But only once. Not sure what he saw in me. Surely not victimhood… Photo by Charles C. Collingwood on Unsplash He did a double take as he passed me walking through the mall, and stopped to chat me up. He reminded me a little of a young Frank Langella, so I let him. I’d just moved to Canada. “I’m sorry. I felt compelled to say something. You look so much like a friend who’s recently died.” It was one of the weirdest pickup lines ever, but I fell for it because of prior precedent in my family. My mother’s second love had done a double-take on the bus when he saw her. She said he looked so stunned she believed him when he said Mom looked exactly like the woman he’d been in love with who died back in Germany. He and Mom fell in love, but the romance went nowhere fast because he was already married. So, like mother, like daughter, n’est-ce pas? Well, except for the married part. His name was Sam, and he wanted to take me to lunch. Okay, I said, but first I have to apply for my Ontario Healthcare Insurance Program card. He went with me, and we talked in the waiting room. He seemed okay, nice and friendly, and I kind of liked him, so I thought I’d better drop the bomb that ended things quickly with a lot of Yankee men: I told him I didn’t want children. “Neither do I,” he said. Well okay, then! We couldn’t just eat in the mall, it seemed; he had some special place he wanted to take me. Foolishly, I got into the car with him and we drove somewhere. This is what I call women ‘doing dumb shit’ that puts us in danger. Dumb Shit I’ve Done Spoiler alert: Nothing bad happened. We went to some restaurant on the water — probably Lake Ontario. I had no idea where I was. He’d been pretty free with the compliments, oh how pretty you are, you’re so pretty, I just love being with you, blah blah blah. Guys say a lot of stuff. There was something not right about him. Kind of phony. He asked a lot of questions. He seemed eager to establish an early intimacy. “What are your plans for this summer?” he asked. I mentioned I was going to a family wedding in New York in September. “I’m going with you,” he informed me. “Um, excuse me?” “I’m going with you,” he stated. “Oh no you’re not.” “Why not?” I gave him A Look. “Because we don’t know each other well enough.” “We will by then.” “Why are you worried about September? You don’t even know if we’re going to make it to the weekend yet.” “Why wouldn’t we?” “You’re not going.” “But I want to meet your family.” “I’ll decide when you’re ready to meet my family.” Wisely, he dropped it. There’s nothing that sets a control freak back on his heels quite like an early sign that his victim doesn’t take any shit. Later he pushed my hand down and took the fork from me. “Let me,” he said, and he tried to feed me himself. What was I, two? “No,” I said, and I took my fork back. Did he think that was romantic? I found it infantilizing. After a little more conversation — oh yeah, we were sitting side by side, he didn’t want to sit across from me — he announced, “I’m in love with you.” Photo by Gage Walker on Unsplash I crinkled up my face and said something along the lines of, “What the hell?” “It’s true,” he replied. “I’ve fallen in love with you.” “After only two hours?” “I’m serious.” “Oh, cut it out!” I spat. “You’re not in love with me. That’s bullshit.” “I am,” he insisted. I’d had enough. This afternoon was growing tiresome. I realized I was somewhere in or around Toronto, nowhere near a bus line as far as I knew, with some joker I’d met at the mall and had idiotically gone somewhere in a city I didn’t know very well. Worst came to worst, I could call my roommate to come get me, but that would be supremely embarrassing, not to mention a huge inconvenience for him. Still, I didn’t feel like I was in danger. I’ve gone through life largely convinced I’m not the sort of woman who gets raped and/or murdered. So far so good. He asked a few more questions, but I wasn’t in the mood anymore. “Tell me your hopes and dreams,” he said. “What???” “Tell me your hopes and dreams,” he smiled. Who the hell says that? What were my hopes and dreams? To make a new life in Canada. To find a job soon. To finish my dark fantasy novel and get it published. To be a famous writer. To meet a great guy and fall in love, after so much disappointment in Connecticut. “I don’t have any,” I stated. “What? How can you not have any? Everyone has hopes and dreams!” Sam cried. “I don’t.” “Sure you do. Tell me.” “Nope. I don’t have any. Sorry.” Stated with that smug sarcasm that says screw you, buddy boy! He tried, but he couldn’t pry any hopes or dreams out of me. I was done. I sat back. “I need to get home,” I said. “I have to start making dinner for my roommate.” Or some other stupid lie, I don’t remember. I wondered if he’d return me or just abandon me, but we got into his car and went back to the mall. He dropped me off there. The conversation was more real, less phony, so we kissed before I got back on the bus. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Today, that would be the end of it, but back then I was trying to turn over a new leaf. My last five years in Connecticut hadn’t been good after my ex and I split up. I call them my Angry Drunken Bitch years. But, there was enough about Sam to like and we’d talked a lot, so when he reached out for another date I agreed. I wanted to be less picky and judgemental. I’d been rather unfair to men, and my last foray in Connecticut, with a customer I’d met through work, hadn’t gone anywhere. The second time Sam called, I had planned to get a haircut. “Cancel it,” he said. “Let’s go do such-and-such.” I was a little taken aback, but I was flattered he wanted to see me so badly, so I did. The next time, I was en route to the salon when he called. “Let’s go do something." “Not this afternoon. I’m going to get my hair cut,” I said. “Cancel it.” “No. I did that last time.” “Do you have to do this today?” he asked. “No, but I cancelled it last time for you. This time I’m getting my hair cut. Some other time, Sam.” For some reason, he expected me to just drop everything when he decided we should go do something. Once or twice I reached out to him, but he said he had other plans. I didn’t ask him to cancel them. I wondered if it was another woman, but I didn’t ask. None of my business; he wasn’t my steady boyfriend. One day we went out to lunch. No annoying comments or pushy suggestions this time. Then we went to see the movie Cinderella Man. All was fine until he tried to push my head down on his shoulder. I pulled it up again. He pushed it down again, more forcefully. “Stop it, that’s annoying,” I hissed. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he trying to force this intimacy? It was like when he tried to feed me. And told me he was in love with me. He’d said the love thing several times since but I never said it back, and he didn’t ask why. I didn’t believe him either. Five years of bad dating experiences taught me not to believe anything men said anymore. We went back to my place and made out on the couch a little, then he had to go. And after that, I heard nothing. Not a thing. I was pissed. Still quite insecure, I had outdated ideas of how dating was supposed to work. I’d been out of it for awhile. The ex and I were together for over seven years, with a split in between, so by the time I moved to Toronto things had changed a lot, but no one cc’d me the memo. I thought if Sam really cared he’d call. It was out of the question that I call him. I don’t remember if I was just being an idiot or testing him. The silence drove me insane. My roommate and I decided to spend a weekend at Algonquin Park, a huge nature preserve north of Toronto to shoot some moose. Relax! This is the only way we shoot moose. Although that mofo does look like he’s contemplating pulling some shit with me, doesn’t he? Photo by the author's moose-obsessed then-housemate I enjoyed myself, but I also stewed a lot. I never believed Sam’s love bullshit, but it always aggravates me when men meet my low expectations. So much for his great love if he couldn’t be bothered calling! Then I accidentally almost dialed him since I’d either forgotten or not gotten around to deleting his number from my mobile. I hung up quickly. A day or so later, he called, seemingly out of the blue. “I’m so glad I found you!” he exulted. “I’d accidentally deleted your number, and I couldn’t remember it. I tried everything to get it again but I couldn’t remember your last name either. Finally I saw you called!” “How come you didn’t have my number written down somewhere?” I asked as I rode the bus. “I never thought to do that, I’m sorry.” “I thought you were madly in love with me. If that were true you’d have made damn certain you wouldn’t lose my number.” “I should have, I apologize. “Or bothered to learn my last name.” “Uh, yeah. Where are you?” “On the bus.” “Well get off. I’ll pick you up wherever you are. Let’s go out to dinner.” “I can’t. I just got a job offer and I have to go do the paperwork.” “Can’t you do it some other time?” “NO! Sam, for god’s sakes, it’s a new job!” “Okay. I really want to make it up to you for losing your number. I’ll take you out to a really nice place I know. I’ll pick you up tonight, then.” “No, I have plans tonight,” I lied. “Cancel them,” he said. “Fuck you,” I replied. “What?” “Thursday night is better. We’ll go out to dinner Thursday night.” “I can’t. I have plans.” “Cancel them,” I said. “I can’t.” “Why not?” “Because I can’t.” “Just call her and tell her you’ll meet her some other night.” “It’s not another woman.” I highly doubted that, but I honestly didn’t care anymore. “Thursday night is best for me. If you want to go out, that’s the night to do it.” “I can’t. I told you. I have plans.” “I’m expected to drop everything when you call. Now, I don’t actually give a damn whether we go to dinner or not. I’ve over you. You want to do this, we do it Thursday night. We do it on my time now. Otherwise forget about it.” “I can’t cancel.” “Okay, we’ll just forget about it, then.” “I still want to take you out!” “Nah,” I said. “I’m over this. You disappeared. Out of sight, out of mind." Not true, but I’ll bet he believed me. I always wondered what Sam’s deal was. Everyone’s obsessed with narcissists, so I wondered if maybe that was his problem, but I tend not to go with pop-psychology labels, so I figured maybe he was just a manipulative little bastard. At any rate, I lost no further sleep over him. That Cancel them crap had gotten on my nerves more than anything else. It wasn’t until I watched a TEDx talk by a domestic violence social psychologist named Dina McMillen that I realized there was a possible explanation I’d never considered: That I was being groomed for