How feminist was I, really, when the shit hit the fan? Photo by Anete Lusina on Pexels “Get out! GET OUT! You’re going to get arrested!” There was a kerfuffle of some sort. I don’t know what else to call it. I was poised at my apartment door, peering through the peephole. I couldn’t see anything. The couple in the hall weren’t in my line of sight. Something maybe knocked or thrown around. But not, I thought, a human body. Hard to tell. I suspected it was the young girl in my wing. I didn’t know her, I had only seen the back of her head once, following her down the hall. I couldn’t see or hear the man, but she clearly wanted him to leave. Was he her boyfriend? A friend? Some guy she’d picked up and poorly chosen to allow into the building? Would I be wasting 911’s time if I called? I hadn’t heard clear sounds of actual violence, nor real fear yet in her voice. “If you ever hear something that sounds like a domestic disturbance, Nicole, call the police! You don’t know how many times, when J was threatening me years ago, that I was backed up against the wall praying to God someone had heard what was going on and was calling the cops.” That’s what my roommate told me thirty years ago, when we shared a house in a small town in Connecticut. She had gotten out of a long-term abusive relationship and was living in peace with myself and her two children. I called 911. CC0 2.0 image by Drew Mackie on Flickr I wasn’t sure if I should have, but after I hung up things escalated. Loud whispers I couldn’t quite make out except for the occasional, “Get out! Get out!” They were still in the hall. I could hear the man’s voice but not if he was threatening her. He didn’t sound like a criminal, at least, like a street tough. My guess was that he was middle-class. My own fears kicked in. What would I do? They wouldn’t know who called 911 but I’d be a suspect as one of the apartments in that end of the hall who could hear. What if she was now in real danger? “How feminist are you, really, Nicole?” What was I going to do? Would I cower and hide in my apartment? Would I call 911 again? A little voice piped up. Not my old roommate’s. “How feminist are you really, Nicole? How truly committed are you to stopping male abuse? If a woman is in danger, can you put your money where your mouth is and STOP IT?” It was that sort of come-to-Jesus moment about what you really believe in. How committed was I to stopping abuse if I could? What if I did something RIGHT NOW to stop it? They’d know who I am. They’d know who called 911. They’d know where I live. And if the man, who I didn’t think lived in our building, came back for me, he only had to consult the tenants board at the entrance of the building to find my apartment number and last name. The sounds of physical disturbance grew louder. Now I wasn’t sure if the muffled thumps and thuds were objects or a body. But the woman now sounded really scared and like she was in immediate danger and even if I called 911 again they wouldn’t get there in time. What was I going to do? The shit was hitting the fan. It was up to me. I left the chain lock in place as I opened the door just enough to yell, “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW, BUDDY-BOY! LEAVE HER ALONE! DON’T TOUCH HER! I’VE CALLED 911 AND THE COPS ARE ON THEIR WAY RIGHT NOW! GET OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW!” “Oh God, now you’ve got to go!” the girl hissed. “Come on, go, leave, before they get here!” I heard the stairwell door open and close. She was safe. Now I was terrified. For myself. NICE JOB YOU DUMB BITCH! What if he comes after me? What do you do when the shit hits the fan? I don’t call myself a feminist anymore because I associate it too much with the fragile, easily triggered, misandrist, ‘patriarchy’-obsessed, chronically aggrieved perma-victims of the modern age. But that night I came to Jesus as my old-school feminism, the kind that taught women empowerment rather than relentless powerlessness, kicked in. I put my money where my mouth was. I shat rather than get off the pot. I’ve criticized other women for being too weak and ‘nice’ and putting up with too much shit. When that young girl told that guy he had to leave, I wondered why she had a tone to her voice indicating she still liked or accepted him in some way. She was young, and prone to bad judgment. But I knew what I was going to say to her in the (extremely unlikely) event that she ran into me and told me next time, to mind my own business. “Don’t ever tolerate that sort of shit from a man. I don’t know who he is or what he means to you but you need to get him out of your life RIGHT NOW if you haven’t already. NEVER allow a man to treat you like that! If you allow him back into your life you’re giving him tacit permission to abuse you again. Stop it NOW before it’s too late!” Women have choices when it comes to men. They have more power than they know. Too many identify with the politics of powerlessness and victimhood and this near-mythical patriarchy thingy as an excuse to ignore their own role in their personal safety. I want women to know they have the power to decide who they’ll allow into their lives. That the earlier you eject a toxic male, the better your chances of survival. I called 911 again. It was hard for me to talk because my thoughts were a muddle. Focus, I told myself. This is no time to lose your head. Speak. When I got off the phone, I was shaking like a leaf. I called one of my closest friends, a man. I told him what happened. I wondered if I’d just put my own life in danger. My limbic system went wild imagining all the ways this could backlash on me. My friend didn’t think my life was likely in danger, he thought the fact that the guy left immediately and didn’t yell anything back belligerently indicated that I probably scared him. That made me feel better. My friend knew how a man was likely to think and act in that situation, even though he himself was the least violent guy I knew. He said I should be more vigilant, maybe not take the elevator with strangers and use the stairs more. Which I already do anyway. I messaged my old Connecticut roommate on Facebook and told her what happened, to see if she had any additional advice. Once the stress hormones diminished I began to feel stronger, in a very Don’t Fuck With Me kind of way. I knew most people didn’t want a confrontation, and I’d taken a calculated risk based on the sound of the man’s voice and judged him to not likely be a physical risk to me. I began to feel proud of myself for doing something ballsy and letting the guy know that someone was willing to stop him. My Connecticut friend said it was good I didn’t step out into the hall where I could get hurt. It got me thinking about how often we women say to each other, “But you could have gotten hurt!” when a man is involved. Well, yeah. But…how far are we willing to go to stop male abuse? How much are we willing to stand up to male power? When a smaller man confronts a much bigger male bully we think that’s heroic and brave. George McFly. My Bodyguard. The Karate Kid. When a woman does it we think she’s crazy or stupid. You could get hurt! Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. What would I do if the man confronted me? I’d thought I might pull the generational thing on him since I’m old enough to be his mother and give him the Angry Mom’s what-for for treating a woman like that and scaring her. After all, he’s far less likely to own a gun, being Canadian, if he’s not a street kid. He might have a knife, but probably not. And he might be cowed by an older woman who shows she’s not as easily threatened as a naive young girl and who’s yelling in his face that when a woman tells you to leave, you fucking leave. No means no!!! That’s how the scenario plays in my head, anyway. I have no idea what I’d have done if he’d confronted me. I might be too terrified to do anything except try to slink past him. Photo by Ilya Cher on Unsplash What would you have done? I offer my story with no suggestion as to how you might have handled it, or ‘should have’. That’s what I did, for better or for worse. I think I did the right thing because nothing bad happened afterward. I was more vigilant as my friend suggested and I kept an eye peeled for strange young men in the building. All the worst-case scenarios my fevered limbic system conjured up never came to pass. Had he confronted me, and hurt me, I might well feel differently. I don’t know if there is a best way to handle these things. I mentally went through an escalation of events that night: A woman who couldn’t get a man to leave. Who began to sound scared. Something that might have been someone being assaulted, if not necessarily O.J.-scary. Then, a woman who sounded like she was in immediate physical danger and with no one around to help except me. If something had happened to her it would be my fault! Maybe in the end I just couldn’t live with that. I don’t know. I make no judgments on women who might have done differently. Who put their own safety first. I can’t blame anyone for that extremely personal decision. But I feel a little stronger and a bit more powerful. I haven’t seen the girl down the hall since then and I hope she makes better companionship decisions in the future. When 911 showed up I listened once again at the door and she sounded okay, her voice was placating. She didn’t sound like she’d been traumatized by a physical assault. I hope she was at least a little embarrassed. I know I would have been, and wouldn’t have wanted anyone calling the police on me again. That’s what I did. What would you have done? How feminist are any of us when the shit hits the fan with a violent man?

Ben was bred to hate the way some women are bred to be victims Photo by Tycho Atsma on Unsplash Ben scowled in his profile photo and oozed contempt for all things female with every word. He targeted every new woman on the social media platform like an estrogen-seeking guided missile. He left snarky misogynist comments, hoping to spark fights with feminists. His spelling and grammar were pretty good for an Angry White Man but his thoughts so jumbled they often weren’t coherent. The moment I strayed from business topics like ‘But What Are You SELLING?’ and ‘Who Really Needs A Company Blog?’ and ‘Hamlet For Goldfish’, (okay, worst business article title ever) to a call for more forgiveness for others, he emerged to leave an irrelevant rant about gun rights. I hadn’t mentioned guns or rights. I ignored him. When I wrote a female-centered middle-of-the-road article about LinkedIn women complaining about sexism, Ben introduced me to the acronym MGTOW — Men Going Their Own Way. He loved to go on about MGTOW. His goal was to put women back in our place, threatening us with what he claimed were our ever-decreasing value to men. The new platform skewed toward older members rather than easily-triggered younger women, so us dumb feminist broads, as he saw us, weren’t much threatened by a powerless dumpy dipstick who claimed a VP role in healthcare systems and had chosen a ratbag Third World country to live in. He wanted us to understand he’d removed himself from the dating scene and he was one more man you’ll never ensnare in your dirty little clutches, you ungrateful man-hating broads!!! To which we digitally glanced at each other, shrugged, and said, “Thank you!” His transparent, tissue-thin armor revealed a man broken by his own perceived lack of power. There’s nothing new about Men Who Go Their Own Way; real MGTOWs just do it without alerting CNN. Women Who Go Their Own Way (I am one) do the same. We just live our lives without an ostentatious publicity campaign. Because M/WGTOWs don’t care what the rest of you do. We’ve got shit to do of our own. Ben was a lone Angry White Man on a new blogging platform, with about ten million users. He was the only one who needed a warning label. He had a story, and I guessed it wasn’t pretty. His monothematic articles reiterated how awful women were, how we were gold-diggers, only wanted rich good-looking tall men, how love and romance and marriage were a sham, how we mistreated men and made them feel like nothing. The last seemed directly related to a devastating event when a partner banished him to the couch. I felt sympathy for his clear pain, but I wondered what life with him must have been like. Emerging from my own Angry Drunken Bitch phase, I couldn’t fault the guy for being angry if he’d been disappointed in love. Hey, that’s how it often starts, bad treatment by the opposite sex. Plus, I recognize today’s feminism manifests a toxic antagonism to men including stereotype man-haters ( La plus ça change… ). Good, decent men are being driven into the arms of misogynist MRAs, an initially-sound movement which had long since been hijacked by haters. I have a personal mandate to reach out to those men who haven’t yet given themselves over to the Dark Side. They are our brothers in sensible, rational gender relations. We need to befriend and de-Ben them. There was no engaging on any adult level with him, though I tried. Ben was too angry to reach. He kept insulting me and trying to pick fights, the Lone Angry White Man most regarded more with pity than anger, including the other male subscribers. How to breed a misogynist Little details began to emerge. Ben ran away from home, joined the military, and made it clear his life lesson was his utter worthlessness to others. He moved to one of the most misogynist countries in the world. Big surprise. Now he’s a Rich American in a desperate country where ‘bride napping’ is a huge human rights issue. I wonder how that plays out for his sex life. He says he’s ‘training’ the future generations of men for the ‘realities’ of dating in the Western world, once again hoping to scare us gals into thinking guys like him have us figured out, soon the gravy train’s going to end and men like him will be back in charge to undo everything feminism ruined. I regard him as a public service filter, removing the most toxic men from the singles world. He’s clear he doesn’t meet Western women’s exacting standards. That anger toward purple squirrel daters is somewhat justified. Although who would want to be with someone that angry? He reminds me of women who complain about all the bad men in the world but never ask what they themselves have to offer, or why they’re attracted to bad men, and vice versa. Ben noted when the family homestead got leveled he couldn’t imagine a more fitting end for the scene of the ‘shitshow’ he grew up in. More details emerged. His father left when he was small. He never knew him. His mother told Ben he was a mistake and his father was worthless. She had a real thing for ‘worthless’. She remarried, and Ben and his siblings suffered numerous cruelties. He witnessed his stepfather murder his mother while he was still in grade school. Ben felt responsible because he’d mentioned she was looking to replace Stepdad after she divorced him. Her murderer got off, Ben claims, by buying the courts off. Hubby #3 wouldn’t have been an improvement as Ben claimed Mom was shopping in the prison systems. He says he attempted suicide many times when he was younger. He was one angry mofo. When speaking of abused women you often hear, “She was raised in an abusive family; it’s the only thing she knows! She doesn’t understand love doesn’t have to come with abuse! That there’s such a thing as healthy, functional relationships! Don’t blame the victim!” No argument here. 110% agreement. Feminists and anti-violence activists too often forget the other victims of violence — the men trained to be violent in horrible environments. I didn’t like Ben much but I couldn’t hate him. He wasn’t wrong about everything, and I recognized a fellow psychological miscreant. Sure, there was a level of romantic entitlement thwarted in his posts. I could relate. It would be easier to hate him without knowing his story. Social media’s global hatefest offers fatuous explanations and a Manichaean view of humanity: Simplistic cartoon comprehension of evil, people suck, white people are privileged, black people are racist and in denial, feminism ruined everything and The Patriarchy ruins humanity. Trumpies are all stupid. SJWs hate everybody. Less do we ask, “How did that person get to be the way s/he is?” Do feminists ever look ‘under the misogynist hood’? Abuse breeds abusers Some have told me they feel like robots or zombies, that they feel their bodies are empty or filled with straw, not flesh and blood, that instead of having veins and nerves they have ropes or cords. One inmate told me he feels like “food that is decomposing.” — James Gilligan James Gilligan detailed his career as a prison psychologist in his now-classic book Violence: Reflection On A National Epidemic. He describes some of the horrible physical, sexual and psychological abuse these former innocent boys underwent by parents and caretakers. His summary of them as the ‘living dead’ describes their own subjective experience. Gilligan felt he was living in “cloud-cuckoo-land” when “…I hear people suggesting that capital punishment will deter murder and induce more ‘reverence for life’. The men I know already feel so spiritually dead that they long for physical death as well.” Ben’s vicious work drew me like that proverbial moth. I wanted to know more. Not out of a prurient interest but to understand the Making of the Misogynist the way I seek to understand what creates and perpetuates female victimhood. He reminded me of me. I used to be that angry. It made me abusive for awhile, too. Not physically, but emotionally and psychologically. My head wasn’t a fun place to live, either. The plot sickens Ben claimed he was molested by an aunt. Was he telling the truth? BELIEVE THE VICTIM! We can’t focus on the problems of young girls growing up with abuse who become serial victims, yet ignore the very same conditions that turn out the men who become misogynist abusers. Let’s remember: Women also respond to abuse by becoming abusers themselves. Some men become chronic victims. Men commit violent physical abuse more than women because they can. Women do it in defense or when they think they can get away with it. We see the latter dynamic in the mutually abusive Johnny Depp-Amber Heard divorce. In audio tapes it’s clear she’s also an abuser, and his response was often to leave the room. I make no excuses for physical abuse, ever. I ask we consider both sides of the coin, and condemn it equally. Women are no angels either. We’re masters of psychological/emotional abuse, because we’re wired for it. Some of it’s neurological; those parts of our brain are larger and more bridged than men’s. It may also be evolutionary; this is how women have survived to get what we wanted or needed where men possessed an outsized amount of power. The beauty of forgiveness “We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.” — The Dalai Lama Put aside ‘The Patriarchy’ for a moment. As we debate misogyny, privilege, and entitlement we need to stop looking at men as a cohesive group (they’re not) and begin looking at individuals. The focus on this all-encompassing ‘patriarchy’ has become a fatuous feminist shortcut for not thinking too hard about what contributes to the other side of abuse. Forgiveness has become a dirty little virtue. It’s not even cool for many Christians anymore, who think the only person worthy of forgiveness is Donald Trump. Forgiving doesn’t excuse; it’s about letting go of your anger towards others who have wronged you. Why? Because you suffer, not the ones who wronged you, when you don’t let go, and because, get real, you’ve wronged others as well. You have much in common with your adversaries. You’ve forgotten about it, but they haven’t. Part of the forgiveness process is looking at things from a different point of view, and most importantly, asking what things look like from another’s perspective. It’s NOT the same as giving your transgressors a free pass. You forgive, but you don’t forget. You’re under no obligation to ever have contact with them again, if you choose. After all, you want to avoid this transgression against you in the future. So when we judge others, however deserved, I ask: What do you have in common with them? Plenty of hateful feminists are no better than the misogynists they condemn. Maybe, if you dislike hateful men that much, you don’t look under your own hood any more than anti-feminist misogynists do. Where feminism hurts us all Today’s angry MGTOWs may be juiced by an unhealthy dollop of male entitlement, but there’s genuine hurt underneath. Ben’s tragic life was marred by bad relationships with women. You think abused women don’t know any other way? Neither do their brothers. Ben never had a chance at a healthy, functional relationship because he has no idea what one looks like. Feminists and misogynists need to stop blanket-blaming and start regarding each other as unique, often-tragic individuals. Misogynists need to stop thinking about their own pain for a moment and ask why some women believe in a patriarchy, why they think men still have too much power, why manspreading drives some nuts. Misogynists should try talking to us for a change. And listening. They don’t have to agree with everything. Feminists and activists who blanket-blame men and ‘patriarchy’ need to do the same. No one is born a misogynist or a victim. While there are certain ways the brain can develop that might predispose certain individuals toward one or the other, environment plays a huge role. Male entitlement and privilege do, too. Prisons are filled with violent men, most of whom were made, not born. We need to show as much compassion for men who grew up with violent abuse as we do for women. I rail against victimhood, but I acknowledge real victimhood exists. It often starts in childhood. For everybody. The only way to stop damaged adults is to better protect children. Why don’t we yet understand that? This post first appeared on Medium in 2020.

