Reddit reviews Super Smutty Sign Language

I can understand that.

I pulled up her book's Amazon page and looked through the reviews. She's got 88% 1-star reviews, but none are verified purchases and they all appear to be around the same time--almost immediately after her book was released. All the verified purchases, on the other hand, are 4- or 5-stars.

It doesn't surprise me much that her signing might not be 100% accurate due to how unusual the phrases are, but that level of bitterness makes it look like just a huge brigade by easily-offended dicks to derail her book.

EDIT: Damn, it got to the point where a deaf guy actually started a Change.org petition called "Stop harassing Kristin of 'Dirty Signs with Kristin.'"

It's a bit ironic--some of the commenters on the petition railing against Kristin for supposedly mangling ASL are not doing too hot with English...

They come from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Super-Smutty-Language-Kristin-Henson/dp/1250026210

Of youtube fame (Dirty Signs with Kristin): https://www.youtube.com/user/thfemale

I went to school with her and knew her while there. Our campus was shared with the national technical institute for the deaf (NTID). So, there is a large deaf population and many programs and classes on ASL available. I am fairly certain that she took some american sign language classes while in school, though that was not her major. She got a lot of criticism over the book (people pointing out some inaccuracies or claiming it is exploitative), though I think many people found it amusing. I don't know much about the backlash from the deaf community, but you can tell from the amazon reviews that there were quite a number of vocal critics. I'd say like almost every group, deaf people are sensitive when it seems someone is trying to exploit their culture. She had a couple of interpreters help her, so I think the message would be able to be understood for the most part by a deaf person (even if it overlooks colloquialisms of the language).

Super Smutty Sign Language.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1250026210/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1416721794&sr=8-1

Sorry if the link blows, I'm on mobile

Kristen Henson who does these videos wrote a book called Super Smutty Sign Language. It got terrible reviews on amazon, but after reading the reviews, they fall mostly into the categories of "She doesn't know proper ASL", "her book is offensive", or people crying "cultural appropriation".

This report lol

must be her book

the book

queerlife wrote:

more info at http://www.reddit.com/r/SRSDiscussion/comments/1o7b2y/an_extremely_problematic_book/



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Edit from 2013-10-11T14:09:24+00:00

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edit: post in SRSD has been deleted. reproduced below.

Super Smutty Sign Language recently came out.

A few thiings to think about:

• These are the YouTube videos that the author made.
  
• Bio of author: > KRISTIN HENSON first started learning American Sign Language when she was a student at Rochester Institute of Technology, which has a significant deaf population. Her dorm mates were more than happy to “help” her out. She once signed “I want a large pizza” to the worker at the school’s dining hall, only to discover that her friends had taught her to sign “I want lesbian vagina.” Since then, Henson has become fascinated with learning dirty phrases in ASL and sharing them with the world at large.
  
  
  
• An English captioned ASL vlog discussing a Deaf person's views on this.For my part, I do think that the videos are very oppressive and appropriative. With regards to the book released recently, there is definitely an element of profiting off the Deaf community (which I am a part of, by the way) when we are already marginalized and struggling to survive due to audiism, ableism and linguicism and other intersections individually experienced by members of the Deaf community based on gender, race, sexual orientaton, ability status, etc.
  
  

I think it's from Super Smutty Sign Language: http://www.amazon.ca/Super-Smutty-Language-Kristin-Henson/dp/1250026210