Don’t blame the victim? Don’t BE the victim Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash Blame my anti-feminist mother for my belief that women are far more in control than many of today’s feminists would have you believe. That women in 2022 are not necessarily helpless victims of ‘the patriarchy’ and the smart ones define how they will allow others to treat them, particularly men. “Never let a man hit you! The first time he hits you should be his last! Leave him, right then and there!” “Never let a man control you, tell you what to do, or who you can associate with.” “Be very careful when a boy tells you he loves you when he’s pushing you for sex. They’ll say anything to get what they want. Take full responsibility for birth control; if you get pregnant he can walk right out on you.” “Don’t EVER let a man abuse or hit you. Did I mention this? My ex-husband never hit me and neither has your father. If he hits you once he’ll hit you again, regardless of what he says. Oh, he’ll apologize and try to make it up to you and swear it will never happen again, but it will!” I wish more women had grown up with my ‘anti-feminist’ mother. I’m mystified as to where she got her strong, empowering, personally responsible First Wave Feminist beliefs, because she was born during the Depression and got married after the war. She never seemed to have gotten any of this from my grandmother (who died before I was born), nor did my mom ever read much feminist literature, except maybe when I was in college and bringing books home. Still, my mother who used to rage about ‘those damn women’s libbers!’ was one of the most feminist women I’ve ever known. She taught me to be authentic to myself, to be personally responsible for my life and safety, and never, ever, to be a victim. It’s her fault I believe women have more say in whether they’re abused than they think. Because I decided never to let a man treat me that way. Because I paid attention to misogyny in boys and men — even though that word wasn’t in common use when I was young — and identified early on who some of the high-risk guys were. Military men. Athletes. Lawyers. Men from certain cultures and religions. Republican conservative men. Any culture, in other words, dominated by men and particularly an exaggerated sense of masculinity. While not all members of the aforementioned groups are necessarily abusers or misogynists, the smart woman approaches them with caution. She also is careful not to let herself be led astray by her hormones if she’s unfortunate enough to be attracted to ‘bad boys’ and hyper-masculine men. There’s still a part of me that thinks Adrian was out of her ever-lovin’ mind for falling in love with Rocky. He was a big dumb palooka whose thing was beating the crap out of other men. Why on earth didn’t she think he might turn on her when he gets angry? The reason why he didn’t is because it’s fiction and Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay. To my knowledge, he is not nor has ever been a physical abuser of women, and he’s famous for his hyper-masculine movie characters. So for sure, hyper-masculine doesn’t necessarily mean ‘abuser’. I wonder, though, how Rocky would fare in real life. I went out with a guy once who told me he liked to box. I went very much on my guard immediately. It wasn’t a deal-killer but my red flags went up. We wound up not going out again, though, because he was immature and turned things I said into double entendres for sex. He said he hadn’t been laid for over a year. I knew why. Some women figure out misogynist identification for themselves. I did too. I figured out on my own that homophobia is a red flag for potential misogyny. Not the sort of garden-variety homophobia from men who are okay with gay guys but don’t want a man looking at him at the urinal, but the kind of vicious, defensive homophobia that indicates a severe underlying insecurity, and hostility to women. (Add that to the Danger List, ladies!) Mom raised me to believe that I am in control of my life. That I decide who gets to spend time with me. That I should never allow a man to mistreat or abuse me. That the sooner I get out of a bad relationship the better. I don’t know how well that works, personally, because I’ve never been abused in a relationship. I’m not attracted to misogynist men, and they‘re not much attracted to me. Thanks, Mom! Not all mothers (or fathers) teach their daughters not to be victims. Maybe they don’t realize they have (or had) a choice. I don’t fault them for that. But I think feminism fails women when it mindlessly recites the mantra, “Don’t blame the victim!” There’s a place for that, certainly. Blaming women for the way they’re treated by how they dress, what they were doing, or whether they had the audacity to do it without a man around in a public place where any guy could just walk up to her and proposition her — it’s not harassment, man, she was just standing there lookin’ all hot and alone! — has been women’s lives since forever. Feminism challenged the notion that women are not responsible for their own victimhood, and that was a very empowering and important notion. But at some point, we need to recognize that while inequality exists, and men are still more physically powerful than us and that women must still, unfairly, be hyper-vigilant about the potential threat men pose, we also, in 2019, have more choices than your mama did, and, like my mother taught me, we too can decide who gets to spend time with us. Like it or not, victimhood stops with the image in the mirror. Like