Are you only holding half the problem accountable? CC0 photo by Kushagra on Pixahive "I’m not allowed to do this. I’m not allowed to feel that. Why aren’t allowed to do, say, think, feel, or want X?” It’s ironic how the chronically aggrieved happily backstroke in self-appointed victimhood regarding whoever they label their oppressors, but indignantly deny their core victim identity if you point it out. Nobody wants to be victimized, but we all love to feel victimized. Victimhood is power. The power to abrogate responsibility for one’s life outcomes. The mark of a Self-Identified Victim is turning every situation into an oppression narrative. Even when you’re empowered, you’re not. It’s The Oppressors always getting the upper hand. Social justice movements are particularly vulnerable to this sort of ‘group narcissism’. It’s all about MY pain! It’s all YOUR fault! YOU need to fix it! The universal unwillingness to self-examine, to ‘Know thyself’ as Socrates urged, manifests as endless articles on the Internetz by people of color, or people of vaginas, advising white and male people how to act, think, say, do, or handle oh-so-delicate POC or vagina-bearers. Ye shall know them by their arrogant self-aggrandizing air of superiority instructing others how to act/think/do/handle etc. the fragile victims. The problem is you, not me. The problem is never me. I am oppressed, therefore I am blameless. There it is. The inherent power of victimhood. We live in a world of discrimination, unfairness and injustice, but it’s less unfair or unjust than we think. Negative life outcomes aren’t always our fault until it is. Fault is shared. I push back on the somewhat outdated notion that the key to ending rape is to focus solely on men, even though they commit the vast majority. It treats women, the other (unwilling) participants in rape, as helpless victims of ‘The Patriarchy’ — the sole source of female inequality, in accordance with the Gospel of Victim Feminism. It treats men as some monolithic Illuminati, all collectively out to devalue and destroy women. It doesn’t teach women that we, and everyone else, have to be vigilant and do what we can to protect ourselves in a world where hostility can come from anywhere, and target anyone, even those demon White Men. Systemic discrimination: It starts early for everyone. Public domain photo by azmeyart-design on Pixabay Victim antiracists similarly argue all the focus should be on white people and changing what they say is a ‘white supremacist network’, although cooler heads, including power antiracists who recognize POC aren’t helpless little kittens, call it ‘systemic discrimination’. Those who aren’t mired in semi-religious fundamentalist thinking recognize it as a problem affecting more than the naturally sunblocked. There’s truth to victimist claims, for sure: Society is as patriarchal as it is racist, founded on genuine white supremacy and male dominance, and white people and men must consciously dismantle institutions that serve some far better than others. They must imagine and work toward a better world not only more equal for women, POC, the trans tribe and others but more equal even for the men and white people currently struggling to preserve a system that hasn’t served us for a damned long time either. We don’t live in 1950 anymore when women had few rights and zero reproductive rights, or even the right to say no to her lawful husband for sex. We don’t live in 1850 anymore when white people owned black people and could treat them any damned way they pleased. We live in 2022, and everyone with a genuine grievance is still far more privileged than anyone who looked like them decades ago. Progress doesn’t mean ‘perfection’. We will never reach perfection. It doesn’t exist. At some point we have to stop, look in the mirror, and recognize where external oppression stops and internal oppression begins. Progressophobia and the Left I urge others to reclaim their power because we all rein ourselves in. It’s more obvious to others how you hold yourself back than it is to yourself. Growing up, my father fought hard against my self-imposed belief that I couldn’t do math, or wasn’t good enough to try something I might fail at. Mom and Dad challenged my attitude but I clung to it with an iron grip. It was easier than failing, and maybe ‘looking stupid’ to others. Arguably, I received toxic messages about women’s helplessness from the mass media. Not that female helplessness wasn’t real, because it was, but that it was normal. Things have changed a tad since then. You wouldn’t know it from feminists who refuse to acknowledge progress, including Texas, which couldn’t have recently made abortion essentially illegal if it hadn’t been legal in the first place. That was progress! Kiss it goodbye, if you don't want to vote for it. The new October 9th law is oppressive to Texas women, for sure, but not to all Texas women. Because oppression is forced upon you. Many Texas women voted for it. They didn’t vote on the law, but they voted for the politicians and religious nutbag lawmakers publicly hostile to women’s reproductive rights. However that works out for them, they bear responsibility. The oppressed Texans are the women who didn’t vote for it. Kanye West would have had a point when he suggested slavery was voluntary had black people been allowed to vote in the mid-nineteenth century, and they’d voted for the Democrats or Whigs. Ironically, it wouldn't have been a bad time for these theoretical black voters to vote Republican, a party formed to oppose the expansion of slave power, (new states allowing slavery) if not necessarily racial equality or the abolition of existing slavery. The Democrats and Whigs might not have been wild about slavery, but they were okay with leaving it where it was. The Republicans eventually passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which achieved abolishing slavery, giving black men citizenship, and giving them the right to vote. Who knew newly-liberated black men possessed male privilege? Today, having lived for close to sixty years and believing I can remember most of them, I’ve seen a lot of change in both racial and gender equality. Cognitive psychologist and popular author Steven Pinker named a major power source behind our victim-centered blindness. Progressophobia is the willful blindness to how much progress we make with society, and equality, complaining instead, ‘It’s worse than it ever was!’ Fourteen million Afghan women are holding up their middle fingers right now to a lot of black people and women people currently stabbing themselves in the eyes. Barack Obama called out progressophobia in black people in his farewell presidential speech. I’ve lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago — you can see it not just in statistics, but in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum. But we’re not where we need to be. All of us have more work to do. He also analyzed the progressophobic mistakes in the sermons of his controversial friend and advisor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Maybe the younger generations don’t believe in progress because they haven’t lived long enough to witness much. We can continue to impel progress (if we can bring ourselves to believe it exists) if we’re not first pulling back on our reins like our self-horse is about to trot our carriage off a cliff. What are you not doing? Why? The greatest well of addiction and suicidal misery is Imposter Syndrome which affects us all, including so-called ruling white men. There’s a reason why men drink more, drug more, and commit suicide more, especially after they’ve lost their job. But if I had to put money on where men feel vastly inferior to women, even if they don’t show it, I’d choose ‘Relationships’ for a thousand, Alex. Education, gentlemen! Take a class, read a book, research how to fix it! Self-disempowerment is pretty universally human. If you don’t know how to do something, learn. If there’s one thing we all have largely equal access to, it’s libraries and the Internet. Learn: How to create a