"Why doesn't she leave him?" and "Why does she tolerate such behavior?" are no longer off the table. Image by Chloe Lemieux from Pixabay Call it ‘The Matriarchy of Silence’. A self-imposed hush-don't-speak by women, for women, to protect women from taking charge of their lives. A 1960s Women's Liberation 2.0 beginning with vigorous protest marches and demands for equal pay, government-subsidized childcare and education equality turned passive somewhere in the '90s and led to the rise of what Naomi Wolf called 'victim' feminism, in which some feminists identified with weakness and powerlessness while paying lip service to strength and personal power. Next year marks the 60th anniversary of the first shot across the bow of Second Wave Feminism: The publication of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan's seminal cri du coeur of American housewives, mothers, and others enmeshed in traditional, 'patriarchal' social institutions. The book that shook the world might never have been written had her original article on the unhappiness of her former female college friends been accepted by a magazine. But none would publish it. Friedan named the ennui and persistent dissatisfaction experienced by American women who were supposed to be happy after having achieved almost every American woman's dream: A husband, a house in the suburbs, children, labor-saving appliances, and time to kaffeeklatsch with the neighbors. Followed by Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch and other 2.0 soon-to-be-feminist classics, together they launched a new wave of feminism pioneered by First Wave voting rights. Where are women sixty years later? Are we more empowered, more equal, more autonomous, more independent? Yes and no. To cadge and bastardize a phrase from George Orwell, "Some women are more equal than others." At least among the privileged, i.e., those who aren't scraping and scrapping for daily survival. For those privileged enough not to subsist in poverty, one finds less equality, lack of autonomy and disempowerment is largely a choice. It's time to ask some hard feminist questions. "Why didn't she report him?" As we toddle into the Twenties, held back like babies in harnesses by an ever-evolving virus, women still have much to celebrate. We're getting educated at record levels, and have surpassed men in attaining college degrees (as troubling a prospect as the lopsided reverse ratio was fifty years ago). We're earning more money, we've got much more visibility and representation in politics just in the last five years, and men like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby have been put on official notice: We're not taking your shit anymore! A woman is one heart attack away from the U.S. presidency today. One woman in Congress 'pwned' a narcissistic psychopath and did more to corral him than any other woman in America. You'd think we have much to celebrate, so why do many feminists sound like old-school man-haters and persistently whine about how hard it is to be a woman in a man's world? We rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic complaining of 'microaggressions' while rape convictions remain appallingly low because A) Many women never report and B) Even when they do, the accused often meets with more judicial sympathy than the victim. We'd rather ignore how even rapists brought to trial, whether acquitted or given a light sentence, are still punished with a lot of psychological stress and bone-shaking fear about what prison might be like for a pretty young thing like himself. Rapes change the life of a victim, but also a rapist's - if he's put on trial. It may not happen even if he's reported, but it never happens when he's not. An unreported rape is a tacit admission by the woman that it's okay for him to rape again. Hard to acknowledge but true. No one wants to push a traumatized woman to report, and no one should be forced, but she needs to understand she's giving him a stay-out-of-jail-free card. Victim feminists respond, "It's not our job to stop rape; it's men's job to stop raping." Yeah, good luck with that. Okay, back to the real world. One hundred percent of unreported rapes result in zero convictions. Rapists aren't going to turn themselves in to the police. So who will? Wouldn't increased reporting instigate more real-world consequences for rapists and reduce violence against women than 'telling your [anonymous] truth on Twitter or Reddit? Discuss. Debate. Explain. "Why don't you leave him?” Yeah, let's get that holy mantra out of the way. This is a question feminists need to ask her before she's wasted and broken and curled up in a fetal position at the bottom of the stairs. Legions of reasons abound as to why women get into, and don't leave abusive relationships, and feminists respond with their knee-jerk, "Not all women can leave!" True. But they forget not all women can't. Not all women are financially dependent on men. Not all women are broken yet. Not all women are afraid for their lives if they leave. Not all women have children to think of. Some women even realize having a baby with a violent husband is a really bad idea. We need to stop tolerating abusive relationships. We need to challenge our friends and family members when they complain about bad relationships or marriages and make sure they understand that right now, to stay is a choice. They need to understand every time he hits her and she lets him get away with it, it's tacit permission to do it again, which he will prove despite his initial protestations that it won't. Hit me once, shame on you. Hit me twice... 'Don't blame the victim?' How many times does she have to get hit before she realizes on her own he's not going to change? Maybe she doesn't know. Maybe she was raised in an abusive household. Maybe she thinks it's okay because she's watched too much porn. The understandable reasons why she lets him do it over and over again don't matter. Someone needs to tell her this is not acceptable behavior in a man. Otherwise, she may never learn. The hard reality about abuse victim feminists still can't acknowledge is women voluntarily enter relationships (even if they may not realize they'll eventually turn abusive), and they can voluntarily leave. The sooner the better. The best time to leave is before she has sex with him, because once a violent, misogynist man is intimate with you, something clicks inside him and he thinks he owns you. You are his. Your body is his. And he can do with it whatever he damn well feels like, and defend his property from any male encroachment he perceives, justified or not. Men famously 'blame the property' for their own insecurity. She has to recognize the warning signs, and get out even if she's strongly attracted to him. We need to challenge 'Don't blame the victim!' more and ask earlier and more forcefully, "Why don't you leave him?" Along with, "Are you thinking with your vagina?" "Why do you let him treat you that way?" This is an adjunct to 'Why doesn't she leave him?' but refers to any man anywhere, outside the realm of rape/sexual abuse. Second Wave feminism taught women to fight back, to behave in a manner to suggest sexual harassment might not be in the man's best interest. We were taught to walk with purpose, as though we know where we're going. As though we own ourselves and the world. We were told to be on the lookout and keep a car key, small can of pepper spray, or other weapon in one hand in case someone decided to get cute. It's not, as victim feminists would have us believe, demanding nothing of men. Men are still beholden unto the law, but they may ignore it, especially since they know you'll probably let him get away with it, unreported. The world isn't appreciably different for men either, because men stalk, harass, injure, and kill other men more than they do women. Small, vulnerable men know this and employ many of the same tactics Feminism 2.0 instructed women. Victim feminists argue it shouldn't be women's responsibility to protect themselves and they're right; however, many of us more vigilant, empowered feminists have gone through life unraped. What 'shouldn't be' is a philosophy; it's useless in an unjust, violent world we all have to survive in. Victim feminists pay lip service to empowerment but quail like frightened kittens before it. They don't develop their own sense of power and they don't want other women to, either. It validates their worldview when others share their chronic sense of fear. Those who take back their own power and don't let men treat them badly are unpleasant reminders that it doesn't have to be this way. It can be scary to deal with sexual harassment and sometimes it can turn out badly for us if we do. We have to pick our battles. When we don't, when we let men get away with it, when we freeze rather than react, it reinforces his actions lack consequences. When we whip around to confront the hand on our ass and yell, "Don't you touch me!" we challenge him, we potentially embarrass him, especially if other women turn and back her up. It works for our cousins the bonobos. They're our common primate ancestor who, unlike chimpanzees and humans, evolved without patriarchy. A world of men facing bonobo-style consequences as envisioned by Pat Benatar (at 3:00) Yes, sometimes women get murdered for their resistance. What you never read about is the millions of un-newsworthy women every day who challenge sexual predators and simple jerks--who don't get hurt or die. Here's an example from about a hundred years ago: My great-grandmother once jammed a hatpin into the hand of a stranger who dared to put it on her thigh in a movie theatre. He counted on her freeze response, her tacit 'consent' merely out of fear. Great-Grandma was quite the little hotcha-hotcha who knew how to handle a masher at the movies. She once humiliated another by saying loudly, "Sir, would you please remove your hand from my leg?" Shamed, he got up and hustled away. Guess what, her last tactic worked for her great-granddaughter sixty years later. The same thing happened to me in a whisper-silent public library. The guy stuck around for a few minutes to save face and then departed, but he didn't touch me again. I didn't get murdered. Neither did Great Grandma, and challenging The Patriarchy was much more perilous in the early decades of the twentieth century. Time to woman up, girls! Female fear serves The Patriarchy quite nicely, thankyouverymuch. Men have historically controlled women through fear of violence and murder. I don't suggest one should blithely walk around challenging every Patriarch who dares to treat her poorly. But now we're in a position to control men more through fear--of consequences. Thank you, #MeToo! But first we must decide we're going to do it. Until then, we let them control us. And get away with it. How Do Women Enable Rape, Trafficking & Sexual Abuse? A victimhood mentality teaching women not to stand up for themselves, or to resent having to do so, encourages misogyny and enables sexual predation. Victimhood mentality starts early with young girls who learn boys are stronger, meaner, and hate us for no good reason we can see. Parents don't crush budding misogyny like bugs in their baby boys, teachers don't stop sexual harassment nearly as much as they might, and small boys learn they're entitled to victimize girls. It's up to us to teach them that shit don't fly no more. The problem isn't just men, but also mental perma-victims who fear their own power and choose to live with the fear rather than challenge it. They don't look beyond the outlier news stories of women killed by men and consider most of those happen to women who stay in abusive relationships. They don't listen to the stories of women who proudly boast to their friends how they stood up for themselves against a man and, clearly, didn't get abused or murdered. It's up to us, not men, to determine how much longer this remains a man's world. Challenging feminists who subconsciously identify with powerlessness can be as daunting as challenging men. While women won't likely physically threaten, dox, or kill us they can still destroy us. Women are masters at shaming, blaming, cutting each other off from others and friendships and now, destroying each other on social media for having the 'wrong opinions' (i.e., challenging their outdated mental narratives). Women afraid of female power are as numerous on the left as the right and they're every bit as effective at destroying challenges to The Matriarchy of Silence. Nevertheless, those of us who believe in women and are unafraid of female power must challenge them more. They need pushback and challenge from other women to move feminism forward and get some real work done. It's the only way they'll ever learn. 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!

