I saw and loved Jordan Owen’s debut film, the documentary The Sarkeesian Effect. I am going to briefly review the film, without betraying too many spoilers, below and talk about its detractors and others who have or will comment on it.
First, however, in the spirit of The Sarkeesian Effect, some disclaimers are necessary.
I have been a fan and follower of Jordan Owen for over three years now. We have never met IRL, Skyped, Google-Hung-Out or Livechatted, but we have corresponded over YouTube and Twitter.
Mr. Owen is a fan and proponent of libertarianism of the Ayn Rand variety. I agree with this to a point. As noted in earlier entries, my economic worldview has far more in common with Alexander Hamilton and Otto Graf von Bismarck than it does with Ayn Rand. 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.
As for libertarianism, my appreciation of and support for it ends where it borders and/or clashes with realpolitik. Case in point, Mr. Owen finds the limits on homosexuals and on Pussy Riot in Russia to be morally repulsive. I am not a fan of these limits either, but I do recognise that Russia is useful in the Middle East and I do not want to further push Russia into the arms of a China that has missiles capable of shooting down US satellites and missiles capable of single-handedly sinking USN aircraft carriers. For this reason, I do not openly protest Russia’s internal policies, particularly given the antagonism that already exists between Russia and the Anglosphere over Russia’s opposition to Nazi Ukraine.
On a related note, Mr. Owen, in common with many North Americans, decries the “militarisation” of police as a threat to democracy. I see no evidence of this threat. On the contrary, I know that, from 1969 to 2004, the mainland British Army and the locally-recruited Ulster Defence Regiment/Home Service Battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment backed up the Royal Ulster Constabulary, itself armed with Sterling SMG’s, then M-1 carbines and finally with Ruger Mini-14 rifles. What effect did the presence of all these rifle-armed forces on the streets and roads of Ulster have on democracy? None. Both of the irredentist parties still managed to elect representatives aplenty, some elected from and serving their entire tenures in office from prison.
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.
Now, onto The Sarkeesian Effect itself. Overall, I loved the film. That does not mean that I am not uncritical of it. Let me lay out my criticisms, some of which reflect purely my personal preferences, some of which are criticisms potentially perceptible by people of the younger generations.
I am old enough to be Mr. Owen’s father. Therefore, the informality of The Sarkeesian Effect was not something I found particularly tasty. My stylistic preferences for documentaries run more along the lines of Yorkshire Television’s 1993 First Tuesday documentary “The Hidden Hand: The Forgotten Massacre,” and Patrick Rotman’s 2002 documentary L’Ennemi Intime (as opposed to the eponymous 2007 drama film which Rotman co-wrote.) Please understand, however, that my preference for the styles of the latter two documentaries in no way indicates that I support their one-sided political biases, a limitation of theirs that The Sarkeesian Effect thankfully lacks.
Specifically, I much prefer the very serious and professional demeanour and presentation of former Ulster Defence Regiment and British Army Intelligence officer Colin Wallace in “The Hidden Hand” and the way the late, great Général Paul Aussaresses often behaves in a like manner in L'Ennemi Intime. Of all The Sarkeesian Effect’s interviewees, only Thunderf00t/Professor Phillip Mason behaves in a manner resembling that of Colin Wallace and Général Aussaresses.
The foregoing two paragraphs are the parts of my criticism of The Sarkeesian Effect that stem from my personal preferences. They are an artifact of the epoch I am from and not any indicator that anything is wrong with the film per se. Thuderf00t/Professor Phillip Mason is several decades younger than both Colin Wallace and Général Aussaresses. The only Sarkeesian Effect interviewee who comes close to either of these two gentlemen in terms of age is Jack Thompson and this as well involves a difference of about a decade.
As to my criticisms of The Sarkeesian Effect which are potentially perceptible by people of the younger generations, they are as follows.
--Thunder00t/Professor Phillip Mason is referred to as a “research scientist.” Yes, that is the position he currently holds. He is, however, properly a biochemist, a word and title which is in sufficient general use to be understood by viewers, and which takes up less space than “research scientist.”
--I had difficulties understanding Cathy Young’s interview. I am unsure, however, whether or not that is a reflection of the audio at my end.
--In a couple of places, there are screengrabs of text juxtaposed with other images. For the Vimeo version, this is no problem and it should be no problem for any DVD version, since one need only pause the film to fully read these screengrabs. Viewers who see the film in a cinema will not have this luxury.
