35
votes
Who are your favourite female YouTubers?
It occurred to me a few days ago that my YouTube subscriptions are heavily weighted in favour of men. I follow a lot of video essayists and educational YouTubers, and when the algorithm surfaces new ones to check out, 99 times out of 100 it's a man talking. Same with musicians, gamers, and tech heads...
I feel like I'm missing out on some valuable perspectives, insights, and just all around good content. So please hit me up with some recommendations!
I'm not a regular watcher of YouTube. I don't subscribe to any channels. I don't usually go there unless I'm directed there via a post on Tildes or Reddit, or as a search result. However, even as a random browser of YouTube, I have seen a couple of female presenters who've stood out to me, and whose videos I've enjoyed.
Contrapoints by Natalie Wynn. She's insightful and incisive about gender and sexuality issues.
Vi Hart presents fun and quirky videos about mathematical topics. (Although it looks like she's not producing videos any more.)
I love me some film analysis because I'm too dense to understand complex themes so I get to have someone explain everything :)
https://youtu.be/SjLOFLE4JRw
That one popped into my feed a while back. I liked Fight Club when I saw it as a kid, talked about it a lot with my friends, and then didn't think about it for a good decade or so. Listening to her deconstruction was very interesting to me, especially the part about Tyler threatening to kill the shop keeper if he doesn't go back to veterinary school or whatever.
Here's a few great ones:
Jenny Nicholson - Theme park/Disney/Star Wars/general entertainment commentary and comedy person. Has a very uniquely...bubbly but dry sense of humor that makes her possibly the funniest person on YouTube. In the circle of Lindsay Ellis, Folding Ideas, etc.
The Pedantic Romantic - Anime video essayist.
DigitalMumbles - Indie game review person. In the sphere of Errant Signal/Campster, Rutskarn, etc.
climbthestacks - Booktube person! That community is a pretty shallow well in my experience, but this channel is really one of the high points of it. Still a lot of lists and all that, but much more thoughtful than the usual in that space.
Sadly not active lately.
Fran Blanche cool tech/music/engineering?/craft person!
I don't follow many, but SexyCyborg is a good one. She's a Chinese maker who does a wide range of maker-oriented projects from wearables to kit reviews, and tends to opine on the issues of the Chinese scene and manufacturer culture. I'm not going to lie, the first video I watched of hers was because she's a hot woman with large fake cans (she actually used this to her advantage for a couple projects, like a cyberpunk costume she built that had her light her chest, and her silicone implants, or a hacking rig built around her as a honeypot with gear stored in her self-built/modded shoes). I feel I did a bad job representing her, but her channel is great.
ContraPoints is great if you want entertaining and informative video essays on a wide range of social justice issues. she's trans, but her early material is from when before she transitioned, which is itself an interesting perspective because you can see her demonstrating her own issues through the medium before transitioning, and then watch her transition, whether that's from philosophy grad student to full-time YouTuber or gender-queer man to woman. The content is consistently good, but her production quality skyrocketed when she quit school, and has steadied into some of the best-made political content on YouTube.
EDIT: Added links.
I have a few I watch regularly for a variety of reasons:
StrucciMovies by Shannon Strucci - video essays, reviews, and episodes of the Critical Bits cast. Shannon is probably best known for her long form essay about para-social relationships: Fake Friends. This is not at all her bread and butter content though.
Quite Shallow/Shy - a mute lady who narrates her videos using a text-to-speech device. Probably best known for her Warframe content such as short, comically negative, reviews of items and events, abridged joke versions of official developer livestreams, and art videos. Also occasionally does videos about other games, mostly comic videos of glitches or bugs.
Truongasm/Momoka Truong - Former Destructoid contributor, now does various little things mostly her True Route Radio podcast or commentary tracks of things like the old Ctrl+Alt+Delete animated series or the reality TV show The Tester. Uploads rather infrequently though.
ValkyrieAurora - Mostly humoristic commentary, reviews, or reaction videos about video games. Mostly focused on Japanese games or games with an Anime aesthetic. I really don't following anything about her other than these videos but her timing and editing are on point and she's fun enough to listen to that I make time to watch them.
Sarah Z - Media reviews and video essays. You might have seen her videoThe Late Capitalism of Fast Food Twitter which did the rounds.
Kat Blaque - Vlogs and video Essays about, well, a lot of things but mostly issues partaining to LGBTQ+ people and people of color. I'm gonna be honest here: I don't know much about most of what she talks about, or how representative it is, or really anything of substance at all I could tell you about. I just put the videos on while I'm doing something that doesn't really require my full attention. Don't hurt me.
Hmm. My YT subscriptions are also heavily weighted towards men, mostly I think because that's what the algorithm pushes. But here are some female youtubers I like:
Overly Sarcastic Productions Literary theory and history. Highly recommend the Journey to the West playlist.
PBS Infinite Series Sadly discontinued, but there's a large archive.
ReignBot Covers creepy, bizarre and mysterious things. I like that she has a skeptical perspective but also understands that people enjoy ghost stories as entertainment even if they don't believe them to be literally true. I.e. not a pure "debunking" channel. I'm all for skepticism but sometimes I just want a good story dammit!