It's coming, whether you like it or not. Biology appropriation will breach the next taboo. Embrace it! Rachel Dolezal is still black, in case you were wondering. Dolezal, a/k/a Nkechi Diallo (she legally changed her name in 2016) is now on OnlyFans, where she hawks beauty and fashion tips, and box braid tips for her fellow sisters. She's done her best to stay out of the public limelight since she lost her job along with her position as President of the NAACP Spokane chapter after her parents busted her. She isn't much in the news anymore. She's trying to live as quietly and blackly as possible. Her critics were outraged at the implications of the Black Like Me 'racial tourism'. Many argued it was a deeper version of 'blackface', another example of white privilege, choosing to be a different race when black people don't have that option. I've argued they do, although it's not as easy for them at this time. However, this indicates a new R&D market for skin lightener and vitiligo medication manufacturers! Dolezal has stuck to her guns despite global condemnation. It's funny how the arguments made against 'transracialism' don't seem to apply to transgenderism. 'Gender blackface' “She’s deeply invested in the black community. That’s really what bothers me about it; I looked at her track record, and she’s really into this. She’s teaching about black culture, she understands the subtleties of the black experience, she’s raising black children, she married a black man, she’s going to work for the NAACP. She does more for the black community than 99 percent of the black people that I know. And I know a lot of hard-working black people. So I can’t fault her for this, I just can’t.” - Dr. Boyce D. Watkins, black social commentator and scholar, defending Rachel Dolezal in 2015 Among many controversial comments Dave Chappelle made in his contentious Netflix special The Closer last fall was, "[Women] look at transgender women the way we Blacks look at Blackface. They go ‘oh, this b---- is doing an impression of me!’" That troubled critics who thought he was suggesting some transwomen are mocking women the way minstrel show performers mocked black people a century ago. Is it truly 'blackface' if Rachel Dolezal genuinely identifies with being black and started a new life elsewhere living fully as a black person, the way people who've chosen the other sex do? We don't recognize 'racial dysphoria' and perhaps there is no such thing, whereas 'gender dysphoria' has been recognized for thousands of years by many different cultures. As the left today celebrates 'gender fluidity', as the LGBTQ community years ago mainstreamed sexual preference fluidity, what if we embraced all fluidity types, whether we personally engage in them or not, and encourage living for awhile in the figurative 'skin' of someone we aren't? The popularity of the trans movement in the teens forced me to rethink my critical opinion of Rachel Dolezal. Race-switching is popular with white women, and black women and their white allies have pushed back aggressively against it. But when feminists push back against men doing the same, especially when some seem driven for reasons other than true gender dysphoria, those critics are called 'transphobic' and 'TERFs'. Jessica Krug was an author and activist who got outed for undercover whiteness. She acknowledges having 'eschewed' her 'lived experience as a white Jewish child in suburban Kansas City." Suddenly, calling what certain transwomen are doing 'gender blackface' sounds less inaccurate. Rachel Dolezal is hardly the poster child for black people, or transracialism. She comes from an embarrassing history of dishonesty and fraud, including welfare fraud. The impetus for her decision to 'go black' may have been her failed attempt to sue Howard University for discriminating against her based upon 'race', among other things, when she was denied scholarships and other opportunities. Still, you can't ignore one thing: She's stuck to her guns, after a global shaming and 'cancelling' pile-on. Dolezal isn't the first to switch race but she may arguably be the pioneer in the modern day's eventual acceptance of transracialism. It's coming. No one can stop it. And the transgender movement will drive that change. Breaking the last taboo The left has enshrined 'identity' and 'lived experience' as the holy, unquestionable dogma with which one is commanded to treat others. Their most extreme demand on human intelligence and critical faculty is that we're supposed to accept any man who says he's a woman, regardless of how much effort he puts into it. The brewing backlash against biology denial has manifested as the recent FINA Swimming Federation's new mandate restricting most transgender athletes from competing on women's sports teams. Elsewhere, feminists are pushing back aggressively against allowing sex offenders to identify as women so they can push themselves into places they don't belong, with access to women and children. Twitter bans users for 'misgendering' biological men as happened to Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy. Thou shalt accept any man's word that he's a woman because he says so. The inevitable move, of course, is to breach the next taboo--Thou shalt not culturally appropriate a race or ethnicity that is not yours. Hypocrisy always gets called out, and it's 100% illogical to claim a man can become a woman on his say-so but a white person can't declare themselves black and take the cosmetic steps necessary. One can't claim white racial transitioners 'aren't really black' because they didn't grow up with the lived experience of racism at birth, yet deny the same argument against biological males who weren't born into misogyny as natal women are. The trangenders guilty of 'gender blackface' are the ones who make a mockery of what being a woman truly is when they appropriate unearned female victimhood by claiming discrimination they chose. As has Stephen Terence Wood, a/k/a David Thompson, a/k/a 'Karen White', who seemed more interested in presenting as a victim than a woman, and getting into a women's prison, where the convicted pedophile sexually assaulted two female inmates. 'Gender blackface' is responding to critics by inviting them to 'suck my ladydick'. (Pro tip for aspiring women: We don't threaten each other with our genitals. Offers to suck your dick are rank noob moves.) Similarly, those genuinely guilty of 'racial blackface' specifically make fun of or mock black people, like this long list of celebrities. Ted Danson's appalling performance (with Whoopi Goldberg's support!) in 1993 at the Friar's Club is the dictionary definition of everything wrong with blackface. It's reasonable to accept transwomen when they're sincere, or simply if they're respectful of natal women's rights and definition. Could I accept a racial transitioner like Rachel Dolezal if I knew her? Yes, I could. But I'd distance myself from the criminal and dysfunctional Dolezal. What if racial fluidity, like gender fluidity, is a good thing? Does it matter why people want to switch gender? While the underlying ideological agenda appears to be muddying the language to erase gender inequities (a highly questionable tactic, and offensive to those who define women biologically), others offer other reasons why they transitioned, not all of them being gender dysphoria. Some have cited not wanting to live in a homophobic or misogynist world, something that sounds horribly inauthentic. Is that the answer to toxic masculinity, the fear of femaleness, the root of misogyny and by extension, homophobia? Conforming better to toxic masculine ideals? Is that what gay rights activists fought for as they struggled to emerge from the closet fifty years ago? I disagree with these reasons, but people have to the right to live the way they want, and for some at least, to make a huge mistake. Does it matter if a man is autogynephilic and gets off on dressing as a woman? Does it matter if someone's 'touristing'? Is it a bad thing to experience life in an identity you weren't born into? We teach children to imagine how they might feel in others' shoes to better understand why people act or think as they do. Imagine you're that black person no one wants to be friends with. Imagine you're a woman who's been forced to have sex with a man. Imagine you're a Trump supporter in a trailer park who doesn't believe in white privilege. Why do these people believe what they do? Why do you believe what you do? If embracing gender fluidity allows us to better accept those who don't align with our sexually dimorphic society, then why not racial fluidity? The left argues that race is just a 'social construct' anyway, so why should it matter what color we choose? If we can medically transform our bodies to fit another gender, why not another race? Photo from the Gender Spectrum Collection The highly controversial 1961 John Howard Griffiths book Black Like Me detailed a white journalist's experience living as a black man in 1950s America. He experienced America's pre-civil rights racism in a way no other white people had. It greatly impacted the way he thought about racism, particularly when he sat on a toilet in a Mississippi 'colored' public men's room, not because he had to go to the bathroom but because he needed a respite from the onslaught of hatred. And he thought, "I can't do this anymore," and realized he had the choice, unlike natal black people. Perhaps that's an experiment the left might consider, and support making it easier for people of color to transition as well, so they can 'live white' if they choose. It's possible to whiten your skin with vitiligo treatments as Michael Jackson proved, but may be more expensive and risky than 'going black'. On a theoretical basis, it offers an escape for those who don't want to live in a racist world. Inauthentic, yes, but the left already embraces that. I would love to read a book called White Like Me. I want to know what a black person's experience is growing up in a racist society and living at least for a little while 'accepted' into white society because no one knows what's under the skin. I want to know if it solved all their problems, and what they think when they experience 'white privilege'. I wouldn't be offended as a white person. I sincerely embrace fluidity overall as something that can one day make us more tolerant, even if it doesn't today. For this to work, racial and gender transitioners need to understand they can't ever have the same lived experience as one who was born into a certain identity. A transman didn't grow up with male privilege and male acceptance, and a transblack person didn't grow up with racism and white supremacy. A transwoman didn't grow up with the relentless assault on their bodies that many women experience, even if they were bullied for not being 'man' enough. It ain't the same thing. What identity 'fluids' need to embrace to make all of this work is to always be respectful of the natal members of the group they've appropriated. This is one area where the transgender movement fails, and why the backlash is brewing. It's thanks to a small select set of hyper-privileged ex-men exhibiting as much narcissistic entitlement as women, as when they presented as men. It endangers the much broader community of transfolk who don't hate women, don't want to threaten them, and recognize that many are already allies, and many more might become them if the community stood up to and challenged the gender abusers. It's a lesson for transracialists. People who switch race can't claim to be 'exactly the same' as their adopted group, and the particular danger will come from the historically privileged white people who, like some men, will find it more difficult to abandon the entitlement between their ears than their old wardrobe. Several years ago I re-connected briefly with an old (black) college friend who was immersed in Native American rituals and religion. I asked why and he said he was part Native American. He certainly didn't 'look' Native. But I thought good for him, even as I cringed to read he was planning to undergo a 'Sun Dance' (Trigger warning: It's painful!) What does it matter if he's not Native himself, raised in a middle-class New York family rather than a reservation, and wasn't subjected to the same pathologies and discrimination suffered by Natives? Growing up black isn't the same. Immersing himself in a culture not strictly his own must surely have broadened his mind plenty, and in the end, how much does 'blood' really matter anyway, when you don't grow up living and being as that particular identity? 'Transitioning' looks more controversial than it is because we're so spitefully divided against each other. What if embracing fluidity in all its forms made us better humans? The problem within the trans community regarding who is 'really' a woman is merely that: A problem, but not an insurmountable one. Much more might be accomplished for gender fluidity overall if we could sit down together and work out a compromise, rather than hurling increasingly-meaningless labels at opponents. We can do the same with racial and ethnic fluidity. After all, if they're all merely 'human constructs', what difference does it make? 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!

People with lives can't keep up with the Culture War Du Jour. Just file it under #StuffOldPeopleSay "When did 'Negro' become a bad word?" CC0 Public Domain on Pxhere A few years ago, before Mom moved into the assisted-living wing of her long-term retirement home, she took me out to dinner at our favorite haunt, Jack Astor’s, while I was visiting in the States for the holidays. We caught up on all the latest — Mom’s friends, mine back in Toronto, Connecticut and Ohio. My family got around back in the day. I told her about a college friend Mom had met once, with whom I’d reconnected on Facebook, only to find he'd turned into a flaming in-your-face conservative. What had happened to him? He used to be such a nice guy. But now he’d turned into an angry, loudmouthed, conspiracy-minded argumentative jerk, I complained. In a voice loud enough that must have reached Ohio, Mom asked, “DO YOU THINK IT’S BECAUSE HE’S BLACK?” “Mom, keep your voice down!” I ducked deep into the booth, hoping no one could see me, even though the entire Midwest must have heard. “No, I think it’s because he’s an idiot!” Mom wears a hearing aid and doesn’t always realize how loud her voice gets. What she’d said wasn’t even offensive, if you asked me, but it contained one nuclear-level wordbomb guaranteed to offend someone, somewhere. If we got any dirty looks I didn’t see them, but I said, “Not everything is about race, Mom.” She virtue signals, but she doesn't know what that is. My mother is remarkably socially aware for a Depression kid. She taught me how never to be a man’s victim, never to tolerate abuse or maltreatment. After she married my father they hightailed it in the thick of the night to Florida where he started a new job, and they a new life together, on the Q.T. so Dad’s avaricious ex-wife wouldn’t find them and make trouble. A few years later I was born, and four years after, my brother. In the 1960s Mom disapproved of the way Southerners regarded black people. “They’re still fighting the Civil War down here,” she’d say. Which was only a century in the past. Some of my earliest conversations with Mom were about race relations. How whites had treated blacks in the past, enslaved them, and regarded them as ‘inferiors’. How whites expressed their contempt for their fellow humans by saying things like The Negro needs to know his place and I don’t like uppity Negroes. Mom gave me three acceptable terms for black people. You can call them black, colored, or Negro. Stick with those three and you won’t insult anyone, including black people. Sound advice for the 1960s. She also made it crystal-clear which word for Negroes you NEVER EVER used, under any circumstances, not even as a ‘joke’. Times change, ideas change. Today ‘Negro’ has fallen out of favor, ‘black’ is still okay, ‘colored people’ is not, but ‘people of color’ is for reasons I don’t understand. It’s the Peoples’ Front of Judea! Get it RIGHT! Also, what constitutes polite conversation has evolved. Not everyone got the memo. Mom offended every black aide within earshot when she opined she thought ‘the blacks’ were nicer than the white aides there. My brother said ‘the blacks’ were all seething. “She was trying to pay them a compliment,” he explained. “I had to tell her we don’t make public comments about other races.” In Mom’s non-color-blind defense, she was 87 years old. She’s done her best to guard against racism, and make super-certain her Southern-raised children didn’t grow up with the toxic racial loathing of the Great American Redneck. Y’all come back now, ya heah? Well not y’all, we don’t like your kind! Stay on y’own side of town! Given the thoughtless, pervasive racism of The Silent Generation, I was never clear from where Mom’s early woke-ness in the first decade of the modern civil rights movement came from. She said her parents weren’t racist, but it didn’t sound like they’d ever talked about it growing up the way Mom and I did. Maybe it wasn’t as front-and-center in New York, when you wear privileged blinders in a segregated neighborhood. At any rate, I figured the retirement aides still had it easier with Mom than many other residents, some of whom suffered from dementia or who could be difficult. I’ll bet some tossed some pretty skin-crawling insults at the mostly non-white staff taking care of them. I sometimes wondered how the Hispanic, black and hijab-clad Muslim aides fared in this Fox News-occupied facility. Older people — because social cluelessness begins when you’re ‘adulted’ — sometimes make clumsy, offensive remarks not because they’re insensitive clods but sometimes what once was acceptable has changed. You lose touch with cultural transformation when you’ve got a career, a family, a mortgage. Then you get divorced, change jobs, move, develop health problems, take care of your ageing parents. ‘Woke’-ism is a luxury for the young of any generation. Mom felt comfortable talking about race because she and my father became friendly with a black couple in Orlando. Mom met Lyla, married to a doctor, at a luncheon in the early years. Back then married couples held dinner parties and they discussed many of the race issues the civil rights movement had brought out of the janitor’s closet. It’s just not always appropriate anymore. Me, I try not to talk about racial issues with non-whites because it’s just too fraught with peril. If they bring it up, I watch everything I say. The rise of presidential hateful tweets coupled with woke extremism has rendered communication with ‘others’ toxic no matter where you stand. When you have to keep your ideas to yourself because you’re no longer certain what to say, it builds walls higher, stronger, and far more effectively than any political campaign promise. Mom gave me the ‘ten-cent tour’ of the assisted-living facility she’s grown to love so much, which enabled her to blossom when she could no longer live alone. “Oh, there’s X,” she said, waving to an aide she loved. “He’s so nice and friendly. X!” she called. “Can you come over here? I’d like you to meet my daughter!” X smiled, holding up a finger. “One minute,” he said, as he used an in-facility phone. “I just love him,” Mom said. “He’s one of the nicest aides here. I think he’s gay but you know, I really don’t care!” I glanced at X. “Mom, don’t say that,” I said. “I don’t think he heard you but we don’t say these things in public.” I explained later why we keep those comments private. I also mentioned her remark about black aides and why we don’t talk about other people based on their skin color, sexual preference, or religion because it was too sensitive. At some point she’d stopped paying much attention to the news because it drove her crazy. She missed the ongoing cultural revolution she’d paid far more attention to in the ’60s when America went bugspit crazy. Maybe she had time to get ‘woke’ before it was cool, before feminism became a household word and Rosa Parks ignited a movement that will never roll back. Maybe Mom had more time to get ‘woke’ while married to her first husband, since they never had children. Then Life Happens, and you miss a lot more memos. About twenty years ago I got remonstrated for referring to ‘Orientals’. “We call them Asians.” Okay, but who changed the rules and forgot to inform me? And how is it offensive, since it means ‘of the Orient?’ One I’m-okay-with-being-Oriental lady says it’s outdated, but hardly insulting. Today, labels-obsessed Millennials slam against their anti-label Gen X parents and Boomer grandparents. I can’t be arsed to keep up and I annoy people by questioning why a particular term is now ‘offensive’ when it was fine last week. I look forward to embarrassing my niece and nephew thirty years from now with my politically incorrect opinions on transracial phytosexual quadro-gendered hybrid humans! Undoubtedly, the aides at Mom’s living facility will one day embarrass the crap out of their own children. “Mom! Don’t say ‘honky’! We don’t call white people that anymore!” “Did you hear Grandpa say ‘ofay’ over dinner? I wanted to drown myself in my soup I was so embarrassed!” “YOU KNOW WHAT? WHITE PEOPLE AREN’T AS RACIST AS THEY WERE BACK IN THE TEENS WHEN I WAS A RETIREMENT HOME AIDE! THOSE CAUCASIANS ARE JUST A LOT NICER!” “DAAAAAD!!!” Smile through the red face. They mean well, you know they do! 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!