--Jack Thompson compares Anita Sarkeesian receiving the GDC award to “Charles Lindbergh receiving an award from the Third Reich, from Hitler,” commenting “This hurt Lindbergh’s standing with America First.” What actually happened was that “Slim” Lindbergh received the Order of the German Eagle from Air Minister Hermann Göring (not Hitler) in October 1938 (Slim soon thereafter donated the award to the Saint Louis Historical Society.) The America First Committee was not formed until September 1940—i.e. almost two years after Slim received the Order of the German Eagle, and Slim was still one of its most sought-after speakers, alongside Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (the President’s son). Moreover, unbeknownst to the public in 1938 (and for many years afterwards), Slim received that award during the precise time frame in which he was covertly spying on Göring’s Luftwaffe ("Air Arm"/the German Air Force) for the US attaché militaire in Berlin, Major Truman Smith. Slim doing a James Bond/Jason Bourne/Ethan Hunt-esque “No! I have principles! I reject you and your damned award!” would have blown his cover. In the end, Slim Lindbergh, as a Ford “technical representative,” flew fifty combat missions in the Pacific, increasing the range of the twin-boom P-38 “Lightning” fighter simply by decreasing RPMs and increasing manifold pressure, a feat MacArthur was grateful for.
The foregoing paragraphs contain the sum total of my criticisms of The Sarkeesian Effect. They show that I am not a blind, unquestioning follower of Mr. Owen. They also discuss very minor details of The Sarkeesian Effect that in no way detract from its immense enjoyability of the film or from the powerful message it sends to even someone of my generation.
As I said, I am old enough to be Mr. Owen’s father. Like Anita Sarkeesian, I am not a gamer. I played video games in the 1980’s and I occasionally and infrequently play video games now, but to nowhere near the extent to which I read. The Sarkeesian Effect still spoke to me. It spoke to me in the sense that it contained information that was new to me. I knew the names Sarkeesian, Quinn, Wu and Richards. I did not know the other names. I also did not know the precise interconnections between all of these names and I did not know in detail how the attack of these social justice warriors against freedom of expression was a coordinated effort. In this sense, The Sarkeesian Effect resembles “The Hidden Hand” in that it identifies a great wrongdoing hitherto unknown to outside audiences, linking specific named individuals as authors of/participants in this great wrongdoing. That being said, “The Hidden Hand” differs significantly from The Sarkeesian Effect in that “The Hidden Hand” accuses several named individuals of criminal conduct which, in the two decades since “The Hidden Hand” first aired, have never been proven in a court of law. “The Hidden Hand” also differs markedly from The Sarkeesian Effect in that “The Hidden Hand” takes an event/wrongdoing, associates several names with it, repeats hearsay and then uses the abracadabra of innuendo to leap to conclusions laced with its preconceived political biases. The Sarkeesian Effect, on the other hand, interviews people who have direct experience with the wrongdoing in question and uses documentation coming directly from the malefactors it names to show what has been going on hidden from the wider world. It ends, not with a strong political statement couched as sinister unanswered questions, but rather with an open exhortation to viewers to be themselves. It calls for freedom of speech, which is the way The Sarkeesian Effect most directly spoke to me.
I am a great believer in freedom of speech. That is how I first came across Mr. Owen. He was actively defending the adult industry from the attacks of latter-day Witchfinders-General Shelley Lubben and Gail Dines at the time. Freedom of speech, however, is something that extends beyond, and is in peril in arenas other than, video gaming and the adult industry. This point was made by no less a personnage than production designer Andy Appleton, husband of production designer, radio host, director and adult performer extraordinaire Kylie Ireland, in one of their Apples and Pairs podcasts. Mr. Appleton is English, and he noted how it is virtually a crime to fly the Union Flag in England. In other words, one cannot exercise one’s right to express one’s pride in one’s homeland in England if one is English. Not uncoincidentally, PM David Cameron, who is fond of giving On The Run (OTR) letters to IRA murderers, has been behind a series of anti-adult industry laws that would have Matthew Hopkins and Mary Whitehouse masturbating with an EM field-generating intensity.
Freedom of speech is also threatened in areas of the United Kingdom other than England. So that everyone reading this is up to speed, a few preliminary explanations are necessary. As well, and this is crucial, the parts that follow in bold and the video I embedded represent PURELY my point of view. Mr. Owen has not publicly said anything about them and, as far as I know, there is no evidence that he is even aware of those parts of what I am about to say
The United Kingdom consists of four different countries united under one monarch, one flag, one nation. Those countries are England, Wales, Scotland and Ulster (commonly referred to by Boston and New York irredentists as “Northern Ireland.”) Although all four countries share a common currency, a common VAT (sales tax-cum-tariff-cum-rebate on exports), and a common foreign and military policy, there are vast cultural differences between the four countries. 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. The Union Flag may be a rarity in England. It is omnipresent at Ibrox and wherever else Glasgow Rangers Support congregate, and in the Twaddell Civil Rights Marchers’ camps and marches in Belfast. Freedom of speech is actively being defended by Rangers Support who defiantly sing “Follow, Follow” and “The Billy Boys” despite the paedophile social justice warriors of Celtic FC/Sinn Fein/IRA taking offence.