it or not, when a woman returns to an abusive man, especially early in a relationship before it’s gotten complicated by marriage and children, she gives him tacit permission in his Neanderthal brain that it’s okay to hit her again. He may not think that, consciously, and may even be genuinely sorry he hit her. But he will get emotionally triggered one day and he will lash out and it will be a little easier this time. The more she returns, as feminists well know, the harder it is to leave. Because at some point the choice really is removed. She’s so beaten down, or so legitimately scared for her life, or the safety of her children, that she doesn’t dare leave. But she has choice at the beginning. She has choice when she’s approached by the guy for the first time and he buys her a drink. She has choice the first time she has sex with him, an act which imprints on the controlling, misogynist male’s mind that she is now his property and he owns her. She has choice the first time he puts her down in public and she lets him. She has choice the first time he tells her what to wear or demands to know who she’s been with (I went out with my girlfriends tonight, I already told you that!) and she allows him to get away with that behaviour. She has choice the first time he hits her. She may not realize along the way she has these choices, which is where we must work harder to make sure she understands that she should never let a man treat her this way. Feminists are telling ‘good men’ they need to stand up to sexism, misogyny, and other expressions of ‘toxic masculinity’ more, that men need to be allies for women rather than just lip-service-paying ‘feminists’. I agree. I also think what’s good for the gander is good for the goose. We need to challenge ourselves, each other, to make the right choices in life and decide not to be victims. We need to challenge our friend when she gets involved with a man who sets off our Bastard Detector. We need to remind her that she can do better than that guy. That she deserves a decent man in her life, one who will treat her better. We need to make it clear by our own actions and choices that we decide not to let anyone who mistreats us into our lives. “Don’t blame the victim” has its place. But now our new, complementary rallying cry should be: “DON’T BE THE VICTIM!” 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 end of male aggression lies with us, not men. We can learn from our matriarchal cousins. CC0 2.0 photo by LaggedOnUser on Wikimedia Commons Let's be perfectly clear on this point: Women decide when violence ends against women, not men. The passive lessons of feminism past have gone as far as they can go. Enough with telling men to stop hurting women. They already know it's wrong. We have to force the ones who don't care. Patriarchal dominance isn't the only model. We know this now. Five to seven million years ago chimpanzees and humans diverged from a common ancestor. We both evolved a patriarchal model of male social dominance based on superior male strength. One to two million years ago, bonobos (pronounced bo-NO-bos), diverged from chimpanzees and evolved a matriarchal social model, despite superior male strength. One theory suggests food competition after the Congo River separated a chimp troop. The ones north had to compete with larger gorillas for food, under which male aggression evolved as a survival tactic that they adapted to control females for sex and resources. The ones south enjoyed a more plentiful food supply, enabling the females to form relationships and female social groups. The southern males who recognized that allying with females offered greater sexual and resource benefits mated more than their aggressive counterparts, and nice guys finished first. Today, our little-studied very close cousins live the lives human feminists only dream of: A world in which females have sex whenever they want, with whom they want, without all the slut shaming, homophobia or male partner possessiveness. Bonobo females also have plenty of male 'partners' assistance, as collective paternity means no bonobo male can be quite sure which children are his. A bonobo male who wants to ensure the perpetuation of his genes has to support all potential offspring. The village truly has to raise a child, when no one knows whose kids are whose. But don't bonobo males exhibit, like all other primates, the typical patriarchal desire to isolate a female partner from copulating with other males, with violence if necessary? Sometimes. But the ladies crush it like bugs. Whatever Shiba did, he will surely think twice about pulling any shit with bonobo females again. The key to bonobo female dominance Evolutionary understanding of humans owes a great deal to the study of our more common cousins, chimpanzees. The chimp male dominance model clearly parallels our own human history and experience. But what about our more peaceful counterparts south of the Congo? What if they demonstrate what might have been, and what could be? It's never too late to evolve. In fact, evolution can now be driven by conscious choice. Female dominance in bonobo society isn't as brutal as male dominance elsewhere. Bonobos are famously quite peaceful, mostly. Aggression is primarily defensive, for reminding forgetful males they're not in charge. Female power appears to be rooted in strong, broad female friendships, including those outside their groups. Female bonobos appear to share an understanding that 'We're all in this together.' Another element that might grease the peace: Everyone gets laid! Bonobos are, to cop a judgmental higher primate term, famously slutty. All of them. Bonobos will shag any time, any place. Males with males. Females with females. Males with females. Even the young get shagged by their elders but they don't seem to suffer from it. At least, they don't exhibit discomfort or submission in the videos I've watched so far. (Let's set aside the adults/juveniles couplings for the time being. I'm not arguing we normalize NAMBLA.) Bonobos, unlike many of our primate cousins, often copulate face to face like humans. They appear to exhibit wild orgasms. Sex is a bonding agent for bonobos. They often greet each other by rubbing genitals together. (Another practice I'm not advocating for humans!) "Hi Mabel, how's it going?" "Great, Loretta, good to see you. How're the husbands and kids?" "Oh, they're fine. So much to do before Christmas..." CC0 2.0 image by Rob Bixby on Wikimedia Commons There are no bonobo incels. Sex is about relationship building, not dominance, and every last one of them is having a lot more sex than you! So what does this mean for us? Bonobos demonstrate that the patriarchal dominance model doesn't have to be the blueprint anymore. We're not bonobos, but we're not chimps either, and they haven't evolved toward becoming a more dominant species like we have. (This may be changing. They've begun making spears for subduing prey.) Human dominance began with exploration into new lands beyond Africa, followed by the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago, which is where many human ills either first arose or were boosted: Slavery, income inequality, power imbalance - and the subjugation of women. There are three steps women can take to end male violence against women, although it won't happen overnight. Recognize we have the power, and the obligation, to end it. We'll need to widely convince victimhood-identified feminists that it's up to women to end male violence and that keeping the focus solely on the offenders no longer serves the movement. We've convinced all the persuadable men not to rape or abuse. Job well done! But we'll have to force the rest. Change is always driven by the oppressed. South Africa didn't end apartheid because whites finally understood it was unfair. The American civil rights movement began with a tired, fed-up black woman on a bus, and second wave feminism emerged from women tired of being treated as coffee-fetchers and sex-providers in the black civil rights movement and the white New Left. Homosexual rights began with the Stonewall uprising. Change begins when enough of the oppressed have had quite enough. The second step: Forge greater female friendships, far and wide. This means moving beyond identity politics as well as welcoming women from 'the other side' of the tribe: Those with whom we disagree politically. And who may need some persuasion just to recognize they have the power to end the madness. Identity politics divides rather than unites, which serves everyone's oppressors quite well. The race divide between white women and women of color today prevents us from uniting together against weaponized penises of all colors. We don't have to agree on Critical Race Theory or merit-based careerism to recognize what we do have in common: Vaginas, and weaker bodies, to which some men feel entitled and on which they'll force themselves if necessary. The Christian Right accomplished bridge-building quite effectively in the '80s and '90s when Catholics and Protestants, who vehemently disagreed on numerous theological points, came together to work against a common goal: To end abortion rights. Worked well, didn't it? How can we forge alliances across political boundaries and persuade others to join us in this fight, if not necessarily in some other fight? Because every single woman has a dog in this fight. And yes, we're talking about natal women now, not female-by-choice. The third step: A world in which women unite to shut down ad hoc male violence I helped shut down male violence myself, a few years ago, by myself. It was scary, but I didn't get hurt or murdered for my efforts. My feminist come-to-Jesus moment arrived: How feminist was I, really, when my neighbor was clearly in danger from male violence? What if women banded together when one woman was in danger from an aggressive male and forced him to back off? "What if we got hurt?" We might, but we might not. Bullies are, at their core, cowards. They won't take on a fight bigger than themselves and a bunch of weaker females can collectively take down a stronger male with the willpower and the culture to support it. [See: Shiba video, above] We can't do it without a broad, cohesive coalition of women, and it won't happen overnight. Just convincing victim-centered feminists and domestic violence specialists that women have the power to end male violence may take a generation or more. The left itself is riven with victimhood thinking and victims aren't powerful. It's a Matriarchy of Silence in which women discourage others from taking charge of their lives and reclaiming their power. I'd rather strive for a matriarchal model in which women collectively control male violence by introducing real-world consequences. I don't advocate one unfair to men, but rather one that offers real value for men, too. My next article will address that and will outline how the only men who won't benefit from a matriarchal model are those heavily invested in toxic masculinity. And if human women stop having sex with, and babies with, toxic masculine men, evolution will favour the 'nice guys's genes and our culture may come to resemble the bonobos' more than the apes. Because here's the funny thing about bonobo matriarchy: It doesn't look nearly as oppressive for males as human and chimp patriarchy is for women. We have the power, ladies. Are you ready yet to end male violence? Discuss. Debate. Explain. 