The Republic of Gilead's threat isn't only from the right. The 'woke' left hates women every bit as much. It's a War On Women no matter which side you're on. I remember a Persian Gulf War veteran in an Internet forum damning the Saudis after 9/11. Stationed in Riyadh, he had little respect for their misogynist, authoritarian, terrorist-supportive culture. He resented having to 'protect' them from Saddam, describing how weak and lazy they'd grown from luxurious overindulgence. Why couldn't they protect themselves? Why did they need the Americans? American women grew lazy too, steeped in the luxury of living in a rich, democratic, First World country where women made breathtaking gains in equality, most especially marked with the 1973 Roe decision liberating them from unwanted pregnancies. Women, who were expected to hand Clinton the 2016 win, didn't value what they had and in a joint, mostly white effort they allowed a guy like Trump to stack an aging Court, having been warned repeatedly they might kiss Roe goodbye. They didn't listen. Trump promised he'd end Roe, and for once, he didn't lie. But the right's War On Women isn't the only one. On the left, it stems from two main branches. 2016 Chicks For Hillary Breakdown White girls liked the racist pussy-grabber more. Source: National Election Pool The first arm of the left's War On Women comes from women who don't vote against their own interests, but won't vote for them, either. Like the voters not included in the above graphic. Opinion poll analysis and political blog FiveThirtyEight suggested that progressive voters who stayed home might have swung the election toward Clinton. Why didn't they vote? FiveThirtyEight's data showed 44% of self-identified registered Democrat voters didn't vote, compared to 46% Republican voters, and 13% who were neither. "The biggest reason given by [all] non-voters for staying home was that they didn’t like the candidates." Black, Asian and Hispanic voters stayed home by 42%, although voter disinformation campaigns and Republican vote blocking efforts may have contributed. What was it about Hillary Clinton otherwise impotent white 'progressives' found so appalling they simply couldn't bring themselves to vote for her? She wasn't good enough for them, either. She knew Washington politics well. She was an 'insider'. Quel horreur! Not voting when one's own self-determination rights are on the line looks an awful lot like not caring about those rights, or those of others. Some progressives may have voted for misogyny more for their pocketbooks with the candidate who favors higher-income households since they can get an abortion whether it's permitted or not. One progressive woman from an upper-middle-class neighborhood told me she and her husband are 'almost making enough to make it worth voting for Trump.' "I won't do it," she added, understanding she's still responsible for those who can't afford a seat at their table. Other progressive homebodies may suffer from internalized misogyny's doubt that women can truly be effective leaders. Naomi Wolf chronicled certain feminists' fear of power and female leadership years ago, and Trump performed well with college-educated women. I wonder who might have been 'good enough' for those SAH voters to get their butts to the polls. Or who might have been toxic masculine enough to motivate them. Vladimir Putin? Kim Jong-Un? Harvey Weinstein? Darth Vader? Does a man have to destroy an entire planet before milquetoast Millennials can pull a lever? Seriously, how much worse must the Republicans dredge up before non-voting chickie-boos whining about Roe get thee to a voting booth? If Trump couldn't do it, who can? Maybe misogynist Hillary-hating 'Bernie Bros' spoke for more liberal women than they realized. The left's obsessive need for 'political purity' hurts women, and everyone else, by rendering every political candidate completely unacceptable. How many feminists obsessed over Joe Biden's 'handsiness' and ancient personal space violations in 2020 when he was up against a confirmed sexual predator? Are those lazy ladies happy now with the world they've wrought for themselves and others? When one gets too steeped in First World luxury (everyone, not just white women) and consequently lackadaisical, this is what happens. Misogyny, dick service and the trans movement The left's misogyny has always been more subtle, easier to hide when the right's misogyny perches like a MAGA-breasted robin on the tallest tree in the park. Progressive men have a higher tolerance for women's rights only when it doesn't immediately threaten their dominance birthright, but the rise of Hillary Clinton thirty years ago began teasing it into the open. Clinton was arguably the first in modern times to step beyond the traditional First Lady role of sticking with a pet cause, like others before her. As First Lady, Clinton had the audacity to chair a task force on healthcare reform, in which she publicly challenged many male Republican conservatives and critics. She lost that battle, but received kudos from many, including a few, grudgingly, from a few of the victors. When she ran for President she unleashed misogyny on both sides, especially the Bernie Bros. Men and their sexual fetishes bring us to the second arm of the left's War on Women. On a less visible level, so-called progressive men's feminism stops at their dick, when the subject is the high rate of sex trafficked women and children in porn and prostitution. Feminism is great as long as it doesn't interfere with every man's entitlement to get off. Traditional, dick-focused misogyny has found a safe haven, at least for now, in the trans movement, where many transwomen - no one knows how many - are autogynephilic. They're erotically aroused by dressing as a woman, pretending to be one, and now, with medical science, becoming as female as a biological man can possibly get. Autogynephilia (AGP) is a remarkably taboo subject in the rise of the male-dominated trans movement. Pre-Internet research on transitioners indicated it was mostly powered by gay men and heterosexual autogynephiles. Activist transwomen's War On Women includes its increasingly censorious silencing of women, often with the help of natal female supporters, erasing the word 'woman', and silencing women with bans and restrictions on social media if those feminist bitches don't shut the eff up and do as they're told. The trans left's War On Women might lead to a 'woke' dictatorship that doesn't look any better for women than Trump Part Deux does. How do you feel about a Republic of Gilead featuring TransCommanders and collaborative Regressive Left 'aunties'? Feminism's War On Women warriors Some feminists never shut up about how much they're silenced. The left's War On Women includes women who de-platform other women for expressing opinions that don't meet their ideological purity test. Speak truth to male power at your professional and personal risk: It's not all abusive misogynists threatening women for speaking out against male violence and abuse. The left's misogynists shout down, threaten, assault, and Twitter-ban women for defending the right of women to remain women and not 'people who menstruate,' 'people with wombs', and the other silly-ass euphemisms the world has adopted to cater to those who are still defending their traditional male dominance, now in wigs and with better makeup than their critics. The difference is that when women are threatened for speaking truth to men who identify as men, feminists are less likely to defend the accused. Women speaking up against 'people with penises' in women's-only spaces and lesbians calling out 'transwomen' pressuring them to have sex with male genitalia are shut down by far too many women, defined as people who were born into it, i.e., those who should know better. Social activism now allies with cyberbullying and violence against women. Often by women. 'Woke' feminists ignore the silencing of women by misogynist men in dresses and their lady lackeys. They tolerate a self-absorbed, largely male movement defining women and dictating to women what 'real women' are as men have done for thousands of years. They support those who disrespect and challenge women who challenge them. The trans left's War On Women has infiltrated Twitter's 'hateful conduct' policy, amended to support trans misogyny over natal women's right not to be harassed, abused, or threatened online. Twitter barely had any fucks to give when the harassers were honest cis-het cybertrolls. One easily violates their so-called 'hateful conduct policy' by stating the glaringly obvious: Transwomen aren't the same as women, or, as happened to Jordan Peterson recently, by using the 'wrong' pronouns when he pointed out Elliott Page cut off 'her' breasts, leading to the usual world-class Twitter hand-wringing freakout. Why did 'he' have to cut 'his' big round breasts off if he's a dude? What is Elliott Page, underneath the chest scars and short hair? Calling Elliott Page 'she', which he was for more than thirty years, is verboten. Where is this silencing of female voices leading us? Silence of the Libs When women can't speak their minds freely, we're back to the dark days when women really were silenced, upon threat of violence or death. Modern feminism is a blink of Darwin's eye on the human timetable. It only began a few seconds ago at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention where the first gentle statements that women should have the right to vote were immediately condemned as 'unladylike'. Feminism from a position of greater female agency only dates, arguably, from the '60s and early '70s when women began marching and agitating and eventually getting what they wanted. What we're still not good at though, because honestly, we're still infants in our own feminist r/evolution, is challenging male authority. It's ingrained in all of us, no matter how feminist we think we are. It's why I encourage feminists to always seek to root out the misogyny and patriarchy between their ears first. We still unconsciously respond to male direction, especially if accompanied with strength and confidence and a deep voice. This goes a long way in explaining how gaslit by the trans movement many alleged progressive feminists have become, and why they're so submissive to obviously misogynist men who act more like men than women. These guys know how to handle, dominate and manipulate unconsciously receptive women. The other feminist challenge is cleaning up our culture of too-embrasive 'tolerance', or 'idiot compassion' as one Buddhist teacher might call it. 'Idiot compassion' is when one shows so much compassion for others, you let them walk all over you, or willfully ignore their transgressions against others. Modern leftism, including feminism, has devolved toward an unfortunate regressive 'tolerance' in which traditionally, universally marginalized women ignore women's rights if some other male-dominated marginalized group complains loudly enough. Like with fundamentalist Islam's abuses against women, which Christian-critical feminists conveniently ignore, and Female Genital Mutilation, against which Western feminism's white, post-colonial guilt prohibits them from standing up for their darker sisters, because 'marginalized' misogynists citing 'cultural traditions' can shut them up on command. It's why and how misogynist men have weaponized female submission so politically. Toxic masculine men have figured out a way to hate, threaten, abuse, and harass women with feminists' blessings. We've witnessed the most brilliant feminist hornswoggling in history by the trans movement's greatest victory in its War On Women: Getting women to misgender boys and men so they can compete on women's sports teams while everyone nods like good little Stepford Wives and parrots the party malarkey: "Transwomen are the same as women." Non-misgoynist transwomen may be too scared to speak out. These other transchicks can seriously kick their asses. When late-blooming transwomen rip the mantle of victimhood from female shoulders, malleable feminists put their critical thinking faculties on hold and accept the mind-blowing premise there's no difference. They harm those many transfolk who don't hate women and live just fine with anyone who can treat them like normal human beings without requiring kid glove treatment, thankyouverymuch. Radical trans-activists won't entertain the notion of compromise because they don't want it, they want total female subjugation, and when women haven't cleared out the patriarchy between their ears, the boys will get what they want. As always. However crazy might be the right's insane conspiracy theories, at least they're not demanding we deny the evidence of our own eyes of the simple difference between boys and girls. Like it or not, we do live in a sexually dimorphic world but we can carve out a place for those who don't feel like they don't quite fit either side. Let's sit down and talk about it, and figure out how we can live and work together happily enough. We'll even make room for you 'wokies' too, if you promise not to shout down, talk over, or wokesplain to women you disagree with. You know, like men do. 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. 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Squash negative demands and action, however minor, fast. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Honestly, it really wasn't a big deal. I knew it at the time, but I still didn't like it. My parents had gone off on a weekend trip. They'd had an argument in the motel room about something minor. Dad rapped Mom lightly on the thigh. She was clear on that. He hadn't 'hit' her, just rapped her on the thigh as he passed by to make a point. "Still, I don't like what he did," Mom said. "He hit me, and that's not okay!" I questioned her. How hard, did she feel he might do it again? No, she wasn't fearful, didn't think she was in any danger. But she was really mad. So was I. This is the woman who drilled an important lesson into my head I never forgot. My Mother Taught Me Never To Tolerate Abuse I wanted to make sure Dad was as clear as a virgin brook on the unacceptability of what he did. I called him, probably at work, and read him the riot act. I told him I understood it wasn't a hit or a punch or a slap, it was light, but under no circumstances was he ever to do it again. A united front against male anger works wonders with many men. My father was not nor was he ever physically abusive, but sometimes people change as they get older. To live an abuse-free life, you start with zero tolerance for abuse. The connection between abuse and entitlement I'm not convinced all physically abusive men are, at their core, violent. Abuse also includes emotional, verbal and psychological, and pretty arguably everyone is guilty, even the nicest, most even-tempered people at some point. When we get angry or triggered we lash out at others - a partner, a friend, a family member, or some poor schmoe who happened to cross our path on a bad day. I suspect at least some men become abusive because they're allowed. I speak from experience. I used to be verbally and emotionally abusive to men during a dark time in my life about twenty years ago. I'm ashamed of the way I treated some men and their biggest 'fault' was not being the men I wanted them to be. I was That Crazy Chick many of them talk about. Not the 'crazy chick' who won't take their shit, the unacknowledged core of abusive men's complaints about women, but the Crazy Chick on dating apps who turned into a bitch in a heartbeat if someone rubbed me the wrong way or reached out and failed to meet my ridiculous standards. I learned what it feels like to be in the abuser's brain. Not OJ abusive, just everyday abusers who lash out at others because they loathe themselves. I wasn't raised to be abusive, as, I suspect, many men aren't. Some learn it growing up, others from mass media, later generations from social media, others from porn and other toxic content, but especially hanging around with negative, abusive people. For some men, it stems from sexual entitlement. For me, it stemmed from romantic entitlement. I found I had something in common with incels, not because I sympathized with them but because we shared entitlement. Incels want sex with women 'out of their league'; I wanted a man out of my own. Incels refuse to recognize the problem resides in them; as did I. I don't blame 'the right sort of man' for running away from me. I had an emotional breakdown over someone I fell too hard too soon for and he fled. It took me a few years of going over and over it and asking "What did I do wrong?" and more life experience to realize I was too needy and clingy. I had no life of my own and depended too much on seeing him. I smothered him. He was the last straw in a string of romantic disappointments, and the poor schmucks who came after him paid for it. I emotionally abused any who gave me tacit permission. They tolerated it. They let me abuse them. They kept coming back for more. I'm not blaming them. Their willingness to be abused doesn't exonerate my behavior in the slightest. But it did make them complicit, the way women are complicit, which shares a very fuzzy boundary with 'blame'. I hammer home the message no one can abuse you without your consent, unless you're not yet a legal adult, because you otherwise always have the power to set limits or walk away, even if you don't yet realize it. 