Likewise, freedom of speech is a core value of the Loyal Orange Institution, founded in 1795 specifically to defend the democratic principle of Equal Rights For All, Special Privileges For None, a principle despised and contested by those religions which seek supremacy over lands not their own.
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. The latter-day Witchfinders-General identified in The Sarkeesian Effect are no different from James and all his rebel scum, are no different from Frederic Wertham or Mary Whitehead, who wanted to ban comic books and Doctor Who respectively, both in the name of “harm reduction” amongst the ever-impressionable, ever-incapable of thinking for themselves youth.
In this regard, Jordan Owen’s documentary The Sarkeesian Effect has made liars of the manosphere who said that it needed many more months and donor/sucker dollars in order to make it “a movie our parents and grandparents will understand.” The average Orangeman may not be a gamer, but he understands attacks on freedom of speech very well. He understands this from personal experience.
The Sarkeesian Effect is also the movie that almost was not made. Although the primary source videos have by now been deleted, it is well known that the manosphere infiltrated and was involved in the production of The Sarkeesian Effect until July 2015, an ironic at best, disturbing at worst element considering that Anita Sarkeesian was trained by Pick-Up Artists (PUA’s.) 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. Mr. Owen’s purge of the manosphere from The Sarkeesian Effect rendered the film apolitical and thus equanimous, for the manosphere is an entirely toxic witches’ brew of anti-Semitism and rape advocacy. It has the exact political worldview of Aleksandr Muzychko/Sashko Bilyi, the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, although it most likely lacks the latter two’s numbers and although it definitely lacks the latter two’s organisation.
Moreover, the manosphere are plagiarists who take on the decades-old ideas of better people, coin a new name for them and then claim to be the inventors of these ideas. The manosphere attacks anyone who does not genuflect before Saint Donald Trump as “cuckservatives.” “Cuckservative” are, in reality, what has been known since the 1950’s as Rockefeller Republicans and the Eastern Establishment. Members of the loyal right—most notably Senator Robert A. Taft, Senator Barry Goldwater, Pat Buchanan, General Brent Scowcroft, General Tony Zinni and Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich—have been opposing “cuckservatives”/Rockefeller Republicans/the Eastern Establishment—since before there was a manosphere and, in the case of the first four, since before the manosphereans were even a nasty thought up their pappy’s trews.
Likewise, the manosphere is not consistent with itself. One manospherean vlogs that “the manosphere has no future since its ideas have been absorbed into the mainstream” while another proselytises the manosphere like a damned Jehovah’s Witness with every fart and every other tweet.
The ultimate indicator of the uselessness of the manosphere is how they behave in relation to a man who, by their worldview, ought to be their idol—SS Brigadeführer (Major-General) Kurt Meyer. In the 1950’s, Meyer told reporters and fellow HIAG members that “Hitler and nationalism are mistakes of the past. It is now time to look to the future.” If the manosphere had bothered to do their research on Kurt Meyer, they would have figured out that neo-reaction is not approved of by their higher-highers. Then again, that the manosphereans ignore their spiritual mentors’ admonitions is not a surprise considering how they pathologically fetishise two kitschy late 1990’s/early 2000’s crapfests The Matrix and Fight Club. (Here is a hint boys; real men prefer films about and featuring real men, such as The Spirit of Saint Louis, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and almost any film starring Jimmy Stewart, Randolph Scott, Lee Marvin and Chuck Heston.)
The manosphere is not different from the social justice warriors. The two are merely opposite sides of the same demographic supremacist coin, no different from the Klan or the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Qods Force in any respect save the specific demographic they push. That has not stopped the two from battling each other, which is to be expected in the way that Coke battling Pepsi is to be expected. It is a battle for supremacy of brand, not of ideas. The social justice warriors also tried to abort The Sarkeesian Effect by targeting the film’s crowdfunding site. They failed just as the manosphere failed. The difference between them is that the manosphere seems to have slithered away from The Sarkeesian Effect while the social justice warriors are on Alpha Strike Mode with regards to the film.
Some SJW’s have attacked the film based on incomplete information from the Woolly Bumblebee, an otherwise decent anti-feminist who is rather young and does not have all the information in order with regards to this film. Specifically, the Woolly Bumblebee erred on the matters of Michael Whiteacre and Paul Elam/AVFM/The Honey Badgers.
