Naomi Wu seems to upset a lot of people. She makes things, and was accused by the publisher of "Make" magazine of being a fake, with some guy doing the actual work. She replied by posting long, detailed videos of her making stuff. An hour of cutting aluminum extrusions with a chop saw and putting together a frame. Soldering PC boards. Eventually, the guy apologized.
One of the useful things she's done is to put up lots of videos of her running around Shenzhen. There aren't enough ground-level videos of the working parts of Chinese cities. There's extensive coverage of Tokyo, by comparison. It's interesting to see the high-density housing blocks and street-level activity. (The "let's increase housing density" crowd from Strong Towns should watch those videos.) People who've met her report that she knows Shenzhen very well, down to the back alley level, where some unmarked door leads to an important factory. She's toured the electronics markets of Huaqiangbei. (I miss the days when Silicon Valley had electronics parts stores.)
She's done some nice technical work. Her main thing is 3D printing, and she came up with the first angled 3D printer that worked reliably. The print head moves in a plane 45 degrees from vertical, and the base surface is a belt, which advances the workpiece one layer at a time. So it can produce objects continuously, or very long objects if you add support rollers. Others had made prototypes of such machines, but the properties of the belt and print head are touchy to make that work right. She got it all working, and it's now a product, with her picture on the box.
At various times she's pushed on GPL compliance, mask quality, and other issues of interest to the tech community.
She wears skimpy outfits sometimes. So what? That's most of Instagram. Unlike most Instagrammers, Wu has something original to say. Sometimes with a biting wit. I gather that it's more biting in Cantonese.
I wonder what fraction of people here commenting disapprovingly about her choice of wardrobe think YouTube should demonetize videos of bodybuilding competitions, male rock stars, or boxing. Because apparently those are super sexy, though I think the bodybuilding thing appeals to more gay men than to het women.
On the contrary, I think the reason the inconsistency is obvious to me is that I understand nudity and context depressingly well. The relevant context difference is that Naomi is a woman.
No, you definitely do not understand nudity or the context. That is not the context.
One, you think nudity is in bodybuilding. It's not.
Two, you think the context of whatever Naomi is doing requires her to hang her nude bits out. It doesn't, that's her choice. It's also people's choice to not like it.
It has absolutely nothing to do with being sexy. I don't see Naomi as sexy at all as a heterosexual male. She just screams forced and faked. Those aren't sexy to me. They are sexual though.
It's all about being close to nudity for impractical reasons. Context matters and the definition of nudity matters.
Well no, nothing of the kind was occurring in the demonetized videos referenced in my post. I did not have more skin on display than any typical YouTuber might under the circumstances. It was a tank top and a halter top summer dress on a hot summer day in a tropical city. The issue was my shape inside those clothes- not the clothes themselves. That's what was interesting, YouTube's response to demonetizing the cardboard dress form made it clear my physical shape was the problem- not the degree of coverage or activity.
A user (I'll leave them unstated) deleted a reply with a metaphor along the lines of "what do you expect if someone wears a clown suit when speaking at a technical conference?" Well, here's her speaking at a tech conference, in "context-appropriate" attire that is neither skimpy nor a clown suit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt1OLgGIqhc In "She wears skimpy outfits sometimes", sometimes is really the operative word.
If you have the skills, it generally shouldn't matter what clothes you wear.
Even if you don't have the skills, it generally shouldn't matter what clothes you wear.
Like don't strap knives to your arms, and do wear a good mask, but generally we spend a lot of time policing other folk's bodies and attire, and for what?
Brains run on heuristics and shortcuts. A group of brains will develop shared signals to aid in that energy-conservation. They will then refine their signalling, ie contextual, implicit, misleading, covert, etc.
Some signals are loud and drown out more complex ones. "Sex sells." The more those types of signals are tolerated or incentivized on a platform, the further it will be dominated by noise masking covert signals.
I once attended a round table discussion in a previous job. The topic was women and work. I'm male, and was a manager, and figured that if half my directs are women I should do what I can to listen and support them.
Anyways, the guest of honor proceeded to advise the 100+ female managers in the room to, among other things, "use their assets" to influence people in the organization. This was met with a stunned but approving clamor.
I felt embarrassed, as if I had accidentally crashed a private sleepover. The person sharing the advice had a proven track record. Why hang onto sexuality signals? Because they work.
It depends maybe on the circles you interact with, but in some circles, people are not taken seriously which try too much to adhere to the conservative business dress code by wearing a suite with tie.
How developers dress really depends on the company and the culture there. E.g. in Germany in many of the conservative older companies, wearing a suite is mandatory, and esp also in all those consulting companies. Also in many of the privatized companies like Deutsche Post, Deutsche Bahn, etc. But then, in other more modern software companies, people would make fun of that.
The idea that you must adhere to some clothing dress code rules is really against the open-minded principles of software developers.
I mean if they are trying to make someone else like me wear formal clothes, yeah I wouldn't take them seriously. I wouldn't work for a company which polices what I decide to wear like that.
But if an individual just wear one themselves by choice, it's silly to judge them for that choice. Interviewing is hard, maybe they feel more confident in a suit.
I feel company culture should be less about someone's personal style/clothing/hobbies than if someone, for example, berates and yells at fellow employees who make a mistake or talks calmly through issues without treating others like they are the problem.
Right leaning software developer here. What are you talking about? Why do you think this has anything to do with political alignment? I find a suit as uncomfortable as anybody else. Dress code is more about public image in my experience than political alignment.
The use of "conservative" here doesn't seem to refer to political alignment. It is common to talk about "conservative business culture" and "conservative dress" to refer to cultural factors — exactly around things like expecting suits and ties. The parent post does not appear to be talking about politics.
> There is no general idea of conservatism though.
That’s just untrue and shows a misunderstanding of what conservatism is, which is about small gov and a return to the roots of said gov. While individual beliefs of how this should be achieved will very between the different nations, the general concept is the same.
See, that's the point. That's only _American_ conservatism. It's not what a CDU represents in Germany, nor what Die Mitte represents in Switzerland - both of which are decidedly conservative parties.
And Chinese politics seems to be even more difficult to talk about than Europe, and that's not even accounting for the fact it doesn't have democratic elections and has a one party system.
From the little I understand, it's complex and dynamic and opaque to the point that current scholars and US government entities studying China have difficulty explaining it; I'm not even going to try.
This has never been true and will never be true for one very important reason: limited attention span. No one has an infinite attention span, and there are many stimuli competing for our attention. Thus, when someone shows up looking like a hobo claiming to have discovered the secrets of the universe, or someone decked out like a bimbo wants to talk about their latest art project, people rightly tune out. That doesn't make them bad people, but it does mark the person trying to get their attention as being painfully unaware that having knowledge of rhetoric is not optional if you want to succeed.
What you wear when you're not trying to convince anyone of anything is your own business, but when you're actually trying to reach someone, maybe it's not asking too much to demonstrate some basic self awareness? If you're not willing to go that far then why should anyone listen to you?
Speak to feminist scholars. It's far more entrenched than that. We have numerous systems deeply entrenched in our model for society that encourage this, specifically against women. We create incentives for insecurity and then prey on it. Keeping women under a microscope, consciously or not, maintains the status quo in business, government, public spaces, etc and as you follow the path back, it almost always has roots I'm religious fundamentalism.
So, yes, insecurity but primarily insecurity about losing power and control, by men. That's why we focus so much on what "she" wears but nobody gives two shits if I show up to work in flipflops, board shorts and a tank top. Why would they? I'm a dude.
Feminist scholars do well at diagnosing the problem. but they're terrible when it comes to arguing for good solutions. They mostly talk about ideology, and let's not kid ourselves: ideology (divisive ideology, at that) is not going to improve women's self esteem or lower their insecurity.
I doubt you actually read any feminist scholars. If you did you'd realize that there's no way to characterize them as they are all over the map, especially since they can fall into so many disciplines (philosophy, literature, sociology, political science, history, etc).
Feminism has an extremely broad remit and it's all based on the idea that actual ideology routinely boxes in half of the population in some way or another. It's just a fact, and thus there is endless study that can be undertaken.
Depends on your position as a male. Barack Obama got made fun of for a tan/beige suit he wore once.
Men get made fun of for what they wear all the time. So, I don’t get this argument that no one cares what men wear because we all certainly do. See mens wardrobe options vs womens. Compare the two - look at what is normal for one and normal for another. You’ll see one has far more selection than the other.
Yes but those are memorable and we laugh at them because they stand out. The volume of hate we throw at women is orders of magnitude worse. We don't even really pay attention to how often we slut/fat/ugly/etc shame women any more.
I agree with you that attire doesn't matter, but we're currently in a swing of increasing conformity. Including (or maybe especially) in tech.
It doesn't look like the stereotype of conformity from our parent's generation, so people don't acknowledge it for what it is. Or think that conflict between subcultures with a handful of mutually exclusive standards for conforming somehow nulls it out.
I do know people who have taken swords to programming conferences, and I've personally been given a knife with a belt sheath for presenting at the same programming conference (possibly a different year). Admittedly neither the swords nor the smaller knives were strapped to our arms, just our waists.
I worked for two gay guys that had their office in a flat next to their home. Sometimes they'd forget which side of the partition they were on. In the beginning I was a bit flushed about this, after a while I didn't even notice any more.
It shouldn't matter to whom? The key here is advertisers don't want to be associated with that. You cab very well respect and accept her, but if a private corporation funding or hosting her videos has an issue with it we can't force them on moral grounds. That's policing other folks as well
Not that I know of, but I doubt any company will ever want to come out and say "hey btw we don't like revealing images of women associated with our product". It'd be something they request of their ad partners, in this case Google, and I'd imagine it'd be something companies would want to keep under wraps. No need to expose themselves to unneeded controversy.
But we do know that many companies do feel that way, which is why many companies try to create a "family friendly" image. And as Google has said themselves, why many don't want to be associated with "non family friendly" images
It's by far the most parsimonious explanation when anything halfway popular gets "demonetized". YT is a profit-seeking business, they're always going to work closely with advertisers. Content makers and users are secondary, almost nobody is paying for YouTube Red.
That doesn't mean that advertisers aren't allowed to try to create a family friendly appearance? They're still a private entity they can do what they want even if it makes no sense to others
Don’t forget about the year she spent asking Signal to put a warning in place for Android users that have third-party keyboards. Apparently an extremely common thing in China and something that totally undermines Signal’s security without people realising.
Signal put the warning in, of course, after she got enough white men to repeat her request. Until the right people reported the problem, the only response she got was Moxie blocking her and dismissing the issue. I don’t see how that isn’t an operational vulnerability a mile wide for Signal: security problems go ignored if people from the wrong demographic report them.
Great summary. She's also one of the only people to help create more parts for someone living with an iron lung[0]. Unlike a lot of people, she seems to actually 'give a shit' about things happening in the world.
Her "skimpy outfits" are part of lesbian culture. One of the lesbian archetypes she enjoys being a part of entails her clothing choices and physique. I don't think that's any different than other cultures. Her content was never branded for children anyway, I don't understand what the issue Youtube has.
The crazy shit she's had said to her on social media makes me gobsmacked over and over again. You always hear people say they get these sorts of comments but she seems to get them a lot more, and a lot worse. It's really heartbreaking.
I've learned a lot from her, enjoy her videos, and yeah. This is just another example of how broken Youtube and Google are.
Years ago there was a comment here on HN, to the tune of: "when a man fronts a team he's called a leader or a CEO; when a woman does the same she often gets called a figurehead or a fake", and it's one of those things where once I heard it described I started noticing it a lot.
That event brought down "Make Magazine" a dozen notches permanently in my mind in an instant.
I respect her a ton for doing what she's doing, and if I remember correctly, she had to install a very elaborate and advanced security system at her home to feel safe.
Make: is Make:. Once they set up an isolation ward for nerds away from main exhibit in Maker Faire Tokyo to keep unsightly EE/HAM nerds away from handsome Makers.
They made huge contributions to their Maker movement and gave me $9 Pro Micros, and I’m thankful of it, but I won’t forget that they always are like that.
Probably most of us reason from stereotypes a lot of the time. I'm ashamed to admit I've recommended not hiring a guy I interviewed for a sysadmin job basically because he showed up wearing a suit and tie.
I think we all do but we should recognise it as an issue and come up with strategies and processes to ensure objectivity and reduce discrimination.
I was once told in an interview for a statistician role that the questions were designed for male candidates and I shouldn't worry if I struggle with them. And this was a big FTSE 100 company.
Once I got past 40, the only reason to own a "good" suit was to attend funerals.
So I would show up to job interviews in a basic black suit, and I liked the way I felt when I wore it. The old-school attitude about "Dress for Success" is just one more thing that's become retro and ironic these days.
Yet, when people make jokes about dongles it's also misogynist, because sexuality at the workplace makes women feel uneasy.
From a European standpoint, the simpler explanation (in this particular case) is that the US tech scene is incredibly, fascinatingly prude. It feels like even HN users would rather post their DNA and a list of illegal drugs that helped them pass an exam before they'd talk about their sex lives, for better or for worse.
As far as I thought, that’s why she does this, her technical skills and her appearance don’t align only if you have a preconceived notion about how she should look
Yeah, IIRC on Twitter she's pointed out that it's really common for rebellious teen girls to rebel by "dressing sexy", and for women in general to be interested in fashion, and she would really like those girls and women to feel welcome in technically innovative spaces; hopefully if I've gotten that wrong she'll chime in to correct me.
Also, though, it isn't really practical for her to get her breast implants removed just because woke "feminists" at Google and NPR are uncomfortable with the sexualization of women's bodies.
Why is it a problem that she employs people to help with her work? Putting out novel and high quality videos at a constant rate is hard.
Despite a lot of popular youtubers giving off the vibe of being one-person shows, most employ production assistants and editors.
Besides, (old) Top Gear was one of the most beloved shows of all time, which constantly featured segments where the Clarkson-Hammond-May trio was implied to make various contraptions, which were clearly made by the production staff. Not once did I feel like that it detracted from the enjoyment.
So as long she puts out high quality content, no one should mind that what she does is 'movie magic' in part.
Historically though she's done her builds herself, and she's been careful to call out the exceptions where a friend wrote some firmware for her or something. Not sure about video editing, I think she does that herself too. I don't think it's accurate to accuse her of "movie magic".
I have to admit I haven't checked out her recently, but I'm not accusing her of anything - I'm just saying that even if she delegates a part of her work (which is what all successful business people do) it is not a cause for condemnation.
Aside from the wankers, people don't watch her videos because she's a "successful business person", but because she's a maker or because she's demonstrating the capabilities of newly available machinery. The Make Magazine guy's erroneous accusation was that she wasn't really a maker, just a successful business person. He was wrong about that. That's the context in which it would be reasonable to read your comment as an accusation, and, as far as I know, a false one.
I didn't think you weren't arguing in good faith. I still don't think you weren't arguing in good faith. That's why I was explaining some important extra context to you that you seemed to be unaware of.
> There's extensive coverage of Tokyo, by comparison. It's interesting to see the high-density housing blocks and street-level activity. (The "let's increase housing density" crowd from Strong Towns should watch those videos.)
Hmm, visiting Tokyo (which is even better than watching videos) didn't make me change my opinions about high-density housing. Quite the opposite, in fact.
As someone who loves her videos, her physical appearance turns me off watching for any period of time. I would do the same if it were a half naked man showing me tech too.
>so what? that's most of Instagram.
I don't like watching the same physical appearances on places where they belong like TV, Movies or Instagram.... so no that's not "normal". If you merge making erotic cakes and cake baking on YouTube, expect a lot of cake baking lovers to not want to watch. It's just logic.
It just feels forced and is an ugly stain on otherwise awesome videos. But I understand that others might enjoy it.
Reminds me of the guy uploading math videos to a porn site, technically we should rate his work based on the math problem solving and teaching skills but you would be a fool to not recognise the problem of it being only reachable by being on a porn site.