Up and Atom Physics, philosophy and math.
Lindsay Ellis Video essays on film.
Claire from BA's Gourmet Makes. This channel has a bunch of shows with different hosts both male and female, but I'd say she qualifies as a "female youtuber". While ostensibly a cooking show, this channel is at times like a workplace comedy. I mean, sometimes they post videos in which the hosts, who are professional chefs, fail to actually make anything and just banter for 30 minutes. I saw a funny (and sad) comment on one of the videos: "This channel allows us to experience the fantasy of being in a positive workplace environment."
Carolina Eyck Theremin musician. This weird instrument has the potential to sound really haunting and beautiful, although it's most well known as the source of various "creepy" background sound effects.
Stefi Cohen Holder of numerous records and championships in powerlifting. This woman can deadlift four and a half times her own weight.
Kirsten Dirksen Minimal/eco-conscious living.
Tibees Relaxing math channel. Like, really relaxing.
Some of my favorites have already been mentioned (contrapoints, jenny nicholson, lindsay ellis, fran blanche), which I second the recommendations for... but here are some other's that I haven't seen mentioned yet:
The Brain Scoop - Emily Graslie is the "Chief Curiosity Correspondent" of The Field Museum in Chicago, and does animal dissection videos (hence the channel name), as well as interesting interviews with scientists and curators at the museum and elsewhere.
Emmymade in Japan - Does a bit of everything food related, from MRE reviews to retro kitchen gadget tests to recipes from old cookbooks.
Physics Girl - Science/Physics related videos meant for general audiences.
Up and Atom - Another science/physics related channel, though she covers far more difficult to understand topics than physics girl. "Making hard things less hard" is a perfect description of the channel, IMO.
Simone Giertz - AKA "shitty robot girl". Sadly her brain
cancertumor is back... so she understandably doesn't post much anymore, but I still highly recommend her channel (and genuinely wish her the best!). :(Natalie & Tara - Two aspiring writers/actors from LA. The channel has a bit of everything, and so their channel description is apt: "Comedy, adventure, crazy food and things we've always wanted to try."
Sarah Z - Does reviews and video essays, similar to Lindsay Ellis and Jenny Nicholson.
Simone's tumor isn't cancerous.
Yeah, I probably should have used the word tumor specifically instead of cancer, since that's rather misleading given hers is benign (albeit still growing). Thanks, fixed.
Girlfriend Reviews is really good. The channel is pretty much the setup to a "girl who knows nothing about video games" joke but she is super knowledgeable about the industry, mechanics and all things games.
Mexie is a P.h.D. in Human Geography who does longform videos on topics from economics (capitalist, socialist) to environmental policy to veganism.
Angie Speaks is an anarchist academic whose work covers community in the era of social media, religion/spirituality, race, and broader cultural critique.
Co-sign on Contrapoints and Lindsay Ellis whom others have already mentioned- they are both excellent.
I'm a little late to the party, and several of my favorites are already listed, but I have another one to add:
Madqueen
She covers Cyberpunk 2077 news and also has a great series of videos explaining lore from the Cyberpunk 2020 roleplaying game which is canon for Cyberpunk 2077. She's a long-time fan of the pencil and paper RPGs and is a wonderful resource for fans of the game. She also has very high production quality, cool costumes and special effects, and creates in-universe Cyberpunk commercials for the various MegaCorps in the universe.
It looks like all of these youtubers have already been mentioned in this thread but my favorites would be Contrapoints, Lindsay Ellis, Sarah Z, and Jenny Nicholson.
Interestingly all four of them fall under the "BreadTube" label to varying degrees
Big fan of Physics Girl and Simone Giertz, but others have linked to their channels. One I haven't seen mentioned yet is HowToADHD. Really great for those with ADHD or living with someone with it. It's been really helping me realize how many of my quirks and flaws are a either coping mechanisms for or the result of my ADHD.
edit: Oh! Vintage Space is another good one. Lots of really interesting videos exploring early NASA and sometimes current space events.
I watch a pretty decent amount of stuff on YouTube but I consciously try to not follow personality-driven content very much, so I don't have any subscriptions to recommend. There are three women I have seen who come to mind, though.
Maangchi is one of the OG food YouTubers, her channel's been up for more than 10 years. She's immensely popular and much loved, cuz she's basically taught tons of people how to cook.
Seonkyoung Longest is another Korean food YouTuber, but I think she does mukbangs and travelogs as opposed to only cooking.
Shirley Curry is a gaming grandma. I think she got her fame pretty much from Skyrim videos but eventually branched out to other stuff. She's good fun.
Oh, and tally yet another vote for Contrapoints.
Other than the ones already listed by others here I've got a few makers, a scientist and a few D&D gamers
April Wilkerson - A DIY woodworker from Texas
Get Hands Dirty - Cristiana Felgueiras DIY woodworker from Portugal
Global Weirding - Kathran Hayhoe, a climate scientist (she's also an evangelical christian, but as far as I can tell she's compartmentalized the two and keeps her science channel just that.)
Laura Kampf - A maker (mostly wood but some metal) from Germany
Critical Role RPG D&D style campaigns along with out RPG related videos. Not speficially a female youtuber this is a mix of women and men.