What we're expected to disbelieve about biological reality approaches QAnon-level credulity Image by Anik Islam from Pixabay Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. - Daniel Moynihan, American politician, sociologist, diplomat, 1983 Has the American left finally jumped the shark? Has it stretched its credibility and influence past the breaking point, as Donald Trump's Capitol coup attempt drove many thousands of voters to switch their affiliation to Democrat or independent last year? The left criticizes the right for its non-commitment to facts nor clearly established reality, such as embracing Trump's Big Lie of a stolen election, along with its overall science-phobic denial or 'skepticism' of climate change and COVID vaccines. Then there's the rise of QAnon: The into-the-ionosphere bugspit-crazy religious fundamentalist-fueled right-wing conspiracy theories so insane social media has been forced to ban them. The left points its scolding finger at the sheer lunacy of what's become of the American right and the Republican party, but what about the log in its own collective eye? The left is no less guilty of science denial. Let's remember how the left embraced the modern anti-vaxx movement's Big Lie linking vaccines to autism, captained by former Playboy Bunny Jenny McCarthy and then-partner Jim Carrey. They relied on their celebrity to influence and persuade others that vaccines harm children, their information drawn from a since-discredited medical journal article linking a childhood vaccine to autism. Some medical professionals question whether her own son was misdiagnosed , since he seems to have 'recovered' as a young adult, and autism isn't a condition one recovers from. McCarthy, Carrey, and many other celebrities suffering delusions of adequacy have done untold damage to children who caught preventable childhood diseases because their parents were afraid to vaccinate them. Not to mention the later damage to the country as a whole when the right embraced vaccine hysteria last year, which has kept America firmly at the top of the global list for infections, deaths and hospitalizations. Yoo-Ess - Finally #1 at something!Source: Bing COVID-19 Tracker Today, there's a newer giant mother of a movement on the left insisting we deny the evidence of our own lying eyes, approaching the level of no less than the right's the-pandemic-is-a-hoax incredulity. Ideology trumps facts in what may be the left's jump-the-shark moment, one that may drive as many away from the left as Trump's insurrection has become GOP voter repellant. Exhibit A Until about twelve years ago, 'transgender' wasn't a word you heard much, and even less likely to encounter such an individual. I met four before the explosion in the late '00s. Today, millions of people worldwide identify as transgender and others regularly state their preferred pronouns except, perhaps, those who need to do it the most. The identification of what once seemed pretty obvious - who's male or female, man or woman - became far more contentious as certain trans-activists increasingly voiced aggressive redefinitions asserting that anyone who identifies as a woman is a woman. Interestingly, transmen's participation is noticeably sparse in this debate. Perhaps because there's no strong push to be permitted into male-only spaces or to be accepted by natal males the way some transwomen have pushed to be included in women's-only spaces and accepted as 'one of us'. What's mind-boggling is how quickly educated, formerly rational minds have assimilated the new assertion that a person with a penis is a woman, simply by demand. Reality is not transphobic 'Transphobic' and 'TERF' (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) are the go-to labels hurled at those who insist biology is real, and that women need their own spaces to protect themselves from historically predatory men. Especially in female prisons, where sex assaults by 'transwoman' prisoners of female prisoners receive far less press coverage than sexual assaults of transwomen prisoners . I put 'transwoman' in quotes because out-of-the-blue convicted rapist transgender self-identification like the UK's notorious 'Karen White' seems a tad suspicious. It's hardly unreasonable to ask whether a new desire for a convicted sex offender to be transferred to a women's prison and be granted access to women might not be because he suddenly feels like a 'she'. Bring this up, and one is accused of being 'transphobic' as opposed to, say, being 'anti-rape'. Never is it acknowledged, by this small fraction of trans-activists and their supporters, that one can be supportive of the trans movement without necessarily agreeing to every assertion. Just ask Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling . She's become the most visible face of biology pushback against a movement she has otherwise clearly historically supported, merely because she asserts biology is real and people with a penis don't magically turn into women on their say-so. We're told that people may not 'feel right' in the body they were born into and that's indisputable because no one knows how someone else actually feels. Before social media and celebrities lent a distinct air of coolness to 'coming out' as trans, a much smaller fraction of the population made real transitions, at least as far as they were financially able to take it, at a time with far less social and familial support and less public understanding of the more unique gender dysphoria, the kind you don't outgrow. CC0 2.0 image by Tim Eytan on Flickr Feelings are real, but not scientific, and they don't always accurately reflect established reality. I once met someone who believed he was almost a literal Anne Rice-style vampire, except of course, he wasn't. We conversed in daylight, for one thing, and for another, he acknowledged he'd never drunk blood. People believe conspiracy theories because they feel right or 'true'. It doesn't make them right or true. Consider the Flat Earth Society. Or Dr. Fauci about alternative methods to prevent or treat COVID. So you can feel like a man or a woman, even though you weren't born that way. Fair enough, but on some level, one can't change one's biological reality. Which is why transwomen don't menstruate and transmen can't impregnate a woman, and some guy in Baltimore doesn't make an ash of himself when he walks around by day. Biology is real A young couple I know have proven it. They had a baby last year. One partner is non-binary (they) and the other is a transwoman (she/her). The non-binary partner carried a baby in their belly for nine months and gave birth the way women have birthed babies for millions of years. I hadn't been sure whether the baby was their partner's. Although the penis didn't prove paternity the baby's eyes certainly did, when I saw the first photos. They were the transwoman's. This miracle could only have occurred with a biological female and a biological male. I accept them and treat them the way they want, because I like them. It doesn't much matter to me what their genes state, incontrovertibly. I can be tolerant because I hail from a lifetime of other 'identities', even though I've never believed or felt like I was one of those personas. Additionally, accepting others' unrealities is comprehensible if you grow up in any sort of religious country. You become accustomed to highly unscientific beliefs you nevertheless go along with, if only to keep the peace. Demonstrably questionable faith-based belief systems aren't always, and don't have to be, toxic. For all Christianity's faults, it's also promoted laudable moral notions of kindness, compassion, redemption, forgiveness, care for the poor and sick, turning the other cheek and yes, even tolerance. Christianity can recognize when it has erred in the past and self-corrected. It fueled and Biblically 'justified' the transatlantic slave trade, but it was Christian abolitionists who ended it. For all its own faults, the fledgling trans movement forces us to question what we think we know about gender. Sincere trans minds ask how important gender is and whether it's fluid. It reminds me of earlier debates we had in college forty years ago about sexual preference, and whether humans are actually bisexual. Are we simply gay/straight/center-bi? I adopted the view I still hold today, that sexual preference is a spectrum, validated by a senior citizen friend who came out as a homosexual (to absolutely no one's surprise) late in life, despite having been married and claiming to be attracted to, and in love with his wife (whom he'd long since divorced). We were told long ago some are 'born gay', and they can't change that, but that wasn't completely true. I know some who say they didn't know they were gay until they were older. Perhaps something within them changed. I knew an adult woman who was a lesbian until she started falling in love with men. 'Conversion therapy' doesn't change desires but unknown biological processes, or changes in the brain we don't recognize or acknowledge yet, may. Photo by Baran Lotfollahi on Unsplash Sex-based brain differences Neuroscientific research invites interesting speculation on just how tabula rasa the left would like us to believe human brains are. Decades-long accumulation of evidence for sex-based brain differences demonstrates there are, in fact, inherent differences in males and females and they do influence behavior. Its significance is up for debate, but a widely-read Stamford University article on brain researcher Dr. Nirao Shah 's work concludes that in human brains, the influence of neither culture nor biology is set at zero. Shah's research concerned neural brain circuits regulating specific behaviors, so he focused on aggression, mating and parenting differences between the sexes, since the behaviors are innate survival and propagation essentials. He sought to identify the genes linked to sex-differing behavior and thereby identify the neuronal circuits underneath those behaviors. Sex-based brain differences were hardly unknown to science but they hadn't received much attention. Once they did, the left strongly denied there was any such thing as a 'male' or 'female' brain. That's arguably true, although it's incorrect to say there are no differences. It conflicted with the left's traditional hostility to biological explanations for human differences, with good reason. Conservatives have traditionally used said differences to justify an appalling array of human rights abuses and bigotries, such as human slavery and the oppression of women. Shah's research and many others demonstrate well-documented brain differences in men and women influencing sex-based human behavior. Environment and culture undeniably influence the way each individual grows up as well, but it too isn't the only explanation. We don't have much understanding yet of the underlying reasons for why people identify as male or female or some position in between, but we can observe that 'identification' doesn't always match behavior, which can remain remarkably sex-based. It begs the question of why certain transwomen activists sound and occasionally behave so aggressively male and traditionally misogynist or why they default to classically misogynist names against natal women who challenge them . Many wonder why transmen are less on the front lines, why they're not pushing into male-only spaces, and whether a natal female brain has something to do with it, regardless of the biology/culture makeup. Good (original) girls don't make waves. Some may not want to be defined by their birth body but they can't claim one is a man or a woman merely as 'identification'. Being one or the other in what is and always has been a largely binary world is skin-deep. Genes don't lie. Neither do genitals. Why should we accept genuine, but unscientific feelings as the sole arbiter of reality? Asserting someone is a woman because that's how she feels is clearly disingenuous when she's still got a penis and can grow a beard. Asserting that 'some men menstruate' is equally disingenuous; the menstruating 'man' is biologically a woman. One's brain has to be logically crippled not to recognize the reason female athletes push back so hard on allowing 'transwomen' to compete in women's sporting events isn't 'transphobia' but because transwomen still retain their male-born physical strength and superior speed, giving them a biological advantage over natal females. It's why sports are gendered. There's no sport in knowing who the winner will be before the race. A new scientific study released in December found that transwomen still run 12% faster than natal women after two years of hormone treatment (with only a 5% reduction in strength after one year). Try explaining what a victory it actually is for your daughter's track team to be so woke as to allow a 'transwoman' athlete who beats out all the natal girls, every single time. One wonders why transboys/men don't stampede to compete in male-only competitions. In conclusion When I was younger we laughed at willfully scientifically ignorant religious fundamentalists who denied the world was older than six millennia, instead created in six days. The most extreme believed the world was flat, because a holy book strongly suggested it was. Today we laugh, sometimes through tears, at how willfully scientifically ignorant people are when they claim COVID vaccines 'haven't been tested enough' and haven't demonstrated safety. Many of these same people blithely get a flu shot every year and ignore the clear, in-your-face evidence worldwide that vaccines save lives and the unvaccinated wind up at Reddit's Herman Cain Awards . Say hi to Hermie for us, Meat! Creative Commons 2.0 photo from Super Festivals on Wikimedia Commons How much more in-your-face can you be than the biological reality that you can only change the window dressing, but not the genes? We embrace others' identities every single day, however privately we might disagree with them, and they do the same for us. Our self-image and 'identity' may not synchronize with others' perception of us. 'White privilege' is a perfect example. Think You Don't Have 'White Privilege'? It's Not Your Decision We don't agree with each other on everything, yet we can still be friends with or love others, even if they're Antifa or a Trumper or believe that Hanson was the greatest, most underrated band in the history of the world. Scientific denialism just makes one look ignorant. Facts are facts, and the truth is inconvenient. People can see evidence with their own eyes. Do otherwise sane, rational people consider how they sound when they insist 'transwomen are real women'? Or when they attack someone like J.K. Rowling for insisting, essentially, that the sky is blue? People might pipe down privately because they don't want their lives destroyed by anonymous cowards on Twitter, but behind closed doors they whisper to each other how stupid the left is because it can't face a blindingly clear biological reality. The left has jumped the shark and taken the genuine reality of gender dysphoria much farther than it needed to go. Biology is real. Genes don't lie. Everyone knows it. Including, I'm convinced, deep down, the denialist left.