If you disagree with her looks then simply stop watching. Same for the people who try to stop her from doing what she does just because they don’t like how she looks. There is plenty of stuff out there I don’t like. But that doesn’t mean that it is OK to ban/stop them.
I don't really support to ban anything that could be seen as sexual, but if you put it out, some people will always judge you on that merit. It will also net you attention and can overshadow your other feats.
Should she be condemned for that? I don't think so. But the engineering feats alone will never be the focus as a consequence.
We shouldn't accept it though and there is a massive double-standard in the treatment of the merit of women who are also sexy and men who are also sexy. We don’t question the merit of Ronaldo as a footballer because he also uses his body in a sexy way to advertise for example.
Another aspect as well is homogenising around the social mores of America by default which particularly in the aspects of sex and sexuality are deeply troubled.
> We shouldn't accept it though and there is a massive double-standard in the treatment of the merit of women who are also sexy and men who are also sexy. We don’t question the merit of Ronaldo as a footballer because he also uses his body in a sexy way to advertise for example.
Of course we do! I'm not into football, but several of my friends who are dislike him explicitly because of this.
Dislike isn't the same thing as questioning his merit as a footballer though. Especially as he is widely heralded as the being one of the best players of all time. I'd also suggest that disliking Ronaldo because he poses in sexy adverts is also pretty closely aligned with the same cultural issues that lead to dismissing women. And whilst I can definitely agree there will be some men who dismiss Ronaldo's merit as a footballer for being too sexy there is a massive difference in degree when compared to the general treatment of women for the same.
But Ronaldo became famous for his football, not his sexy body.
Everyone knows sex sells, but some people (not only men) get upset when they see people promoting themselves with their own sexuality, especially when it's in an unrelated field.
I think Naomi is great, but I can see why some people get upset by the way she presents. I wonder how less attractive maker women feel about her, for example?
People weren’t just upset at how she looks they outright questioned her technical merit because of how she looks. And yes women can have misogynistic views as well which are just as unacceptable.
I mean, if you look at the base rates of how makers and engineers dress, she's about as far as it can get from the mean. However, if you were at burning man or the DNA lounge, she'd fit right in with a bunch of other hackers and attendees.
I think they essentially questioned why is she 'famous'; is it because of outstanding technical ability, or because of the way she presents, and unwisely chose to try and disprove her technical ability.
The question still stands to some extent though I think. Using 'sex' to sell yourself is accepted in music, film, fashion and so on, but perhaps not in technical fields, and, actually, as I think about it more, I'm starting to agree a little bit.
We shouldn't accept youtube regulating their own content? You're free to protest them but many many creators have had problems with them to no response. I find people in this thread are turning a YouTube issue into a social issue. However you feel about it, it's within the purview of advertisers to not fund content they dislike. Artists have been complaining about that for eternity
This seems like a failure of imagination. Or maybe an expectation of seriousness which can only be associated with certain kinds of people who dress and speak a certain way.
The reality is that anyone can be really smart and make “serious” contributions and they deserve to be taken seriously regardless of how they choose to dress or present themselves. We have chosen a certain definition of normality and we can choose to expand that to be more inclusive.
From what I’ve read about Naomi, she is interested in both the engineering and the social justice aspects of her work. She deserves to be taken seriously and not dismissed simply because of the way she looks.
I think she is a smart woman and that she intentionally uses sex appeal. I actually don't condemn her for that, but to suggest the animosity exists "because of her looks" is dishonest. It is because she uses sex appeal for marketing herself. I am fine with that, but it is what it is. Some people have a problem with that and I doubt that will ever change and there are also good arguments that it is or should be irrelevant to the topic.
Some people do have a problem with that, and they are telling on themselves when YouTube demonetizes Wu but no one will ever touch Kyle Hill's videos in spite of the fact that he teaches science while looking like the love child of mid-90s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Madonna.
(... And nobody should, his videos are great. Seriously if you haven't seen his stuff go check it out. But there's an obvious double standard if he's in and Wu is out).
An alternate perspective is that she dresses how she wishes, and other people ascribe that sex appeal regardless. The most outrageously attired of a group of similarly skilled people is likely to draw the most fans and detractors, whether that was their intention or not.
I'm guessing it's a bit of both, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I'm a white male, so it's relatively easy to convince people to take me seriously. That isn't a great situation, but noone expects me to downplay that to make things more fair.
She has a harder time being taken seriously (as evidenced by the MAKE story), but she's attractive which makes her videos more interesting. I don't think you can blame her for using advantages.
From what I've seen of her, she does seem to enjoy being dressed nicely, so I don't think she's only doing it to get views.
Of course appeal is subjective, but I believe she calls herself sexy cyborg. Denying intent is almost as offensive as a denial of existence I believe. Although there can be cases like that.
Because if there's anything to judge a person on the basis of, it's Reddit logins they chose when they were 20 and stuck with as they grew in popularity
I don’t know why Naomi’s comment is being downvoted. Another young (at that time) woman, Amanda Knox learned the hard way about being judged on the basis of her online account name: When the tabloid media learned that her Myspace nickname was “Foxy Knoxy”, they spun salacious stories, making her out to be some sort of “femme fatale” who would be capable of murdering her flat-mate, Meredith Kercher.
Quoting her: "I look the way I do for myself, and I don't object to any one else's polite enjoyment of that."
Considering something like body dysmorphia (as an example) might help give someone benefit of doubt. I'm not going to pretend to understand exactly why someone feels that way.
>Considering something like body dysmorphia (as an example) might help give someone benefit of doubt. I'm not going to pretend to understand exactly why someone feels that way.
Yes, it is something like that. But it's bullshit for me to dance around it and expect some sort of grace. I will say something.
I don't think you owe justifications for your body modifications or wardrobe to anybody: not to the police, not to the CPC, not to your parents, not to Google, and certainly not to random people on Twitter competing to see who can be the cruelest.
About an American lady who needed some parts for her iron lung and how no one would help her. Only the thing is, they knew I already had:
https://youtu.be/4VKZTmTP7oY
I'd fabricated the collars in Shenzhen, mailed the first batch, revised them and needed someone on the US side to to the final fitting. Martha told them this, a quick search told them this, hundreds of people told them this- did NPR revise the story to correct the omission of "oh by the way this problem we were talking about was solved by this female engineer". No of course not. I mean, it's NPR, you think they are going to get smut on their fingers writing about someone who looks like me? Never going to happen.
Again, hundreds of people called them out. But they did the math and decided that the stigma of mentioning someone who looked like me was worse.
That's just the last few months- this has been a constant for years. I fully Open Sourced the best selling 3D printer on the planet, have the first five Open Source Hardware Association certifications granted in China- which people said would never happen, have brought multiple Chinese companies into GPL compliance, I'm the only women to have brought a 3D printer to mass-market- a game changing design for small scale manufacturing- the list is long, but somehow, none of it is "appropriate" to cover- just because of how I look.
We're well beyond- "does my appearance detract from my work". Of course it does. We're at "does my appearance justify not just complete erasure of my work but constant attempts to deplatform and defund me" I don't think it does.
I have never heard of you before (which I guess is just more evidence) but the way you make your point is absolutely brilliant. I will definitely be checking out your channel.
I hope you don’t get worn down by the bullshit, we need more people like you in the world.
It's certainly a shtick that is offputting to some and challenging to others. It also should have zero bearing on whether your work and contributions are valid. There is definitely a double standard, just look at how some celebrities dress and act and are praised for it.
As I see it, you "cannot do it right". Here is what I mean by this:
Some people in the comments here have noted, that wearing anything that is more revealing than people are used to, might be seen as "fighting for the right to display yourself in whatever way you want" for women in general and see it as a positive thing. Whether that is interpreting too much into the action, I cannot say. On the other hand there are other people, who interpret it as means to attract more viewers, and does not add to the technical content.
So there are at least 2 contrary interpretations. Perhaps it could be named "polarizing". I would not say that this is "your fault" in any way. It is simply the state of our society currently and how we are being socialized. It can be improved. The human body is in itself nothing criminal. It is our interpretations of expression, that gives meaning. There will always be critics, who see it one way or another.
I did not know your channel before. I congratulate you for making some GPL happen. Good job on that! One thing I personally would value is, if you put emphasis on free (libre) software, when doing GPL and not name it merely open source. I think your content is interesting. I also like to see how it looks in Shenzhen, besides the technical aspects of the channel.
Well said. Also fair play to you for being prepared to openly identify as who you are, in a part of the world where it's not necessarily as easy to do so as it is for many of us.
I admire the strength, conviction, humility and technical skills you are constantly showing. Please keep doing what you are doing. Some people can’t handle a beautiful woman who is smart, skilled, and choose her own way in life. That’s their problem. Not yours. Remember that for every low self-esteem hater out there, there are many others who support what you are doing and disagree with the haters. Years ago woman were not allowed to show their ankles in public. We have come a long way since then. But there will always be a small group of people who can’t handle independent woman who doesn’t conform to their ideas. Just ignore them. They are dinosaurs and will eventually die out.
> We're well beyond- "does my appearance detract from my work". Of course it does. We're at "does my appearance justify not just complete erasure of my work but constant attempts to deplatform and defund me" I don't think it does.
It’s not you, it’s not the advertisers, it’s them. It’s not fair play. The fair play aspect is particularly infuriating. So what if it’s their platform - just because they can set the standards as they please doesn’t make it right.
YouTube is a US corporation, and this action is un-American.
I believe you might not fit into the story they want to paint onto the tech industry in general.
You think your successes would have been harder to achieve if you didn't advertise with sex appeal? You don't need to justify yourself for anything but you still sound like you feel the need to do so.
I don't even know their exact angle to be honest, they probably don't want to make the impression that sex appeal is a necessity for success in tech. But that is speculation. I understand the want to keep it "clean" but I hope you can appeal the demonetization.
>You think your successes would have been harder to achieve if you didn't advertise with sex appeal? You don't need to justify yourself for anything but you still sound like you feel the need to do so.
Oh, not at all. It's a gender expression issue, some dysphoria problems, I will try to go into once I muster up the courage. I'm cis but have an...odd backstory. It's definitely counter productive to success in tech after a certain point.
>they probably don't want to make the impression that sex appeal is a necessity for success in tech.
It could be, but at the same time, many young women like being flamboyant, most unlike me outgrow it, but few 17 year olds aspire to the pant-suit. A passable IG "thot" doing tech isn't necessarily the bad influence people think it is. I think a healthy balance of role models will attract a healthy balance of candidates. I think saying "you have to be gender conforming within this narrow spectrum or look like this" is an absolute nightmare for, well basically everyone- men included.
> It's definitely counter productive to success in tech after a certain point.
I believe this too, although the currency on social media might be different. In a work environment many actually do it as a courtesy to people that do not sexualize themselves. There is an attention economy in the workplace too. Looks do give you a bonus in many cases until you leverage it. Then it is suddenly the worst sin. A bit hypocritical perhaps, but it might level the playing field a bit and it lets people keep focus.
There are probably few people that honestly condemn you if you forget your pants when coming into work, but it is still generally expected that you at least try to put them on. Not sure if there are any barriers yet to be broken down.
> A passable IG "thot" doing tech isn't necessarily the bad influence people think it is
I generally agree, although I would lie that I would not be disappointed if people rely on whatever "thots" do. Perhaps I am too conservative, but Instagram is a great argument for catholic girls boarding schools, even if everyone know they are the worst. I think there is a difference if you get recognition for your looks or for your skills and mixing can lead to trouble.
> aspire to the pant-suit
It changed a bit in recent years, but often it is pretty relaxed. I regard it as a boon that you often can immediately separate the engineer from the salesman. But the former has the choice at least.
It's because other people stir shit up with her as the topic, either for fun/trolling, or they truly feel she's somehow threatening (their masculinity and world-view).
While some people certainly seem to subscribe to "feeling their masculinity/world-view is threatened" interpretation, the fundamental problem that q lot of people don't seem to understand is that the internet changed the mechanics of fame.
The best explanation I've seen - and possibly the most important video on youtube - is "This Is Phil Fish"[1] by Innuendo Studios. It's not really about Phil Fish; it's about everyone who isn't Phil Fish acted when they decided he became "famous". In the past, being "on tv" or "in a band" or other traditional examples of fame required some amount of buying into fame. Becoming famous required media access that was controlled by gatekeepers. You had to work with those gatekeepers if you wanted to be "on tv" or whatever, and because you had to choose to participate, people often see the decision to become famous as also accepting some amount of responsibility to "act like famous people are supposed to act".
This internet fundamentally changed the mechanics of fame, because the internet IS media access. Now it is possible to become famous - to become a "celebrity" with a "responsibility" to act in a certain way - simply by being yourself in your normal everyday life.
Oh right, she has good command of English which is checks notes the most widely spoken language on the planet Earth. No way to learn decent English unless you are a communist party agent.
Never been to mainland but I've spent a month working on Taiwan. You ain't going to find perfect English among the sellers on Hsinchu street markets perhaps but many industry professionals have it as good as it gets.
What kind of point is that really? Do you think they teach English especially well for CCP members or what? Or is it more along the lines that an attractive foreign female shouldn't be able to speak English well?
For any Westerners here who seem to have a hard time understanding why this is wrong:
Look at an even more women-oppressing culture such as that of Afghanistan under the Taliban. Women are required to cover their faces in public. Why? For "modesty." What it boils down to is that if women show their faces it could have a negative effect on men (sexual attraction).
A lot of people where are shaming her for being essentially immodest in her quest for female empowerment. A face is not immodest. A boob is not immodest. It is not sexualized because it is just a body part. It takes a man to do the sexualization, so the sexualization isn't the boob, but a man's who is doing the sexualization. A baby does not sexualize the boob (it's food). They get conditioned to it by society and culture as they grow older (a culture that sexualizes it).
Sub out face in Afghanistan with boob in America and you'll see it's the same picture. While we should pat ourselves on the back for being so progressive as to allow women to show their faces in public, we haven't quite gotten to the point where it's ok to show boobs in public. And yes, some women prefer to wear burkas, just as some women prefer to hide their boobs in public.
The point is that those restrictions on women shouldn't be dictated by the actions or effects they have on men. Instead, men should either change their viewpoints or control their own sexualization so that women don't have to accommodate. These immodest views come from those who sexualize women, and because that's out of the control of women so they should not be forced to accommodate something out of their control.
Yeah, sub out boobs with genitals in your argument, and replace men/man with women/woman and see if your argument is still sensible[1] when women complain that they have no wish to see male genitalia.
You're complaining that men are the problem because women are the target, but I'm pretty certain a significant number of women also complain when a venue has unexpected partial female nudity.
[1] Every culture draws the line at different points. Turning it into a "men are the problem" conclusion, while being wildly incorrect, is also hilariously sexist to both sexes. Edit your post to demean non-binaries as well and you'll have a hat-trick!
In an environment where it's normal, there are no problems. I experienced such an environment myself, I was (surprisingly?) not bothered by this in such a setting and women there neither.
Women may complain that they have no wish to see male genitalia in a setting where it is not normal / can be seen as / is an assault. Intents matter, too.
If you point your middle finger, the finger is still a body part but you are doing something offensive because you intend to insult someone.
I address that point that some woman want to wear burkas, just as some women don't want to show their boobs. Just because most men don't want to be tempted by seeing boobs, some women don't want to see boobs either. But regardless of men or women neither should be dictating how some woman want to show their body.
Also, while I use the term "men" I really mean "any person that sexualizes a woman over their physical appearance."
> But regardless of men or women neither should be dictating how some woman want to show their body.
But, they can dictate how some men want to show their body? *shakes head*
Firstly, you claimed that men are the problem, not that people who object are the problem. This new claim is a different claim.
Secondly, whether you like it or not, women are more likely to complain of male nudity in a venue than men are to complain of female nudity in a venue, yet you want to portray the argument as "men are the problem".
Your argument only works in your head because you draw an artificial distinction between men and women, and you want to "protect" the women. Treat everyone as people and your argument falls over.
Distill your argument to the essential bits:
1. Does a person have a right to show whatever part of their body that they want to?
Sure.
