Women who love monsters are merely the extremest of the Bad Boy lovers Richard Ramirez with one of his many sweeties. Photo by Mario Solera on Flickr WARNING: Possibly triggering details of violent assaults. Richard Ramirez, the ‘Night Stalker’ who terrorized Los Angeles for over a year in the mid-’80s, was quite the little hotcha-hotcha. The self-professed ‘Satanist’ convicted for thirteen murders, five attempted murders, eleven sexual assaults and fourteen burglaries was one of the biggest ladies’ men, attracting a huge following of groupies that continues even though he died on death row from liver cancer in 2013. He married a groupie in 1996 and they divorced years later. He was engaged to a 23-year-old writer at the time of his death. Prison groupies for serial killers and other less accomplished murderers are nothing new, and even gay killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy owned their share of women wet for torture and murder. As I researched serial killers for a friend’s movie project awhile back, falling down a related rabbit hole on murderers, torturers, rapists, and the women who love them, it struck me just how vulnerable female psychology can be to abusive men, and how we as women and feminists need to work harder to recognize and challenge those vulnerabilities. No woman deserves to be hurt, but oftentimes we put ourselves in stupid situations that increase the likelihood. I’ve done it; you’ve done it. Dumb Shit I’ve Done I didn’t get raped, but I sure made it easy for them Some women have a real jones for dumb shit. My friend Sandy was one of them. Do You Have A Thing For Abusers? Knowing the red flags will help you avoid them I can’t imagine any dumber shit than pursuing a sadist guilty of some of the most heinous crimes against (usually) women. Bad-boy prison groupies’ psychological profiles usually include: Low self-esteem Believe these guys to be ‘misunderstood’ Believe love can ‘save him’ There’s actual safety pursuing the baddest of the Bad Boys: He can’t hurt her in prison. And now he’s her Bad Boy. There’s also an element of control for many of these women, who may have received an overabundance of it from their not-so-jailed boyfriends. She controls his access to her, not vice versa. She decides when they see each other and she doles out the gifts. He can’t screw around on her with other women. He needs her attention more than she needs his. She has a life he doesn’t. Some really sick groupies add an additional psychological kink you don’t find in regular abuse victims: She wants to live vicariously through her bad boy’s crime stories, particularly if he shares a detail or two that supposedly no one else knows. It makes her feel ‘special’. Not unlike non-homicidal abusers who share tidbits about their past with a lover, for the same reason and also maybe to ‘excuse’ his past and forthcoming behavior. Some women are aroused hearing firsthand about sadistic crimes. This also explains some of the husband and wife/partner teams where she claims she was afraid of refusing her husband’s demands or expectations that she aid him in his crimes, but was nevertheless aroused by it. Now I think I understand serial killer Karla Homolka, famous to Canadians during the late ’80s and early ’90s when the blonde beauty and her babelicious husband Paul Bernardo raped and killed three teenage girls, including her own sister. The two strangers were tortured before they were murdered, excruciating details revealed on videotapes of the crimes found too late to do anything about Homolka’s ‘deal with the Devil’. I never understood why she participated, as her life and mindset didn’t follow the well-established psychopath course her husband did. But, she clearly enjoyed what she was doing. The ‘Barbie & Ken Killers’ raped and killed her sister the night before Christmas Eve, and in a video made a few weeks later (they documented much of their lives this way), Homolka mentioned how much fun raping Tammy had been. Before they married, she knew Bernardo was a Bad Boy but she didn’t yet know how much. He tested the waters, telling her he might want to rape people, maybe do even more (he was already the as-yet-unidentified Scarborough Rapist who’d terrorized the eastern part of Toronto in the late ‘80s). Karla dug it. She was into it. She’d claimed on the witness stand that Paul had committed the murders, not herself, but the videotapes proved otherwise. Why do women fall in love with men who’ve committed such terrible crimes? Especially those who identify as feminists? And many do. One might surmise these women are unattractive and not terribly bright, but some are beautiful and educated. Many consciously recognize their attraction to society’s monsters, and know they’re bad partner choices. Many women love ‘alpha males’ and these men are the epitome. But prison groupies just can’t seem to help themselves. It never occurs to them to challenge something in their brain that drives them to such a bad decision, or maybe they don’t want to. Yeah, blame it on Hollywood. That’s the $64,000 question. Maybe they’re empowered by the knowledge that other women share their fantasy, ‘normalizing’ it. Plus, women are traditionally — and as part of our neurological wiring — ‘carers’. The belief that these men are ‘misunderstood’ and that love can ‘save him’ is the same psychological profile you get with garden-variety abuse victims. These clear emotional brain vulnerabilities, unchallenged, drive women to put themselves in dangerous situations, and to get involved with abusive men who simply can’t be ‘fixed’ by the right woman. I understand why women are attracted to ‘bad boys’ and ‘bad boy behavior’, if not at the level of a man who tried to zombify one victim and eat others as Jeffrey Dahmer did, or torture their victims like Ramirez and Bernardo/Homolka did. I used to have a big thing for Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. I also had what I now regard as a fairly unhealthy attraction to Alex, played glamorously by Malcolm McDowell in the 1971 movie A Clockwork Orange (although I didn’t find Alex in the novel, which I read first, attractive at all). Still, I never wanted to meet a real Alex. A friend who also shared my Spike fixation once said, “How come I can’t find a guy like Spike?” It’s dangerous not to understand the difference between the fantasy of a ‘bad boy’ and the real thing. ‘Bad boys’ are best left for one-night stands or the occasional fling, without making more out of it. Bad boys (and girls) don’t make for positive, functional life partners. “There’s no such thing as a man like Spike,” I replied. “He’s our idealized bad boy. He’s brutal, but never to Drusilla [his vampire love interest] unless it’s part of sex play. He loves her to pieces and will do anything to protect her, but he never, ever abuses her, not even when she callously flaunts her new lover in his face while he’s temporarily stuck in a wheelchair. A real-world man like Spike would beat the snot out of her regularly whether she screwed around on him or not. She’d live in constant fear and probably wind up in a domestic shelter.” How many times did I hear from abuse victims, when I was younger, “I thought I could change him?” How many thought their love was enough? The idea you can ‘reform’ a highly damaged person with love can be fatal to women who buy into it, especially if Monsieur is released and there are no longer guards and barbed wire standing between her and her Wuv-Twoo-Wuv. Carol Spadoni learned that the hardest way when the convicted murderer she fell in love with was released, subsequently murdering her, and her mother as well after sexually assaulting her. Two Australian women married incarcerated men they fell in love with, one of whom committed minor property crimes and the other convicted of killing his previous wife. The one in love with the thief died from the business end of his hammer and the other guy went back to prison for trying to cut off his sweetie’s ear and pull out her teeth with pliers. I don’t know if either of these men were psychopaths, but it’s extremely hard to reform an abuser who doesn’t want to be reformed, and it’s nigh unto impossible to reform a psychopath. No amount of love will change them; they are neurologically incapable of giving or receiving love, although they’re way good at faking it. This notion that we can change a ‘bad man’ with our love is one of the most toxic elements of female psychology and something feminism needs to seriously challenge. There’s a difference between loving genuine monsters versus female-porn fictitious ‘bad boys’ who are bad the way we want them to be without ever turning their unholy rage on us. The ‘rape-y’ books and movie scenes women love depict ‘rape’ defined as a woman fantasizes it is, with a hot man driven uncontrollable by lust or love rather than hostility or the desire to jack off with her body as so many drunken frat boys do. It’s the dangerous excitement of not being quite sure what’s going to happen next. The power of one individual over another. The sex appeal of Christian Grey and his Red Room, knowing the torture is consensual , and he’s not going to kill, dismember, or serve you with fava beans and a nice Chiaaanti. Where it all goes tits-up, as it were, is when we confuse the man who doesn’t exist with the one who does. It’s how we put our lives in danger whether it’s Sexy Hypermasculine Guy who beats you when he’s feeling low, or at its most extreme, when we fail to question why we think raping, torturing and murdering a woman is extremely hot when we’d never want that done to ourselves or any woman we could think of. It’s putting yourself in harm’s way. It’s a conscious, deliberate dance with danger. It’s doing dumb shit. We’ve spent enough time analyzing abusive men, what role male entitlement and privilege and ‘The Patriarchy’ plays. We need to turn our attention to our own psychology, our own choices, our own desires. When we identify vulnerabilities we have to address them, not just shrug and say, ‘That’s how I roll.’ And we need to challenge these toxic desires in others. We need to call out toxic feminine psychology, however kindly, in our family members and friends just as we call out toxic masculinity. It takes two to tango, as my mother likes to say. “Marisol takes a lot of crap from Jean-Paul,” Mom used to say about a female friend of hers, “and I say to her, ‘Marisol, why do you put up with this?’ He acts like a jerk, but she tolerates his behavior.” Prison groupies share some of the same psychological elements as many regular abuse victims, but are simply farther down the spectrum. They’re not as far removed as regular victims might believe. Time to stop making excuses about ‘blaming the victim’, and challenge women to stop being the victim. We must make this feminism’s manifesto for the 21st century. Our lives depend on it. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

Forget killer viruses, fires, superduperhurricanes or murder hornets. Russia has been invaded. America is next. It hates you. And it's coming for you. Free for commercial use photo from PxFuel Sochi, Russia, became Ground Zero for a massive Spider Invasion last year. Hordes of giant killer spiders invaded Russian homes in this subtropical city (who knew Russia had subtropical anything?), terrorizing the locals. Okay, I might be exaggerating a little. They’re about three centimeters long, so I guess, technically speaking, that doesn’t compare well to real giant spiders, like you find in Australia. Also, it’s not, maybe, hordes of spiders, just a farkava lot of ’em. And they’re not human extermination armies. Entomologists, people who study things with more than four proper legs and whom you don’t want to talk up at cocktail parties lest something horrible crawl out from their shirtsleeves, say they’re harmless wolf spiders, that they pose no threat to humans and their bite is about the same as a bee sting. Pardon me, but doesn’t BITE suggest a real danger to humans? And ever been stung by a bee? I was, last summer. My foot swelled up and itched for days. It was horrifyingly traumatic. Okay. Exaggerating again. It was horrifyingly annoying. But still. Spiders. BITE. That’s all I have to hear to cross Sochi, Russia, off my bucket list. (Okay, exaggerating again. I’ve never had the desire to visit Sochi, especially after the Olympics debacle . But now I have even less of a desire. And then there's the whole war they started in Ukraine. Like, everyone would hate me if I gave them my tourist money. But, I'll be honest. The spiders keep me away from Russia more than the Evil Empire thing.) These entomologists note Sochi’s new housemates might actually do some good while they’re living there rent- and mortgage-free. They may not be much of a danger to humans (apart from the BITING stuff) but they do eat midges, cockroaches and fleas. Look, I don’t care if they eat Republicans. I don’t care if they eat unmasked white-sheeted swastika-bearing Plague-carrying MAGA morons. I don’t want three-centimeter-large spiders in my apartment. EVER. Even if they all sign waivers promising never, ever to bite me. If I find Republicans in my apartment, that’s what the Raid is for, and I’m going to have a word or two with Border Control since I live in Canada. The spiders’ weird behavior may be a symptom of climate change, or it could be they’re horny little bastards who just need a warm, dry place to mate. Because, you see, it’s mating season for Sochi’s aroused arachnids. So don’t worry, Russkies, they won’t stick around, they’ll just use your home for a quick in-and-out, bum a cigarette, and maybe cart off a vodka bottle or two, but then they’re gone and out of your hair. (I know, nightmare-inducing mental image!) This isn’t the first climate change-induced spider invasion shot across the bow for an increasingly creeped-out humanity. In 2012, the Australian town of Wagga Wagga (and that’s pronounced WOGGA WOGGA, not WAGGA WAGGA, as an Ozzie friend archly informed me, despite the fact that it’s spelled WAGGA WAGGA and not WOGGA WOGGA and is without question the world’s stupidest town name) got invaded by giant horrible evil brain-destroying monster spiders from hell, I suspect because Wagga Wagga must have been a very, very bad town in a former lifetime. A sillier explanation holds that the horrible beasts relocated to higher ground after a flood. Just to put things in perspective, this apocalypse was prophesied in what was once thought to be a cheezy horror movie but is now understood to be an insightful documentary, 1975’s The Giant Spider Invasion, set in the mythical state of Wisconsin: Giant spiders have a big thing for polyester pantsuits. Avoid them, Ozzies! Not to put too fine a point on it, but there was a more recent ‘horror movie’ (read: explosive documentary) on what happens when spiders go all Hell’s Angels on an entire town, 2002’s Eight Legged Freaks: So anyway, God’s wrath of horrid little frightmonsters snowed on southern Australia, dropping down in white billowy hellwebs from the sky, literally coating poor Wagga Wagga with web sheets filled with, ugh, bazillions of flood water refugees. You know what? I’ll take the Murder Hornets any day. Crikey, some might argue that Wagga Wagga’s Boschian nightmares aren’t exactly giant spiders at 1–6 millimeters, they’re merely ‘money’ spiders or ‘sheet-web weavers’ (that jump! ), but it’s only Australians who say ‘merely’, because they’re grateful the little futhermuckers aren’t the normal Volkswagen-sized beasts that customarily terrorize tourists. Listen, I know about ‘merely’. I grew up in Florida where we had big ugly demonic fiends — ‘merely’ garden spiders. Some of the beasts had pretty colors but I maintain that any spider bigger than a dime is a Big Ugly Spider even if it’s got a friggin’ original Picasso on its huge tank-like back. Yes, Floridian spiders’ eyes gleam with Satanic evil, are armoured like a Sherman tank and will fucking kill you if you so much as entertain a fleeting thought of pulling your shoe off. Image by Ray Shrewsberry from Pixabay My mother said there was a spider web between two trees outside my bedroom window when I was a baby, and she tried to hose it down, but the web was too strong, and then she tried a flame-thrower but it was still too strong, and it even survived her small tactical nuke. So she sent out the big guns — or rather, the big pole — in the capable hands of my father, who made short work of the aerial lair and the vicious lemon-sized beast Mom swears had glowing eyes and giant fangs. But, you know, Mom’s even more arachnophobic than I, so she might have exaggerated a wee bit. I used to watch something like the little dude to the right hanging off a bush outside our church during the sermon and I thought that was a really scary-ass spider but clearly I’ve never been to Australia. Or Sochi. I will never move back to Florida, which suffers world-class hurricanes and floods and if millions of these murderous mutants moved into my living room in their tiny little rain slickers and bug-corpse-speckled umbrellas I’m leaving the whole damn galaxy! Image by Jools Theriault from Pixabay Wagga Wagga isn’t the only place with terrifying climate change-crazed spiders. A user on Reddit recently posted a photo of some monster who lives in his backyard who bears a striking resemblance to Aragog, the evil giant spider queen in the Harry Potter movies. He doesn’t say where he lives. Which means…this mofo could be ANYWHERE. Maybe even in your hometown. In your backyard. Escaping, I don’t know, climate change or maybe it’s in lockdown or maybe just waiting for the next Trumpocalypse. The Horny Spider Invasion isn’t just happening in Russia. Wolf spiders, (spider wolves?) have invaded British homes looking for a shag ’n’ fag. This came just weeks after a massive British daddy longlegs invasion, in which bugs (not spiders) with legs as long as the Great Wall of China scoured British homes looking for mates. Britain, too, was very bad in a former lifetime. Image by Henryk Niestrój from Pixabay I’m not at all clear why spiders think anyone’s homes are bangalicious bug brothels, but who knows what those Brits really get up to behind closed doors, oi, mate? So far, Canadians seem safe from horny spider invasions, maybe because it’s still too cold here, or because I live in Toronto, where the spiders are really boring, or because I live in a skyrise and they can’t climb this high (there’s a method to my madness!) We might have stinkbugs. They’re a problem in New Hampshire , which is like a Great Lake and a state-and-a-half away from me, but I found one on my porch last week. (A stink bug, not a Great Lake.) It was hanging on the wall, not bothering anyone, and after a few hours I suspected it was dead. I didn’t poke it or anything to see, as I wasn’t sure if it could fly or not, but it must; how else could it have gotten up here? A few days later it was gone. So either it dried up, dropped to the floor and blew away or maybe it decided to quit loafing around and go get some stinkbug shit done. Brace yourself, kids: Things are going to get EXTREMELY buggy in the next thirty years. An international team of research scientists tasked with keeping the world in abject paranoia in case a vaccine is found for coronaviruses, Republicans, and other plagues of humanity, have determined that biological creepy-critter invasions are going to increase by a mind-boggling 36% by 2050 . This means ‘non-native’ insect species, so whatever shit’s been terrorizing Asia and Europe and maybe even Australia while we laugh and point our fingers at the other side of the globe, may be coming for your ass! Europe’s gonna git it the worst, followed by Asia and then the Americas. The only North American creepy-crawly-lover on the team said the study will allow ‘a shift from a reactionary stance to a proactive stance in defending against biological invasion.’ Which means to me the Biden-Harris House damn well better have a plan to protect Americans not just from the Supreme Court and $20/pack toilet paper but from the Horny Spider Invasions to come. Because spiders famously laugh in the face of Border Control when they're parachuting over the 49th Parallel in their Wagga-Wagga hellcloud balloons. God has spoken, and He’s pissed at us for not taking better care of the Earth. He’s even getting all Biblical and shit elsewhere, not with spiders but with plagues of locusts on Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia. These ravenous little bastards can travel up to 150 km a day, or over 5,000 km if they hitch a ride on an airplane. So, like, don’t think the oceans are stopping anybody from invading North America. Or from within. Scientists suspect climate change may also be behind the recent invasion of venomous pus-shooting ‘walking toupee’ caterpillars in Virginia, customarily found farther south but now on the northern move because, well, who’s going to stop them? Stinging flannel moth caterpillar image by Andreas Kay on Flickr . Do not pet these. DO NOT PET THESE. Scientists believe there are two primary climate-related explanations for why insects, arachnids, and a lot of larger, furrier wildlife are migrating, bringing with them our next possible pandemic . Changing weather is modifying insect traits and also impacting their food, natural enemies and predators. Rising and falling temperatures affect arthropods (insects, spiders, anything with a bunch of legs and an exoskeleton) and so do weather events like floods and droughts. They’re on the march to escape imminent death, predators and to find food. So, all laughs aside, climate change’s impact on insect populations means humanity is about to get up close and personal with creepy-crawlies in the coming decades. And speaking of coming, you might want to stock up on cigs and beer. The last thing you want is a spider getting peevish on a host unprepared for post-coital spider bliss. Aaaaaahhhh, a spider bite is no worse than a bee sting. This first appeared on Medium.

Tired of the mass shootings? The smash 'n' grabs? The venomous political division? Had enough with the Ignited States? Then it’s time to break up. Here’s how. I’m not sure if the sun is rising on a new America or setting on a soon-to-be-failed state. I leave it to you to interpret this for yourself. Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash I think the moment I realized it was over between myself and the United States was an evening in 2004 as I ate dinner. The newspaper photo of a Muslim prisoner in Abu Ghraib presented me with a man on a box, dark-robed and hooded like an obscene parody of a Klansmen, arms outstretched like Jesus with electrical cables gripping his hands. Moral degenerates, or as George W. Bush called them, “My base,” cheered and made excuses for why it was okay to torture prisoners like we were some goddamn ‘shithole country’, as an American wag more recently put it, although he was talking about other people’s countries at the time. I’d schlepped off my Canadian immigration application three months prior, but I don’t think I was yet all-in. Committed enough to go through the trouble and expense (I think so far it had cost me around $1,000, not a sum I’d had to pay all at once) but when I saw the now-iconic photo, I knew it was over between me and America. We had to break up. We couldn’t live with each other anymore. The moral degenerates have multiplied, the self-infantilization of America continues, and the difference between the left’s and right’s extremism has become so blurred the only difference is in who they hate and how they express it. No, the left isn’t as violent as the right. Yet. So you want to become a Canadian My focus for this article: Americans, since others’ mother countries may vary. Immigration, not asylum claims The Skilled Worker program, which is how I entered Some of my information may prove out of date, as I started the process 19 years ago. Happy to update my information if someone tells me what's new. If you’re interested in the story behind my decision to leave America, you can read a guest blog post I wrote for a writer friend several years ago, when I had more of a sense of humor than I feel today. Consider this your starter article on How To Become A Canadian. Your home base will be the Canadian Immigration & Citizenship website. Bookmark it. Immigration and citizenship Apply to travel, study, work or immigrate to Canada, apply for citizenship, a permanent resident card or refugee… www.canada.ca There are two ways to enter Canada: Immigration and asylum, and this article doesn’t take into account COVID-19 restrictions. Applying as a refugee doesn’t apply to Americans, although never say never. America’s on the ‘safe country’ list, for now. WARNING: Famously Canadian niceness and courtesy does NOT extend to Canada geese. They are assholes. Two main immigration options Federal immigration Quebec immigration Quebec is a slightly different province from the rest of Canada for many political reasons I won’t get into here. The answer you care about is there’s a separate immigration process for it. If the Canadian government rejects you, you can still apply to Quebec and if it accepts you, the federal government may still approve it unless there’s a good reason to keep you out which can include having a criminal record, medical condition, or other problematic details (like ties to terrorism). I considered Quebec my Plan B. You don’t have to speak French to live in Quebec but if you don't you'd best live in cities like Montreal or Quebec City where you can get by with Anglais . The farther you get into the hinterlands, the more French-only it gets. If you successfully enter Canada, you become a permanent resident and can live anywhere in the country you want, including Quebec. You have most rights as a native-born Canadian but you can’t vote or sit on a jury. You may not be eligible for provincial government-paid healthcare for a certain period after you enter (I waited a month or two in Ontario, I think). You can’t become a citizen until you’ve lived here roughly three years, and that means your butt inside Canada. When you apply for citizenship, you have to specify how much time you spent outside the country during that time period, and then calculate how many hours you’ve been here because they look at hours. I was here eight years before I applied and I had a bitch of a time cataloging all the times I went to the States for family reasons or took vacations. And I forgot one stupid business trip to Chicago which they found stamped in my passport, but fortunately they let it pass. The main immigration choices Skilled worker. Canada now offers Express Entry for skilled workers which wasn’t available for the slow-ass process I went through. Provincial nominee program . Applies to anyone who’s got special skills that would apply to a specific province. Maybe you’re an oil worker who wants to work in Alberta or a miner who can work in the northern territories (bring some heavy-duty clothing, it can get quite nippy closer to the Arctic Circle!) Atlantic immigration pilot . A company or business who wants to hire you needs to sponsor you. It’s for jobs the business hasn’t been able to fill locally. Start-up visa. Canada actively encourages entrepreneurs and investors to build potential businesses in Canada. The Greater Toronto Area in particular is actively seeking people with startup/entrepreneurial tech skills as it aspires to become the Silicon Valley of Canada. Rural and northern immigration pilot . Similar to the Atlantic one, this one is designed to encourage people to move to smaller, more rural, less attractive communities. Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal remain the most popular destinations for new immigrants, so the federal government is always trying to persuade people to choose different regions (which you may want to consider anyway as the major metros are getting too expensive for even the rest of us to live in). Refugees. Doesn’t apply to Americans, but people living in those considered asylum countries can start here. Family sponsorship . If you’ve got Canadian family members, including relatives, this is one route. Just keep in mind your sponsors are ultimately responsible for you, which will factor into whether they’re willing to cooperate with you on this. Quebec-selected skilled workers. If Canada won’t have you, maybe the Quebecois will! Bonne chance! Caregivers. Self-employed. Are you hockey-mad? Love curling? You must have ‘relevant experience in cultural activities or athletics’ and be able to contribute in some significant way to those activities or athletics here. Agri-Food pilot. Canada needs food industry workers, but you’ll need a job offer. Several requirements are those you’ll find as for the skilled worker: Proficiency in at least one of the two languages (English or French), the funds to support yourself until you get on your feet, educational requirements and eligibility in one of the industries. Immigrating to Canada is a big undertaking. The federal government requires an insane but not insurmountable amount of paperwork. Among the crazier information they asked for was every damn address I’ve ever lived. Literally. I wasn’t sure how good they were at checking so I was as rigorously honest as I could be, even including calling a post office in Kent, Ohio to ask the lady on the phone if she could tell me the house number directly across the street. I lived there while the post office was being built in 1986. If you don’t drag your ass like I did you can pull the initial application together in a few months. I think it took my dithering ass something like 6–8 months. I was at maybe 90% ready to go, and asked myself, “If you don’t do this, where will you be in five years?” The answer terrified me so I did as a British friend predicted, “If I know you, you’ll just say fuck it and jump.” The process will take longer if you have legal complications, children, and an ex-partner who may create trouble. They’ll want to know about all your exes, including any relationships you still have with them. I schlepped the application off and reminded myself that if I stayed, in five years I’d probably be exactly where I currently was, except even crazier. When I saw the Abu Ghraib photo, I couldn’t wait to GTFO of America. What happens if your initial application gets accepted For the skilled worker and other programs, you’ll need to: Send your fingerprints to the FBI , if they don’t already have them (and if they do, maybe you shouldn’t even bother with this project). I visited my local police station and requested it. It was free at the time in Bristol, CT. Then you ship them off to the FBI and wait for the criminal check to come back. ***IMPORTANT TIP!*** Keep on top of the FBI with this! I had ninety days to submit my report to Canada and after two months I called the FBI to see when they’d get back to me. Not for many months, they said, as they had a new whack of paperwork submitted thanks to the recently-passed Patriot Act III. I wanted to jump through the phone and scream, “DON’T YOU DARE FUCK THIS UP FOR ME!” but I didn’t; I kept my cool and was really really really nice and polite and asked what we could do, as I needed to submit my report in the next thirty days. The lady quite kindly offered to look for my envelope and it was more of an undertaking than you’d think, but she called back an hour later, said she’d found it (I’m the only Nicole Chardenet on the planet, as far as I know) and that she’d put it at the top of the pile. “They should be getting to it very soon,” she said. And they did, in the sense that I got it back a few days after my deadline. I schlepped it off, with a letter detailing why it was late and describing all the lady went through to find my envelope and put it at the top of the pile. I asked them to please not stop my application for this, it wasn’t my fault, as I’d gone down to the police station the day I’d gotten approval to move forward, and I mailed it the following day. This is funny, but seriously, NEVER bring weed across the border from either direction. It’s illegal to do so in both countries even from federally weed-legal Canada to or from a weed-legal State. The next missive informed me my next step was to: Visit a Canadian-approved doctor in the U.S. for a medical exam at my expense to make sure I wasn’t bringing any expensive diseases or conditions into the country. One weirdness I encountered: I reported I’d been treated for depression (I was afraid to lie in the slightest) and the doctor asked if I’d been suicidal. I hadn’t, but I still had to fax him a document from my doctor certifying I hadn’t been when he treated me to get his approval. “Why would I go to all this trouble and expense to move to Canada if I wanted to kill myself?” I asked. “I can just do it here.” He wasn’t sure either. But Canada won’t turn you down just because you got treated for depression. If they did, he said, they’d never let anyone into the country. “Ninety percent of people experience depression at one time or another in their lives,” he said. “And the other ten percent are lying about it?” I responded, and we both laughed. Submit several original documents that will make you extremely uncomfortable including your birth certificate. How much time did it take? The process took a little under a year and a half from the time I mailed the initial application packet the first week of January 2004 until I got the temporary visa in the first quarter of 2005. Processing time can vary greatly, and often, so consult expected processing times regularly. The less complicated your life is, the less time it will take. I, for example, was just moving myself and a cat. No family, no house back home to deal with, no crazy exes wielding custody disputes. This is hilarious, written by one of Canada’s best humourists, but it’s also an excellent introduction to Canadian culture for the Canadian noob How much did it cost, and what was involved? I don’t recall the exact amount, but I think it was around $3,000 total to move to Canada. The breakdown, as best as I can remember: A two-part immigration application fee. The first was non-refundable even if you got rejected. The second, paid some months later, was roughly the same amount, and refundable. The doctor’s visit Special mailing and shipping fees. I didn’t want either country’s postal service screwing anything up so I paid extra to mail anything to Canada. I chipped in even more to send my original documents in an armoured truck and to ensure they were returned safely. I think I included the costs of the move like renting a U-Haul and hiring some local strong guys through a temp agency to help load the van. Other miscellaneous expenses What else do I need to know about moving to Canada? DO NOT USE U-HAUL. They suck. Just Google ‘U-Haul problems complaints.’ ‘Nuff said. Unless you’re a refugee, you will almost certainly be expected to prove you can speak one of the two main languages reasonably well. The absolute safest way to do this is to pay for a language assessment. By the time I got to this I was tired of forking out money so I took a small risk. I wrote two essays for the Canucks: One in English and one in French. In each, I detailed my experience with the language, including being born, raised, educated, and working in the U.S. for over forty years. That I spoke and wrote English better than most of my countrymen and if they didn’t believe me they could Google my unique name and find my work online. For the French one, I stated I hadn’t had help from anyone with the essay as reading it should make it immediately apparent why I gave myself fewer points for French fluency. I can get by, I said, but I can’t hold a conversation. I noted that I’d spent the previous year and a half working on my French. The IRS is unclear on whether you have to continue paying taxes after you move to Canada. You probably don’t, but we had several conversations about it and I still moved here thinking I didn’t have to file a tax report every April as always. You do, but unless you make a certain amount of money (usually somewhere around $100,000 a year) you don’t have to pay but you still have to file a report. Unless you’re a tax genius, you WILL need a special accountant who knows how to do it because it’s far more complicated. Kiss the EZ-1040, or even the not-so-EZ-1040, goodbye. You’ll need to show you have enough funds to support yourself for six months or so. I think at the time I had to prove I had $10,000 in the bank. That’s Canadian dollars, and at the time the exchange rate made it $7,500 American dollars. You can’t become a citizen until you’ve lived here three years. (See: Calculating hours, under Two Main Immigration Options.) If you’ve got a Driving Under Impairment conviction, you might be inadmissible for ‘serious criminality’, although you have options. Other reasons why you might be inadmissible. What to do if you’ve had any criminal convictions. Do you need a visa or Electronic Travel Authorization to come to Canada? Something that may help your case that didn’t exist when I immigrated: A Nexus card for expedited cross-border travel. It means both countries already agree you don’t need to be subjected to as much scrutiny at the border as those without. If you travel across the border as much as I do (pre-Plague), the <$200 fee (today) for like five years is money well spent. Don’t bother with an ‘immigration consultant’ or lawyer unless you’re quite sure you need one. Especially the ones who claim they can fast-track your application. The immigration authorities here move with all the haste of the IRS or any other monolithic, inefficient government agency. One reason why it might be an effective use of your money is if you’re a federally convicted well-connected psychopathic asshole who was once a citizen. (He was allowed back in.) In conclusion Good luck! Bonne chance! Image by World Bank Photo Collection on Flickr (2.0 Generic — CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) This first appeared on Medium a few years ago, but I've updated it a little for more recent events. This was originally in response to the hotly disputed 2020 U.S. election. 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!

