The Opportunistic Misogyny Hijacking Black Lives Matter
YouTuber ‘ Smooth Sanchez’ went viral on Monday with a controversial video streamed live from the New York City #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) protests, in which he pretends to work for BLM, and asks white people to kneel in solidarity. Despite the cheers of encouragement in the live chat replay, it’s clear Sanchez has failed to read the room, given the disparity of 2.1k dislikes (about as many as he has subscribers for the channel) compared to just 377 likes. During times of great civil disturbance, we can rest assured that it’s business as usual for edgelord trolls. The following Friday, #GoBaldForBLM was trending on Twitter, which encouraged white women to shave off their hair in a similar display of solidarity. Unsurprisingly, this action had nothing to do with BLM, having originated on the website 4chan. Given that both of these pranks target women specifically, it says much more about the misogyny and opportunism of the posters than it does about the “self-hating” white people it sought to expose.
In the original video, ten out of the twelve women in total who kneeled were on their own. Out of the solitary women, 83% kneeled; compared to 50% of the solitary men. Women were much less likely to kneel if with a male partner, with this figure dropping to 33%. Sanchez interacts with over ten men without asking them to kneel, and yet out of all the women…