an eventual abusive relationship. McMillen tells of over 630 violent domestic abusers, (95% male) she’s interviewed over the years in a client-doctor relationship in which she’s prohibited from telling on them. Without fear of punishment, these men have ‘dropped the mask’ and spoken with her quite freely about what they did to their partners, displaying male privilege at its ugliest and often evincing no empathy for their objectified partners. McMillen believes our solutions to domestic violence are too reactive rather than proactive. She advocates teaching young girls and women ‘in about two hours’ the ‘secrets’ abusers don’t want women to know about their psychological manipulation techniques. The mind-blowing, eye-opening takeaway for me was when she ran through the list and Sam ticked off several. Like: He needs you to trust him, plan a future with him, and fall in love with him. He pulled ‘too much, too soon.’ Early claims of love; artificial intimacy attempts; telling me what we were going to do; planning for our future together. All at the first meeting . I wondered if he’d read The Game or something that told him women think you’re serious when you speak about the future with them. McMillen spoke about pushing for constant contact but Sam didn’t do that. He did, however, want my attention like a cat: When it was convenient for him. He tried to get me to confide in him before he’d built trust. He expected me to drop everything and be at his beck and call, although he didn’t get mad when I wouldn’t. However, McMillen noted that often women go along with the little decisions these guys constantly make for you because we want to be liked and thought of as easygoing. Which I did. I’ve long believed our need to be ‘liked’ by men is one of the biggest vulnerabilities in female psychology. Whenever I’ve done dumb shit that put me in danger, like getting into a strange man’s car, it’s been because I wanted him to ‘like’ me. She offered several other red flags but you can watch the video for yourself. I strongly encourage it; it’s not graphic with no descriptions of violence. She was only able to speak very generally about her subjects and not identify anyone. “Holy fuck,” I said as I watched. She didn’t even list all the warning signs. It would take too long. She wrote a book about it, though. "But He Says He Loves Me!" - The Women's Abuse Prevention Manual Sam complained a few times about my ‘walls’ when he tried to get too close to me. He was right, but I felt pretty justified. He telegraphed his phoniness at every turn. I wonder what might have happened if I was more of a victim. Or what I might have done if I’d met him when I was more emotionally naive and trusting. Would Sam have had better luck taking advantage of me? Maybe, although I don’t think it would have advanced to emotional or physical abuse. I’ve never been abused by a man and don’t believe I’d have tolerated it from anybody. Do You Have A Thing For Abusers? Knowing the red flags will help you avoid them When I was young, I was, like many women, easier to manipulate with the carrot-and-stick approach. It’s unconscious and not specifically male; women do it too. It’s when you give someone just enough attention to keep them interested but you’re really not that interested yourself. Didn’t understand that one until I read the book He’s Just Not That Into You. I recognized how this had been done to me several times, but also, that I’d done it a few times myself. Wish I’d had this book when I was younger. I hope others will take lessons from this and realize that abusers can’t abuse you unless you let them. First and foremost, recognize their need to control and establish authority and resist it. And get out early. Because they can’t control a woman who won’t take their shit. This article first appeared on Medium in January 2020. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

But what if those questions could set them free? What if it led to greater freedom, happiness, more trustworthy friends and--increased status? Pixabay public domain image I didn’t want to be one of those right-wing bigots , of course. It was my last days of blogging on Medium in late 2021, slowly becoming aware of the toxic transactivism that had consumed the liberal mind while I challenged wussy feminism. I was arguing with a popular uber-feminist writer, more learned about the history and philosophy of feminism than I. She said my remarks about transwomen were harmful to a vulnerable, marginalized population when I voiced obvious questions, and I felt guilty; maybe she and the trans-allies were right? She said they needed our compassion, not our judgement. A few times, I acknowledged that transwomen were women, uncomfortably. I wanted to agree with her, but my knowledge of basic biology precluded it. I said to her: I'm also disappointed in your frankly bigoted approach to J K Rowling, who has been quite supportive of the trans community if you're not an entitled dude in a dress (I don't know if she sees them that way, but I see some of them that way). Maybe we should just start labeling the indisputable facts? People with XX chromosomes menstruate and carry babies; people with XY chromosomes don't. We can accept transgenders for what and who they are but please, don't gaslight us about who can menstruate and who will never carry a baby in their