Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

How to Build a Feminist [A Patreon Exclusive Video Essay] (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-01 13:49:46
Edited:
2025-01-04 10:58:58
Imported:
2026-06

Content

So this is it!!!! AHHHHH!!! 😍 This is the video essay we’ve been working on! To be clear, this will not be released on Youtube. “How to Build a Feminist” is just for Patreon!

We did originally plan to release this on Youtube, but after a lot of consideration (and advice from friends) we’ve decided this video is a little too … hefty for a Youtube audience. A little niche. A little… eccentric! 

So instead, we are going to publish a shorter video to Youtube on Friday, which covers one-ish of the chapters from “How to Build a Feminist” but will feel like its own complete video with a new ending and everything. So that’s all terribly exciting!

We also have a behind the scenes video that’s coming exclusively to Patreon probably next week!

Thank you again everyone for your support and your patience! You all are so wonderful, we genuinely have no words. 

Enjoy!! 🥳

EDIT: Also check out this behind the scenes video!

Files

Comments

allykitten87

Loved it! Loved the way you broke down Barbie and Poor Things. Loved the puffy sleeves. And lovely to see you Ada. Midnight here. Going to watch again tomorrow when I'm a little more awake. Can't wait for the. YouTube edit. Hope you guys are happy with the video, it is premium quality.

Verity Ritchie

BTW we made the blue jacket from scratch! Very proud of that!

Vince Whitacre

Thank you for giving us this! Lovely seeing Ada in a video, AND YOU TALK ABOUT DAISIES which I haven't seen in 20 years but I'm pretty sure I love it.

Taru Mäkelä

Loved it. Ada ate as we all knew. The ending was asmr bliss. GJ! My fav media analysts ❤️

Michi

really enjoyed the ending

Benedikt Maria Beckermann

Thank you so much for making this video! When I watched Poor Things, I liked it more than Barbie, but it still felt kinda off and kinda “appropriating” feminism, but I couldn’t properly explain what caused the feeling. Your video gives so much context about the referenced tropes, and the way the movie was (only partly) adapted.

no

i was so disappointed in barbie, not just because of its antifeminism (dont you hate it when an antifeminist thing says it's feminist...). it could have been so much fun if it didnt try to teach a lesson which almost always fails anyway. it should have been stupider, more abstract and arbitrary, leaned heavier into like, child's play mechanic, no winking narrator commentary... anyway what a great video! and lovvve the sleeves

100 Percent Legal Penguin Tender

Was this supposed to be the boring thing that had to be cut out? Because if so, I have a strongly worded (respectful) letter to write to the naysayers. And if it isn't, GIMME THAT OTHER VIDEO, I CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF THIS CHANNEL.

The Mad Jay Woman

So very cool to have previously listened to you volleying your ideas on ‘Poor Things’ and whether there was a video there to now see the end result in this delightfully rich essay! Hoping to hear more about how all these elements came together - especially the Miss Honey Gender Spectrum! Sidebar - why does this make me want to rewatch ‘The Bride’ (1985) other than I suddenly remembered that is a thing that actually happened…

most evil guy I know

Your minds! Another banger as always. A stellar onscreen debut from Ada, and Verity, your puffy sleeves are so good. I think about these tropes so often, and the Miss Honey Gender Spectrum is so real. Have you ever heard of the 2014 Pygmalion-based sitcom Selfie? It starred Karen Gillan and John Cho. It’s deeply goofy, but as a tween who loved My Fair Lady, I ate that shit up. I think Eliza is more of a Mrs. Wormwood in it, and she and Henry are marketing and sales reps. It got cancelled like mid-season and fans campaigned to get it back on air. Haven’t seen it in a decade though so not sure how it would hold up in the Pygmalion adaptation-verse lol.

Helena Real

What an amazing video! Thanks so much for sharing it with us. Barbie disgusted me and Poor Things was good, but I always felt like something was missing from it. Now I know what. Also: Ada's great and the bit at the end had me laughing all the way through the credits! You're both awesome 😁🖤

m.stnbssr

Amazing! Thank you so so much! Such great input, research and new perspectives! So glad to be able to support you! And that outfit is just amazing! 😍

m.stnbssr

Incredible! 🤯

Mthaytr

Loved this! also the end gave me asmr tinglies tbh

blusocket

Awesome video, thanks so much for sharing this with us! Your analysis of how Gloria functions as Pygmalion in Barbie was so insightful. Poor Things was flawed for sure--it was a little overly quippy, had a couple clear blind spots, and they really dropped the ball on the class commentary--but I had a really good time with it! Bella superceding her creator and embodying all three positions in the Christian Trinity herself was a neat bit of writing that I think was underdiscussed in the conversations being had about the film around its release.

mothblaze

Banger video. What was the song in the part 3 transition at 28:25?

