Recursion

83 Comments

Source, with thanks to @saladinahmed on Twitter.

Next week on Manfeels Park... (83)

Silence is consent.

Now that, my friend, is pretty fucking creepy

I stand corrected; in this context, that should be :

Silence is assent.

The lip-biting was almost speech.

You obviously don’t get out much. Sometimes people say something so mind-bogglingly stupid that there simply is no adequate response except baffled silence.

I’m still looking for a word to describe my perspective on the sex life of a guy who thinks silence is consent.

Concerned. Let’s go with concerned.

There are plenty of things that people assent to with silence, that have nothing to do with sex. Imperial wars, police brutality and class division, for instance. Believe it or not, not all politics is pelvic.

I managed to find a strip in the archives that you hadn’t argued with*, so I take it you agreed with that one?

*although I’ll admit it took me quite a while.

Srsly I have no doubt he thinks his criticism is constructive and invaluable to our hosts

Those who write on bathroom stalls
Roll their shit in little balls
-graffito

Keep it classy, Sir Dudebro!

Sometimes, silence is *contempt*. There’s no shame in not wasting breath on somebody who’s never going to be persuaded.

I used to think that, until I realized that it means that the loudest mouths win.
The solution is to speak up, but address not the unpersuadable, but third parties listening in. Be the reasonable one, and let the defenders of the faith disgrace themselves.

So now you spend your spare time writing copious comments on a webcomic.

Because that’s real activism.

Priceless.

Thank you for commenting on my comments. Of course this is not for activism, but for self-education. These comments boards have taught me much about how epistemological closure works.

I don’t think you’re actually interested in learning, just in trolling.

*deep, sustained chuckle*

So now you spend your spare time writing copious comments on a webcomic.

Because that’s real activism.

Priceless.

no clue how that ended up in reply to you, sorry

Sometimes, a picture IS worth a thousand words!

“Mansplain” is a fine word. It means about the same thing as “patronize”, down to the Latin roots, but it has these three advantages:
1. It has bad grammar;
and therefore
2. It works as a trendy ingroup-identifying shibboleth;
and best of all
3. You can accuse anyone who points out 1 and 2 of being patronizing.
This closes the circle!

Wow, a third-degree recursion. Recursion to the third power, or something?

Level 3.14159, to be precise.

Pretty sure if you’re not quoting Pi to at least 11 decimal points it doesn’t count as ‘precise’.

He probably just googled it, but was too lazy to cut and paste the whole thing

You are quite right, that should be “_approximately_ level 3.14159”. To be _precise_, that’s level pi, as befits circular reasoning. I stand corrected; thank you.

And thank you for implicitly agreeing (by silence, natch) about the recursive cliqueishness of ‘mansplain’.

I am morbidly curious to know how many more times you need to me smacked upside the head by the host before feeling the need to reevaluate on some fundamental level.

me==be

Hey, stop bringing me into this, the two of you. You kids are adorable but I am NOT your mom. Think of me more as… a benevolent zoo keeper.

A sarcastic benevolent zoo keeper.

But,

Why specify the “benevolent”? Surely keeping us guessing will keep us on our toes?

I write to report that several days ago, Salon.com published an article containing the word “whitesplain”. The writer used that word to denounce Rudy Giuliani’s incoherent and self-serving defense of Eric Garner’s homicide by police.

When I read the word “whitesplain”, I heaved a huge sigh. Alas, the illiterate “splain” neologism has infected the general population, and is now endemic! “-splain” is now a suffix!

Oh well, why not. Language is free to evolve by any means available, including co-opting raucous illiterate shibboleths from self-righteous sophomores. But I remain prescriptivist enough to demand that “splain” have a specific definition.

Therefore I propose the following definitions. Define “splain” to mean “to state a political argument that is smug, condescending, oblivious, illogical, self-serving and self-protective”. Then, for any identity faction [X], define “[X]splain” to mean “To splain while [X].” So to mansplain is to splain while male, and to whitesplain is to splain while white.

Now we can coin new words like “straightsplain”, “cis-splain”, “boss-splain” and “richsplain”. I’m sure you’ll like those words. But you might not like some other coinable words.

