The reviews are in!
Well, at least one review is in.
In a 5000 word review essay that is perhaps too charitably described as “rambling,” military obsessed blogger Freiherr Karza von Karnstein explains why he loves The Sarkeesian Effect so much.
While his, er, argument is too convoluted for me to summarize in a brief blog post, I have taken the liberty of extracting some sentences from it that I think would work well as blurbs to use on The Sarkeesian Effect’s DVD cover and in other publicity efforts.
I have also taken the liberty of adding exclamation points to all of the possible blurbs below to give them a little extra zing!
Specifically and concisely, I do not see government participation in business and tariffs/sales taxes as irrevocably evil, but rather as tools that can be useful, and I do not share Rand’s disdain for sacrifice, a behaviour common to many aviation and racing pioneers and a behaviour common to winners of the Knight’s Cross, the Grand Cross of Valour, the Victoria Cross and the Medal of Honour!
Yes, that is an actual sentence from the “review.”
On another note, I disagree with Mr. Owen on the biological necessity of “manspreading!” He has argued that “manspreading” is necessitated by the fact of male anatomy! Males have dominated the ranks of airborne troops the world over since the 1930’s! Paratroopers are trained to keep their feet, calves and knees together when they are about to make contact with terra firma, since “manspreading” one’s lower limbs will lead to fracture of at least one lower limb on impact, a situation which tends to be prejudicial to the proper functioning of a paratrooper! Not all males need to manspread! Only airborne-unqualified/airborne-incapable males need to manspread!
That one might be a teensy bit long for a blurb, sorry!
Specifically, while most Englishmen, it seems, have surrendered their right to fly the Union Flag without a fight, this is definitely not true of the Loyal Protestants of Glasgow and the rest of Lowlands of Scotland (the sheep-molesting animists once referred to as “Highlanders” but properly referred to in 2015 as Teuchters are another story altogether) and of Ulster, all of who are consistently putting up a hell of a fight to maintain the Union and the Union Flag!
Ok, while that is an actual sentence from the review, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the movie, or Jordan Owen, or anything even vaguely related to either. I’ll try to do better with the next blurb.
In this regard, The Sarkeesian Effect is essentially a 2015 cinematic version of Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne, of the First Day of the Somme!
I don’t know what on earth that means, but it does at least mention the name of the film, which is good, right?
Mr. Owen was right to do onto the manosphere element of the production what King Hussein did to the PLO in 1970’s Black September!
Hmm. That might be a little confusing. Maybe we could shorten it to just:
Mr. Owen was right … !
Let’s try another:
Twenty years ago, I remember Neal Knox trying to instigate a coup against NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, a coup that was halted when Soldier of Fortune editor/publisher Colonel Robert K. Brown, an NRA board member, publicly declared his support for LaPierre and condemned Knox!
Sorry! That one, which is also from the review, doesn’t seem to have any obvious connection to the film, so let’s forget it.
The Manky Bheasts are people who, in the time of Jane Austen’s novels, were quite likely to be hanged for stealing chickens or shoes, who, in Downton Abbey, would be footmen and stable boys like Barrow who knew their place and knew to only be heard saying “Yes, milord, no, milord!”
Crap. That one might not work either. Not even the exclamation point I’ve added can save it.
In objective reality, Canada is one of the lesser of Her Majesty’s Dominions, less important that Belize, the Falklands and Fiji!
Well, that might not work as a blurb for The Sarkeesian Effect. But it could be put to good work by the publicity departments for Belize, the Falklands or Fiji!
Let me try one more:
Long story short, when the Manky Bheasts and other feminists/SJW’s launch their video Alpha Strikes against Mr. Owen and The Sarkeesian Effect, know that they are coming at this with an agenda and a sierra-load of biases, unlike those who confirmed the existence of the Higgs-Boson particle!
I think we’ve got it!
There’s your blurb, Jordan!
You’re welcome!
Is that anything like monkey tennis?