belly, until transgender surgery/treatment gets a helluva lot more sophisticated. “Where’s your compassion?” she asked. “Where’s your common sense?” I countered. How could a highly educated, grown-ass woman assert that transwomen were no different from women? She fancied herself a feminist expert! How could she not see the classic abusive male personalities that simmered beneath transactivist Etsy-sourced frillies? I asked all the glaringly obvious questions she wouldn’t. Five days later, my account was suspended. I didn’t petition to get it back. I was already used to the pointlessness of trying to reason with Medium’s woke unreasonables. I still wonder whether my former feminist foe actually believed her own B.S. Not all Believers are as True as they pretend. They know deep down what they profess is wrong-headed, or maybe even downright harmful to others. But preserving positive self-regard offers less psychic pain than a personal integrity unpopular with the maddened crowd, and so they persist, pursuing their personal poison the way alcoholics and drug addicts obsessively seek that which makes them feel worse rather than better. This article focuses on the cognitive dissonance that tortures the human spirit arising from beliefs and narratives one professes, but which one knows on a deeper level to be untrue, when one’s actions don’t align with them. When intelligence and education isn’t enough For woke progressives and liberals, part of our narrative is that we’re good, empathetic people who don’t want anyone to feel the pain of exclusion, which many of us have felt at one time or another, or perhaps throughout our lives. When everyone else professes X and agrees that’s the correct belief to be a good person, the crowd is always right, right? But I’m addicted to reality. I’ve never been very good at not challenging those who deny what I know to be factual. I try to keep an open mind, but not so much my brains fall out. I knew it was wrong from the get-go to claim that transwomen are the same as women because they claim that’s how they feel. The more I explored trans issues, and encountered transactivists, I realized not only weren’t they ‘the same as biological women,’ but they were about as male and misogynist as the guys I wrote women should avoid on Grow Some Labia. The reality-denying Medium feminist didn’t understand that compassion and inclusion can quickly turn into complicity and cruelty. Where was her compassion for women who felt uncomfortable sharing private spaces with the be-penised? Or for female athletes who had to compete against hulking men like Will Thomas? Or lesbians accused of ‘genital fetishism’ by transwomen with a penis? She may not have known about the growing awareness of medical harms potentially visited on ‘trans’ children, or the sudden spike in trans people coinciding with the rise of gender-questioning content on social media, and the creeping influence of queer theory public education. Maybe she didn’t know about Tumblr’s role as a queer factory for gender-morphing labels, pronouns and ‘microaggressions’ pulled out of thin air to be weaponized against people who didn’t adhere to queer mythology. Maybe she didn’t have friends with teenage kids coming home with weird ideas about whether they were actually the immutable sex they were born with. She would have, though, if she’d asked those glaringly obvious questions, and Googled. On some level, she feared what it would mean about her, her values, the hills she’d died on, the public stands she’d taken, and the testament to her intelligence. Who wants to admit they were gaslit, the ‘expert’ who could cite endless highly-regarded sources in support of feminist theory but somehow missed the angry Twitter invitations to ‘suck my ladydick’? Who frequently dissected ‘the Patriarchy’ but missed the ‘cotton ceiling’ whiners , formerly the entitled heterosexual men of our youth accusing women now of being lesbians if they wouldn’t have sex with them? ‘Trans-allies’ are in for several years of high-level, self-inflicted psychic torture, beginning with the death of sex changes for children. The Trump administration’s HHS has issued a ‘best practices’ report for treating confused ‘trans’ children beginning with therapy first. According to Jay Battarcharya, the National Institutes of Health Director, “We must follow the gold standard of science, not activist agendas.” ‘Gender-affirming care’ is shaping up to be one mother of a medical scandal. Not only will woke progressives increasingly face a hostile mob of ‘normies’ turning accusing fingers, demanding to know how they could let his happen, but also the realization that the Trumpoids were right and they themselves were grievously wrong. They thought the science was settled. They trusted progressive media outlets that turned out to be deeply incurious. They didn’t question, and explore for themselves. They didn’t wonder how a respected periodical like Scientific American could issue a mind-bogglingly brainless article like Stop Using Phony Science To Justify Transphobia, or wonder about the credentials of the author, a dude named ‘Simón(e) D Sun’? Scientific American, like other science periodicals, used to believe in evidence. But now, belief is the evidence. Progressive ideologues eliminated inconvenient science, just like their compatriots on t’other side, the fundamentalist