President Biden's pledge to choose a black woman to replace retiring Supreme Court judge Stephen Breyer reminds us how it's never been about the most qualified. Alleged leading Biden nominee fave Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, CC0 4.0 photo by Wikicago on Wikimedia Commons President Biden's announcement he will choose a black woman (he may already have announced his pick by the time you read this) to fill the seat of retiring liberal U.S. Supreme Court Judge Steven Breyer has cued a predictable, and understandable chorus of 'tokenization' critiques. Biden is fulfilling a campaign promise to black voters to appoint a black Supreme Court justice, and now it's time to deliver. The predictable part is Republicans who've suddenly 'got relijjin' on the need for a 'merit-based' pick. As if Supreme Court nominees have ever been entirely about merit and not identity politics, beginning with the first Supreme Court in 1790 consisting of one white male Chief Justice and five associate white male justices, which no one questioned. One initial nominee, Robert H. Harrison, declined to serve, and President Washington replaced him with James Iredell rather than asking, "Hey, I was just talkin' to Martha, maybe we should add a little representation for the other half of so-called free America. Whaddaya think of a woman?" Back then, it was pretty inarguable who could serve. Leadership was 100% white men and women's place was quite specifically in the home. As for those few black freedmen? Not even under consideration, and pretty inarguably unqualified after a previous history of unpaid servitude and no political experience. Then again, seven years after the end of the Revolution, a bunch of baby ex-colonials with no prior experience in running their own society without royal oversight were winging it as much as any white woman or black freedman would have. Had they been allowed any input, one wonders how different America might look today. The unspoken Supreme Court white-guy qualifications remained until 1981 when President Ronald Reagan fulfilled his own campaign promise to shake things up by nominating a woman. Sandra Day O'Connor broke a 191-year-old tradition. Conservatives howled over Reagan as they now do over Biden. Funny how little they spoke of 'merit' in the late teens while a politically inexperienced and demonstrably ignorant President made the government safe for overprivileged, underachieving white men again. Long detour off the Merit Parkway Granted, Biden's optics aren't good today in the ultra-divided Disunited States of America, where both far sides of the political chasm play their own version of identity politics. Ideally, we would pick the best of the best of anyone who'll have the job. Before 1981, the pool of qualified white men was fairly sizeable, and while the choices almost always closely matched the political ideology of the President, few could challenge them on merit alone. A nominee had to have serious legal chops to be considered. It was only when Reagan specifically chose a woman that Americans wondered whether O'Connor was chosen for merit or her biology. Did anyone think to ask whether we were ever truly getting the best and the brightest before anyone thought to nominate anyone other than a white man? Probably there weren't any equivalent candidates among their ranks until women and POC were allowed into the hallowed halls of higher education. Arguably, American POC and women have a lot of catching up to do, having been held back by twelve generations of slavery and 12,000 years of male control. Then again, none of the original white guys back in 1790 had any clue how to run a country as they hammered out whole new, untried ways to govern, including a separate judicial branch unattached to executive authority, apart from the President nominating replacements. Choosing only white men, consciously or not, shut down the pool of opportunity from others who might have added real value and more importantly, an outside-the-box perspective. The pool of prospective black female lawyers Biden is considering will almost certainly be more qualified and less 'problematic' than any of Trump's picks. Republicans weren't concerned about 'meritocracy' when they blocked confirmation hearings and votes for any Obama choice to fill Antonin Scalia's position when the Justice passed away in February 2016. Mitch McConnell claimed the people should 'have a voice' in who appoints the vacated seat, with the October election ten months away, rather than his stark terror Obama would choose a progressive nominee of any identity. Republicans got lucky with the election outcome and Donald Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch to replace Scalia. Gorsuch was a nice (i.e., non-problematic) white former preppy who Trump correctly expected would vote quite reliably on the conservative end . Educationally and legally, he had the chops, and wasn't the worst conservative white man Trump could have chosen but not even close to the best of the best. Next Trump appointed the morally-challenged Brett Kavanaugh, with a good but not exemplary legal background, credibly accused of crimes he could no longer be prosecuted for since his accusers had failed to report them the same century as they allegedly occurred. Without the sex crime allegations, Kavanaugh was at best, okay, but not superlative. Trump appointed his least-meritocratic pick, Antonin Scalia protegé Amy Coney Barrett, hardly exemplary as a legal mind and who had been a 'handmaid' in a traditionalist religious group. 'Handmaids' in the People of Praise performed pastoral care, gave some community advice and organized aid, the usual 'church lady' activities. The group changed 'handmaids' to the awkward-sounding 'women leaders' after the popular Hulu TV series attached an unsavory association to the word. Former members describe the People as pretty firmly entrenched with male leadership and the man as the head of the household. Which is pretty much how Trump views women: Created by Who-Cares to serve men, and part thy legs on command. Barrett likely looked like a loyal 'good girl' who would continue to do what men directed her to do. If ever there was an argument against concern for merit for any government position, let alone the Supreme Court, it was during the Trump years, when the least-qualified human being in America was President. Diversity of perspective matters too The U.S. Supreme Court Justice position is a little like the astronaut profession. Many might aspire to it, but only a handful ever get the job. America doesn't look the same as it did in 1790. White men don't own people and women and POC have more power than they did back then. An all-white Supreme Court doesn't properly represent the country over whose lives they create the ultimate rulings. Neither does an all-male Court. A black female nominee deals a blow both to the male-heavy and nearly-white history of the Court and will introduce a new intellectual, legal experience the Court has never had before. When Americans ask why Biden is specifically targeting a black woman for the role, I'm reminded of the answer Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave when asked a similarly weird question after his party won an election seven years ago. Political perspective diversity matters as much as legal qualifications and experience in government, where entrusted others make decisions affecting all our lives. Is it 'affirmative action'? Not necessarily, and it doesn't necessarily mean 'less-qualified'. No one will ever agree on who was 'most qualified' but it's pretty much a given whoever President Biden nominates will be better qualified than a guy who behaved during his investigation hearing like the beery, entitled, affluenza-addled adolescent preppy boy he was, along with a woman whose religious group reinforced traditionalist, anti-feminist views of women. What would a truly merit-based Supreme Court pick system look like? Let's pretend we're somewhere in the future, we don't know how far and it's not important. America is more equal than it was back in the 2020s, even if it's not perfect and we've recognized true parity may never be achievable. We've reached a point where we acknowledge women and POC have caught up enough that we can now introduce a more merit-based system. Who knows, maybe the imbalance by then will be not enough white representation. (The Atlantic disagrees.) I'm fascinated by Malcolm Gladwell's description of 'blind auditions' for symphony orchestras in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. He details 1950s criticism that orchestras were heavily white and male, that musicians seemed chosen by favoritism, sexism, and racism rather than talent and ability. Ergo, 'blind auditions' were set up in which candidates auditioned behind a wall or a curtain and were judged solely on their performance. It took a little tweaking; orchestras remained stubbornly male until someone realized the characteristic clicking of female high heels was subconsciously biasing the judges. Once required to remove one's shoes for a silent walk to the chair, and suddenly merit won the day. Some have disputed the blind audition story but studies have supported subconscious bias in hiring overall and I wonder: What if we had an AI system in the future, far more sophisticated than the ATS's (Automatic Tracking Systems) hiring managers use today? One in which reports are generated on a Supreme Court candidate's qualifications and background experience but all identifying information is stripped out. The President's recommendations could be included as well. The Senate sees or hears these reports and then interviews the candidates as they always have done, except behind a wall and with a device to alter the voice to sound like every other candidate's. Some senators might recognize a candidate by their experience, or the way they spoke; for example, if someone speaks with an accent, a particular dialect, or is known for certain catchphrases. The nominees might be coached, or seek coaching, to learn how not to give subtle cues away. It wouldn't be perfect, but it might introduce a genuine return to 'merit' choice from a much broader pool of people and bring us much closer, if not completely, to true parity. No matter what, the U.S. Supreme Court won't be as white anymore and there WILL be better 'identity' representation. The only problem it doesn't resolve is political diversity, which also matters more than we acknowledge. It's not fair, nor is it in the best interests of the country, to be over-represented by any one political point of view. Liberal, conservative, Libertarian, contrarian, even centrist ideology doesn't have all the answers. That might be the much bigger question in our future Supreme Court Justice appointment scenario: How diverse, ideologically, is the Court? In the end, that will likely matter far more than any personal identity 'merit' choices do today. Or ever have been. 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!

My friend did. She couldn’t see the red flags Photo by Jesús Boscán on Unsplash I used to go clubbing back in the day with a woman who didn’t know how not to get hit by men. Sandy resembled Kirstie Alley, then popular on Cheers. Her face bore a sort of friendly fatuity which wasn’t her resting-dimbulb-face. There just wasn’t much going on underneath. We had little in common. But she was fun to go clubbing with. We were in our mid-twenties; she had three kids and a divorce under her belt. She’d married at seventeen to get out of a bad home life to a man twice her age, her ‘rescuer,’ until the battering forced her to rescue herself and her kids. She bore little curiosity beyond them, her retail job and her search for a man who wouldn’t hit her. The ex hadn’t been the only one. “Sandy, what’s your deal?” I’d ask. “I just don’t have these problems.” I belly danced apart from my day job, performing for men’s birthdays mostly. My roommate, who co-owned the lingerie store where Sandy worked, employed me sometimes to dance outside the store’s entrance on the High Holidays (Christmas, Mother’s Day, Halloween). Men practically came to me in my sleep. None were the sort that set off my Danger Detector. “I can’t imagine anyone abusing you,” my brother once said. “I think you’d rip his dick off.” That about summed it up. I didn’t attract abusers, nor was I attracted to them. I recognized the warning signs at a very early age. “How do you find these nice guys?” Sandy asked one night when we’d eschewed dancing to check out a new Yuppie sports bar. “I’m attracted to them,” I said. “How do you know they’re nice?” Good question. I scanned the clientele. The guys were largely clean-cut, groomed and nicely-dressed. This wasn’t like the redneck dive where I was greeted with a hand on my ass. “Let’s try something,” I suggested. “Which guys here do you like?” We had no plans to chat anyone up that night, but had I been on the prowl, several might have been in my own crosshairs. Sandy looked around. “That one’s cute.” She tipped her beer in his direction. Ugh. Yes, he was attractive. I wouldn’t have touched him with a ten-foot Hungarian. He wore a wife-beater. Had a porn-’stache, although we didn’t call them that in the ’80s. Muscular and manspread-y. “Yeah, that one’s going to hit you,” I said. “Try again.” She picked out another one. No wife-beater this time, but just as macho and he-man. “Yeah, he’s going to hit you too,” I said. “Try again.” She picked out another one. I forget what he looked like. Just another Master of the Universe. The kind of guy whose eye I avoided. “Uh-uh.” “Then who would you pick?” “That one,” I said, pointing to a curly-haired cute guy with a coordinated outfit. “Or that one. That one. That one.” “Boring,” she said after each one. “Boring. Boring. Boring.” “I don’t think they’ll hit you.” Of course, I had no way of knowing, but I had plenty of faith in my own good judgment. Jerkwads weren’t attracted to me, or if they were they didn’t bother because they could tell I wouldn’t put up with their shit. I walked around with purpose, like I owned myself. I made myself heard. I was feminist, but not Ripley-vs-the-Alien. Guys understood I wasn’t a victim type. “Sandy,” I said, “your problem’s clear. You have a thing for abusive men. These macho types are danger boys. The ones you call ‘boring’ are the ones who don’t hit. What you value in men is messed up.” Fishing for abusers My roommate saw Sandy eating lunch in the food court. She watched a skanky guy approach and strike up a conversation. Sandy didn’t do what safety-savvy women would, sending disinterest signals like not looking him in the eye, short, polite, but non-friendly non-answers to his questions, and if he didn’t bugger off say, “I have to meet my boyfriend.” No, Sandy gave him her phone number. “She just attracts these guys like magnets,” observed my roommate, often annoyed by Sandy’s lack of brains and common sense. She knew a thing or two about abusive men from her own former partner. Except that she learned her lesson. She never allowed an abuser into her life again. She married a lovely man several years later. I belly danced at their wedding. Making the right choice My roommate figured out she had the power to decide who to allow into her life. I don’t know how Sandy’s life turned out. We lost touch when we stopped clubbing. I know she died at 45, but from natural causes, with her children at her side. I hope she found a nice guy who wasn’t ‘boring’. I spend a lot of time pondering why I don’t have the same problems with abusive men other women do. I grew up in a non-abusive household with a mother who drilled into my head early never to allow a man to hit me. The first time should be the last. She taught me it’s a choice. Not all women understand that, for reasons that aren’t their fault. What Women Can Learn From Studying Pickup Artists A man who batters is always at fault, but we’re ultimately responsible for our own safety, which some women haven’t learned, perhaps due to upbringing, a repressive religion or culture, or buying into toxic societal myths like the appeal of the decisive, always-leading hero. Not their fault. First glance isn’t always spot-on, of course. When Danger Boy is a Nice Guy I kept an eye on a ditzy-seeming blonde at a medieval re-creation event years ago. Many of us found her kind of annoying because she played at being dumb when in fact she’d majored in Medieval Literature in college. Not quite the ‘doughnut degree’ young women back then often sought when they were more interested in their M.R.S than a B.A. or Ph.D. Men trailed her wherever she went. I watched her, because I didn’t like the company she kept. That cute dumb blonde routine was catnip for abusers. I particularly didn’t like one of her groupies. Young, a ‘fighter’ (in mock medieval battles), strong, masculine-looking, and from New Jersey. Education and smarts didn’t necessarily correlate to romantic common sense. I’d known plenty of bright, battered young women. Canadian radio host Jian Ghomeshi pretended to be a ‘good guy’. His dizzy groupies came back for more abuse, so desperate were they to get into his pants. CC0 2.0 photo by Sarjoun Faour via Canadian Film Centre on Wikimedia Commons Danger Boy turned out to be a pretty decent fellow, once I got to know him. The Blonde Ditz, I found later, also had a thing for nice ‘boring’ guys. I stopped keeping an eye on her. Partner abuse starts with who we allow into our lives. It’s critical to recognize the early danger signals. Plenty of abusers turn dark only after they’ve hooked you in with that fake good-guy crap. Then they turn controlling. They pitch tantrums when you go out without them, even on a Girl’s Night. They offer cheesy excuses like, “I worry about you.” Their overblown sense of entitlement already leads them to believe they have a ‘right’ to a woman, once they have her attention. When she sleeps with them, they think they ‘own’ her. Worst idea ever: Having a baby with them. Then they’re chained to this rage-y manchild. Getting out just got more complicated. Lots more. Sometimes men slip into controlling behavior if they’re allowed. A guy once tried to order me to do things and I responded, “Don’t tell me what to do.” He got the message. I had another, the day he met me, decide he would attend a family wedding with me in a few months. “You’re not going,” I said. “Why not?” "Because it’ll be too soon.” “I can meet your family.” “I’ll decide when you’ll meet my family. If ever.” Case closed. I want women to know they have agency over their own lives. Today’s fragile feminism pays lip service to it but often falls short. We need to examine what we want in our relationships. Sandy preferred masculine take-charge men, probably because she had so little control over her own life. Needing a hero offering ‘rescue’ provides a wide avenue for abusers to move in and seize control. The men she valued were the riskier ones. I wonder if she ever learned from her experiences, recognized the pattern in the men who hit. I wonder if she ever remembered our conversation in the Yuppie bar. Who do you attract? Who are you attracted to? It starts with choice. 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!