I think the ideal reaction to manspreading is to shout something like “AIRING OUT YOUR BALLS THERE, SWEATYBALLS?” at the top of one’s voice, but I can never bring myself to so it.
@EJ awww thanks :-p
Jesus, where does he get the energy for this? That crap documentary really inspired that much of a response? Maybe the reason it’s so irrelevant is because the documentary itself has such little substance to comment on, let alone praise.
I beg to differ…
http://d817ypd61vbww.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/tile/image/original_150.jpg
“manky” is adequately explained by Urban Dictionary (by which I mean “has multiple overlapping definitions that aren’t a sex act thought up on the spot”).
A search for “bheast” finds a football-related blog, in which the writer uses it to describe people who share his hobby and have an agenda:
https://themanthebheastscanttame.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/hello-world/
Har. Reminds me of an article on public-transport etiquette that I read long ago, long before “manspreading” was ever a word. A woman dealt with that particular rudeness by grabbing the guy’s knees, clapping them together, and saying loudly enough for all surrounding passengers to hear, “That’s enough, you’re all aired out now.”
Which gave me to think: Maybe these rude dudes do it because they’re metaphorically telling all the world to smell their musky, musky balls. Ugh. Like all the BO on public transit isn’t already nauseating enough.
Was this review generated by one of those automated postmodernist essay generators?
I took “Manky bheasts” to be a really obscure (or made up, since these types love making up their own) racist term for black people, given the context of hanging and “Knowing their place.”
Either this guy was in a state of excessive refreshment or he’s joking.
Really, this just too random to be serious.
Okay, again I’m going to go against the grain and ask how this would not be harassment. Loudly screaming about strangers’ genitals, grabbing and manipulating their bodies, is considered harassment in the majority of situations. I don’t think encroaching on multiple seats is reprehensible enough to merit this response. If a girl put her bag on the seat next to her, blocking it from other passengers, you wouldn’t start loudly speculating about how many tampons she has in there, or whatever.
And “manspreading” is not a word now. It’s yet another deliberately annoying portmanteau. I can’t wait until society gets over that phase.
… “Yet another”? You aren’t referring to “Mansplaining,” are you?
@theluckyfrog:
You… don’t have a firm grasp on this, do you? That analogy was awful.
But not all, as you admit with your use of “majority of” rather than “all other.” Sometimes when someone is being rude, a public response that would normally be rude is justified.
See what you’re doing though; abstracting the situation until it sounds much worse than it is. “Screaming about strangers’ genitals” and “grabbing and manipulating their bodies” sounds like it could be as bad as a dude screaming about a woman’s tits and shaking her around, or a woman shouting “nice cock!” and spreading a dude’s legs open to try to get a better look.
It’s technically accurate, but profoundly misleading and disingenuous, and something that really annoys me. It’s frequently a sign that someone is trying to misappropriate progressive language.
Keep in mind this is one woman, and unless you read the original thing you don’t know what standard she used. Maybe she prowled the transit line, seeking out dudes with knees more than an inch apart. That’d be unjustified. Maybe she only did this when a guy was taking up seats on a crowded train and no-one else wanted to call him out on it. That’d be more justified.
… “Yet another”? You aren’t referring to “Mansplaining,” are you?
I’m referring to a hell of a lot of words, and “mansplaining” is only one of them. Buzzwords are irksome, require tedious explanations whenever anyone unfamiliar tries to join the conversation, and eventually come to replace far more nuanced concepts. And that’s the best case scenario, when even the people using them aren’t fighting over the definition.
@theluckyfrog:
And yet those words are also an attempt at creating a language to talk about something that didn’t have a label before. They take hold not because they’re catchy or clever, but because when people hear the word (or hear the definition the first time) they immediately recognize what’s being talked about.
They aren’t simply buzzwords, and they aren’t a replacement for nuance any more than any other label is. They enable people to talk about something they might not have known how to describe before.