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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Why do women care? What could we accomplish if we didn’t? “Do I look old? I don’t really look old, do I?” Photo by debra123 on Needpix I can’t find the original tweet, but I got flamed for having a ‘clownish’-looking face. I thought my profile photo, in which I held a copy of my then-just-published novel, was a good one. The Twitter twit thought otherwise, appearing out of nowhere to trash my face. It came, ironically, from a woman whose inartfully made up face reminded me of Pennywise. I didn’t get angry, but I did inform her of her own cosmetics misapplication because, damn, Circus-worthy, according to Pennywise Pennywise has no business flaming others about their makeup! A few years later, some Twitter dude took issue with something I said. Instead of returning with a reasoned response, he made fun of my hair in my profile photo, claiming I had ‘split ends'. Well, I usually do, but apart from quarterly haircuts, shampoo and conditioner, my hair care regimen takes like five minutes which is about how much time I will allot. The super-smooth look you see in hair product commercials requires a lot more than just their shampoo. Many women would have pitched a fit over ‘misogyny’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘sexual objectification’ and ‘unfair standards for women’. I recognized it for what it was: A mere cheap shot targeted at what the flamer hoped was a direct hit on my self-esteem. Looks-shaming: Everyone can play! I used to react more strongly when men looks-shamed me, but women are probably far guiltier and got more of a free pass. It’s easier to write them off as being jealous, or just catty. Or ridiculously unaware of their own bizarre-looking face. In high school a bitchy girl named Kristi reminded me every day during study hall that I dressed like a weirdo. Whatever I was wearing, she and her nasty little friends (one male, another female) reviewed, carefully within earshot, everything I wore, to put me down and make me feel worthless. It worked. I was sixteen years old. In retrospect, although Kristi was, in my opinion, very cute and had a boyfriend, she struggled with a weight problem and today I see the insecure teenage girl hoping to feel better about herself by dragging another down. A guy named Dan also reminded me daily I was an ‘ugly dog’ who would ‘never get a guy’ and who nicknamed me Wolfwoman. He’s the only person I’ve ever wanted to kill. Literally. Back then, we only fantasized about it. Dan was an even more insecure teenager, who grew up and refused to call me ‘ugly dog’ or ‘Wolfwoman’ at the five-year reunion even though I kept walking up to him after a few Fuzzy Navels with a big grin going, “Say it, Dan, say it! I haven’t heard it for five years! Say it!” Why did I care so much? For all the railing women do about ‘The Patriarchy’ and its high standards for women (Where do they come up with these standards anyway? Is there an annual Davos-style summit for The Patriarchy? Where does it meet? The Butler National Golf Club?), I bought into these beauty standards, fueled by the unrealistic images of late-’70s TV. The Love Boat. Shampoo ads with big-haired slim models (in college I’d learn they were artistically altered by clever photo enhancement techniques). And, gods help me, that bitch Cher, with her own TV show, standing on stage every Sunday night, her famously fabulous Bob Mackie designs clinging to her bony hips and shoulders. She was all belly button and awkward, gorgeous angles. I wanted to look like her. What I didn’t understand was Cher’s genetics mandated tall and slim and her Cherokee blood likely graced her with those gorgeous cheekbones. I didn’t have the Internet, or enough awareness, to challenge such unrealistic images. When someone wants to attack a woman with a quick low blow, insulting her looks, whether or not she’s OFU (Old/Fat/Ugly) is almost a guaranteed wounding blow. We, along with our girl gangs, can almost always be counted on to react with outrage. Why? Because no one buys into ‘The Patriarchy’s’ standards more than women. Between Cher’s and Farrah’s bad examples of how I ‘should’ look, and reminders from Kristi and Dan that I didn’t, not even close, I suffered lowered self-esteem, a growing sense I wasn’t ‘good enough’ and kept hoping maybe when I got older I’d be that pretty. I joined millions of other young girls and women frowning in the mirror and criticizing each body part with the relentless eye of a psychopath. Some women never challenge those norms, even those who rail about ‘patriarchal standards’. They budget for plastic surgery. They binge ’n’ purge. (I wasn’t disciplined enough for an eating disorder, thank Goddess!) They buy clothes, makeup and expensive skin treatments because someone said something mean and they believed it. She decides, like I did, she isn’t pretty enough. In its very worst manifestation, caring too much about one’s looks results in Body Dysmorphia Syndrome, when you pick out, obsess over and ‘fix’ flaws no one else can see. It’s permanently never feeling ‘good enough’. Jocelyn Wildenstein, the ‘Catwoman’ New York