Laci Green

Early life and education

Green was born in Utah. Her mother is a Mormon from a small American town, and her father, from a Muslim family, is from Iran. When she was two years old, her family moved to Portland, Oregon, and when she was twelve, they moved to California for her father's job. As she grew older she began to question the Mormon faith because of its strict gender roles and expectations of her as a woman. Growing up, Green was interested in theater and was supported by her mother who owns a theater company. Soon after leaving the church, she fell into a state of deep depression and struggled with self-harm and suicidal thoughts. She began to work with a therapist who helped her through her depression. She is now an atheist, though occasionally attends the Unitarian Universalist church.

Green identifies as bisexual.

In 2011, Green graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in legal studies and education. In February 2017, she announced her intention to pursue a doctorate degree in public health.

Green now lives in Los Angeles.

Activism

Green's videos were originally a hobby, but, as they grew more popular, she took more interest in sex education. As of October 2014, her YouTube channel had more than 1,000,000 subscribers. As a sex educator, she has given lectures at several universities and on behalf of Planned Parenthood. Green is a former co-host of DNews, a YouTube channel with short science-based shows, launched by the Discovery News website. On January 18, 2013, Green appeared on Dr. Phil in an episode titled "Girls Who Bash Girls Who Dress Sexy". She spoke about how she believes slut-shaming is wrong and how it is used to degrade a woman's sexuality.

Green advances the sex-positive movement in her videos and lectures. She has said that she wants to "get people to talk about sex in a way that isn't shameful, awkward, or weird. People are uneducated and this creates so many stigmas that don't need to be there."

After fellow YouTuber Sam Pepper posted a video of himself grabbing women's bottoms, Green wrote an open letter, co-signed by several other YouTube bloggers, asking Pepper to "stop violating women". Channel 4 and the BBC interviewed her about sexual harassment in the YouTube community.

In 2012, Green received death threats via the Internet after she used the pejorative term "tranny" in a video; she apologized and took down the video, stating that the offensive comment had been made years earlier when she had been very uneducated. After a month-long break, she returned to her YouTube channel in August 2012.

Green won a 2016 Streamy Award for Science or Education.

In May 2017 Green had a series of dialogs on Twitter, in her own videos, and in the videos of other YouTubers, with critics of identity politics, gender identity, and modern feminism. She said that some of the points made by these critics were "more valid than they’d previously seemed" and though she did not repudiate any of her past positions on these issues the critics welcomed Green's overtures.