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July 25, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
18:36
A Study in the Dunning-Kruger Effect
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Time Text
Now I swear to God I am actually producing real content.
But in the meantime, I'd just like to take a look at this.
Hello there YouTubes and welcome to the very first episode of What Sargon of a Cad Got Wrong Now?
Shit.
This is going to be a long list buddy.
I can see why you'd turn this into a video series.
A new series which exposes the fibs, fallacies, falsehoods and fabrications spewed forth, vomited onto the internet by the stripped gears of the mind of the YouTube user known as Sargon of Akkad.
Honestly, do I have to really be lying in your opinion?
Can I not just simply be wrong?
Now this series was inspired by the many requests I'd had to give Sargon his own episode of The Descent of Man, Osphere, which is another series that I do and I'll leave a link to the playlist for that series below.
Goony Beard Man attacks his betters thinking that he's going to ejaculate inside a rainbow head sheetwink.
Hmm, I'm thinking a good dose of Airport's Lore coming on here.
In which I expose individuals from the Manosphere for the pricks that they are.
Jesus.
Do I need exposing as a prick?
I thought that was just a given.
And while Sargon is an absolutely worthy candidate for induction into that particular hall of shame, I'm actually such a prick I deserve something better.
Right?
I just cannot be bothered with him.
Do you know that you're doing this in a video series titled What Sargon of a Cad Got Wrong Now number one?
Of what one?
He's just too much of a fucking prick for me to sit there and go through all of his fucking mental diarrhea.
But how else are you going to know how much of a prick I am?
In such a condensed short space of time, which is what I have to do for that series.
And I'd have to go through his back catalogue and all the rest of it.
It's just too much.
It would have driven me fucking mad.
Me too.
I actually listened to one of my original videos, Twiny Sarkeesian, and uh.
Yeah, God, I feel you, buddy.
I feel you.
That fucking guy.
Tell me about it.
So instead of doing one big video like that about him, I'm going to be performing regular educational enemas on Sargon.
Yeah, but are you sure that the continual exposure isn't going to have some sort of lasting effect, like some kind of slight measure of self-awareness or anything like that?
Which are very much needed because he's so full of shit.
Your comic timing is impeccable.
Now like my other series, it will be on a regular, irregular schedule, by which I mean they'll be coming out every so often, but there won't be like one every Wednesday or something like that.
But as and when the fancy takes me, I will be dealing with one of Sargon's freshly crimped off lies.
God, I thought I was just wrong, but no, now I'm lying as well.
And exposing him for the utter bullshit merchant that he is.
Alright, but you better not give me any bullshit while you're doing it.
So, with the opening formalities dealt with, take it away, Sargon, you twat.
You don't know how much laughter I've cut out of this video already.
They claim to be apolitical, yet in the same breath, refuse to acknowledge the politics behind these games.
Well, to them, there are no politics in being white.
There are no politics in being brown.
These things are not political.
But to the people writing these articles, they absolutely are.
They cling to the notion that women didn't fight in the Middle Ages, fiercely stating this as fact.
Well, it's not that they need to fiercely state it as fact, it's that essentially it was fact.
Oh, really?
Uh, yes?
Because I call bullshit.
I hope you listen tuneful while you're explaining exactly how I'm wrong and talking bullshit.
Now, before we get going, I'd like to point out, as indeed Sargon went on to point out in the video itself, that the majority of people in the army during the Middle Ages were, of course, men.
This is a peculiar debunking video.
But Sargon way overstates the point.
What percentage of female warriors to male warriors do you think there were through the Middle Ages?
And basically states that women were a negligible part of the armed services at the time.
Yes, they were.
They absolutely were.
They were a negligible part of the medieval armed services.
Believe it or not, in the Middle Ages, women had relatively few feudal military duties.
I know that sounds silly, but they honestly did.
Which is fucking bollocks.
Well, I'm persuaded.
But what does your past self say?
That the majority of people in the army during the Middle Ages were, of course, men.
Hmm.
Maybe it's due to patriarchy.
What he also doesn't say is why that is the case.
I just said it was because of the patriarchy.
Because that would mean him having to admit to the dreaded P-word.
Dreaded P-word.
So, Middle Ages.
The plague or polio.
That's what I'm going for.
Patriarchy.
What?
Of course it was.
I mean, yeah, no.
Oh, I was totally wrong.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Medieval Europe was patriarchal.
I'm glad you've taught me something that I didn't already know.
Yes, because in most of the world, during the Middle Ages, women were severely hampered from serving in the military due to the patriarchal nature of the societies in which they lived.
Okay, but I am right then.
I mean, women were the negligible minority of any medieval military force.
Do we agree?