'No Test' to identify early red flags According to Rob Andrews, a domestic violence counselor in Australia, male abusers 'boil the frog' by introducing control slowly and gradually. He offers a 'No Test' for women to apply early in a relationship, before a controlling personality does too much damage. "The No Test is basically to watch out for the way your partner responds the first time you change your mind or say no. While expressing disappointment is OK, it's not the same as annoyed. Annoyed is 'how dare you,' a sign of ownership or entitlement." He identifies ownership, entitlement and control as the early 'red flags' of a new relationship. He notes it happens far more often for women, but it's important to remember controlling, abusive, women resemble abusive men in many ways. Look at Amber Heard. I know, because I've refused to allow abusers into my life, and because, for an ugly time in my life, a few men allowed me into theirs. They didn't have zero tolerance for abuse. This may be a weakness for men today because when we talk about toxic relationships and abuse, we're almost always talking about male-on-female. We often won't even acknowledge how abusive women can be, even physically, when the man permits it. When I called my father decades ago, I demonstrated a united effort by the women in the family to make sure he understood his small rap on the thigh was unacceptable. They'd been married over twenty years, and it was a silly argument. But striking another person is never acceptable. He was angry. We all get angry. We have more control over ourselves than we acknowledge when we're triggered. When the abuser wears lipstick Anyone who thinks women can't be abusive has never known any women, or was home-schooled. We're masters at psychological manipulation and abuse. We're even more violent than acknowledged, mostly because we have to be more underhanded about it. We'll rarely confront a man physically, unless he's in bed like former Saturday Night Live comedian and actor Phil Hartman, shot to death in 1998 in his sleep by his alcohol and drug-fuelled abusive wife. Female serial killers like Aileen Wournos who murdered her johns up close are still rare, but experts have come to believe they may be more common than suspected. In her book When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, Patricia Pearson details how law enforcement often fails to identify female serial killers because of the erroneous belief that a woman couldn't possibly commit muliple acts of violence. Men and their more public violent crimes negate, in many brains, the notion that women, too, are violent. One expert quoted by Pearson notes that "Female serial killers actually average a greater number of victims than their male counterparts, even though the deaths occur right under their communities' noses." Who ever suspects the girlie? Mostly violent women have to operate under the radar. Certainly the list of historical poisoners is distinctly female. Today, babies and old people in the care of female less-than-caring givers are often targeted. Pearson explores whether SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) deaths are always tragic inexplicable accidents along with women who murdered their babies in the throes of postpartum depression, or just driven mad by a difficult, incessantly crying infant. She also explores caregivers with high body counts in the healthcare profession and mothers diagnosed with Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, in which they injure, sicken, or even kill their children for the attention and sympathy they receive from others. They're almost exclusively, Pearson notes, "the province of women who find themselves in maternal roles, either as biological or adoptive mothers or as babysitters or caretakers....They have an expert grasp of medicine and a keen sense of medicine's power." Women don't have the physical strength to murder like men. We have to be more cunning and subtle. Public domain image from Wallpaperflare Men are the most common physical abusers, including against transpeople who are at higher risk for partner violence. It doesn't mean we should ignore women's less common, less popular victims. Men injured or murdered by women are still victims. And lesbian domestic violence gets a lot less public attention than it deserves. Violence and abuse comes in all shapes, sizes, ages, colors, and sexes. If we were less tolerant of abuse we'd recognize this. It was a silly thing, Dad's little rap on the thigh. I knew it, Mom knew it, but she had never been struck by a man before. I knew he'd probably never do it again, but I called him because I was quite sure he'd never do it again if he had to endure another riot act. We have to resolve we will tolerate no control or abuse in our lives, and remove the parties responsible, or get out early. More importantly, we need to present a united front for others. It wouldn't have spiraled with my father, but with other men it might have. Controlling controllers "You're not going to do that," a boyfriend in my early twenties once told me. I forget what it was about. I looked up. "You're not going to tell me what to do," I told him. "You are NEVER going to tell me what to do, do you understand?" You gotta squash that shit like a bug. Anyone can do it. Early on, from the first sign of trouble, you come down hard on controlling behavior. Whether it's a man or a woman or anyone else doing it. Early is better than later. You set your boundaries and the other knows where they stand. If the other person's response to boundary-setting is to insult or hit you, that's your sign it's time to go. No matter how pretty or handsome they are, not to mention, of course, wealthy. Controlling, abusive people are never worth it. Never. If you liked this article you might like these: What If Human Women Challenged Male Aggression Like Bonobos? What Abuse Victims Can Learn From Prison Groupies I Think I Was Groomed For Abuse Once 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!

Mass shooter normalization demonstrates domestic abusers are no longer just a threat to their families Public domain photo from Rawpixel Warning: Brief mentions of animal and child abuse. Canada's worst mass shooter, the late Gabriel Wortman, returned to the news as police release information about his extremely violent genealogical history. Wortman's father Paul was highly abusive as was George, Paul's father. In April 2020 denturist gone bad Gabe killed 18 people and probably himself in Portapique, Nova Scotia. A new report based on police interviews of his surviving wife, family members, friends and acquaintances details family violence going back at least four generations. Not only was young Gabe subjected to horrific violence, he was forced to commit it himself. His father Paul made Gabe shoot his own dog when he felt he wasn't taking care of him well enough. Paul and his brothers (Gabe's uncles) were subjected to so much of George's violent abuse that they each considered killing him. One uncle thought about it after being gifted a rifle when he was 12, but didn't have the courage. Another stabbed George as a child during a family fight. As an adult, Paul once smashed his father's head into the concrete after George denied any of the vicious abuse he'd committed when the boys were growing up. Daddy Paul is still alive and admits to nothing more re Gabe and his brothers than 'having a hell of a temper' and 'screaming'. Image by Alexa from Pixabay In a 12-hour ordeal of terror for the small Portapique community, on April 18-19, 2020, domestic violence perp Gabe went on a rampage, setting multiple fires, killing 22 people, and injuring three. He set a new record for Canadian mass killing previously held by 1989 Montreal misogynist Marc Lepine, who killed 14 female engineering students, screaming how feminists had ruined everything, blaming them for his failure to get into engineering school that year. Guys who hit girls With the United States as the decades-long case study in mass shootings, a common thread that's emerged is shooters' personal histories of domestic violence. A recent peer-reviewed research study in Injury Epidemiology analyzed five years of Gun Violence Archive data, finding that two-thirds of mass shooters (defined as four or more fatalities, not including the gunman) killed family members, intimate partners or had a history of domestic violence. It's why President Joe Biden's new gun law, passed last month, closes the 'boyfriend loophole', meaning dating partners convicted of domestic abuse can no longer buy guns. How effective this new law will be remains to be seen in a nation awash with guns. It's like fighting cockroaches by no longer allowing them to eat garbage. The closed loophole only applies to dating partners who have been convicted of prior abuse. And how many abuse victims are willing to report it, let alone push it into court? Good luck with that. Canada doesn't have the gun violence problem America does, but it's growing, since like every other country on the planet, we've got an unhealthy share of toxic masculine men who can't be trusted with plastic picnic knives, much less shooty things. The profile of the violent mass shooter is 'male', big surprise there since the historical, universal profile of the violent anything starts with 'male', and now, to put a finer point on mass shootings which in the U.S. are no longer a 'rare occurrence', we can now add 'domestic abuser'. This means that a woman's private hell is no longer her own business. The rise of the mass shooter and his clear connection to domestic violence demonstrate that the next Gabriel Wortman will likely have a history of intimate partner abuse, and many will be quietly aware of it. Not all shooters fit that profile. Younger mass killers like teen Uvalde shooter Salvatore Ramos, the aforementioned Marc Lepine, 'killer incel' Elliott Rodgers, and Seung-Hui Cho, the University of Virginia's first mass shooter (there was a second a few years later), were unmarried, social reject loners who'd never had girlfriends. But a fair chunk of them, too, had a history of violence, if not necessarily against women. What do mass shootings mean for the tough guy's social circle? Protecting one's own family and colleagues may mean having to take a highly uncomfortable, more proactive awareness in handling a highly volatile neighbor, co-worker, or friend's spouse, especially if one suspects or knows there are guns in the house. Sometimes angry men go after the wife and kids, sometimes everyone but the wife, so she can live without her nearest and dearest as 'punishment' for whatever transgressions against him he thinks she's committed. Becoming a mass shooting victim increases for one who knows the shooter, especially if close to his partner. One might make the list of people he's out to 'get', especially if he thinks she cares about them or that they helped her. The work colleagues of an abused partner may be at risk as well. With multiple mass shootings a literal daily reality for Americans, far more people will discover the ugly emotional legacy once the domain of comparatively few: The guilt of realizing you might have been able to stop a massacre. CC0 2.0 image by 2happy from Stockvault How might you feel if someone you knew or suspected to be violent, some man you never liked, maybe you didn't even know him that well, committed a mass killing in a church, supermarket, parade, rock concert, school, or public park? Maybe he had a reputation in his neighborhood. Maybe you didn't know his partner, or didn't know her well, but you suspected something weird going on at home. Maybe she always wore sunglasses, even inside. Maybe she explained away her bruises as 'klutziness', but not with that funny ha-ha attitude genuinely clumsy people express. Maybe people half-joked, "He's going to be the next mass shooter!" They won't be laughing if it happens. Especially if they know or love any of the victims. Domestic violence is no longer a private matter. It's now everyone's business. The role of the abused partner It won't do much good to talk to her. She'll likely be afraid of what he'll do if he finds out. He may have isolated her enough that she'll reject any offers of help. It may put her safety in danger if he even sees her talking to someone. But taking the 'It's none of my business' attitude when we hear something going on could be more deadly than just for her. I became more vigilant at the start of the pandemic, realizing that so much togetherness would create increased family friction, especially if there was pre-existing dysfunction. One morning I heard a man's raised, angry voice in the apartment next door and I went on full alert. The moment I heard anything sounding like violence I was ready to call 911. I don't know the family, but I've seen them. He screamed at the kids a little but made no threats and I heard no violence, so I let it be. I have called the police on a prior neighbor, putting myself a bit at risk. However, I'm much older than she and we live in Canada where guns aren't nearly as easy to acquire as they are in the States. If I was still living there, I'd be far more worried about any guy I knew to have an anger management problem. What would it be like in the States, when there are more potentially dangerous nutbags who might turn the gun on me, a stranger or near-stranger? What can we do? One of the worst moral dilemmas is deciding whether to report someone you suspect might be a potential mass killer, but hasn't created enough suspicion yet. I've had to grapple with it in the past year. I'll write about it shortly. 8 warning signs of a mass shooter, according to experts (USA Today) One thing to do is call the police if you hear something going down. Couples fight, and I only call when I hear what sounds like violence or threats. I don't file spurious complaints, but I've often thought about what a formerly-abused friend said: "Call the police. You don't know how many times J had me backed against a wall and I was praying to God someone was calling the police." It will at least start a police record on the guy, and serve him notice that others are paying attention, especially if it happens multiple times. Then there's a record detailing a history for this guy. But don't call the police without real reason. Arguably, it could put the partner's life in danger, but consider also any children in the home. It's not just her life at stake; he might harm the kids too. We might be afraid the abuser will find out or figure out who did it. The list of suspects is small in a neighborhood, or a hallway. What if you know there are guns in his domicile? What if he decides to shoot everyone he sees one day? And one of those people is you, your spouse, or your kids? An article about the red flags for a potential shooter, and what to do, notes that the police aren't always the first go-to. Sometimes a counselor, mental health advocate, community leader, school administrator, or family member is the best place to start. I called my property manager several years ago when I shared an elevator with a deliveryman carting a rifle storage locker. I noted the floor number he punched. It's not an illegal item here, but whoever ordered it pretty arguably had guns, and the paranoid American in me wanted the property manager to know just in case something went down. The person who ordered it may have been a perfectly level-headed gun owner. No reason to call the police. Just let someone know. In case. The red flags aren't race, religion, political party or even one's views and opinions. One can be racist, sexist, homophobic or a member of that political party you can't stand and not be a potential mass shooter. They cross the line when they start talking about it, hinting about it, posting disquieting photos and expressions on social media, or even making a direct threat about 'those who have it coming'. He might have owned guns for years but now he seems to be buying a lot of them, along with ammo and protective gear. You start with the police if you think it's an urgent enough threat, and with others if there's not. When they're expressing empathy with mass shooters, that may be an early warning sign but not for police involvement. Last year I filed a report on an acquaintance I'd defriended and blocked on Facebook over a political dispute. She took it much harder than I'd have guessed, and she made harassing, threatening calls. She disguised her voice but I knew who it was. I struggled with calling the police over this stupid little cat fight. I didn't think she was dangerous, and doubted she had guns. But, I didn't want to worry my friends about this, and if something did happen to me, the police would focus on my close male friends. No one would even know who Jamie is since I barely knew her and never talked about her. I created a record in the extremely unlikely case she pulled anything. I gave the police Jamie's name, phone number, email address and Facebook page address and made it clear I didn't want them to intervene right now, just know she's their primary suspect if I disappear or turn up in a gully somewhere. We're only now coming to realize that domestic violence is a public health issue, especially in a country drowning in guns like the United States. I think about it even here in Canada, where mass shootings have historically been rare, but they're growing, especially in the pandemic. The other day I Googled 'the most recent mass shootings', thinking of America and found---the most recent one was in Langley, BC. It's time to open discussion about how we can better protect our communities from mass shooters, knowing what we do about their violent histories, whether they abused their partners and families, or whether they were disturbed young people who never should have been allowed to purchase guns. We must also address how to do this without putting the man's immediate family in danger. Let's serve notice to abusers and the next wannabe CNN superstars everywhere: We're watching you, and we're reporting you. This will also serve notice to women in abusive situations who may be unwilling for whatever reason to handle it: Don't tell us to stay out of your business. This isn't just your business anymore. It's a public health crisis. It's everyone's business. 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!