The problem is, _everybody_ splains. Smug self-serving hypocrisy is a human universal, and rightly so, because from time to time it’s a survival necessity. Anyone who denies being a splainer is the lamest splainer of them all. For details, consult psychology and literature, including the works of Jane Austen.

To self-serve and self-protect; it’s not just a good idea, it’s the Law! Therefore splaining is a human right; an ignoble right, obnoxious to use, but tyrannical to forbid.

Splaining is universal; so if mansplain and whitesplain are words, then so are poorsplain, workersplain, trans-splain, gaysplain, lesbiansplain, blacksplain and womansplain. I say this not as a prescriptivist recommendation (that they _should_ be words) but as a descriptivist prediction; they will _become_ words. The meme has escaped the laboratory, and will mutate into all available niches.

The racists will love “blacksplain”, for it means “to splain _while_black_”; and the MRAs will latch onto “womansplain” with a vengeance, for it means “to splain _while_female_”. Are these terms not manifestly racist and sexist? And therefore aren’t whitesplain and mansplain?

After initial reluctance, I have come to like the word “splain”; it is useful and witty. But I still firmly believe that, for any value of X, the term “X-splain” is always collectivist, bigoted, illiberal and essentialist. The term has reactionary politics built in.

I am sure you’ll agree that “womansplain” is a sexist term; yet I suspect that you think that “mansplain” is not. How could this be so? I eager await your splainations.

not quite sure ” womansplain ” is a sexist term Ipso facto if used it contex provided ie the argument is entirely self serving and oblivious to other points of view however I also feel that women (in general) are conditioned to give up on an argument much sooner when being shouted down by others. Even when rebuttals lack a certain logic (or any for that matter) nothing is better at closing down a thread than “get raped and murdered bitch” to which there is nothing much to say but “same to you, God bless”

I recommend looking at his comment history before assuming good faith. He’s a troll, and not a particularly smart one.

Gabrielle: Thank you for your insightful comment. It is indeed true that women are trained to be passive; but, in partial compensation, are taught manipulation. Bold or sly, splaining works either way.

I note with grief the barbarity of internet discourse that you report. I was once told, in this website’s comments section, to DIAF; a savage acronym that I have never encountered anywhere else. Perhaps it is a generational thing. Kids these days…

My complaint with ‘mansplain’ and ‘womansplain’ isn’t the splain – I have grown to like that verb – but the essentializing prefix. If you have been splained to, then how does the genitalia of the splainer matter?

The gender matters because very often, men feel entitled to mansplain simply because they’re men and they’re talking to women. They’re not explaining something because they’re doctors or mechanics, it’s because they’re men and naturally know better than the stoopid little wiminz. Check out the “Academic Men Explain Things to Me” Tumblr: http://mansplained.tumblr.com/

Scratch that, I see you’ve already found it. And are apparently unable to understand.

But I do understand. To ‘mansplain’ is to splain ‘just like a man’. I understand the frustration that the term expresses; but also the gender essentialism.

Dont feel bad, that is far from the only thing he is unable to understand.

My goodness, how in the world did these people create a popular webcomic without your input? You should charge them consulting fees.

However, I digress

Stupid google-loving troll cannot find origins of the word Mansplain, fails at google, is still stupid, a troll.

More a writer than a reader, this guy.

I googled ‘origins of mansplaining’, and got Urban Dictionary. It says;
“Either sex can be guilty of mansplaining.”
– which makes the prefix unnecessary and misleading as well as sexist.
Please note:
http://www.xojane.com/issues/why-you-ll-never-hear-me-use-term-mansplain
Xojane calls ‘mansplain’ “mad essentialist”. Also “lazy and dismissive”.

Congratulations, you managed to find 1.1 legitimate source while at the same time again demonstrating your inability to select legitimate sources. In fact if one uses natural numbers you found zero legit sources, because urban dictionary counts as -1.

But, please, by all means, continue to ignore the history and actual definition (as opposed to your straw man) of the term mansplain. It’s definitely much funnier that way.

