm not using this term in the dog-whistle transphobic ways) themselves for 'just because.' If a person is sexually aroused by the idea of being an amputee, they have the right to pay a surgeon to amputate their limb or limbs. The surgeon again has the right to refuse to do this.

4: If a person from point #3 has a cannibal fetish they have the right to also eat their own amputated limb.

5: I really don't see a good principled argument for why those suicide booths in Futurama shouldn't be legal. The only argument I can see for this is that most people who survive suicide attempts end up being glad their attempt failed. So even though I think that we have the right to end our lives, the reality is that society is better if we treat suicide as something people are not allowed to do (excepting things like MAID laws). So I'm in this weird position where I think something that is morally okay is still something that should be outlawed.

Not sure if i’m allowed to post this here, sorry! Loved her and enjoyed drawing this so much.

Lohar and her battle with the Sea Snake has been immortalised in the opening credits.

Just happened to scroll down on the website today and was very positively surprised to see a familiar face on the front page!

Came here right after finishing the Conversion therapy video. There is a part of that video in which Abby talks about how easy it has always been for her Mum to get the same kind of drugs that Abby had to go through an immense amount of state invasion into her private life to get.

And this really has cemented in my mind just how easy and simple the argument for transitioning: It's just the same as why cis people should be allowed to change our bodies. And for me this is very easy to justify because I believe that we are the masters of our own bodies (you're not going to like how far I take this though).

Like, cis people have the right to change and modify our bodies in some pretty extreme ways. Dare I say we have the right to 'fuck up' our bodies. You can see articles in the tabloids about young women who get their boyfriend's name tattooed on their face occasionally. And from my view, the appropriate response to that is to go "Freedom motherfucker do you speak it??" When people have the right to do things they sometimes make horrible choices that ruin their lives. Doesn't mean the State should remove the legal right of dumb teens to get face tattoos. And most people it seems generally agree with me, because to this day people still get dumb tattoos without being criminally charged.

There really is no argument I can think of that allows for the above, but then claims that trans people cannot do the same thing. **Especially** when it comes to non-permanent things like puberty blockers, or social transition (ie, hair and clothes). The only possible argument for having one and not the other can only be based in a dislike of transness, which is - ultimately - a feels over reals inclination.

And for years now, before trans people became THE visible issue that it is today, that was always my thought process. Again, you're not going to like this, but the way I see it I'm the master of my own body. If I want to have my leg amputated just because I really like peg-leg pirates, or if the thought of being an amputee makes me horny, or I if I'm curious about what human flesh tastes like and I want to try it on my leg, I think that I have an Odin-given right to do so (I have no desire to any of the above and I would not recommend it).

The way I see it the idea that trans people are some kind of new phenomenon cooked up by young people today is nonsense. It's another extension of the same values that I endorse as someone who likes the Enlightenment values: Autonomy, an emphasis on reason, happiness, and freedom over tradition, etc. The idea that our society wasn't completely correct when it came to what gender is isn't that different from the idea that our society wasn't correct about the roles of men and women in society.

I'm not crazy right?

I feel bad posting something critical on here, because it seems like Abigail checks it often. But I miss what Philosophytube used to be. I feel like online trans culture desperately needs our philosophers back, but over the last decade all of our best have slowly receded away from their audiences out of fear and/or disappointment, or just better-paying opportunities elsewhere. I cannot just quit my own work to start a YouTube channel, so it feels like there is nothing I can do about this short of posting.

When I started watching Abigail, she was just sitting with a camera in front of her bookshelf trying to "give her philosophy degree away for free." I found that so righteous and inspiring! I am still today always trying to give away my own art school education, writing about art history and art theory and feminism online. It was so exciting when she started to merge her acting work with her philosophy work. I think she and the other ""breadtubers"" were so politically invigorating to many of us American millennials a decade ago, who felt like western governments had already abandoned us by the late '90s, and again in 2016. I learned so much that I never would have learned otherwise, without money for a degree or friends willing to study along with me. I am so grateful for that knowledge, how easy she made it to learn things that really were important to know.