Verity Ritchie

I watched every episode of Selfie for this video! There's even a few brief clips of Gillan and Cho in there when we talk about Shaw's Pygmalion and the makeover! It wasn't very helpful, I think because episode 1 goes with the set up of Shaw's Pygmalion, but it can't really follow through with it much because Eliza needs to remain the way she is more or less for the show to keep going. I thought it was a disaster to begin with, but it did seem to be finding its footing towards the last episodes when it dropped the Shaw elements!

Lizz Clark

I’m so glad I subscribe to your Patreon, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this! Fascinating comparisons between the two main films and I also loved just how many other reference-points you brought in from the makeover genre and beyond. The Miss Honey spectrum from Ada is so real and the kind of thing that makes me want to just stare at a wall for several long minutes thinking about how much it shapes my life as a woman

most evil guy I know

Aw I must've blinked and missed the clips! Yeah I remember a decent portion being disastrous as well, I can't imagine it would've been particularly helpful. 😂 It was fun while it lasted but it's hard to picture where the story would've gone.

Jack

Really loved this video, thanks for your hardwork into creating these

Becky B

Excellent!! The Miss Honey Gender Spectrum was an eye opener for me. I feel like I've been brainwashed by media to root for the boring middle ground too, too often.

Leigh Hile

I LOVED Selfie when it aired, I wish it had more time to figure itself out. It was a bit rough around the edges, but Karen Gillan and John Cho were SO goddamned charming, and I really think it was doing something genre-wise that hadn't really been done. I was a little bit what-the-fuck? at the beginning, but by the time Cho started speaking in rhyming couplets I was like, "Ohhh, I think it get it... this is a musical... but without the music." Do you know what I mean? Anyway, I think it was an absolute gem that never got its fair shot.

Leigh Hile

What a fucking treat this video was!!! I hope the Miss Honey gender scale makes it to the YouTube video because I will 100% be using that as shorthand to talk about how media negotiates the acceptable performance of femininity from now on.

Muireann McGlynn

You're probably exhausted of watching modern pygmalion movies but I watched "Pixel Perfect" (2004) the Disney channel movie as a kid and found it incredibly disturbing for reasons my child self couldn't put her finger on. It's about a boy who programmes, then falls in love with, a sentient AI woman to act as a hologram singer in his friends band.

Guliya

This is sooo good!

Verity Ritchie

Haha, we did consider watching Pixel Perfect! But we didn't in the end, maybe on a some grim dark night we will force ourselves to sit through it...

Muireann McGlynn

You've put yourself through enough as it is but if you did and felt like including your thoughts in one of your podcasts I would strap in 😁

Lossomo Films

Hurray super excited for this one!

Stella

This is so so great, I love it! I've enjoyed every bit of it and learned so much. So it's definitely been well worth the wait! I hope you can continue to take as much time as you need to research and put together great video essays such as this one.

Wes

why are you asking us to support you on patreon when this is a pateron exclusive video

Maxine Wilemska

Great video. Really learned a lot from it. The pollyamorous scientist ending of poor things honestly doesn't stray too far from a barbie movie. Girls get it done #girlpower #girlboss. It makes me long for a two films a film where the created woman is never domesticated and just continues a path of childlike joyous destruction; or a film where the inital program is desirable and straining from it harmful. What's the point of a film about an automaton going on a big adventure only to end up back home having realised it never should have left? The base enjoyment of a heroes journey? Circular repetitive storytelling? Pinocchio? I can see why archetypes like this fit corprate slop like the barbie movie but isn't Yorgos Lanthimos supposedly some kinda indie darling? I realise that my brain is craving some insane kill la kill/cutie honey Barbie movie where her inhumanity is her strength, she never needs to discover love or truth because she already represents love and truth and she gets progressively more bimbo, more feminine and more violent and uncontrollable as the film goes on. This might be too much for certain markets. I can see why they went with Greta Gerwig's pitch instead.

Andrew

Great work! What was the reason to have not have Ava in the YT version? You had to shoot that part twice.