And, not that it’s super relevant, but your claim that “xojane says” anything whatsoever entails a complete failure to understand how publications work. To better understand your personal issues I recommend googling Alan Sokal and reading the free paper here http://works.bepress.com/babette_babich/29/

Thanks for the link. I have not yet finished the paper. How does it connect to xojane? My personal attitude about Sokal’s hoax is that he successfully proved lack of intellectual rigor in at least some postmodernists.

It doesn’t connect to xojane, however it does illuminate your deep ignorance of periodicals and editorial policies

Well, I do know (along with everyone else) that one particular online periodical is intellectually lazy enough to become a laughingstock.

You should petition to make issue-evading an olympic sport.

So are you saying that xojane’s feminist personal blog is irrelevant because there are no intellectual standards for periodicals on the Web? I suspect that xojane herself thinks that she says something, and even means it.

Again I thank you for the Babich paper. Please cite page and line number where Babich discusses editorial policies for online publications.

Haha stupid troll builds new straw man, no word yet on plans to burn it in pagan ritual, details at 11.

Please cite page and line numbers, in the paper that you linked to, where Babich discusses editorial policies for online periodicals.

See, well adjusted children learn around age 5 that just because they throw a tantrum Mommy won’t let them eat marshmallows for dinner instead of carrots and peas.

You may have marshmallows, young man, but only after dinner, and after you have done your citation work.

You do realise that XOJane is not a single person but a wide variety of writers?

No, he doesn’t. That’s the funny part.

I do now, thank you. So to be exact, it was Lesley on Xojane who will never use the term ‘mansplain’. The point still holds; that at least one feminist considers the term ‘mad essentialist’, and also ‘kind of lazy and dismissive’.

Keep chasing that tangent buddy, maybe one day you’ll find the slope :).

I’m curious; as a math guy, do you consider “at least one” a representative statistical sample?

I understand: Lesley, publishing on xojane, differs from you, therefore she is statistically insignificant.

We’re planning for perfection
No minority we’ll shun
With a single small exception;
The minority of one.

Haha stupid troll claims that he is a math instructor, fails basic statistics, is stupid, a troll.

The right to free speech and the “right” to be taken seriously is often confusing to stupid concern trolls, libertarians/randroids and other pseudointellectuals. In other words, the easily confused.

You keep saying hilariously stupid shit without addressing my claim that you have no idea what mansplain actually means. When you decide to do so, we might get somewhere other than the mockery you so richly deserve. Not holding my breath though.

That’s kind of like saying “At least one black person thinks white people saying the n-word is okay so it must be”. But you keep on trying.

My personal suggestion, leave it alone. He goes after tangents like a greyhound after hares.But, I’m in no position to criticize having gotten here first.

Yeah, I know. I would never engage someone like this IRL but online it can sometimes be fun. I can just walk away if it starts to bother me.
I’m just undecided on whether or not he’s lived out his welcome on my “you’re a dolt but also kind of funny” list.

My biggest problem is that he is not even remoely interested in getting called on his BS. So it goes.

Sara: Your hypothetical is a tangent, and does not address Lesley’s point. Is ‘mansplain’, as she claims, lazy, dismissive and mad essentialist?

Waidaminnit… you are accusing someone else of going off on tangents?

BWAHAHAHAHAHA

You can’t write this shit.

And you can’t answer it.

Your abiding belief that you are entitled to a serious debate is adorable. Perhaps if you stop trolling somebody might stop laughing long enough to give you one.

Since you (for once) did something vaguely resembling what you were told, here’s a treat. Google “Men explain things to me”.

Did so, found lots of reviews of the book but no text from the book; also a Huffington Post blog by her, including “Facts Didn’t Get In The Way”. An Aspen 1%er splaining her own book to her; most amusing.

Also “Academic Men Explain Things to Me.” A mixed bag. Lots of one-upmanship and arrogant cluelessness, mostly his but sometimes hers. (For instance in one of them she gave an ideologically robotic definition of gender, one that sounded like it came out of a committee.) One’s own splainations are always intelligent.