Christians. A social psychologist and the UFO cult Dr. Leon Festinger was an important figure in social psychology who infiltrated a doomsday cult which believed a UFO was going to pick them up and save them from a forthcoming apocalypse. He developed the theory of cognitive dissonance after infiltrating the cult to study the members’ actions, behaviours, and thoughts once the expected continent-destroying flood failed to materialize. He examined the psychological distress they felt and how they coped when reality didn’t align with their expectations. Many refused to acknowledge they’d been wrong and rationalized away what went pear-shaped, instead spreading their message and seeking more Believers, each new recruit vindicating them. Their founder helped them rationalize away their pain and disappointment, by relaying the aliens’ convenient new message that their faith had saved the world and therefore, given humanity a second chance. Others, less committed, left the group egg-faced. Monty Python nails the cult mentality in 1979’s The Secret Policeman’s Ball To achieve cognitive consistency, the opposite of cognitive dissonance, one must rationalize the contradictions away, or change one’s mind. In other words, be willing to acknowledge new data has invalidated the old. Rationalizing is easier than thinking things through. “The experts say that if trans kids aren’t allowed to transition they’ll commit suicide. But why didn’t any do that when I was growing up?” The Pain of Asking — and the Greater Pain of Not Asking A far healthier way to achieve cognitive consistency is through learning a very simple but difficult life lesson: Knowing when to acknowledge one is wrong. The sooner the better. It’s extremely hard on the ego to admit you’ve been misled, or simply haven’t done enough research, but the longer you wait to admit what shames you, the worse your future. Being ‘wrong’ is often just a matter of believing what you do with the best available evidence , until more comes along that contradicts, disproves or simply changes the story. You weren’t wrong before; now you’re demonstrating intellectual honesty thanks to newer or better data. This is the whole foundation of scientific inquiry. The Trump years will be sheer hell for ‘trans-friendly’ progressives. They’ve denied the evidence, refused to ask the glaringly obvious questions, kept themselves as insulated as possible, and blithely dismissed facts as ‘right-wing propaganda’. They’ve rationalized their critics were vile TERFs, carefully sealing their ears, eyes and minds. Many, like Dr. Festinger’s Seekers, will cling to their original beliefs, because it’s awfully late in the game to pretend they didn’t know. The consequences of admitting error are high. Achieving cognitive consistency relieves irritating moral hypocrisy, but introduces the new threat of ostracism by unenlightened friends and family, because if Cousin Martha confesses she thinks she was now wrong about something, by extenuation she damns them all. What awaits the Questioners on the other side? The upside for Cousin Martha, if she chooses honest cognitive consistency, is immense psychological relief. Especially if she can avoid talking about it. One way she can re-reconcile her vision of herself as a Good Person is to work with the group she feel she’s harmed. If her intellectual mistake was to support gender-affirming care, she could help detransitioners facing angry backlash from transactivists for publicly admitting they made the wrong decision and now want out. Martha’s experience with her former community would be invaluable for smoothing the detransition backtrack. She’d bring compassion to her new community who tragically bought into a pseudo-scientific narrative detrimental to their health, their mental well-being and their ego. If Martha is brave, she could publicly speak about her personal journey. She could explore why she chose to believe what she did and why she no longer supports it. If she doesn’t want to do it publicly—with good reason—she can do it anonymously on a Substack or an X account. She’ll receive negative feedback, criticism, and outright flaming, but she’ll be safe from personal or professional ruin. Learn how to admit your errors and correct your mistakes. Recognize that changing your mind in light of new evidence makes you honest, not a ‘flip-flopper’. Few actually realize the power —and the optics —in being strong enough to admit and correct mistakes, especially publicly. We all understand that children blame others and everything else rather than accept responsibility. People who act like what we believe adults to be are the obvious adults in the room. And we admire their courage and integrity. There’s increased status to be found in changing your tribe from the fact-fearing to the Questioners. Achieving cognitive consistency starts with asking those glaringly obvious questions. Realigning one’s sense of self with reality may lose some friends and family, but there’s a whole other community of the intellectually and morally responsible waiting for them. Maybe the solution to losing former friends is finding wiser, truer ones. Did you like this post? Do you want to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter  Grow Some Labia  so you never miss a damn thing! There are also Substack  and Spotify podcasts of more recent articles!