Some men still resist women's equal rights. But what if a more egalitarian society brings them...certain benefits? Does he look like he's complaining? Photo by Vlada Karpovich on Pexels In my last article, What If Human Women Challenged Male Aggression Like Bonobos? I explored theories as to why our close primate cousins evolved toward the more peaceful society many of us humans claim we want. Bonobo society exhibits some elements of a 'matriarchy' rather than a patriarchy, but still appears much more equitable for both sexes in a way the patriarchal model of male dominance never has been. While bonobos are far less studied than humans and chimps by biologists, zoologists and other scientists, our sex-crazed, hippie-like grrrl power African cousins south of the Congo River offer several options for changing human society--for everyone. The idea of a human society run primarily by women must sound pretty threatening even to a rational, even-minded human male. Patriarchy has been brutal for women for many thousands of years and a 'matriarchy' sounds too much like Payback's a bitch, bitches! Let's get this straight: No Blessed-By-God/dess biological anybodies should run the show. Humans are fallible and selfish and power corrupts absolutely. Women would find whole new ways to screw up the world and tip the current power imbalance to their own favor, as I expect would happen if black people, Asians, Latinos, or any other melanin-based group would. We're more alike than we're different and one thing we all have in common is human tribalism. Our bonobo cousins, though, demonstrate how a more equitable society benefits everyone, including males, whose primary 'lose' is that they're unable to behave as aggressively as other primates, since bonobo females gang up to shut them down fast. It's theorized this response is enabled via extensive female friendships, a sentiment that extends even to females in other troops. Bonobo males are hardly 'henpecked', to coin a judgemental term from their higher primate cousins. They benefit mightily from the equitable bonobo social model which begs the question: Would human males, also, if we adopted some of their best practices? What if the men who fight the fiercest against women's equal rights are the ones who'd benefit mightily from a more equal world? In order to sell a less violent, non-zero-sum-based future vision to Da Boyz, we women need to paint them a picture: What will it look like? Should they be afraid? A bonobo-style human social model would be less matriarchal than patriarchy is patriarchal, and would NOT be led by misandrist #MeToo victim feminists. They're the ones who would mess it up if they were in charge. Gender hatred sucks no matter who wields the power. Let's explore what we can adopt from our bonobo cousins and more specifically, What's in it for men? SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! South of the Congo, everyone gets laid and peace reigns supreme. Bonobos put the 'free' in 'free love'. There are no bonobo incels! In a comparable human model, only relentlessly toxic masculine males will lose. Scientists theorize that bonobo male aggression may have selected out of the gene pool in Darwinian fashion if female bonobos favored mating with less aggressive males. Bonobo females shag who they want, when they want, in front of the males they've shagged before and if anyone objects, several bonobo females will move in to remind him to stand down, buddy-boy. I'll bet s/he doesn't stress over whether their baldness will hamper their access to sex. Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay I don't advocate we emulate all the bonobos' sexually liberated lifestyle - adults have sex with young bonobos, who, admittedly, seem to be okay with it, but if human females can learn not to favor 'bad boys' and toxic masculine models that have proven otherwise successful for aggressive males for thousands of years, male aggression might be bred out of our species. What If Women Refused To Have Sex With Abusive Men? What Abuse Victims Can Learn From Prison Groupies Cis-hetero-normative, and especially more even-tempered, broad-minded men who choose to cooperate with strong, powerful women will finally get the breaks they deserve and enjoy plenty of access to women without all the grief and jealousy this currently causes - because sex becomes a bonding ritual rather than about dominance and possession. Keep in mind, that works both ways. But what if you're gay, trans, or genderfluid? The bonobos got it covered! An end to homophobia Bonobos are pansexual. They'll have wild sex with just about anyone, and that includes male-to-male and yes, guys, girl on girl! Homophobia becomes a happily discarded relic when everyone is free to explore whatever homosexual feelings they may have. There aren't likely any 'trans' bonobos (not that we can look into their brains, but maybe 'identity' doesn't matter when you can be who you are without social sanction), but bonobos exhibit the sexual fluidity humanity is currently exploring now. The trans/non-gender movement's willingness to be more fluid, to regard sexual identity and sexual preference as a spectrum, less bound to labels and less trapped in rigid gender roles, is something we humans can certainly work on. Photo from Vice's Gender Spectrum Collection No more hiding. No more going on the 'down low'. No more shame in loving sausage more than you love Jesus. No more 'beards' to pretend to your family you're 'normal'. Everyone is normal when it's consensual. Everyone getting laid and being who they are without a lot of crap from the Twitterati and Tucker Carlson's WTF scowl leads to another male benefit. Less violence from other men In our world today, men are as much at risk for violence from men as women are, and a less violent world for women means a less violent one for men. With an end to entitled, aggressive, socially-challenged romantic rejects, the sexually satisfied will have much less to be angry about. When collective female power demands and enforces female sexual rights, including the right to shag whoever they want, and sex becomes a bonding ritual rather than a dominance one, men won't need to compete with other males for women. Everyone's available to everyone! Men will have a lot less to fight about. When men are no longer allowed to bully and assault women, bullying or assaulting other men won't be a good look for women seeking non-toxic partners. If anyone forgets, perhaps the formerly-bullied weaker men can gang up together like bonobo females and keep more aggressive males in line. There's one final benefit for men to adapt to in a non-dominance human social model. Escape from the Man Box 'Real men' fit into a constricted definition of what 'being a man' or 'masculine' is. Social scientists have come to refer to it as the 'man box' , noting it's a hegemonic masculinity that ultimately restricts and harms all men, whether they consciously adhere to it or not. It requires men to pack their feelings, emotions and sentiments into a mental box and keep them far, far away, because emotions are for 'girls'. And girls suck because they're weak and feminine, not like he-man boys! Remaining in the man box today is the safer option for many men, who are less bullied and preyed upon if they conform to toxic masculine ideals, but many chafe to escape (like those in LGBTQ) and in a more equitable world, with the primary excuse for toxic masculinity (female subordination) removed, men will be free to be whoever they are, whatever they are. They'll be relieved of the immense burden of constantly having to 'prove' their masculinity and forever being surveilled by anxious male 'gender police' for signs of homosexuality . Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. By Édouard Hue, CC BY-SA 3.0 on Wikimedia Commons Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight! We humans no longer have to follow the patriarchal dominance model germinated by the Agricultural Revolution. Some men, arguably many men given the popularity of a cardboard he-man like Donald Trump and the intense fear around female sexuality surrounding the current direct threat to Roe vs Wade, feel like they're fighting for their lives in the face of 'dark hordes' of immigrants and feminist hordes of angry, pissed-off feminists seeking to turn them into second-class citizens (fear of the tables turning is behind a lot of Angry White Male-ism). It's hard to fault their fears when you peruse social media and find as much victimist-thinking misandrist feminism damning men, laughing at them, blanketing them with generalizations, and proving that misandry is as ugly as misogyny. Fortunately, bonobo females never take it this far. Bonobos overall aren't known to kill each other. This is the kind of chick human females may need to sit on from time to time. 'Erasing men' isn't the answer, either. Ladies, The Slumflower's on the Watch List! Update:You're on the Watch List too. That's what they do to us when we don't 'satisfy our needs'. And this is right because...? A more bonobo-style social model for humans might not be 'matriarchal', per se, and absolutely can't mean female dominance. But there would definitely be more female power, leadership and decision-making input. We can strive for a more equitable society in which our increased power augments, rather than debits, men's. What we as power feminists must do to encourage our potential male allies to join us is to help them visualize what a more equitable society looks like, and particularly what it means for those who are today part of the dominant power structure whether they accept it or not. I hope I've presented men some food for thought regarding how we can all learn to live together, work together, and love together. For starters, gentlemen: We offer lots more guilt-free sex and a happier, more joyful existence. What else does a more equitable future look like for men? What else is in it for them? What changes do we women need to make within ourselves first to prepare for the responsibility that comes with increased power? Are you ready for it? Are we ready for it? Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

Oh so what? It's the Loony Left. What would happen if the Level Left stopped giving a fuck? And laughed? Say no to toxic ideologies and language. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Oh I'm sorry, are you talkin' to me? 'Cause I don't give a fuck. - Wanda Sykes Once I hit fifty, I discovered a new feeling : I just don't give a fuck. Stuff that upset or worried me when I was younger no longer did. Especially what people thought of me. The older I got, the less I gave a fuck. I didn't transform overnight, but I attribute it to two sources: Hormonal changes as I journeyed blithely into middle age, and a few years later, a turn toward Buddhist psychology. Right around the (Red) dawn of the Trump years (natch), I realized I was still too-easily triggered about politics and current events. I started or engaged in too many fights on Facebook, so I began de-triggering by exposing myself to a wide variety of reprehensible assholes. Thank God/dess for Twitter! I sought people I couldn't stand - Republicans, ISIS fanboys, misogynists, man-hating feminists, white and black racists. I'd scroll through their tweets until I couldn't resist telling some #$%&* off and then stop --before I tweeted something provocative. Or, I'd write the tweet but not post it. Today I still occasionally challenge assholes, but mostly only if something needs to be said. Like, can I add something no one else is saying? Is it promoting my agenda of encouraging people to take back their power and be stronger, or do I just want to feel superior-to-thou? I'll admit I still go for the quick hit of self-righteous assholery, but I'm doing it less. So what if they call you a nasty name? I challenge left-wing fascists. Some argue only the right can be fascist but I disagree. Taken to the extreme, which the left has done for several years, the far left has come to greatly resemble the far right, its primary distinction being merely who they hate. I find a near-identical religiosity on the far left one finds in the right's fundamentalist Christianity. 'Wokeness' looks rather a lot like a medieval Inquisition if thou fallest short of their strict, merciless, dogmatic ideology. Dared to say that a person who menstruates is a woman. “A Martyr To Fanaticism” from the Library of Congress with no known copyright restrictions The left tosses around pejorative labels so indiscriminately it stops sounding like an insult about fifteen minutes after first use. And when you no longer give a fuck, the label ceases to hurt. I got called a racist the other day on Twitter by a gender ideology nut who took exception to my pointing out that the trans movement's misogyny against biological women isn't only a white thing, plenty of POC transwomen share their misogyny. Simply mentioning race triggers the response algorithm in far-left haters. They're like Pavlov's dogs. Bet you my bottom loonie the tweeter hates white men, the acceptable racism of the Loony Left. I don't give a fuck when someone calls me a racist because I know I'm not, although I can't swear I've never been guilty of inadvertent racism, bigotry or bias. But as John McWhorter recently argued on The Glenn Loury Show, maybe we should differentiate between genuine racism and lighter shades of bigotry and bias. The same goes for the far-left's other overly-broad pet pejoratives. As far as I can tell, their blanket definitions include: 'Racist': Any white person who challenges Kendi-and-Coates-schooled victimhood-oriented antiracists 'Misogynist': Any man who does or says something a 'woke' (victim) feminist doesn't like, including telling her she's pretty 'Transphobe': Anyone who challenges someone who's been a woman about as long as I've been awake this morning 'TERF': Any biological woman who pushes back against narcissist, misogynist transwomen and trans-activists 'White supremacist': Anyone born white, no commitment to genuine white supremacist values required. That's you! (Unless you're not white. Although you may merely be in denial.) Why do we care what they call us? It's Twitter, for pete's sake. Or Shitter as I call it when it's on fire with woke holy rollers riled about some ancient blackface disgrace or 'deadnaming' Caitlyn Jenner, as though no one knew who The Olympic Athlete Formerly Known As B***e was. When I lived in the United States, I was a regular, public, vocal critic of the excesses and hypocrisies of Christian fundamentalism, and Islam after 9/11 with the left's unwillingness to condemn the violence, misogyny and homophobia in Islam for which they readily damned Christians. Boy did fundamentalist Christians and fundementedlist feminists get mad at me! No Muslims, since in Connecticut we didn't have many. Time To Call Out Misogynist Religions - And Name Names I stopped giving a fuck. Sorry folks, but I call out misogyny and crimes against women no matter how popular the perps. Today, the left has weaponized social ostracism not just to marginalize some, but through a vicious petty desire to destroy lives and careers. They discovered their power when they got its pioneer victim, Justine Sacco, fired for an ill-thought-out sorta racist tweet, one that truly merited no more than a quick meeting with HR: "Remember you're representing the company when you voice a public opinion." Cancel culture is the left's version of a mass shooting. Lives are pointlessly destroyed for vastly overstated harm. Cancel-bullies can't do it on their own. Corporate boards are submissive, compliant little kittens when confronted with 'controversy', however manufactured and mild. Unless they're big enough to profit from it, as some have come to realize. Heineken's "Lighter is better" ad. Racist? Maybe. Intentionally? Things that make you go "Hmmmmm...." No question though, it's lucrative! Social ostracism literally kills. We evolved as a cooperative group-bonding species for survival. One literally dies without your posse to back you up when the sabre-toothed tiger, the rival cave clan, the street gang, or your psycho gun-wielding ex finds you. It's even more critical now when human connections, already weakened by technology and social media , swing in tatters by an isolating pandemic. Nothing makes one feel suicidal quite like social ostracism. 