Yes I see I have once again been fooled into thinking you are interested in a serious discussion, I guess I’m more of a sucker than I thought. Nobody here (least of all me) is at all interested in your brilliant literary criticism. I called you out on your attempt to denigrate the term “mansplain” without having the least idea of what it meant or how it arose. Instead of attempting to address my claim, you did everything you could to deflect starting with a half-assed google job and running away on every tangent available. If you want to share your amazing literary criticism with the world by all means start your own blog – pixels are cheap. If you want me to continue a serious discussion with you please provide some minimum evidence that you are aware of the meaning and history of the subject of the discussion. Cheers!

PS – the amazing appetite for distraction from a person who last week was vewwy angwy indeed at people he precieved as changing the topic is very amusing, if somewhat predictable.

The etymology of a pseudo-progressive shibboleth is indeed an interesting topic in cultural history; but I was addressing the term’s present-day meaning, including its reactionary essentialism. Now that ‘whitesplain’ is a word (and ‘cis-splain’ too, according to Google), it’s only a matter of time before we have to put up with ‘blacksplain’ and ‘womansplain’.

No, you weren’t addressing its present day meaning. You were addressing a straw man, because you are clearly too stupid to understand its actual meaning. Since you chose not to research it like I told you to, back under the troll bridge for you!

Stupid pseudointellectual troll uses big words to seem smart, is pseudointellectual, a troll. Details at 11.

Ad hominem argument. Keep it classy.

It is my sad duty to inform you that ‘womansplain’ is already a word. According to Google, it is out there, and it is being used, sometimes ironically, sometimes with sincere sexism. Michelle Malkin is a particularly bad offender.

Fortunately ‘blacksplain’ is still rare.

Haha stupid troll advertises trolling by pretending he disagrees with it, is stupid, a troll

I neither prescribe nor forbid; I report. “Splain” has gone viral, sometimes to perverse effect.

Hmm, seems the reply button dislikes me.

This site’s comment section could use a 5-minute edit function. The worst typos are invisible until right after you click the post button; that’s a Murphy law.

Mo:
You have asked for surrealism and fables in the comments. Your wish is my command.

Mythical Correctness

Once upon a time, a Troll and a Knight In Shining Armor contended over the politesse-correctness of the verb, “to elfsplain”.
The Troll argued, “ ‘Elfsplain’ is a racist insult. It’s true that plenty of Elves are condescending, self-righteous and clueless; but not all of them; therefore ‘elfsplain’ is an essentialist canard.”
Sir Dudebro, Knight of the Shining Armor, retorted, “Stupid Troll uses big words to seem smart, is pseudointellectual, still a Troll.”
Then Mo, the mighty Warrior-Queen of the Essjays, descended from Heaven on wings of Art. She decreed, “Desist from strife, my pets! For you, O Troll, are like unto the Cat, who expresses affection by bites and scratches; whereas you, Sir Dudebro, resemble the Dog, who slobbers on faces and humps legs!”
Sir Dudebro said, “My liege! Behold a local monument: the Pedestal of Feminine Superiority! I pray that you mount it, so that I may grovel at your feet!”
“You’d better not, ma’am,” the Troll remarked, “for then he’d peek up your dress. That’s what that Pedestal is for.”
“You both prove my point,” said wise Queen Mo. “And as for your ‘elfsplain’ quarrel; to you, O bold and handsome Knight, I give this golden laurel wreath, for you have won the fight; and to you, O sage and cynical Troll, I give only my assent, for you have won the argument.” The Warrior-Queen of the Essjays then ascended back to Heaven.
Sir Dudebro and the Troll high-fived each other; for She had satisfied both their desires.

Moral: Give ’em what they really want.

And you accuse me of not having class. Adorable.

Tardy edit: please replace ‘golden laurel wreath’ with ‘brazen laurel wreath’.

I think I found a new source of inspiration for you to mine. It’s called Manbook. It’s a men only MRA site. But beware, the site’s creator is a loon.

http://jezebel.com/mens-rights-activist-threatens-to-murder-women-who-visi-1676903340

Appreciate the heads-up but Manfeels Park actually deliberately avoids MRA haunts and similar because we believe that it’s not fair to actually go LOOKING for trolls UNDER the bridges where they’re just grunting among themselves. The comic’s supposed to showcase what supposedly ‘reasonable’ types say in the wild while pretending to communicate in good faith with normal people. Thanks for the thought, though!

Very wise, and best wishes in the new year!