Three options for American women to, um, *empower* men to bring Roe v. Wade back CC0 public domain from Pxhere A few years ago actress and feminist activist Alyssa Milano suggested a Lysistrata-style protest by women after the latest round of Republican-backed abortion rights limits. She was pooh-poohed, including by myself for suggesting a sex strike, but now, with Roe gone, maybe she had a point...? Not wanting to have sexual intercourse just got more attractive for any woman unfortunate enough to live in a bass-ackward state. That sucks, when you're a healthy, red-blooded young American woman with carbonating hormones. We can be sure of one thing: Abortion rights aren't coming back soon, unless everyone votes Democrat in the fall. Yeah, that'll happen. Here's the thing: It benefits men mightily when women fear pregnancy. I'm not sure today's outraged progressive 'feminist' men have yet worked out just how much a Roe-less world benefits them as much as conservative men. If you pay attention, you'll note that male feminism usually stops at the penis. When women's rights interfere with male sexual pleasure, one encounters resistance, pushback, and justification. Don't believe me? Test your 'feminist' male friends by talking about how we need to crack down on sex trafficking of girls and women in porn and prostitution and see how 'feminist' they are on the subject. I discovered this by accident last year when I told a man I'd started dating how I'd read a book that discussed the sex trafficking problem in porn. Boy, did he get triggered! He hotly denied there was a trafficking problem and demanded I provide evidence. "Just Google 'sex trafficking in porn'," I replied. "The first page of search results contain articles from high-quality, factual sources about the problems at YouPorn and Pornhub," the two most popular sites. I hadn't known him long enough to realize he watched a lot of porn. No wonder he got so angry. I'd just inadvertently made him feel like a dirtball. I hadn't known how popular porn had become. I never date anyone long enough to find out. Most men make me want to rip my brain out of my head before I'm half-finished with my coffee. An article I read elsewhere described how men talk about 'sex work' as 'empowering' for women, using a new term to pretty up 'prostitution' so they don't have to feel ashamed at degrading women who suck stranger dick to feed their families, not because they like to. To be fair, so-called female feminists have made these arguments too, including 'sex workers' I'm not convinced are feeling all that empowered. I can think of three ways we can protest Roe in the bedroom and provide impetus for all men to hurry up and bring Roe back. Protest Option #1: Shut your mouth Let's consider this: A less intercourse-y world for men means something wondrous and beautiful: BLOWJOBS! BLOWJOBS! BLOWJOBS! BLOWJOBS!!! This works out fabulously for men, many of whom may not be that much into sexual intercourse anyway. Intercourse is more intimate, and usually involves facing your partner, being much closer physically, and, God help them, looking into her eyes. That's where connection happens. That's where feelings happen. The emotionally stunted man wants to look anywhere but. Blowjobs, on the other hand, require nothing more than laying back and enjoying it. For some, it's being 'serviced', even if she's not a prostitute. For others, like rapper DJ Khaled, oral sex is exclusively the 'right' of the male to receive, because he is 'king' and there are 'different rules' for men and women. I'd like to know who set those 'rules' and why he thinks he's 'king' when it was a woman who carried his heavy ass for nine months in her belly and pushed him out from between her legs. Can you imagine DJ, or any other man, having the courage, commitment, or fortitude to do that? So yeah, there's a power element to getting women to give blowjobs, although to be fair many men are happy to reciprocate, and may even claim to like doing that the most. But man, do men love blowjobs. If we can't get what we want, they can't get what they want. Men decided what women will do with their bodies. We'll decide what they won't. Free SVG Protest Option #2: Require men to get better in the sack. Particularly with oral. If you can't live without sex at all, Option #2 will require men to get better in bed. This will be painful for the ones who delude themselves into thinking they're better lovers than they are. Which is to say, nearly all of them. And that means absolutely no blowjobs for men who don't reciprocate. That's right, DJ Khaled, go ask Lila Nas X or Saucy Santana for one. Learn to love the beard scratch! No more faked orgasms, ladies! Men only get rewarded with loud screams if they produce it. No trophy just for sticking your tongue out! While we're waiting for Roe's return men will have to make their partner's pleasure of primary importance, which means getting to know their bodies much, much better. Pay attention, Ted Cruz! You MUST learn where the clitoris is located. (No, it's not in the medicine cabinet!) How many men, really, are good at oral sex? I've been with a lot of men and I can only remember one who possessed the one critical skill for giving good ladyhead: He listened and followed instructions. Most men, I've found, have one way of going down and simply can't be taught anything else. A friend I recently discussed this with agreed. Most men learned how to go down from an early girlfriend and they either suffer from the delusion that all women are alike down there or they just don't care. Several years ago I was with a man who only knew what could be described as the 'hummingbird' technique. His tongue moved so fast it had to have been a blur. "Slower, slower!" I said. "And gentler. You need a much lighter touch." "Okay," he said, and he slowed it down, for about thirty seconds. Then the hummingbird returned. "No, no, slower and gentler!" I said. "You're killing the feeling." "Oh, okay," he said and slowed it down. Thirty seconds later--"Please! Stop doing that!" Ten seconds later--"Okay, let's forget it. This isn't working." What part of 'slow' and 'gentle' did he not understand? Unfortunately, I find this is fairly typical. They don't listen. You can't teach them. But in a Roe-less world, they will have to learn, or go back to Rosy Palm. Option #3: The double condom protest If you prefer intercourse, and many of us do, insist on two condoms. He should be using birth control anyway since men don't want to pay for unwanted children any more than unwilling mothers want to carry or raise them. We all know how much men hate using condoms, right? "I don't feeeeel as much!" "You're not going to feel anything if you don't put it on." "How about a blowjob instead?" "Hang on, let me check something." She pulls out her mobile, scrolls and taps. "No, we still have no abortion rights. How do you feel about a condom now?" "How do you feel about anal? You can't get pregnant that way." "Gross. I don't do that porny shit. I want intercourse, and now that I have no abortion rights, you have to use two condoms." "TWO CONDOMS? Are you out of your mind, woman?" "In case the first one breaks." "Screw this. I'll go find Camellia. She'll do it bareback!" Fine, let her raise the dumb-ass's baby. Or contend with monkeypox. Really, how pleasurable will sex be for women now that forced pregnancy is a possible consequence? As sardonic as I'm being - Lysistrata was an utter fantasy even back in classical Athens - it's something to think about. I really do see the popularity of blowjobs and anal sex exploding with men as they have for many years with teenage boys, many of whom never reciprocate on the oral. It's how girls cement early the misogynist idea that women exist to service men with their bodies, and that female sexual pleasure isn't important. The pain must be evenly spread. It's not every American man's fault Roe is gone and it's plenty of American women's fault that it is. The bottom line is sex just got more dangerous for everyone, but especially women. Sexual intercourse in a restricted or no-abortion state needs two condoms to be safer. If intercourse is out, then men need to up their game in the sack and earn their partner's screams of pleasure. Alyssa Milano and a fictional married war protester may be tongue-in-cheek, but there's a method to their madness. We need to spread the pain. Okay, Kavanaugh's doe-eyed poor-poor-baby wife won't refuse her wifely duties for her overprivileged frat boy, but what if his friends began griping to him at country club parties that this was all his fault? Nothing will motivate American men to correct an injustice quite like limiting or cutting off male sexual pleasure. Start with the blowjobs. Trust me, they'll turn into Gloria-freaking-Steinim before you even get to the condom thing, and we'll have Roe back by Thanksgiving. 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!

Same old cis-het sexual predator, different wardrobe and 'identity'. I'm not a lesbian, so correct me if I'm wrong, since definitions change faster than Donald Trump's excuses for stashing classified documents, but as I understand it, traditional lesbians are girls who are attracted to girls and not boys. They like girls with girl-parts, not boy parts, and most especially not a penis and testicles. They like women with women's bodies, not jawlines with a five o'clock shadow or bodies that can win the men's decathlon. Lesbians like girls. The 'cotton ceiling' idea, coined by a porn actress in 2015 , has been popularized by a small segment of the trans movement along with certain 'allies' who aren't trans themselves, who I'll guess are almost certainly male. The 'cotton ceiling' describes lesbians who don't want to date transwomen, especially those who still retain their original equipment. With 'cotton ceiling' complaints come the invented word 'ladydick', to gaslight people into believing some women have a penis, the way we're supposed to believe some men menstruate. Biology speaks truth to identity about who and what is under the appropriated clothing, wigs, chest scars and close-cropped haircuts. But whatever. As J.K. Rowling famously got flamed for, "Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security..." But don't act like a sexual predator. The wolf in she's clothing 'Cotton ceiling' complainers tend to be transwomen who 'identify' as lesbians. But calling their penis a 'ladydick' doesn't make it any more attractive, or female. A transwoman who pressures women to have sex with him isn't a lesbian, he's an entitled, abusive, privilege-entrenched cis-heteronormative man and a sexual predator. Lesbian ladies, we cis-het females all know this guy! He doesn't care if we're not ready for sex, maybe not yet ready to lose our virginity. He doesn't care if we're not attracted to him. His dick needs service and he's chosen one of us as the unlucky recipient to service it with one of our orifices. He will say and do whatever it takes to get us to spread our legs and if we still resist, he will pull out the big guns. "You must be a lesbian!" No, we protest, no we're not. "I think you're a lesbian! Prove it! Prove you're not really into bush!" So now, that same cis-het dude has donned a dress and inverted his hoary old line to pressure lesbians who won't ride his hot rod, either. "You're not really a lesbian! If you are, prove it!" Maybe lesbians should ask: If you're a transwoman identifying as a 'lesbian', why don't you hook up with other 'lesbian' transwomen? Avail yourselves of the 'mangina' in the back! Lesbian transwomen who won't date or have sex with other lesbian transwomen are, therefore, transphobic TERFs! 'Cotton ceiling' sexual predators are the same-old same-old. It's NOT OKAY. It's abusive, entitled male privilege dressed up and with a repurposed line. You don't have to defend yourself People dig who they do, and are entitled to reject anyone. Not wanting to have sex with someone is the only reason you need to not have sex with that person. After all, lesbians don't want to sleep with every woman they meet. When's the last time a female lesbian accused another of not being a real lesbian because she wouldn't sleep with her? Pressuring people to have sex: It's primarily a guy thing. The original 'cotton ceiling' proposal posited that maybe we should challenge what we think constitutes an acceptable romantic or sex partner. That's fair, especially in these Tinder-challenging times. People can enlarge their dating pool if they open up more to others they automatically rejected - people from other cultures and religions, other races, the disabled, the age-distant, and larger people. But only if they want to. No one should force themselves to sleep with people they don't find attractive because of some 'unprogressive' or 'transphobic' B.S. guilt trip. Especially lesbians not the slightest bit interested in a penis. And an estimated 80% of transwomen (no one knows for sure) still have one. An unfortunate reality for anyone who switches gender is they dramatically reduce their dating prospects. It may not be fair, and fat people can relate, but transgenders defy what most people find attractive in a sexually dimorphic species. 'The norm' is to find the opposite sex attractive, or the same sex if one is gay, which is thrown off kilter when someone blends sex and gender presentation. We're wired a certain way and while we're not slaves to our cavecritter legacy, you don't overcome it after only a decade of 'wokeness'. While it's fair to challenge any of us to question our sexual preferences, sex with someone who doesn't want you is not a human right. Sexual attraction has served the human race for millions of years, since its recursive purpose of life is its perpetuation. No god or human decreed this; mindless evolutionary biology did. We've evolved the way we have to perpetuate life, whether we individually choose to or not. It does no good to compare us to other species who aren't sexually dimorphic. We ain't clownfish, frogs or bearded dragon lizards. I've found no mammals - our kind - who are. Maybe we'll evolve away from sexual dimorphism in the future; but don't hold your breath for this lifetime, because evolution takes a looooong time. In the meantime, we can work around biology's limitations. Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Emily Walker in New Zealand The role of the AGP transgender male The dirty little not-so-secret about a fair number of transwomen is that they're autogynephilic, in which a man is aroused by looking like, dressing as, and fantasizing about being a woman. Trans-activists succeeded for awhile in making it 'taboo' or 'offensive' to mention it since people feel greater sympathy for gender dysphorics than for cis-het male sexual fetishists. AGPs have constituted a large part of the transgender population since long before gender-switching became popularized by social media. Gay males constitute the other large chunk of traditional transgenders. Since the latter is uninterested in vagina, and in fact may have transitioned to female to make themselves more attractive to straight men, it's some of the AGPs - cis-het men - who are now preying on vulnerable and naive young lesbians. Abusive cis-het males are calling the shots now, having successfully penetrated the trans and LGB movements and gaslit enough of them to think that transwomen are the same as women and that 'some women have penises' and that it's 'transphobic' to not want to have sex with the dick under the dress. The well-meaning desire to be 'inclusive' is the Achilles heel of the left. It lends itself too easily to abuse via tolerance of intolerance - condemning the Christian religion, for example, for its historical poor treatment of women and religious minorities like Jews, while turning a blind eye to those same abuses in modern Islam. Or fighting for the 'right' for people with penises - i.e, men - to invade women's safe spaces like spas, prisons, rape crisis and domestic violence shelters. 'Idiot compassion' Another word for this over-inclusiveness is 'idiot compassion', coined by the late Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and describes how compassion taken too far, enables some to walk all over others and perpetuate abuse. The left's overemphasis on inclusivity and non-offense is the idiot compassion that makes those who rail against 'misogyny' and 'patriarchy' the most easily gaslit to ignore the blatant misogyny, patriarchy, and traditional male entitlement expressed by abusers in Transworld. Some feminists - cis and lesbian - are beginning to connect and call out classic abusive male tactics and public misogyny in dresses. I want lesbians to know they're not alone. We straight chicks see through these opportunistic men attempting to manipulate, pressure, guilt-trip and control lesbians into giving them what they've always wanted from women and were likely unable to get when they 'identified' as men. The backlash has begun, fueled not by 'transphobia' but by traditional feminist hostility to male abuse. You are what you are and you're attracted to who you're attracted to. You're not 'transphobic' or a 'TERF' if you don't want to ride a penis, or date someone who simply looks like a guy inside or outside of a dress. When he pressures you to have sex with him, he's not a she or a her. He's demonstrating he's as all-man as he always was. He's neither a woman nor a lesbian. He's a sexual predator. Same-old same-old. 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!