2. Do people have to be forced to see that display in a public venue?
Depends on what the society has decided on.
3. Should the rule be based on whether the viewer/displayer is female or male?
> But, they can dictate how some men want to show their body? shakes head
You're making this a gender war thing. It's not about who gets to dictate what to whom. It's about why something is dictated and who it's benefitting.
For genitalia, both genders are not allowed to show theirs. This is acceptable because it's fair.
For breasts, men can show theirs, yet women cannot.
For skirts: too short and a woman is labeled slutty. Why? Because people who sexualize them (often men) view them as sexy and wanting sex. And so these people then dictate that they should wear longer skirts so that they don't feel so guilty themselves. This ends up being one party dictating how the other should appear in order to accommodate their own needs.
Men can wear short or long. It's ok because generally women do not sexualize men in that way. But the point here is that the viewpoint of immodesty comes from the viewer, and women have no control in how they are viewed by others, therefore they should not have to adjust themselves to accommodate for something they have no control over.
> 1. Does a person have a right to show whatever part of their body that they want to?
>> Sure.
No that is not my argument. I accept the laws that both genders cannot show their genitals or sexual organs. If we enacted a law that said all people have to hide their mouths I'd be in full support. We don't have such a law but we are close to it (face masks for covid). What I am against is unequal laws enacted by one group on another to accommodate the first or other group.
> 3. Should the rule be based on whether the viewer/displayer is female or male?
>> Most definitely not.
This is not about male or female. This is about one group forcing their preference on another group to accommodate their own needs.
> Men can't wear "too short" because men's pants are not made that short.
You’re completely missing the point. If men did wear shorts as short as a woman they might be perceived to be weird, but not sexualized in the way a woman would be.
Men do have breasts. They are simply not as enlarged. But again you are missing the point because a flat-chested woman would not be allowed to show her breasts either. Maybe men are just better genetically because we are not born so immodest?
My argument summed up is that woman have certain non-sex related body parts (could be hips, could be breasts) that have certain display requirements thrust upon them because they cause sexualized ideas in another group of people (mostly men). As a society we decided that these sexualized thoughts are bad and should be stopped. OK, that’s acceptable. However the method we decided to do that is to tell the women to hide those parts so the other group is not tempted. Problem solved. However woman are being forced to modify themselves by society in order to fix a problem inherently caused by another group. They have no control over how the other group perceives them, so they shouldn’t be the ones having to adjust constantly to others’ perceptions.
It used to be that fat was sexy. Who knows, maybe in the future it will be flat chested. Depending on what men become sexualized by, women have to constantly change their appearance so as not to tempt man.
If you don’t find that ridiculous, let’s sub it out with a similar example. Imagine a group of white people who, whenever they see black people, felt “uncomfortable” because black people in their minds are associated with crime, thugs, etc. Let’s say that, in uncommon instances, the white people felt threatened and may have started fights if the black people looked particularly like criminals, or maybe the black people felt prejudiced and started fights. Let’s say the government’s solution to the problem was to segregate the black people from the white people, but they did so by telling the black people to not live in existing white neighborhoods. Problem solved because the instances of black on white confrontation are abated. Is it fair though? No, because it’s inconveniencing black people in order to solve a problem caused by the view point of white people. Black people can’t control how others view them, and if the problems are inherently caused by those misguided viewpoints then we should be 1) fixing those viewpoints and 2) telling people with those viewpoints to deal with it.
When you look at something like Borat's swimming suit, it is ridiculed specifically because it is sexualized. However, for men that swimming suit generally results in a negative sexual interest, and it's why you hardly find men wearing it. In gay parades you find plenty of men wearing ultra tight shorts, specifically because they sexualize. How can't they? They are specifically designed to highlight the genital areas.
As a second point about breasts, human breasts are unique in the animal kingdom because they are specifically made to signal sexual availability. Generally animals do not have enlarged breasts, even when lactating. In humans the woman breast evolved to enlarge when sexual maturity is reached to signal sexual availability. So saying that boobs are just a body part that men sexualize is also incorrect.
> Secondly, whether you like it or not, women are more likely to complain of male nudity in a venue than men are to complain of female nudity in a venue, yet you want to portray the argument as "men are the problem".
Source? Anecdotally living in the South, it is overwhelmingly men complaining about women not properly conforming to their sensibility regarding modesty.
I've never heard it the other way around, and you claiming it is an undisputed fact "where I like it or not" is bizarre to me.
Unfortunately the comment asking for clarification has been flagged into oblivion, so I'll repeat my clarifying comment here:
I definitely did not intend to say that Naomi Wu is like a flasher, and I appreciate your implicit request for clarification.
I meant that I frequently hear both men and women criticize specifically women for nudity, especially when the critics are from the US, and I very rarely hear them criticizing men for nudity. When men do get criticized for nudity, it's usually in a circumstance where the nudity is being interpreted as a threat, such as a flasher, which is a very different situation than posting a video of laser-cutting a dressmaker's dummy.
I definitely did not intend to say that Naomi Wu is like a flasher, and I appreciate your implicit request for clarification.
I meant that I frequently hear both men and women criticize specifically women for nudity, especially when the critics are from the US, and I very rarely hear them criticizing men for nudity. When men do get criticized for nudity, it's usually in a circumstance where the nudity is being interpreted as a threat, such as a flasher, which is a very different situation than posting a video of laser-cutting a dressmaker's dummy.
Gotcha appreciate the clarification. Yeah that's an important distinction between violating some norm regarding how "modest" women are required to be and the overtly violent nature of sexual harassment by men.
Idk, I think he's got you with the "sub out for dick" thing.
We live in an (I hope) egalitarian democracy and what's acceptable to display is dictated by our polis. Can this same be said regarding women wearing burkas in Afghanistan.
>most men don't want to be tempted by seeing boobs
Just lol
A woman's boob is not equivalent to a man's penis. If anything, a vagina is is the equivalent to a penis, as both organs are used as part of sex. A boob is not normally used as part of sex. That being said, if we all agree that no genders can show their sexual organs then that's fine. That's at least an equally applied rule.
However the issue here is that some men, and some women too, find it bothers them to see boobs, but only female boobs. It's irrelevant if some woman happen to agree, because a woman can still oppress woman, just as a Chinese person can still be racist towards Chinese people.
If a women dressing sexy (but otherwise within the generally accepted constraints of not showing genitalia or nipples) and then gets raped by a person (man or woman), is it her fault or the person's fault? Is she asking for it by dressing sexy? Sexy here is in the eye of the rapist, and whether the women thinks she is dressing sexy herself is irrelevant, so I would argue that it is the rapist's fault. If a woman does something to her outward appearance such as enlarging her breasts or dressing "immodestly" and it causes weird feelings or urges in some people, those feelings are wholly the fault of the person feeling them.
Wow, in what world is there a debate over who's fault it is that a woman gets raped?
You didn't respond to my points about skin exposure being a social norm. We choose to show/hide genitals, breasts, ankles, feet, etc based on a region by region basis.
There will always be somebody complaining about everything. That doesn’t mean that it should be banned. I don’t like loud people in restaurants. I don’t like people drinking in the streets. I don’t like noisy souped up cars. I don’t like people playing loud music in their cars. I don’t like rich assholes. So should we ban all of that? Of course not. We all have to compromise to some degree to make society work. It used to be the case that woman were not allowed to show their ankles in public. I am sure back then you would agree with this because conservative types always disagree with anything that changes status quo. Especially when it comes to woman.
Imagine if men or women showed up to work completely naked. For one it might not be the most sanitary, but let’s assume we don’t leave any mess or smell from those lower regions. People would not care because it would become normal. As the previous poster identifies, different cultures have different levels of normal and it is a great comparison of face to boob. In my opinion the fact you hide something makes it more sexual, not less, because then it is no longer normal and it is now rare. From a economic perspective there is not scarcity causing its value to increase.
Yea but those laws are the manifestation of cultural mores. It used to be illegal for black people to vote so laws shouldn't be held up as universal rules of what should be right. I think the important bit is that breasts are not genitalia, and men can expose their breasts. At least for actual genitalia, no humans of any gender can legally expose them in public! That is at least fair.
Why is it always genitals…? I just don’t get this argument. It sounds like a straw man constructed from what would be the part they prefer not to stare at.
"Per se", perhaps. Your reasoning goes like this: sticking up your middle finger or shouting "motherfucker" in someone's face isn't insulting. It's the recipient that makes it an insult. Therefore, it is perfectly civilized to do either.
And we're not talking immodesty. While different cultures may have different limits, that doesn't mean they're too subjective to even pay attention of.
And showing your body is not a quest female empowerment, if only because it would leave the lesser gifted in the shadows. Calling it a quest female empowerment is an absurd word game.
No one is censoring her, it's just demonization. No one is compelled to pay her for her content. Advertisers aren't the Taliban if they are picky with what content they're associated with. Artists have been complaining about sponsors dictating the terms of art of centuries and its always been just a niche background conversation. I'm not entirely sure why this is different, it's still private corporations doing business at the end of the day. It's get right to dress how she wants, and it's others right to associate with her or not.
What I find interesting is the other female voice that gets shush is women who are for modesty. Other female content creators often take issue too-- it reminds me of the twitch scandal a while back where some women would wear beach wear on cam. Some women complained that in order to compete with that they needed to wear less too. And then they felt uncomfortable with the direction things were going. I think they made valid points, and yet then as now no one really cares.
It feels like it's still a matter of controlling women's bodies, just not society is saying they should "wear less and be free" rather than wear more. Women's voices, at the end of the day, are still secondary in these conversations, especially when they take place on the internet, and that's something I find incredibly ironic. SexyCyborg herself is making posts here but it's drowned out by others fighting her fight for her. Rather than elevating the voices of creators like her, it's just turned into a "women need to be able to wear less everywhere or were the Taliban" thing.
Which, by the way, is bordering in Islamophobic. Muslims make up close to 25% of the world population and many women choose to wear modest clothing. I know some firsthand. Treating them like they're just brainwashed or being forced by the Taliban is so insulting and demeaning and completely ignoring the voices of billions of women. I find it so strange how often I see people treating them like they don't exist or the their voices aren't valid. The Taliban isn't the only people in earth who find value in modesty and its frankly misogynistic to imply the women they feel that way are just backwards and oppressed
You are missing the point. The point is one group is forced to accommodate for problems caused by another group. The problem is the forcing.
No one should be forced to wear burkas nor to not wear them. But the status quo there is that they are forced to wear them. Yes I agree with you forcing women to not wear burkas is equally as bad as forcing them to not wear them.
I’m arguing that we should let each woman individually decide for herself their preferred body image (within the confines of equal laws applied to all genders). They can show their boobs, cover, them, cover their faces, shoe their armpit hair… whatever they want.
> It takes a man to do the sexualization, so the sexualization isn't the boob
I think you’re trying to rewrite the books that mention erogenous zones. Go read them instead. Boobs are sexual.
Having said that, sexuality is not the problem; prudeness is. A vagina could be sexual and still be fine to be uncovered, as it is/was in some cultures.
Neither sexuality or prudeness should be the problem, rather the aggression.
Display of genitals is seen as a gesture of aggression or dominance, not just in Humans. That's what distinguishes nude breasts from nude genitalia. And it's a rather more pronounced problem with male genitalia, we're not equal in that regard.
Some cultures do allow them being uncovered, but I think experts could still tell us that there are some rules to all of that. And these cultures are rather small and rare.
> For any Westerners here who seem to have a hard time understanding why this is wrong
As opposed to the sexually liberated cultures of Asia, India, or the Middle East?
> The point is that those restrictions on women shouldn't be dictated by the actions or effects they have on men. Instead, men should either change their viewpoints or control their own sexualization so that women don't have to accommodate them.
What is this mirror universe where men recoil at the unclad female form? Please direct your complaints either at puritanism in general, or Google and their advertisers in particular. I certainly don't feel accommodated by this demonetization.
With the exception of India those other places don't speak English. My comment was targeted at the predominantly Western culture of the HN audience, which I myself am a part of.
> What is this mirror universe where men recoil at the unclad female form?
That's great that you don't, but the point is not that men recoil at the female form, it's that men are dictating rules on women to help them control their own urges. Again, burkas were invented because men wanted women to be more modest, and to help prevent sins such as womanizing and sexualization. Both of those "sins" are predominantly committed by men towards women so it is a problem rooted in men, but solved by adjusting women's behavior. Even if some women prefer to wear burkas, or agree that it is good to be modest for some reason, that does not mean all women should now be required to do so.
I hear what you’re saying and I understand your points regarding men. At the same time, at least in the US, I think it’s important to acknowledge that a lot of judgmental criticism directed at women comes from other women.
Just want to point out that many Western countries and cultures don't share this hysteria and shaming around nakedness or female empowerment. Which doesn't mean that gendered power structures don't exist or that you see naked boobs everywhere in the summer city.
Showing naked bodies in various contexts on public television is not controversial in many Western countries.
And not all countries share then same culture of embracing nakedness. It's odd how they never get mentioned. Their views are valid as well, whether you agree or not. It's differing social mores. Defining what social rules are acceptable and what aren't (and hint hint it's our rules that are the good ones) seems like another way of dismissing foreign cultures, which unfortunately feels like an an age old coming from the west
Of course. I'd argue that even expressions not embraced should still by default tolerated, as opposed to banned, censored, or demonetized.
I can't say I know of a "perfect" nation in this sense, but there's absolutely varying degrees of range between "embraced ideas" and "accepted expressions". Both the USA and Afghanistan rank particularly low in an international context, there.
My main point with the comment you're replying to is that either way, the idiosyncrasies presented by GP as "Western" are more American, or at least anglo-christian (in lack of a better fuzzy word).
> It is not sexualized because it is just a body part. It takes a man to do the sexualization, so the sexualization isn't the boob, but a man's who is doing the sexualization.
I agree with most of your comment, but I just want to point out that women are also harsh judges of other women who don't fit cultural norms in how they dress or behave. It's not just men sexualizing women and trying to cut them out if they don't fit, it's also women policing other women in this way.
Ever stop to consider why? What compels people to shun those that don't look like them or adhere to their standards? Perhaps a tradition of oppression an subconscious jealousy about the display of freedom by doing something atypical?
Women can be misogynists too. We don't have a monopoly on that. We as a collective value conformity because it keeps people in line and doesn't threaten our existing architecture. Things that deviate from norms draw attention and inspire discussions like this. Too many people thinking about coloring outside the lines and then more will do it.
If we didn't indoctrinate our kids at the start, we'd have a higher chance for more uniform distribution of power. More people would be able to achieve success, which would raise the floor and make the ceiling not feel so high. Those on top would feel like they're losing because the gap would shrink and the perceived height from the top would be lower. Can't have that so we say things like "boys will boys" to dismiss shit behavior, glorify #boymom, defend our girls by saying they're "not like other girls" and sell little girls on shiny object and lacy dresses, even if they really just want to play with dinosaurs (because dinosaurs are cool and not only for boys).
Why not ask then instead of paternalistically assuming you know why they think that way and how to fix them? If women feel a certain way it's still their right to. I disagree with this idea that if a woman agrees she's correct and if not she was just brainwashed by society. This feels like just another way for men to take away agency from women. I imagine they have a multitude of reasons they feel that way. Some may be jealously or society, but I've heard women say things like they feel it pressures them to dress the same and increases societal expectations that they dress in more revealing clothing. Whetet or not you find the valid, just brushing over all of it and saying they're indoctrinated is so.. yikes
These aren't _my_ assumptions. There is a world of research on these topics. All people can and do have their own opinions but when we're talking about oppressed people (women are oppressed), we have to follow the path by asking "why?"
* Why do little girls suddenly start to ask if "boys are better" when they get to school?
* Why do we feel the need to tell people out opinions about how they look?
* Why is a tattoo of a butterfly on a wrist okay for a woman but not full sleeves? (Contrast that with men.)
* Why do we insist on loudly proclaiming our daughters are "not like other girls" or are "like a boy"? Is there something shameful about it?
