So just the other day, I was reading this interesting article
international Woman's Day: Woman Have Been Written out of power. the Time is Ripe for a New Language of Equality on the website the Conversation
The basic thesis is that the English language contains in it certain quirks that can be read as sexist
Some people might immediately stop listening at the mere thought of that, but please allow me to share
what I find to be the articles most compelling argument
Let's say you're in a classroom and you want to ask the teacher a question. Let's call him Alex Brown
So you raise your hand and you say excuse me? Mr. Brown. I have a question. Now, let's mix it up
Alex Brown is actually a woman. So you raise your hand and you see excuse me mi...
and now what? you see conventionally you have two choices here miss or mrs
But how do you determine which to use? maybe you base it on her age? Maybe you try looking for a wedding ring?
It's a pretty minor choice, but some women will get quite offended if you use the wrong one.
To me, This is by far and away the most interesting point in this article thinking about this one point
How do we decide?
Which to use and why is it even the thing in the first place? if I wanted to go full radical
I could argue the changing your name to mrs
Could be seen as a claim of ownership by a man, which is kind of what this article suggests
Now, I certainly don't agree with all the points in this article
It's written from a very extreme point of view and it sees this is a major issue contributing to female oppression
And I mean, I guess it's kind of correct
But it's certainly not something I'd be campaigning in the streets to abolish
I see it more as an interesting quirk of language
The article also makes reference to the mankind argument
that came up in my last video as well as how women are more likely to be called by their first names
overall I found it to be an interesting article and I recommend you give her a read. link in the description
so
Why did I just do that?
Well in high school most of you will remember
Learning how to analyze a short story or article your given certain conditions to meet: a summary, some interesting points
Maybe a question, then your overall opinions. It's pretty basic stuff. And that's what I just did it
Took what a minute or two. This whole class is option A when you want to talk about an article
I'm sure it's probably not very good video content, but it's certainly better than option B. You see this International Women's Day popular
YouTuber Sargon of Akkad made a 15 minute video on this article called The Language of Oppression
Where he slowly and painfully reads through the article stopping every line to make some comment about how it's wrong
It's definitely not the first time he's done this and I'm not the first person to point it out
But I think taking a deep dive into this video will reveal why exactly this way of analyzing articles just doesn't work
Now given what you now know about this article if you know anything about Sargon
Then you probably already know what his response is. But let's take a closer look at how he comes in his conclusions about the article
Sargon: so I thought I'd just do an old-school style video for International Women's Day because why not I found this really great article on
Sargon: TheConversation.com
Sargon: International Women's Day: Women have been written out of power - time is ripe for a new language of equality
Sargon: right from the offset You know exactly what kind of person you're dealing with
Sargon: They're dealing with the politics of group power. The group dynamics between one another and their ability to exert control over one another
Sargon: That's what she's talking about
Sargon: that's a pretty goddamn hefty thing to start with and it's so weird how such naked power mongering is considered acceptable by feminism
Sargon: I can only assume it's because they think that that's what men do with other men
Sargon: Which honestly as a man, I do not think that any decisions that men make in general almost
Sargon: I mean literally any decision is made with the intention of preserving male power. I don't think that's true
uhm
So you can see why this video is 15 minutes long right that entire tangent started just from reading the title of the article
and you'll note, that's not even what the article is about. That tangent about feminists thinking that that's what men do
That's not in the article
You see what he's doing here is he's priming his audience to be angry before he's even started reading it
He's already introduced this idea of the evil feminists and their heads and don't get me wrong
I have no doubt that Sargon thinks what he's saying is true, but it's still misleading to claim
That's what the articles about when... it's not. I assume that Sargon actually reads the Articles before he makes these videos or rather
I hope he reads them first. Well, here's another one
Sargon: But after the MeToo campaigns
Sargon: Exposure of the gender pay gap and the recent publication have yet more research that challenges the idea of a gendered brain
Sargon: I actually spent a bit of time looking into this and I'm gonna have to spend a lot more time looking into it
Sargon: but anyway
Sargon: It's mind boggling see how gendered blindness described as the one size fits men approach in designing tech culture lives on
Sargon: She's complaining the men invent things and they invent things to fit them and not women
men invent things
Again, I have no doubts that Sargon thinks he's telling the truth here
I am fully willing to believe that he thinks that's what this article says, but well
Hopefully you realize that's not what this article says. No, the writer isn't complaining that men invent things
She's talking about a very common problem women have
Called as you may have seen right here on the screen the one size fits men approach to things
Let me give you an example. You might have noticed that iPhones keep getting bigger
well this is resulted in problems for a lot of women who find the phones to big to comfortably hold in their hands and to big to fit in their pockets
And I'm sure you can see why that might annoy some people who want to get a new iPhone but can't because it just isn't practical
You also notice I never mentioned this point in my summary and that's because this isn't part of the articles main point the first two
Paragraphs much like most articles are preamble to set the stage and not the articles main focus
But Sargon likes to go through these opening lines step by step because they're usually less substantiated
and therefore easier to make sound stupid
The next paragraph is also a Sargon triggering point and I Quote: "meanwhile women's equal
contribution to society and culture is ignored visible women, those in the public eye or who call it unfair treatment are
Subject to scrutiny and treated suspiciously in a way that men are not" as you can imagine Sargon doesn't like this
Sargon: Hang on, I hate stop you after every sentence, but how do we know that It's equal?