Like Brett Kavanaugh did? And you just didn’t know it? I recently sent an apology to someone for nasty shit I did forty years ago. Better late than never, n'est-ce pas? I was digitizing my life, scanning journals, stories, and photographs, reminding me of silly crap like my first boyfriend, playing 'beerhunter' with friends, the uber-drama of who likes who and who just broke up with who, and dumb private in-jokes whose humor is lost to the annals of time. One afternoon I read a forgotten movie script I'd written for a college class, very thinly based on an uber-drama in my life at the time, and my words reached out from 1984 to gob-smack me in the face with the evidence, in fading black on white with smudgy typos and clumsy ballpoint pen corrections, of what a serious bitch I could be when I was a college student. Okay, I won't mince words, I can be a bitch even today but damn, did I really do that? I laid it down on the coffee table and walked away, so appalled was I at how my friends and I had acted. I had help, but I was the Lead Asshole. I never read the rest. I threw it away without scanning it. What I'd done to Alice gnawed at me. Our inner Brett Kavanaugh This occurred during the Ford/Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings. I half-listened, half-watched a proposed Justice who was a way worse asshole than I had ever been deny everything. At least I never pretended to rape someone and then laughed my ass off when they ran away crying. I listened as the Senate Committee slowly pried Kavanaugh's ancient memories apart. I became convinced that: Ford was telling the absolute truth about what happened that fateful Maryland night thirty-six years previously Kavanaugh was lying through his #$%ing teeth about not remembering--now--but… He really had forgotten about it until Ford came forward, and probably needed to rack his brain, because he clearly had a serious alcohol problem then He #$%ing remembered by the time he sat down to give testimony. Brett Kavanaugh had a moment few of us ever do: He faced consequences for something he’d done a loooooong time ago he’d completely forgotten about, hadn’t thought was a big deal at the time, and now, decades later, it came back to bite a giant chunk out of his ass. He literally had no idea how he’d impacted someone for an entire lifetime. He didn’t get it, and he didn’t want to, because admitting the truth to himself was too soul-shattering for an older, wiser, soberer man. What did it say about him as a person that he ruined a teenage girl’s life with what sounds like a cruel, thoughtless prank? The fact that he and his buddy laughed hysterically when Christine Blasey tore out of the room indicates they really thought it was a big joke. Well. He wasn’t laughing at his hearing. He was Sniffle-upagus, a petulant man-child, the nasty adolescent boy’s face transparent behind the tissue-thin middle-aged man-mask. This wasn’t fair. This happened like a thousand years ago. Why was she trying to screw up his biggest career move? Why was she bringing this up now? It was just a big joke, ya dumb broad! But before you judge the Judge and write him off with ‘he deserved it’, and he did… …What’s your secret Brett Kavanaugh moment? What should you be judged for? Do you even know? Brett Kavanaugh moments are universal, and usually not nearly as serious as a semi-rape attempt. Most of us will never find out about our moment, something we said or did we didn't think was a big deal, except it was. To someone else. We may never find out unless they decide to confront us - via an email, a Facebook post, a snail mail card, maybe a voice mail message. The risk is greater if you become a public figure. We say and do stuff throughout our lives. When we’re teenagers we’re particularly vicious little bastards, half-formed adults and half-baked savages. My worst bully in high school, the only person I ever felt like I could kill, had finally grown up five years after graduation and later got married and had a child at some point. I don’t know if he’s still married as he hasn’t updated his Facebook profile since the early Obama years (yes, I accepted his friend request) but the little boy in the photo must be in college by now. The First Guy To Hit Me Was The Last And here’s why it never happened again I haven’t gone through life cursing Dan, but he still left a lifelong imprint on me. Do you think it was a good one? I could bring him his own minor Brett Kavanaugh moment, if he ever publicly stated he’s never hit a woman. Which will probably never happen, because he’s not a public figure. And… …I wonder if there's my own Christine Blasey Ford out there somewhere, who could tell a story of something perhaps far more thoughtless and cruel than the shit I pulled on Alice in college. Something I've completely forgotten about. The aggrieved have far longer memories than the perpetrators. I'm not worried about Alice, my Ford. She could, at worst, embarrass me a little but not cancel me on Twitter. She'd never do it because she wasn't blameless herself. It doesn't excuse the way I treated her, or the climactic Biff Thing. I don't know if Kavanaugh ever felt remorse for what he discovered he'd done. Maybe you resist more when you've been globally shamed, rather than privately contacted. What struck me was the similarity in our experiences: We both traumatized others and forgot about it, because it didn't happen to us. Brett Kavanaugh had forgotten about Christine Blasey until she smacked him in the face with a giant, thirty-six-year-old wet mackerel of a misdeed and he learned how abominably he’d changed someone’s entire life. She became a psychology professor to better understand her long-term trauma, and explained why she could be certain it was Brett Kavanaugh, and not someone else, to California senator Dianne Feinstein. Without missing a beat. "The way that I'm sure I'm talking to you right now, it's just basic memory functions and also just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrine in the brain. That neurotransmitter encodes memories into the hippocampus so that trauma-related experience is locked there, so other memories just drift." It wasn't a 'big deal' from Kavanaugh's perspective. But it was to her. Alice in Blunderland Alice created dissension for our college crowd by going after everyone's boyfriend, but deciding mine was the one she was destined to marry. It was comical at first as she had commonplace looks and was somewhat unsocialized. She was, however, relentless. She'd fallen madly in love with James and the only thing standing between her and him was me. And the fact that he wasn't into her. But still. When he didn't fend her off sufficiently I felt insecure and threatened. Between the script and my old college journal, I shook my head disparagingly at my mean-girl bullying, how I gossiped about Alice, wouldn't shut up to anyone who would listen as to how much I couldn't stand her, and the childish pranks I instigated. Like wearing a dead aunt's engagement ring my mother had given me on my left hand, whenever Alice was around, to make her think James and I were engaged. My stunt worked, it hurt her, as a friend confirmed, describing the look on her face whenever I flashed it around. Mission accomplished. I joke-formed a fictional 'hit squad' with a few friends, with fictional stories about getting back at the people who'd done us wrong, always starting with Alice. I'm sure at least some of it got back to her sometimes. Alice had been easy enough to get along with until she started chasing James, and then everyone else's boyfriends. She created bad feeling, especially for James and myself, and started fights between couples. She told my roommate she was waiting for me to instigate some 'precipitating event' that would break James and I up, and that she'd 'wait me out forever'. She shares the blame for her troubles. We all had good reason to put an end to her crap. But the way we ultimately handled it was horrible. The way I handled her leading up to it was horrible. I was her worst bully. One of our number - I'll call him Biff - got everyone's agreement on a scheme to rid ourselves of the troublesome Alice once and for all. The plan was to meet up at the weekly gathering of a social group we were all in that met at the university. We'd get her alone, and in front of us - because, Biff emphasized, she needed to see everyone was behind him on this, especially James - he'd yell at her and tell her in no unclear terms she was to leave us all alone, as we didn't want her around anymore. What really makes me cringe is how it didn't go down that way. What was a terrible idea turned out far more humiliating for Alice than we'd intended. We waited in a secluded area while Biff tried to get her to leave the meeting room, where there were many more people. Alice knew he hated her, she must have figured something was up, and when she wouldn't leave he spoke his mind and humiliated her in front of the entire chapter. Until I dug up the old movie script, I'd almost forgotten about this. I'm quite certain Alice hasn't. A bottle of the house poison, please I remember wondering how I or other girls might have reacted to Kavanaugh's and his friend's 'joke'. You never know what negatively impacts another's life forever. Getting raped, for example, ruins some women's lives, and strengthens others. Some emerged from the Holocaust saying, "I won't give the Nazis one more damn minute of my life," while others descended into survivor's guilt-driven madness or committed suicide. I don't know if Alice ever made her own private peace with us over our groupthinked Biff bomb. As I re-read my forty-year-old journal I was struck not just by how abominably I treated her, but genuine anger I held which I revisited dispassionately; I didn't get angry all over again or re-traumatize myself, but I felt some empathy and compassion for the faulty young woman who had begun to fear Alice might really take her boyfriend. Buddhists say anger is a poison we willingly consume. You can't always control how people treat you but you can control how you react, and how much power you're willing to give them, long after the offense. Had Kavanaugh and his buddy picked a different teenage girl, one who brushed things off more easily, his Supreme Court nomination might have gone more smoothly. He could have moved through the rest of his life blissfully ignorant of Ford's and several more black marks against him, as others stepped forward to tell their own Gross Encounters of the Brett Kavanaugh Kind, including one who accused him of actual rape, albeit outside of the statute of limitations. I'm over Alice's malice; I can honestly say I bear no ill will toward her. She's not an unresolved memory popping up when I'm stressed or angry like a bottle of poison I willingly drink so I can mentally upchuck all over myself again. I don't know whether she can say the same for me. James and I broke up a year or so after The Biff Thing and Alice moved to another city where she married a nice guy, although they divorced later. A few years after college I moved to southern New England, she to the north. We ran into each other sometimes at our social organization events and got along well. She'd left an unsuitable religion and adopted Paganism, a far better choice for someone way too intelligent and progressive for the earlier religion. I gave her a ride once at a large annual gathering and we chatted about our lives in New England, never mentioning the past. I looked for her for years. I reached out to her recently on Facebook. I wanted to connect so I could apologize to her and I thought she might accept since we had been cordial with each other in New England. She didn't accept. So I sent her a direct message, unsure if she'd see it or not since I wasn't a connection. I feel like I've done what I can. Brett Kavanaugh's Christine Blasey Ford moment When we women think of Brett Kavanaugh we think ‘man who sexually abused someone and got away with it.’ Except he didn't. Kavanaugh didn't rape teenage Christine Blasey, he only pretended to. There's a gap between a 'joke' and a real rape. Some women would have shrugged it off, perhaps even laughed it off. Not all women react the same way to rape, or ha-ha-jokey-not-rape. But some are heavily traumatized even when no actual rape occurs. You never know how the victim of your 'joke', your bullying, your cruelty, will be impacted. For Blasey Ford, it impelled her toward a psychology career, to better understand what happened. Kavanaugh impacted her life that much. I don't know how much I impacted Alice's life. While The Biff Thing was a group effort, I think I was the ringleader in a nasty longer-term campaign to personally humiliate her. Christine Blasey Ford failed in her attempt to stop Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, but she returned his favor by traumatizing him - and make no mistake, it's pretty damn traumatizing to be globally shamed. She wasn't the only one whose life and family were threatened during the 2018 hearings; Kavanaugh and his family were subjected to the same anonymous abuse. It's rare for someone with an ancient grievance to return the favor, although social media has made it easier. Kavanaugh didn't get off scot-free; his life will never be as hunky-dory as his critics imagine, and with the recent loss of Roe he may find himself especially in danger. His family will never be the same either. He has two school-age daughters. A controversial 2018 political cartoon depicted a child saying her bedtime prayers…. “Dear God, forgive my angry, lying, alcoholic father for sexually assaulting Dr. Ford.” It was in poor taste and generated the customary backlash. An understandably sympathetic Chelsea Clinton issued a plea to leave Kavanaugh’s daughters alone. But this illustrates how his family will live with his legacy for the rest of their lives. His daughters will forever be tarred as ‘the rapist’s daughters.’ Kids of both genders can be vicious little rhymes-with-runts. Enough has come out about Kavanaugh that they know or suspect the truth about their father, however much they might publicly defend him or privately deny it. While most women, especially Kavanaugh’s critics, don’t think of themselves as bad people and have probably never driven anyone to suicide, or Ford-years of therapy, they don’t know. The bullies rarely remember. The victims do. A few years ago I reconnected with an old boyfriend on Facebook and he mentioned some thoughtless remarks I'd made that clearly stuck with him decades later. I have no memory of them, but I can't say I didn't say them. I defer to his memory, because they stuck in his craw, not mine, and I imagine it's the sort of semi-raw wound that emerges when he's angry, depressed or upset just like everyone else and myself has. We may die not knowing who our Christine Blasey Ford was. Along with Alice, I learned of someone else I hurt as I scanned my so-called life; and like Alice, he wasn't blameless. But I still think I was a real bitch to him, and I wonder: As petty as it all actually is, is there anyone who has a real *bitch* of a story to tell about me? I doubt I ever drove a fragile mind to suicide like the Mean Girls of South Hadley, Massachusetts, but I wonder who may still be drinking a bottle of poison with my face on the label. Before you dismiss your inner Kavanaugh protesting, “I’ve never done anything that bad!”…maybe you didn’t. Or maybe you don’t remember it. Or maybe it was, to you, 'no big deal'. We are all blind Brett Kavanaughs, walking around and living our lives blithely unaware of our personal Christine Blasey Ford. Until maybe one day she emerges and explodes like an IED to tell her truth. Or his. 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!