I mean, I don't mind conceding that in the mind of a male feminist, the word patriarchy adequately explains the reasons for this.
Because if Sargon ever admitted to the P-word, his rabble of Cretanous simpletons would lose their little man boners and might stop giving him all that money.
Oh.
Taylor, that is some internalized salt there, isn't it?
But no, I think that all of my subscribers will probably agree with me when I say that medieval Europe, and indeed most of the world, was indeed patriarchal in the Middle Ages.
But anyway, on with the history ponage.
I'm in such anticipation, my balls are tingling.
Now, I've left a load of links down below in the description box to sources for all of this material.
And also a link to a fantastic episode of the Medieval Archives podcast, which deals with this particular topic in general, which you should all definitely go and listen to.
Go and check that podcast out.
It's wonderful.
In one of those links, there is a great long list of female warriors from the Middle Ages.
Yeah, here it is.
There's a long list.
And, I mean, for example, on the top half here, there's 12 bullet points over about 400 years.
Which isn't negligible.
Sorry, go on.
I won't.
I won't mock you at.
And I'm just going to read to you a few choice cuts from that list.
That's great.
And I'm sure that none of your examples are going to be silly.
But you're carrying on with this like you think plucking out individual examples disproves a trend.
In 783, Saxon women threw themselves bare-chested into battle against Charlemagne.
Yeah, but it wasn't because they wanted to, you bell end.
The year before, Charlemagne had executed 4,500 Saxon men in a day.
In 971, the victorious Byzantines discovered what they called shield maidens among the fallen Norse warriors.
Again, on the defensive, there were women who were dressed as men and were fighting in the army.
On the losing side.
How many women were there in the Byzantine army?
Oh, none.
Because of patriarchy.
From 1131 to 1160, Melisendi of Jerusalem fought in the Second Crusade.
Do you mean Melissande, the Queen of Jerusalem, who actually sent her two principal generals, Manassas of Hygies and Philip of Millie?
And rather beautifully, in the 1400s, there was a case of reverse white knighting, basically, where Isabella, the Duchess of Laurent, which is in modern day France, led an army to rescue her husband from the Duke of Burgundy.
That's true.
She did do that, I'm sure.
But that doesn't make her a female soldier.
And that doesn't mean that female soldiers' contribution to warfare in the Middle Ages wasn't negligible.
And of course, Sargon, there is this woman.
So fucking what?
The majority of the French army was still male.
Yes, arguably the most famous human being, male or female, of the medieval period.
Genghis Khan.
Joan of Arc.
Well, you some kind of white nationalist.
She's not famous if you come from anywhere other than England or France.
The female warrior who led the French fucking army for Christ's sake, Sargon.
You mean the French army that was comprised of men who did the majority of the fighting?
You seem to think that Joan of Arc was like a Warhammer fantasy general riding a dragon or something.
I would put money on that she would be the only woman with arms in the entire French army.
Jesus Christ, man, do you know anything?
This is amazing.
Now anyway, let's have a look at a few contemporary medieval images, shall we?
Just try and stop me, buddy.
Just try and stop me.
Now this first image is an absolutely perfect example of why Sargon is completely fucking wrong.
I can barely contain my laughter.
You're really going to enjoy this.
Now this one is taken from the Smithfield Decretals manuscript from 1230.
And it's a picture of a castle being defended solely by women.
Because during the Middle Ages, when men were off fighting in wars abroad, for instance in the Crusades, women would be left to defend castles, towns, cities, villages, hamlets, whatever.
It's very hard for me to do this with a straight face.
Things in images are not always exactly as they seem.
For example, this castle is not literally being defended by monkeys and assaulted by wolves and foxes.
Now this image is actually a parody of the popular medieval motif, The Castle of Love, which often took the form of knights assaulting or surrounding a castle while women fight them off by throwing flowers at them.
Yes, it's pretty gay.
But no, not in this castle of love.
Instead of foxes and apes replacing soldiers, it is maidens who are replacing soldiers.
And instead of throwing flowers at her suitor, she's instead humorously slashing him in the head with a sword.
You'll notice that no one else on this castle is armed, and the man doesn't even have his weapon drawn.
This is not meant to be a literal depiction of an actual battle, you fucking idiot.
Men didn't just go off to war and leave their wives undefended.
So it was very common to see women engaging in military battle.
No, it fucking wasn't.
It was freakishly unusual.
And in this image, you can see the castle being defended solely by women.
The face at the window is thought to be that of a male child.
So the only grown adult male in the image is the one having his fucking head cut in two by the sword of a woman, Sargon.
Do you think that they sent armies of one man to assault castles full of women?
You fucking...
You're a moron, I'm afraid, mate.
You don't know what you're talking about.