socialite featured on bad plastic surgery websites, started out as a very beautiful woman who embarked on a lifetime of plastic surgery. Wildenstein, then & now. Photos by celebrityabc on Flickr According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ 2018 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report, over 14 million procedures were performed on women vs. 1.6 million for men. At least some of these procedures will have been for reasons other than vanity, such as repairs from accidents or birth defects or body parts causing great discomfort, like oversized breasts. Ironically, our pandemic social isolation may have eroded our ‘artificial’ self-image. Women reported they'd stopped wearing makeup, dressing carefully, or keeping up with their dye jobs, aided by shuttered beauty salons. A few years ago, when I worked from home, I put on makeup every day because it made me feel better. Now I only put it on if I have a Zoom meeting or I'm going to the grocery store. But even then it’s a five-minute slap-on job. Don’t like my split ends or wrinkles? Bite me. What if this became A Thing? According to a study from The Skin Store, the ‘average woman’ will spend about $300,000 on makeup in her lifetime. Not sure who ‘the average woman’ is, but I’m pretty sure she’s way more privileged than myself and many others. That’s a helluva lot of cruises and mortgage payments! The 3-Step Suffering Removal Plan Life offers countless ways to suffer, and I, like all of us, am an expert at amping it up. Suffering, as the Buddha pointed out when he discovered it on his first foray outside the palace walls, is an intrinsic part of life. The Four Noble Truths teach: Suffering exists; Arises from attachments; Disappears when you abandon your attachments; And The Eightfold Path provides the blueprint for how to free yourself from suffering. For those for whom quarantine hasn’t yet induced them off the $300,000 Hamster Wheel Of P̶a̶t̶r̶i̶a̶r̶c̶h̶a̶l̶ Self-Imposed Oppression, here’s what’s worked for me. I’ll apply the first three noble truths: Identifying, challenging, and changing perspective. I identified my problem. I would never please everyone. Despite a lifelong weight problem, I performed as a belly dancer for nearly twenty years at birthday parties and the occasional non-dirty stag party. So what if I wasn’t slim enough for some of them? No, I didn’t look like Cher! Hey, this was Connecticut, not L.A., and they were all so drunk they thought I was Cher anyway. As a quick aside, I never had to deal with the sort of fat-shaming many others have endured. I was never obese. The sort of relentless shaming reserved for those with a more serious weight problem is outside the realm of this article. I can’t speak to that personally. Others are better-acquainted than I. I stopped comparing myself to other belly dancers and women on the street (what Analog Gen-X had to do to keep ourselves down before Instagram) or wondering why I couldn’t look like them and resenting that they could. Wouldn’t my life be perfect if I looked like her? Well, I didn’t look like Sasha, whose impossibly long slim waist moved like a dancing cobra and I didn’t have the lush German girl’s body or her lovely Teutonic looks but so what, I looked like me and no one was complaining and I was still the biggest flirt on the East Coast! Many of these goddesses had the inclination to make more effort. I didn’t. I had other ways I preferred to spend my time. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with either choice, as long as you’re making it for yourself and not someone else. Hard to know the difference sometimes. Here’s what you don’t see: Even the most gorgeous performer or Instagram babe never admits how uncomfortably imperfect her off-stage, off-camera life is. I decided what I had was ‘good enough’. That’s where my own personal WYSIWYG was born. 2. I challenged my self-defeating conclusions. I asked, ‘Why do I care?’ Why did I take cues from ‘society’s standards’? Where did those standards originate? From others, in my head, or a bit of both? How could I challenge them? Who held me to those standards? Was there really some male club or ‘Patriarchy’, issuing orders from the ninth hole on that gentlemen’s golf course (“The Penis Facial. This is what you must do now to remain beautiful to our gaze”)? Was I making myself the victim? Was I cranking up my pain by taking a thoughtless comment and extrapolating it to be an attack on myself and maybe even all women worldwide? Was I in fact victimizing not just myself but all women when I filtered everything through a lens of what I thought ‘society’ dictated? “Get an eye lift, or we won’t like you anymore. And your cankles are gross. Fix them.” Photo from Wallpaper Flare It was illuminating the day I realized: If all men disappeared tomorrow, would any woman get a boob job? The ones whose back was counting the days until those triple D-cups could get whacked down were doing it for themselves. The rest were defining themselves by male standards of beauty because women don’t intrinsically care about big breasts! Evolution gave them to us to feed babies, not male wank fantasies! This led me to extrapolate — Who was I looking good for, honestly? Women? Men? Or myself? Beauty ‘standards’ internalize misogyny, sometimes fueled by being raised in a male-dominated environment. We all consciously or unconsciously buy into traditionalist dictates, until we decide to challenge ourselves. I searched within and explored why my beauty standards were what they were, where they came from, not ultimately to blame but because I couldn’t ease the pain without identifying the cause. I had to detach caring what others thought, especially after I started using the Internet. There were plenty of damaged people wandering around cyberspace looking to drag others down even before the rise of social media, and especially after it became easier to publish photos. If I took every nasty comment personally I’d never do anything, say anything, or accomplish anything. Now it was time for psychic surgery. No chicken gizzard fakery required! 