Sargon: How do we measure that? do we just assume that you existing means your contribution is equal
Sargon: Coz That's a remarkably entitled way of looking at it
Sargon: I mean I would think that if I existed and didn't do any work or didn't do as much works the people around me I wouldn't be
Sargon: Considering myself to have been contributing an equal amount.
So I'm not actually too fussed about that first comment
I just wanted to include it because it's really shitty that he assumes all women just sit around and do nothing all day
But it's the second part that I really want the hone in on
Sargon: "visible women those in the public eye or who call out unfair treatment are
Sargon: Subject to scrutiny and treated suspiciously in a way men are not"
Sargon: I don't know about
Sargon: I think that men would be treated with scrutiny and suspiciously for example Jussie Smollett
Sargon: In a way when there, whenever anyone's claiming victimhood because we need to know that we're not condemning an innocent person
Sargon: I don't think the treatment is unfair. I think it's equal. I just think women do it more often
You may have noticed he says "I think" a lot. he thinks the treatment is equal, He thinks that it's fair
Well, this is the main problem with this format of video because he's focused on this one article
He can't expand and do further research on the topic
This is especially bad because as some of you might've noticed this article has a link in the sentence
A link to an example in which this woman describes her experience being an academic and her appearance is held to a much higher
scrutiny than her male counterparts and in case you didn't know this is an incredibly common problem Sargon can't say that though because
He needs to keep believing that the feminists have no arguments there...
They're just a bunch of crazy people
Basically, he's forced himself into a situation where he can't do research which is awkward for a video creator to say the least
Sargon: "Nevertheless any discussion about the link between language and gender discrimination
Sargon: Often results in predictable comments about the trivial nature of the issue" ha don't trivialize your problems
Sargon: But they are rather first-world aren't they?
Sargon: "It is this attitude that contributes to perpetuating male power and authority at the expense of women"
Sargon: This is what I mean when I say that they are talking about power blocks. Groups of people that are chosen on innate characteristics as in
Sargon: Anti-feminist women, these women are claiming you as part of their team
Sargon: Feminists men if I was talking the same terms I would be claiming you as part of my team
Sargon: Whether you like it or not
Sargon: And to be honest with you, the way you see the world you're claiming me as part of your team anyway
Sargon: I don't agree that men generally operate with the interest of promoting male power
Sargon: So I just do not agree that this worldview is legitimate and that goes for the same as race as well
Sargon: To be honest, and I mean any other of these goddamn intersectional characteristics
Sargon: I don't think that people do operate with the deliberate intention of
Sargon: promoting that identity block
Sargon: Generally, I mean I imagine that a lot of radical leftists absolutely do I mean their explicit about it. that's what this article is
Sargon: But I don't think that normal people who aren't part of your cult do this.
Okay. I skipped a few lines there
Where Sargon was just reading the article. for clarity I skipped this bit
He gets triggered by the gender scholars and the mankind argument
What I really want to talk about is this Sargon seems to think that the article is saying that men do this
intentionally, I don't know why he thinks that because if you actually read the sentence the author clearly understands most people consider this
a trivial issue and therefore understands that this behavior isn't deliberate and again when she says here and
Again here. You see this is what happens when you go through an article Line by Line you miss the forest for the trees
So to speak, in fact, let's skip forward and see how Sargon reacts to reading this sentence.