#NotAllWomen dislike being objectified. Some encourage it, and then complain about male attention WTF? Was she out of her mind dressing like that? For a website’s trade conference speaker bio? Her tiger-striped too-tight tube top drooped so low on her generous chest, had it slipped another millimeter she would have displayed what a friend of mine called ‘clams on the half-shell’. She had the rack for that outfit, for sure. But as a speaker at a business conference, well — even the extremely casual nature of the cannabis industry made me look askance. Shouldn’t she try to be a tiny bit more business-like? Even if Business Casual might be considered overdressing for this particular event? A woman can dress any damn way she pleases, right? But what if we’re sending mixed messages? In this era of aggressive, in-your-face #MeToo and #TimesUp, maybe we need to think about those messages. And by ‘we’, I mean everyone, not just women. Just imagine if a man, especially one in power, strutted around the office with his shirt unbuttoned low enough to reveal his manly chest, his rock-hard gym thighs encased in tight trousers or perhaps the bike pants he didn’t bother to change out of when he got to work. Would anyone complain? Would anyone feel intimidated? Would they feel brave enough to report to the HR manager the guy who signs her paychecks needs to cover up more and stop sexualizing the office? There’d be private grumbling and maybe a few blog posts deep within the bowels of Da Internetz complaining anonymously about Mr. I’m-Too-Sexy-For-This-Office. But the ones who sexualize the workplace and complain about it the most are women. Maybe the day will come when office workers can dress however sexually they want without making anyone feel uncomfortable, but I don’t think we’re there yet. Not in 2021. Dress for excess Perhaps the most venerable message harking back to the very early days of mammalian pair bonding is I’m sexually available for mating purposes. The best-looking life forms get the cream of the mating picks, whether it’s a more brightly-colored mandrill butt, or supremely rockin’ bird of paradise mating dance moves, or perhaps less hairy cleavage, as was the case for Homo Erectus, who lost their body hair when they moved to the super-hot savannah. Looking babelicious is a literally timeless message meaning, first and foremost, I’m available, Gorgeous! The message is murkier today. A woman can look good without wanting men to attempt pickups. Men shouldn’t assume it’s what she wants, but she shouldn’t assume it won’t happen. The self-objectifying pair-bonding message mixes with the one telling men Treat women in the workplace as colleagues, not sex objects, even as we wander around the office wearing self-sexualizing high skirts and near-illegal cleavage. If the workplace is the place where work gets done, then why dress like you’re going out with your girlfriends? It’s a tetchy, murky subject, with workplace harassment in the spotlight and a woman’s unquestioned right to not be sexually harassed regardless of how she’s dressed. It remains remarkable that some men still have to be reminded constantly not to pursue romantic attachments in the office, particularly with anyone who reports to them. I’m not arguing women ‘bring it on themselves’, but I ask women to consider: If you want to be taken seriously at work, how are you presenting yourself? How you dress sends a message. How seriously would a male colleague be taken if he wore what Wil Ferrell wore in a famous Saturday Night Live sketch? It’s exaggerated but he’s only showing a bit more leg than a mini-skirted woman. Let’s be honest: Some women enjoy being objectified, like the aforementioned Toni the Tiger. They work hard to look really, really good. Great clothes. Great hair. Great makeup. A woman spending that much time on her face and body wants to be looked at and admired. Don’t deny it, Hot Stuff! I don’t fault her for that. The ancient Greeks and Romans got gorgeous. The ancient Egyptians dolled up. Hell, they may have invented makeup. Men self-sexualize too, to send many messages, only one of them being I’m sexually available. It can also mean I’m the alpha male here. I’m the dominant one. I’m the one you have to fight if that don’t sit right with you. I get the desire to look good. But I kept it business casual when I worked in offices, because, well, the workplace isn’t the place for my red-hot sizzling menopausal mow-mow-mow. Now I work from home, and when I wear sexy summer clothes, I throw a wrap on for a Zoom meeting. Neither The Girls nor my bare shoulders belong. The message I want to send is to take me seriously. Workplaces are for work, not sexual advertising. I dare you to not look at these A woman I worked with many years ago sent a hugely contradictory message with the way she dressed at our small IT firm. She had a highly confrontational attitude, in-your-face aggressive defense with male colleagues. I understood why: She’d previously worked in American law firms and auto dealerships, two of the most notoriously misogynist professions. She had to be a badass to survive in traditionally female-sparse offices. Like ours. Except ours wasn’t particularly misogynist. It blew my mind how she dressed every damned day. I don’t know if it’s how she dressed at her previous jobs but every morning I was greeted with her ample chest’s décolletage. The very last thing I would ever wear if I worked in a toxic masculine environment (which our office wasn’t) is something shoving The Girls in everyone’s faces. Then there’s LinkedIn, another professional setting where self-sexualization needs to be downplayed. People, I’d like to remind you Linkedin is NOT Facebook! It’s a PROFESSIONAL networking group and romantic gestures, comments and messages have NO PLACE here!!! Women have a hard enough time being taken seriously in the yaddayaddayadda RANK MISOGYNY of yaddayaddayadda EQUALS TO MEN yaddayaddayadda BAD BEHAVIOR yaddayaddayadda… LinkedIn Himbos—men looking for love in just the wrong place—happen even to old farts like me on occasion. I shrug and message back, “LinkedIn is a business networking site, it’s not a dating service, I’m not interested.” End of story. It’s a minor male faux pas, at worst. Unworthy of the overprivileged First World posting tantrums they customarily spark from outraged Cleavage Queens of Babelonia. It stands to reason someone might mistake a really good-looking social media profile picture for a potential availability signal, especially if a woman puts a lot more effort into looking good than I put into crafting the perfect snarky comment response. A self-sexualizing photo sends a mixed message. No need to publicly eviscerate the miscreant on social media. Save your outrage for stuff like Weinstein’s casting couch or Cosbying someone’s drink. Or, to be fair and non-sexist, being accused by over a dozen men of raping, fondling, and sexually harassing them. Everyone sends messages the way they dress, whether it’s Everyone look at me, I’m God’s gift to wo/men or My mother still dresses me. When I watch a female CEO spend an entire day responding to her LinkedIn himbo tantrum commenters, getting mad at those who don’t support her or tell her to chill, and her photo indicates she spends more money on her hair than I spend on a month of groceries, I think, Oh, enough already! You want to be looked at! Just tell him to eff off and move along! Don’t you have important CEO shit to do? Dressing sexy creates the potential for workplace drama and could be mistaken for sexual overtones. Which happens on both sides of the romantic divide, despite #MeToo. Sometimes women are the sexual predators. I'm-Too-Sexy-For-This-Office With growing educational and economic power comes responsibility. Today’s office ain’t yer grandma’s Mad Men office. There’s still plenty of inequality and sexual harassment, and the power imbalance still skews heavily toward men, but, and this is critical, not as much as it used to. At this particular trade conference, for the infant legal cannabis industry, I saw a fair number of woman-founded and woman-owned businesses. The cannabis industry boasts a higher percentage of women in senior positions (37%), 21% higher than the national average. Yay for….oh, man, I forget! People can dress however they want. But we need to consider the message we send. Men are slowly ceding power to women but we’re nowhere near parity. The woman in the tight dress and best boobs money can buy is not perhaps the best image fighting the ongoing sexualization of women in the #MeToo era. Workplaces are for work, not your cleavage, and that goes for men too. The more we can focus on our jobs and not Ms. Sexpot or Mr. I’m-Too-Sexy-For-This-Office, the more productive we’ll all be. As public debate increasingly puts the ‘coarse’ in ‘discourse’ and humans divide up into their own little More-victimized-than-thou tribes, it’s time to take stock of how much we ourselves contribute to our problems. Not to assign blame and beat ourselves up, but to take responsibility like big boys and girls and resolve to do better. This includes the misunderstandings coming from mixed messages. Mean what you say, and say what you mean, however you communicate it. 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. 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A bunch of chickie-boos registering post-Roe to vote for the very first time points to how we Americans sleepwalk through elections, until we're like, "Whahappentoourdemocracy?" I raised a bit of debate earlier this month on LinkedIn when someone posted a supportive article on Iranian women’s protests against wearing the hijab. Commented I, It's a critical example of an unpleasant fact of life: In order for things to change, the *oppressed* are the ones who will drive it, no one else. Not the ruling class/party, not the government, *the oppressed*. When they've had enough they say the hell with it and *fight back*. It doesn't matter who they are or where they live. It's a universal fact of life. Something to think about in our own highly privileged, victimhood-obsessed cultures. A few pushed back and one inevitably dragged slavery into it (because you can never talk about oppression without bringing up slavery, since we only got rid of it, like, the other day), sarcastically suggesting “..those slaves should have rose up collectively and vanquished their oppressor(s).” To which I noted there were numerous slave rebellions over the centuries and it remained a primary concern for slave owners everywhere. Rebellions fed the narrative along with escaped or freed slaves telling their stories to sympathetic abolitionists, their allies. There are always allies, I pointed out. Humans can’t collectively agree on anything. You may not know who your allies are and they may be afraid to speak up, but eventually a tipping point occurs and the tide turns against the oppressors. Otherwise, many sleepwalk through their lives accepting the status quo, especially when they tolerate the slow, gradual erosion of their rights until one day they wake up and… The girls finally got ‘woke’—up America’s mid-term Congressional election isn’t nearly as sexy as the quadrennial presidential election, but nothing is collectively making women’s hearts go pitter-patter—with fear—as much as the forthcoming mid-term elections next month, four months after the official loss of Roe v. Wade. Absentee Voting Information for citizens living abroad - U.S. State Department Democrats Abroad All reports indicate that women are registering to vote, many for the first time in their lives, in record numbers, and primarily Democrat. Seems many finally woke up from their deep sleep of, like, the last fifty years and realized that oh, hey, OMG I can’t believe Republicans actually pulled it off! They got rid of Roe! WTF are we going to do now? I didn’t think they’d REALLY do it! But they did, and no one can say they didn’t see it coming if they were paying attention. Feminists and women’s rights activists warned about it for decades. The long slow death of Roe began at its birth in 1973 when foes began looking for ways to restrict abortions, beginning with the passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976 which prohibited any government funds to be spent on any abortion that didn’t result from rape, incest, or when a pregnancy posed a threat to the woman’s life. It was the first real shot back across the bow and continued throughout the country as Republicans, conservatives, and the religious right worked hard at the federal, state, and local levels to roll back the hard-won right to make choices about one’s own body. “This will result in the loss of Roe if you don’t stop them now!” feminists kept yammering. America’s women weren’t listening. They had shit to do. Like jobs, and families, and keeping up on Dallas and Dynasty. Later, they distracted themselves with social media and Netflix, ironically with The Handmaid’s Tale. “Wouldn’t that suck if it happened here?” some asked while others gave them the side-eye and thought, “WTF do you think is happening under Trump, you dizzy broads?” Three Supreme Court justice picks later and - a total of five liars under oath who said they’d preserve Roe - the joke’s on you, chickie-boos! Ha ha ha! Gaslit ya, bitches! If this November turns into another Blue Wave, like the last mid-terms which saw a record number of women elected to Congress, the next two years could be interesting, if President Biden and the other Democrats have the balls and labia to get some real shit done, damn what the Red Caps want. Don’t count on it, but women can dream. Not all the new voters are motivated by fear of the new Republican lordship over their wombs. Some will be driven by fear that women who value agency will chip away the right’s hard-won victory over female autonomy. The blue wave may be lighter or darker than the last, but it will likely be purple in some places, or simply a lighter shade of red. The question after the election is: Will women learn their lesson? Democracy is like a marriage. You can’t slip the ring on - or sign the Constitution - and then go back to sleep. “I don’t have to try anymore. I don’t have to vote to keep this alive.” Too many women sleptwalked through the latter part of the twentieth century thinking all was well with abortion rights, even as its enemies patiently turned up the heat. You could always get an abortion somewhere, even though it might be more of an inconvenience. Mostly middle-class and white women could afford to think this way, not the poor who might barely scrape up the money for the abortion, let alone the bus or train ticket to elsewhere. Now a woman can, will, and is going to jail if she has an abortion, even if she travels to a legal state. Unless she’s fucking Herschel Walker, who will find a clinic somewhere on the Q.T. You want to be a resident of this Jesus-stan state? You keep your damn legs closed until marriage or menopause and if someone rapes you and you get pregnant, deal with it, you filthy whore! You made him do it with your slutty, womanly ways! This is how Gilead starts for women: Not with the highly improbable sudden American coup d’état of the book, but by incrementally boiling the pretty little froggies. We let it happen. We allowed Republicans to do this. We permitted them to erode away our right to make decisions about our own bodies. Women have power, and sometimes we choose to give that power back to the original holders. So we will turn out to vote in Roevember, but what’s not on the ballot is the return of Roe v. Wade. Whether that takes another constitutional amendment or perhaps some new federal laws that survive Supreme Court