Comments on: Drunk History, vol. 3: women’s history edition

By: Wednesday round-up: How-to edition : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:29:11 +0000

[...] be a funny comedian by Jen Kirkman. (Some of you may recall Jen’s brilliant performance in Drunk History, vol. 3: Oney Judge from a few years ago. She stopped by to comment here on that post, too, and reported the nasty [...]

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:50:48 +0000

Satsuma–there are a lot of men who comment here, and who add great things to the discussion of feminism and history. A lot of them comment under male names, but others have gender ambiguous handles.

I don’t think men should be catered to, but I don’t think we can give up on them entirely. Some of us are related to them by choice as well as by accident.

By: Satsuma

Satsuma — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:19:54 +0000

I think we need to gather printouts of the male hatred of women on these blogs, and then show them to classes.
I think men need to be banned from feminist blogs period.
They’ve had centuries to do their own politics in their all male clubs long enough. I think talking to men is a waste of time from a feminist perspective. It is women who need to unite, organize and provide space for women in business and in scholarship to flourish. What’s wrong with a rapist/sexist free zone?

Go back and read your Mary Daly? Where were the thousands of women in the academy who stood up for her and demonstrated outside Boston College when she was fired? Where was the outrage from the next generation?
Where are the legions of women who are reading Sonia Johnson, and taking radical feminism seriously these days?
Just where the heck is the anger, the toughness the take charge attitude? Why are we still trying to educate men?
They are worthless wastes of time. Women! Women, wake up!!!

By: Bing McGhandi

Bing McGhandi — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:08:39 +0000

A big wOOt for Jen, even though I personally don’t approve of wOOting! I would show her episode in a math class, you know, if I taught math.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:28:08 +0000

That stinks. I think I’m going to show the thing now in my American Rev. class, f-bombs and all. Assuming I can figure out how to work this part of our classroom-enabled “teaching stations,” which can be pretty cranky. Maybe I’ll use some virtual clickers (i.e. hands or paper) to take a poll on the methodology and the historiography. Our so-called “majors’ classes” are pretty male-o-centric (60+%) in this century, unlike our general ed. required course, which reflects the U. average of about 57% female. Maybe I’ll do a comparative test.

By: Tales from the Backlash: Blogging Women’s History Month edition : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 15:20:16 +0000

[...] just in last night from the Historiann mailbag, from Jen Kirkman, the comedian who narrated “Drunk History, vol. 3,” the women’s history edition featuring the story of Oney Judge and her relationship with her owners, George and Martha [...]

By: Historiann

Historiann — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:49:21 +0000

Jen, I don’t know if you’re going to check in again, but this is appalling, if not entirely surprising. The more I’m on-line, the more I see the same gender dynamics playing out here as in real life.

I thought your “Drunk History” was the funniest of all of them by far, BTW! Let me know if you put anything else up on YouTube, as I think my readers would like to know.

By: Jen

Jen — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:42:13 +0000

Hey ladies,
This is Jen – the narrator from Drunk History. I thought you would find it interesting that I have received death threats, mean emails and countless comments directed at me being a woman, stupid, ugly, “this is what happens when bitches drink” etc. etc. for this episode.

My other male friends who narrated the other ones have received almost NO negative feedback – except for the occassional person who asks them, “Were you REALLY drunk?”

My comments are strictly to do with gender and young boys seem angry that when I got drunk – I got mad about slavery. I’ve had my patriotism questioned, and lots of boys write to me about how my facts are wrong – when many of the facts are spot on and I had a document in front of me that I was referring to.

I find it very interesting that the subtle sexism’s in our culture run RAMPANT on the internet and are very disappointing. I don’t think feminism is being addressed AT ALL to these younger boys in whatever school they go to.

-Jen K.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:42:36 +0000

The F-bombs would make me keep it out of classes, too, not out of prudishness, but because why reinforce the already-strong parts of their vocabularies while contributing to the well-documente coarsening of the culture? That said, it was an Eff-ing riot. But why was it credited as “featuring Danny McBride,” when “Jen Kirkman” carried the eff-ing thing from endzone to end-zone? I mean, his pantomimes got better from scene to scene, but subtract her nuanced narrative and the clip maybe lands on the cutting room floor in Mountain View.

Best line: “she knew the address… hiccup… because she used to LIVE there…”

By: Historiann

Historiann — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:28:45 +0000

Thanks Indyanna and K.N.–we miss you at our Historiann HQ dinner table too! I’m glad you all enjoyed the video.

I considered showing it to my women’s history students in class just for fun, but I thought there were too many F-bombs. Am I a prude, or merely prudent?