We took away agency long ago and we've been dangling it in front of oppressed people for years, periodically letting take small bites. That's another form if how me keep a grip on things. We give people a taste, as long as they're willing to take the conditions that comes with it.
There's a thing called "choosey choice feminism" that is a hot button item. One side days "following the magazine standards is a choice and I'm free to make it because feminism" and the other side says "but why do the magazines exist and would you choose that if you weren't bombarded by it all day?" I think both sides are right but I also hear and see the problems. It's not about whether or not feelings or opinions are right though, it's about what you'd feel or think if you weren't subjected to it constantly. To ignore the external influences and dismiss patriarchy is to accept the status quo as a Good Thing and be okay with slut shaming and demonizing the very freedom of choice you're trying to defend.
I don't see how this works well for long (and it arguably hasn't) because of th cognitive dissonance required to accept all things to be true.
>It's not about whether or not feelings or opinions are right though, it's about what you'd feel or think if you weren't subjected to it constantly
It's not about whether their opinions are right, it's about where they're valid. Women can have opinions that aren't correct, just like men are free to be wrong. When you say it's about what they would feel if they weren't subjected to it constantly is totally subjective. Some might say women would run around naked because it's more comfortable without societies pressure, some say they would cover up because taking off clothing is a societal pressure to appease the male gaze. But then again, the assumption that all women would think that same is just more simplifying them and their views.
In reality it'd probably be a mix, because women can dislike other women without it being because society brainwashed them to. Saying they wouldn't ever be rude to one another if not for society feels like that patriarchal idea that women are all innocent flowers that must be protected from bad influences, rather than they're normal people who are nice and mean and everything in between. If you're gonna go into the territory of "what if everything were different" you can't also declare you know exactly what would happen. And yes society has taken a lot of agency away from women, but the solution isn't to take agency away from them in service of feminism. This just leads to a different set of problems for women
women in the west are more free, privileged, and protected than any other group of humans ever in history
little boys also ask if girls are better when they get to school. both sexes are curious as they grow up. school is also dominated by female teachers and there are now more girls in school than boys.
the rest of your questions are nonsensical. people are people. norms exist. they might change but there will always be norms, and they will be tied to masculine and feminine expressions too.
> What compels people to shun those that don't look like them or adhere to their standards? Perhaps a tradition of oppression an subconscious jealousy about the display of freedom by doing something atypical?
If you want to be uncharitable, sure. Or maybe you could recognize the fact that human bonding is largely based on shared values, and if someone looks or acts radically different, then you see no common ground on which to establish such a bond.
I think people are all too quick to reach for the "hatred" and "misogyny" labels.
So why do we loudly shame those that don't want to adhere? Who does it benefit? Does my heavily tattooed spouse need to know she's not your version of bangable? Does my bigger friend need to know that people don't find her size attractive, when she's happy about it?
If we're going to discuss being charitable, we should start by allowing people to be happy with themselves and not share our thoughts on what we don't like about them because that's the problem. That's at the root of this whole topic. We are incapable of allowing people to deviate without telling them how we feel about it.
Why? And why don't we do the same thing as to men? (There is no 100% rule. Some men are shamed and some people shame men. It's not at the same rate.)
> So why do we loudly shame those that don't want to adhere? Who does it benefit?
It benefits them because they're expressing their values and preferences, which allows them to find others like them and build bonds over these shared values. A shitty way to do it maybe, but it always comes back to bonding.
Edit: although some people shame out of genuine concern that the shamed party will not themselves be able to find human bonds. This is a type of shaming you often see from parents.
> We are incapable of allowing people to deviate without telling them how we feel about it.
I'm not sure who "we" is. Society collectively is much more tolerant of deviations from normal dress, appearance and behaviour than they were even 10 years ago. Society takes time to adapt.
> It benefits them because they're expressing their values and preferences, which allows them to find others like them and build bonds over these shared values. A shitty way to do it maybe, but it always comes back to bonding.
I'm comforted by the admission of how shitty that is. I don't agree with your premise but I don't have to. The end result is that we can converge on the idea that people should stop being so forthcoming about their opinions of what other people do to and for themselves. If that's all we could (collective we, not specific) ever do, that would make the world pattern and remove the examples from Publix that keeps the pattern of shitty behavior going.
> Edit: although some people shame out of genuine concern that the shamed party will not themselves be able to find human bonds. This is a type of shaming you often see from parents.
Parents shouldn't shame their children. That's shitty behavior too. It's also infantalizing, whether from a parent or not. I've never shamed my kid and I don't plan to. I dealt with that myself and I can tell you that it didn't reap the outcomes anyone could have been looking for. I haven't spoken to my parents in years.
> I'm not sure who "we" is. Society collectively is much more tolerant of deviations from normal dress, appearance and behaviour than they were even 10 years ago. Society takes time to adapt
I'm not so sure that's true. I may have agreed with you 10 years ago but now we have Incels and Red Pills and Men Going Their Own Way and people openly advocate raping women (I have a hard time knowing that's a real thing). I think we've regressed and we're more than happy to shame people for anything we don't agree with. Loudly. Constantly. To the point that we drive people to isolation because they're tired of the barrage. (look up You Look Like a Man for a perfect example of this)
> I may have agreed with you 10 years ago but now we have Incels and Red Pills and Men Going Their Own Way and people openly advocate raping women
I'll only close to say that I think the media exaggerates this phenomenon considerably because it drives clicks, so don't buy into it. It's the same effect where people saw terrorism everywhere and feared muslims back in the late 1990s to late 2000's because the media was constantly harping on it.
Yes these people exist, but I haven't seen any evidence that they are a problem on the scale the media would have you believe (unless you're on Twitter, which is an unrepresentative cesspool).
Whoa, whoa. Is that why so many macho men can’t wear a face mask? Do face masks emasculate men? Because if they’re being told what to wear, to cover up their face, it’s being treated like a woman. Except it’s so completely not that. It suddenly makes more sense to me that people are so irrational about the mask and calling it “freedom” while they casually shed virus particles (micro-scale microaggressions), because it’s this weird cultural/emotional response.
In Canada, indecency laws prohibiting bare breasts in females but not males were found to be unconstitutional. Despite the lack, social mores and cold weather fairly successfully keep breasts covered here.
"No shirt, no shoes, no service" signs became more popular in reaction to the ruling, but the expected wave of bare female breasts did not happen, disappointing immature males.
You're not telling us what you're thinking, or you're telling us something without thinking about it. What you posted reads like a collection of ideas and not an argument of any kind. The quality of individual constituents in that above collection seems suspect as well.
An argument might go something like: hypothesis, supporting evidence, prediction, theory, course of action.
What you wrote reads something like: prescription, direction, story, conjecture, prediction, dismissal of example to the contrary, proposed emotional response.
I think there must still be some restrictions. Topless nudity is on the verge for me. The only reason why I think there is a case to be made is that so many people around the world DO find it offensive. But that's still a weak argument.
Showing primary sexual organs in my opinion is not a question and shouldn't be tolerated in many venues. It is a form of aggression in almost every culture. Even some hunter gatherers who walk around with genitals visible often have some way of making it less offensive. Very rare exceptions...
The issue here isn't about sex at all or sexualization. Sexualization is given as the reason because that's all men can see breasts as. If you look at it from a dog's point of view, or a baby's point of view, it's a source of food or just another thing and you may start to wonder what the big deal is with making breasts bigger or even showing them.
The issue of contention here is that women have to adjust their behavior/physical appearance over some non genitalia body parts because it happens to induce sexualization in some men, and men don't have to cover that same body part.
What if the majority of people were sapio-sexuals instead of breast-sexuals? Do I need to start dumbing down my HN posts so that I don't be perceived as immodest? Given the diversity of sexual preferences where do I draw the line of accommodating others' sexualization boundaries?
For the record I agree with you on genitalia, because at least both men and women are not allowed to show them. But breasts? It is not genitalia—it is not even used in the act of sex (normally)!
Breasts are a secodary sex organ. And i dont know how you prefer your intercourse, but i happily fondle with the breasts of my wife during sex. If you break down sex to just reproduction, ofc they are only needed to feed the baby. But culturally the are sexual organs and erotic. So its normal in my (european) culture to hide breasts (at least the nipples) from public.
Edit: I would like to add that its not okay to demonetize Naomi Wus 3D Bust Video. Thats another discussion and i think we are on par here.
I agree with you on the moral part. But it seems odd to me that you're ignoring the fact that we are talking about a faceless amoral corporation here.
Most likely, a prudish approach to breasts is simply good for business. That's why advertisers like it. And that's why Google has a hard time selling ads for this video. And that's why Google's algorithms demonetized it.
Also, a lot of people in the US were upset about US companies bending to Chinese demands. But China is a huge market. Sacrificing your morals to gain 1.4 bio potential consumers is the correct decision if you're a die-hard capitalist.
We live in a culture that allows the profit margin alone to dictate almost all moral decisions. I'm not surprised that this has led to questionable morals ...
Sigh... while talented, she is constantly pushing the boundaries of taste and the YouTube TOS to gain subscribers.
She pretends to be some women's rights activist when she's really just a purveyor of some weird type of titillation. Yes the algorithm is capricious, yes its arbitrary, and yes YouTube is evil. But she's clearly making a bust of herself naked. I'm sure if I put my balls on YouTube they'd be more than demonetized.
I have no problem with her personally, I also don't find her interesting at all... but it is what it is. YouTube probably needs to classify videos more finely grained so that we can distinguish between types of videos and match tolerances for blue content to advertisers.
Quite often one needs to take a more direct approach because these misogynistic policies are so ingrained that people actually believe them to be natural. One needs to be in-your-face to get past that.
We like to scoff at Muslims and their backwards policies about women, and yet somehow Western societies are blind to their own - so much so that we need to be told from time to time that the emperor has no clothes.
Naomi is doing a good thing, and a service to women's rights.
>"Quite often one needs to take a more direct approach because these misogynistic policies are so ingrained that people actually believe them to be natural. "
I strongly agree with this. No one would dream to complain if the Louvre posts a male academic-led MOOC lecture about the Venus of Milo [0]. The pathology of this puritanism isn't harmless disagreement over which art is or isn't in "good taste"; it's the undercurrent of diminution of and disdain towards women, as Wu is very right to call out. The wild disparity between how censors classify male sculptors and woman sculptors is precisely how bigotry works -- tacit, implicit, unexamined. Men get the benefit of implicit respectability where women are suspect. Any constructive discussion about this will of course push sexists far outside their comfort zone.
> We like to scoff at Muslims and their backwards policies about women, and yet somehow Western societies are blind to their own
it's the american (or western?) exceptionalism at play - the bar is set to the _current_ western level, and muslim rules that the taliban abide by are seen as a lower level of civility (where civility is defined as _western social mores_).
Please don't mistake what I've said for whataboutism. The Muslim rules about women that the Taliban abide by are a lower level of civility. Full stop.
We've had similar disconnects between civilisations on other topics such as slavery, brigandry, serfdom, duels, witch trials, honor killings, torture, debtors prison, capital punishment and such, which improved and in some cases even disappeared as various peoples attained higher levels of civilisation.
That said, being "less bad" compared to some others isn't a laudable accomplishment. Honestly investigating your weak spots is an important aspect to growth.
>The Muslim rules about women that the Taliban abide by are a lower level of civility. Full stop.
And exactly what rules are those? If you're gonna call people less civilized at least have the decency to be specific. Muslims make up 25% of the world population and many Muslim women find modesty to be an empowering personal choice. I know many myself. The idea that they're brainwashed or uncivilized just echoes of the colonial mentality of "these brown people are uneducated and they need to learn to be like us". You're toeing the line as close to Islamophobia as possible while simultaneously acting as a women's rights champion.
It's so strange that men can disqualify women's voices in the name of feminism, like women with unpopular opinions aren't valid. I don't agree with the Taliban but without clarification it seems as though your just implying that people who believe modesty is a virtue in women are uncivilized. It's amazing that this kind of speech is acceptable, when we can all recognize similar criticisms coming from conservative voices as problematic
Those are the rules that emerge as a byproduct of history as it marches onward. When it comes to human rights, one can note that what is considered acceptable behavior towards a human changes in one direction only.
We don't go back towards saying that slavery is acceptable.
We don't go back towards saying that racism is acceptable.
We don't go back towards saying that executions are acceptable.
And we're also not going back towards saying that women have less say than men, that women must defer to men, that women should have less opportunity than men, that women should lose autonomy over their bodies, that women who are "immodest" should be punished, etc.
These uncivilised things are slowly weeded out while we as societies learn better ways to counter the baser instincts of our reptilian brains and (hopefully) eventually treat each other with the respect and dignity that are now even codified into a declaration of human rights (very civilised!)
So yes, anything that goes counter to that is uncivilised. I don't care who you are; these principles apply. And if you happen to be slower on the uptake, you'll be pitied by those who get there earlier.
So basically you skipped over everything I said and made a straw man of "modesty is equivocal to policing women and deciding they must have less opportunity to men". Like you literally cannot consider the subtleties of what some non western believe. Forcing women to believe what you do.. "for freedom" isn't feminist. This is just bigoted intolerant nonsense, and your righteous indignation doesn't make it okay. You would get kicked out of most western feminist groups for saying this stuff. Women aren't uncivilized because you think their views aren't worth discussing and because you cannot understand the difference between women valuing modesty and someone else mandating it. It's exactly the same type of paternalistic thinking that religious leaders use to tell women what to think and what they can't think
Yes, she did. And she wanted the right to do it. She wanted the right to do with her body as she pleases, and the right to be seen as she pleases.
And in doing so she fought censors, TV networks, the FBI, you name it. She fought her whole life against this kind of bullshit. And now Naomi has taken up the fight too, and is probably discovering just how unnecessarily heavy a burden it is.
My point is different. Is it the same fight? Is explicitly pushing boundaries because you want to be seen as sexualized and have the right to do so the same as trying to push those boundaries while claiming not to aim for sexualization?
Honest question as they don’t seem the same. But maybe they are?
It's fighting against the stupid view that two lumps under your flesh are somehow evil and must be hidden away or punished somehow (but only if you're a woman), or that touching your crotch on television is an arrestable offence, or any other thing in that long list of stupidity.
It's about having rights over your own body, such that you can say "You don't like what you see? Well too bad, because it's my body and my right and you can't do a damn thing about it, nor do I have any obligation to explain myself."
It's primarily women who fight this battle because the rules are tilted far more against them. Most men can't even see the problem.
Here's an interesting thought experiment: A man gets breast implants and then goes around topless like he did before. Can you imagine the chaos that ensues? The legal questions? The social commentary about "decency"? The traumatized children? Can you see the hypocracy?
> Here's an interesting thought experiment: A man gets breast implants and then goes around topless like he did before. Can you imagine the chaos that ensues? The legal questions? The social commentary about "decency"? The traumatized children? Can you see the hypocracy?
I’m curious if you are suggesting that is perfectly acceptable that, in a society that prohibits topless women from walking around, it would be perfectly acceptable for a man to implant breasts on himself and then walk around topless.
> Is it the same fight? Is explicitly pushing boundaries because you want to be seen as sexualized and have the right to do so the same as trying to push those boundaries while claiming not to aim for sexualization?
Naomi Wu never claimed not to aim for sexualization. She talks about it pretty frankly. She uses the handle "sexycyborg". She's obviously aiming for sexualization.
Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted other comments that she’s made on the subject. It does feel like a lot of the debate is caused by miscommunication perhaps, or misleading intent.
Sexualization is in the eye of the beholder. In most cases, men. So men can’t keep it in their pants so women have to surgically reduce their breast sizes to accommodate some boundary of sexualization set by men?
Why she shouldn't have the right to be seen as sexualized if she wants to?
Because sex is bad, and tempting/teasing people is bad? - as some certain cultures say (but hardly bat an eye with portrayals of "fun" violence or tons of other issues).
She completely has that right. I think a lot of the controversy is an appearance of being disingenuous by claiming that she’s not trying to be sexualized.