Humor speaks truth to power. Trump fears it. Musk fears it. Dictators fear it. So do the 'woke'. Suggested new Twitter title for Elon Musk: Bertinelli's Bitch! After Twitter's new 'free speech' fanboy rendered 'blue checks' available to everyone for eight Washingtons a month (no verification required), the adorable little blue-checked 'Barbara' from the 1970s sitcom One Day At A Time 'pwned' the richest man in the world. The Barbie Badass led an army of copytrolls against the Head Twit by changing her account name to his, tweeting and retweeting pre-midterms pro-Democrat vote-blue messages. Other blue-checkers followed suit and the 'real' Musk, who said he's voting Republican for the first time in his life (I guess he's finally rich enough), pitched a twitfit and began suspending anyone impersonating him. Starting with comedian Kathy Griffin, and including Sarah Silverman, who proved Musk to be a lying sack of--well, she Musk-tweeted, "I am a freedom of speech absolutist and I eat doody for breakfast every day". Bertinelli was not suspended and no one knows why. Maybe Musk had a crush on her when he was a kid. Maybe he suspended Kathy Griffin because she once tweeted a photo of herself holding Trump's bloody, decapitated head (Spoiler alert: It wasn't really his). Musk and Trump have an uneven relationship with each other - mega-narcissists can't stand rivals - but Trump is sorta-kinda-maybe-potentially- not-really-sure-after-Tuesday the putative head of the Republican party, but more importantly, he's permanently devoted to protecting the rights of billionaires to ruin the environment while pursuing obscene amounts of money, even Elon Musk. And who knows, Musk might be Kathy G's next bloody head. For 24 hours Bertinelli made Elon Musk the laughingstock of the Internet who says he doesn't want 'impersonation' on Twitter. The guy who nailed the truth about power “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” Who said it? Incorrectly attributed to Voltaire, who's probably rolling over in his crypt for not thinking of it before this bozo, the oft-quoted truism is actually the 1993 brainchild of Kevin Alfred Strom, a white nationalist and neo-Nazi later convicted of possessing kiddie porn and trying to coerce a 10-year-old girl into a relationship with him. While a neo-Nazi pedophile likely isn't right as often as a broken clock, he still penned one of the most inarguable truisms of the modern era. Those with the real power today shut down those they can. And nothing scares the powerful quite like humor. Trump only holds power - for now - over members of his party. He can't do a thing to stop the memes, jokes, and Baby Trump air balloons. But his followers have power. They're better-armed than the left, which is why we shouldn't rest easy just because Michael Moore was more right about the midterms than the pollsters warning of a 'Red Wave'. The MAGA set famously shuts down speech with stunts like the voter intimidation tactics of armed, armoured men stationed as close to ballot boxes as legally permitted, or the guy who put Nancy Pelosi's 82-year-old husband in critical condition when he came to their house armed with zip ties, demanding to know where she was. Politicians, journalists, celebrities and female gamers regularly get death and rape threats when they express or support policies angry entitled men or white people don't like, especially if it comes from 'uppity women' criticizing male hegemony. The right's 'lone wolf' mass shooters are comparable to Islamic single-cell terrorists. The left's top powermongers are trans-activists. Critics have observed how incel forum language and opinions often weave trans-activist discourse with white nationalism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and of course traditional misogyny, and how 'incel' vocabulary has suffused trans social justice language on social media. Perhaps the right has managed to infiltrate the too-tolerant left. And masquerading misogynists have now consensually penetrated feminist brains saturated with idiot compassion. But this summer, the edges began to fray around misogynist drag power with Mr. Menna's release of a Village People-inspired parody around the incontrovertible biological facts of gender/sex, and the influence of 'sissy porn': Y Chromosome! The 'free speech absolutist' at the helm of a twithole Titanic may return the hate speech banned after January 6, but also what should have been acceptable speech to begin with - criticizing gender ideologists. #TERFs and #JKRowling are trending more and with much more support from women than was safe before. A newer regular trending term is #WomanFace, accusing many in the trans movement of gender 'blackface'. For several years now, criticizing or making fun of the trans movement in any way has been a risky proposition. These guys have had real power, dick-tating what is and isn't 'transphobic', quick to complain and get anyone banned, especially any biological woman, who challenges their power. Their Twitter Reign of (T)Error might be over. Dictators fear nothing more than humor. Mr. Menna's outrageously gay parody, incorporating real videos from transgender women, took Twitter by storm and signaled to women, gays, and lesbians that angry male Misses' power was wilting like an autogynephile's ladydick in Army shorts. Comedy is THE most power-reclaiming protest there is. If people are laughing at you, they don't fear you. They might fear laughing publicly, but every time they laugh behind your back it erodes your power, where you can't see it. You'll miss the signals they no longer fear you, which is when they rebel. Perhaps even overthrow a government, as happened to Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. Why the woke fear humor For all its faults the left still remains the truly embrasive bloc that mostly wants to see equality for all, regardless of how one 'identifies' or dresses. It wasn't wrong in making the world less safe for genuinely divisive 'jokes'. But the more seriously you take yourself, the more humorless you become, and risk becoming the absolute power you fight absolutely. America's humophobia reflects the unstable, uncertain times we live in exemplified by the unstable, uncertain leaders we elect. It's hard to be funny when you're worried about everything, like the price of everything shooting higher than Elon Musk's SpaceX. Nobody feels like laughing when they exist in a chronic state of depression, stress, anxiety and fear, and that describes most of America. Even for the rich, who worry about losing it all, and what retaliation they'll eventually face for their crimes against humanity. If someone does feel like cracking a joke, it's as likely he'll be incinerated by an online mob rather than be told, "LOL! That's a good one!" We come to fear the pain relief we seek. The left's suffering cultural paleontologists dig deep to uncover ancient grievances so they may torture others to relieve their own pain. They've become so super-sensitive to perceived slights against marginalized groups they fail to recognize a so-called marginalized group has been hijacked by the most powerful human beings on the planet - men - and it's lost sight of when humor makes fun not of people, but of bigotry. The Most Politically Incorrect Offices Ever Were My Best Bonding Experiences You destroy the power of ugly ideology by holding it up to the light and making fun of it. Laughter diminishes wrong power. Real social justice lies in the courage to call out power's hypocrisies, extremism, its oh-so-serious self-importance even as you support its real grievances. Yes, people DO have the right to dress and identify how they want. Trans rights aren't a problem for anyone who holds a 'live and let live' approach. It's no skin off anyone's nose how you see yourself, but know that not everyone will validate you. That's life, for all of us. Just ask the most aggrieved man in America why he still can't get over half the country to validate his self-image that he won the last presidential election. "I used to do business with a transgender in Hollywood. Man everybody would be scared of her in the boardroom. She'd walk in there, newly-minted woman, high heels, purse, wouldn't say anything just walk around lookin' mean and shit, and then she'd walk to the head of the conference table, stare at us all, reach into her purse and pull her old dick out and throw it on the table. "Let's talk business, gentlemen!" "AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!" - Dave Chappelle Somehow, we're supposed to believe that transwomen are the most put-upon, suicidal, abused, marginalized, oppressed people ever. So when Dave Chappelle cracks a joke like the above, people laughed because they got his point: Some transwomen are still a lot more male than advertised. No transwoman could slam her ex-manmeat down like that, but one can certainly laugh at the entitled grievance of angry men for whom the dress and makeup fail to cover their aggressive, traditionally dominant, phallocentric behavior, along with their five o'clock shadow. Dave Chappelle doesn't 'punch down on transpeople', he speaks truth to power, i.e, men , some of whom have adopted the trappings of a real marginalized group - women - to gain sympathy and acceptable grievance from otherwise anti-patriarchal feminists. The problem with transwomen marginalization is that underneath them all are powerful biological men who made a choice , most of whom still possess their 'original equipment', not to mention their sense of aggrieved entitlement. Women fighting to keep transwomen out of women-only spaces aren't 'transphobic', they're afraid of the very real potential predator underneath who looks exactly like a man in the ladies' shower room. Everyone hates hypocrisy, except their own "Our population has split into two camps. On one hand there are those who support Putin; on the other, there are those who can read, write, and reach logical conclusions." - 25-year-old Russian comedian Aleksandr Dolgopolov Donald Trump hated how every member of his Cabinet was portrayed by the biggest fuck-you to his hyper-masculine view of himself and the world, by women portraying men on Saturday Night Liv e. Some antiracists can't stand jokes calling out black racism. Some feminists can't stand jokes making fun of their misandry and 'patriarchy' obsession that borders on QAnon conspiracy theory. Hyper-he-man Putin has forced a comedian to flee Russia and cancelled the popular Russian TV show Puppets which regularly made fun of the new President. His big burn back at G7 leaders who joked about his shirtless photos was, "I don't know how they wanted to get undressed, above or below the waist. But I think it would be a disgusting sight in any case." The Turkish government couldn't stand a pop star who joked about the 'perversion' one can learn in a religious school. The oppressive Myanmar government fears and loathes comedian Zarganar , whom they forbade to perform any sort of comedy in the country. "I wonder why they never said that you normalize transgenders by telling jokes about us." - Transwoman Daphne Dorman to Dave Chappelle Normalization brings equality, but it also eliminates 'coolness' and claim to victimhood. Celebrities no longer 'come out' about being gay; it's boring. You can't even get a podcast interview for that anymore. Now everyone comes out as 'trans' until they find some new, probably invented, 'marginalized' identity. Narcissists require a constant stream of validation and professional victims have to invent oppression when they no longer shock their audience or punk the far right. We need sharp, incisive comedy more than ever now, when the world looks so dark. Humour holds power to account. Now more than ever we need to speak truth to that power while we still can. Humor can harm, but it can also bring about a real equality that brings to those oh-so-special little snowflakes - professional dictators or the wokenati - what they fear. Normalcy. And irrelevancy. 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!