more attractive dating profile. How to speak up over mansplainers in the boardroom. How to assert your rights with racist shopkeepers, doctors and real estate agents. Snappy answers to stupid questions about your gender transition or presentation. How to stiffen your resilience if a single thoughtless comment ruins your entire weekend How to identify controlling, abusive men before you get in too deep with them. And gold-digging women, or crazies. Grow some balls or labia, or a spine if you’re undecided. Taking back your power requires taking back some of the blame. It means no longer using oppression solely as an excuse to ‘I can’t’ while watching mindless YouTube baby foxes or Mean Tweets compilations. Watch a TED talk instead! Or videos on how to start your own business! Or how to identify abusive, controlling men! What must you ask yourself if you’re serious about moving forward with your life plan or dream? Who’s stopping you? This is THE first question you should ask yourself. Victim ideologies teach us to ignore how much agency we have over our lives, and how even if we can’t control assholes, we control how we react to them. We forget how to work on ourselves to become less triggered by those who bully, degrade, and humiliate others to feel better about themselves. Black dude Steve QJ describes how someone called him The Forbidden Word and he reacted by — laughing, then chasing the kid down the street and challenging him in a friendly manner. Who’s really stopping you? Is it Da Man, or Da Patriarchy, or Da Cis-iarchy, or…? Public domain image by Thomas Wolter on Pixabay Why do I care so much about assholes, anyway? The world is full of them, and some specialize in creating bespoke angst for you. These labeled assholes include (genuine) racists, sexists, transphobes, homophobes, Islamophobes, and Nickelbackophobes. Clearly, it’s better to challenge the racist asshole in the drugstore aisle than it is a clearly armed MAGAt who called you the Forbidden Word. It probably won’t end in laughter like it did for SteveQJ. On the other hand — just sayin’ — what if you chuckled, waved your hand dismissively, and smiled, “Yeah, whatever!” How devastating might it be for Blanche Magahat to realize THE ***N*** WORD failed to get a rise out of you, even if it did (but you covered it well)? Guess who did their part to take and throw away the power of an ugly word. Guess who ruined Blanche’s entire day. I’m learning to laugh at misogynists, particularly those who diss older women. Know why? Because I’m becoming more at peace with myself and giving less attention and power to the people who would put me down for the simple biology of being older (or female). Why do we care so much about assholes? Why do we even label them? How much power do we give oppressors when we label and dissect them like a scientist with a newly-discovered insect? No no no! You can’t dissect THAT bug! Black Bugs Matter! CC0 2.0 photo by Martin LaBar on Flickr Who cares what they think of me? Racists gonna hate. Misogynists gonna hate. Nickelback detractors gonna hate. At some point, you’ve got to stop worrying about others who think poorly of you, unless you’ve given them a good reason to think so. Then, it’s time for serious soul-searching. I had to do it when I realized I was being an asshole on Facebook. We’re encouraged to measure our value by what others think of us, at its very worst by a bunch of strangers and total wankers. Social media like Facebook and Instagram push whatever makes us engage (ergo, make money for them). Instagram pushes pro-anorexia content at users with anorexia, for pete’s sake. Ask not why a boy would want a stick-thin girl for a girlfriend, ask how much more you can Photoshop yourself to fake being as beautiful as all the equally fake-beautiful teenage influencers on Instagram. Analysis: Zuckerberg tries to hit hard at the whistleblower, but nothing lands It’s much harder to not care when you’re younger, but the sooner you begin moving your concern from external to internal validation, the more you’ll be able to accomplish no matter your detractors. Don’t wait until middle age or even your senior years as many do. The world is full of people born or shoved into ‘disadvantage’ — skin color, gender, gender/preference uncertainty, physical/mental/intellectual disablement, poverty. Life isn’t fair, and since the Agricultural Revolution, birth is a lottery. Nobody deserves the life they were handed. Not you, not me, not Kim Kardashian, not Mitch McConnell, not even (especially!) Donald Trump. For better or for worse, no one deserves the great, terrible, or average hand dealt. It’s not your fault. But here we stop with the Other-blaming. Who hates you the most? Discovering Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art: Break Through the Block and Win Your Inner Creative Battles helped me identify my own worst enemy. Pressfield names the internal resistance we all struggle with: The Terminator. Resistance is insidious. Resistance is implacable. Resistance is indefatigable. Resistance is protean. It shape-shifts. It lies. It dissembles. Its aim is to destroy us, body and soul. — Villain = Resistance My Self-Doubting Resistance Is The Frickin’ Terminator It will kill us if we let it, and we often do. It’s why I’m not good enough spiraled the suicide rate, particularly for teens, long before the pandemic. Looking within, and identifying what we’ve been doing to hold ourselves back our entire lives, is arguably the most torturous exercise anyone can engage in. The older you are, the more painful it is. All that past time wasted! It afflicts everyone, regardless of privilege. If I had to put money on the most self-hating human being in America, it would be Donald Trump. Doesn’t everyone recognize what a tissue-thin veneer of confidence and strength the shadow-man has? His followers follow him because he is one of them. Gooble-gobble. Nobody listens to them either, and worse, the rest of us make fun of them. Trump can relate. His victory is their last chance to validate their belief that it’s all everyone else’s fault they’re losing privilege and power, rather than taking an honest look at how much they’ve worked to give it to the 1%, their massas. How they voted against themselves and their own families. They’re now willfully killing themselves because the life they want is too painful to live. How different are we, even if we’re not as toxic as Trump and his sycophantic doggies? You’re the only person you have complete control over. On a planet of seven billion people and counting, you’ll never change everyone. Men will still rape. Woke bigots will still destroy lives and careers for no good reason and drive some to suicide. Nazis will still hold rallies. Incels will rail and fume about feminists and occasionally lash out violently, although most female murder victims will get killed by the partners they chose rather than random strangers. Some will always hate you for one damn reason or another. You can’t do anything about them except eliminate them from your life. We can fight back against the haters, we can march for much-needed structural change, but it’s as critical to change ourselves. We’re all imperfect, we all hate to be wrong, and we all prefer to blame others for our own failures and shortcomings. Privilege is real (and comes in varieties besides color and gender) along with systemic discrimination, but we must acknowledge a world of opportunities we closed our eyes to so we didn’t have to face potential failure, or how long we waited to recognize what we truly want and grow the balls, labia or spine to act. Sometimes, the oppressor is you. And there’s only one person that asshole hates. What if you stopped listening to toxic others? What if you stopped telling yourself I can’t because others tell you that? This ain’t the 1950s. This ain’t the 1850s. At what point will you stop pointing and turn toward the mirror? It’s not all your fault, of course. But it’s not all their fault, either. This post first appeared on Medium in 2021. 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!