I’m not talking about this particular video by the way, but more than likely the reactions to her other videos have affected how this particular video is judged, which is probably not fair.
>I think a lot of the controversy is an appearance of being disingenuous by claiming that she’s not trying to be sexualized
What if she's like that anyway, and thus doesn't have to "try" and is correct in saying that?
Some women dress like that just fine on their own, enjoy enhacement surgery for certain parts and so on, and they don't have to do it for some audience...
This is not about the body, this is more about the choices. For example if you’re going to wear practically a thong in a bunch of videos unrelated to something sexualized, and then claim you are not trying to make it sexualized, a lot of people will think that’s being disingenuous. Doesn’t even matter what the actual body type is, it’s a question of what people consider to be appropriate in relationship to what someone says they mean by their dress.
They can certainly do that, but then they need to be aware of how it appears. It’s all well and good to imagine a society where you never have to care what people think, but unfortunately neither men nor women live in that kind of society. People will draw conclusions from how you present yourself.
I remember getting a book on spirituality whose author is an attractive young woman. She had rather suggestive photos of herself throughout the book and the book's content had nothing to do with the photos (and it was wasting space, the book would have been a few pages shorter without the photos). The book itself was pretty good, but it was really annoying to see her photos everywhere. There is not one reason for suggestive photos and yet here we are.
This to me, is disingenuous. If I am attending a math lecture, I do not want to see my professor's abs (or balls or whatever) even if he was the most attractive man on the planet.
The problem (at least to me) is not that Naomi is wearing skimpy clothes. The problem is her channel has nothing to do with fashion (or women empowerment etc). It can be a completely fun and educative channel, instead there is more discussion about her clothes than the good stuff she makes and the good education she provides. All the while claiming she is not trying to be sexualized. All this unnecessary controversy can probably be shut down if she had two channels - one for fashion and one for electronics.
Having said all that, maybe we should grow up as a society and learn to not put so much thought into body parts. I get that viewpoint too.
>The problem (at least to me) is not that Naomi is wearing skimpy clothes. The problem is her channel has nothing to do with fashion (or women empowerment etc).
So? Why should people be compartmentalized, and not be allowed to feel and look sexy whne doing tech stuff?
That's the puritan dichotomy, where the body/sexual is bad, and should be kept inside marriage and procreation, or -as adjusted in more permitting puritans- to specially allocated sexy-time.
And, that said, the premise that her channel has nothing to do this is wrong.
Her intention is not to show how some technical stuff. It also isn't to show that women in general can too do some technical stuff.
It's to show how a sexy, sensual woman, a category often dismissed as bimbos, can also do technical stuff. And that technical stuff can be part of a fun and sexy thing, not just something that's relegated to bookish somber asexuality.
I mean, it's even in the channel's name...
>All the while claiming she is not trying to be sexualized.
Ok, thats fine if she wants to do that type of content (if you don't like the words "sexual content" then make up a new word, because that's not the point).
But sometimes advertisers do not want to advertise on that type of content, and since it is their money, thats alright.
Like sure, go ahead. Make that type of content. But don't be surprised when advertisers don't want to buy ads on it.
It seems to me Youtube could solve the problem by providing advertisers fine-grained controls.
I remember an earlier discussion on HN about Youtube demonetizing other content - videos about guns, I think. My thought then and now is that there are many advertisers on Youtube who would like their ad to run on "ForgottenWeapons shoots a pre-WWII anti-tank rifle" and many (probably not with a lot of overlap) who would like to advertise on "SexyCyborg builds a sexy mannequin". Large, conservative brands probably wouldn't, but Youtube is leaving money on the table if it caters exclusively to those.
A lot of people think that looking at flickering colorful lights on a planar surface can be sexually arousing. There are so many fetishes... ;)
However I do think that western culture is a bit on the prude side and has a strange double standard regarding nude or partially nude bodies depending on gender or its features. Sexualizing one type, while normalizing another.
Not Western culture. Anglophone culture. Vast swathes of European cultures are quite happy with nudity; I remember nude sunbathing in Amsterdam in the summer being very common and not at all sexual. Denmark recently found fame for Dillermand, literally translating as "willy man", an animated children's show about a man with a prehensile stripey penis (1). He gets into trouble using it inappropriately -- for example by putting petrol on a barbecue with it. Owch.
I'd much rather children grow up knowing what the other gender looks like naked with that knowledge being delivered in some environment other than PornHub. It's insane -- I literally only knew about the female form from reading medical textbooks as a child and had never seen a naked woman until I was 19. Many women have no idea what their own anatomy is, because cultures have such a taboo about it. Yet on American cultural exports, love, breasts or bodies get an 18+ rating and explosions, shooting and murder get a prime-time action TV slot. I don't get it.
The point here, is what the advertisers want to spend their money on.
Use whatever euphemism or descriptive word you want. The point here, is that advertisers do not want to be associated with whatever it is you want you call it.
Yes, and for this, the content need to be triaged. Here the content is rated as containing depiction/drawings of nudity, and this is just a fact, advertisers are then free to buy or not.
You'll have to ask the advertisers what they think on that.
Call it whatever you want, or use whatever euphemism. But at the end of the day, whatever word you use, the advertisers likely don't want to be associated with it.
They didn't block the content, they looked at it and classified the video (for advertisers) as containing depictions of adult nudity, which is technically correct.
I'm a mainland Chinese citizen with a high profile on Western Social Media, I can assure you I work very hard to make sure no one confuses me as a women's rights activist. Particularly not these days.
"Yes the algorithm is capricious,"
Not the algorithm- all human moderation.
"she's really just a purveyor of some weird type of titillation"
Why not just have an Only Fans, weekly photo video sets, and a decent copywriter and make 10x as much money? Why go through all this work?
"she's clearly making a bust of herself naked."
It's a dressmakers dummy, for sewing. It's a tool, it's not even decorative. It's of me because the clothes are for me. You can't make it with clothes on it or it won't work, I decimated the mesh instead. Men have been 3D printing far higher resolution models of nude female torsos without complaint from YouTube for a decade.
I'm happy to see you here, and kind of shocked how the discussion seems to flow past your comments, going back and forth within the HN crowd instead of engaging with literally the creator who's livelihood is being discussed here.
For any random project that gets posted on HN, "hey, author here..." posts will typically end up at the top of the page, let's hope we also manage for this one here.
I had honestly not ever thought about your financials, simply assuming that with such a prolific youtube chain you would be fine. Your first twitter thread about this a few days ago made me reconsider, and given that youtube are being so arrogant about this I just signed up for a small $5 subscription on your tipeee.
@everyone: if your stance is "just ditch youtube" then this is your chance to make it possible: https://en.tipeee.com/naomiwu/
Edit: wow, just read through the rest of the thread. Actually a lot of back and forth going on. I stand corrected. :)
That's very kind of you. No Patreon and Western sponsors are understandably reluctant to work with a Chinese national- even those that are ok with my appearance. Chinese businesses can't figure out how I am still online, most don't want to risk the association but a few do and sponsor just enough to keep the lights on. It's tight some months though.
Would you be up for receiving cryptocurrency, either as sponsoring (like your tipeee site) or just as donations?
EDIT: See now that you already accept the main ones <3
Pro tip for when you have the time: Generate a new BTC address (native segwit bech32; starts with "bc1" instead of "1"). It will lower fees significantly, which can be a difference between a smaller donation being meaningful or not when fees are higher)
You're not wrong. You are being discriminated against. I mean you have so many things that 'family friendly' reactionaries would object to: Chinese, LGBTQ, cup size, making naked torso. I guess they all count. If it was only one you'd probably be fine. It's not a surprise. For what it's worth I do not support such discrimination and in a better world this wouldn't happen.
“No, there won't be an answer as to why men making nude female torsos will not be subject to the same enforcement and never have been.”
I pressed YouTube on are or would those videos with identical content be treated identically, over several emails- they refuse to answer. That model is an extremely common test print in the community and I’ve never heard of anyone being demonetized for it. I’m hardly going to test it by reporting them and I’m also worried that people may now go and report or otherwise brigade those videos- many of whom are incredibly supportive friends in the community so I don’t want to over emphasize this and have them somehow blamed for doing nothing wrong.
>Also, in my understanding, youtube only demonetizes PER VIDEO, not your whole account unless you do something serious, is that right?
That is correct, although in my case it has been becoming more common every month and more ridiculous each time. None of the adult content rulings have fallen within their own definition.
Hold on, this is important. You're claiming gender-based discrimination but you don't actually know for sure if you're being treated differently from the male content creators.
From what I understand it is as often a problem with translation as it a clear political standpoint. What makes the phrase 'mainland China' problematic in English, is that it can mean a number of things. Someone from China using it may do so because:
* They were taught to do so and simply understand it to mean 'someone from the People's Republic of China'. No political subtext intended.
* They use it to mean that they are from the literal mainland of the People's Republic of China, but not Hong Kong or Macau.
* They use it because they genuinely see Taiwan as 'that other part of China' that needs to be unified with the People's Republic of China, despite having been a sovereign democracy for over 70 years.
When you say "I am from China" (or "I am from the PRC"), there is no chance of this having any deeper political meaning. When you say "I am from mainland China", there is a good chance that you do see Taiwan as a 'rogue province' and may support its 'inevitable' reunification by any means, including force. That latter sense is the one that is highly political and irks many people.
Note: there is no need to get into the justness or wrongness of Chinese reunification here; it would be off-topic and not likely to be fruitful. I do think it is important that people understand that the phrase 'mainland China' is not bereft of connotations and may cause readers to form an opinion of the person using it that may not be in line with that person's actual intent.
> From what I understand it is as often a problem with translation as it a clear political standpoint.
In principle, yes, and I do think this is an underappreciated issue which, if understood better, could have avoided several needless heated arguments in general.
However... Where does your understanding come from? It runs contrary to my experience from living in the region.
IME, "Mainland China" is one of the least loaded and ambiguous terms, and tend to refer to "the literal mainland of the PRC" (that is, sans Macau and Hong Kong, and definitely Taiwan).
> When you say "I am from mainland China", there is a good chance that you do see Taiwan as a 'rogue province' and may support its 'inevitable' reunification by any means, including force. That latter sense is the one that is highly political and irks many people.
While technically, yes, but it could equally (and probably more often in practice?) be used by people who recognize the independence of Taiwan and do not want to force a "reunification".
"China" (and even more so "Chinese") is more open for being problematic as it can imply the citizens, ethnicity, cultural heritage, the CCP, the PRC nation-state as such, etc... Being more specific removes room for misinterpretation, willful or not.
This is my perspective from living in the region for a couple of years. Though I wouldn't say I've knowingly interacted with more than a small handful of "pro-unifiers".
It may be a bit similar to when I say I live in "Ireland" referring to the "Republic of Ireland", which exists on the same island as Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. I've been here for about 6 years and I would love to see both countries unified as one, both for historical reasons and to annoy the brexiters. Extra points if we also get Scotland and form the United Republic of Scotland and Ireland. That'd drive the brexiters nuts.
> They use it because they genuinely see Taiwan as 'that other part of China' that needs to be unified with the People's Republic of China, despite having been a sovereign democracy for over 70 years.
Taiwan's official name is the Republic of China, so the folks I've heard use the "mainland" qualifier aren't saying "there are two parts of China" but rather that there are two countries that call themselves "China".
People from the Republic of China (i.e., Taiwan) with English language proficiency don't refer to themselves as 'island China' or 'the real China' (barring fringe elements), but may call themselves (ethnically) Chinese. Generally though, they call their country Taiwan and themselves Taiwanese in English.
Besides, if ambiguity is the concern for people from the PRC, the phrase "I am from the People's Republic of China" lacks any political subtext.
Expecting mainland Chinese to use the formal name of the PRC to self-identify is needlessly clunky and formal.
The reason why many Chinese, regardless of nationality, use the phrase “mainland Chinese” or “mainland China” in English is because it’s the direct translation of 中国大陆, the phrase used to identify the mainland. It doesn’t indicate political affiliation in any way.
In my experience the vast majority of people who use the phrase "mainland China" in Guangdong - and especially Pearl River Delta area - are using it to mean "not Hong Kong or Macau". Taiwan is really not part of the consideration for most people in Guangdong.
YouTube is chuck-full of soft porn, so that is obviously not the problem here. Moderation and demonetarization of this sort is done by an (anonymous) human not by an algorithm.
So why is mrs. Sexy controversial? Look at her twitter-profile and see where she is getting the most flak ...
Believe me, saying something like that is far more controversial, and will generate far more hate, than showing off some artificial boobies in a tech video.
Fairly sure she's already reported being visited by the police over the contents of her Twitter and youtube. In addition to being "outed". While you're suggesting that she do things that will result in her being silenced, for your own laughs.
I don't have a nuanced thought to add. I think it sucks these videos were demonetized and I agree there's something weird going on when 3d bust test prints abound. Sorry you have to fit so hard to get people on the same page
If YouTube put as much effort into addressing the pandemic of health misinformation as they do into making your life difficult, the world would be a better place.
Thank you for spreading such good information on masks.
>Why not just have an Only Fans, weekly photo video sets, and a decent copywriter and make 10x as much money? Why go through all this work?
I mean, I cant help but agree that you're being a little dishonest here. Without passing judgement on whether what you're doing is right or wrong, a quick glance through the Twitter link in the OP and its quite obvious that you are well endowed and using it to your advantage by wearing revealing clothing. Can we acknowledge that some probably significant proportion of your channel views are at least initially due to your physique and the way you happily show it off?
>its quite obvious that you are well endowed and using it to your advantage
Yes, I play the cards I've been dealt.
>by wearing revealing clothing.
No, the clothing and gender expression predates YouTube and is for other reasons, is usually more conservative when I'm filming for YouTube, and is for myself. I've never worn anything for my audience.
>Can we acknowledge that some probably significant proportion of your channel views are at least initially due to your physique
Yes, I’ve come to take pride in it "came for the tits, stayed for the tech". If I happen to look the way I do for reasons other than marketing, being able to encourage technical proficiency in a demographic that was not looking to learn anything is about as good an outcome as I could hope for.
>and the way you happily show it off?
Sort of. I look the way I do for myself, and I don't object to any one else's polite enjoyment of that. As a gay woman I've gone from conflicted to entertained and accepting of it- as might any straight man who found themselves on the receiving end of the support of a large number of gay men, just for being himself and looking how he likes to look. But like our hypothetical straight creator- benefiting from something, it not the same as catering to it.
I'm not 100% sure on this, but when I visited China (and my brother has said similar with Taiwan), the concept of old/existing was blurry - as an example a temple that has been completely reconstructed and doesn't include any of the original material, is still 2000 years old.
I think Terry Pratchett has a similar passage in The Fifth Elephant - this axe, over time may need a replacement head, or the handle may need some work, but it will always be the same axe that my father gave to me [paraphrased].
I guess, applied here, it's a similar thing to knowing you are male in a female body for instance. Morphology of the avatar in your head can be different to your external appearance, ie. you always had large boobs?
>>>Morphology of the avatar in your head can be different to your external appearance, ie. you always had large boobs?
I wonder when the Overton window shifted and we began to accommodate insanity. I liked Dave Chapelle's take on this issue in "Sticks & Stones"[1]: if he walked around behaving as if he was ethnically and culturally Han Chinese, nobody sane anywhere in the world would take him seriously. Imagine the response if he applied for PRC Citizenship on the basis of the "morphology of the avatar in his head". It's totally okay to have A Cups. It's insane to assert "well in my head I thought I had D Cups, so just agree with me and treat me as such."
I would agree that it would be odd to assert that people treat you like something you physically aren't, but you're missing the point which is the way you view yourself, not the way other people view you.
You are free to have whatever self image you like. >>I've always imagined myself with large boobs, and look, I now have them to fit my self-image, so I consider them part of myself.
That's not asking anything of anyone else, and yes it's totally OK to be whatever shape you like (I'd prefer to be healthy myself) - Naomi's girlfriend seems to prefer not to be hyper-feminine and that's fine too.