'Woke' ideology, whether it's race, gender, LGBTQMOUSE, or Western colonialism, has become as religious in nature as god-based religions. The woke mob isn't allowed to imprison you in stocks in the town square, but they can introduce a permanent black stain on your character and reputation whenever someone enters your name on Google. What can we do about it? It's hard to stand up to dangerous religious fanatics, and too many 'social justice' movements have become infected by rabid dogma and a severe allergy to facts, science and evidence-based policy-making. What we need is to become a new breed of intellectual and knowledge-based social justice warriors, ironically, to take on the tiny minds who've come to ally themselves with injustice and human rights abuses. The first item of business will be challenging the woke True Believers' distrust of Enlightenment ideals of knowledge, reason and rationalism. Among the many bad ideas introduced by post-modernist 'thought' is the notion that scientific reasoning and rationalism are bad because first of all, and obviously, it was pioneered by white European and European-influenced American men. Post-modernists therefore approach knowledge as something constructed; they ask and challenge why it was constructed a certain way. There's clear value in considering the way biases and prejudices have influenced what is 'known'; especially when dealing with subjects requiring human interpretation. Some can't be observed or tested, like a past historical event or cataloguing biological evolution. Human bias and error are ever-present and something historians and anthropologists, among others, must seek and eliminate. But it's quite another thing when leftist extremists deny clear-cut science and history, along with our own observation. Like claiming women never lie about rape when clearly sometimes they do , or that genitals don't define your sex. John Cleese explains the science to a wannabe. Biology is real. Even with a constructed vagina. The second item of business is to laugh more. The Loony Left's too-casual labels hurled like a senior citizen tossing seed to park pigeons dilute the meaning of real-world prejudice and discrimination, enabling genuine bigots to brush them off. He's feeding the pigeons because he hates ducks and geese. And squirrels. Species-ist! CC0 2.0 image by Laura Hadden on Wikimedia Commons They're making those of us still on the rational side of liberalism look bad. Let's call ourselves the Level Left! It's up to us to hold our own accountable for their often toxic language. We can stop fearing our own True Believers, and re-apply the power of their labels to the truly deplorable by laughing at their current misapplications. By refusing to be shamed because some overprivileged twit calls you a TERF or a misogynist. Hopefully you're not actually racist, sexist or transphobic! One danger of laughing at the Loony Left is missing the occasional moment when they do have a point. We don't want to become the genuine bigots shrugging it off. Even the Dalai Lama changed his heart a bit on homosexuality when challenged by San Franciscan gay activists in 1997. The Level Left can reclaim language from those who abuse it with humor. Not all lefties support 'woke' extremism, just as many on the right aren't all Bible-thumpers and MAGA lynch mobs. The powerful fear humor because it calls out hypocrisy and holds it up for public ridicule, and there's nothing those whose business is public ridicule fear more. The best way to fight our extremists is by laughing at their labels, and their hypocrisies. We can't stop them from calling us names but remember what your mama told you about sticks and stones. Nothing takes the power from a so-called insult quite like shrugging it off. What the woke powerful fear almost as much as getting 'called out' themselves is the normalization of the marginalized. Humor takes the power of fear of the 'Other', and when we can all laugh together we all become less scary to each other. Dave Chappelle's transgender friend Daphne Dornan pointed out how being able to make jokes about the transgender community normalizes them, and makes them less 'those people' and more 'one of us'. That may play a large role in why the movement is so famously thin-skinned. Social justice movements, all about championing the marginalized, suffer from narcissism , but the trans movement appears to be one of the worst , which calls their motivation into question: Is it really about encouraging acceptance of transitioners, or would they rather preserve their current power to control the language and narrative by shutting down opposing opinions, particularly from women? Once we normalize the truly marginalized with humor, we take the power from those who misuse it and encourage the less courageous to step out of the shadows, join us and publicly agree: Yes, this is bugshit crazy! And it all starts with, as Wanda Sykes would encourage you, not giving a fuck! Whatever, girlfriend." Free for public use image 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!

Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos threatened teen girls but they didn't report him to the police. Why? Image by Kerttu Northman from Pixabay Several no surprises as the infuriating story of the Uvalde school massacre unfolds: Accused shooter Salvador Ramos fit the classic profile: Loner, violent, aggressive actions against others. Most of all, MISOGYNIST. What he doesn't share with most of his fellow NRA-sanctioned mass murderers is a domestic violence record, presumably because of his age and it's unlikely he ever had a girlfriend. I hope. Ramos was active on teen social media platform Yubo, which billed itself as “a place where anyone can belong, feel safe and hang out.” Perhaps they should have added an asterisk for a footnote stating, Just kidding, we're pretty tolerant of harassment and bullying, especially of teenage girls. This wasn't his first offense. Ramos regularly threatened them with rape and murder, and some reported it to Yubo, who would temporarily ban him but then he'd return. Users who blocked him reported they could still see his threatening, misogynist comments in livestreams. One claimed Yubo did nothing when she reported him. Which makes me wonder. Why didn't they tell parents or the police? No responsible adults seem to have been aware of Ramos's threatening presence online, and none appear to have known when he performed the traditional last ritual before committing mass murder: Proudly displaying online his new firearms purchases. Yubo users reported they 'didn't take him seriously' and as for his misogyny, well, 'that's the way it is online'. Sounds like the Sixties, when 'girl watching', catcalling, and workplace sexual harassment were 'just the way men are'. Not only is there little shame in being a misogynist and threatening women, but it's a badge of honor in the 'manosphere'. What might happen if Yubo was as serious as it claims about making the platform a safe place for kids? The CEO's fatuous letter in the wake of their user's vicious attack contains all the Zuckerberg-worthy mealy-mouthed platitudes and promises. "We take seriously our responsibility to make Yubo as safe as possible," (Uh-huh) , "...we have been working to accelerate safety developments in our pipeline and further expand the scope of existing safeguards across our platform," (We're as serious as a Bugs Bunny cartoon about this) , they've "deployed a new algorithm-based detection system, which we have been developing for over six months," (We've got the AI bots on this, okay? Can we please go back to the Amber and Johnny thing?) What if Yubo took a hardcore stance against online violence threats and permanently banned miscreants? Maybe that's not good for business? Why didn't the girls tell responsible adults? One Ontario girl said Ramos threatened to rape and kill her and her mother and shoot up her school. Perhaps the prospect of an American kid allowed across the border, presumably without his parents, seemed far-fetched. Others said they simply didn't take his threats seriously, despite school shootings by violent misogynist teenage boys having become a fact of American life, rather than notable violent outliers they were in Columbine days. What other reason might teenage girls have for not telling responsible adults? If I'd told my parents about Ramos I'd get punished. If I told the police, my parents would find out and I'd get punished. They wouldn't call it 'punishment'. They'd say I did the right, responsible thing, but they'd tell me I could no longer be on Yubo, where I'd have a social life as well as rape threats. They'd call it 'protecting me'. They might even restrict my freedom 'just in case' Ramos came looking for me (easier to do when you stay within your own country). Why didn't Christine Blasey didn't tell her parents about her near-rape attempt by teenage future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh? She wasn't supposed to be at a party with beer; she'd have gotten in trouble for sure if they'd found out. If she'd told them what happened they might have been supportive, but they would likely have reacted as my parents would have: They'd have restricted her social freedom 'for her protection'. This reaction is actually worse than genuine punishment. When you're grounded, it's for a set period of time, and you know you deserve it, but when they're 'protecting' you it's for an unspecified period of time, often years. And you didn't do anything wrong. HE did. I don't think I would have told my parents either. This is how we all encourage, support, collaborate, empower, and cooperate with misogyny. Why do we give boys free rein? Little boys have more freedom than girls, starting with the sandbox. We excuse violent behavior by boys while telling girls to "Play nice." We're clearly not crushing budding misogyny in the Playskool set when little boys express dislike for girls. "How hard can that be if a stupid girl can do it?" My brother was allowed more freedom than I when he was a teenager and when I pointed it out to my mother she said, "It's different for boys." "What, because of rape?" "Mostly. It's not fair, but it's for your protection." My brother wasn't and isn't in any way a misogynist, but the message was clear: Misogyny is okay. Girls get punished because boys can't behave. Boys especially can't control that troublesome little dangly thing. Curfews for men British peer Baroness Jenny Jones scandalized Englishmen last year when she floated the idea of a 'curfew for men' after the rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a young woman walking home at night. The inevitable "Why should we all get punished?" hysterics erupted from men who clearly had never thought about how females are born into a permanent curfew of one sort or another, as it's up to us to protect ourselves from male violence. A writer for he-man British online magazine Spiked threw a strident, overly emotional tizzy over the notion that Jones's proposal, half-ironic and possibly half-serious, might be implemented. "This seems like a joke," he blustered. "After all, who would honestly propose such a mad, authoritarian idea?" Um, one member of the half of Britain who's tired of men having zero concept of what it's like living with the ubiquitous threat of authoritarian male violence, and not knowing who the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys' are? I've publicly supported the need to educate women on how to stand up for themselves and avoid male violence by making better choices; but we need to go farther holding men accountable than we have before. Maybe now they'll listen to us. Educational campaigns for men have gone as far as they'll ever go, and if we're serious about fighting misogyny - and by 'we' I mean we women - then we've got to introduce some real consequences to misogynist behavior. As American cities explode nationwide with mass shootings, property destruction and violence against others, almost all of it committed by free-range, uncontrolled men, let's imagine a community imposing a 9pm curfew for them, defined as anyone with a penis, or violent men will work around this by suddenly 'identifying' as women as some incarcerated sex offenders appear to be doing now and as one non-incarcerated multiple offender is accused of doing . For this to work, there can be no exceptions. Yes, this punishes a lot of men who aren't violent, nor does it address daytime crime like home invasions or smash-n-grabbing, but curfews would be the first shot across the bow of curtailing male crimes committed against women under cover of darkness, and perhaps drive home the point to a few more that it's not fair that all women must self-curtail to avoid male violence. We didn't do anything wrong, either. As for female criminals, the police will have a lot more time to answer these calls. Just imagine how much easier everyone will sleep at night, except women living with abusers. Talking about curfews now, since they won't realistically happen anytime soon, gives them some time to think about the choices they've made and whether they want to deal with a potential Lockdown Part Deux, after they just survived Part Un. It might impel a few to make some tough decisions about whether to stay, and to make plans if they're not. How about a trial six-month male curfew, then staggered back slowly from oldest (least likely to commit violent crimes) to the youngest (the most volatile male age group, 18-35)? Then, anyone who messes up goes back to his own curfew. Men prone to bad behavior might well control themselves better when there are real consequences. What can women do? In 1972, feminist protesters on Wall Street staged an 'ogle-in' to educate men on what it felt like to be the object of unwanted public sexual attention. "Look at the legs on that one! Sorry, you're beautiful too!" Street harassment was 'acceptable' back then, and while it occurs today, there are more often consequences, as offenders learn from women who challenge them. I see men turning their faces as they approach myself or other women on the street. I know why. They don't want to be accused of ogling, or 'the male gaze' as we call it today. Women are a lot less tolerant of sexual harassment in 2022, and less inclined to write it off as 'that's just how it is'. Except maybe online, and it's time to drive change there, too. We can't afford to think this way anymore. Men can do far worse than make nasty sexual comments on the street. Now they threaten rape and death anonymously . Online. Or in plain sight, like Salvador Ramos, when girls aren't willing to tell the authorities. We can all start by reporting more online misogyny, even when social media doesn't do anything about it. We can pressure them to do more and call them out when they don't. Twitter offers the option to report a tweet for several reasons, and they send updates later inform you what actions they took. They don't tell the tweeter who made the complaint. It's unclear whether Elon Musk will buy Twitter, so there may be less of a threat of the Trump gang returning and making the platform as safe for misogyny and misinformation as it was, and still is to some degree. We need to encourage our teenage girls to report more, especially anonymously. But most importantly, we can't punish them with 'protection'. I'm not fond of victimhood-centered feminism, but I'll support them here when they say the focus needs to be more on male behavior. They're right. It's time to hold men accountable, and that means all men, including the ones who who are less innocent than they think. If that seems unfair, it is. Women understand this, because we've been held accountable for their offenses against us for thousands of years. Curfews sound crazy, and many will argue 'unworkable', but we simply haven't normalized the idea. The public laughed at feminists complaining about ogling, 'girl watching' and sexual harassment fifty years ago. Let's just hope it doesn't take fifty years for women to push misogyny off social media. And we can start by encouraging our teen girls, and not punishing them for 'doing the right thing'. 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!