The battle for democracy's soul in the ICE Age is beginning to look less like good vs evil than Alien vs Predator. Guess who the losers are? By Elkman on Flickr - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 It’s been distressing to watch Donald Trump’s depressingly predictable strong-arm response to violence during the Los Angeles ICE protests. He’s been itching for just this sort of fight so he can prove to his voters he’s the manly-muscular he-man to protect the nation from illegal wrongdoers and anarchic criminals. So of course the more violence-prone on the left handed him his golden justification and demonstrate just how much moral confusion and decay rots the souls of the left as well as the right. The ICE protests are legitimate acts of free speech and began, as always, much less violently than Trump’s Himmlerian response justified, when the damage was still easily within the purview of the LAPD and Governor Gavin Newsom. But the tired pattern we saw with the George Floyd/BLM protests emerged yet again like the Alien from John Hurt’s chest: First Amendment actions degenerated into violent riots and what was once peaceful was now a legitimate reason to bring in outside help. Naturally, Democrats and liberals condemned Trump’s response rather than also the violence that justified  calling in the Guard which, just a tad too early, certainly were necessary not long after. Nadda word from the Demmies against torching shops that put people out of business, or Waymos, arguing that no one drives them so it’s okay. I doubt the firebugs would feel so sanguine if someone torched their cars as a political ‘statement’. Watching political shenanigans in the Trump II era looks more like Alien vs Predator. “Whoever wins…….we lose.” Fetterman stands alone Americans may largely agree on the need to control illegal immigration and remove criminals, but less so on Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional response. On January 22 , about half of U.S. adults thought controlling illegal immigration should be a high priority and only 20% didn’t care. It was a winning campaign promise. Most approved of removing violent offenders, but not how Trump’s executive orders dictated. Today, according to new Pew Research Center findings , while many Americans approve of suspending asylum applications and deporting illegals, 61% disapprove of shipping them to a foreign nation like El Salvador. Support for the the ICE raids is at 54%. One wonders how much higher it would be if the raids were conducted in a methodical, strategic, and properly targeted manner. Support for a border wall is also higher than it was during Trump’s first term—56% vs 46%. Democrats, unsurprisingly, support anti-illegal immigration efforts much less than Republicans, who adore the brown-shirted gross human rights abuses and complete disregard for the law and Constitution that define the very core of Donald Trump’s administration, MAGA Republicans and his own degenerate personality. No one with a shred of human decency could support this. Even some Republican voters are muttering what has become many’s repetitive mantra, “This isn’t what I voted for.” Meanwhile, the left selectively condemns the violence they dislike while ignoring or applauding that which they approve of. Bad: Right-wing response to the ICE protests. Good:  Protest violence pretending to be protected speech. It’s a pattern we’ve seen over and over again in previous protests and especially within the ‘Free Palestine’ movement which exemplifies the moral rot of the woke progressive carcass. Liberals were supposed to be the good guys, remember? Only the lone voice of Senate Democrat John Fetterman rang out in the Democratic wilderness, the only member of his party with the balls to hands-down condemn the violent protesters who invited the tough government response. “I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that. This is anarchy and true chaos.” He also noted how much Democrats “lose the high ground” when they “refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement.” Fetterman may be the only ‘normie’ left in the Party. The moral morass of Trump vs the Islamofascists No one can claim the moral high ground in the campus Thunderdome when one side (s)creams for the genocide of another country while the President tries to deport anyone who expresses an opinion he doesn’t like. Protected speech: Criticizing Israel and the IDF’s actions. Unprotected speech: Attacking, harassing, discriminating against and vilifying Jews, and subjecting them to clear hate speech. Funny how quickly the left came to embrace it when it was their own. Funny how Trump came to embrace cancel culture when expressed by Islamofascists rather than MAGA fascists. No one defended Jews during Biden’s Reign of Error. The Democrats turned a blind eye, except for the Volksgemeinschaft  the Squad who gleefully encouraged the blatant violation of Jewish students’ civil rights. It’s open season on Jews in a way the world hasn’t seen since the 1930s. Remember when our  side was against Nazism? It’s dead certain President Kamala Harris would have turned a blind eye to her own Jewish citizens. Before she replaced Biden, President Wannabe WishyWashy praised campus protesters , saying, “There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.” She worried more about whether women in Gaza had enough sanitary pads rather than whether Jews in her own country could go to class without being vilified as baby murderers. She never blamed the Gazans for their filthy Islamofascist dictatorship that