Verity Ritchie

Because, like we said in the description, it was originally planned to go on youtube. And when the plan changed we liked the ending gag and didnt want to cut it. So now I guess its a parody of a youtube ending lol, idk.

Verity Ritchie

Ada made that choice because she felt that if the youtube version opened with her voice and then switched suddenly to mine after a couple of minutes, it would sound weird and confusing to anyone unfamiliar with the channel

Yonatan Zunger

Holy crap, this was amazing. I feel like I just got so much better an understanding of so many things and I am also laughing my ass off. This is honestly your best video yet. Also is this the first time we've seen Ada on camera? She's great!

Slávek Janík

You're just the bestest! Most lovely video, can't wait to watch it like 500 times as all of your other videos.😂 Also, i'm so glad we got to see Ada and hear her voice, she's great! Thanks a lot for your insight, smart thoughts and sassy humour.

Rei D.

I’m so glad I got to see this. You two do amazing work at building and communicating new perspectives that help someone like me navigate the illusory world in a way that is just as exciting and enriching as it is critical. And as a response to the post about YouTube, I hope this space offers the support and comfort you need to keep writing and just live life.

TheSarcasticBastard

Watching this and wondering where Penny Dreadfuls Lily Frankenstein would fall… who near the end was very much in favour of women’s power but still being controlled by the men surrounding her. It’s a shame the og series was cancelled.

The Mad Jay Woman

Chuckling now thinking of Ada as a Patreon exclusive

Verity Ritchie

Thanks so much Yonatan! Ada's face has appeared briefly before, but this is her first time talking to camera! It was great, and she wants to do some more in future!

Dora Mercedes

I've never read Frankenstein but I've read Pygmalion (both the myth and the book) and I've seen My Fair Lady and so many of the films derived from it and I have to say, I've never seen someone connect all these books and films like this. I kept wondering if you were going to bring up Ex Machina, which I enjoyed though it made me very angry and the anger exhausted me. I don't know that I'd recommend the film but I had a lot of thoughts watching it and afterwards, I kept thinking about it, which is kind of what I want from movies. I want to continue thinking about that world. I'm a little surprised you didn't discuss The Fifth Element because the pedophilia is really on the nose and even though I love the fashion in that movie, I can't in good conscience recommend the film either. I had fun wearing pink and watching Barbie with my friend, but I didn't think about it much afterward and to me, that was the biggest letdown. All this to say, I'll probably give Poor Things a watch but I'll definitely give it a read. Thanks for making and sharing these videos. I always learn a lot and find myself revisiting things when I watch your stuff.

Dora Mercedes

Addendum: Thinking about it some more, I feel like there are similarities between Bella and Faye from Cowboy Bebop. And now I'm really interested in watching the film/reading the book. Faye wakes up in the future after cryogenic sleep but she has no memories of her past and everyone from her past is long dead. So, Faye has to find herself. She becomes a bounty hunter. Her character journey is a lot of fun.

Jon Patel

Brilliant video (apart from the epic take-down of my favourite movie Matilda). It's incredible how you both consistently manage to find these insidious trends and tropes across time and genres and present them in such a clear and entertaining way, even though the implications are actually quietly devastating. It must be exhausting researching this almost procedural violence against women. Once you start seeing the makeover its hard to stop. The denouement of Grease is a makeover of both Danny and Sandy, though even slutty Rizzo is literally chastened by a pregnancy scare. Though in another of my favourite movies, Clueless, there is a failed makeover, which actually serves as part of Cher’s growth. Anyway lots to think about, thanks for all the great work you do. And lovely to put a face to a voice, more Ada please!

Jon Patel

I will say watching Matilda as an adult you do love Trunchbull, especially the "Why are all these women married!?" line.

big bird

this is a masterpiece! this is peak pop culture Pygmalion scholarship. and finally I will sound only kind of incoherent when I talk about Poor Things The Movie! the Pygmalion-like frameworks you've presented are so solid. also it's funny and the editing is excellent and so are the outfits and I could go on!