How much are we willing to tolerate to avoid acknowledging a mistake? Your self-image is the biggest liar of all. Photo by Geralt on Pixabay The new friendship came with an expiry date, I knew that much. He's black; I'm white. He was African, Americanized after twenty-plus years living in the States. I, Canadianized, after fifteen years apart from the mother country. It began with a friendly Twitter comment. We bonded over our mutual depression and loneliness, at the dawn of what politicians assured us was only 'a few weeks' of isolation to combat a new deadly virus refusing to restrict itself to Asia, not as easily controlled as SARS. I was unemployed; he'd begun a new job but wanted to quit for reasons he couldn't quite articulate. I warned him this was a terrible idea as he was over forty-five, employers didn't know how to hire anymore, and the economy was tanking. He quit anyway and unemployment became another commonality. His isolation encompassed more than stay-at-home orders. He lived precariously in Trumpistan, fed news stories of black men getting shot and killed by police or racist civilians. A few months later, the U.S. exploded with rage at, well, everything after an infamous knee-on-the-neck encounter. His unemployment deepened his depression and isolation. Friends slipped through his fingers. I knew he contributed somehow but couldn't figure out what. His criticisms of American blacks only went so far and, despite claiming he got along better with people who weren't black, he still had no close friends except me. For now. Who really put us here? Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels I got a job; he did too and a few months later, mused about quitting because it wasn't working out, once again, for non-specific reasons. A little over a year after numerous text chats, phone calls and Zooms, our friendship ended over his new roommate. A young black woman moved in. "That's not a good idea, given how much you dislike black women," I said, but he assured me everything would be fine. It wasn't. She moved out less than a month later, accompanied by what I felt was his performative video walking around his house with a 'dash cam' on his head in case she 'pulled something'. He claimed she'd threatened him during an argument and he feared for his life. I asked repeatedly what the threat was and he 'couldn't remember' exactly what she said. He was so afraid he wore a camera on his head yet he couldn't remember her threat? She moved out post-haste after an argument, bidding him adieu by urinating on his bed. The dispute had something to do with money. His language about her concerned me; he became convinced she was a sex worker on the side and I asked if he'd been hanging out in incel forums; I recognized some of the language. He denied it. He emphasized repeatedly how he feared for his life but his 'fear' remained unconvincing. Who had the most to fear, I wondered, an out-of-shape 18-year-old girl or a 47-year-old man? He'd precipitated something, I was sure. I believed his claim they'd argued about money; young people aren't always good at meeting their financial obligations. But something else happened. I don't condone what she did to his bed but it indicated red-hot anger over something deeper than money. I don't know whether he made a move on her or, just as likely, tried to make her his 'friend' in his desperate loneliness, and reacted poorly at an unwillingness to get close with her landlord. Any conflict I'd witnessed, whether with his employers or roommate, reminded me of a book I'd read on abusive men, cataloging the vagueness these men expressed to court-ordered therapists about how their spouse 'provoked' an abusive attack with a lot of non-specific language about how 'she got all irrational' or 'I don't know, she went off on me again'. Drill deeper, twist his short 'n' curlies, and the facts begin to emerge: The 'crazy' spouse stood up for herself and her children in the face of his abuse and control when she unforgivably challenged him. I don't think my ex-friend was abusive but I experienced what his other ex-friends must have when they challenged his self-image, consciously or not: Gloss over, attack, shut down. When I received his WhatsApp breakup tirade, after which he'd blocked me, I understood the root of why he was depressed and lonely. Everyone else wasn't always to blame. He couldn't tolerate challenges to his fragile self-image. His narratives had begun to unravel and I'd gotten too close to his responsibility. It's all YOUR fault! We live in a world where we've become phobic about being wrong. About anything. The only thing new is how rabid we've become at never acknowledging we might not be the best judge of things. Even when someone is caught having committed some terrible destructive act, they offer endless excuses: It's someone else's fault! He had to kill that mofo who dissed him on the street; she made him beat her with her irrational desire to challenge him; he practically forced her to have an affair because he never listens to her. We've enshrined victimhood so firmly in our minds it's a wonder it's not in the Bill of Rights. The biggest liar in our lives is our self-image. As the Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, “O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!" We'll tolerate almost any negative impacts in our lives as long as we don't have to live with the shame of being wrong, of making a mistake, realizing we should have listened to others, failing to recognize the danger signs. How much will you tolerate to avoid the shame? It's hard to admit your woulda-shoulda-couldas. I shoulda left that job sooner. I shoulda left that woman sooner. I coulda been a contendah. I coulda been someone. I woulda been a great singer, but I listened to my parents and went into this boring field instead. Why did I wait so long to...? Now it's too late! I wonder how many people stay in abusive relationships because they don't want to admit to themselves--or others, by admission when they leave--they made a mistake. They chose poorly. How embarrassing it is to think everyone must have been judging you all along, wondering why you stuck with your partner despite all indications s/he was toxic. My ex-partner stayed in a toxic marriage because his self-image centered around I'm not a quitter. His ex-wife physically abused him, and I don't think he abused her. Not once did he ever make me feel the tiniest bit in danger. He was, however, a functioning alcoholic, and I never heard her side. His family didn't like her; it pushed him closer to her. Even after he realized the marriage was finit he resolved himself to a loveless, unhappy roommate rather than acknowledge he'd made a huge mistake. It ended when she left him for another man, whom she eventually married. She was the mistake to end all mistakes in a line of tragic choices. They bought a house they couldn't afford. They had a child in the midst of a desperately unhappy union. After the separation, she and the boyfriend abused their son and he and her family united together to get custody of the boy in a long, ugly protracted court battle. All because he didn't end the marriage himself, and sooner. The grand irony is he was, in fact, a quitter; he'd quit the marriage and settled before his wife left him. His self-image was more important than his personal safety or happiness. How many women choose to stay in unhappy, abusive marriages rather than admit to themselves and the world they made a mistake? That they should have listened; should have acknowledged the warning signs; should have left sooner. Woulda shoulda coulda. Often, we only leave bad situations when they become intolerable. My ex's wife wasn't willing to settle like he was; maybe quitting did no harm to her self-image. I've stayed in bad jobs because I'm not a quitter, which came from my early professional history of being a too-quick quitter. My earlier reasons for quitting were, in retrospect, pretty stupid (i.e., self-image challenging). I rationalized my later reasons for staying in genuinely bad workplaces or dead-end jobs. Part of it was fear of what came next, but part was also I was a quitter when I was an ignorant child; now I'm a rational, personally responsible adult. Huh. Photo by Yan Krukov from Pexels How much will she tolerate to avoid admitting a mistake? I focus on how women can take back their