So this past week the National Women’s Law Center released a video staring Sarah Silverman to bring awareness to the gender pay gap. Now, the NWLC is a great organization that works hard to get laws passed that aid in the protection and advancement of women, and makes sure these laws are enforced. So I bet right now you’re thinking: “The NWLC (a great organization) and Sarah Silverman (a badass comedian) coming together to close the wage gap! What could be better than that!” Well…actually a lot of things. I had some serious issues with this video.
The problem I have with poking fun at “vagina taxes” and getting sex changes to achieve equal pay is that transgender people exist. Hello captain obvious! I’m so shocked that no one involved in the production of this video caught that. The whole time I was watching, I was kind of baffled that they would make a joke out of this situation. Sex change surgeries are not always sought after by transgender folks but they do happen quite frequently in our society. I think it’s pretty ridiculous that such a prestigious law firm would completely forget about this fact.
To be fair, the video does raise some really important issues and it does so in a humorous fashion which I can totally dig. I was just really disappointed to see their complete disregard for a whole public. Especially since the wage gap effects transgender people so heavily, it really blows my mind that the NWLC completely ignored their existence. The Twitter world was quick to let the NWLC and Sarah Silverman know their video was an epic fail:
The NWLC responded to the Twitter backlash with a blog post where they declared they would put some of the money raised by the campaign to use raising awareness about trans discrimination. This is great, and honestly the least they can do, but they never even gave a real apology. In the video, Sarah jokes about a $500,000 vagina tax….but this is so inaccurate. You don’t have to have a vagina to be a woman, and having a penis won’t necessarily get you equal pay.
Feminism is about equality of the sexes and trans women, are women too. We need to be inclusive in our efforts otherwise we are just as much a part of the problem. What did you guys think about the video?