Ghosts And You Might Die

Finally got to watch this one, and aaahhhhhh it's so good!! Thank you for validating both my love of the Poor Things movie and my ongoing disinterest in ever watching the Barbie movie. And for including an analysis and comparison of the Poor Things book, with which I was entirely unfamiliar. I was able to carve out a quick break to watch the YouTube version earlier, and it was so much fun to compare Ada's line delivery to Verity's in the Miss Honey Gender Spectrum section. I have to wonder, is Bella's final look in Poor Things... sort of a Miss-Honey-"ideal"-femininity makeover, maybe, a little? The unadorned (save the big sleeves) beige turtleneck and the relatively plain ankle-length solid-colour skirt sort of read to me as being a version of the toned-down bimbo, given how odd and revealing some of her earlier ensembles are (and, ah, lack of ensembles). When I saw the film, I thought it was a representation of Bella settling into a practical, mature sense of fashion... but having watched this analysis, I wonder if I have my brain colonized by the Miss Honey Spectrum, so that I unconsciously read modest-yet-flattering clothing as the end-point a woman would aim for!

Porge

In addition to this reinforcing of ‘acceptable’ femininity, I think a lot of filmmakers just rely way too much on clothes and styling as symbolism in place of real character moments, maybe as a twisted misconception of “show, don’t tell”? So many films use this convergence on an aesthetic middle ground to symbolise the resolution of a conflict between characters, but this sucks because 1) the way you present is about more than just one other person and 2) it’s way more powerful when characters connect emotionally *in spite of* their superficial differences

Karoliina Ollikainen

Ah god, the Miss Honey Gender Spectrum is painfully accurate and one of those things that you can’t unsee once you notice it. (Side eyeing my own wardrobe now, honestly…)

Saschi

Saw your AMAZING teaser for this on youtube and thought "I need more." Now I've seen all the videos on youtube and subscribed here and I still think that!

Karoliina Ollikainen

Ah god, the Miss Honey Gender Spectrum is painfully accurate and one of those things that you can’t unsee once you notice it. (Side eyeing my own wardrobe now, honestly…)

Ro

Brilliant!

Restrictedmilk

I loved this deep dive! I feel very enlightened, and this was an artistic tying together of all these tropes and media. One thought I had throughout was how insidious it is that a lot of these movies are women's media... And it's so romanticized and idealized. Even the modern "feminist" takes are subtle promotions of how women should perform in society, and that is just... Yuck.

Restrictedmilk

Oh also, as a new patron but a long time watcher, it was really fun to see Ada!

Verity Ritchie

Wasn't she great? Hopefully she'll do more in future! Thanks for your support, Restrictedmilk!

Ginny Di

I'm gonna be honest, I bought this post because after watching your YouTube excerpt and seeing that Poor Things was mentioned in this one, I was scared that Poor Things was Bad, Actually, and watched it with some nervousness! I was relieved that you saw the same things I saw in Poor Things as far as subversion of the "born sexy yesterday" tropes, but also fascinated by your insights on the book, which is now on my to-read list.

Zam Ziva

Finally got around to watching this and it's great! Thank you as always - I haven't seen Poor Things or Barbie but I've been meaning to get around to PT since I've watched most of Lanthimos's films. I really like his actors' strange dialogue delivery for some reason haha. I was wondering if you have a list of your sources? I'd love to read some of the papers you reference in the video

Kyo

Loved this video! I'm really interested in reading the Poor Things book now and seeing the story in a new light.

Bean!

Just watched the YouTube vide and ran to buy this post to watch the longer version. Beauty politic is something I’ve been seeing discussed in more focused aspects (tiktok trends, social media influence, ect) but never do other discussions lean into how feminism can be used to address the larger topic of beauty as a construct. It feels like as a society there is a fear of what it would mean to dismantle our current understandings of beauty, and a fear of how difficult that process would be. Anyways, fantastic work and thank you for this video!

calp

This is incredible!

Verity Ritchie

We dont have a list unfortunately, our writing docs are messy, but all the sources are in the top right corner, or if you want to ask about a specific topic source we can figure it out for you!

Jasper Joestar

every single one of your videos is so perfect!!

Corinna Vatterodt

Great video, I especially liked the credit scene :D Unfortunately my cat did not - she was sleeping next to me on the couch and was rudely awoken from her sleep by the robot repair noises, which seemed to stress her out quite a bit xD

Saoirse

Great video, I don't think it seems too niche for YouTube personally, but the shorter version did get me (a long time viewer) to sign up for your Patreon so hey!

Ariel Vittori

Finally got around to watching this and it’s totally one of my new faves. Feels kind of ironic how Miss Honey really WAS the ideal of femininity for me as a child, so much so she was one of my first crushes (and made me figure out I was pan alongside very butch and very much not ideally feminine Sailor Uranus). Also, it’s so cool to see Ada featured, hi!!