invited retribution, nor asked why Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. She fell forever squarely on the Blame Israel side. She never asked how kids obsessed with LGBTQ rights supported the most violently homophobic people in the world. Nor how their obsession with right-wing ‘fascism’ blinded them to the Islamofascism driving the ‘Free Palestine’ movement. If she’s so appalled by IDF violence against the Gazans, where’s her outrage for Hamas’s violence against them? They’re a brutal dictatorship. She and her morally rotten compatriots didn’t see what so many of us do: Harris is as much of an authoritarian cheerleader as the Trumpitarians. Trump decided to do the right thing about campus moral rot: FIX IT. And of course, he screwed it up royally. Trump’s actions are every bit as anti-free speech as anything they’re doing or teaching at Harvard. Political diversity? Do we have any reason to believe he’ll do anything other than turn elite institutions from woke ideological shitholes to MAGA ones? Watching him work to put an end to the blatantly illegal and unconstitutional actions of student protesters violating others’ civil rights isn’t exactly Justice League. Holding my nose I grow ever-more estranged from my fellow liberals as I observe the abandonment of traditional liberal values. Remember when we  weren’t the violent ones? Now we justify violence for ‘a good cause’ the way the right has always done. Luigi Mangione is a far-left folk hero, and the same people who condemn Vance Boelter for assassinating Minnesota Democrat politicians were sad that Thomas Crooks missed Trump  last year in Pennsylvania. Los Angeles rioters threaten, “Delete that photo or we’ll fuck you up.” Condoning your own bad actions gives permission to the other side. The political football in America, like the eternal Israel vs ‘Palestine’ clusterfuck, stretches back for centuries. Axios found that in 2022, all U.S. extremist mass violence was linked to the far right , which has historically been more violent, with occasional eruptions from the left, as we saw in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and once again galvanized by the Hamas October 7 attack. The far right has no moral credibility, either, when it condemns L.A. protest violence. They gave permission. So many partisans can’t differentiate between just causes  and bad actions. Facebook friends I know to be good people post weirdly uncomfortable responses when I say things like, “You can want to criticize or end the violence against the Gazans without being antisemitic or calling for the end of Israel,” or that there is absolutely no moral justification for the October 7 attack. Many on the left don’t understand the complex history of hostilities between the collective descendants of Abraham, and worse, they conveniently ignore the vast body of historical violence and terrorism endemic to Islam. Today’s Islamofascism began with a 7th-century military commander. These Facebook friends aren’t antisemitic, but they’re soft on it, and willfully blind to who’s actually responsible for turning Gaza into a shithole, long before October 7. Squirmy leftists drag out of mothballs, instead, the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Um, eight years ago, folks? They don’t like when pointing out the same sins they excoriate on the right, clearly present on the left. Even more exemplifying of the complete moral bankruptcy of many leftists are the so-called liberal ‘feminists’ of the Antisemite Set who denied  the horrific rapes that took place on October 7. False 'False Rape Allegations': The Way Feminists Now Collude With Rape Grow Some Labia 31 January 2024 Read full story We libs are supposed to wax hysterical about Project 2025 when our own embrace genocidal calls, mass rape and Islamofascism ? Of course, the left lost immediate credibility when it weighed in on the side of the October 7 attackers the very same day . Why is racism bad, but antisemitism good? Why is it so hard to say, “Protests good, rioting bad”? Is the law for all of us, or just Donald Trump? Alien vs Predator The MAGA Klan cheered when Trump pardoned his January 6th insurrectionists   rioters  exuberant tourists. When the ICE violence started, the right-wing media shrieked in horror and exaggerated the violence, while the left-wing media practically pretended it wasn’t even there. But how can conservatives claim to stand for law and order, when Trump failed to bring in the Guard for January 6th, or when he hypocritically refused to call the Capitol Hill rioters what he now calls the ICE protesters: Insurrectionists. The morally rotten right gave permission for violent ICE protests. FFS, they chose a demonstrably lawless man to uphold the law. A second time. It’s hard to envision this bipartisan moral decay as ending in anything other than pain, blood, and at least some deaths. I still sometimes wonder whether Donald Trump is America’s ugliest enema , the man who will purge the shit out of both sides of the polar-ized ICE caps. Well, someone had to do it. The haters, criminals and rioters on the left weren’t going to clean themselves or anyone else up. It’s just a shame that the right won’t either. They’ll simply replace their own lawless, authoritarian vision for America to replace the Democrats’. And for now, it’s Alien vs Predator and—guess who’s losing. Did you like this post? Do you want to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter  Grow Some Labia  so you never miss a damn thing! There are also Substack  and Spotify podcasts of more recent articles!