3. I changed my perspective I didn’t stop caring overnight, but I did stop caring. Giving a big figurative middle finger to external opinions was difficult, but I brushed it off and kept on keepin’ on. What’s more important to me than random strangers’ opinions is my work, my writing, my family and friends, my plans and goals. My hair isn’t YouTube-worthy. Deal with it. I’ve got a message to impart and people can listen or not. They can watch or not. If I make them hurl their tuna sandwich that badly they can go elsewhere. You know who don’t give a rat’s patoot what people are saying about their looks? Men who are killing it. They say, “I’m a wrinkled old fart, but I’m rich and my wife is 32.” Those may not be laudable values but they don’t give a crap if I think so. They’re getting things done anyway. The ones who do care what others think are often suffering the same mental pathologies as women. Male body dysmorphia exists too. I take my cues from women on the ascendancy rather than selfie queens or random tweetflames. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was credited with her decisive leadership and empathetic communication for shutting down COVID-19 infection like Donald Trump with a news reporter. She wore casual clothes during her national addresses from her den. She had more important things to think about than what people say about her outfit. German chancellor Angela Merkel, once described as ‘the most powerful woman in the world’, is a scientist with a doctorate in quantum chemistry. She handled the world’s most notorious orange-skinned bad comb-over'ed narcissist like a pro. She, too, was credited with keeping COVID cases lower during the final years of her administration and persuading Germans to cooperate early with COVID control efforts. What do female leaders who have distinguished themselves on pandemic crisis management have in common with successful male leaders? They don’t care about the Twitterati’s irrelevant opinions about their hair. The Goddess of taking crap about her looks is Hillary Clinton, and it didn’t stop her from running for the highest office in the land. Her critics cared far more about her pantsuits than she did. I want Clinton’s psychological resilience, even though I will never run for office. You don’t keep COVID deaths to <25 like New Zealand's Ardern did when you’re stressing about the nasty comment some jerk made about your tracksuit while you were addressing the nation from your den. I warned myself when I started making YouTube videos: The comments will be vicious. I know what bottom-feeders troll YouTube looking to thumbs-down videos and leave nasty comments. (Bonus, though: YouTube doesn’t distinguish good from bad. It counts it all as ‘engagement’ which for their algorithms is good.) I don’t victimize myself, I don’t blame ‘The Patriarchy’, and I don’t drag anyone else into it either. I’m responsible for myself and my standards. Here’s the thing: It’s not just women targeted with unhealthy societal messages. All that male body dysmorphia comes from somewhere. For a case study on just how damaging unchallenged societal messages are for men, read Susan Faludi’s interview with ultimate he-man Sylvester Stallone for her 1996 book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. The book gave me a much richer idea of the difficult challenges of being a man, but the Stallone interview opened my eyes to just how much like us men are when they don’t challenge societal standards (Is there a Matriarchy?). Stallone idolized Superman when he was young, but didn’t understand the toll maintaining that he-man image took until he gained weight to play a schlumpy character in Copland. It did a real number on his self-image as a rock-hard superhero, especially when fans recognized him while he was making the movie and their faces registered dismay and disappointment. All of a sudden, mirrors were no longer his friends. Nor did he receive validation from fans. Not challenging one’s own assumptions is psychologically toxic. I began to let go of my fear of not being ‘good enough’ when I refocused from people I wished I was like to people I actually was like. When I stopped to ‘look under the hood’ with others I found everyone feels insecure, and they, too, are targeted and absorb toxic messages of how they should look, feel, or be more successful. Even Sylvester Stallone. The key to not beating myself up became knowing what I valued, why I valued it, and how I created my own needless suffering. I can’t change the world’s, YouTube’s, or ‘The Patriarchy’s’ unachievable standards, but I can reject them. Less caring = Less suffering It’s my decision. 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!