The Woolly Bumblebee asserted that Mr. Whiteacre was in cahoots with the manosphere to divert The Sarkeesian Effect into a perpetual moneymaking scheme. This shows insufficient research. Mr. Whiteacre has been a friend of Mr. Owen far longer than he has been a friend of the manosphere. Mr. Whiteacre is Jewish, while the manosphere’s view of Jews is exactly identical to that of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Woolly Bumblebee also resorted to bringing up the fact that Mr. Whiteacre may have been in contravention of a couple of paragraphs someplace. What she did not bring up was that whatever Mr. Whiteacre is supposed to have done, it was not serious enough to get him incarcerated the way Bobby Sands and Liam Adams was and is.
As regards Paul Elam/AFVM/The Honey Badgers, the Woolly Bumblebee has pointed out (and, indeed, has been a party to) infighting within the Mens’ Rights Advocacy movement. I do not dispute that such infighting has occurred. The Woolly Bumblebee’s error, in my estimation, is to think that this infighting is something that is unique to this lot, something that has never happened before. This is not an aspersion on the Wooly Bumblebee. It is only an artifact of her youth. 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. Fifteen years ago, I remember an equally public and acrimonious split in the Law Enforcement Alliance of America between then-director Jim Fotis and past director Leroy Pyle, who went to found the rival Second Amendment Police Department. Likewise, it is not a coincidence that the NRA and Gun Owners of America exist as separate and oftentimes feuding entities today.
Also, the first of her “Realityland” podcasts with her husband shows an inherent contradiction in Wooly Bumblebee’s thinking. She and her husband say how their in-laws are often shocked that their children have chores and responsibilities in their house—then do a 180 and condemn Ayn Rand and “John Galt,” when “John Galt”’s entire speech is an exhortation to exercise personal responsibility and not rely on parents/the government/taxpayers for one’s well-being.
This segues quite nicely into some of Mr. Owen and The Sarkeesian Effect’s current SJW Alpha-Striking critics. A good number of them are English so, for the sake of simplicity, I will collectively refer to them as the Manky Bheasts. A bit of background on them is in order, since their background is germane to their views.
Specifically, the Manky Bheasts are members of the Monday Book Club, council-housing dwellers. To those who speak American, this means Whiskey Tango trailer park dwellers subsisting off of EBT. 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.” (If you are wondering why Jane Austen’s novels and Downton Abbey remain immensely popular in America, simply look at enough English SJW videos on YouTube and you will understand why Americans rush to the former two for immediate relief.) In a modern context, they most closely resemble Onslow of Keeping Up Appearances, the type of people Regan and Carter nicked in The Sweeney and the submarine-based antagonists of the second season of The Last Ship.
I am not making this up. If you look at the Manky Bheasts’ YouTube videos and listen to them talk, you can detect this immediately. Some even openly display their council flats. All of them speak like council flat apes, in a manner of spoken English that bears little to no resemblance to that of the Earl of Grantham or Kenneth Branagh—or, at least, in the manner of speech Brangah uses when speaking in documentaries for DVD extras; in real life, Branagh sounds exactly like he did when he played Colonel Tim Collins of 1RIR on the telly/TV.
I am also not condemning the Manky Bheasts for being born into what they were born into; I am not condemning them for their class. Nor am I condemning them for their ape-like manner of speech per se. Bernie Ecclestone, Jenson Button, Will Stevens and Rusty Firmin were all also men of modest origins. The difference between the former four and the Manky Bheasts is that the former four recognised that their origins were a pathological embarrassment to be gotten away from, something they achieved quite well through discipline, hard work and dedication to a craft at which their devotion led to personal and internationally acclaimed excellence, as opposed to whinging about nothing on YouTube in the manner of the Manky Bheasts. Likewise, one is not born with civilised speech. One chooses to speak in a civilised manner, just as one can equally opt to remain apelike of elocution. Kenneth Branagh made the former choice when he spoke in interviews; although, unlike the case of the Manky Bheasts, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way he speaks naturally, Branagh understands that he is far more understandable speaking the way he does in interviews. Nor is this option for civilised speech purely an English matter. The US gothic soap opera Dark Shadows is most illustrative in this manner. Two of that show’s stars were the late Jonathan Frid and Joan Bennett, a Canadian and a New Jerseyite respectively. On Dark Shadows, Jonathan Frid spoke like a civilised human being and not like a fucking Canadian the way Michael Hogan and the bheasts of Trailer Park Boys, Corner Gas and Rent-a-Goalie choose to speak. His co-star Joan Bennett also spoke like a civilised person, unlike her disgusting bheast of a cousin Morton Downey Junior, who made no effort at all to not sound like someone with typical Jersey class (i.e. no class at all.)