XxOldLadyBallsxX

Delivery on the little quips off the charts in this one

Ani

This was phenomenal omg

N N

God you both have such great hair I can't stand it

Fatears

this was a super nice and insightful video to watch! Will definitely check out the book Poor Things!

Ivell Scarlet

If I had to describe poor things I would call it a Freudian journey (compared to the hero's journey). A character explores first her ID then her ego and then her super-ego. It is a journey to full personhood. That's one of the reasons there is so much sex in it. Bella cares only about food and sex at first. On the boat, she starts reading and learning, and when she sees human suffering she starts caring about morals and other people.

Rome

hi, excellent video! i have a question about just one small part of it— have you seen Shaun’s video “How Wikipedia Got Ex Machina (2014) Wrong”? it contests the analysis on wikipedia which is somewhat similar to your analysis by considering another character, kyoko. not saying your reading of ex machina is wrong necessarily just thought it might be interesting.

Verity Ritchie

Thanks, Rome! We have seen Shaun's video, and I don't think there's any conflict between what Shaun argues and what we argue. For Eva to be a femme fatale, she can still be emotional. In fact, we argue that she does "become" human essentially, but we argue that the film conveys her journey to humanity as being defined by the sexual desires of the men. She's designed to be sexually attractive to Caleb, and when she dresses herself (sensually, while being watched by Caleb) at the end when she is liberating herself, it is with pieces of the bodies Nathan is attracted to, finally putting on a dress which matches the painting on Nathan's wall. Her humanity is defined by her sexual desirability to Caleb and Nathan and the film is about how that desirability leads to the men's destruction. Shaun's video isn't unreasonable, but he's very focused on one particular element of the film. He doesn't analyse Eva and Kyoko's relationships to the tradition of fembots in cinema and he doesn't touch on the male gaze either. We found his video to be somewhat limited in its scope.

Stephani Soejono

Verity, I have a little extra cash and now I can finally see this wonderful excellent video :D I'm so happy this video exists

Howl Jenkins

The short YouTube teaser brought me here, and I enjoyed the full-length version so much. I feel like I learnt so much watching this video, your perspectives were fresh and your analysis so thorough, thank you so much for your hard work. I'm now left with so many questions. Even thought I was uncomfortable with many things about the Barbie movie — such as it's gender-essentialist ending — so many more things flew over my head and, over multiple viewings, eventually I really found the experience very enjoyable. I found it fun and silly, and most importantly a feast for the senses: the fashion, the set design, the cinematography and the colour palette were opulent, intricate and beautiful. It was just very beautiful to watch, even just as a sort of exhibition of the works of art of all the craftspeople involved in its making. And even though I found Poor Things so incredibly artful and intricate too, its aesthetics are very deliberately edgy and disturbing. So now i'm left wondering, is the anti-imperialist feminism of Poor Things inevitably synonymous with the edgy, grungy and Vivienne-Westwoodesque aesthetic it embraces? Can the glossy, pretty, pink and feminine (but not feminist) aesthetic of Barbie be divorced of its capitalist significance? Has this aesthetic ever been successfully reappropriated? Also, on the topic of the Miss Honey Gender Spectrum, and seeing how it intersects with this hyper-feminine, pinky glossy aesthetic and its image of the bimbo, I'm reminded of the film Legally Blonde that also has a hyper-feminine pinky glossy aesthetic — largely embodied by it's blonde bimbo protagonist, but also present in many other aspects of the film — and the character does undergo a sort of makeover. However I feel like at the end of the film, the lesson I took was that Elle Woods succeeded because of her femininity and not in spite of it. She undergoes an... intelectual makeover? She undergoes a change for sure, but mostly she changes the world around her in order to accept her. And her fashion is still very true to her hyper-feminine, pink aesthetic. She doesn't necessarily end up a watered-down version of herself, or does she? So, while I'm very aware that Legally Blond is not interested in feminism or anti-imperialism (or nuance around its queer characters for that matter), I'm curious how it might aligns or subvert your analysis of makeover movies, and how it interacts with the Miss Honey Gender Spectrum. If you read this far, I'm so sorry you had to put up with my disorganised stream-of-consciousness thoughts, but your video really stimulated me intellectually and brought up all these interesting questions and thoughts. I'm now going to make my way through the rest of your videos and podcasts where hopefully you talk some more about all these topics that got me so fired up! Congratulations on your excellent work.