challenges, we will likely see a slow, gradual return to eventual abortion rights. What’s the timeline? I don’t know, but it took 49 years to drive a stake through Roe’s heart. Some have called for the impeachment of the five Supreme Court justices who lied under oath about preserving Roe, but that’s not likely to happen, for good reasons. As justified as it would be, we’re already facing a much bigger crisis of state if Donald Trump and his cohorts-in-coup d’état get indicted. There’s hell to pay if he is, and hell to pay if he isn’t. And the side who will bring holy hell if he is is much better armed and more inclined to use violence. Eliminating over half the Court would be truly unprecedented and terrible, terrible optics for any sitting President. Remember, progressives, these things work both ways. What does this mean for the rest of America? Women who paid attention and cared about preserving their rights voted Democrat, or for any Republican or other candidate who declared their commitment to abortion rights. Those who sleptwalked through the end of Roe weren’t registered or didn’t vote and we can thank them as much for Roe’s demise as we can the Handmaids and their Commanders who actively fought and voted against abortion rights. ‘T’warn’t all just the Republicans, after all. What has happened to women is a lesson for the rest of our nation of zombies. Since the ascent of Ronald Reagan in 1981, we sleptwalked as a nation as he destroyed unions beginning with the PATCO air traffic controllers strike the same year he was inaugurated. We snoozed while he nationally deinstitutionalized the mentally ill and created a homelessness crisis, and subsequent crime spike, which continues to this day. The C-average college student granted ill-thought-out tax breaks to everyone, increasing the national debt and destroying budgets. When the nation’s unemployment rate was over 10% in 1982, Reagan’s primary objective was to promote school prayer. It was the kind of silly-ass culture war we have today, and illustrates how a largely overstated grievance underlines a sinister agenda by one political wing to impose a particular way of life on everyone else. We woke up in 1984 to re-elect The Great Obfuscator in a landslide and snored as he undermined civil rights, escalated the Cold War and drove the Doomsday Clock three minutes to midnight, pushing it back to six minutes in December 1987 with the INF Treaty with the then-Soviet Union. We shut our ears to warnings during the Bush II era that income inequality was a serious problem and the middle class was disappearing. We had more important things to think about, like how the hell we were going to find another good-paying job in the latest recession and whether we were going to get murdered in workplace mass shootings. Now here we are in 2022 and we can’t agree on what’s a secure, honest election or even collectively condemn a violent attempted overthrow of a democratic government. At least in 1974, Republicans grudgingly came to agree that Richard Nixon had to go. We still point our fingers at ‘shithole countries’ and tell each other, Yeah, we’re not like that. Not even close! Those damn libtards just hate ‘Murica! Sleeping beauties and their new transfer of body autonomy to male control are the canary in the coal mine for American voters. I won’t even quote Pastor Neimoller, we all know what he said. We don’t care. We have shit to do. Gotta catch the Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix tonight! 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!

The latest 'No news here' study on men's undateability ignores the problems with women, and how we continue to raise boys In more nothing-news-here from the 'Water Is Wet' department, a recent study on dating determined that the number of chronically single men continues to grow as women say "Nuh-uh," to any who have consistently failed to meet what they've been saying they want for literally several decades: Emotional connection, ability to communicate, shared similar values. The yeah-duh conclusion that women are now pickier and not 'settling' for men also notes that marriage/partnership often benefits men more than women, and that women, especially single, childless ones, are leading happier lives without men or children. Having vowed never again to set foot in the online dating world, which has been an utter 21-year waste of time, I decided to never-say-never earlier this year and give Facebook Dating a try. It's the I'm-already-on-Facebook lazy lady's choice. I can report nothing has changed since 2001. Men remain consistently clueless about women and regularly put their most snooze-inducing foot forward. With the exception of one slightly weird guy, the rest still couldn't make conversation, and still don't grasp the concept of basic common courtesy. Were they just lazy? Makes it easy to filter the time-wasters down to two or three who weren't egregiously mediocre. Even the scammers couldn't be arsed to ask for money. Sometimes I gave the suspects some rope in case they were truly some English-challenged guy living in Toronto. Many wanted to move to WhatsApp where I figured they'd start the scam but they never did. The only person who acted like a scammer wasn't--the weird guy effusive with compliments, even when I told him they made me uncomfortable. He kept talking about how much he was thinking of me and wanted me to text him photos of myself in summer clothes (No, find your wank material on YouPorn). He was classically flakey, like failing to confirm a text asking if we were still on for our first meeting (so I didn't go) and that was the end of that. Later he resurfaced and denied having having blow me off and I said, "Review the text thread." Google proved he was real, though, living in the area. He was different, at least. It's not all 'toxic masculinity', although that's where it starts - the masculine notion that what defines a 'real man' is being as unlike women as you can possibly be. The women's movement has propelled women's autonomy and independence to the point where we no longer rely on men anymore to survive, at least until we all vote for Gilead. Men haven't evolved nearly as fast, and it's not all their fault, either. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not just in men, but in women, too, that we are as remarkably un-self-aware. Dazed and confused by divorce Many men, after decades of marriage, get blindsided by divorce, especially as they inch closer toward retirement. They eagerly anticipate the end of their desolate office drone days and can stay home with the gal who's been bitching for years about his lack of availability. She's finally getting her wish! But What's-Her-Name's had enough of the last forty years' drudgery too. The kids are gone and she's done with the whole marriage thing. Guess what departing wives cite as their reasons for wanting The Big Split? Emotional unavailability and lack of communication. Which they've been providing as the good supportive wife for all their marriage. Traditional masculinity dictates men should depend solely on women for it. One writer called it ‘emotional gold-digging.’ The deal, as men understood it in the '70s and '80s and '90s when they got married, was that their responsibility was to provide for the family and be a good father. The diff was that men have never been, and still aren't, much concerned with equality of work at home. The old Enjoli perfume ad from the 1970s lied like Donald Trump to the National Archives about how women can 'have it all', with a job and a family. The biggest lie is the man's off-camera voice volunteering to cook for the kids. The problem of clueless masculinity doesn't reside solely with males. Female Problem #1: Many men want to be more emotionally available and communicative, but don't know how or women won't let them Women sometimes react to emotionally vulnerable men by shaming or rejecting them. Research shows that boys are about the same as girls at expressing their emotions until about age four, when they begin to learn to shut down their emotions and not be so 'girly'. They come to rely on logic and 'rationalism' while girls are left free to be as emotional as they want. The result is men become too reliant on skills that aren't always applicable to human, emotional problems, and women fail to develop their logic and rationalism skills which would serve them better rather than reacting to everything emotionally and 'irrationally' - one of men's top (valid!) complaints about women. I can certainly see the disconnect between what women say they want and what they really want. I had a friend when I was a young hedonistic clubber who said she wanted a man who wouldn't hit her, and who would treat her well, but--she found the 'nice guys' too boring. She liked macho he-men who thought women were their personal property. It's an evolutionary trade-off: Hercules was great for protecting you from harm, but today he's more likely to be the source of the harm. Women who want emotionally available men might need to consider who they find attractive. 'Alpha' males may be incredibly hot but should you take them home to Mother? Many crave power and control and that includes over her. Is she willing to make that trade-off? Case study #1: Nicole Simpson. Case study #2: Rachel Evan Wood. Men who can communicate and be more emotionally supportive are what angry incels call 'beta males', if said males aren't angry incels. When I watched hypermasculine action hero movies, the heroine rode (never drove) or walked hand in hand with the hero into the sunrise or sunset, and if Stallone was the star it was clear communications skills would never manifest in their relationship. I pondered the real 'happily ever after' in which she was miserable with him after the relationship luster wore off. When she's struggling with her demons late at night, where is he? Can he hold her and tell her it's all right? Can he sympathize with her? Or does he pull away because he's tired and there she goes again... There are men who are up for the task, but women don't always notice them, or appreciate them. Granted, these men may be hiding themselves well behind an ill-considered dating profile of mediocrity. Many could use a crash course in self-marketing/self-promotion. Women who are tired of emotional islands must change their value system to appreciate and find attractive men who exhibit more self-awareness than your average rock, or clueless, toxic feminist. Men need gentle, supportive help in getting in touch with their emotional life more. We owe it to them. Women have escaped the bondage of toxic femininity since First Wave feminism, much of which has been accomplished with the help of numerous male allies who've mentored us, recognized the challenges we faced, and if they didn't always 'get it', they got it a lot more than the ones who bitch on social media that 'feminism ruined everything'. The modern world demands a lot of everyone. Men are trying to adjust to a world in which women share the jobs, financial management, and political power. Women are trying to adjust to a new world of female agency and power. Not all are ready for it, including many on the left who pay it lip service, but would rather do anything except manage their own life as though they had agency. Thousands of years of patriarchy doesn't change overnight, and women still have a long way to go before we eliminate it between our own ears. Male allies have mentored us, pushed us, prodded us to become the best person we can be, and we have to do the same for them. Men are really, really good at seeking and receiving power. Which, let's face it, women are still quite uncomfortable with. We're really, really good at communication and emotional vulnerability. And men will play catchup for awhile. We've proven we can learn. So can they. Neither of us is smarter than the other. Female Problem #2: We are still raising misogynist boys Women, as a whole, continue to unconsciously collaborate with misogyny and 'the patriarchy'. I've written about the woman who aided and abetted sex trafficking (who wasn't Ghislaine Maxwell), the women who enable rapists, perpetuate rape culture, who make it harder to believe women, who make excuses for abuse, and worst of all, continue to raise misogynist boys. Collaboration with The Patriarchy (dun-dun-DUUUNNNN!!!) starts when they're babies, when we don't crush the budding misogyny that's probably at least a little wired into their brains after thousands of years of it being the norm, and what they learn from mass culture. We don't challenge four-year-olds expressing hostility to femininity and saying they don't like girls. Even as a small child, I wondered why mothers weren't more offended by their baby misogynists' attitudes. "I'm a girl," I'd have reminded my son if I had one. "You got a problem with that?" When he was old enough I'd remind him he's here because of a girl, and that no male enters this world without one - the parent who does the most work in conceiving a baby, since she gestates it and pushes it out between her legs, then feeds it with her body. If I had been my aunt when my male cousin prohibited me from joining him in his treehouse because, 'No girls allowed,' I would have told him - even a small child - that the laws of this country dictate no discrimination on the basis of sex, and if his treehouse doesn't allow girls, then it doesn't allow boys either, and to get down RIGHT NOW until he's rethought his policy - and if he doesn't, his father and I will dismantle the treehouse. You'd be surprised how fast you can crush misogyny when there are real consequences. Nothing has changed since I was growing up. New parents can find plenty of advice on dealing with misogyny in boys - and how to raise non-misogynist boys - on Google. But when I Googled 'How to raise a non-misandrist daughter' and 'How to raise a daughter who doesn't hate men' I found nothing about how to raise girls without toxic feminism. A certain prominent feminist, author of several books and returning talking head on the news with the loss of Roe v. Wade, was someone I found on the blogging platform Medium and who I quickly muted. Almost everything she wrote was whiny victimist crap, and she said she was raising her young daughter to be a 'feminist'. I rolled my eyes thinking how much this kid would grow up hating men like her mother who never met a woman who was responsible for her actions, or a man who wasn't. Women aid and abet misogyny by feeding it with misandry, the way some antiracist and transgender activists chase off their allies with their own bigotry and hatred. As we challenge men to be better men and to support women more, we need to become better at supporting those men who genuinely want to ally with women - not just against sexism but against the very real threats we face together - climate change, economic inequality, the outsized power of billionaires to dictate and fund toxic government policies, and most of all...freedom from male violence. Toxic masculinity fuels unhealthy emotional denial in men, and toxic feminism encourages an enduring false feeling of powerlessness and victimhood. We'd do well to ask ourselves how much we are the problem with undateable men, too. Because I'd call most of these guys 'clueless' masculine rather than 'toxic' masculine. Trying to escape your own prison can feel like getting lost in a video game where you can't find your way out to the next level. If we're so sure we want emotionally available, communicative men, maybe we'd better start considering whether we want them as much as we say, or perhaps not like my old friend. 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!