“Mansplaining” is literally the only one-word word we have for said nuanced concept. It’s an important word that broke through a common annoyance that every woman’s had to deal with for hundreds of years and finally brought it to the forefront of public (ie, outside the feminist sphere) discourse on societal sexism.
And in response to that long deconstruction comment, now who’s being tedious and pulling an argument apart on semantics?
Fine, ALL cases. Commenting on, screaming about, calling attention to strangers genitals, breasts, or other sexual parts I’m forgetting, is rude in all cases. It’s not an appropriate response to rude behavior that is not in itself sexually harassing. And my analogy is fine, because it was an example of a comment that was weird and unnecessary, and the point I’m making is that your proposed comments are weird and unnecessary.
I stated an opinion, and as usual, you guys didn’t like it. That’s fine. There’s no reason for any of us to waste more time on this and I can stick a flounce. Buh bye now.
Well that was fucking bizarre.
Commenting on strangers’ genitals is rude even when it’s a response to rude or harassing behaviour? Wow. I never knew that “please get your dick out of my ear” is impolite. This seems to be an etiquette firmly rooted in protecting the feelings of people who go around putting their dicks in people’s ears.
Actually, thinking about that, that position is at least extremely coherent with a lot of other reactionary positions.
“Putting your dick in someone’s ear isn’t rude; commenting on someone’s dick being in your ear is rude.”
This can be generalised to:
“[X] isn’t rude; talking about [X] is rude.”
Let’s try a few:
“Being racist isn’t rude: pointing out racism is rude.”
“Rape isn’t a problem: rape accusations are a problem.”
“Economic exploitation isn’t class war; campaigning against it is class war.”
Have we stumbled upon the general case of privileged reactionaries?
It’s a false equivalency, too. Women get their body parts inappropriately commented on and touched on public transit all the damn time. And if the same kind of thing was happening to dudes, it would also be wrong. But it isn’t, at least not that I have heard, and the examples of calling out manspreaders on this thread are not equivalent to sexual harassment. Just like how going “hey lady your stiletto heel is stabbing me in the foot, get off of my foot” is not the same thing as going “hey lady those heels make your ass look tasty as fuck, woo!”
Also:
Arse. Take two.
1. “Girl.”
2. Has any woman ever claimed that she needs more room for the sheer number of her tampons?* Because every manspreader ever claims to need more room for the sheer size of his balls.
*The answer is “Fuck no, what the hell.”
“Manky” is a UK colloquial/slang term that means dirty, rotten, disgusting or worthless — depending upon the context. Originally from Northern England and parts of Scotland (although you might well hear it as far south as London these days), its usage can only be dated back to the late 1950s — although it might be a variation on an older French or Italian word. It certainly would not have been around in the early 20th century (Downton Abbey’s period), let alone used in Jane Austen’s 19th century. Even today, it’s not the kind of language you would ever use in a public/professional capacity.
I have absolutely no idea what a “bheast” is, although I’d imagine that “manky bheasts” could be reasonably translated to “filthy creatures”. Quite why Sturmfuehrer von Karnstein didn’t just use the latter rather than a made-up word prefixed with an obscure piece of British slang is something of a mystery.
Perhaps there is a super sekrit MRA award for “Most Obfuscated Blog Post 2015”? It would go some way to explain the 5,000 word screed. After all, there’s serious competition for this award already out there…
Oh… dang it! There’s 6 months of rock solid lurking ruined!
Lucky Frog,
First of all language evolves all the time. The Canterbury Tales is in English but doesn’t sound much like the way we speak today. Language changes with culture. It’s not a static thing. It never was.
Secondly, manspreaders often press their leg against their seatmates, sometimes pinning them against the wall or window. If someone is putting their body parts on another without their consent when it isn’t an incidental or accidental contact, that person has every right to do something about it. It’s not harassment. It’s self defense.
I’m not sure why this is something you’re throwing a tantrum over, but whatever. Stick to the flounce and tell yourself it’s a victory like the MRA trolls do.