[0:00] Thunderf00t: The reason that the “Ban Bossy” Campaign was one of the most EPIC face plants of our time, is that it was so incredibly poorly thought out on the most simplistic and rudimentary levels.
[0:17] There’s an irony in telling people to, ‘ban the word bossy!’ It is, well, kind of BOSSY.
[0:22] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.”
[0:25] Thunderf00t: I mean, seriously, did no one in this campaign think of the internal inconsistencies here? It portrays women as less suitable for leadership, in that if your dreams of leadership can be undermined simply by being called ‘bossy’, it’s highly questionable if you were ever suitable for making those tough decisions of leadership in the first place.
[0:44]: Then there’s the 1984 police-state solution of BANNING WORDS.
[0:49] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.”
[0:53] Thunderf00t: It makes the incredible leap that girls lose interest in leadership when they become teenagers, and then attribute this to the word ‘bossy’.
[1:01] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.”
[1:14] Thunderf00t: Even if it WASN’T a pure distortion of the actual original study, it would be one HELL of a leap of faith to NOT attribute the change in boys and girls with adolescence, and instead say, naah, it has nothing to do with adolescence. It’s all down to a SINGLE WORD.
[1:33]: Put simply the, uuh, factual basis of this ENTIRE campaign was BULLSHIT. They claim that being called ‘bossy’ keeps women from leadership. Yet EVERY single example they give of women in leadership says they were called ‘BOSSY’!
[1:52] clip from YouTube, “Ban Bossy—I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.”
[1:56] Thunderf00t: And they STILL ended up in leadership of one sort or another. I don’t think you really thought that one through, did you?
[2:03]: And finally, even if EEVERY single thing they said was true, they’ve just advertised the way to destroy EVERY woman in a leadership role in America.
[2:14] clip from YouTube, “The Doctor Vs The Prime Minister – Doctor Who . . .” and clip from “Ban Bossy”
[2:43] Thunderf00t: I mean you can see ‘em now, all sat around, pumped up and brainstorming in their Donald Trump’s Tower boardroom:
‘We need something short, punchy, catchy—something people will remember. Oh! Alliteration’s good. I know—how about banning a word? But we need a word that starts with ‘b’. Not bitch. That’s a naughty word; we don’t want to ban naughty words, just ones that hurt women’s feelings. Ones we can portray as sexist. Okay—look, sure, I know that ‘bitch’ hurts women’s feelings too. And it can be portrayed as sexist. But look, we just don’t want a feminist campaign with the word ‘bitch’ in the title. Okaay? We need something short, something punchy. Wow! BAN BOSSY! Yeah, ban bossy! Now all we need is a load of women in leadership to say that they got called ‘bossy’ and how it destroyed their chances of leadership. Don’t worry about the inconsistencieees. No one’s that observant. And then we’ll just use their billionaire’s brown-nosed network to get the U.S. Secretary of Education involved with BANNING WORDS. And then all we need is a pretty object to put on the front of it. Yeah, a woman of some sort. Don’t worry, this is a feminist campaign. We only call it sexism and objectification when OTHER people use beautiful women to sell things. Ah! Perfection. What could possibly go wrong?’
[4:04]: This was all actually backed by an impressive array of successful women, most notably was Sheryl Sandberg’s baby. Sandberg is listed as being worth about a billion dollars. A billion dollars is actually quite a lot of money. Just to put that into perspective, let say this video gets 25,000 views. From her wealth, she could pay each one of those 25,000 people an average U.S. salary of about $40,000. So, she can’t be a complete idiot. Right? Eeeh, that’s until you realize that Donald Trump is worth three to four Sandbergs. Crazy thing is, if you watch Sandberg’s TED Talk, you’ll realize that she already understands why there aren’t so many women in leadership. She describes it EXACTLY: ‘women typically want to have children’:
[4:54] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “And from the moment she starts thinking about having a child, she starts thinking about making room for that child: how am I going to fit this into everything else I’m doing? And literally from that moment, she doesn’t raise her hand anymore. She doesn’t look for a promotion, she doesn’t take on the new projects, she doesn’t say ‘me, I wanna do that’. She starts leaning back.”
[5:14] Thunderf00t: And childbearing age comes right bang in the middle of career development. And then, a sophisticated and dynamic job [?] is typical of leadership, of those privileged enough to have those jobs.
[5:27] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “In the high income part of our workforce in the people who end up at the top Fortune 500 CEO jobs or the equivalent in other industries, the problem that I am convinced is that women are dropping out.”
[5:40] Thunderf00t: Being out of the loop for six months or a year-
[5:42] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “Nine months of pregnancy, three months of maternity leave, six months to catch your breath-”
[5:47] Thunderf00t: -makes it much harder to come back and compete at the top of the pile. So she basically describes how they play it safe—they lean back in more supporting roles rather than leadership ones. They lose interest in being at the top of the greasy pole.
[6:03]: After all, is it really worth pissing your life away, fighting to be at the top of the greasy pole, simply so you can say you have three billion dollars rather than one? Really, when you’re on your death bed, do you really believe that you will look back and think, ‘yeah, I’m really glad that I decided to spend so much of my life dedicated to staying at the top of the greasy pole, simply so I can die with a four and a lot of zeroes after my name, rather than a one and a lot of zeroes’?
[6:32]: In fact, to be honest, in your boardroom, Sandberg, if you were privileged with that choice-
[6:37] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “Everyone who’s been through this, and I’m here to tell you, once you have a child at home, your job better be really good to go back, because it’s hard to leave that kid at home.”
[6:46] Thunderf00t: I would say, that leaning back and living life is by far the best choice. Exchanging life for money that you could never possibly spend, is just a fool’s errand.
[6:58] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “When I was in college, my senior year, I took a course called “European Intellectual History”. Don’t you love that kind of thing from college? Wish I could do that now.”
[7:06] Thunderf00t: Seriously, she’s, say, 44 now. Let’s say she lives another 50 years. If she doesn’t earn a single penny for the rest of her life, she would have to spend TWENTY MILLION dollars a year. That’s five hundred times the average salary of an American, just to consume her wealth.
[7:25] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “Don’t you love that kind of thing from college? Wish I could do that now.”
“The numbers tell the story quite clearly. 190 Heads of State; 9 are women . . . And out of 193 world leaders, just 17 are women . . . 80% of political offices being occupied by men . . . less than ¼ MP’s is a woman . . . of all the people in parliament in the world, 13% are women . . . Men occupying the highest ranks in virtually EVERY industry in the world . . . in the corporate sector, women at the top, C level jobs, board seats, tops out at 15-16%. The numbers have not moved since 2002, and are going in the wrong direction.”
[8:08] Thunderf00t: Sandberg describes this women-losing-interest-in-leadership, in detail in her TED Talk. She UNDERSTANDS the reasons. But what I’m missing out on here, is where is the sexism in this picture? WHO is discriminating against the women here? The different representations of men and women she basically describes as being down to lifestyle choices.
[8:33] clip from YouTube, Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders”: “-and I’m here to tell you, once you have a child at home, your job better be really good to go back, because it’s hard to leave that kid at home.”
[8:41] Thunderf00t: WHERE is the sexism in that? Where is the sexism in not finding women at the top of the greasy pole?
[8:50] clip from DNews?: “-men occupying the highest ranks in virtually EVERY industry in the world.”
Many thanks to Linda for supplying the transcript!
Thunderf00t 