And even worse, he's a good friend. And black. Free photo from Pexels Weeeeeeeelllll...not sure I'm happy about that, even as I agree with your political assessment. Not crazy about you owning a gun being suicidal and all. Even as I recognize you might NEED it living in AmeriKKKa... Charley and I met over Twitter, at the beginning of lockdown. I live in Toronto, he lives in a major U.S. city I'll call BigMetro. Our friendship spanned phone calls, Zoom, and Whatsapp. We dissected the pandemic, toxic Trump culture, and America's racism and crime problems. I'd left the U.S. fifteen years previously; he, an African who'd immigrated in the '80s, now wanted to live anywhere but. "Is there any place that doesn't hate black men?" he asked. "Uh, Africa?" No, he claimed Africans hated each other. "You don't have to move back to the mother country. Pick a different one. Africa has lots of countries." He was a little racist, but not the kind you'd expect in a black man. He blanket-disliked Africans along with African-Americans. He found the latter backward, anti-intellectual, and claimed they'd made fun of him because he was a nerd--educated, well-spoken, with an interest in geek culture like comics and superhero movies. His African-American assessment wasn't off-mark. I'm not black, but I lived in the US for over forty years, including the South. I've observed some racially self-destructive attitudes. Charley was especially un-fond of black women. One night he confessed he'd twice had dreams in which he strapped on C4 explosives, prepared to go out and end it all, taking others with him. We came with an expiry date That conversation happened either on a phone or Zoom call. It's not in our lengthy, thousands of WhatsApp texts. I saved the year-long exchange, in case the BigMetro police might one day need it. The C4 dreams bothered me not because I was concerned he would perform a suicide bombing - how easy was it to procure or make C4? - but he'd also expressed some sympathy and empathy with mass shooters, saying he understood why they snapped. I could tell from the beginning our friendship came with an expiry date. We struggled with mutual unemployment, both of us depressed, stressed, and anxious, Charley even more so as a black man living in Trump's America. He suicidally ideated, so I counseled against buying a gun, knowing two-thirds of American gun deaths every year are male suicides. Almost all are white males, but black male suicides were increasing as America deteriorated under pandemic lockdown, a recession, Trump, George Floyd and anti-masking protests, and skyrocketing crime rates, especially in BigMetro. The person most at risk from an armed Charley was Charley. He didn't want to pack heat on the street, just keep it locked in his house in case of a break-in - not only thieves but, perhaps, racists coming for a successful black man living in his own home in a middle-class neighborhood. He didn't know his neighbors. Charley found it difficult connecting with others, and while he'd likely encountered discrimination from his fellow humans, I pushed back on blanket statements, particularly about blacks and black women, and I hadn't been the first. His personal narratives slowly unraveled, like an uncut loose thread. Our friendship ended over a failed roommate arrangement with a young black woman. (What could possibly go wrong???) When I questioned his vague dispute with her and got too close to the problem - his misogynoir - he ended the friendship with a long rant on everything wrong with me on WhatsApp, followed by blocking me. What became clear was his history of quitting early - jobs, two short-lived marriages, a roommate arrangement and at least one friendship. I suspected there were several others given his inability to stay connected long with anyone. He could never articulate whatever the problem was. After receiving enough vague answers, I fully recognized where it lay. Few of us can meet a threat to our self-image. Many of us choose to let the offending party go rather than face the challenge. I mentally bade Charley good-bye and, as we say in Paganism, 'Go in perfect love and perfect trust'. We'd passed our sell-by date. Revenge of the nerd Those C4 dreams bothered me, along with incel language that crept into his speech during the roommate fiasco, and the occasional mass shooter empathy. Sometimes he'd said he thought he might snap like that. As far as I knew, he didn't own a gun, but I wondered what might happen if he did. What nagged me was I was 95%, maybe 96% certain he wouldn't turn into a mass shooter, but not 100%. I knew him as a good guy with a big heart, a great brain and a deep desire to connect with others. But angry aggrieved men with guns rarely end well. How would I feel, I wondered, if he acted? What if he pulled a black man's George Sodini and walked into a public place and started shooting innocent representatives of his grievances? What if I might have stopped it if I'd told someone? He'd sometimes sound like the abusive males profiled in the book Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. Male therapist Lundy Bancroft writes of men in abusive partnerships and explores the intense entitlement these men feel. While I didn't think Charley was an abusive guy, (not that I knew his ex-wives' sides of their stories), he'd begun to express certain sentiments I recognized from the book. Lots of self-aggrandizing talk about how wonderful he is, with so much love to give and women just don't want it. He spoke with entitled jealousy of his three-week-long roommate, suspecting her of being a side hustle sex worker, using incel slang like THOT (That Ho Over There). He thought she was getting way more sex than he was, but denied spending time in incel forums. He created what looked distinctly like a performative video of how terrified he claimed to be after an unspecified threat she allegedly made (he 'couldn't remember' the exact words, or any of them, when I pushed). The incel language increased, and I wondered if he'd perhaps pulled something on her. Nothing like a sexually frustrated male to impel shooting at strangers. Would he or wouldn't he? In the months after our split (the spring of 2021) I mentally debated whether I should do anything. Should I warn someone, but who would I call? The police? He was a black man in one of the most dangerous cities in post-Trump's America. What if the police went in there with guns blazing and killed him just on a tip that he might be dangerous? I didn't even know if he had a gun. But what if he did and went Sodini? Who would he kill? How could I know he wouldn't go to some black 'hood and start shooting? Or shoot a group of black women? What if I could have prevented those deaths by telling someone? How could I look at the victims' photos on a news site and not feel horrified guilt? Google offered nothing on dealing with the early nuances of a potential mass shooter. I didn't know who to talk to, who would listen. I considered maybe talking to someone at BigMetro's Black Lives Matter chapter but I didn't think they'd take me seriously - a white woman calling from Canada wondering whether to tell the police about an otherwise really great black guy who might snap and kill black people. What do you do when the potential shooter isn't a young white male, but a black man? Would the police even care if his gravest threat was to black people? My choice was to potentially save lives, or maybe get my ex-friend killed. I didn't want that on my conscience either. Especially as he has a child he was helping to raise. I tried following him online. He had a blog he didn't update much, and he'd blocked me on Twitter, his most active account. Later, it got banned. If he's got a new account, I don't know what it is. I kept an occasional eye on his YouTube channel. He posted nothing radical, or much at all, and when he did it was usually about his long-distance child. I kept thinking about him though, although I didn't call the police. I just couldn't. This is where the Divided States of America has gotten us. I want to protect innocent lives, but I can't trust the police not to overreact to a potential black male threat and kill a man who may have only been popping off. I still consider him my friend even if he doesn't return the sentiment. We were there for each other during a very dark time in our lives, and for that I will always hold a very large soft spot in my heart for him. What I have since learned The Internet still offers almost no discussion of the early stages of someone who hasn't yet taken his first step down the mass shooter path. Charley ticks several profile personal history boxes, like past trauma, mental health struggles, and suicidality. But that describes a sizeable chunk of Americans . A less common sign is empathy for previous rage killers. Charley, like most of us, has personal trauma, but no violence in his history as far as I know. He spoke well of his parents, and never of school bullying. He did think his brain might have been damaged or altered by a near-death illness when he was a child (supported by some medical evidence). While he never expressly said he would hurt others, I regarded the C4 dreams and shooter empathy as warning signs. What he doesn't share with mass shooters is youth: He's comin' 'round the mountain to 50. Another thing: He's a laudable maverick, in therapy at the time of our split. It's unusual for a man to seek therapy , and even more so for black men. Recently he posted an interview he did with a podcaster. I didn't listen to it all as it was nearly an hour of the same-old-same-old, but he mentioned a plan to move to another country, one I think is a good choice. It's something for him to work toward. It won't solve his human connection problems until he recognizes his own role, but his mental health struggles should be partially alleviated with not having to worry about white racism or becoming a crime victim. I don't worry about him going Sodini as much now. When I wrote a recent article on mass shooters I learned when to call the police, and when not. You call when something seems imminent, or might shortly, and not just a few warning signs . Lower-level resources can be drawn upon - family, friends, clergy, and community groups (like ones focusing on violence prevention). I Googled his brother based on details he'd told me, who lived elsewhere in the U.S. That might be my first stop if I had to tell someone. I won't know if Charley spirals again since we're no longer friends, but I've Googled a few community/mental health organizations in BigMetro to whom I will reach out if I discover he might be at risk again. They'll be in a better position to know whether to intervene, and how. I've considered reaching back out to Charley in friendship but his interview proves he hasn't changed his self-pitying and I don't have the patience or energy anymore. As mental health spirals downward in the Ignited States and mass shootings become almost not-news, I wonder how we can better help the Charleys of the world - with the knowledge that they can include any American. Mine was a particularly tough decision to wrestle with. I would have called the police last year if Charley was white. When to seek intervention, and from whom, strikes me as a new discussion we should add to the public debate on reducing rage murders, whether they're in the workplace, schools, or public venues. What do you do before they start making plans and buying guns? How can we politely intervene to alleviate their distress? 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. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

Why not? Photo by Andreas Lawen, Fotandi on Wikimedia Commons Why do ex-wife Dita Von Teese and ex-fiancee Rose McGowan maintain they were never abused by shock rocker Marilyn Manson, unlike how actress Evan Rachel Wood and several other women have alleged? I wondered about the unusual pair while I researched and wrote an earlier article this year, She Is Willing To Do Whatever It Takes To Be With Me , examining Manson's accusers' typical lack of self-reflection or self-awareness one customarily finds with abuse victims as to how they let this guy happen to them. The title comes from Manson's quote in a 2015 Guardian interview to describe the devotion of his then-girlfriend, which summed up the mental headspace of all of them, I thought. When Wood labeled Manson as the previously unnamed celebrity who'd physically, emotionally and sexually abused her for years, Von Teese and McGowan publicly supported the accusers' stories, but noted that Manson had never treated them that way. "Please know that the details made public do not match my personal experience during our 7 years together as a couple," Von Teese wrote in her 'sole statement' on the matter. "Had they, I would not have married him in December 2005. I left 12 months later due to infidelity and drug abuse. "Abuse of any kind has no place in any relationship. I urge those of you who have incurred abuse to take steps to heal and the strength to fully realize yourself." McGowan also denied having been mistreated by Manson. "When he was with me, he was not like that,” she said. “But that has no bearing on whether he was like that with others, before or after." McGowan has been more publicly commentative than has Von Teese, who stuck to her 'sole statement'. Several other accusers reinforce Wood, along with celebrities like Trent Reznor with his own ugly stories about the kid from smalltown Ohio. Two women stand alone, claiming no abuse. Or are they lying too, as all his other accusers were until they finally told the ugly truth? Make him fear the frying pan "There is just no way that I would allow that to happen to me." - Marguerite Whitley, O.J. Simpson's first wife I've looked for the answer in the months after my original article. Not all women who've been with abusers were themselves abused. I want to help women better understand their complicity in withstanding abusive relationships. Unless a woman is forced into a relationship by trafficking, or a restrictive religion or culture, she makes choices every step of the way, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes informed , like Evan Rachel Wood, along the downwardly-spiraling abuse staircase. What's more interesting than why some were abused by a given man is why some weren't. Why not? I haven't found much information anywhere on why a man abuses some women but not others. O.J. Simpson's first wife, Marguerite Whitley, springs to mind. They were married for twelve years, from 1967 to 1979 and she claims he never hit her, not once. "If he did he would have got a frying pan upside the head," she told Barbara Walters in a 1995 20/20 interview . Whitley asserts the marriage broke up over O.J.'s celebrity. She was a private person and as O.J. once stated, "...we can't walk down the street without causing a commotion." Simpson's celebrity clearly wasn't a problem for teenage Nicole Brown, who met him just as his first marriage was ending. Her life achievement goal in high school was to 'marry a wealthy man', and she seem as obsessed throughout the rest of her life with him as he was with her. Indulging a man's excessive control needs, feeding his narcissism and tolerating his abuse are the lengths at which Brown, and other women, will go to 'do whatever it takes to be with him'. Others may set boundaries for the man, either stated or simply expressed in how much nonsense she'll tolerate when he acts up. I have a theory about that... I suspect not all abusive men are 'classic' abusers. They're not born to be bad, evil from the moment they started walking. I suspect everyone, women included, have the potential to be abusive, but only with the right (wrong?) circumstances aligned. I have one ex-boyfriend who stalked the ex-girlfriend who came after me, which was hard for me to wrap my head around when she told me years later. "X? X did that?" I kept saying, slack-jawed. I found my own inner abuser twenty years ago when I underwent what I think of as my Angry Bitch years after a bad breakup and much romantic disappointment to follow. I never hit anyone but I was emotionally abusive. Angry, hostile, and drinking too much didn't improve my communication skills. I think we all possess The Monster. It resides within, along with our better 'Buddha nature'. Marguerite Whitley sounds like she tolerated no crap from O.J. Maybe he wasn't allowed to hit her, and he knew it. Maybe he could imagine a frying pan aimed at his head without her ever stating it. Maybe he was not yet a full-blown narcissist. Maybe he wasn't famous enough, or powerful enough, to set the new rule: You'll accept the beatings, or I'll find someone who will. Will you do whatever it takes to be with me? But, I suspect, mostly he knew on some level he couldn't get away with that shit, the way we all know what we can and can't get away with with our partner. Maybe s/he won't tolerate dishonesty, infidelity or insults. Maybe you can bring up stuff from their past, but not that one thing . If we want to keep the peace, if we want to keep our partner, we know what we must do, and not do. Manson ex-wife Dita Von Teese on Wikimedia Commons: She won't take your shit. Rose McGowan. CC0 2.0 image by Philip Ng on Wikimedia Commons. She won't take your shit either. If there's one thing that became glaringly clear about Nicole Brown Simpson, it's that she was willing to tolerate his abuse. I'm not sure why as she didn't emerge from an abusive household and childhood, but not recognizing bad, abusive men is a common weak spot for many women. Their abuse susceptibility is increased if they're not strong enough to live independent lives of their own. What We Can Learn From Nicole Brown Simpson's Bad Choices What Abuse Victims Can Learn From Prison Groupies Now I wonder about Dita Von Teese and Rose McGowan. Did they also not tolerate abuse from Manson? Did it never come up because of the boundaries they set, even unconsciously, if he'd never tried to control them, because he knew they wouldn't put up with his shit? Where are your boundaries? I have always maintained that abuse contains a certain level of choice, and Manson's Guardian quote effectively sums it up. How much is a woman willing to do to be with him? I've tried to understand where Nicole Brown got the idea it was okay to tolerate O.J.'s abuse and I still don't. Maybe it was simply a lack of discussion during her girlhood. I grew up trained by my mother never to put up with crap from boys and later men, years before I was old enough for either. She drilled it into my head that I should never tolerate abuse, and never let a man control me. My Mother Taught Me Never To Tolerate Abuse This Is What Zero Tolerance For Abuse Looks Like The #1 Red Flag Of The Abusive Man I'm nearly sixty, and I've spent my entire life not being abused by partners. I've never been hit by one. Never been called a filthy name or put down by one. Maybe an early boyfriend, when I was 19. I think there was one time I lightly slapped him for something disrespectful he said, and by light slap I mean little more than a gentle tap on the cheek. That said, today I concede I was wrong to do that. Striking , however without injury, is always wrong, especially with heightened emotional response, unless you're physically defending yourself. I set boundaries with him, as I did all my boyfriends and partners. I think they did too. It's all part of being in a healthy relationship. It's possible to live an abuse-free life if you make the choice to do so. Some men have abusive personalities, entrenched in rock-solid male entitlement and privilege. Many people may develop it later, due to life circumstances, a substance abuse problem, or, I wonder, finding those who are willing to take their crap. We all take our private crap out on others at one time or another. We all have deep-seated psychological problems that may stem from serious trauma or, as psychologist Mark Epstein notes in his book The Trauma of Everyday Life , from traumas that engrave themselves on our brains even as infants that we can never consciously remember, but they're there, impacting our views and values and reactions and filling us sometimes with unnamed fear we don't understand. Even people from happy, tightly-knit families have these unconscious dysfunctions. It's what makes us human. Our brains, according to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku , are THE most complex systems in the universe, and the more complex a system is, the more ways it can malfunction. None of us are immune. But what we can do, if we want to avoid abusive relationships, is to educate ourselves on the warning signs of an abusive partner, but also self-examine and ask ourselves an all-important question: Do I Have A Thing For Abusers? A far more important question young women need to ask themselves as they embark on a romantic life is What am I willing to do to be with him? It's a particularly critical question if one's goal is to marry wealth, or to be with a powerful celebrity. Rich men often expect to control their women, who are expected to take his crap. It's hard enough to snag a rich or even just well-off man if you're not as gorgeous as Nicole Brown, and the pool shrinks considerably if you throw in And he can't be controlling and abusive. The day of the O.J. verdict, I went home and wandered around my apartment asking aloud, "Was he worth it, Nicole? Was he rich enough, handsome enough, famous enough, cool enough for you? Was he worth all the beatings, Nicole? Was he worth it?" She did whatever it took to be with him. 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!