Having the opportunity to get implant surgery and deciding to pursue it is still playing your hand. The same way that being born into a scenario having access to computers and deciding to use them is. Or using makeup. Or being born with a healthy enough body to work out for muscle. Etc, etc, etc.
If that argument (that leveraging any available artificial enhancement is ok) held any conceptual weight, we would embrace PEDs in athletics. We don't. Ask yourself why?
>its quite obvious that you are well endowed and using it to your advantage by wearing revealing clothing
What is "revealing clothing" to you. We are not in the 1900s where it's a crime to show a little ankle. Her clothing is nothing out of the ordinary in many videos.
If you have big boobs people will notice no matter what you wear, youtube shouldn't act different based on your body... If another youtube would exist who has very small "assets" I can assure you nothing would've happened.
Again, I'm not making a moral judgement. But the first three tweets in the linked thread:
1. Bare midriff and tiny shorts
2. Deliberately fully exposed cleavage
3. A tiny spaghetti strap
Wear whatever you want, but don't be surprised when you get sexual attention, and don't pretend that as a public figure who makes money off of eyeballs that you're not deliberately taking advantage of your assets.
It's like we're not allowed to acknowledge that people dress for attention without being accused of puritanism or shaming.
And while we're on the subject, it is disingenuous to ignore the fact that the female figure induces a instinctual physiological and psychological responses in men. Social norms around modest dress may exist for a reason beyond oppression or patriarchy or what have you. It's tens of millions of years of evolution - not quite fair to pretend that revealing clothing does not force an onus onto men to suppress visceral urges.
> the female figure induces a instinctual physiological and psychological responses in men.
No. We are not all that shallow. In order to cause such a reaction there has to be some context, some hint of availability. I like her. I enjoy her videos. I'd like to have a coffee or beer with her. I'd love to be her friend. I'd like to ask her a ton of questions (political, technical, social), but I am not sexually attracted to her. Even if I were, I know I'm not what she likes and that she's not single.
> force an onus onto men to suppress visceral urges.
The universe has no obligation to make it easy for a person not to behave like an animal. That's what the sizeable lump of tissue inside your head is for. It's not a space heater.
Yeah, but what about the music video and commercial advertising argument? E g., That sexiness is commonly used in western society? Why single her out?
Also, if it were about the "onus", where does it stop? I'm regularly attracted to women and OBVIOUSLY I have to suppress my visceral urges. Do you want women to wear a burkha?
> its quite obvious that you are well endowed and using it to your advantage
And what exactly is the issue with that?
Every model in advertising & on Instagram, every actress, and many more do the same. And so far I haven't seen a reason why that's supposed to be bad, aside from religious fundamentalist nutcases.
The amount of downvotes you got for this comment is IMO a part of the issue and undeserved. Gender and sex aren't taboo topics, and pointing out that someone might or might not use their attractiveness to their advantage is part of the discussion and totally reasonable to do, without having to start with "what is sexist", "what is male oppression", "what is sexual discrimination against woman" etc. We're all driven by instinct, and sex is part of that. If someone is presented attractive, they will (usually) get more views, which is also why attractive people are used as models
She herself commented in a different reply and agreed to some of the points, yet this comment is getting downvoted to hell
(Disclaimer that I don't know Naomi Wu and have never seen a video of hers. I'm replying based on the context of the OP link and reading through replies)
You may not be completely wrong, but this is her answer:
> YouTube's criteria are patriarchal, and male gaze focused- if men like it, it's bad and women need to change
I think she's right. The kind of puritanism enforced by Youtube (or Facebook) is based on, and obsessed by, male gaze, and therefore patriarchal and retrograde.
I would agree that there's a limit, and that limit is porn (yet Twitter doesn't censor porn, with no ill consequence to their business). What she's doing isn't porn.
This is pretty closely related to hot tub channels on Twitch though.
There is, very obviously, a whole strain of content aimed at "sexual content where you normally can't have sexual content" - and the problem for providers is not dealing with it at some point means that is now what your platform is for (which ironically pretty much devalues the original content - the taboo is the appeal).
>She pretends to be some women's rights activist when she's really just a purveyor of some weird type of titillation.
Thankfully men know better than her what she is (as opposed as what she claims to be), and can put her in her place
After all this demonization happens to everybody who claims to be X when they're something else (e.g. a champion of rights vs an opportunist careerist, or a tech reviewer vs a sponsor shill).
Her videos are not taken down, just have what YT calls "limited monetization". How does she know the same does not apply to other YouTubers she pointed out? Afaik the monetization status is not displayed anywhere on the site for anyone else than the channel owner.
If that's the case then I would love to know how reliable this method is, and whether she actually did this research before making the claim that other videos are not demonetized. If there really are not while hers is, then obviously YouTube has a problem.
Seems like everyone is just guessing at this point. She's in this thread right now, why not ask her? Everyone is fighting over one another for women's rights while ignoring the actual woman
> She's in this thread right now, why not ask her?
Because this is Hacker News. We can't summon her with @SexyCyborg or /u/SexyCyborg like we can on Reddit. Heck, you won't even be notified of my reply, and will have to actively check out your threads.
I understand how this policy may reduce heated arguments, but it makes it harder to connect with people, and I've never managed to have an actual conversation spanning several days here.
Oh I actually wasn't aware of the. Yes I agree.. I can see how it avoids arguments a bit, but it'd be really useful in situations like this where one wants to single out certain voices. Seems otherwise they get drowned out by the masses of posts
> she is constantly pushing the boundaries of taste and the YouTube TOS to gain subscribers.
Yeah, she’s definitely pushing the boundaries… but I’m not convinced that she does it to gain subscribers.
I recall speaking with her in what I believe was her first “public” appearance on the Internet, on Reddit, several years ago. She put up with a lot of sexist crap[1], and disappeared for a while shortly thereafter.
I think her reasons for her body modifications and the somewhat sexual tone of her projects are inherent to her personality; I think she’d be doing exactly the same stuff if she wasn’t getting paid for it.
1: … and bear in mind this is coming from someone who has a generally low tolerance for “wokeness”. The things people said to her were really bad.
She's doing it for attention, and that's ok, right? People want to be noticed, and they want to control what others notice about them (see fashion industry). I think there's some give and take that comes along with that. I don't find it that surprising that the bust video was demonetized, or any of the others, frankly. That's the cost of expanding the Overton window, I guess.
Eh. I think we're all fooling ourselves when we say we're just doing anything for ourselves. People are just hardwired to seek the respect and approval and, yes, attention, of our peers.
> She pretends to be some women's rights activist when she's really just a purveyor of some weird type of titillation.
You are over-reading this. I would chalk it up to "Chinese market is different from the US. Shrug."
When I was looking for Cantonese lessons for my work many moons ago, the tutors made a point of emphasizing their modeling credentials (both men and women).
HUHWUT?
It was a very strange experience for me having come from the US where "sexual-type discussions are considered unprofessional". I simply shrugged it off, tried a couple tutors until one clicked, never talked about their "modeling career", and got on with butchering Cantonese horribly. :)
> She pretends to be some women's rights activist when she's really just a purveyor of some weird type of titillation
There are 1000s of videos of young women doing Yoga in such tight clothes you would know exactly what the nether regions look like and even without clothes with no age restriction on there.
If people wanna watch such content that is their business. It is none of my business however maybe have a age restriction for over 18s.
She is a conundrum: is she titillating or expressing herself, or maximising her reach?
It is a sad fact that if you took two women on youtube with equal talents and content - the one that "dressed up a little" would be more successful. I don't think that's the case with men (although Colin Furze and Integza do wear ties, maybe that's a factor in their success)
It hard to see how YouTube can defend their actions - her videos are far less titillating than many (most) music videos available (do a youtube video for "female rap video").
>She is a conundrum: is she titillating or expressing herself, or maximising her reach?
Initially, before I was Outed I could not explain any of it. Which was...frustrating at the time to say the least. Now, as shitty as getting Outted was I can at least reference part of the explanation:
https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/139660466709473690...
But as to the rest, I'm still on the fence. I'd like to explain, but these things are very personal, and if I won't explain, I understand why people assume the most likely explanation even if it's unflattering to me. As I said, I'm very aware of my own role in all this.
I'm pretty sure that explaining things will not help here.
I mean the demonetization and ToS stuff on YouTube isn't really about Google trying to enforce their morals onto the rest of the world, it's mostly about them making money.
Even today, there's a surprisingly high number of very conservative people living in the US & EU. That's why abortions are illegal (or a gray area) and why questions like "Is it immoral for unmarried women to get pregnant?" still get almost 50% yes. Plus the US has a really odd relationship with breasts. Murder on TV is fine but show titties and you're adult-only. I believe it's because so many people are devoted Christians and have matching puritan views. People still say "god bless America" quite often if you consider that modern science suggests that god probably doesn't exist.
With that in mind, any content that might anger or drive away the more conservative &/ religious half of YouTube's viewers is risky business for YouTube. They probably couldn't sell you to enough advertisers, which is why they are now refusing to pay you. For them, it's just profit optimization. And that means explaining things wouldn't help.
> modern science suggests that god probably doesn't exist
Huh? From my understanding, "science" has had the same perspective on this since like forever: it's unfalsifiable either way, but both explanations are at least self-consistent. There's no smoking gun against either side, and so it all depends on your priors.
This excuse really needs to go. It's empty. How a company chooses to make money is an indication of internal culture, and it determines the place the company has in overall society. Every company needs to make money, so what? That doesn't give them carte-blanche in their operations, not even in the US.
I fully support your right to sculpt your body however you choose. The people who are uncomfortable with it should take responsibility for their own feelings instead of blaming you for them.
> I'd like to explain, but these things are very personal
And you don't need to. Unfortunately people are people - titillation and everything else is in the eye of the beholder - and they will interpret what they see in a way that fits in with their perspective.
This explains nothing. I don't think you do yourself much favours here. Because there's a subculture of people like you, it's OK to be half naked in front of kids?
Yes, it's totally ok. What's the problem? For someone from Central Europe, this dicussion seems very bizarre. Go to a random lake in Germany or Austria and you will see women sun bathing topless. I mean, kids literally see boobs from the first day they are born. I am really sick of this puritanical BS!
To me this reads like you are saying that being half naked in front of kids is somehow problematic per se and should be avoided. Maybe this was a misunderstanding.
Either way, I don't really understand why you brought up the "kids" topic in the first place.
> if you took two women on youtube with equal talents and content - the one that "dressed up a little" would be more successful. I don't think that's the case with men
Of course it's also the case with men. The dude in a suit will absolutely garner more attention than the one looking like an unwashed hobo. Although some people may rally behind the hobo-look as challenging the norms.
Yeah - I don’t know why people find this hard to believe. The more physically attractive talent will always win over the less physically attractive given all other things are equal.
>It hard to see how YouTube can defend their actions
We shouldn't expect them to. There's always going to be blurry boundaries between sexual and non-sexual content, and we should accept this. What we should be critical of is the appearance of selective enforcement - ie. some people are banned and others are not for identical behavior.
I remember on Twitch there's a girl who kept getting banned for wearing the same skimpy clothes that many other female streamers wear, she just had larger breasts that were more attention-grabbing. So the bans seemed superficially unfair, but it was fairly obvious what principle was motivating them.
Thank you for this comment — this is such an important part of the story.
The only reason I could think of for the demonetisation was because family brands didn’t want to be alongside this content. What kind of family advertiser opts to display their content on “not for kids” videos?
Unless — forgive some hyperbole — Oreos want in on the Megan Thee Stallion hype with amongst 9 year olds.
As far as I know YouTube has video "for kids", meaning video especially and solely made for kids, kids shows, etc. The "not for kids" is literally everything else. There's no real "family friendly" category, all the "not for kids" videos are still supposed to not be NSFW.
If she is pointing this as an excuse, it just shows how ignorant and/or manipulative she is. This checkbox is not how she says it works. It doesn't mark video's unsuitable for children..
What boundaries?As in, who knows (besides the higher ups at youtube, of course) what are the boundaries of the YT TOS?This is the problem with your argument(if you made it, i'm not sure).Nobody knows literally what the boundaries are because they are too vague and YT has clearly a double-standard in both applying it to certain people and letting people know what is allowed.Then again most people, and definitely creators (should) know that YT has stopped being the platform of edgy interesting videos which actually made it explode (especially after 2007).
I will not pretend to care for her for 2 simple reasons: I don't know anything about her, and I don't pity people who dance with YT "anymore"(As in 2014 and later, when Youtube de facto became sh1t, and later in 2016-2017 when this was already established as a way going forward for youtube, resulting in what's known by the masses as "adpocalypse", further censorship post 2016, etc.)
They absolutely are still active and doing write-in campaigns about this; that's where FOSTA/SESTA came from. The ability of evangelicals to sway elections by having a large number of people in a pulpit filter bubble is greater than that of tech in the US.
Facebook allowed users to foment genocide (also NYT article). They didn't lose payment processing. The point that puritanical elements are seeking to push sexuality away still stands. Facebook apologizes and promises to moderate better. Pornhub gets cut off at the knees.
the united states is puritan. we always think we've broken away from our puritanical roots, when really we've just found new expressions of our puritanism.
Past achievements should be considered within their timescale. If I build a water clock now, it would be cool. But Ctesibius building a water clock in 250 BC, now that's fucking impressive.
3D printing a human bust is cool. Sculpting a human bust three thousand years ago? That's incredible.
Will those videos or that dressmaker's dummy have any artistic value in the future ?
A modern day engineer designing and building 3d printers then scanning themselves in to building a physical model of themselves is I think roughly equivalent to a 2000 year old sculptor learning the by then commodity trade of stonecarving.
Both skilled artisans doing things which did require a lot of training but also not uncommon in their own age. Let’s not infantilize the past and pretend everything they did was mindblowing.
She’s not forcing anybody to give their attention. Who’s fault is it to give that attention? (Hint: men). So she can’t get breast enhancement because it will risk other (men) possibly objectifying her? It’s the men doing the objectifying so defining what she can or can’t do with her body because of the effect it might have on others (mostly men) is the very definition of male entitlement.
> I don't think it is controversial to state that it could be perceived as tasteless
"Controversial" is doing a lot of work here. Much of what is considered acceptable is only in retrospect. Much fine art was considered "controversial" in its tim.
The expression you may be looking for is "a dressmaker's dummy". Or, in the US one finds "mannequins" in the department stores, with clothes hung on them.
I have no problem with her personally, either, for before this morning I had never heard of her.
> She pretends to be some women's rights activist when she's really just a
> purveyor of some weird type of titillation.
I don't see why she can't both be a women's rights activist and be a "purveyor of some weird type of titillation". It gets dangerously close to another ugly argument: that immodest clothing diminishes the culpability of a rapist.
> She pretends to be some women's rights activist when she's really just a purveyor of some weird type of titillation.
Naomi Wu was influenced by the cartoon (animate) culture. She designed her character according to the public perception of a girl in animation, it's her persona. And based on how I look at it, her wearing style is a rebellion against the traditional idea of what a woman should be wearing, maybe it's a political statement of some sort.
I do agree that she maybe wearing a little too less. If she were my own sister, I would probably constantly annoying her so she can dress more properly at least for her own safety concern (you don't want to test the dark side of people). However, if it was truly an act of political statement, then maybe it's reasonable that she wants to make it louder.
(Seriously, I would recommend that she remove the "Sexy" reference in her banding to avoid serious legal issues)
I think the businesses that receive complaints that they saw 'tits' with their commercial is pretty large. 'Cardboard nudity' or not. ( if they ever see it ofc)
> She pretends to be some women's rights activist when she's really just a purveyor of some weird type of titillation.
You seem to be implying these are somehow mutually exclusive. I don't see how that follows though. Pushing the boundaries by purveying a weird type of titillation could very well be a form of women's rights activism.
> Sigh... while talented, she is constantly pushing the boundaries of taste and the YouTube TOS to gain subscribers.