So contrary to your assertion, women were actually tearing it up during the Middle Ages, you ignorant twat.
Holy shit.
It's really late as I'm recording this.
I've got to try and be quiet.
Oh, yes, I'm the ignorant twat.
Yes.
In this image, we see a female knight on a black horse, and this one is taken from the Capadalista Index of 1458, which was a contemporary series of illustrations from the city of Padua, which is in the modern day nation of Italy.
This is a much stronger image.
You should have started with this.
But yeah, it's a picture of a woman in armour on a horse.
This picture does not disprove the overwhelming majority of soldiers and warriors being men.
And this one is again another medieval illustration of battle, with the figures on the left clearly being women and the two figures in the foreground being those of women who are either dying or dead in military battle, Sargon.
Oh, you fucking doofus.
This is a medieval representation of a battle between the Amazons and the Trojans.
Look, this is a painting of the Greeks returning from Troy that was done in the Middle Ages.
They all look like contemporary medieval knights in contemporary medieval books because they had no fucking idea what ancient Greeks or Mycenaeans looked like.
Everyone from history to the medieval mind was drawn in the style of a medieval person because they didn't know what they were fucking doing.
Just like you with this fucking video.
Now this is an image of Kwala bint al-Azwa and I apologise for the almost certain mispronunciation of that.
Now she was an early medieval Arabian warrior and she led a troop of women most notably against the Byzantine army at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636.
Well done, you've actually found an actual female warrior and she comes from very hardy barbarian tribes in Arabia.
Good for you.
Now this is another warrior princess but this time from Western Europe.
She is Isabel of Conche which is in the modern day nation of France and she is seen on the left there wielding her sword in battle.
Yeah I couldn't find anything to corroborate that and the fact that she's not wearing armour suggests to me that she's not actually a warrior.
I think it's far more likely that this is symbolic.
It's interesting that in the article in which you found this image they say by all this time the carrying out of Bohrman's orders was done.
The Turks are surrounding us on all sides throwing darts and casting javelins and shooting arrows from a surprisingly long distance.
Our women were a great help to us on that day since they kept bringing water for our embattled men to drink and bravely comforted them as they resisted.
I mean I don't want to be a sourpus old misogynist but that does kind of sound like the sort of role that women would take in a battle.
Now this image is yet another example of just how wrong Sargon is because as you can see on the left there there's a woman engaging in jousting.
Now contrary to the modern image we have of jousting it wasn't just an event at medieval games It was actually a very brutal form of military training, intended to simulate a cavalry charge.
And as this image shows, women were clearly undergoing such training during the Middle Ages.
Do you think that they trained with cotton buds on a stick in their nightswear with pantaloons on their head?
Or do you think that perhaps this image isn't representative of reality?
You fruitcake.
These next two images are fine examples of medieval body armour that are on display at American museums.
And I specifically want you to take notice of the chest bulges.
That's not space for boobs, you fool.
This is man's armour that is deliberately shaped that way so a lance will glance off of it at an angle.
Which have been placed there specifically to accommodate the female warriors' breasts.
You clearly don't have much experience looking at breasts.
What kind of tits do you think that fits?
Or would Sargon suggest that maybe they were made for extremely fat medieval knights with man tits?
That's not what I say, actually.
I say that they were made for people who were concerned with taking a very sharp pointy stick at very high speed straight to the chest.
And so they were given these contours so they would glance off rather than puncture.
And there are many other examples of this kind of medieval body armour which suggests that women were not an insignificant part of the military during the Middle Ages.
It's ironic that you've actually proven almost exactly the opposite of that.
But my question is, didn't you say that women weren't allowed to take a major role in the military due to the patriarchy?
What would there be all of these female armours for and all of these female armies, not just of Amazons, if the patriarchy was preventing this?
Now it's worth pointing out that any of those pieces of evidence individually don't make up a compelling case for the role of women in the military during the Middle Ages.
Neither do all of those pieces collectively.
Because say with the contemporary images from the medieval period, they were often idealised versions of actual events.
And often they were completely fictional or depicting events that happened thousands of years previously in mythology.
So they're not 100% accurate, but put all those pieces of evidence together and you have an absolutely rock solid case for a pattern of female involvement in the military during the medieval period.
It's the use of rock solid that I like so much about that.
So running contrary to Sargon's argument, clearly women were not an insignificant part of the military during the Middle Ages.
Reality has an anti-feminist bias.
So with that in mind, I've got one question for you, Sargon.
you anything.
Jesus Christ this was legitimately terrifying.
I actually thought you were going to say something funny.
Fucking hell, look at this guy's face.
This fucking guy is.
What Mr. Potato Head here.
Now, fuck off.
Thank you so much for this video.
It's been so eye-opening.
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