When you're too extreme to think critically, the center looks like a bunch of existential terrorists Photo by hamletnc on Free Images Something happened to Kendra in the last twenty years. The woman who once was, in true progressive form, willing to accept another’s deeply held belief contradicting her own, recently defriended me on Facebook because she claimed I 'misgendered' people and was 'transphobic' and a 'TERF'. That was the extent of her argument. I'd take a half hour or more to explain my positions and she'd return a few seconds to toss off a few irrelevant insults. The article that launched a thousand TERF accusations: We Accept Trangenderism, Are We Ready for Transracialism? "What happened to you?" I asked. "You were a lot more tolerant twenty-two years ago when we disagreed on the War in Afghanistan." In the days after 9/11, she wanted me to sign a petition protesting the as-yet unlaunched war on the Taliban. I explained this was our Pearl Harbor, we were attacked, and the Taliban knew what to expect as President Clinton had warned them if they didn’t turn Bin Laden over to us, and if he pulls any shit on our soil, your asses are burnt falafel, capische, paisans? They didn’t hand him over, and in retrospect maybe Clinton shouldn’t have spoken Italian to a bunch of semi-literate goat herders. But I’m paraphrasing. Rather a lot. Kendra politely acknowledged our differences, and we were back on the same page a year and a half later with the Iraq War. Now, she's turned fundamentalist. Not Christian, 'woke'. In an already-divided world rent violently asunder by an orange-haired dementia-addled manchild, the left and right have both embraced extreme ideology, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, rigid adherence to holy dogma, and persecution of ‘heretics’ who dare to dissent. Their only difference is one god. The ‘woke’ even have their own Judgment Day thing: The fuzzy future ‘day of reckoning’ their adversaries have coming for them. The hell with established evidence. Fundamentalists believe what they want, regardless of how demonstrably ludicrous. Faith trumps facts with religious nuts, every single time. Opposing extremism has squeezed those of us who see logical fallacies and inexcusable hypocrisy on both sides closer to the center, where we reside easier with others from t’other side of center. We all eschew both the whiny overprivileged identity politics of the red-capped Trumpers and the label-obsessed narcissist Social Justice Warriors, two extremes united by one common agreement: That those of us in the Murky Middle, where the other side isn’t always wrong, and our side isn’t always right, are The Devil! Graphic from FreePNGimg The Murky Middle is where the world isn’t as simplistically cut and dried, black and white, Democrat and Republican, male and female, or, most importantly, good and evil. It fully embraces and flaunts the dreaded N-word: Nuance. The Murky Middle is where we come to say…. The Forbidden Things The opinions that piss off everybody . The ideas that used to sound rational, reasonable or just plain commonsense before the world got — crazy. “My only problem is not all cases are the same. The comedian Aziz Ansari was being mentioned in the same sentence as Harvey Weinstein and that’s ridiculous.” ― Christina Hoff Sommers, feminist bête noire “It is time for those who love liberal democracy to join hands with Islam’s reformists. Here is a clue to who’s who: Moderate Muslims denounce violence committed in the name of Islam but insist that religion has nothing to do with it; reformist Muslims, by contrast, not only deplore Islamist violence but admit that our religion is used to incite it.”  — Irshad Manji, gay feminist author and perpetual bug up Islam’s ass “One does not need to be brown to discuss racism, one does not need to be Muslim to discuss Islam. Ideas have no color, or country. Good ideas are truly universal. Any attempt to police ideas, to quarantine thought based on race or religion, and to pre-define what is and what isn’t a legitimate conversation, must be resisted by all.” - Maajid Nawaz, British activist and media talking head “Racial differences are largely adaptations to climate. Skin pigment was a sunscreen for the tropics, eyelid folds were goggles for the tundra. The parts of the body that face the elements are also the parts that face the eyes of other people, which fools them into thinking that racial differences run deeper than they really do.”  — Steven Pinker, cognitive scientist, science writer Two-for-the-price-of-one offense with The Pinkster: The extreme right is offended that color is only skin-deep, and the extreme left denies race even exists. This is *embarrassing* It sounds intellectually virtuous and fashionable to challenge the sacred dogmas and rock-solid ideological beliefs of both extremists. We Murky Middlers can cheer each other and pump a fist or two. We’re so smart! We know, after all, the world is a lot more complicated than the infantile tantrums over stupid crap pitched by the let’s-see-who-we-can-get-fired-this-week Twitterati would admit. Then other voices pipe up from the darkness, saying things we agree with, and the Murky Middle squirming begins. “Things have happened, having to do with many things including political correctness, where people are so worried about being politically correct that they are unable to function.” “Cities like Richmond and Baltimore and Philadelphia have black mayors, have black city councils, have black police commissioners. How can it be systemically racist if these men and women today are actually in control of the city?” “I have fought on the front lines to prevent illegal immigration.” The Murky Middle turns to smile in camaraderie with those who dare to voice our own unpopular opinion and find ourselves looking into the eyes of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and racist Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, the trio who gave us those last three quotes. Then there’s Fox News's troublesome Tucker Carlson, for whom I briefly gave grudging respect a few years ago when he stood up to the left's social media hit squads . They tried to boycott him into the unemployment line over offensive sexist comments he’d made more than ten years ago on a shock jock’s radio show. His comments about women were loathsome but he was perhaps the first individual with the power and clout to successfully challenge far left social media sociopaths. And I’m pretty sure he was punking women anyway. I think? Someone has to challenge the suspiciously unemployed and mentally deranged Outrage Machine on Twitter, which has nothing better to do than dig up the ancient dirt in all our backyards. And anyway, who has to go back ten years to find Carlson’s misogynist views? Just switch on Fox. Thing is, it works in reverse too. Several months after the left failed to cancel Carlson, the undercover far right and their easily-gaslit lefty allies found they can’t cancel J.K. Rowling either. The trans movement demonized a perfectly reasonable beloved children’s author whose only arguable transphobia stems from the online abuse she’s taken from misogynist trans-activists. She’s called them out for what they are: Abusive assholes just like her ex-husband. The Murky Middle’s first challenger began with a racist overaged frat boy who defends Nazis. But damn, he had the balls to stand up to anonymous and powerful online bullies. He told Twitter to go fuck itself, refused to resign and, holy shit, Fox News was perhaps the first corporation with the balls so far to refuse to fire a ‘canceled’ employee. This is our embarrassing condundrum: In the Murky Middle, we don’t always like the company we keep. We recognize that even repugnant assholes from either end of the spectrum sometimes make a good point. The Murky Middle’s intelligent and messy denizens properly represent real life: The deeply flawed human beings we all are who say, do, and act in abhorrent ways sometimes, or oftentimes. We don’t expect the unattainable moral purity the fundamentalists demand, yet are unable to deliver themselves. Murky Middlers know Trumpers are on the wrong side of history, but so too are those who promote exaggerated, racist and distorted ‘critical theory’ ideologies for children and adults in the name of ‘wokeness’ and ‘accountability’ that never seems to include themselves. When you’re part of the Murky Middle everyone who’s a football field from the center thinks you’re on the opposing team. The Republicans think you’re a Democrat and vice versa; the conservatives and liberals each think you belong to the other group; feminists think you hate women and the MRAs and incels are afraid you don’t. Related: Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web Murky Middlers condemn the right’s, especially the ‘Christian’ right’s, excuses for any and all sins - as long as they’re committed by their own. Family values? No touching genitals you’re not married to? Hold your nose and vote for three-baby-mamas Trump! Anti-pedo? Vote Roy Moore, he loves Jesus! Pro-life? Don’t wear a mask, because liberals do! We also condemn the left who started the anti-vaxx crusade years ago with a titty-flashing Playboy model, her past-his-prime funnyman boyfriend, and her perhaps-not-as-autistic-as-advertised son. We further condemn those who mock, persecute and attack people on its own side for sins they consider far worse than anything Republicans excuse: Jokes, ‘cultural appropriation (but only for white people), ‘misgendering’ (except for women’s athletics), slavery obsession fatigue, kids’ Halloween costumes, or writing about any indigenous person or character while white. Lefty radicals join with their enemies on the one objective they agree on: Destroy all liberals! Turning others from the dark side Some brave Murky Middlers march into the metastasized hate fringes and their festering beliefs. Black dude Daryl Davis, my Murky Middle Dalai Lama, befriends members of the Ku Klux Klan. He collects their robes when they leave. He’s got dozens. Some Murky Middlers come from the Belly of the Beast itself and decide simmering in spiritual poison is no way to live. Nothing makes you sympathetic to people’s beliefs you now reject than having been one of them yourself. Some of us may be more imperfect than others, but all of us are more imperfect than we believe ourselves to be. Stage Five hate cancer is too late. It’s what happened in Christchurch. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. El Paso. Pulse. Charlottesville. Overland Park Jewish Community Center. The Wisconsin Sikh Temple. The Pittsburgh Tree of Life Temple. The Buffalo supermarket. People like Daryl Davis and Christian Piccolini strive to cure those who want to be cured, and to prevent Stage 1’s tentative tendrils from taking root in naive young minds. The Murky Middle Challenge I choose to confront the hard left because it’s too easy for them to brush off critiques from The Other Side. They’re more likely to listen to one of their own, although, like my ex-friend, they can be quick to shut down any challenge to their beliefs (exactly like their ‘enemies’ on t’other side). Have you talked to a center-right or center-left person, whichever isn’t on your political side, recently? Intelligent, rational conservatives and liberals do exist, and they’re our fellow allies against extremism. We don’t agree on everything, but we don’t need to. Read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, and then talk to someone from t’other side. Who may read the National Review rather than Huffington Post, or who may enjoy avocado toast. Hey, you don’t have to eat it too. Before we help others, though, we need to help ourselves. It’s hard when we’re as easily triggered or emotionally hijacked as they are. I struggle with it daily. How do we deal with our own anger issues? How many of us turn it inward or lash out blindly at the world, like Trumpistan and the Twitterati? How many of us engage in unhealthy coping behaviors - like our adversaries - while living with perptual anxiety and a chronic, background, low-grade depression whose origin we can’t identify? We, too, make others around us miserable and angry. We have more in common with our opponents than we know. At some point, if we grow tired enough of our own emotional cesspool, we wade toward the ladder to pull ourselves out. But others don’t, perhaps unaware they don’t have to feel this way. That they have a choice. Spewing at rallies or on social media is the lazy person’s public debate. Painting a childish black-and-white world where the wolves are always evil and the humble tradesmen always good is easier than acknowledging many of us share the wolves’ desire for flesh. As for the humble, heroic woodcutter and miller, when they’re not saving their beautiful daughters from evil witches, they’re attending anti-immigration pitchfork mobs and plotting to commit genocide against a neighboring kingdom. The Murky Middle conceals you if you do the easy thing and shut up. When you speak up or refuse to take sides you get slapped down by both. Is that any way to live? Do we want to cede the power to the screaming, vexatious mobs who compete to see who can bring down public debate, civil behavior and political discourse the fastest? We in the Murky Middle are The Enemy To All. We must embrace it. We are the ones who dare to think, see and hear other sides. And recognize the nuance. Because we’re not The Side of Good, and they’re not The Side of Evil. How do we know? Because finding a simple point of agreement is a start. Even with Klansmen and Nazis. 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!