But there's been a slow change in her work over time; it doesn't feel like education is really the point anymore, and its making the politics feel... off. I tried to watch her last video, about conversion therapy, and it's the first video of hers that I genuinely just couldn't get very far into. She claimed that anti-sodomy law in the past was an attempt to "control women's sexuality," when that just isn't true. I had been doing my own research on the history of sodomy law, to try and understand what I have in common with cis gay men as a trans man, and it came off like she just hadn't done her research, and more, wasn't concerned with any cis-or-trans-men viewers feeling insulted or calling her out on it. Which was startling-- it's usually obvious how much work she puts into research and detailed context-giving and solidarity with people who are not just like herself.

I found in my research that sodomy laws have rarely ever been enforced on lesbians/cis women; they were largely an attempt to enforce control over cis men's role in reproduction, marriage, the family, and the economy. It made me think of one of her other recent videos, "Women, Money, and the Nation" which I thought was really excellent-- a man is just a scam invented by the nation to get free labor, too. The earliest sodomy laws in the UK were an attempt by the British upper-classes to criminalize their political opponents' sex lives; it was old white men trying to accuse other old white men of "degeneracy." We remember Oscar Wilde not just because he was a sexy poet, but because he risked his own class position and freedom to issue artistic call-outs towards his own class. It seriously disturbed wealthy power structures, and it made him a political icon. When these laws affect normal people, it is usually the poor; the goal isn't to maintain some fusty anti-sex culture for its own sake, but to maintain wealth inequality by locking off "the oldest profession" from people who are otherwise unemployable, i.e. disposable according to capitalists/"the nation."

But it feels like most trans people are just totally disinterested in understanding how that same sense of "reproduction + labor as civic duties" affect cis men, and not only women or trans people. We seem to not notice how the ideology of patriarchy is more specific than "women are simply inferior to men in every way," or how patriarchy is a cross-sex, cross-class, cross-racial justification for the poverty and imprisonment used to punish every type of "degenerate" person for the last several centuries. I wouldn't have had to do all the research myself if it was a topic that I had ever seen anyone in trans communities, online or off, talk about before. It seems like only weird old white men study this stuff, seemingly so they can run roughshod over anyone who disagrees with their regressive and authoritarian political goals.

I just rewatched her video about climate grief, which I won't link here out of respect for the rules, but you can find it easy enough. She asked some edgy-but-serious ethical-philosophy questions about what exactly we are to do about climate change, if governments refuse to respond to the obvious fact of it and mitigate the problem themselves. Now Europe is facing a historic heatwave that is definitely caused by anthropogenic climate change, thousands of people have already died, and it feels like nothing is left of the political spirit that made PhilosophyTube so great. All it's been for months are promos and references to her Hollywood work, and I'm sorry but I don't consider the commodification of trans YouTubers to be interesting or liberating or really political in any way. It makes me feel great despair that she has pulled so far away from continuing to pursue her most insightful & politically-effective work seemingly in favor of the safety and prestige of being a Hollywood cosmopolitan.

I am a trans millennial nobody from the midwest, and I am feeling very bleak about it all lately. I wish anyone still working in video essays would tackle the subject of policy around reproduction and sex work, and explain how these things relate to trans oppression and liberation, maybe through the example of Planned Parenthood providing hormones to the poor even while facing constant political attacks from the right. I wish someone would talk about "chosen families," and explain that polyamorous trans folks raising children together is an expression of radical feminist Shulamith Firestone's dream of "women's" liberation. I would die for a PhilosophyTube video connecting Simone Weil's idea of "needs of the soul" to trans identity. But I'm afraid that Abigail's bent towards ~metaphysics~ as an explanation for bigotry is just not going to do the political work that she wants it to do for us, and worse, I dread that she is soon going to abandon politics and YouTube altogether for fear of backlash, or out of doubt in her own ability to create real political change. Politics has never really been motivated by metaphysics; metaphysics is just the veneer worn by historic propaganda against the oppressed.

I'm afraid this is the sort of thing that will get deleted for "nastiness disguised as philosophy" (i.e. Bad Vibes) but I just wanted to put it somewhere. I feel very sad and afraid of what is going to happen to the US, and I am horrified by what is already happening to Europe and the UK. I feel such love and solidarity for all my trans sisters and cousins, I root for their success and eternal happiness, including the ones I disagree with. But I also fear that trans men & the poor have been socially and politically abandoned by trans communities and commentators, especially those of us who try to maintain solidarity with cis men (queer or otherwise), and no one with a large platform feels eager-or-equipped to speak on it or do anything about it.