So, we have an article about the negative consequences of dressing like she does, and you're still here pushing the "she does this only 'cause she benefits from it"?! She really, obviously does not benefit from it.
> She pretends to be some women's rights activist when she's really just a purveyor of some weird type of titillation.
Dude, this is so beyond false it's insulting. She's an accomplished engineer. Sorry you don't like how she dresses—hell, I don't especially, either. But to ignore everything she has accomplished and act like she's a pornographer because of it? Your misogyny is appalling.
It's basically the digital equivalent of body shaming. And this sort of thing will feed into biased AI algorithms, and shape the world of "acceptable media" in the years to come. It may seem harmless on the surface, but the ramifications run deep.
That's still body shaming though. It's sexism because it doesn't apply to men, but it's body shaming because it's only applying since she is good looking and doesn't hide it.
Naomi definitely knows what she has. Her handle is SexyCyborg after all. But that doesn't mean that she should be demonetized. There are two main issues that are worth discussing around this-
1. Discussing where YouTube should draw the line on modesty. They don't allow full on pornography and most people think that's okay. I personally think that an attractive person making tech videos is probably okay. Maybe not everyone likes it, but there are a ton of videos on YouTube that I don't like and are still monetized. Even if I disagree with where exactly we draw the line, I think it's okay that YouTube sets a modesty standard. There will obviously be disagreement across cultures about the right set of standards to apply.
2. Criticizing YouTube's inconsistency in applying these rules. There are numerous examples of videos with women wearing skimpy outfits that are monetized and there are numerous examples of videos with women's busts in them that are monetized. It doesn't matter what the reason is for Naomi's demonetization- whatever the reason it's inconsistent and that is unfair. I think this is clearly the worse of the two issues here. If YouTube is going to claim some set of morals to appeal to advertisers, they need to be consistent. It would even be preferable (to what they are doing now) if their reaction was to give a strike strike or demonetize every creator that is pointed out where they had videos of women's busts. Just the appearance of aiming for consistency is better than what they are doing now.
YouTube found something special in creating a community of people that identified as YouTubers (above any other media platform they were on) and YouTube's recent actions are going to result in them losing that magic. Naomi's case is just one example. Maybe the magic is already gone.
Except it's not an USA thing. Here in Europe showing nipples in a public place is also considered nudity and generally frowned upon. It's a cultural thing, no need to attribute ideology to it. And the culture is shifting - just a century ago it was considered not modest if you wore shorts or short skirts, or two-piece swimsuits, now it's normal and accepted.
It's a USA thing. Where I'm from in the nordics they have bus advertisements with nipples on them. There is no issue with breastfeeding or semi-translucent clothing in most of Europe.
Look at european cinema and TV, there is a lot of nudity.
This. The music industry is continously producing even more sexualized content, basically utilizing the visual model of porn in their "music" videos to get popular and attract viewers, through appealing to the lowest common denominator of our basic needs.
But I guess there is money in that for advertisers, so it's allright, too bad money speaks and then when individual content creators just try to utilize that same thing, they get demonetized.
I'm all for youtube not becoming basically a strip club, but at least have some cohesive applying of those rules then for the music industry also.
The title ("Naomi Wu Demonetized on YouTube") makes it sound as if her whole channel is demonetized, while it's actually just one specific video of her making a nude bust of herself from cardboard.
Youtube is a fickle beast, and there's plenty of examples of creators and videos getting demonetized seemingly without a good reason [0]. I would guess that this particular video got hit because she´s pushed the limits before, and Youtube has their eyes on her. There might be some mass reporting from haters as well.
In a different tweet she writes "YouTube's criteria are patriarchal, and male gaze focused". I kind of agree with that, at least that women's bodies seem to be more sexually loaded than men's according to Youtube and the US culture Youtube bases its rules on. I don't think men can monetize sexually loaded videos on Youtube either, but the rules for what's deemed sexually loaded are different for women.
There's really two problems converging here. One is that women's bodies are considered inherently more sexual, and the other is that anything that can be considered sexual is deemed immoral and wrong.
Yes, like I mentioned she has pushed the limits before and Youtube is well aware of her. Not saying I agree with it, but having individual videos demonetized isn't the same as having the whole channel demonetized.
Here's a video of a Youtube video getting demonetized automatically after 0 views [0], probably because of previous videos on the channel.
I don't really get why it has to be 'demonetised' anyway, I suppose that's $Company's prerogative, but the 'here's someone else wearing the same top' tweet is a pretty weak argument - if you know that's the issue, then... yes, one person is wearing a top that covers their (yes, smaller) chest, and the other isn't?
I don't think that's 'punishing topography', that's punishing the choice of clothes to suit it (or not). If the person on the right were wearing something similarly revealing, so they only difference was 'less to reveal', sure.
Again, not commenting on whether that's 'right' or not. I just don't think that's a valid defence if she (thinks she) knows that's what the problem is. It's like wearing a children's long-sleeve shirt somewhere that requires covered arms, and saying 'What? You're just punishing my long arms!'.
It is not demonitized it get limited advertisement because of nudity and that is the problem, there is no nudity on her video. Her video is now in adult with nudity content and most big spending advertisers don't advertise on those class of videos.
Here we are again, click bait HN comments distracting me from work. How is this allowed? Maybe we should stop paying people who are naked under their clothes. /s
All jokes aside the issue I see with a European alternative is that EU laws about Free speech isn't as wide as US and they got their own pet peeves like hate speech laws ( on paper I support but in practice I don't) and other weird country specific restrictions.
Hold on. Naomi Wu is not demonetized. A video that Naomi Wu created was demonetized, or as YouTube puts it, found to not be suitable for all advertisers.
Creating content on YouTube has been my full-time job for nearly four years. There is a HUGE difference between a channel being kicked out of the Partner Program and a video being 'demonetized.' (Namely, that in the latter case, all of your other videos, past and future, can still earn revenue.)
It’s the advertisers who should be getting it in the neck for being anti-boob* prudes, right? YouTube are just parroting Nabisco’s requirements that Oreos only appear alongside bosoms in or below the Nth percentile deemed acceptable by focus groups of parents in the 28 to 40 core biscuit buying demographic.
Well, when you play on YouTube, aside from Google's own interests, you need to play by US puritan rules and foreign policy interests. This channel was rubbing against both (sexuality + China).
What I don't get is how in year 2022, having landed on the moon and tricked silicon into computing for us, we as a western civilization still haven't come to terms with our own bodies, other peoples' bodies, the fact that we have a sex drive, the fact that we can and do have sex for pleasure and punish ourselves for all of these things. It's insane.
I've played videogames where I turn people into fine red mist, where I decapitate people or deglove them, where blood and gore are practically features. I've watched movies with scenes so brutal that I've felt sick.
But full nudity and sex? Noooo, we can't have that! Thanks, Puritan America.
The right to have tools for killing people is considered essential to maintain their democracy. Unfortunately, their constitution doesn't say anything about the right of being naked or having large breasts or other visible appendages shall not be infringed upon.
It's all the fault of those damn Puritans: people who were such sticks in the mud they were essentially kicked out of Europe because nobody wanted to hear their prudish nonsense. They were all about the "fire & brimstone".
Why do people insist on conflating demonitization with censorship? Google isn't saying she can't put her body on YouTube, they're saying they don't think they can sell ads on that content. If advertisers would pay for controversial content, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Advertisers would pay for controversial content. They'd pay less, but they'd pay. TPB keeps selling ads somehow.
I think the reason people see demonization as censorship follows the same lines as seeing non-government censorship or "ceasing to do business" (in an industry that generally does business with everybody) as censorship. They aren't exactly going out and burning books, sure, but it's certainly exclusionary and it's certainly targeted.
What's wrong with demonitizing all the videos of gay people? "It's not censorship." Still seems to have most of the negative impacts of censorship. It's a spade to me.
>Google isn't saying she can't put her body on YouTube, they're saying they don't think they can sell ads on that content. If advertisers would pay for controversial content, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The assumption being in this case that advertisers will pay for ads when a man creates a nude female torso and not when a woman creates a nude female torso and YouTube is simply acting on their behalf?
Seems like a dumb move on YouTubes part. Instead just only show ads from advertiser's who want to be associated with this kind of content. There aren't many of that kind of advertiser, so prices will be low. YouTubers will then soon find out that while that sort of content might get lots of views, it earns few dollars, so will produce other content.
Having a binary 'you have been demonetized' flag just seems like a way to stir discontent.
Not defending YouTube, but I think that the letter said that some advertisers won't accept "sexual" content and thus her income would go down? The big question here, as I see it, is whether it's fair to call that "sexual" content.
Advertising-funded adult sites are extremely common, though. If you have adult content and want a site to host your content and share ad revenue with you, you have lots (lots!) of choice. The problem is that there's a lot less money available to people funded by sex toy ads on PornHub or whereever than there is to people who sit behind Liberty Mutual ads on Youtube.
So SexyCyborg would, unsurprisingly, prefer to be on youtube. But she's also dancing on the edge of what people call "adult" (again, I'm presenting no personal opinion here: take it up with Liberty Mutual if you don't like the definition). So naturally she's going to have trouble with those boundaries. PornHub never would have kicked her off, but she doesn't want to be on PornHub.
It's all about money here, not freedom. That was my point.
Same in Germany and Austria. It's not unusual to see fully naked actors on TV, even on the afternoon program. That's because we can see a difference between nudity and (graphical) sex.
Dailymotion, the French youtube competitor, used to have a "Red" section on its front page, next to "Sport" "News" etc, where they kept all the nudity. That all got deleted in one of their acquisitions.
Not really. Sexuality is and ought to be a normal part of human life and the repressed puritanism of US culture in particular is kind of awful.
There's a distinction worth making between voyeurism and sexualizing others but when someone portrays themselves as they want to be seen I have no idea why that needs to be put in some sort of box. Because there ought to be nothing offensive about sex, which is just about the most natural thing on earth.
And of course for some reason everything is assumed to be sexualized, from a sculpture of a torso to even breastfeeding mothers, I still remember 'female presenting nipples' on what was it, tumblr? It's like some sort of cursed feedback loop where the repression leads people to be horny about every sight of a nipple.
I think most naturists would argue that nude and topless sunbathing has nothing to do with sex or sexuality. If they are political at all they would say they are taking back nudity from sexuality.
I disagree. Yes it's multicultural; but there are unified attitudes and cultural behaviors that purvey the country. Foreigners who come from abroad to live here maintain their own cultural identity while adopting American culture.
What do you mean by strong cultural weight? You mean like Japan or China?
Not in popular culture like television or media. Media seems like an important part of culture but it is by far one of the smallest aspects of culture. Product and business infrastructure of the entire world is tightly integrated with China and that is definitely culture.
The core of the problem here seems to be that the video was classified as adult because her breasts are larger (that's also what she hints at), while other videos with smaller breast dummies are not classified as such.
I would also probably feel offended if Google told me that my breasts are pornographic just because of their size.
Actually "western civilization" if you just count it as having begun in ancient Rome (if not earlier) didn't really have such a problem with nudity intrinsically.
We have long come to terms with this, and the general opinion seems to be that there should be limits to public nudity and sex. These are not culturally invariant, but the internet happens to be a thing that is accessed from all over the world, so there's a kind of lowest common denominator where money is concerned. A bit hypocritical at times, but quite understandable, really. I don't know why you think that's insane.
Technically we can view entire Youtube as being mysogynist. If she is an American she will have a very strong case to bring this lawsuit on (possibly class action lawsuit). I recalled there was a case regarding women showing topless and won (if any legal expert here can chime in). It only take a cursory search to show that Youtube showing men's nipples without demonetization while a simple cardboard of female equivalent getting "women-hate" from Youtube.
There’s nothing inherently amoral about nudity. Demanding modesty of others, and expressing how bad they make you feel, is a reflection of yourself and the damage that others have done to you.
While fascinating to read through the thread here on all variations and manifestations of evil in each eye of the beholder, please bear in mind that these are uniquely held disturbances from the writer.
Yes, it's a regular occurrence, not the whole channel yet. And technically it's "reduced monetization" but that works out to a 90% drop in income on those videos.
And again, before all of HN jumps on me, yes I get why, and agree why, but no I'm not doing it for the reasons many of you think and will want to chastise me for. I really do just look like this. If it was just a matter of changing outfits like a normal functional human being I really would at this point, it's just...not that easy. I'm contemplating an explanation video but it's a sensitive subject for me and not an easy thing to do. Yelling at me that I have it coming because I'm a lying whore trying to cheat poor innocent simps out of their money isn't going to make it any easier to offer a more complete backstory.
Let me start with I completely support you and love your Twitter and videos.
But this feels uncalled for.
> Yelling at me that I have it coming because I'm a lying whore trying to cheat poor innocent simps out of their money isn't going to make it any easier to offer a complete backstory.
No one’s said anything like that.
From what I’ve seen, HN is generally pretty supportive and respectful of you, even if they disagree personally. So why all the negativity coming out of the gates?
Ok. Glad you can see the people on HN aren't trying to attack you. Even if some comments are worded aggressively.
Like you've said yourself many times, your appearance is provocative to many, but just as people criticize you for it, you also capitalize on it; at least, it appears that way. (No publicity is bad publicity -PT Barnum)
My question is, what is the controversy this time? You said you see why they did it.
Also, how do you know the guys' videos of printing women’s busts aren't also demonetized?
Thanks for replying. It's disturbing to hear that you're being harassed like that on top of it. Since my comment was kinda terse and focused on one specific point, I just want to say that I don't agree with the demonetization. I've watched and learned from several of your videos before and I really appreciate the content you make. As someone who worked at Google in the past and worked with others who were trying to get the company to address issues, I'm constantly frustrated by YouTube's decision to allow people with multiple strikes of obvious bullying and hate speech on their platform and then turn around and do something like this.
Thank you, I really appreciate that. And I also know my own role in all this and that my inability to explain myself better isn't helping. I wasn't trying to rally the troops or anything, it was more my own frustration with companies that feign progressive values or go all out during Pride and what their actual conduct is like.
you really shouldn't have to make an explanation video. noone is going to explain to you why they feel the way they do...why should you? you do your thing. it is what it is. accept people's opinion or it seems like you expect them to accept you.
Youtube appear to have forgotten about the creators. I miss the wild west days of Youtube when it was growing and anything went. Now we don't have a dislike button, comments get randomly deleted, everything is decided by a random opaque AI and small creators don't get paid. Who now gets to the front page? The highly-polished advertiser friendly mainstream content I went to Youtube to escape from.
I don't agree with some of Naomi Wu's comments about her being specifically targeted for some characteristic, I really suspect she is just an unfortunate victim of the same dumb "human review" everybody is. Some low paid person working for Youtube has X seconds to discern between 'porn' and 'not porn' - they see large breasts and think 'porn'.
The main problem here is they optimized all humanity out of their system. There's no empathy, there's no justice, there's no room for change. It's not a platform I have enjoyed using for a long time now, and it's only because of people like Naomi Wu or EEVBlog that I even interact with it at all. I think most people are looking for a compelling reason to leave.
How does she know whether the videos she references are demonitized? It's unclear to me if they are monitized since none of them seem to have midrolls.
But yeah, Youtube demonitization is pretty bad and arbitrary. Might be better if they had competition.
I don't personally follow the stuff she does but I still support her work and choices she makes.
What I'm really concerned about is her safety operating out of China. Just in the last couple of years, we've seen several relatively high profile women either go silent or even disappear without warning in China.
She could easily get caught up in some party member's politics net for doing or saying "the wrong thing".
If she gets nabbed tomorrow, there will be a 1-week public uproar in the West then crickets after that. That will be accompanied by criticism that "she deserves it" and "omg Becky just look at her" kind of sexist comments.
Agree. There's a video (ironically on YT) about that - Vice vs Sexy Cyborg.
I guess real life is about navigating the waters, you're not going to be able to talk directly to every viewer, so you're always going to be misunderstood and VV.
If the hysterically prudish standards of many online services were to be applied to museums containing old artifacts, they'd hack off Michelangelo's David's dick and put a pair of boxers on him.