[Total Silence]
Oh... Um, he doesn't read this line he skips it in fact if you're reading along with him
He skips from here to here which you know is only like most of the articles main points
It's not that big deal. This is especially crass given the fact that up until this point. He had been reading line to Line
So anyone watching this video would naturally assume that he you know
Kept doing that. It's things like this that make me have to assume This is more than just Ignorance.
If it was just ignorance then he would have read these arguments and no doubt said something stupid about them
But he doesn't. Instead he pretends like they don't exist
And as it turns out if you cut half the article out you can make the arguments seem pretty weak easily
I trust that I've made my point clear already whether intentional or not Sargon is clearly misrepresenting this article. He twists the words
He's reading in order to make the feminists seem dumber than they are
He goes on wild speculative tangents based on absolutely no evidence
And worst of all he cuts out large portions of the text because he doesn't want to argue with them
But I want to keep going Anyway
I mean if you thought Sargon insinuating the women don't contribute equally to society. It was bad. Then you're in for treat my friend
Sargon: "Unlike some other languages English is not a gendered language" then How does English do it?
Sargon: "But gender is still often arbitrarily used to some things"
Sargon: "Cognitive research suggests that language in the way people use as a profound influence on the way
Sargon: We see the world" no shit, if we don't have a language
Sargon: How can we think?
Sargon: Of course It has an effect on how we see the world if you perceive the world whether accurately or not as a series of intersecting
Sargon: Oppression's then naturally you're gonna have a profoundly negative View of the world, aren't you?
Sargon: whereas someone who doesn't see it that way might look around at the material wealth and freedom that we have and are losing and
Sargon: Say well, hang on a second
Sargon: Everything seems to be pretty great. We should probably carry on doing what we were doing to get to this point
Ahhh, did you see what he did there?
He just asked the question that the article answers in the next sentence
Then he reads the next sentence agrees with the sentence
But then says that the sentence is saying it wrong this whole tangent about feminists making men the enemies is a total fabrication backed up nowhere in this article
You know... because that's not actually what feminists want and that little jab about losing freedoms is veering
Pretty close to MRA territory, don't you think? Okay. I'll spare you Sargon's voice for this one
and just tell you what he says. This is the mr. And mrs. Section and Sargon declares
The mrs is useful because it denotes a sign of power and that you're part of a nuclear family, which is good
Which I mean it doesn't take a genius to figure out the flaw in that argument
If it is a recognition of power then why don't men get a new title when they're married, please answer me Carl
I expect an answer in a postcard by the next week xoxo ~Kyle
So if you haven't watched Sargon's video yet then this is the one part where I would highly recommend it
This rant is almost like five minutes long
And I'm not gonna get away with putting that in my video. So go from this time code to this time codes and um,
Sorry
So now that you're back, maybe you'll join me in saying
Sargon
What the fuck?
The string of words you just made it
It baffles the mind
And it shows a blatant misunderstanding of what feminism is.
I mean
Let's just work through a bit by bit Shall we?
once again he opens by agreeing with the article but not really and then he just I mean he just
spirals out of control
He says that the article is being an indignant
Sargon: getting indignant about that is not exactly a very persuasive way
Sargon: To get people try and change their minds
when in reality
it Isn't really. He says so that it's their fault that people like Ben Shapiro
refuse to use the correct pronouns
Sargon: By acting like assholes about it is the quickest way to get someone like Ben Shapiro
Sargon: to go "You know I'm just gonna call you a man cuz you look like a man deal with it"
And then and this is my favorite bit by far
He claims that men and woman were equally discriminated against throughout history and that it only seems like women were
Discriminated against because we only have the writings of a small amount of high-class elites
Sargon: As if the the history of mankind wasn't one of struggle and suffering and sacrifice and people just doing the best that they could
Sargon: Just to keep it together
Sargon: So we end up in
Sargon: remarkably middle-class bourgeois societies for you to go
Sargon: "You know this isn't perfect the entire history of humanity was horribly oppressive to people like me or
Sargon: grrrr
Sargon: Rabble! rabble! rabble!" give them a break
Sargon: Like go back a hundred years and the women don't think that they're being oppressed by their husbands. That's not how they view the world
Sargon: The alternative is way worse for most of them
Sargon: So it's it's like the way you're acting as if men and women have been historic enemies is not correct
Sargon: But listen to the aggrieved former slave "for hundreds of years only women's suffered discrimination on the grounds of their sex"
Sargon: Are you fucking kidding me?