Why do we not hold them equally accountable for the human beings they co-created? I pissed off some LinkedIn Elon Musk fanboys a few weeks ago. It started with a news story about Musk's new Twitter diktat that everyone who hadn't yet been fired be prepared to work "long hours at high intensity" and in the office, since Musk doesn't believe in remote work. Okay Grandpa! His unreasonable demands in a world where work/life balance is something office drones are embracing and Musk devalues sparked a mass exodus of highly qualified Twitter executives and managers similar to an earlier Tesla So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night . Tesla's Burnout Brigade left a leader who couldn't stay focused on its mission - to make electric cars - and demanded work and innovation outside Tesla's scope, like over-automating the factory and the car itself. Who insisted the new EV must have 'Falcon Wing' flat car handles that magically expanded when its owner approached, introducing additional layers of complexity which exponentially increased the number of elements that can fail. And they did, repeatedly. Demanding Twitter employees drop everything to devote their lives to fixing Musk's problems after firing people on a whim without having the foggiest clue what any of them do demonstrated his continuing monolithic cluelessness. LinkedIn comments to the original story - almost all from men - supported the tired old complaint that 'No one wants to work anymore,' as though only corporate leaders do any work, and that they deserve unfettered access to everyone else's time. I pushed back in a comment. The next day I checked LinkedIn to find an editor had featured my comment in a news story. It generated some interesting resistance from, once again, men. One commenter complained my feminism threatened masculinity and another accused me of 'womansplaining' manhood to men. Which I might half-agree with, since I'm commenting on an experience I've never had, but also, people accuse others of 'splaining when they feel threatened by criticism. One nurse validated my statement about deathbed confessions. Why do we only judge successful people like Musk by how much money they and their shareholders make, and allow them to get away with neglecting work/life balance, especially spending more time with one's family? Why do we slag off the importance of raising human beings? They're so damn important the U.S. Supreme Court recently declared states have the right to eliminate abortion choice if they want, but we can't hold family failures like Elon Musk and many other manly successes responsible for the human beings they seed but can't be bothered with, except to pay occasional lip service to them? Where does Musk fail? Elon Musk is the father of ten surviving children. His first died from SIDS at two and a half months. He has, at this time, three baby mamas and believes humanity's problem isn't overpopulation, but underpopulation. A Wired magazine article detailed the ideological history of population concerns - whether over or under - and speculated Musk likely wants a ready labor pool suppl y to do the grunt work for long hours and low pay. Interestingly, the new Republican is pro-immigration in a way Republican non-entrepreneurial politicians are not. It's easy for Musk to call on people (read: Women, who've been less inclined to breed since they found freedom and feminism and seats on the Board) because he's not the one who carries them for nine months, and expects to do daddy duties only when it's convenient. By necessity, as CEO of three large companies - Tesla, SpaceX and now Twitter - who sometimes, but not always, puts in the long hours he regularly demands of others, Musk must necessarily neglect his families. The Head Twit can't even serve all his companies properly. Tesla's stock is down by 49% as of a month ago. At least one of his children has disavowed her father. Vivian Jenna Wilson, the daughter formerly known as Xavier, has changed her gender as well as her last name, explicitly to sever all ties to her bio-dad: "Gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form." Musk has claimed he supports his new daughter's decision, and any 'transphobia' accusations lobbed against him merely stem from his complaint that transgender pronouns are a pain in the ass. No one knows what the story is behind Vivian's desire to remove her father from her life, but it's probably not pronouns. In the meantime, his numerous children have and are being raised by their mothers, au pairs, and the occasional visit from their otherwise preoccupied father. At the core of Musk's sneer is the unconscious assumption that raising children is still 'wimmin's work', and if women want to work outside the home, they'll have to figure it out on their own. Dreaming cool shit and making it real is the purview of overly-fecund visionaries who don't have time for their progeny. A two-year on-and-off pandemic lockdown, though, has changed many male minds. Once the wrinkles were smoothed out, the initial inconvenience of working from home became less stressful, especially without the hassles of traffic, parking rate robbery, public transportation, or being stuck in a cubicle or 'open concept' office fishbowl. Who knew families were cool? You could spend more time with your children, at lunch and on breaks and after work, without a long, messy commute home. While the pandemic spiked the divorce rate for some, it introduced a new family dynamic many have been unwilling to give up, especially for a dictator who's clearly outside his wheelhouse, and wants everyone else to put in triple time to clean up his messes after unintentionally introducing fraud, imposterization, rising hate speech and driving out his advertisers. It's impossible to slag off Musk's true genius and vision, and easy to understand why he has so many admirers and fans. But what about the ten human beings he's co-created? Why do we allow men off the hook with their families, when female leaders and office workers are still made to feel guilty if their family life suffers? Women don't get pregnant by themselves. Elon Musk is a hugely successful entrepreneur, but a failure as a husband and father. There's no other way to describe him. Is Elon Musk worth his compensation? The resistance I found on LinkedIn struck some nerves. Some of my critics may be aware of their own failures as husbands and fathers. Especially if they're divorced. Or they still define themselves primarily by their jobs, linking their masculinity to their breadwinning capabilities. One wonders: Do CEOs like Musk need to earn as much money as they do? Are they even worth it? Do they add the outsize value to their outsized paychecks and compensation? From 1978 to 2018, average work wages grew by slightly under 12%. CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5%. Last year, S&P 500 CEOs made 324 times more than their median workers. In the first year of a pandemic that ground the U.S. economy to a halt, with 25 million Americans laid off in the first two months alone and thousands of businesses folding, 2020 was beddy beddy good to American CEOs, whose compensation increased 16%. Canada's CEOs didn't exactly go hungry either, as their 100 top-paid CEOs' compensation reached $10.9 million , about $95,000 more than their 2019 average pay. While CEOs were popping French champagne, the pandemic may have boosted men's long-lagging participation with their families, and it was gratifying to see many LinkedIn men supporting work/life balance. One can be a successful businessperson, entrepreneur and parent, although I don't believe any Fortune 500 CEO can be as successful as Musk without sacrificing the parental role. Do companies need to be that big, requiring too much time (Tesla's employees complained how demanding their jobs were when Musk was still showing up at the office) when CEO kids are going daddy-less? Maybe North America's top-paid CEOs need granular, deep-dive performance reviews. If Elon Musk's pay and compensation is 324 times greater than his median employees' wages, shouldn't he be expected to demonstrate he's earning his keep by delivering equivalent value? Which should be determined not only by how much money the shareholders are making, or the stock price, but also whether he's adequately compensating the people that keep his factories or platform running, and giving them enough time to spend with their families. If he's not delivering equivalent value himself, it's time to reduce his workload along with his compensation. Tesla, SpaceX or even Twitter might be greater with a focused leader at the helm, rather than one-third of a celebrity CEO preaching the benefits of hard work he can't even master himself. Like father, like son Musk's fatherhood shortcomings may be rooted in his own father's. Like daughter Vivian, Musk is estranged from his own father, Errol Musk, for unclear reasons. Musk has vaguely slagged off his father as being 'evil', saying, "My dad will have a carefully thought-out evil plan. He will plan evil. Almost every crime you can imagine, he's committed. Almost every bad thing you can imagine, he's done. It's so terrible you can't believe it." Sounds like the kind of vague exaggeration Donald Trump would say. And Musk is right, it's hard to believe since Errol Musk isn't in jail for burying bodies on his property, raping children, committing genocide or defrauding old people as a Nigerian prince. One might suspect just a touch of exaggeration on the part of a son who once accused a hero of being a pedophile . Errol Musk once supposedly (unverified) shot and killed some burglars who entered his home, successfully arguing he did it in self-defense. There's definitely one verifiable super-cringeworthy act: He had two babies with his 42-years-younger stepdaughter from a previous marriage. If you're keeping track, that's seven children total for Daddy Musk by multiple baby mamas, one of whom he met when she was four. Yes, ewww , but not illegal, not even in violation of the incest taboo, and not jailworthy. Elon's daddy denies being the terrible human being his son describes and claims he was a good father, but also exhibits perhaps a touch of defensive jealousy about Baby Boy's accomplishments when he claims the entire Musk family, not just Elon, has done "a lot of things for a long time. It's not as though we suddenly started doing something." Errol was a strict father who raised his children with 'discipline and austerity', although he still had plenty of time for mistresses. A Musk biography describes Elon's childhood as 'excruciating' with schoolyard bullying and whose father was 'emotionally abusive and tough' and subjected his children to sitting still and quiet for four hours at a time while he lectured them. So, an exemplary paternal role model he wasn't. The truth is somewhere in the middle. It's questionable whether Errol Musk is as bad as his son makes him out to be, without exactly qualifying for Father of the Year. Daddies who care Musk and his fanboys have to stop work-shaming the most overworked workforce in the world. American workers' productivity has increased by 430% since 1950 and only Chile, Mexico, Israel, Korea, and Costa Rica work more hours. Forget the 40-hour workweek; the average full-time employed female works 8.33 hours a week and the FT employed male 9.09. The U.S. is the only country in all the Americas without national paid parental leave. A hundred and thirty-four countries have set a maximum work week length, but not the U.S. There's no federal law requiring paid sick days, and we rank at the bottom for average paid vacation days. Today, 70% of American children live in a home with two working parents, while Elon Musk and others dare to call Americans lazy. Being a father means more than hopping on and off and moving on to the next womb. It's not just about bringing home the bacon, especially when a sizeable number of employees at Musk's companies are women. Overcompensated CEOs aren't the only barriers to work/life balance; men face a variety of invisible barriers to taking paternity leave - the rolling eyes of their colleagues who wonder why they'd bother, or fears of job and promotion discrimination for not being 'dedicated enough'. American workers are 'dedicated enough', but some have shifted their priorities to their families, which may be more gratifying than working for a suspiciously overvalued and ungrateful taskmaster. So as not to be the failure Elon Musk's father has been. And Elon. I wonder what Musk's kids will say when he's on his deathbed. Or even if they'll be there at all. 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!

What if a reboot truly committed itself to 'diversity', with merit, opportunity equality, and broader ideas and points of view? A----DEI 2.0? Today I come to praise DEI, not to bury it. Or, more to the point, the idea of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion rather than the current iteration of DEI, which is quickly becoming a widely-acknowledged failure. DEI isn’t a failure because it’s a bad idea—it’s because it’s an early version, 1.0 of a social justice project, implemented by the wrong damn team which lacked the proper education for the job and didn’t source enough outside knowledge to correct all its mistakes. It never even acknowledged their project had more bugs than a Brooklyn housing project. DEI needs a reboot—a 2.0. The reboot won’t be perfect either, but it’ll be less imperfect than 1.0. Every project, technology-focused or human, needs to evolve, change, upgrade and fix. DEI’s hubris, not unlike the Democratic Party’s, was that it had all the answers and didn’t need to fix anything and brought about its own demise. Its biggest failure is with its first initial: Diversity. It ain’t gone none. Equity: Let’s replace it with ‘equal opportunity,’ based on merit. Then there’s ‘inclusion’—criminy, that may be a whole ‘nother article on its own. But I’ll be brief. Let’s start from the beginning. Diversity: Let’s add some Angry racist black women and self-hating white progressives, here’s your pink slip. Go burn a cop car or oppress a gay kid or something. DEI hews to a common but laughably false narrative: Critical ‘everything’ theory, but primarily Critical Race Theory. It’s pretty damn racist to all but state that white skin is a racial Mark of the Beast, when black skin used to be the Mark of the Beast of Burden. DEI 2.0 needs more white people, but not those pandering, self-flagellating pale-faced virtue signallers, so admirably skewered in Matt Walsh’s recent Am I Racist? DEI 1.0 teaches that all you need to know about white people is that they’re evil, part of a ‘white supremacist’ network, and should just shut up and let black people and others spew racist hate speech unchallenged. DEI 2.0 needs more people of all colors who challenge this sick dogma. It needs those who get that we’re all 99% genetically alike under the evolutionary adaptations from whence our particular people came. That there’s virtually no difference in our cognitive abilities, our IQs, or our ability to accomplish what we want given our own personal resilience, motivation, ambition, and equal opportunity. The first three are within our own internal locus of control. The last is external, which is where genuine social justice’s job lies. You have to change you . The systemic rest, that which is truly beyond the individual’s ability to overcome, we can fix. DEI 2.0 absolutely needs more Jews, since antisemitism has become the leading fave of ‘progressive’ racists in North America and it’s particularly virulent in black communities . Maybe a DEI class on antisemitism can begin by showing students a map where Israel is located in the Middle East, rather than the center of Wall Street or Hollywood as they imagine. Equity: Stop putting okra in the fruit salad We don’t need to ‘diversify’ fruit salad by giving vegetables equal opportunity. Vegetables work beautifully in traditional salad, but fruit salad is for fruits, not okra. No one puts okra in fruit salad. It doesn’t belong. It doesn’t work well in that position. But people aren’t vegetables (well, at least not in my circles), and there’s no group of people who ‘don’t belong’ in a particular profession except those who simply aren’t qualified to do what some numbnuts administrators need to check off their diversity list. The human okra aren’t black people, Jews, Indians, queerfolk or women. They’re people who aren’t suited for the job. White-boy astronaut John Glenn didn’t give a rat’s patoot that the best mathematician to send him on a life-threatening mission into space was a ‘colored woman’. He trusted Katherine Johnson’s brain above all others, and that was in 1962, when the civil rights movement was barely out of diapers. While the dramatic scene in the movie Hidden Figures never happened—Glenn on the phone saying, “Get the girl to check the numbers,” he did entrust Johnson—and only Johnson—with his life. The West Virginian Johnson was born into a somewhat privileged family in 1918. It wasn’t abject poverty. She showed an early proficiency in math as a small child. Also critically, Johnson was eager to go to school and learn. She was selected as one of three African Americans to attend West Virginia State College and graduated at age 18 summa cum laude, with not one but two degrees, in math and French. Not many black people, especially women, pulled that off in 1937, but Johnson did, partly because of her mild economic privilege, but also thanks to her natural talent and relentless education drive . She and her NASA compatriots were fruit in the fruit salad, not okra. Inclusion: It needs boundaries ‘Inclusion’ is a great idea that, like everything else in the hands of those who gild lilies as a hobby, turned from a progressive ideal into an oppressive bludgeon. To paraphrase Rodney King, a respectable new DEI framework should be simply about understanding how to get along with— include each other. To look for the good and laudable, rather than seeing skin color or sex or rainbow hair and making assumptions based on a group rather than an individual. Which is just bigoted. It’s not hard to include others, if you train yourself to accept others, not to mention yourself, as human, and people, rather than inextricably bound to an arbitrary collection of ultimately irrelevant identities. One area of inclusion that will be tricky to negotiate is ‘trans inclusion’. Transactivists are pretty famously aggressive about pushing themselves in places resisted by women, and women’s rights, needs, concerns, and safety are, as always, thrown under the bus by ‘progressives’ and the DEI 1.0 set. I’ve extensively critiqued the trans movement and transactivists in other articles (you can find them under ‘ Transreality ’ on my navigation bar) so I won’t get into it here. DEI 2.0 will need to balance transfolk’s right to live how they want, but train them to understand that others’ concerns matter too (which is such a ‘woman’ thing to do!), and also that fairly pedestrian problems like how some can get the pronouns wrong due to visual and audio cues (a manly jaw or voice) that don’t sync with what humans associate as ‘male’ and ‘female’ is a First World problem, not a violent ‘microaggression’. Let’s keep it in perspective. Oh no! Include even CONSERVATIVES?!?! DEI 1.0’s most desperate diversity need is for what happens between the ears: Ideas, narratives, values, beliefs, political positions, and points of view. No group of people, biological or ideological, should ever run everything. It's just too tribally human to favor your own. DEI 2.0 must especially guard against marginalizing opinions and points of view. It should incorporate liberal, conservative, libertarian, and other viewpoints. It should acknowledge and respond to all sides in any given conflict, whether it’s two people of different races in disagreement about a comment, or offering an opinion on a complex topic like nations at war. Its understanding of history must embrace a much more diversified and nuanced understanding of the world and human peoples, recognize the contributions others have made to civilization, and stop defining whole groups of people by only their bad traits or actions. It has to stop giving a free pass to miscreants and nasties of other races and cultures too. It has to recognize that almost every single culture has engaged in slavery, colonization, imperialism, genocide and horrifying torture. Yes, even Indigenous North Americans . Especially them. The Iroquois: The Lords of Pre-Contact Genocide. DEI must purge itself of people who seem rather mentally and emotionally disturbed, actually. Diversity dearth of thought in the academic world has created the dogmatic, authoritarian woke hellhole from which students emerge today, fit for little better than tapping away on their mobile in a coffee shop, raging against the reality that challenges everything they’ve been taught about history, science, art, literature, and sociology. It almost completely ignores human psychology. DEI ‘whitenizes’ every new scapegoat—most recently, Asians and Jews—and teaches impressionable young people that they’re helpless against the evils of colonialism/capitalism/ white supremacy/patriarchy (take your pick) and that men, along with white people, are responsible for all the world’s evils. It keeps young people carefully sheltered from different points of view and differing ways of seeing things by denying the legacy of white Western contributions to the world and labeling anything they don’t want to learn about as ‘racist’. (I’m pointing at you, Claudine Gay, the okra at Harvard U!) 1.0 is an abject failure but the idea is a good one and properly implemented, it could enjoy widespread appeal. The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) noted recently that, believe it or not, most Republicans and Democrats agreed on basic core values. "Roughly 90 percent of the people in the survey, Republicans and Democrats alike, said that personal responsibility, fair enforcement of the law, compassion, and respect across differences were important to them." That’s when you’re not asking them about anything related to politics, I imagine. ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste,’ as an old PSA once encouraged us to think. DEI’s objective of creating a more just society is laudable, and diversity starts with talking to the people you don’t like, or just don’t think you like. It must bring about diversity of thought, diversity of races and cultures and replace ‘equity’ with merit-based equal opportunity. It can be inclusive, but not trample on others’ rights. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. DEI is a good idea; we just need to take it out of the hands of the hopelessly incompetent. Wokeness just got dealt a likely deathblow in the United States with the anything-but-Democrats election. This is our opportunity, kids! 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 podcasts  of more recent articles there too!