Youtube has been recommending this video to me for the last two weeks and I never watch her content. They sure don't seem to have a problem promoting the clickbait before the blowback happens.
There are tons of YouTube channels and creators out there making videos for the expressed purpose of being sexual, and are never demonetized. Sure advertisers can put forward a family friendly image out there if they want. However, using that over simplification on this platform is more than disingenuous it’s revolting. Lets play pretend that’s how the advertising algorithms tailor content.
I’ve been watching YT, Make, and others bully, harass and in some cases actually put Naomi in danger.
I am proud of Naomi, she doesn’t need me to be proud of her.
She is brave.
She dresses how she wants. Idk what you decided to put on this morning but if you’re still wearing it then it was good enough for today wasn’t it?
She works on what she wants, and she is good at it, gives props to others, among a million other talents.
She does good work for her local community and ours.
She stands up to people bullies who get butt hurt and upset because apparently they think they did something there and are surprised to find they didn’t.
Women have been expected to take criticism silently with grace. She matches energy, without stooping down to their level, as we should.
She is a credit to the tech community and we should not be making excuses to continue justifying this type of behavior just because of its dated normality; we have every reason to be proud.
It was not long ago that computer geeks were stereotyped as virgin basement dwellers, who rarely showered; “Remember the 3-2-1 rule”.
She can walk around dressing however she wants where she lives without having to worry over much about something happening to her or people harassing her. I’m not gonna lie I wish we had it like that.
She is a kind, brilliant, caring person and instead of justifying how she’s being treated we should be proud to have her.
Wu has done more for the Maker subculture than almost any of her critics. Details have been well documented in other posts.
I wish Wu's critics would just be honest for once. I try not to be reductive, but I her case it's patently obvious that she gets flack because she's got extremely big tits.
Given the boxes she checks (female, clearly very intelligent, creative, STEM stuff, good content creator) she'd be held up as a hero by everyone sans implants.
At a guess it is simply jealousy. They know that she has done more than they will ever do for the maker subculture and that she will do a whole lot more. To make themselves seem a bit taller they have to kick the other person down.
I've had to conclude she is a legit maker, but I don't like the clothing at all (I find it distracting from the making) but certainly not a reason to deplatform (or making a nude female body model). I do think a more likely interpretation is that she dresses that way for views, but since she has vehemently denied it and given explanations, I will simply override my distaste for the clothing.
Maybe I'm silly to think this, but I don't think the reason for the unequal treatment is because the other creators were men, but because the boobs on the statue Naomi made were positively humongous, by the standards of the abstracted/idealized female nude figure which we are accustomed to treating as art. I remember being shocked the first time I encountered a nude statue in real life (had to travel outside the US to find them). I've gotten used to them now, but I would be shocked again if I encountered a city square with a naked statue with boobs this in-your-face big. The video might have been saved with just the elimination of the nipples. Male statues are actually a bit more restricted, because the ancient pieces like Michaelangelo's David that we are used to seeing in art have artificially tiny wieners. Won't be seeing any Jonah Falcon statues in public parks.
This is a sad failing on YouTube's part. There must be many words, in addition to hypocrisy, that describe precisely this situation, in which a company is openly engaging such double standards while covering itself with legal and fiduciary shields. Of course it's their prerogative to decide what is monetised and what isn't, and they have all these rules and guidelines to shape it, but they apparently follow them selectively. I guess I don't have to carry a thesaurus around anymore, as I can just use YouTube as an example.
I think one action to take is to gather and show as many examples as possible, like she did on her Twitter account. In addition to discussing for pages after pages here, people can also retweet to amplify the message. Because it is the prerogative of those that sympathise with her, to point out hypocrisy of YouTube. They can't do as they will, punish selectively, and not expect public backlash, can they?
I also wonder if it would make sense for Naomi and other sympathetic content creators to make videos with different characteristics (same kind of demonetised video, but with the full spectrum of what YouTube deems questionable) to figure out more precisely where they draw the line, which would more clearly define YouTube's obviously malleable boundaries and paint them in a corner, for the purpose of giving people like her more opportunities to point out the double standard publicly. Just off the top of my head, the examples in this instance could be re-shooting the video with
- another cardboard clone that has a penis
- another cardboard clone with its nipples taped (I'm serious)
- Naomi in winter clothing
I know that this might come across as a stupid idea, and it shouldn't even be needed in the first place, but since all politics is shaped by public opinion, every weapon in our arsenal that can move it, even by a millimeter, should be used. It's hard work, really.
Yes, unfortunately it's a bit like trying to run a hotel and not being able to take Visa or Mastercard- just Discover Card. Alternatives in this case don't really help, it's marketshare that produces the income.
It's a chicken-and-egg-thing though, with the viewers and the uploaders...
I think the most realistic path to something better is that content-makers who realize the value in alternatives to the YT model and Google or would like to minimize being dependent on their goodwill, will start to double-post their content to a less controlled alternative (today that would be Peertube and/or LBRY). It will probably not happen over night, but at some point I think that's the best shot at reaching critical mass where it's enough market share to be profitable and all the rest will follow. Even if exposure is initially negligible, keep at it, Rome was not built overnight.
Same thing for Twitter... Why not start having a presence on the Fediverse? :)
I absolutely get where you're coming from, but now that you're personally experiencing some of the downside of the centralized US/China-centric status quo, rather than only trying to have the dictators be more benevolent, start taking steps to be part of something better?
HMU if you're up for it and need help with hosting or whatnot.
BTW, really appreciate you doing what you do and coming in and engaging in the comments. I'm sure you're a source of inspiration for many.
>Not sure the analogy holds when Visa and Mastercard repeatedly warn the hotel they’re violating their ToS, but the hotel dgaf
If the complaint is "your hotel is made of brick" and it's not in the ToS that's a problem.
YouTube can't actually cite which of their rules I'm violating- in fact according to their rules I'm fine, and the thing they do have a problem with- my physical shape, would require surgery to bring into compliance with their demands. I'm not doing that.
That is the reality. Like it or not. Vimeo has its use case, the arts mostly. Odysee is something I'll check out every now and then, but even there it's just YouTube creators using it as a back-up.
use case: being a reminder of why if you have a YouTube channel why not being banned should be your main priority. the drop from #1 to #2 platform is reaaaallllyy steep. Like trying to find eBay alternatives after you lose your ebay account..yeah good luck with that. Or PayPal alternatives. They all suck.
awesome ..1/1000 the traffic. no viralness, no recommendations, or discovery, no rev., needing to use 10+ platforms to equal 1/100 the traffic of YouTube
There are well moderated/curated PeerTube instances, just like there are well moderated Mastodon and Matrix instances. You just have to look for them, which is a big problem for a video site(no virality, smaller audience).
Now I'm not sure whether it would be best to encourage each maker to have their own instance (complex to administrate, unless completely automated, but at least easier to migrate to another handler), followed by a maker-dedicated instance, or directly host everything on a centralized instance.
Woman angry that showing as much skin as legally possible in public has consequences beyond the halo effect. Advertisers don't want to pay you if you dress like this. The solution is to take some personal sponsors, or dress normally. Nobody is entitled to being paid by advertisers. Believe it or not, there are clothes for women that don't show 90% of the body's skin, and most women in the world still wear them. It's not a burden.
I do not follow Naomi Wu but one of the funniest moments in the movie "The aviator" is the scene in which Hughes (di Caprio) tries to convince the censoring bureau (whatever its name is) that showing part of (I forget the actress) a female breast is NOT pornography.
That sequence has stayed with me for the clear depiction of prudishness and stupidity to which people can reach when censoring something.
It's funny how all this talk about democracy and freedom goes to shit as soon as some redneck's dink tingles and he and his buddies start mailing Alphabet about a girl's cleavage... ah the mythical land of the free.
If you equate somebody being refused to post content on a website to some sort of deviation from democracy and freedom I would encourage you to live in Russia or China for a few years. It'll re-calibrate your understanding of freedom and democracy.
never heard of her. Just checked her channel and every episode is her in a tube top and short shorts. Maybe she's technical, but the way shes dressed is clearly with the intent to draw people in sexually.
When she leaves the house she puts on a full set of clothes, so even shes consciously aware of how she looks in her videos.
From what ive seen, she doesnt deserve demonetization because youtube has worse.. and shes providing educational content but its clear to me where the controversy lies, education + intentional sexual appeal. Id bet a large part of her audience is 10-18
> Just checked her channel and every episode is her in a tube top and short shorts. Maybe she's technical, but the way shes dressed is clearly with the intent to draw people in sexually.
No. I look how I've always looked. My clothing is about gender expression and visibility and is common within my LGBT niche. That appearance sometimes helps, it sometimes hurts, I don't object to those followers that like it but I also don't cater to them.
>When she leaves the house she puts on a full set of clothes, so even shes consciously aware of how she looks in her videos.
You mean in the winter? Why would I wear hot pants outside in the winter?
i am more concerned about the chorus of men here who do not find a female body enticing when it is in a state of dishabille. is that normal? what constitutes sexuality for straight men? can you really separate the visual input from how the brain processes it?
naomi's portrayal beggars belief because literally nowhere else in the world can she exist...except i guess Only In China?
to believe that she is a genuine person is laughing on the faces of the women in the RoW. i like naomi wu and her videos, but i would like to believe that she is an aggregate of many people/minds and an entertainer. and that's ok.
if she is real, she is an unreliable/dishonest narrator. if she is a creation, then she is awesome. i would rather prefer that she is a creation of many minds.
Wonder what the success rate for petitioning youtube as foreign national creators are. Alphabet goes out of the way to be support unfriendly and at the end of the day it's not even about clearer rules but incentivizing less support to save costs unless demonetization drama cause sufficiently bad PR. Content creators who has accumulated harassers over the years that are report happy are kind of screwed. Maybe extra screwed if they come from places like PRC.
It's a little strange, I have the top tech review YouTube channel in Mainland China, one of the top five English channel- and yeah just because they are blocked here, but still it's a big market. And with 1.5m followers still I can't get a partner manager. I know guys with 400k who started years after me that have partner managers. I just go through the same forms, escalating past boilerplate responses. No regular point of contact or consistent dialog. Terse copy/paste responses. Refused my Play buttons and verification for years. None of which make any sense to me The risk I take running a YT channel this size, from inside China, as a Chinese national is not small. Why make it so much harder for me rather than establish a dialog?
Not that I know anything special here, but are there any PRC nationals who can have a relationship with YouTube while in the PRC? I can get foreign YouTubers establishing a relationship with YouTube via their home countries, or Chinese YouTubers abroad establishing relationships in their non-PRC resident countries, but it might be impossible to do it from inside the PRC as a Chinese since there isn’t much cooperation between the Chinese government and Google.
It might be worth it to ask them about the process they went through if you don't know already. It could be some really trivial blocker that doesn't require much preferential treatment to get through.
You'd think a non-white non-American female engineer not afraid of self-expression and her own sexuality would be a darling given the big talk of diversity and inclusion, but in the end she gets rejected because her boobs are too big for America to handle. It's comical.
You can't post like this to HN. Since it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, I've banned this account. For explanations of why we do that, see these links:
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
The brilliance of an oppressive system like ours is allowing some of the oppressed to buy in and become the oppressor as long as they obsessively work to be "one of the good ones" and disavow any deviancy.
If all the porn sites went away, I could definitely make due with YouTube. There's of course a subreddit about it (/r/youtubetitties). You can show breasts, even enormous breasts, in the context of breastfeeding, hand expression (which is an established fetish category on porn sites, and the ones made for the porn sites do end up on YouTube, and don't get taken down), exams, self-exams, reduction consults, augmentation consults, topless protests, artsy film and stage productions, and so on.
However, I have no idea whether any or all of that is also demonetized. So maybe it doesn't mean anything, I dunno. I just noticed it's kind of easy to misread demonetized as demonized.
You're doing good work. Don't stop. We in America need more people to understand why Shenzhen works. We used to have cities like that in the US.
(An automatic tool setter for the SYIL mill will make it more useful. Having to manually set each tool discourages you from using more than one tool per job. Automatic tool setters are cheap, while automatic tool changers are expensive. I've used a Tormach without a tool setter, which means you spend too much time setting up.)
>You're doing good work. Don't stop. We in America need more people to understand why Shenzhen works. We used to have cities like that in the US
Thank you
>An automatic tool setter for the SYIL mill will make it more useful. Having to manually set each tool discourages you from using more than one tool per job. Automatic tool setters are cheap, while automatic tool changers are expensive. I've used a Tormach without a tool setter, which means you spend too much time setting up.
Right?! I have to do something about a tool changer, my Carvera is so much easier that I use it 10x more.
This HN title would really benefit from being a little more specific: "N.W. Demonetized on YouTube for Display of Inanimate Objects That Resemble Human Nudity".
As someone who managed to live without knowing who is Naomi Wu (though I might have seen her once or twice in YouTube suggestions), I think it's more important what is the basis for demonetization than the personality. HN title says nothing about it, and it is useless for anyone who is not already following N.W. directly or indirectly.
I do not suggest to shorten her name though, that's me being lazy typing on the phone. And my suggested title even with the name written in full is not longer than some other approved titles on HN.
It would be used against me to further discredit my technical work. There are plenty of people who would love to be able to accurately refer to me as an "Only Fans model".
I often think of your public statements against SJW issues and people diminishes your feminist work. I think the technical work stands on its own for sure.
>I often think of your public statements against SJW issues and people diminishes your feminist work.
Who's a feminist? Those disappear where I'm from. Thing is marginalized women living in circumstances that would make most of those busybodies shit themselves don't need to collect enough ideological compliance head pats and "atta girls" to get a "good feminist" sticker on our foreheads. We have praxis.
IMO the real point here is that many content creators/streamers want to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand they want to be classified as family-friendly so they can target their content to children, which is the audience with the highest advertising margins and merchandising opportunities. On the other hand they want to push a sexual image to gain increased views.
Most would agree that pushing sexualized content onto 13 year old deliberately is unethical.
You see the same tug of war battle happening on Twitch.tv with the constant rise of some exotic-like content (hot tub streaming, boob "ASMR", etc.) followed eventually by some token bans so that Amazon can make it look like they aren't willingly promoting that content.
Which is a shame. They're all watching animes, mangas and I want my girls to one day see all the cool things one can do with 3d printers and that you can be dressed in whatever you like and be awesome, and call BS on bad ventilators or bad security practices, and still be respectful of your moral roots and parents and live safely in an authoritarian place...
I hope YT realize one day that your content is far better and rich than the false medical ads they're pushing sometimes on kids playlists... And that an less evil alternative emerges.
I'm aware it's incongruous. The whole thing makes very sensible people uncomfortable because it seems vulgar and unnecessary. And that's going to be the case until I butch up and use my words. Probably won't help much, but it might at least make some sense then.
One of the useful things she's done is to put up lots of videos of her running around Shenzhen. There aren't enough ground-level videos of the working parts of Chinese cities. There's extensive coverage of Tokyo, by comparison. It's interesting to see the high-density housing blocks and street-level activity. (The "let's increase housing density" crowd from Strong Towns should watch those videos.) People who've met her report that she knows Shenzhen very well, down to the back alley level, where some unmarked door leads to an important factory. She's toured the electronics markets of Huaqiangbei. (I miss the days when Silicon Valley had electronics parts stores.)
She's done some nice technical work. Her main thing is 3D printing, and she came up with the first angled 3D printer that worked reliably. The print head moves in a plane 45 degrees from vertical, and the base surface is a belt, which advances the workpiece one layer at a time. So it can produce objects continuously, or very long objects if you add support rollers. Others had made prototypes of such machines, but the properties of the belt and print head are touchy to make that work right. She got it all working, and it's now a product, with her picture on the box.
At various times she's pushed on GPL compliance, mask quality, and other issues of interest to the tech community.
She wears skimpy outfits sometimes. So what? That's most of Instagram. Unlike most Instagrammers, Wu has something original to say. Sometimes with a biting wit. I gather that it's more biting in Cantonese.