Sargon: men suffer discrimination on the grounds of their sex as well
Sargon: Societies were very stratified in pines gone by for both men and women (this wasn't a mistake, he actually said "pines")
Sargon: It's just that you only have the record of the men. So you assume oh look at all these rich powerful men
Sargon: They must represent the majority of the male experience throughout history because they're the ones writing about it
Sargon: No, dude, we get to hear from an unbelievably. Tiny and unbelievably privileged
Sargon: slice of ancient societies
Sargon: We don't get to hear from most people in those societies
Now...
For the love of sanity. I really hope that none of you expect me to debunk this claim
I mean, none of it is true. It's almost a joke. how untrue it is. I mean read their sentence
discrimination on the basis of sex that's clearly what the article says
But Sargon seems to think the economic or racial oppression is included in that number as well
Well, it's not this article is about sexism. Yes, of course men have been oppressed through history, but not on the basis of sex
I mean really think about why he says we only have the right things of a very small sliver of powerful men. Yes!
He says men!
Like Sargon do you not see. think about what you're saying for God's sake and I really want the hone in on this claim
Sargon: Like go back a hundred years and the women don't think that they're being oppressed by their husbands
Sargon: That's not how they view the world
as I mentioned Sargon released this video on International Women's Day
and do you  want to know something. Absolutely hilarious. The first National Woman's Day was on February 28th 1909
Yes, that's right. Almost exactly 100 years ago, which is just absolutely fantastic, isn't it?
I mean I couldn't have planned that better even if I tried and finally let's talk about
Sargon its waifu Margaret Thatcher
I can see why some
anti-feminists may grasp onto Thatcher is like the ideal all women should strive for but the reason Thatcher was
Successful is not because she was a better woman. It's just because
Well, she kind of hated the fact that she was a woman and just kind of acted as if it didn't matter
That's why despite her being the first female Prime Minister. Nothing She did actually
Benefited feminism much at all. See she essentially believed the same thing Most old sexist men do except that
she believed that women should just be like her if they wanted to get things done which isn't a very
Healthy outlook to say the least. Thatcher is without a doubt an interesting character but waifu material?
Well, she's no Queen is she. oh boy That was a long ramble
So that's a typical Sargon of Akkad video full of blatant lies and subtle hate for women in fact just for a laugh
how about we listen to the last few lines of this video
Sargon: "It is not easy to change culturally conditioned ways of behaving and thinking but the continued perpetuation
Sargon: "Reinforcement of cultural and social stereotypes through language cannot be dismissed as something trivial
Sargon: we.. the need for a conscious change or awareness of how words are used has become ever more urgent for
Sargon: inclusivity in communication and support gender equality"
Sargon: That's all the reason for me to not have to worry about it too much then really, isn't it?
Sargon: I mean, I don't I don't support what you consider to be gender equality
Sargon: I don't agree that men and women should have the same material conditions imposed by a third party
Sargon: Presumably the state. I don't agree that that shit. We should have a leveling of society or open racial and sexual discrimination
Sargon: Against one group that we considered being the majority in the up of the oppressor of another group
Sargon: I don't agree, especially when the institutions themselves are not particularly discriminatory
Sargon: And again, if anything discriminatory in favor of the minority groups
Sargon: You know if we've got fair institutions
Sargon: Which we probably did have until recently then I don't see why you couldn't just got along like the other women that already did it
You heard it here first folks men and women shouldn't actually be treated equally by the government. I mean, that's what he said, right
I cannot think of a different way to interpret that sentence. nine hundred eighteen thousand subscribers
Isn't that terrifying
Thank you for watching. Hopefully this video isn't taken down by Sargon fans. They've been known to do that on occasion
But if is well, I guess I'll be really mad about it on Twitter
oh and also I'm pretty sure the pinned comment on this video is a joke
at his expense but I could be wrong. like subscribe comment. Call me names, whatever you fancy
Bye