Emma Watson only reads about misogyny. J.K. Rowling lives it. "I have been directed by male directors 17 times and only twice by women," [and] "of the producers I’ve worked with 13 have been male and only one has been a woman." Emma Watson is no feminist. Once unfairly criticized for being a ‘white feminist’ (white isn’t a choice, people) who didn’t understand the ‘intersectionality’ of other women’s perspectives (duh, neither do those other women) there’s nothing to indicate she has much of a clue about any real challenges most women face when they’re not born to two legal-eagle lawyer parents watching out for their nine-year-old budding thespian at every step of her career. The preppy British plum claims she suffered the ‘full spectrum’ of sexual harassment at the 2018 Golden Globe awards. I somehow doubt that, as being a less-protected actress in Hollywood means suffering bun burns from the casting couch or being able to describe Harvey Weinstein’s disgusting genitals to a jury. If Watson’s ever experienced any of that, she’s never mentioned it. I tried to find what Hollywood sexism she personally experienced beyond a bunch of likely fart jokes at dinner or the worst one could say about a director is—he’s a man, but I found nothing. Perhaps, quite rightly, she fears damaging her acting career while she’s still a hot ticket. Maybe she’ll ‘fess up after she retires. In the meantime, I damn her pseudo-feminism not because she’s clearly as privileged as her detractors claim, even rich privileged people have their stories and experiences, but because having once shown real promise to take feminism beyond its tired perma-victimized narrative to a new level, she instead chose to de-volve, becoming a good little handmaid, doing, saying and thinking whatever certain misogynist men tell her to. The former feminist used to stand up for women’s rights, and would never have tolerated male abuse of women. Today, mum’s the word for angry transactivists who viciously abuse, threaten, and call filthy names J.K. Rowling, the woman whose phenomenally successful children’s books and subsequent movies are the reason why anyone even knows Watson’s name. J.K. Rowling has been dragged all over Twitter for having the labia to stand up to gynophobic transvestites, starting with supporting a woman who lost her job who dared to speak truth to those who see biology as heresy: Maya Forstater was fired from her job for stating the glaringly obvious scientific fact that no one can change their biological sex. J.K. Rowling knows a thing or two about abusive men, having divorced one before becoming one of the most successful children’s authors ever, while the worst the ridiculously privileged Watson’s ever alluded to is some Hollywood sexualization, some of which, like most young actresses, she’s encouraged herself. Instead of standing up for a fellow woman, abused and vilified by hateful misogynists, Watson chose to side with the boys, turning her back on a woman desperately in need of her feminist sisters’ support. For Watson, ‘feminism’ is a meaningless word. Rather a lot like ‘transphobic’. To further demonstrate how little she understands the feminist challenge of recognizing bold misogyny, Watson also shared she donates to a highly questionable charity: Mermaids is a controversial British pro-trans charity who for years has communicated with many young people, including those not of legal age, sending them ‘breast binders’ to flatten their breasts, even when kids email them admitting their parents won’t let them buy one. Mermaids also pushed ‘same day’ cross-sex hormone treatments for children, behind parents’ backs of course, despite many scientists and medical professionals warning there’s no certainty yet on the potential for irreversible health effects, like permanent infertility and lifelong health problems. Funny, when adult men communicate with children in email on the sly and send them free stuff, people get upset about it. Worst of all, a pedophile apologist resigned from the Mermaids board when it was revealed he’d given a speech to an advocacy group for pedophiles to which he referred to them as the ‘minor attracted’. He’s compared masturbating with and ‘cumming on a shoe’ to ‘cumming on a child’. Commented J.K. Rowling after the pedophile row: England’s National Health Service ordered Tavistock, the country’s only gender identity clinic for kids and young people, to shut down by the spring of 2023 for being “not a safe or viable long-term option” for the young gender-confused, an independent report finding they were put “at considerable risk” from an “unquestioning affirmative approach.” The predictable class-action lawsuit soon followed on behalf of a a thousand families with post-transitional regret. If Emma Watson has anything to say about her support for Mermaids, or an opinion on L’Affaire Tavistock, I can’t find it. Other prominent Mermaids supporters include Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, brother Prince William and his wife Kate, and U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. How to gaslight feminists “I went out for a work dinner recently. It was 7 men… and me." (2015) In the olden days, feminists fought for women’s rights, and until very recently, no one had to spell out exactly what a woman is: An adult human female, regardless of how she feels, acts or is privileged enough to identify. Women became a protected class as a result of the feminist movement, and fought long and hard for the same rights as men. Those rights have always been under attack by conservatives, who prefer to see women by more traditional, masculine definitions, and it was taken as a given that the left was the pro-feminist, anti-misogyny crowd. Except the same level of toxic masculinity was always there, just better camouflaged. Manipulative men, always so good at gaslighting and persuading vulnerable female minds, particularly young and inexperienced ones, struggled for a long time to figure out how to manipulate those bossy, strident, demanding feminists who insisted on better behavior from men than they were ever expected before that bitch Friedan upended the apple cart. They finally figured out the Achilles’s heel of the left: Inclusivity. The left, to its credit, has always striven to provide a ‘big tent’ for the marginalized, those who were not born into apex privilege. Inclusivity became a tool with which they might finally conquer the world for true progressivism. Progressives patted themselves on the back for being so inclusive, and striving to eliminate bigotry and prejudice from within their souls. It became hard to avoid the moral smugness derived from looking over the political fence at t’other side, with their racism, misogyny, and homophobia on display like trans-identified male Darren Merager’s genitals in a San Francisco spa . The left self-righteously addressed the moral failings of fundamentalist religion and the privileged politics of the super-rich, and the way these groups gaslit their uneducated, working-class base into voting against their own interests over, and over, and over again. The left’s smugness grew, and moral superiority turned downright insipid with the rise of Donald Trump, a human lance who unleashed the ugly boil on the conservative, Republican soul. All the very worst spewed forth: Unbridled white supremacy, accompanied by Confederate flags; Hitler fanboys carting swastika banners and chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” in Charlottesville; an accused rapist on the Supreme Court; a submissive, religious cult handmaid joining them. Progressives were so morally superior. Yet right under our pretty little noses, angry misogynists were gaslighting progressive brains, figuring out that ‘inclusiveness’ was the key to persuading certain feminists to admit men who didn’t have their best interests at heart, and enabling our so-called ‘feminist’ men to get in touch with their Inner Misogynist. The men’s rights gang figured out that by appropriating the costume and culture of female victimization and marginalization, they, too, could join the club, with feminists’ blessings. The farther progressives were down the left side of the political spectrum, the easier they were to gaslight. ‘Woke’, which started with the best of intentions, ‘waking up’ to the systematic discrimination and inequality of so many marginalized tribes, descended into an ugly far-left, cult-like version of the MAGA movement: Rigidly dogmatic, bigoted and prejudiced (white people, male people), and ideologically extremist. There were no shades of transgression; every sin was a mortal sin. Your life could be destroyed as much for having done blackface at a college frat party forty years ago as for having drugged and raped dozens of women. While the ‘woke’ laughed and pointed fingers at ‘those stupid QAnon-loving MAGAs’, believing the pandemic was fake and that Trump won the 2020 election, it cultivated its own equal disinformation campaigns to fool those on their own side who lacked proper critical thinking faculties. Some far-left gullibles pioneered the modern-day vaccines-are-evil cause, while others opened their minds to psychological, political, emotional, and ideological manipulation. Certain men realized the burgeoning trans movement offered an entrance into progressive, and particularly feminist, brains. Gaslighting: What it isn’t, and what it is We women - all of us, no matter where we come from - suffer certain psychological elements which make us all vulnerable to gaslighting and other forms of manipulation. ‘Gaslighting’ is a word particularly vulnerable to lingual abuse. It means manipulating someone to doubt their own sanity, yet gets used and abused by those who confuse their opinion or point of view with factual evidence to the contrary. When I Googled it awhile back I found an article warning about ‘racial gaslighting’, some of which included white comments like, “Are you sure that’s what they meant?” or, “Are you sure it was that bad?” I can understand how some racists might downplay someone’s racial harassment or discrimination experience, but with the far-left’s habit of hyper-exaggerating every little alleged ‘microaggression’, I can see how some anti-racists’ views can be skewed by their own partisan, hyper-victimized, or even racially bigoted perspective. I’ve read countless articles by women who hyper-exaggerated their experiences of ‘misogyny’ and ‘patriarchy’ and male entitlement. Minor transgressions turned into world-class MeToo moments. Like a guy who touched a brooch pinned to a woman’s bosom. Or an untoward comment in an office. (Whatever happened to just trying to work it out with the offender first, before dragging the boss, HR, lawyers, or the Supreme Court into it?) ‘Lived experience’ isn’t evidence. It’s opinion . It’s subject to what may well be a highly-skewed, even prejudiced interpretation by the experiencer. So no, challenging someone else’s suspiciously performative ‘lived experience’ isn’t necessarily gaslighting, although it can be. Gaslighting does occur when we’re told to accept something clearly wrong. Like that you can change sex when you can’t. No matter what you do to your body, no matter how sincerely you ‘identify’ as the opposite sex, your biology speaks the truth. Male bodies will never menstruate and even if they could somehow get pregnant, male hips are too narrow to pass a baby between them. Their birth would have to be Caesarean. Why? Because they’re males. And ‘transmen’ still bleed monthly unless they take menstruation suppressors which they have to do to eliminate periods because they’re females. It’s not ‘gaslighting’ to say so. It’s gaslighting to say your biology doesn’t ultimately define you. It’s gaslighting to call them ‘people with a penis’ or ‘people with ovaries’ when the reason why they have these organs, or did, is because they’re males or females. No one should be forced to lie in public and claim transwomen are the same as women, or that transmen are the same as men, when the latter’s reality is that they’re just as vulnerable to rape as they were when they identified with their true selves. Their weaker, vulnerable bodies can still be raped and abused by men, regardless of how they dress. I’m both mystified and horrified at how many so-called ‘progressive’ women, particularly women like Emma Watson who holds herself up as a global spokesperson for feminism, are so easily gaslit to believe that transpeople are ‘the most marginalized people ever’. We’re talking mostly about transwomen, far more vocal than transmen. Hyper-aggressive and in-your-face just like traditional, abusive, heterosexual men. Rose McGowan tells a male bully in a dress to sit down and shut the fuck up. Somehow, shit like this evades Emma Watson’s notice. Instead, she sweetly abandons an abused author who has suffered the most vicious abuse by so-called ‘transactivists’ who subject J.K. Rowling to vile threats, names, and abuse that Watson would quickly condemn if they dressed as the men they are, rather than in little better than ‘womanface’. Funny how condemnatory The Patriarchy’s pretty little handmaids are when the abusers are Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, and Harvey Weinstein, but keep their adorable little mouths closed like good little girls when the abusers are not-very-persuasive ‘women’. Anyone who’s delved into J.K. Rowling’s expository opinions on transpeople and the trans movement will find gender ideology criticism, but no actual threats, abuse, or ‘transphobia’, a Loony Left catchphrase meaning, “Anyone who dares to challenge TiM authority.” I’m not sure if ‘transphobia’ is even real. Why would anyone be afraid of men who are, in essence, transvestites? It’s not the costume women fear, but the entitled, potentially violent, abusive males underneath. ‘Transphobia’ looks an awful lot like perfectly understandable fear of abusive men, and ye shall know them by their traditionally male violent language and actions. Putting aside the clear reasons why violent, abusive transwoMEN hate J.K. Rowling and adore Emma Watson, let’s try to identify what’s in it for feminists who ignore or defend misogyny. Let’s start asking them the hard questions (assuming they can stick around long enough for an adult conversation rather than blocking, defriending, or running screaming about ‘transphobia’ out of the coffee shop). Let’s start pointing out the misogyny they miss and ask them: Whether they approve of the filthy language and names transactivists call women and whether they’d be as tolerant if it was MAGA men; Why they think transgenders who chose their marginalization are more marginalized than women born into hostile sexism; Why they think people who grew up male and came to transgender as adults can possibly understand what it’s like to be a real woman with a weaker, more vulnerable body; Whether they support allowing male prisoners to identify as women so they can get into women’s prisons, and why the majority of them are convicted sex offenders; And, the ‘money shot’ question: #BelieveTheWoman: When a woman says she was raped by a transwoman with a penis and the transwoman says she didn’t do it, which woman should we believe? It says something about the state of feminism that we actually have to ask these questions of ‘progressive’ women who submissively accept stereotyped male definitions of womanhood they’d never tolerate from conservatives. At a time when women’s rights are under attack all over the world and far-rightism is rising not just in North America, it’s terrifying that women’s worst, most fearful enemies might not be from the Trumpanzees and the new Republican majority, but from women carrying signs saying ‘Transwomen are women’ and who claim ignorance or right-wing propaganda for the documentation of the rising number of traditional sexual predators in a movement that’s so easy to take advantage of, maybe because so many so-called social justice warriors are women. Emma Watson is still young enough to judge J.K. Rowling with the wisdumb of her privileged roots. Many are afraid to challenge the Watsonites, fearing life-destroying cancellation for daring to speak truth to trans-identified male authority and its good little handmaids. Even if J.K. Rowling was a complete stranger to Watson, her failure to defend a fellow high-profile woman from being called a ‘cunt’, a ‘TERF’, a ‘bitch’, and targeted for violent male fantasies about how they’d like to degrade and murder Rowling, utterly repudiates any claim Watson has to being a feminist. Let’s just call Watson what she is: A men’s rights advocate for whom men’s delicate fragile feelings and pronouns are more important than women’s safety. It says something about the maddening crowd too, that Watson has so many ‘feminist’ defenders who parrot their masters. But I know what a feminist is. Feminists defend and protect women, they don’t turn their heads and hum to themselves and donate to child-abusive charities when violent men degrade, humiliate, and threaten women who challenge male authority online. They know real misogyny when they see it. They don’t just read about it in People magazine. 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!