Please, Abigail, if you see this: we need our philosophers back, badly. You are so good at what you do as a public intellectual, and the world needs smart, challenging, political women like you to help us understand how to get out of this mess we're all in. Please don't give up. Your old political audience is still rooting for you, and we want to help you win.

I don't know how to start this post, so I'll just get right into it. I wish that Abigail would cover more decolonial philosophy in her videos. While her video on rationalising colonialism was well-done (as are most if not all her videos!) I wish she would have engaged the works of Native American and Latin American philosophers. I'm talking Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Aníbal Quijano, José Carlos Mariategui, etc. There's a lot of really good material out there and as one of the most prominent figures in Philosophy YouTube, I think she could really help get some eyes on these thinkers.

My thoughts on this /r/AskConservatives discussion:

• when our memes promote good nuanced ideas using left-wing language, the right accuses us of being "too wordy"

• when our memes promote good nuanced ideas using right-wing language, the right accuses us of "stealing their jokes"

• you can't win with these f*ckers. They just don't wanna hear your message, no matter how you phrase it. It's not that you can't meme, it's that they get offended at any facts that contradict their hateful worldview.

  • note: I'm not talking about all right-wingers. There might be a few who listen and ask questions in good faith. But the ones who shout "the left can't meme" are just trying to gaslight us, make us think we're "out of touch with the people", and get us doubting our ability to communicate. We can in fact communicate just fine. Telling you you can't meme is just another form of tone policing.

As leftists we try to design our memes so they actually do some good in the world. Because a message can reach more people if it's at least kind of funny.

Right-wing trolls make memes to crack jokes at people's expense (usually at innocent people's expense, or if it's making fun of an actual bad person, it's to paint their entire group with the same brush). P.S. If you don't know how to be funny without being hateful, it's you who can't meme.

One last thing: There are some genuinely sh*tty memes from rich liberal democrat politicians who are actually out of touch with the people. But that doesn't represent the rest of us on the left.

Happy Pride

At the end of her old video called Queer✨ she does this performance of a Saint motel song and has these rings that are just gorgeous. I also like the nail polish, but white nail polish is simple enough to find. I just couldn't find anything that looked like the rings she wore in the video, especially the snake ring. All the other ones don't seem to have the right distance between the wraps or have some other reason that i don't like them. The link to the video below this text. If anyone can find some links that contain what I am looking for i would be eternally grateful!!! Thank you in advance to anyone that even took the time to read this message, if there are any people that did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hi6j2UXEZM&t=1988s

Over the past year I’ve been studying musical theatre at university. And we have a module where we write an essay where we reflect on how the lessons/ lectures have affected us in our training and lives settling into uni etc.

I’ve been watching Abi’s videos for a good couple of years and rewatched the video “Food, Beauty, Mind” and found that this linked really well with 3 lectures we had on food, self esteem and self awareness.

During these lectures I also was able to raise my hand and reference a lot of philosophers that are referenced in PhilosophyTube videos which my friends said really helped them write their essays and put a name to the thoughts that they’d had about subjects which I’m really happy about!

As a tall, fat, butch, lesbian, alto (I promise this is relevant) I found that I was told to view myself in an impossible way in order to fit into the expectations of the theatre industry and I referenced this in my essay and referenced video in the bibliography of my essay and also the video on stoicism! (I also directly referenced and appropriately quoted the philosophers that the original ideas came from Dw)

Just wanted to say that that video gave me the words to understand what I was feeling and has made me a better person and a better role model for my younger cousins and kids that were part of my LGBTQ society in secondary school who also want to go into the performing arts.

Also Abigail’s videos and references to retraining in theatre after gaining a philosophy degree gave me a lot of comfort in choosing MT after going through a massive crisis while being pushed to choose an academic degree by my very old and stuffy grammar school.

So, (if you happen to read this) Thank you Abigail! Thank you for making these videos that inspire me to be a better, more educated person, love your videos! (My cat also sends her love lol)

I'm fairly certain she mentioned it, and one that was something like mindworms????