"GROW A PAIR" That's what we say to men when we think they're acting weak. "Grow some balls!" So what do we say when women are acting weak? We can't very well tell them to grow some balls. Women can't, of course! Women need to 'grow some labia'! They're the parts of the vagina that would have become the scrotum for the balls had she been born a male instead (and since she didn't, what would have been her balls are her ovaries). But I doubt you came here for a female anatomy lesson. It's time for us to grow some labia and woman up, show more strength, challenge ourselves more. Time to take more charge and responsibility for our lives, and spend less time blaming 'The Patriarchy' or systemic sexism. Those things exist, for sure, but at some point we've got to recognize the buck stops with the woman in the mirror and we need to claim our power (or reclaim it if we gave it away somehow!) So it's time for women everywhere to GROW SOME LABIA! I've written a few blog posts about how we can do exactly that and reclaim our power! Feminism The differences between victim feminism, which sees women as chronically aggrieved and victimized by men and 'The Patriarchy', and power feminism, which is more focused on one's self, achieving and claiming personal power and using it for the betterment of others. Dec 21, 2024 The Transfolk Who Really Do Need Our Support The experience of 'The Bearded Lesbian' reminds us some folks really do need to transition; and how LGBTQ can fail them I began following... Dec 5, 2024 American Feminists Don't Need A 4B Movement The South Korean feminism project will be dead in the water. Like it or not, we need men, and they need us. Maybe we just need to reform... Nov 24, 2024 Emma Watson, Emma Watson, Wherefore Art Thou, Emma Watson? The foxy fauxminist has gone missing in recent years. No movies. No fauxminist outbursts. Not even any trans love tweeted. I... Nov 17, 2024 Progressive Democrats Hate Women More Than The Right. Especially Feminists. Right-wing misogyny isn't How The Left Was Lost. It was women's, the primary administrators and executors of patriarchy and misogyny. The... Oct 12, 2024 A Frenchwoman Is Dead Serious About Holding ALL Her Rapists Accountable The Gisele Pelicot case highlights just how frighteningly high is the number of 'normal' men who have a penchant for, and might be... Sep 14, 2024 Let's Have A Grownup Talk About Privilege - With Curiosity Rather Than Outrage It's real. It's worth exploring even for the UnWoke. Its purpose is to open our own eyes rather than beat up others (and ourselves) over... Feminism Substack Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER for all my latest on power feminism, reclaiming your power, and the ongoing culture wars. Visit Substack >> Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER

WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE ABOUT POWER Big Girls Don't Blame The Patriarchy Explore The Blog LABIA POWER! About Me Grow Some Labia! is written by a liberal, feminist writer and social justice critic who teaches women and others how to reclaim their power and avoid partner abuse. She also candidly critiques far-left, progressive/woke/ social justice extremism. It's a place for people who lean left or right, but not so far their brains fall out. GSL's work can be found here and on Substack, Quora. And maybe a few other places. About Me The Latest From My Labia Power! Blog 5 days ago Daniel Penny: The Hero That Wasn't "He scared the living daylights out of everybody." The woke left damns Daniel Penny for trying to save others from a clearly disturbed... Jan 4 We Have To Think About Moderating X, Bluesky And Other Social Media The anoymous psychos who call for others' assassinations are a direct threat to democracy and public safety. Threats are NOT free speech.... Jan 1 Here Comes The 'Woke Right' And It Looks A Helluva Lot Like The Woke Left Brand-new management, same as the last! But the bipartisan UnWoke have the recent accumulated observation to help call out the... Dec 25, 2024 Roman Holiday - A Christmas Story Oh no! Not another Messiah! CC0 public domain Just what we need. Another bloody Messiah. The name’s Flatulous. I’m a Roman soldier in... Dec 21, 2024 The Transfolk Who Really Do Need Our Support The experience of 'The Bearded Lesbian' reminds us some folks really do need to transition; and how LGBTQ can fail them I began following... Dec 14, 2024 Is There Any Real Joy In Learning Anymore? Can students even experience learning something intriguing or unexpected? Or are they only told what to think? "Just kill me now!"... Explore The Blog DON'T BE THE VICTIM Take back your power. NOW. It started with abused women who didn't know they could say No to abuse. It morphed into taking back your power from political bullies and haters, including 'social justice warriors'. Don't Be The Victim GROW SOME LABIA "Grow a pair!" That's what we say to men when we think they're acting weak. "Grow some balls!" So what do we say when women are acting weak? We can't very well tell them to grow some balls. Women can't, of course! Women need to 'grow some labia'! Grow Some Labia I also take on the crazies from the right and the left. Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER

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