Your story may be true but your opinions, selective omission and creative mindreading need a fact check When she's telling you something with a lot of spin. Photo by Personal Creations on Flickr CC0 2.0 Women love to 'tell their truths', most recently under the #MeToo label, and almost always involving bad, abusive men. Gaslighters. BDPs. Manipulators. Psychopaths. And of course everyone's fave pop-psychology label, narcissists. I’ve absorbed the stories over the decades, including men with dysfunctional partners and exes, like one who thought he could ‘fix’ her, the way Johnny Depp thought he could Amber Heard, two people engaged in mutual physical dysfunction. Others have spoken of living with women with serious psychological issues. My ex’s son was abused by his first wife and her now-husband. She used to hit my ex, too. Many publicly ‘tell their truths’, sharing stories of rape, sexual abuse, and childhood neglect. Fewer men do. Is it because men are less inclined to speak publicly about their problems? Or because #MeToo can be hostile to men, forgetting how women can also abuse? I read to understand power dynamics and identify how people (especially women) can protect themselves better from dysfunctional, abusive relationships. Sometimes I like, or comment, or piss people off, or I get liked a lot when I say something that resonates. Often I say nothing at all, I lurk to learn. Some complain they’re ‘attacked’ for ‘telling their truth’, asserting ‘they won’t shut me up.’ Women are often singled out for speaking out, most often by men. But not everything women say is true, even as they’re not lying. A room with a wrong view Mixed into many of these unvarnished truths are half-truths, fallacies, selective omission and interpretive mind-reading. It’s one thing to state the facts, and another to pile on what Buddhism calls Wrong View, the opposite of Right View on the Eightfold Path. CC0 3.0 image by Krisse on Wikimedia Commons Right View is 'clear seeing', understanding reality unfiltered through one's values, beliefs, experiences, goals, dreams, practices, family, culture, religion, etc. We all delude ourselves, thinking we know our reality better than we do. You can only tell your truth to the best of your current ability . Some confuse their truth with their interpretation of why the other person inflicted psychological damage, prompting these armchair psychologists to blithely apply popular diagnostic labels. The blinding lack of self-awareness and critical self-analysis explains why the world appears to be full of narcissists, almost all of them women's ex-partners. What’s *your* pop-psychology label? As one reads tales about abuse, bad dates and sexual harassment, one wonders what the 'truth-teller' was like. What is 'the narcissist's' side of the story? What, you can't trust a narcissist to tell the truth? How can you be sure the narcissist isn't the narrator? Or someone suffering from some other pop-psychology label. Occasionally writers are honest about their own toxic contributions. They’re frank about past shameful actions like being abusive themselves or cheating on a partner. I salute those writers for having the labia (or the balls) to bare their imperfect souls. Women seem especially prone to adding their own judgments and interpretations, making one wonder whether the Evil Ex owns the label . Did a medical professional diagnose them or did the writer? Women are particularly unforgiving, especially if they’re steeped in ‘patriarchy’ victimhood-centered thinking. They'll happily analyze and diagnose the accused but almost never turn the spotlight on themselves. What did they contribute to the bad relationship? No one is ever 100% innocent. There's a typology of victimhood, with varying levels of personal responsibility. There’s a bit of an angel/devil complex, too. Vagina = angel, Penis = devil. Fark off, I’m in bitch mode Women have achieved equality with men in one realm: Inventing reasons for why they're not responsible for their toxic reactions and behavior. A time-honored female self-excuse for controllable bad behavior is one’s period, later called PMS, for which there's still uncertain evidence. When you’re older you can blame it on menopause. When I was young, a friend blamed her irritable, snappish mood on her period, leading some to conclude she must be ‘on the rag’ thirty days out of the month. Easier to blame her hormones than acknowledge her legendary low self-esteem and ongoing jealousy of everyone. Now women explain their bad behavior as the result of mental illness--anxiety, depression, or the universal favorite, stress--all of which are almost never so debilitating that sufferers lose control over their behavior. Opposed to, say, a schizophrenic or psychotic or someone who's genuinely delusional, ergo less accountable for their actions. Some will wave off their own dysfunction contributions by claiming to have Borderline Personality Disorder, PTSD or Alcohol Use Disorder (the fancy new term for ‘alcoholism’), which begs the question: What must life have been like living with her? The ex might be a piece of work, but she may be no walk in the park either. Like, you know, Amber Heard. Interpretive judgments aren't facts, they're opinions. Where does one end and the other start? Does the truth-teller even know? Many women love to cite thousands of years of 'patriarchy' to explain bad male behavior. If he hit or raped her, was it because of his ‘male entitlement/ privilege/narcissism’ or because he was raised in a violent, abusive household of his own? What if he’s been raped too, making him a brother in her dysfunction? What if violence is the only way he knows how to deal with his anger, if he doesn't realize he's trapped in a 'man box' ? What if he’s as ignorant as she as to what constitutes a healthy, functional relationship? She might not understand the real reasons behind his behavior, but has increased her own suffering by layering her experience with her own skewed interpretations, i.e., ‘wrong views’. Critical gender theory takes a female-victimization view and almost always faults men, masculinity and 'patriarchy', but asking what’s at the root of his dysfunction carries uncomfortable implications for women. If we accept some women are socialized to be victimized, it’s a given that some men are socialized to be abusers. If some women simply know no other way, we must acknowledge the same for some abusive men. The point is not to excuse abusers, but to rehumanize them. The responsibility of truth-telling Some women complain about pushback when their views or interpretations are challenged. Others are genuinely victimized by misogynist, angry men hiding behind cowardly anonymous accounts with their own caricatured wrong views about how women are all gold diggers, whores, manipulative puppet-masters, rape liars or whatever other pop-psychology labels they parrot from the Red Pill crowd. Then again, 'feminists' hiding behind anonymous accounts attacking men are misandrist trolls, no different from their misogynist brothers. Public domain photo from Pickpik ‘I’m anonymous because I need to tell my truth without gang rape, death threats or doxing attacks,’ is justifiable, but it holds one to a higher standard of truth-telling. Anonymity grants the freedom to express opinions and tell truths that might subject us to unjustified abuse. But it also grants the potential to lie, or simply be less judicious with the facts. Interpretive mind-reading I particularly dislike the practice of impugning motives, beliefs and values to individuals one has never met or groups toward which one is prejudiced. I understand the frustration of decent men who get attacked for their ‘privilege’, ‘entitlement’, or ‘toxicity’ by strangers. As a white person I’m tired of Critical Race Theorists impugning motives to what we think and feel and how we’re subconsciously racist even if we don’t know it. What the hell would they know about the white experience? I imagine men must get tired of being caricatured as potential rapists and perpetual misogynists and don't even know where this Patriarchy they're accused of being in collusion with even holds their secret Davos summit. I work to identify and question my own endless wrong views, perceptions and toxic beliefs. I have multiple daily lapses where I catch myself in toxic thoughts caricaturing individuals and groups I don’t like. It’s especially important to challenge one’s wrong views in these divided times where Manichaean politicians and social media turn full-fledged people into cardboard characters. Like in children’s cartoons, you can tell the good guys from the bad guys by the evil mustache. I challenge you to separate your truths from your potential wrong views. And enough already with the silly pop-psychology labels, ya little narcissist! 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!

Tired of people's stupid questions? I'm tired of everyone else's stupid questions too, but I still answer them. No, this is not what I do on the sabbats. Image by Jean Louis Mazieres on Flickr "It's not my job to educate white people!" Man, it's tough to be a 'woke' black antiracist today. If a twelve-generation legacy of slavery, 100ish years of Jim Crow and Herschel Walker aren't enough of a cross to bear, you still have to keep answering Stupid White People Questions: "Why do you get mad when I say I’m colorblind?" “Do you really get followed around in stores?” “Don’t you know there’s black privilege too?” Nobody knows the troubles you’ve seen. “Is there really any such thing as ‘microaggressions?” “If education is so important, why do black kids accuse others who do well in school of ‘acting white’?” “But what about Ibram Kendi’s racism?” A little personal Googling would avoid the annoyance you feel at having to answer the same seriously dumb questions. Then there are the ones that push internal buttons because—well, erm, maybe they have a point? Some ‘dumb questions’ persist because antiracists would rather not answer them. They fall into two buckets: Truly Stupid White People Questions, and Uncomfortable White People Questions. Or male questions. Or religious questions. Or gender/sex questions. I understand both sides, the frustration of being asked the same questions about something over and over, especially when you want to scream, or maybe you actually do, “WHY DON’T YOU DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH? WHY IS IT MY JOB TO EDUCATE YOU?” For me, substitute ‘Paganism’ for ‘race’. Monotheistic folk, we Pagans are really, really tired of your dumb questions too. It’s not our job, either, to update or educate you on how modern Paganism has changed since the practices of Baal. FYI: No, we don’t sacrifice children anymore. I don’t care what QAnon told you. “Google, ignorati? Ever heard of it?” I don’t say that. I answer the questions, however truly stupid, and say, “Google Paganism and Wicca, it’s fascinating stuff. We’re sooo not like the pagans of yore. We’re all about human equality, spiritual power for women, protecting the Earth, the great circle of life and the web of human interconnectedness. Hey, it’s the 21st century, amirite?” Friendly chuckle! Pxfuel If you don’t want to ‘educate’ others, you’re right, it’s not your job, but ask yourself this question, regardless of whose dumb questions you get ad nauseum : “Would I like to be part of the solution, or the problem?” I can offer two reasons, as an exasperated Pagan, why you might consider the former. You’re changing the world one mind at a time Not everyone who asks questions is evil, stupid, or making fun of you. Often, there’s genuine inquiry behind it. I’ve chosen to be the solution. When you get angry and tell people off, you’re the problem. The first two questions I usually got when people found out I’m Pagan were THE most annoying, the ones that made me want to rip heads off. But I didn’t. “Do you worship Satan?” “Do you do naked rituals?” I politely tell them no, Pagans don’t worship Satan, and I add a little historical perspective: Satan is a Christian deity, not a Pagan one. He was invented by the early Church, and debuted in the New Testament. “Christians will argue Satan isn’t a deity,” I respond, “but I argue he is, especially among the fundamentalists, who ascribe almost the same power to Satan as they do to God.” It gives them food for thought. As to the always-salacious question about nudity in rituals… “Some do, I don’t. Geez, we live in Canada, and before that, I lived in Connecticut. Do you know how COLD it gets in both places? Ha ha ha! Then there are the summer bugs. Who wants to get bit there by skeeters?” Can I blame them for thinking we all get nekkid and shag each other in the circle? Whenever the mass media drags us out of the shadows (at Halloween) they often focus on the nekkid rituals some groups do that others don’t. Anything that appeals to the penis gets top billing. Not to mention all those Hollywood movies featuring gorgeous naked or nearly-naked witchyboos. Sometimes I’ve added—honestly— “Look, do you know what REAL witches look like? Geez, we don’t want to see ourselves naked, much less each other!" People are interested in alternative religions whether they’re spiritual seekers or curiosity whores. I can get mad and put them off, make them walk away and think Pagans are real bitches, or I can feed their curiosity and perhaps incline them to do their own research. Those who contend daily with racism, sexism, gender identity and other issues might consider how many minds they might change, or plant the seeds, when they answer ‘dumb’ questions. When you offload education efforts to Google, they could go down all the wrong rabbit holes If I told my ‘dumb questioners’ to just Google Wicca and Paganism, they might pull up fundamentalist propaganda along with legitimate websites and videos. Google is working to ensure their algorithms provide more reliable sources in their search results than in the past. Today, the first page or two of Paganism/Wicca search results look mostly respectable. A few years ago, before political pressure to reduce higher ranking of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory, and downright fake news-driven results driven solely by popularity, Google’s coveted first page offered a mixed bag of reliability and factualism. I hoped that, after talking about Paganism in a positive manner with a thumbnail sketch of what we commonly believe, that people would discount fundamentalist nonsense. Now you have to dig deeper into Google to find the crap. When I Googled, Are Wiccans Satanists? I found only one Christian-written article critical of Wicca by the conservative Focus on the Family. It provides a less hysterical Christian critique than I used to get years ago, and I’m not much nicked it’s on the first page. It’s targeted at parents whose teen girls may be showing interest in Wicca and brings up a good point about how it may appeal as a ‘mix ‘n’ match’ religion for a generation that eschews absolutes. Young unformed minds might not be ready for something like Wicca, not without responsible adult guidance. I disagree with some of the article’s contentions, and reject its argument that Wicca is wrong because the Bible is against witchcraft, but I can’t call it propaganda. Encouraging Google use offers you the opportunity to educate on the basics of responsible research. Social and political divisions encourage us to remain within our insular ‘bubbles’ of belief and only consult sources that substantiate our already-formed opinions rather than challenge us to consider others. You can’t trust mass media as much anymore. Researching growing sexual predation in the trans movement is Exhibit A in attempting to untangle fact from narrative, or outright fiction, from two warring sides with their own diametrically opposed agendas. Not only the right has a reliability and credibility problem. When I Google about transwomen raping or sexually assaulting others, it takes a little effort to locate the truth, starting with ‘truthiness’. The right-wing media is far more willing to report issues of men in dresses intimidating women with their genitalia, but twisted to their own narrative and sometimes outright false. Worse, the journey often starts with far-right sources. The Blaze? Intercept? Breitbart? The UK’s Daily Mail? I’ve run a lot of sources through Media Bias Fact Check over the years and these sources are all huge factualism fails, but that’s where you often start for the first clue about the trans movement’s uncomfortable problem. Left-biased sites mostly ignore these stories, so I’ll take the alleged offender’s name from the right-biased media, Google it, perhaps with quotes around his name along with ‘trans’ and maybe other key words, to see if there’s mention in more reliable sources. Which you can find, if it’s a real story, with braver websites willing to risk social media condemnation for ‘transphobia’, like The Guardian or the UK’s Unherd. Still, you can’t always trust these sources either. A fair chunk of them still bounce up and down in the MBFC ratings. I’ve seen Fox News ranked as high as Mostly Factual although they otherwise remain fairly stable at Mixed. The Guardian was ranked higher a few months ago, today it’s Mixed. CNN is the same, stabilizing at Mostly Factual far more than Fox News, but not enough to make them a reliably reliable source. Overall, the farther one travels down the bias spectrum, the