States in which abortion becomes completely illegal might come to resemble countries where men rape largely with impunity Photo of prayers for an Indian gang rape victim by Ramesh Lalwani on Flickr Controlling women's fertility has been the number one tool in the patriarchal misogynist's box for thousands of years. When a woman has no say in whose babies she'll have, or how many, even when she doesn't want any, she's trapped in an iron fist. She's forced to stay home and raise children, even if they were conceived by incest and other rape. This keeps her conveniently out of the workforce, where she competes with men for good-paying jobs, and forces her to be dependent on just one, so she must service him sexually and cater to all his other needs. He no longer has to be 'sensitive' or concerned with her feelings. They're back to gender roles as misogynist prophets pretending to channel god(s) intended women to fulfill: Servicing men's needs, no different from slaves. It's what the Republican Party has been about all along. Re-subjugating women, turning them back to utter control by men, by making sexual consent extremely dangerous again. For women. Babies are the best male harness for women, ever. Here's an ugly, uncomfortable truth for American women: It wasn't some bizarre Patriarchy coup. They can thank a lot of American women, particularly in the South, for consistently voting against body autonomy and sexual consent. Some voted as they did, often litmus-test on abortion, out of a sincere belief that it's murder. Can anyone fault them? One has to vote one's conscience and anyone who truly believes abortion is murder must vote against it. But even as we point fingers at how conservatives only value human life once it's safely past a vagina, American women have never been collectively enough in favor of choice to ensure genuine personal freedom. Republican women, particularly those schooled in misogynist fundamentalist religion, have historically been more closely divided. In 2019, Republican women were nearly equal at 49% willingness to overturn Roe vs 48%. Democratic and left-leaning women supported keeping Roe by 83%. I'm not sure they really thought through, though, what it would mean for themselves. What will life will be like in those states that immediately rescind any legal route to abortion? Source: Guttmacher Institute Women will be forced to bear rape babies in states with no exceptions. Perhaps female Republican voters (mostly white, some Hispanic, very few black) haven't considered what no-exceptions-abortions means for themselves personally in dictatorial states - how rape may well become weaponized further against women with now zero body autonomy. And how their daughters and other loved ones may be put on trial for murder if they miscarry. Or leave the state to procure a legal abortion. Or whether they'll die at home rather than risk seeking medical help. Or what it will be like raising rape grandbabies, at least those not tossed in dumpsters. Where women's bodies are under total male rule, rape becomes unofficially acceptable, if technically still against the law, except for marital rape, which no longer is a crime when a wife, his 'property', 'has' to let her husband have sex with her, whenever he wants. It becomes more difficult to leave unhealthy, abusive marriages when all he has to do is keep her knocked up so she can't run away. Or he can forcibly impregnate his girlfriend so she can't leave him, or the state, with his fetus in her belly to expel it on her own terms. This may not be as much of a concern for fundamentalist religious women, who who've internalized misogyny and have been trained all their lives in submission to male authority. Less religious Republican women may experience buyer's remorse. How much longer will it take for misogynist men to dehumanize the fetus and turn it back to what it was in Exodus, male property, the same as a wagon or a mule? If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. - Exodus 21:22 It won't be much more of a stretch for no-exception states to become more like Pakistan, where a woman who reports a rape to police is arrested for committing adultery, and 72% are further abused in prison, including by the police. Or in most parts of the Middle East where male relatives can murder their daughters for shaming the family with extramarital sex, whether consensual or not. Our so-called feminist left won't help. Their weak refrain for decades has been, "Rape will stop when men stop raping." Yeah, that's the ticket. Wait for men to decide it's wrong, rather than forcing accountability not only of rapists themselves, but the legal and justice systems. Or more importantly, making better choices of who to allow into your life. Let me know when it's safe to visit the United States again. Feminist predictions will soon become near-total reality: "Don't report it, you won't be believed." Or worse, get arrested for being a filthy ho. The Guttmacher Institute has estimated more than half the country - 26 states - will ban abortion once the Court issues its final decision, which could come as early as this summer. They range from outright bans to partial or near-bans, with some 'trigger laws' that 'fire' as soon as Roe is overturned. We've considered how women are treated in countries where women's rights are to shut the hell up, support your husband unquestionably and keep your vagina at home where it belongs, and cluck our tongues at how 'backward' they are and how privileged we are to live in a country where women have actual rights. We have met the enemy and s/he is us. Less civilized American husbands will soon be empowered to rape their wives and keep them pregnant and terrorized at home 'where they belong'. Girls whose families, religious, or social cultures prize female virginity now have a new excuse to sequester