Let's ponder a world in which woke social justice advocates experience limited employment opportunities because they can't pass the Grownups test. What??? These guys were targets of an unsuccessful cancelling campaign? They had my attention. Lately, with the post-October 7th woke watermelon kersplat and Donald Trump’s wall resonating even with some level-headed liberals , I’ve been wondering if it’s now possible to stand up to the left’s psychopathic cyberbullies, perhaps, even, if there might one day be a way to monetize it, make it work for you, a larval idea definitely still curled up in my mental honeycomb somewhere. Either option will require the balls or labia to handle it, and I don’t know what the successful recipe looks like. But here was a company in Connecticut, my old stomping grounds, in fact in the same town where I used to visit friends, melting the ‘flakes. Their website claims that self-appointed ‘social justice warriors’ slammed them on social media, calling them out for supporting ‘pigs and killers’. Bet you can guess who that means. Not surprisingly, this agency has a firm conservative mission statement and values. Surprisingly, it’s a marketing and PR agency. I say that because after nearly thirty years of visiting commercial and business websites, the folks who own and work for marketing agencies customarily don’t vote red in great numbers. What I’ll just call The Agency greets you with a pop-message on their home page: “We’re not staying silent any longer.” Interest piqued at Grow Some Labia—who were these Mad Men who challenged the Woke Swarm—and survived? I couldn’t find any details about the cancel mob’s alleged attack but the CEO did mention their pet programs for the police and military veterans. “If you don’t support our first responders, get out,” he says. Pretty sure there’s no DEI program at The Agency. Not sure how diverse it is either as it seems pretty white and he-man, although in one Fox interview they feature a black man he hired. I did note a few women. The most interesting thing about his agency is his ‘Snowflake Test’. It’s questions job applicants must answer to be considered, and he says it eliminates 60% who drop out before finishing. It’s not the SAT; it doesn’t take two or three hours. I’m guessing 15-20 minutes unless you’re a novelist. He says it’s not about political beliefs, but rather a mindset. He notes there are conservative snowflakes too (let’s remember, they’re responsible for about 40% of academic professor firings in the U.S.!) He’s okay with coming across as a ‘kooky nationalist’. He complains they were getting deluged with job applications, from people who couldn’t spell, didn’t know ‘you’re’ from ‘your’, and most of all were ridiculously entitled. They didn’t even know what The Agency did. Many made the common delusional Millennial/Zoomer assumption that coming out of school, they deserved to start at $100,000. When his Snowflake Test went viral, he was deluged with more job applicants—presumably those who thought they’d pass, or knew they’d pass if they’d found it on Da Internetz, and about 20,000 emails both for and against. Many CEOs expressed a wish to be able to require it for their own companies, but they ‘can’t’. In one YouTube video The CEO talks hard turkey to Millennials, of which he acknowledges he’s one himself. It’s peppered with quick glimpses of movie quotes from Braveheart , pro wrestling, Donald Trump and what I suspect is a scene from the remake of The Hills Have Eyes , a guy being burned alive in the desert while tied to a tree (in the original, which I’ve seen, he’s tied to a cactus). The CEO is fond of the green-screen background of hypermasculine alcoholic beverages—not a bottle of Merlot anywhere! One sees that background frequently in other videos. I know I could pass his Snowflake Test but I wouldn’t want to work for The Agency. I respect what they’re doing and I appreciate the CEO has his own solid values, not all of which I agree with—or perhaps to his extent—but he’s standing up to whiny weakass snowflakery and we remaining Real Liberals are fed up with them too. I won’t argue with his commitment to family, country and patriotism, values worth supporting if they don’t degenerate into rah-rah January 6th conspiratorial lunacy, but I’ll note that America’s biggest snowflake is on the right and angling to be president in between criminal trials. Conservative thought isn’t any more evil than is liberal thought; it’s all in how logical and rational it is and how it’s applied. People who think neither side has anything valuable to offer are dangerous extremists. Or just morons. The best of all possible worlds combines multiple good ideas from various political camps and leaves the crap behind. When I debate conservatives on the benefits of marriage and the need to return to it, I state up front: I agree, but gay marriage stays. It’s not up for debate. Homosexuality is real, and there’s no logical, rational reason to prohibit it; critics inevitably turn to the dictates of a holy book written by shepherds and smelly lunatics screaming to no one in the desert thousands of years ago the way one of their descendants screams on the street outside my apartment complex today. Although it’s unrecorded whether any of the Biblical prophets ever yelled, “I want to suck your dick! Why won’t you let me suck your dick?” Some of the CEO’s other videos depict himself and other staff members engaging in he-man Feats of Strength like training with Navy Seals. I wonder what The Agency’s workplace is like for women and whether sexual harassment is dealt with properly. Do they even have an HR manager? I don’t see one on their company LinkedIn profile. Are women expected to ‘suck it up’, and what happens if the CEO himself is the harasser? It’s the core weakness of HR: No authority above the man on top, who signs everyone else’s paycheck. Their tough-talking Joe Rogan suspiciously doesn’t ever want to hear anything about feelings, which are real and need to be respected even when one isn’t a snowflake. A review on GlassDoor notes that he likes to walk around ‘strapped’, I assume with a gun, not a dildo. Forty years ago I had a co-worker who brought a legal gun to the office every day and I didn’t care; today I’d care a fuckuva lot since right-wingers commit the bulk of mass shootings. What if it’s The Agency’s Dirty Harry who goes off the deep end? It seems the CEO himself is capable of getting butthurt. Another GlassDoor reviewer had this to say: From the CEO down, leadership is extremely toxic; luckily this company is still tiny, so with a change of leadership, the toxic culture could be easily amended. I also happened to notice in a previous post from the CEO which makes me a bit concerned even after leaving SPM "60% of our staff is actually not conservative". This would imply that there was some type of party tracking happening at my place of employment, which needless to say, is very unsettling. The CEO responded unconvincingly, accusing the poster of a fake review and threatening to sue for ‘slander’ (Pro tip, Rambo: Written falsehoods are ‘libel’, and this was an opinion on an opinion site ). He offered no valid reasons for thinking it was fake, apart from claiming they’d had no one who only worked there for six months. A few other responses indicate that what triggers this guy is critical reviews. Snowflakes: Sometimes they’re red-white-and-blue! He sets off my own red flags; I’d rather have a beer with him than work for him, but I like his Snowflake Test and I’d love to see it more widely adopted in the corporate and especially the academic world. He’s the CEO many wish they were: The guy who’s not too pussy to stand up to spoiled snowflakes, who calls them out and doesn’t cave like a little bitch when a bunch of anonymous losers with grey heads or eighteen different Pride flags in their profile call for someone to get fired because someone ‘depersonalized’ them on X. I deliberately use misogynist language here: America’s CEOs are a manly bunch, but the quickest castration is by cancel campaign; I suspect the reason they issue written apologies after these events is because if they tried to speak, only dogs could hear their voices. Millennials, and now Zoomers, earned their reputation for snowflakery. The stereotype doesn’t fit all members of these generations, but many electrons have been spilled over the younger generations’ disinterest in working; Jody Foster complained about young work colleagues who can’t spell or express themselves properly in email and who don’t come in for work if ‘they’re not feeling it’ that morning. The Snowflake Test filters for grownups and ensures the HR manager’s time will mostly be spent hiring and managing the company insurance plan, rather than sorting out conflicts between adult children who suffered the cruelest microaggression this morning: Some racist asshole said he didn’t like black coffee! Or who get mad because the rest of the staff isn’t keeping up with their hourly pronoun changes. The Agency’s CEO makes some great points about the need to work, to come into the office on time, every morning, and you’re out the door if you can’t hack it; I’m reminded of a roommate I had thirty-seven years ago whose boss called her every morning to wake her up so she could make it to work on time; she was a waitress at Friendly’s and apparently she’d never heard of the ‘alarm clock’, which my boss would have fired me for if I didn’t have one. Snowflakes’ parents didn’t do their jobs raising their li’l chilluns to be good citizens, conscientious workers, or to be resilient to adversity; these modern Peter Pans are destined to be supported by their parents in perpetuity. The ‘Snowflake Test’ calls out the strong stench of corrupted ‘social justice’ that permeates DEI-infected corporate and academic North America to nag, harass, bully and hector employees who should only be expected to come in every day to do a job, whether it’s to reconcile the financial reports, build a new product, code the next killer app, book some demos, support the customers or manage the operations. ‘Social justice’ has no place in the workplace unless you work for a social justice non-profit; employers and employees otherwise are not there to save the world, but to make the shit you want, need, and buy. Part of what will make them successful is learning how to work with people they might not want to hang out with in the lunchroom, or even sit next to at the after-hours company gathering at a local waterhole. The Christian conservative and the feminist need to respect each other enough to keep their differences out of the office; the Black Lives Matter guy and the white Republican must do the same. And the whateverthefuck with the pink hair, the nose ring and the flag du jour on their desk needs to realize that most people don’t do bespoke pronouns but don’t much care how they dress or present themselves as long as they get their work done. Snowflake tests aren’t just for rah-rah conservatives like the red-office-in-a-blue-state Agency. They’re for all of us who simply want to come to work without a morning wasted on a Zoom call with a hateful bigot force-feeding us the latest Kendi-fueled innovations in anti-white racism and blindness to antisemitism. Of course, I realize replacing DEI with a Snowflake Test will put a lot of DEI ‘trainers’ out of work. I’m good with that. Hopefully their parents haven’t sold the family home and moved to Fort Lauderdale, but if they have, I hope they’ll have fun living in DeSantisworld. But don’t expect any ‘gay days’! 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 damn thing!

Screw the social just-us warriors. Where you hail from is as much a part of your genuine 'identity' as which pronouns du jour you appropriate! Newton Crosby : Where are you from, anyway? Ben Jabituya : Bakersfield, originally. Newton Crosby : No, I mean your ancestors. Ben Jabituya : Oh, them. Pittsburgh. — Short Circuit, 1986 movie “Where you from?” I asked the dude with the accent who’d just shown up. “Me and Dennis are from the U.S.!” I was in Montreal a few weeks ago, at the Mont Royal drumming scene where a bunch of hippie Montrealers gather every Sunday afternoon to whack the skins into the evening, with a dance pit for anyone stupid enough to dance in 27C weather. (I’m stupid enough.) I hung out out with a vendor named Dennis from Miami (Hey! I’m from Orlando!) and we chatted for like an hour and a half before this other guy showed up. Without pitching a hissy fit about microaggressive marginalization, he simply answered. “Columbia!” I cried. “I understand it’s a great place to retire. A friend of mine is learning Spanish for it.” Antiracist pro tip: When you ask someone where they’re from, find something good to say about their country, no matter how politically unpopular. “Saudi Arabia! Birthplace of the famous Caliph Haroun al-Rashid!” “Russia! Home of Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote one of the most beautifully-written books ever!” “Sudan! The Kingdom of Kush!” [Dear Goddess don’t let him ask me what I know about the Kingdom of Kush, which I think is like weed or something!] And if you don’t know anything about the person’s country, just smile and go, “Wakanda! Awesome!” and then Google it later. There’s definitely a wrong way and many better ways to ask the Unquestionable, with bad reasons and good reasons for asking, too. A painfully funny lesson on how not to ask people where they’re from. Also, it’s pretty obnoxious to just walk up to someone and ask them. An underway conversation is better. But damn, is this a funny (if slightly immature) way to handle it! Every American I told I was moving to Toronto informed me how marvelously wonderfully multicultural, diverse, and cosmopolitan the city is. I got tired of hearing about it. But it’s one of Toronto’s biggest appeals: It’s not perfect, but diverse people get along here better than Americans. I like to joke that if I wanted to be a racist it would be difficult because then I’d have to hang out with ‘my own kind’, and I didn’t know enough white people to do that. We’re the New York City of Canada, with just about every culture imaginable with over 140 languages spoken. When you’re more relaxed about differences they become less noticeable, less important, and we come together rather than self-segregate. We no longer walk on eggshells worrying about saying or doing the wrong thing. Or worse yet, engage in embarrassing virtue-signaling. “Thank God my laundry detergent isn’t racist!” But wait, yes it is! It promotes segregation! The ‘woke’ deem it racist to ask where people come from, but it’s racist to hierarchize people by their skin color, religion, ethnicity or culture as the wokenazis do every damn day, arbitrarily assigning ‘oppression’ and ‘victimhood’ status, the way right-wing identitarians hierarchize people by assigning biological inferiority. Where you’re from is as intrinsic to your personality and existence and identity as what you do for a living. As I’m fond of saying, you can take the American out of America but you can never take America out of the American. One’s birth country is a part of us that binds us forever to the mother country the way you can never truly deny your birth family no matter how much you cut them out of your life. Unless you emigrate to a foreign country as a very young child, I don’t know that you ever feel ‘truly’ part of your adopted culture. Some people don’t like talking about their culture, and some do. “It’s not my job to educate you,” some sneer, and they’re right. But others love talking about their culture and will happily answer questions and ask questions of yours, too. They’re the ones you’ll make friends with. We’ll bring about racial equity before the ‘woke’ ever will. Despite the woke. Mutual education brings us to greater comfort, then to laughing together, comparing our cultures, and there’s no greater bond than shared humor. Not racist humor, shared humor over the silliness inherent in all cultures. Human beings: When we look at ourselves a certain way, and especially if we’ve had a few beers and squint a little, we’re a hilarious species! This is actually what woke social justice warriors fear: That we will come together and lose our fear of each other and those silly-ass differences. They thrive on difference and perceived threat, just like the far right. They merely differ on who to hate. SJWs hate white people, and ‘whitenize’ others in their ever-devolving and increasingly racist view of humanity. Jews are the new white people despite being not uniformly white; Asians are getting whiteneized as a consequence of being too successful. The social just-us warriors (because they only want justice for themselves, not for all) derive their racism from lack of skin color, as the far right derives it from darker shades. I’m coming to associate racist political extremism with mental illness, not because political ideology is crazy, but because political extremism is almost always expressed as a sublimated reaction or resistance to something else entirely. Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation speaks of how the people reporting the highest degree of mental health problems are young liberal, progressive women, which begs various questions: Is liberalism a mental illness or are people with mental illness encouraged to express their unrelated, pre-existing, sublimated anger via ‘social justice’ causes? Or do various political ideologies work well enough until others take good ideas too far and turn them into bad ideas? It’s very chicken-or-egg. I can make as much of an argument for MAGA as an expression of mental illness as I can for wokeness. Like, supporting limited but intelligent immigration is fine until it turns into a fearful Well some Muslims commit terrorist attacks so we need to ban ALL Muslims, or, Guns are needed for protection of family and property, and THERE’S NO GREATER THREAT TO EITHER THAN—EVERYONE! And, the George Floyd riots were bad but January 6th was just a fractious Capitol Hill tour! Hang the black guys, free the white ones, especially that gay cutie in the fur and horns! Why we need to ask The Question a lot more Asking people where they’re from is how interesting conversations start. One of the first things I did in Canada was to join social group MeetIn Toronto to make new friends. The others were there for the same reason. One of the first questions we asked, because like 90% of the people there hadn’t been born in Toronto, and a fair chunk of us not in Canada either was, “Where are you from? Oh really? How long have you been here?” Or I’d start chatting with someone at the bus stop or in the mall and I’d share I’m from the U.S. Sometimes they’d share where they were from, sometimes I’d ask, usually if they had an accent. Once another immigrant and I share where we’re from, we start laughing about what a pain in the ass moving to Canada is, and ask about each other’s citizenship. One Egyptian guy asked me which policy I liked better: American assimilation or Canadian multiculturalism. We had a really interesting exchange about it. The hysterics from the social just-us set is all for fear that somewhere in North America, there are two or three people who are super-racist and only want to know where you’re from so they can ruin your day by micro-aggressing you or something. According to the Harvard Business Review , (yeah, we should totally take anything Harvard says about racism seriously!), asking where someone is from—are you ready for this?—quickly turns into a microaggression and “…reduces someone’s identity to a social group, a city, or a culture, and that can trigger feelings of alienation. Microaggressions can also reinforce differences and magnify unequal power structures.” As opposed to, say, reducing someone’s identity to skin color, sexual or gender preference, quantified bloodline blend to identify distasteful white blood, and other social just-us reinforced differences correlating to woke construct power rankings? It’s an assumed microaggression to ask someone where they’re from, but not for their pronouns or for their students to stand on the campus green and call for the elimination of another group of people they don’t like before the first body on the side they’re on falls, which absolutely positively does NOT NOT NOT reduce someone’s identity to an imagined group color or political position. But what if you’re white? It’s dicier to ask The Question. I understand why . There truly can be an uglier, racist assumption that if you’re not white, you’re not ‘really’ a Canadian or an American. My reason for asking is to connect with my fellow immigrants. We all have a story to tell as to how we came to Canada. Or America. It can be a microaggression, for sure, and I understand how it can alienate or offend others. I don’t like, either, the sort of anti-immigrant rants that are just about how “My neighborhood doesn’t look like me anymore.” I’m not an obvious immigrant with my skin color or my accent, so my response is usually something like an icy, “I’m an immigrant. So bite me!” There are good ways to ask The Question, even when you’re white. How about a big smile and offering where you’re from first? As soon as you react positively to whatever the other person responds, the conversation never goes awry. And it can be beneficial, too. An Indian woman I got friendly with on the train ride home shared an Uber with me since it turned out we were headed for the same neighborhood. I asked the driver where he was from after we chatted for a few minutes. “I’m from the United States, she’s from India,” I volunteered. “Where are you from? Oh, Jordan? Wow, that’s awesome, have you ever been to the ruins of Petra? It’s on my bucket list to visit before I die!” The driver was happy to share more about his culture and asked me to connect with him on LinkedIn so he could offer advice whenever I decided to go. And, he was a business marketing major who had trouble finding a job, and I know freelance agencies where he might get that critical experience everyone wants before they hire you. So it’s a good thing I asked, and that we chatted. Knowing he was an immigrant gave both my new Indian friend and I some perspective on how challenging it can be to get a real job when you’re an immigrant. I ran into discrimination when I first moved to Canada too, as an American. Canadians can be weird. I had the same conversation with another Indian Lyft driver just last week. He needs help finding a job, too. Immigrants always need help finding a job here, since I moved here nineteen years ago. La plus ça change. I’ll bet he’s glad I asked Da Question. He asked for even more advice. The woke left is the other half of our ugly racial division problem. Those of us who are non-hardcore on either side of the political divide can reach out to our fellow humans and bond with them. We have to reject the political extremisms that ruin our countries. We have to fight ugly identity politics. The blinders have fallen; everyone’s side has a wing of Deplorables. Not everyone can afford to travel to other countries and experience different cultures. So let’s ask questions. We can tear down woke-constructed barriers and learn to be less afraid of each other by learning about other parts of the world whether we ever go there or not. It’s Not Your Job To Educate Others, But Do It Anyway The ‘woke’ are psychologically damaged people forever seeking channels for their outrage. It’s one thing to fight racism, and another to be disappointed when you can’t find it. Social just-us has a vested interest in never ‘achieving victory’, even when they have: If they acknowledge we’ve won a lot of major battles, if they admit America and Canada aren’t as segregated and hateful as they once were, what have they got to live for? Here’s one suggestion: How about climate change, which affects everyone, regardless of social condition? The world leader recently abandoned it to become an antisemitic Regressive Left Hamas groupie. Believe me, climate change will keep any SJWs out of trouble for a good century or more. Tell me where you’re from in the comments! But only if you feel comfortable. Hey, I might be able to help you find a job….! 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 damn thing!

At least, it won't likely get a mention in the Pentagon Report The aliens may be here already, but it’s cool. They brought weed! Image by Anja from Pixabay I used to know someone who believed aliens kidnapped her and her young daughter at night. She was a good friend, but, I privately thought, someone with a Fantasy-Prone Personality. FPPs have a fuzzier intellectual boundary between what’s real and possible and what’s not, and prefer, in my experience, supernatural explanations to rational ones. She wasn’t the only one I knew. We were Pagans with New Age overlap and while not all spiritual people are FPPs, you’ll find a fair amount in religious cultures. I won’t claim anyone with a belief in divinities or afterlives is an FPP, since the human race shows an amazing capacity for self-delusion, and if you dig deep enough, you’ll find even atheists believe in something far-fetched, sans divinities. My favorite faith-based belief system is the widespread multi-partisan political belief in the mythical Bottomless Well of Operational Efficiencies. It holds that if we only cut government ‘waste’ enough, we can have whatever ridiculously expensive projects, upgrades, treats and glorious prizes our little hearts desire without raising taxes a penny. Personally, I don’t believe anyone’s been kidnapped by aliens, particularly the ones fascinated by our buttholes and sexual organs. It was a ‘thing’ from the sexually repressed 1970s through the ’90s and now it either gets less attention or that particular delusion has moved aside for QAnon. Carl Sagan once noted that aliens observing us because we invented something new is akin to us being fascinated with the Andaman Islanders because someone invented fishnets. How interested are any of us in sticking butt probes up, say, salamanders, to, what, learn more about how they poop? Or as the alien Paul put it in the movie of the same name, “What am I doing here? Harvesting farts?” With 36 intelligent alien civilizations Out There , not even including theoretical parallel universes and mini-universes or sub-universes hypothesized by scientists, what I do believe in — as any self-respecting critical thinker would — is the existence of extraterrestrial, and likely intelligent life, Somewhere. Just not here. Are we about to learn The X-Files Truth? Are aliens actually visiting? Walking among us? Buying kiwifruit on sale, the requisite six feet away from us in the Stop & Shop? The kind that can scale any wall by, like, walking through it if they wanted, or touristing in from the Big Three Dozen ? It’s June, the month in which the Pentagon must release a longstanding report on UFOs and the weird shit military and aviation personnel have reported for years, especially the last few with several so-called provocative videos. UFOlogists await breathlessly on tenterhooks while some of us wait with bored facial expressions for the Google news alert indicating where we can download the report, which we’ll promptly do before we forget about it, so we can read it when we have time, and promptly forget about it. Or where we put it. Who needs to read it anyway? It will headline and summarize everywhere, and probably be more boring than the Mueller Report. Especially if there are no juicy bits — no butthole porn, no alien collusion with the Russians, no extraterrestrial golden showers. And especially no aliens. The final evidential answer may still be, ‘We ain’t got none.’ Here are a few reasons why I don’t give much of a rat’s patoot beyond mild interest: Video photography clearly hasn’t evolved since the 1950s I’d embed a few of the more ‘provocative’ videos if any were even remotely interesting, but I can’t tell the difference between the ones shot last year and the ones from 1955. The camera on my new Android is higher-resolution than anything the military has. No wonder the Russians bought our last President so easily. The U.S. military wouldn’t have recognized Vladimir Putin marching into the White House with the Russian Army behind him until Trump fell to his knees and buried his face in Vladdy’s crotch. When UFO debunkers like Mick West can still offer easy this-worldly explanations for the most recent shitty videos, I have to wonder whether we should be arming our armed forces with Androids and iPhones rather than my dad’s old Super 8 movie camera. Stunningly convincing photo of sophisticated alien intelligence — or maybe a low-flying bird — by Assnogholeo on Wikimedia Commons If the U.S. government had anything new on aliens, the Republicans would have scared us into voting for dictatorship last year Maybe it’s because The Orange Menace was already so divorced from reality he couldn’t conceive of losing the 2020 election, but get real: If the American government possessed any evidence of aliens, Donald Trump would have trotted them out of their meat freezer in Dayton or pulled out the Pentagon equivalent of Anthony Fauci to give a press conference to warn we were under imminent attack. “If you elect Joe Biden and KaMAHla? Camly? Camellia? Campbell’s Soup? Harris they’d turn your teenage daughters over to their tentacled terror and U.S borders would be overrun by aliens the likes of which would make you long for the days of Mexicans and Dominicans!” Notably less demented former President Barack Obama received no interesting response from the government on the evidence for alien visitation. That’s either evidence of the Deep State at work, or the aliens have more important things to do than fuck with our farm fields. Yeah, there’s just no way this could have been created by humans. We don’t have the sort of advanced technology required. Hell, we can’t even get our iCrap to stop pushing annoying notifications on us. Photo by Hansueli Krapf on Wikimedia Commons Even if those ARE aliens, they’re probably really tiny and too damn cute The videos of some tiny little object ( the GOFAST ) speeding over water, we’re assured, moves too fast for any similar human object, unless you’re familiar with some of the world’s fastest drones, clocking in speeds of 200km per second or more. Anything small enough to be in those will have all the nightmare-inducing terror potential of a newborn kitten. We imagine aliens will be like us. One camp holds that aliens are Jesus-like Klaatus come to save us from our evil selves. Another holds the aliens show up to ass-rape the earth and raid its people, rather a lot like conquerors from foreign lands or the tribe beyond the hill over the course of human history. The Judaeo-Christian undertone is unmistakable. Either Alien Jesus scolds us and tries to get us to stop sinning, whether it’s killing each other or preparing for nuclear war, or Extraterrestrial Yahweh goes all Biblical lasers-postal on the human race’s collective ass for reasons we’re initially unclear. In the Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds the aliens harvested human blood and tissue as fertilizer for their terraforming project. In Independence Day , they were after our natural resources. In 1979’s long-forgotten trash-horror Phantasm , an alien mortician kidnapped humans and turned them into dwarf zombie slaves for his planet. In one Twilight Zone episode aliens came To Serve Man — literally. Armie Hammer is smacking his lips in anticippppppppation. How much like us, or not, will eventual First Contact aliens be? They won’t likely be humanoid, especially not with oversized heads and big puppy manga eyes. Carl Sagan noted the extreme unlikelihood that life will have evolved as it did on earth and Stephen Jay Gould has noted that if you rewound the Earth ‘tape of life’ and let it evolve all over again, evolution would likely take a radically different path. There are no guarantees humans would evolve again. According to the Kardashev scale devised by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in the early 1960s, it measures (theoretically, of course) the different levels of intelligent civilization. It’s theorized no life has advanced to Type IV, although we wouldn’t likely detect it anyway. Type <1 — That’s us, kids. We’re estimated to be around .73 on the scale now, expected to reach Type I in 100–200 years. Type I — We can harness all the energy from a nearby star, and be able to harness all the available energy on Earth. We’re not even close to either. Type II — We can control, not just transform a star, and exploit nearby gas stars, siphoning off the hydrogen. If we mastered fusion power we could build a giant reactor for all our needs, and bonus! Nothing currently known to science could waste our superlatively clever asses! Some place way cooler than where you live right now. The chicks are always hot, and naked. Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay Type III — Now we get to do some exploring. We travel the galaxies and are masters of energy knowledge. We might be cyborgs after many hundred thousand years of human evolution, and regard the Homo Sapiens of today with the same sort of casual dismissal with which we regard our earliest human ancestors. We’re likely colonizing as much of the universe as we can reach. Of course, we don’t know what the repercussions of any of this will be. What happens when we deplete a gas giant? What if we did harness the Sun’s energy for ourselves? What would be the consequences? And of course, most of all, can we stop killing each other and cooperate enough to pull any of this off? Good questions all, and I doubt any aliens will provide the answers. We confront the same problem Christians do if they’re honest with themselves: No one’s coming to save us from ourselves. Not Jesus, King Arthur, the Overlords, Godzilla, Maitreya, Quetzalcoatl, the Jedi or even Harry Potter. We got ourselves into this mess, and we must pull ourselves out of it. Maybe the real reason we’re hoping for alien visitations is we’ll have someone new to hang out with who’s perhaps immune to Earth virii and haven’t yet annoyed us to the point of divorce. The good news is despite reports to the contrary, things are getting better, not worse — at least in some ways. We still have the capacity to destroy ourselves and we might. But cognitive psychologist and popular science author Steven Pinker painstakingly notes how the world today is far less violent than even a hundred years ago. His brick-thick tome The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is tough but fascinating reading. Some parts you might want to skim, like the descriptions of medieval torture of humans and animals, for ‘fun’ and punishment, but it’s un-put-downable. As for the aliens, I don’t expect much out of the Pentagon’s forthcoming Pinker-rivalling doorstop. On the other hand, if they surprise me, I’d be happy to foster a temporary pandemic support alien, as long as it’s furry. And cute. What the hell is that thing? As long as it’s not actually the size of an 18-wheeler and doesn’t try to poke anything up my butt, I’ll take one off your hands for a few months. Image by Andrew on Flickr This first appeared on Medium in June 2021.