lower the factualism rating, but even sources on both ends can get something just enough right to hint whether there’s a real story or grain of truth. MBFC offers brief summaries of fact checks the source may have failed or notes they have so far not failed a fact check. How many people, really, know how to properly research and pay attention to information sources, particularly who’s funding them? If MBFC doesn’t list their source, I encourage them to Google it, perhaps with quotes, and add ‘is it reliable’, or ‘who’s funding X’. I also encourage them to click the About link on the website to see who’s behind it and possibly funding it, which might influence its point of view. We all think we’re better at critical thinking than we are. But some are really lousy at it and won’t know The Intercept from the Associated Press (The AP is one of the least biased, most factual sources). We should try to guide people away from the Internet’s uglier rabbit holes. Now let’s ask you, the non-educator, an important question. Are some of those ‘dumb questions’ those you’d rather not think too much about? Some ‘dumb questions’ get asked repeatedly because they deserve answers they’re not getting. I intentionally ask ‘dumb questions’ of certain feminists still stuck in the ‘80s when women had less financial, economic and political power than we’ve got today. I ask because there’s real inquiry behind them and I’ll keep asking them until feminists stop hissing and spitting like angry kittens and answer them. Like, “Why does she let him treat her like that?” I don’t assume an abused woman will be automatically hunted down and murdered like some feminists think. I know abusive relationships usually happen gradually, with equivalent compliance from the victim. Not all abusers are physically violent, and not all violent ones are Stephen-King-character-over-the-top-psycho violent. Every decision a woman makes to stay with that guy is consensual (unless she’s trafficked), and sometimes she doesn’t understand she has a choice. But not all. Many domestic violence victims are educated, competent women, many go into it warned , making excuses along the way until they’re wondering how they got to the point where they could star in their own Lifetime Channel movie. I’ll keep asking my ‘dumb question’ until victimhood-identifying feminists acknowledge how much female choice and power plays a role in abusive relationships. After which, I hope, we can better educate girls and women on how to avoid toxic partners entirely. Other questions that make feminists squirm are, “How many rapists get off scot free when victims refuse to report and take them to trial? And, doesn’t that give the men permission to rape again, since they got away with it before, making the earlier victims partially complicit in future rapes?” I understand all the reasons why women wouldn’t want to put themselves through the ordeal of a rape trial, but they forget for whom it’s also quite an ordeal: The accused . Putting more rapists on trial will give them plenty to squirm about for several months, most importantly contemplating this uncomfortable thought: How pretty am I? Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have worked on my glutes so much at the gym! He might be acquitted, but he’ll be forever changed. His world will never be as safe, either. Feminists hate these ‘dumb’ questions. I keep asking them because they’re not. They’re questions that put others on the defensive because this ain’t The Battered Wife or The Burning Bed forty years ago. It’s today, and not all women can claim ignorance or lack of financial and personal power. There are logical, moral, and ethical problems with deniers’ stated positions. Every social justice activist will encounter squirmy questions. Truly dumb questions require patience, so you can educate others and not create animosity. I can’t believe we Pagans are still defending ourselves against Satanism but instead of getting mad, I put the responsibility for belief in Satan squarely in the lap of the early Christian church, where it belongs. Not-so-dumb questions demand answers. Antiracists tired of answering questions about ‘acting white’ or the still-high rate of fatherless black American families need to come up with better answers than “Educate yourself!” which sounds like they should start with themselves. People who claim transwomen are the real victims (and some are) need to answer for the blatant misogyny, entitlement, and traditional male aggression many trans activists - invariably transwomen - exhibit. If feminists want to end rape and sexual assault, they’ve got to think about why they aren’t willing to take difficult but realistic steps to end it. Related: The Woman Who Abetted Sex Trafficking Men who are tired of being blamed for everything wrong with the world must debate why they’re responsible for the lion’s share of violence against others. Some dumb questions are really dumb, but let’s answer them anyway. It’s not our job to educate others? If you choose social justice you signed up to be an educator. You quickly learn who to educate and who just wants to fight. I choose to be part of the solution, rather than the problem. Which do you choose? He's educating himself. PxFuel 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 left and right share much in common, including compassion only for the 'right' people "F'n snowflake." "F'n MAGA." Photo by form PxHere "Where's your compassion?" she screamed at me in a comment on another blogging platform. "Where's your brain?" I asked. We argued whether transwomen's rights were more important than actual women's rights. She hewed to the 'woke' narrative, I spoke for the Reality Community. I've pondered compassion a lot in the year since that argument (I got kicked off the famously far-left platform shortly after and wonder if she had something to do with it) and today I'd ask a different question. "Where's YOUR compassion? For women, Ms. So-Called Feminist?" Her heart was in the right place--after all, most of us can agree people have the right to live how they want without hassle or violence--but not her brain. She accepted uncritically the 'woke' metanarrative that how you identify is what you are, when clearly that's not true. Or no one would question Donald Trump's identity as the rightful, lawful President of the United States. Since women have been an underclass for forever and men only when they chose to don dresses and wigs and post endless narcissistic Instagram photos, my compassion for them is more limited than it is for, say, female prisoners - emphasis on the word connoting powerlessness - who don't want people imprisoned for sexual offenses sharing a jail cell with them. But still. Ms. So-Called Feminist had a tangential point. I'm low-TERF; just as one's right to swing your fist stops at my face, your right to parade your dick around stops at the same place. But I knew who I was heartless and uncompassionate about. Trumpers. MAGAs. White nationalists. Misogynist men. Did I just trigger you? How much do we have in common with 'those people'? I'll be honest; I can't stand fundamentalist Christians. I grew up in the United States and remember the modern day movement's birth. It started not with famously fundamentalist Ronald Reagan but during conservative Christian Jimmy Carter's reign, in 1976 with a mysterious slogan. Bible-thumping had left the revival tent and was about to be discovered with an annoying believer near all of us. The ignorati asked, "Found what?" which was their invitation to tell us about Jesus. I grew up in a nice mainstream, progressive Lutheran church and family, and we didn't like those 'Bible thumpers' much. I argued with them in college, left Christianity and later wrote many articles criticizing them in a local alternative newspaper which today I would regard as a bit extreme (my articles, not the newspaper). I still can't stand 'fundies', considering them Trump-loving fake Christians along with their fellow MAGAs, white nationalists, and toxic masculine males and fangirls. But I've begun to ask myself, "Why are they the way they are?" I excuse my lack of compassion, reasoning they chose who they are, their values, their toxic ideologies. They may have been born into a certain religion or culture, but they can escape it if they choose, along with their politics, values, and assumptions. But were they truly as free to leave as I thought? After all, everyone has a story, and negative beliefs imply it's never a pretty one. Sometimes life is like a difficult video game you can't shut down and walk away from when you get frustrated. Maybe you've tried to find a way out and you can't; you wander around forever trying doors that are locked because you haven't found the mystery device or life decision to liberate you. Learned helplessness teaches you God wants you here, this is your lot in life, you're not good enough and there's nothing much you can do but shoot meth and let Tucker Carlson or QAnon assure you it's everyone's fault but yours. Fundamentalist ministers encourage you to vote for the masters who prefer you in your place and persuade you to stay there, and God will reward you in death. We don't know the other side's stories, and we make ill-informed judgements about them. Why does that woman hate men so much? Because she's one of those hateful, misandrist feminists! But why? Why did she go down that path and not another? There may well be a tale, or several, of trauma and abuse involving males. Or maybe she was raised to hate men by her angry, resentful mother. Maybe men abused the hate into her. A cousin or uncle who molested her. Maybe she doesn't know another way, because she believes her own mental bullshit. Why does that asshole insist on living in a trailer park? Doesn't he know he should lay off the heroin and get his goddamn GED? Others have worked their way out of poverty; look at J.D. Vance! That MAGA isn't J.D. Vance and didn't grow up the same way he did and maybe he just gave up trying for various reasons, good or bad. It's easy to feel compassion for those we can relate to, with whom we've shared their struggles; less so for the ones with whom we have little in common. I don't understand why fundamentalist Christians hew to a clearly unscientific, historically flawed history to explain why humanity sucks - is it 'sin', or our complex, flawed brains? - but I try to understand why they choose that path. Maybe they prefer simplistic answers, or they prefer the deeper ties with a community of like-minded individuals. Maybe they're afraid of the responsibility a more worldly view entails. Maybe they see how screwed-up the rest of us are and think, "Not for me. I only need Jesus." It's an 'insular bubble', but so too are our own, wrapped up in our own little religions - 'woke', liberal/conservative politics, fan culture, 'furries', #MeToo. Traditional liberal thought is rooted in compassion for others and accommodating and debating other points of view. It's what drove blindly privileged white people to support the early civil rights movement, and heterosexuals to embrace gay rights. To ask the questions, "Why should a black skin matter when applying for a job?" and "What skin is it off my nose who they love?" The left's conceit is that we're more compassionate than Those Other People. Liberals, like conservatives, are imperfect humans too, less inclined to show compassion for those they don't think of as 'downtrodden' or in today's parlance, 'marginalized'. The left has fallen into the rigid trap the right fell into long ago. Give me that old-time Woke religion The seventies marked the fundamentalizing of the Religious right, and the late eighties the 'fundamentalizing' of liberalism. Today's highly illiberal extreme left is a 'woke' religion indistinguishable from fundamentalist Christianity save for its only difference - one God. Like their Christian brethren, they're more unforgiving of Those Others. When TV evangelist Jim Bakker fell from grace after a sexual affair with a woman in the '80s, Christians forgave him. When Jimmy Swaggart publicly confessed with tears and shaking voice to hiring prostitutes to perform weird sexual stuff, Christians forgave him. And then again when he did it again. They forgave Christian politicians for diddling other men - repeatedly - "Hate the sin, not the sinner" - and today have so abandoned Christian moral standards they voted for Donald Trump, arguably the biggest sinner the Republican party has ever rallied behind. Their 'pro-life' claims now lie in shambles with their support for Herschel Walker, a man of Trump-level stupidity with multiple baby mamas, who's paid for at least two abortions. Christian fundamentalists demonstrate what Buddhists call 'idiot compassion' for the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Idiot compassion is what Ms. So-Called Feminist exhibited when she asked where my compassion was for transwomen. I asked where her brain was because she should see transwomen aren't the same as born women mostly from the vehement misogyny coming from many. Putting on a dress and wig and calling yourself Mary Anne doesn't negate traditional predatory male sexual behavior. The 'woke', like Christian fundies, will forgive anyone who shares their own insular bubble. One wonders how the compassion game will politically unfold after a mass shooter targeted an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado last week by a male-born suspect identifying as 'non-binary'. Guess what? He hails from a right-wing, conservative Mormon family. Oh, the cognitive dissonance for both sides! Will the left condemn 'one of their own', if the accused turns out to be another right-wing extremist? Will the right excuse him for 'mental illness' as they always do with their own mass shooters, or will they fold in embarrassment that a crazy gender identity nut came from a conservative Christian family? The fundamentalism police Another commonality both extremes share is turning on each other for insufficient devotion to The Cause. Wokeists, like Christian fundamentalists, police each other like the Gestapo. The holy rollers keep an eagle eye out for sin, especially anything sexual, while wokeists patrol social media, looking for anyone who's not woke enough. If they find someone they don't like, and can't find a good reason, they'll dig back practically to the point of their target's birth to find something untoward that person said or did. Because, you know, the Holy Wokers themselves are sinless. Putting aside our own biases Ms. So-Called Feminist's question is worthy of all our consideration. I don't worry about my acceptance of transwomen. My TERFiness extends no farther than keeping men out of women's-only spaces until they can handle the responsibility, which I believe won't be for at least a few generations. Maybe a century or more. You don't erase thousands of years of patriarchal entitlement and objectification in just a few. I focus my attention on my far more visceral response for MAGAs and Bible Trumpers. I've read books about the chronically poor to gain some insight into why they're so uneducated, why they don't understand white privilege, and why they're so inclined to bigotry. I can never understand their lives as I grew up middle class. But I can try to understand what it must be like to go into debt over a rundown home, barely-functioning car or a health problem, and living a daily, endless struggle over paying the rent, the mortgage, their child's medication, and how they're going to keep their family eating. They don't have time to do anything but struggle - stress, anxiety and depression their constant companions from dawn to dusk. I can't understand the wokeists either, who, despite their fancy college educations, come across as hateful, dogmatic, and as ignorant as those for whom they have zero compassion. Fundamentalist Christians get one thing right: We can hate the sin but not the sinner, or bigot. Christians may imperfectly apply that themselves (which is why there's a runoff between the highly flawed Herschel Walker and a Democratic Christian minister in Georgia), so there's something the left has in common with 'Bible-thumpers': They strive, and often fail, to be more like Jesus and on the left, we strive, and fail, to be better people too. But not always. If we can see the error of our ways we can change, and many have. Obama got elected partly because Republicans fed up with George Bush's party extremism voted for him (like my father, who told me Obama was the first and only Democrat he voted for before his death). Some have left both the 'woke' because they're fed up with the lies, the hypocrisy, the misogyny, the racism, the anti-science, and the anti-intellectualism. They see identity politics are as hateful, dogmatic and loathsome whether the bigot flies a Confederate or trans-activist flag. CC0 2.0 image by thaths on Flickr CC0 4.0 image by Ted Eytan They look at the history of enforced left-wing politics (Communism), recount the human catastrophes that resulted in China, the Soviet Union and North Korea, and realize that living under Kim Jong-un is no better than living under Hitler. Compassion is good, and sorely lacking. Idiot compassion, unfortunately, is a pandemic. We'd do well, when we accuse the uncompassionate, to start with ourselves. So I ask: Who do YOU despise? 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!