them at home the way women in traditionalist, patriarchal countries overseas are, to ensure they're not 'ruined' by unauthorized entry, consensual or not. Best for her to cover up and not tempt men with her womanly body. It's women's responsibility to keep men chaste and pure, because it's never the men's fault. CC0 2.0 photo by Ben Schumin on Wikimedia Commons Perhaps we couldn't conceive of a world without Roe again. Or thought we could become India, a country with a notorious systemic rape and sexual violence problem. We're not there yet, but even now, not enough American women have considered how easy it might become to rape a woman into one's control. After all, in the Bible she was forced to marry her rapist. It's getting harder and harder to blame 'The Patriarchy', when the Republican 'Matriarchy' supports male power and the Regressive Left fears its own. Men weaponized their penis thousands of years ago and have agitated against the loss of their power for the last hundred years as American feminists consistently won more rights and pushed their equality. It's why speaking out too much, possessing too-powerful a voice against misogyny and patriarchy results in de rigueur rape and gang rape threats. Raise your hand if you're still on the fence about women as property, ladies Many American women, at heart, are consciously or unconsciously uncomfortable with female power. We can blame conservatives for the current state of affairs, but we ignore how willfully blind and blissfully un-self-aware many feminists on the left have been for decades. Victim feminists pay much lip service to 'empowerment' and 'taking rape seriously', railing against the 'Patriarchy', unaware of their own internalized fear of empowerment. They tell men how they must stop raping and abusing and take its victims more seriously, yet reject suggestions that women take back their power by protecting themselves better from predatory, toxic masculine men. Don't blame the victim, BE the victim! Stay weak and powerless and cringe with fear in your safe space. Slap the Patriarchy! I've been wondering what American feminists will do now. Are there enough strong enough to stand up against a horrific potential miscarriage of law or will they fold up like good little victims and research herbal emmenagogues on Google, at least until Republicans ban those too? Or will it finally galvanize them to fight back in ways men didn't consider before they voted against women's body autonomy? I honestly don't know. What this could mean for men It's not all roses and rape for American men. Unpaid sex will become much less available in states for women with no options. Some might attempt a Lysistrata protest, although I don't see it happening as a widespread phenomenon. Returning abortion rights to America may take many years and likely decades. Women with financial resources may migrate to states where their rights and autonomy are respected, leaving men in bass-ackwards states with a dearth of women (rather like China and India today). That won't work out well for the ones unable to leave. But upside! Fewer women to take 'their' jobs. I'd hoped the near-certain loss of Roe might turn the midterm elections bright blue, but this year's Congressional election polls so far are turning red. It might take a decade or two of rape and dumpster babies, or religious nuts deciding next that girls don't need to go to school, because reading only agitates them and the only thing she should think about is how to please her man. Women in Arkansas, 2023. CC0 2.0 photo by Arnesen on Wikimedia Commons Maybe Republican women are more at peace with rape and abuse than Democratic women. I don't know. Women voting against their own interests and freedoms has always mystified me. "Will you believe us NOW you need to vote Democrat to protect women's right to choose?" "Not yet." It's widely speculated Republicans will go after birth control, and marriage laws next. Maybe not condoms, because men still want to be selective about who they've decided will have their babies, and no one wants certain skanky hos to get pregnant. Or it might not matter if Republicans remove any laws mandating male responsibility for illicit conceptions. Several different possibilities this year could play out for women. The Supreme Court might rethink its position, considering how overturning Roe could permanently affect their and their families' safety in a violent, divided America. American voters might think harder about who or what they're voting for. The Roe draft might be amended for less harshness than the leaked draft. Maybe God will soften five Supreme Court Justice hearts so His girl-children don't suffer as they did for thousands of years before those uppity bitches of First Wave feminism began angling for the vote. Men knew it wasn't going to stop there, no matter what Suzy B and Liz said. Or maybe Roe really is almost over, and it will be open season on women's bodies with re-weaponized penises. I sure wouldn't want to be a woman living in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, or 23 other states right now. But most of all I'm glad I don't live in Alaska, which already has the highest rape rate in the country, which far exceeds the national rate. We are about to understand the real meaning of living in a Patriarchy. Photo by Victoria Pickering on Flickr - CC0 2.0 Creative Commons

"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. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

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!