power, especially if they're abused. I was raised to believe being abused was largely a choice, by a mother who never was - neither by her husbands nor her father. We're largely finished with blaming 'patriarchy' and telling men not to abuse. One of the greatest lessons I learned from my mother is, "You can't change a man. Don't ever marry a man thinking you can change him. You can't." She failed to take her own advice. My father was never physically abusive but he could be emotionally abusive (as could Mom) and he was, like many men of his generation, remote and emotionally ignorant. She tried repeatedly to change him. When I was older, I reminded her of her own advice but she never listened. Yabbut, it's always different when it's you, right? It would be decades before I internalized the only person you can change is yourself. Our self-image is the very heart of who we are, except perhaps for enlightened spiritual seekers. Buddhist psychology is all about stripping away the 'wrong views' we have, especially about ourselves. It's tough work. You can be committed but still feel like you're lost in a video game with no idea how to get to the next level. Recognizing how committed we are to preserving our fragile self-image is terrifying. It opens up a whole can of worms. What choices did I make to bring myself here? Why am I with this partner? Why do I still hold this job? Why aren't I farther in life than I imagined when I was ten? Woulda-shoulda-coulda. The hard work of confronting the lie of your self-image means realizing how different your life might have been had you not allowed it to rule. Even the rich and successful aren't immune. Why are there so many members of the 27 Club? Why has suicide spiraled in all age groups for thirty years? Why are so many rich people so damn miserable? I have never envied the rich; I've known too many of them. Reading the books I have in recent years validates my belief that one of many pieces to the puzzle of why women tolerate abusive men is they don't want to admit they were wrong. They made a bum choice, especially after they invested a lot of time and perhaps children in their life together. Worse, maybe he wasn't a bad choice initially but later he changed. It's easier, I guess, to hope if you stay and love him enough he'll change back, rather than cut your losses and go. I myself have never been abused but I have a personal stake in this seemingly incongruous journey. I explore the whys for women locked into the worst-case choice because I myself have made many bad choices to preserve my lying self-image. We who live in the Western world have a ton more choices than women in developing or undeveloped countries. We fancy ourselves victims when the person who victimizes us the most is ourselves. We tell ourselves 'it's not our fault' when we were at least complicit by making a bad choice and sticking with it. My own bête noire is not bad partner choice, but sticking with jobs long past their sell-by, and not challenging myself to grow professionally more, something I'm only beginning to do late in my life--and never as much as I think I should. It was all choice. I made them, with no do-overs. I am an American, I am a Canadian, and I've made many choices in my life. Some were good, some were great, some were terrible. Some I made repeatedly because I was--am--a slave to my self-image. I say that only when I think about my consistent bad choices. Reclaiming your power means taking responsibility for your choices. The older you are, the less excuse you have for claiming ignorance. We are the architects of our own lives. Women's most precious freedoms came into our possession beginning only a century ago--the freedom and power of choice. Let's fully embrace it, stop listening to our lying self-image and resolve to make better choices. Don't be your own victim. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

They remind us we need to talk about female Intimate Partner Violence, too - and acknowledge how similar are the dynamics Amber Heard CC BY-SA 2.0 from Wikipedia; Johnny Depp CC BY-SA 4.0 from Wikimedia Commons “Baby, I told you this once. I’m scared to death we are a f**king crime scene right now.” — Johnny Depp to Amber Heard It’s a tale as old as mass media: Rich, beautiful, powerful man falls in love with rich, beautiful woman, is alleged to have abused her throughout the marriage, and ignites an ugly debate, now mostly on social media, about whether she’s telling the truth or not. Some generalize that ‘Abused women aren’t believed,’ which is only partially true; the woman is always believed, by many, and not believed by others, and never believed by a few, regardless of the facts. An uglier new twist emerged in the latest sad tale of Hollywood epic love gone awry: She, too, is an abuser. The dirty, acrimonious and highly public divorce of Hollywood heavyweight Johnny Depp and wife Amber Heard a few years back dragged into the light a little-acknowledged corner of domestic violence discussions: The female abuser. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 1 in 4 men have experienced some sort of physical violence by an intimate partner. While we speak endlessly about the number of women victimized by violent male partners — and that number is always much higher — we fail to recognize that, while battered men are in the minority, there are more than many believe. Especially since battered men, like women, often don’t report it. Domestic violence activists want to keep the focus on women, since they’re battered, injured and killed far more than men. And almost always, by men. I’ll leave the jeremiads about men and patriarchy and the validated statistics to the activists and social justice warriors. I will examine female batterers like Amber Heard because I know the activists and SJWs won’t. This is what equality looks like: Violence is ALWAYS wrong, not just when men perpetuate it. It doesn’t matter that Amber Heard can’t hurt Johnny the way he can hurt her. It doesn’t matter that he’s more powerful in Hollywood than she is. Her violence against him is still wrong. We can’t point fingers at one injustice while ignoring the other. “You didn’t get punched. You got hit. I’m sorry I hit you like this [slapping sound]. But I did not punch you. I did not f**king deck you. I f**king was hitting you.” Just imagine if Depp had said these words instead of Heard. She made many damning comments on audio tapes released by Depp’s legal team. The Twitterati debated whether this was ‘mutual abuse’ or abuse in self-defense. It gets worse. It sounds an awful lot like the kind of discussion a lot of domestic violence couples have, except with the roles reversed. AH: “Hit you across the face in a proper slap.” There’s such a thing as a ‘proper’ slap? AH: That’s the difference between you and me. You’re a fucking baby! JD: Because you start physical fights? AH: You are such a baby! Grow the f**k up Johnny! JD: Because you start physical fights? AH: I did start a physical fight, because- JD: Yeah, you did. So I had to get the f**k out of there. AH: Yes, you did. So you did the right thing. Heard starts physical fights. They both make that clear. The entire transcript is here. Depp alleges Heard had domestic violence issues before she met him, and there is at least one prior minor incident to indicate she sometimes got physical with others. (And her female then-partner, as females are wont to do, defended Heard’s actions later and downplayed the seriousness.) If there’s further evidence Heard got physical with others prior to her marriage, I haven’t found it yet. She alleges that Depp physically abused her throughout their marriage. He admits to abuse on the audio tapes. Heard released photos of her bruised face at one point. We’ve also seen a video of a drunk and threatening Johnny Depp, early in the morning, getting violent with the camera. We already know he abuses drugs and alcohol and a Rolling Stone article from 2018, The Trouble With Johnny Depp, makes it clear the man’s got a lot of psychological and emotional problems. While the article only touches upon his stormy relationship with Heard, it does examine Depp’s tortured relationship with his mother, an abusive woman he described as “…A real bitch on wheels. My mom was maybe the meanest human being I’ve ever met in my life.” His mom ‘hurled things’, like ashtrays and phones. There were ‘irrational beatings’. “It was a ghost house — no one talked. I don’t think there ever was a way I thought about people, especially women, other than ‘I can fix them.’ ” Sound familiar? Johnny married a woman not unlike dear ol’ Mom. And he wants to ‘fix’ broken women, the way many women naively want to ‘fix’ their broken, abusive men. That’s the remarkable part about female-on-male abuse: They greatly resemble the reverse scenario. There are no innocent victims in this story. Just a couple of sad, broken individuals with anger management issues and a clear willingness to lash out at the one they claim to love. According to the Mayo Clinic, it’s not always easy to recognize Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against men. A November 2019 Psychology Today article notes there’s a growing body of international evidence to indicate both genders experience IPV in proportionate numbers. It’s titled Domestic Violence Against Men: No Laughing Matter for a reason. Because when men get abused, they often get laughed at. The article links to a horrifying British social experiment in which actors pretending to be a couple fight twice in a public place. In the first scenario, the man begins to get physical with the woman, and strangers nearby appear concerned and a few intervene. In the second fake fight, the woman gets physical with the man. No one intervenes. Several smile and chuckle. Including women. Ha ha, domestic violence is funny! Just imagine how viral this would have gone if people had reacted that way to the ‘abusive’ man. Is the UK statistic at the end that 40% of domestic violence is suffered by men accurate? I don’t know. It seems men are often unwilling to report or admit it because they think they won’t be believed. And, apparently, they justifiably fear being laughed at. By women. Toxic femininity, or toxic feminism? The article also links to a short, five and a half minute story of Alex, whose tale sounds remarkably like those told by abused women. Warning: Disturbing images and wounds. There’s only one real difference between Alex and Jordan’s tale and the reverse: He could have fought back, because he’s physically stronger, but he didn’t. Maybe he knew violence was always wrong. Maybe he’d been brought up that ‘You don’t hit girls,’ like my ex said re his abusive ex-wife. (He never once lifted a finger against me or ever made me feel even the tiniest bit in danger, so I believe him that he never hit her, not even in defense.) Or maybe Alex suffers from the same victim psychology we more commonly associate with women. It’s easier not to take men’s stories seriously because the narrative has always been an often more serious or fatal reverse story. That narrative is largely accurate, especially in times past when women had fewer options for leaving. Today, unfortunately, women’s rising equality may also result in women’s feeling they have the ‘right’, somehow, to abuse a man who ‘makes them mad’. AH: What do we do different if I--if I have a problem. JD: You tell me. AH: You need to tell me how to tell you different- JD: Tell me. AH: -if I’m hurting you- you need to let me be able to be mad. Sometimes you are gonna make me mad. I’m a human. I cannot live where it’s like- JD: Well, the same thing goes for me then. You’re gonna have to allow me to get mad. AH: Yes! Exactly! I- JD: Okay, but when I get mad then you start fucking yelling. There was a lot of yelling in the Depp-Heard household. Plenty of insults. Plenty of f-bombs. Sometimes abuse is verbal, not physical, where often women have the upper hand, although it’s not hard to imagine Depp isn’t a hefty contributor as well. He also has a habit of ‘splitting’, as Heard complains, regardless of whether physical violence is involved. AH: I told you- I- what I needed. You said we should- [unintelligible] you don’t- [silence] We are seeing the counsellors not to just- stop what we are doing. It’s not alone enough. We gotta change how we do things. And I wanna trust you and I feel like all the trust is gone- all the fucking trust is gone in a relationship because you keep splitting. JD: I’m not going be in a physical f**king altercation with you. AH: Don’t. Then don’t. JD: You f**king hit me last night. You f**king… AH: What about all the other times you split? C’mon you cannot act like that’s about that. JD: Well on a plane, I can’t split. AH: No, and you hit back. So don’t act like you don’t f**king participate. There’s a lot more in the transcript. It’s quite, quite clear that Amber Heard herself is a batterer, even if her record isn’t as lengthy as Depp’s. It’s a sick, sad social dynamic, two people who seem incapable of working out their differences without yelling, recriminations, and occasional violence. Amber Heard sure sounds like a male abuser in those audio tapes. It’s mutual abuse. Activists and some feminists don’t want to admit that. They argue, with some justification, that female abuse is defensive and often in the context of a male-abusive relationship. It also found that “in general, women and men perpetrate equivalent levels of physical and psychological aggression, but evidence suggests that men perpetrate sexual abuse, coercive control, and stalking more frequently than women and that women also are much more frequently injured during domestic violence incidents.” So yes--men are and always have been the more violent partners, and Johnny Depp appears to be no exception, so Heard’s violence against him occurs in that context of male abuse. But what’s striking about the audio tapes and transcript is just how much she sounds like a traditional abuser, making excuses for herself, mocking Depp for being a ‘baby’ and noting no one will believe him. She states “No” when he asks if she thinks she’s an abuser, then, when he asks if she believes she’s abused him physically she dances around the question with all the finesse of a politician asked about his sexual imbroglios. Heard makes it clear she hits her husband at times when he hasn’t hit her, and that he ‘splits’ when she does this, so, he often removes himself so as to not take her abuse and perhaps not respond the same way. She also complains he ‘splits’ when they start to fight, whether violence has occurred or not. Depp’s no angel. Neither is Heard. And neither is a devil. It’s impossible to argue that only one or the other is a victim, unless one is a hardcore misogynist or misandrist. The audio tapes make it crystal clear that both parties have violence issues and the abuse is mutual, not Heard whacking Depp Public domain image from publicdomainvectors.org on the attack (although that may have happened, too). If we’re going to take IPV seriously, we’ve got to open the conversation to the unpleasant reality of those women with their own separate violence issues. It’s hypocritical for women (mostly women, apart from a few virtue-signalling ‘feminist’ men) to claim IPV is a serious problem and then turn a blind eye to female abuse. When women are raised in abusive households and move on to adult relationships with more abuse, we express sympathy and empathy for the fact that she learned to be a victim through a lifetime of abuse. So what excuse are we to offer the man who grew up with ‘the meanest person he’d ever known’ and who at least sometimes tried to avoid getting physical with his sometimes violent wife? Prison psychiatrist James Gilligan in his now-classic book Violence: Reflections On A National Epidemic (1997) argues that shame plays a huge role in the motives of men who commit horrifyingly violent crimes. Where does this sense of shame come from? Often from childhood abuse, neglectful environments. Gilligan writes, “In the course of my work with the most violent men in maximum-security settings, not a day goes by that I do not hear reports — often confirmed by independent sources — of how these men were victimized during childhood. Physical violence, neglect, abandonment, rejection, sexual exploitation and violation occurred on a scale so extreme, so bizarre, and so frequent that one cannot fail to see that the men who occupy the extreme end of the continuum of violent behavior in adulthood occupied an equally extreme end of the continuum of violent child abuse earlier in life.” What are we to make then, of men who are abused and go on to abuse? Something to think about. CC0 image public domain on Pxhere 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!