But perhaps the best example in all of this is Mr. Owen himself. I had been listening to him for many months before I found out he was a native-born Southerner (as opposed to a carpet-bagger.) Mr. Owen, as with Kenneth Branagh, and the late Jonathan Frid and Joan Bennett, understands that presentation is a matter of choice and how one chooses in that regard reflects upon one’s self. Those who think highly of themselves enough to aspire to be and do more adopt the manner of the civilised. Those who see nothing wrong with the excrement they were shat out into do not.
That being said, the Manky Bheasts are not entirely without qualities. Some, when in discussion with others (as opposed to whinging out YouTube soliloquies) are well-mannered and amiable. Some even show an awareness of Canada, which speaks to an advanced level of knowledge. A bit of background on that last sentence. Canadians who have lived their entire lives in Canada and who think that anything that Mansbridge and Robert Fife shit out through their mouths constitutes “news” actually think that Canada is the centre of the universe. It is not. In objective reality, Canada is one of the lesser of Her Majesty’s Dominions, less important that Belize, the Falklands and Fiji. This is evident in the fact that the BBC and The Financial Times rarely even mention Canada and do so with nowhere near the frequency that they mention Pakistan and India, two of Her Majesty’s other Dominions. Almost all Canadians have heard of Her Majesty and the Mother Country. It is not necessarily true that all Englishmen have heard of Belize, Fiji or Canada.
Amiability and a modicum of above-average knowledge, however, does not make someone right. The Manky Bheasts whinge incessantly about patriarchy despite the fact that, much as with tachyons and thetans, but unlike the Higgs-Boson particle, there is no evidence that patriarchy exists. There is no alleged effect of patriarchy for which another cause has been entirely and categorically ruled out. The thing about the Manky Bheasts, and a good number of SJW’s in general, is that they are facultative logic users. They believe in logic when it comes to the existence of a deity, but they abandon all logic, all skepticism, all need for evidence when it comes to outlandish claims of feminists, claims which often have never been proven in a court of law. One even outrightly stated “When a woman talks about rape, we should accept what she says even if it turns out she was not raped.” In other words, the Manky Bheasts would have us streamline the judicial process by skipping directly from accusation to the sentencing phase, with zero due process for the accused. Thankfully, the legal system is not of that inclination, at least not yet anyway.
This illogic of the Manky Bheasts informs how they launch their Alpha Strike on Mr. Owen and The Sarkeesian Effect. Their commitment to ideology over logic and evidence leads them to conflate Mr. Owen and Thunderf00t/Professor Phillip Mason with the manosphere simply because the latter two also happen to oppose feminist extremism—despite the fact that the latter two have also had bloody public battles with the manosphere as well. Had the Manky Bheasts properly done their research, they would have picked up on several extremely obvious differences between Mr. Owen and Thuderf00t/Professor Phillip Mason on the one hand and the manosphere on the other.
Mr. Owen and Thunderf00t/Professor Phillip Mason are genuine atheists. Leading manosphereans are openly Shiite and Roman Catholic and attack what they call “the atheist cult.” Mr. Owen and Thunderf00t/Professor Phillip Mason believe in the individual and believe that the individual should have the right to live as that individual sees fit. The manosphereans, like the social justice warriors, simply cannot conceive of human beings as individuals each with their own interests. Instead, where the social justice warriors see only “the oppressed” and “the oppressors” in lieu of individual human beings, the manosphereans see only an “Alpha” to “Zulu” hierarchy of males wherein each male of “Bravo” rank or below must aspire to become an “Alpha” level serial rapist like Sinn Fein/IRA, or else he is just a useless waste of protoplasm who should extinguish himself and stop polluting the pristine utopia of the “Alphas.” As for women, the manosphere, just like feminists and other SJW’s, does not see them as individual human beings each with her own interests. Instead manosphereans, like feminists/SJW’s, sees women as sacrificial objects. The difference is that manosphereans openly see women as literal sacrificial objects to be conquered by “game,” whereas the feminists/SJW’s see individual women as figurative sacrificial objects, a collective on which they can advance their cause.
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.
Interesting post (I do enjoy learning bits of history), but I must say I cannot see how this is an actual review of The Sarkeesian Effect. Other than saying you enjoyed it, there's no discussion of the film itself. In fact, it doesn't even state the film's premise.
Anyone who isn't already aware of the film would have absolutely no idea what it's even about, much less its specific arguments and supporting evidence. Surely you can see this?
Posted by: D | 09/28/2015 at 09:55 AM