www.thisamericanlife.org/637/words-you-cant-say
Transcript: www.thisamericanlife.org/637/transcript
The whole thing is worth listening to but this was the part that really stood out to me
Kelefa Sanneh: There were other words she couldn't say-- words that were more fundamental to the kinds of videos she made.
Laci Green: People got mad when I would say male or female in a video to refer to anatomical stuff, like female orgasm or male sexuality or whatever. Yeah, people said, can you not say male or female?
Kelefa Sanneh: That's the thing. She makes sex ed videos, so she talks all the time about genitals, about reproductive health, about sex. There's basically no way for her to avoid these words without making some pretty fundamental changes to the way she talks, like how do you talk about someone who's intersex? Born with sex organs or traits that don't fit traditional definitions of female or male?
Laci Green: Yeah, I made a video about intersex conditions. And in the video, I talked about sex development in the womb and sex differentiation and how we become male and female, and they're somewhere in between. And people didn't like that I used the terms male and female, but literally, how do you explain intersex without male or female? I've thought about it so many times. I don't even know. You have to use anatomical terms.
Kelefa Sanneh: And how do you talk about sex and anatomy without saying male and female?
Laci Green: Well, I start using the terms vagina owner and penis owner. I was trying to be creative. I want to address the genitals. If you have a penis, is it applicable? And that's kind of the route that I've taken since.
Kelefa Sanneh: Did you get positive feedback when you started talking about penis havers and vagina havers, as opposed to males and females?
Laci Green: No. I mean, yes. But also no. Some people liked it. I'd say more people didn't like it. They're like, why are you calling me a vagina owner? And I'm like, ugh.
Kelefa Sanneh: So, if this is new to you, and you're wondering why some people want to avoid the words male and female, the idea is this. When you call a penis a male sex organ, you're kind of implying that having a penis makes you a man, and that's not true for everyone. You're leaving out some transgender people, for instance. None of this satisfied the growing number of people who thought Laci was totally problematic.
On Tumblr, someone put together a list. It was called "Masterpost-- Why Laci Green Sucks." It had 93 entries, accusing her of hypocrisy, ignorance, insensitivity. It explained why her commentary had been hurtful, not just to trans people, but to women, people suffering from mental illness, Muslims, millennials, vegans of color. When she first started making videos, it felt like freedom, and now it felt like the opposite.
Laci Green: It started to feel like being back in Mormonism. You've got this sort of doctrine the social justice doctrine that you hold on to. The intention is good to make us better people, to do better by each other, to become more moral. They're both moral systems, and they operate in similar ways. Using shaming when you get out of line.
There's just sort of this feeling of repression on your chest, where you just can't speak freely or be freely in the world. And it felt exactly the same to me, like I was policing my own thoughts and words. I felt like a bad person all the time.