This Week's Amanda Sentence...

Leonard Pinth-Garnell here...

Well, we haven't had the time or inspiration to work on a new installment of Republican Poetry, so we'll throw out some of the Amanda Sentences that are already falling from the vine of 2008 like so much rotted fruit...

Hey, maybe I should be writing some poetry, after all!

Anyway, here's this week's installment of This Week's Amanda Sentence, subject - as always - to updates as circumstances warrant:

Sentence #1:

The history of it [virginity]—from the ancient world that put a monetary value on it to the Catholic world that treated it as a high religious calling to the Protestant world that viewed it as a pre-marital state that was transient but nonetheless mandatory—is fascinating, but where Blank really stands out is in her analysis of how virginity is a concept (and therefore elusive) but has been treated throughout history as a thing, and therefore somehow detectable through methods other than “asking a woman her damn self”, which is out of the question, since that invests in women the authority to label and thereby control their own sexuality.

109 words. Whew… This week's headache-inducing Amanda mystery: The difference between a concept and a "thing".

Sentence #2:

The obsession with virginity is a direct result of the fact that it’s more myth than fact.

17 words. Let's see… The fact that myth is more myth than fact explains the fact that we're obsessed with a myth that may - or may not - be based in fact.

Sentence #3:

Can someone who’s been fucked up the ass but not the vagina really lay claim to the ideal of the naive, “pure” virgin untainted with sexuality?

26 words. Just imagine what the world would be like if we didn't have Amanda around to puzzle out the really tough philosophical questions for us…

Sentence #4:

It also helps the task of objectifying and dehumanizing—since virginity is contextualized as a thing, but it’s not actually a thing, we tend to look at the woman herself as the thing that gives thingness to virginity.

38 words. "Thingness"?

Sentence #5:

All the other sports have half-naked women prancing around for crap pay to reassure anxious men that they haven’t gone homo in the past 5 minutes.

27 words. So the Dallas Cowboys' cheerleading squad is there to keep Texas' male population from deciding it would be more fun to go home at halftime and redecorate the living room? Who knew?

Sentence #6:

I’m sad that I feel that I have to endorse the one white guy running in the race.

18 words. No need to apologize… You two-faced enabler of the patriarchy, you.

UPDATE: Alerted by Five Feet of Fury, Dennis notes the following hummers posted by Amanda over at the rather obviously misnamed RH Reality Check:

Sentence #7:

Violent incidents may not have happened yet, but their very presence is there to inspire terror and fear for your own safety, not spontaneous conversions to a particularly wild-eyed version of Christianity.

33 words. An absolute Amanda classic. How can something that has not happened - and therefore does not exist - have a presence? I mean for someone who isn't hallucinating...

Sentence #8: (Nominated for the 2008 Amanda Marcotte Sentence of the Year award)

Just as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked because they symbolized American power to the 9/11 terrorists, women's health centers are targeted nationwide for domestic terrorism because they symbolize women's freedom to the terrorists that obsess over them.

41 words. Would those "domestic terrorists" be the ones who are prepetrating the "violent incidents" that "may not have happened yet"? Not at all... these domestic terrorists are picketing the homes of Planned Parenthood employees! Oh, the carnage... oh, the humanity... oh, the massive destruction and death... just like 9/11!

Sentence #9:

Picketing people's homes is to terrorism as stalking is to domestic violence and rape.

14 words. I know that Amanda is attempting to establish just how serious picketing is, but I'm afraid this sentence actually takes it in the opposite direction.

Vote early, vote often. This week's lucky winner gets a life size copy of the Pandagon Contextualized Virginal Thingy of Death...

"Mmm... contextualized..."

Comments

[blue girl]

"So the Dallas Cowboys' cheerleading squad is there to keep Texas' male population from deciding it would be more fun to go home at halftime and redecorate the living room? Who knew?"

LOL!

[lane]

All I can say is WOW. Really, just WoW.

She's a 5 watt bulb working in a modern LED era. I would mock her, but that would be like kicking kittens, if they were really stupid.

[Joel]

I'm casting my vote for Number Four. If Martin Buber were an ignorant, foaming, vaginally-fixated, foul-mouthed uterofascist, he might have said something like that.

[Dennis The Peasant]

Joel-

So what you're saying is you have a thing for #4.

[Joel]

Not merely a thing, Dennis. A thing that is the essence of thingness, and so not a mere concept of thingness. Although it may be a thing of conceptness. But not (being, after all, virginity) a thing of conception. Ness.

[Dale Price]

You can wade through Amanda's deepest thoughts without getting your ankles wet. If she ever manages to stop regurgitating soporific feminist cant (liberally sprinkled with f-bombs and gynecological references), let me know.

I'll scan the skies for flying pigs and free money.

[Temple Stark]

No. 8 actually makes sense in and out of context. The rest is, indeed, tortured English and I'm sure the good lady "claims" to be against torture.

-temple