From a non-misandrist & hopefully helpful standpoint Graphic by Jose The Storyteller on Pixabay (quote added) Talking to women is a minefield for men. Romantic connection is at an all-time low. Millennials aren’t having sex. Bumble exists because, as a male friend put it, “Men are sick of being shot down all the time. Fine, let women decide who they’re going to talk to.” Michael Kimmel writes books about clueless young Guyland and Angry White Men, although I’m pretty sure not all the angry dudes are white. And the clueless ones aren’t all young. If victim feminism made women hard to approach before, #MeToo now carries the danger of her snapping your photo in the bar and sharing it with all 53,579 of her Twitter and Instagram followers accusing you of intersectional patriarchal pseudo-woke misogyny because you told her she was beautiful. My former blogging platform daily newsletter emails were full of article recommendations (“Based on your reading history”) by angry women with a gigantic hate-on for men who may need to rethink whether they need to post every damn day. So many of these articles sounded like a gripe about whatever annoyed them that morning instead of some earth-shattering, mind-blowing insight about how women and men are, like, different. It’s no wonder the birth rate is dropping. (Those recommendations ARE based on my reading history. I’m trying to understand angry feminists better to gently challenge their, IMNSHO, highly skewed and phallophobic view of the world.) Can we talk? But, it’s not all angry feminists spouting academic jargonbabble about what CIS-het normative rapists men are. Based on my nearly 40+ years of experience dealing with single men…the last fifteen of which have been largely man-free…I can state pretty categorically: Y’all don’t seem to learn. Even the ‘woke’ ‘feminist’ men don’t seem to get it on a very basic level, which is how to talk to a woman you don’t know. It was difficult in the best of times for a man to approach a woman, and like it or not, that’s how our biology works. Guys have always done the pursuing, and old evolutionary habits die hard. Modern women don’t always seem to get that, and we can all try and be a little more understanding. A guy who tells you you’re beautiful isn’t necessarily an asshole. But, guys, it does make you sound like every pickup artist who’s ever approached us. I call it the UPS — the Universal Pickup Script: “You know, you’re very beautiful.” “You have beautiful .” “And you also have beautiful .” Which is why the answer to “You’re very beautiful,” was quickly answered with, “I’m not interested/I’m married/I have a boyfriend.” I rotated my lies. We can’t make a romantic decision as fast as you A man sees a woman he finds attractive, and he chats her up. But that's 2–3 minutes of preliminary small talk and then he tries to close the deal, as we say in the sales world. Problem is, smart women can’t make a decision about him in just a minute or two of conversation. He’s the bigger one. He’s the one who could be a psycho or needy or crazy or stalkerish. Women can be all those things too, but as Margaret Atwood noted, men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them. Guys, please remember this every time you chat up a new woman. Romance novelist Phaedra Starling best explained the threat an unknown man poses for a woman in her now-classic blog post, Schrodinger’s Rapist. Some (not very smart) women may be wowed easily by big muscles or a winning smile or a smooth line, and go off with a guy somewhere for a coffee or a glass of wine or Goddess help her, to his apartment. Or even to hers. Not smart. He might be okay, and that will lull her into the false belief that her judgement is excellent, but the next guy might not be as safe as she thinks. We all do it; even I’ve done it, but it’s never ended as badly for me as it has many others. We’re not always clear, and sometimes you just don’t listen One longstanding complaint men have about women is that we expect you to be mind readers. That’s a fair assessment. It drives me crazy when women say to me, “If you don’t know why I’m angry I’m not going to tell you!” or “You know damn well why I’m mad!” I don’t play guessing games, and I’m not going to let a woman torture me like that. You shouldn’t either. If she can’t tell you what the problem is, tell her if it’s that important she’ll discuss it like an adult instead of playing games. One of you has to be the grownup and in this moment, it’s not going to be her. Don’t twist yourself into knots over whatever your mystery sin was. Homey don’t play dat game. It’s supremely childish and women need to be called on it when they regress like this. This isn’t second grade. Women aren’t always clear about what they want with a man, and it’s often because we’re not clear on what we want for ourselves. This is where the miscommunication came into play for Aziz Ansari, who stopped pushing Grace when he was asked and who apologized later, and was thanked by being turned into a #MeToo pariah. His dick got in the way of his thinking, but ‘Grace’ sent a lot of mixed messages herself. Also, I don’t think going to a man’s apartment is a good idea when you don’t know him very well. As I noted earlier. Just a bad practice overall. On the other hand, some women are quite clear on what they want, or not, and men don’t always listen. There are some pretty hairy stories of sexual assault and they’re crystal clear they were not down with what someone forced on them. As a Facebook friend put it, “I have had many times where I have been very direct with men. Then they will not listen anyway. Some claimed that’s not what I meant. Others claimed I never said this or that. Sometimes I would make a statement and when not listen to [sic] I would get angry then hear, Oh you were serious.” Yeah, she was serious! I say, quite seriously, that it really does seem like a penis can cause male deafness. But then there’s the dreaded female, “I’m fine.” Two of the most deadly words for a man. You asked her if something’s wrong, and her response was more frigid than a polar vortex. It’s not an acceptable answer. If she’s not fine, she needs to tell you why. Period. No games-playing. No expecting you to psychically deduce it ‘if you really loved her.’ Don’t let your dick do the talking It really is true that some men think with their dick way too much. Some should just leave the damn thing at home when they go out with a woman because dicks make men say the dumbest things. I went out with a guy from a dating site a few years ago who insisted he was looking for a long-term relationship and not just sex. Nevertheless, within an hour of meeting me he told me how big his 'junk' was, picked the sexual position he wanted to have for our first time, the type of bed he wanted to do it on, and he needed to know, absolutely needed to know, “Do you shave your pussy?” Planning our first sexual encounter isn’t something a lot of women want to do on the initial coffee date. And also, don’t ever call it that. However, I gave him another chance and we went out again, and this time he asked me about my menstrual cycle and what my bra size I was. I texted him later and politely told him why I didn’t want to see him anymore. That’s only fair, I think. Fortunately he was a man about it and didn’t make a nasty fuss. I was straightforward with what I said and criticized his behavior, not him. I braced myself for a possible responsive shitstorm but all I got back was “OK.” I appreciated that mature response, if not necessarily his ability to focus on something other than my body. Guys, just stay away from the sex talk the first few times. We’re all a little crazy I think a lot of miscommunication between men and women comes from our psychological wiring — our brains are different, so we don’t think like each other — and because, frankly, we’re all a little crazy. Photo by KS KYUNG on Unsplash Some of it is the way we’re raised, some of it is biological. What we have in common is we all filter the world through our biases, fears, past experiences, childhood traumas, insecurities, and just generally skewed views. Buddhists call it Wrong Perception. Him: “She clutched her purse closer to her as she passed me! She thinks I’m gonna snatch it because I’m black!" Her: “Dammit, why’d I pack this big umbrella? It made my purse heavier and there’s not a cloud in the sky! Stupid bloody weatherman!” Bagel Guy: “Why is it okay for women to say, ‘Oh, you’re five feet’ on dating sites? ‘You should be dead?’ THAT’S OKAY?” Female customer: “I just wanted a bagel.” Her: “He won’t talk to me. I’ve been trying to make conversation all afternoon and he gives me short, one-word answers. He doesn’t like me anymore. He’s not attracted to me. I said something wrong. I’m too fat! He thinks I’m ugly! This is a disaster! I’ll never get another man! He’s bored with me already! HE HATES ME!” Him: “Why wouldn’t the motorcycle start last night?” A feminist Wrong Perception There's a pervasive feeling among some feminists that everything wrong with their lives is due to men, patriarchy, sexism, and the way they were ‘socialized’ as women to be compliant and submissive and people-pleasing. That’s true, to a point, but women really are, generally, wired to be better communicators and nurturers. We are, after all, the ones who have to raise the baby, at least for the first few years when s/he can’t be left alone for long and needs to be suckled six times a day. The language and communication parts of our brain are, generally, better developed than men’s. Men’s brains are more developed for sex, so guess what they think about more. They’re not bad guys for being more sex-preoccupied, and women aren’t weak and stupid for being more emotional and nurturing. It’s entirely possible little girls and boys are being raised a certain way because they evidence gender-traditional behavior at an early age. I don’t believe pink vs. blue booties has anything to do with it. CIS really is the norm, whether we like it or not, and most of us are going to fit into one label or the other. Some folks don’t feel comfortable with either and that’s fine, but this post isn’t about them. I found one article about how ‘women aren’t allowed to be angry,’ or some such nonsense. That it’s okay for men to be angry but not women. Oh please. Plenty of men can testify how they were raised not to express their anger and how it’s made them serious head cases. It’s not gender-specific; the world just isn’t comfortable with anger, no matter who expresses it. It’s become too convenient to blame gender and roles for why we fail to measure up internally. It’s a lazy woman’s excuse. Other articles are about how women aren’t allowed to express their sexuality, or some such similar nonsense. Sometimes the writers come from cultures and religions that really aren’t okay with women’s sexuality, but many others don’t mention them at all. So where are all these pole-dancing sex-work-defending Girls Gone Wild coming from? Meanwhile, men feel like they can’t express any sort of interest in women whatsoever for fear of being castigated by outrage junkies on social media. So, anger repression is looking a lot less gender-specific. Maybe the problem isn’t men, or feminists, or socialization, but our own internal Controls Gone Wild. Photo by Ta Mystika on Stocksnap For examples of male Wrong Perception, just drop by your nearest incel discussion forum to learn how women are running the entire world because Feminists Have Ruined Everything. Are women really just a bunch of brainless Stacys forever in search of their Perfect Chad, leaving Our Heroes out in the cold with their dicks in their hands, or do these guys need to learn how to talk to women without asking about the condition of her vagina in a coffee shop? Is there a Davos Summit for Patriarchal Wannabes to teach them how to keep women down, or are women who feel held back too often holding the reins themselves? Maybe men should stop seeing new women as “Potential Love/Sex Interest” and get to know her without the not-so-hidden agenda. Especially since some women are particularly cautious, having had some pretty bad experiences with men in the past. Remember: We’re the ones who have to fear for our physical safety. Men have a long and ugly history of violence against women, and women have a much shorter history in reverse. By the same token, maybe women can stop viewing men as abusive just because they get approached for a date. And also be more clear with themselves what they want and who they want it with and when, so we have fewer Grace/Aziz Ansari misunderstandings. And also, ladies, make sure you understand what ‘misogyny’ means before you go thoughtlessly tossing it around on social media. Talk to each other, listen to each other, and…go forth and be joyful together. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

But is porn the problem, or *mainstream* porn? What does ‘better’ porn look like? Photo by Jens Karlsson on Flickr CC0 2.0 (and some graphic material altered out) When I was six or seven my mother took my brother and me to an annual Orlando fair. The main attractions were kiddie rides and of course the usual fright houses. This particular year, either the layout of the park changed or I was now old enough to notice attractions featuring torture and abuse of women, intermingled with the children’s attractions. You see the palest imitations of such fair bait today: The garish pastel paintings remain, but over the decades they’ve become light-years less misogynist. Not exactly feminist, but Alpine lasses busting out of their corsets like the old Heineken girl are a far cry from what I still remember seeing fifty years ago: Scenes of women in a medieval torture chamber — One on the rack; one in an iron cage over a fire; a buzz saw slashing open a lovely belly (everyone’s wearing bikinis). Who knew they had buzz saws in 1495? Or bikinis? I remember a woman guillotined. I remember another coiled by a giant angry fanged snake. I remember a recorded voice saying, “Watch a beautiful woman tortured to death.” What kind of sicko would want to see that? It took a few hours to process, but later that evening I got really upset and cried to my mother. She got really angry herself — “It’s always the women!” she raged, and wrote a letter of complaint to the owners of the fair. Undoubtedly other parents did too. The next year, the misogynist poison was moved to the back, far away from the kiddies. Feminists put an eventual end to it. Thank your grandmothers, Florida Millennials! That’s what we need to do with today’s violent porn aficionados: Move them to the back of polite society. Relegate them to forums like r/UndateableLosers. Where they complain to their fellow incels about ‘feminazis’ who won’t have sex with them. In my futuristic fantasy, women have learned to not allow violent men into their lives. They’re poison ivy, no matter what they look like. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Mainstream porn’s toxic effects on — everybody I’ve written two previous articles about Nancy Jo Sales’s recent book Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno. It’s made a helluvan impression on me. How Can Women Choke The Life Out Of Dating App Misogyny? No More Allowing Angry Misogynists To Set The Rules This article explores the most interesting insight Sales made about male dating app swipers, to which she gave only a passing mention, quoting a 2012 Psychology Today article. …Porn hurts men as well. Research suggests that young men who consume porn have lower sexual satisfaction and are more like to be ‘depressed, unable to enjoy intimacy, and suffer from desensitization of feelings, dissatisfaction, loneliness, isolation and compulsion’. The article notes nine out ten children ages 8 to 16 get their sex education from porn. By the time they’re dating, they’ve viewed hundreds of strangers having sex on porn sites, and some of them (no one can seem to agree on the percentage) feature physical violence or verbal/psychological abuse against women. One estimate of 88.2% has been widely-critiqued as having been cherry-picked by the researcher, but more realistic percentages put violence against women at 20–40%. It’s important to note a fair chunk of women visit porn sites. YouPorn reports 23% are females and PornHub’s female visitors are 32%. Sales’s book — and some of her previous work — documents the rise of physical violence in whatever passes for ‘dating’ in a Tinder world serving up women to men exactly as The Patriarchy always envisioned it. I kept wondering: Why the hell do these girls put up with it? Part of the answer came a few weeks later from a CNN article, Sex ed conversations you need to have with your tween or teen. Parents are still not talking about sex to their children early enough, and even find the subject embarrassing. I’m a little unclear why they’re still mired in Victorian vexation when the ’60s counterculture dragged sex out of the bedroom and into the Woodstock mud pits. ‘Raunch’ culture, pole dancing, Internet porn, the rising acceptability of polyamory, ‘safe sex’ and the near-extinction of marital virgins (estimated at less than 5%) suggests humans @#$% like bunnies, and have engaged in way broader sexual exploration than many previous generations, but blush like maiden aunties of yore in front of the children. Parents miss teaching all-important lessons like “Daddy and Father McFeeley aren’t allowed to touch you there either.” Or that a man who hits you is a man you should NEVER tolerate in your life. Or how to recognize a good wo/man when you meet one. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Lack of proper sex education, in the context of values, consent, and considering the needs, desires, and feelings of others, sets up unrealistic expectations for girls and boys about what sex is ‘supposed’ to be like. Since porn is created by men, for men, to please men, it’s no surprise it teaches young women their job is to be submissive and go along with whatever the man wants, however degrading. They need to look beautiful because pleasing men sexually is of primary importance. It teaches them to sexualize themselves which in turn encourages men to objectify women. The Sexualization/Objectification Vicious Circle: It’s always a joint effort. Since men are the primary consumers of porn, let’s ask: If mainstream porn is leaving them depressed, isolated, desensitized, and unable to achieve intimacy, how good would sex be for them without porn’s toxic, self-centered, violent, emotionally extinct influence? What if sex for men with feelings and consideration for one’s partner turns out to be better than sex without? What if their lives were overall happier and more peaceful if they weren’t watching porn actresses pretending to enjoy a gang rape? What if their sex was way better? Does this mean they have to give up porn? What is ethical porn? Who knew there was such a thing? Ethical porn seeks to represent sex as it really is for us mortals without giant fake boobs or a Tom of Finland penis. Ethical porn features a far greater diversity than you’ll find in mainstream porn. The actors and actresses look more like us — some pretty and handsome, some out of shape, some older, some younger, some less white or cis-heteronormative. One might add, less plastic ‘factory’ style bodies. A male friend told me years ago he preferred vintage porn to modern porn because, in the ’70s and early ’80s, porn actresses had different bodies and looks; they lacked plastic surgery ‘enhancement’. Now they all looked alike. In ethical porn, there’s more touch, more genuine sexual pleasure, more giggling and more emotional connection. Most importantly, the sex is clearly consensual, which one article notes the lack of which is the reason why mainstream porn seems so ‘icky’. No one’s agreeing to a gang bang because they’re getting paid and the kids need to eat. The biggest selling point for ethical porn is its creation. The performers and production people get paid fairly and everything is done with the input of all involved. No one is forced or pressured to do something they don’t want to do. There’s no sex trafficking. Many more of the orgasms are real. Ethical porn portrays the female sexual pleasure perspective, not only men’s. It understands women can enjoy porn too when it includes their needs and desires. Especially since we need more to get us wet ’n’ ready than a freakish big dick popping out of someone’s pants. Foreplay: It’s the other F-word. Image by Capsula Nudes from Pixabay What can women do to resist increasingly misogynist mainstream porn? I’ve never had a man suddenly whack me around in bed, but I had one close encounter in a van several years ago I now wonder may have been birthed by misogynist porn. I didn’t get hurt, but I came close. I don’t engage in hookup culture; I think it’s a monumentally bad idea to go to a stranger’s house for sex. I did it a few times in its early days, and nothing bad happened, but now I look back and want to bitch-slap my younger self. What the hell was I thinking? A few ideas for Just Say No To Sexual Violence: Set and reset your boundaries. Always. The biggest misogynist/victim feminist lie is that men make all the rules. It’s still a man’s world for sure, but not as much as advertised and The Patriarchy’s power grows weaker every day. That’s why there’s such a Trumpian backlash, and why some guys want to beat the shit out of you in bed. Grow some labia and seize your power! It’s YOUR body, and YOU decide what gets done with it, and to it. Make sure he knows what’s not okay, especially if you’ve only known him for fifteen minutes. The first time he hits you should be the LAST! Period. End of discussion. ‘Nuff said. Delete and block. Be clear in your profile about what’s not okay Be upfront on who should swipe left: NO VIOLENCE! Knowing what I do now about dating apps, and particularly Tinder, whether I engaged in hookup culture or not I would clearly state what is NOT acceptable: No slapping, hitting, choking, punching, or kicking. No ‘faking’ rape. For those women who claim in their profiles they ‘want’ to be pseudo-raped, ask yourself: Is it what you really want, or do you say it to get more right swipes? Because consensual rough sex play comes with BDSM rules. Don’t leave home without them! No misogynists allowed. Period! Listen to your friends and family. If they express concern about the level of control a man has over you, or how he treats you, and especially if they warn you they think he might become abusive, or he already is, listen to them! We aren’t very good at listening to ourselves, even less to others who don’t ‘understand’ him, when our hormones are bubbling or, Darwin help us, we think we’re ‘in love’. Preventing a violent relationship is much easier than leaving one. Stop consuming sick porn yourself It doesn’t mean you have to give up porn, but you may have to pay for it. Ethical porn costs money to make since it’s, you know, ethically-produced. No one is trafficked; so everyone gets paid. Stop consuming porn that hates you and thinks you’re a slutty cunt who deserves to be slapped and punched because ‘it’s what women want and deserve’. Where can I find ethical porn? I can’t make any personal recommendations as I don’t consume porn, but I only learned about ethical porn while writing this so never say never. Here are a few sources: The 7 best ethical porn sites that aren’t Pornhub: your definitive guide Premium and free ethical porn for the sexually conscious Here’s Why Ethical Porn Is the Best Porn You Can Watch (includes 10 ethical porn sites) Himeros TV — For gay ethical porn In conclusion I’m not anti-porn, and now I’m curious about ethical porn. A while back a porn-loving male friend shared with me a Pornhub video he expected I’d like based on what I’d told him I didn’t like about male-centric porn. He was right; it was pretty hot! The scenario was an older rock groupie having sex with a younger musician. They were simply two people pleasuring each other with a certain level of appreciation for the other. It considered the woman’s pleasure as well as the man’s. His pleasure didn’t include tormenting or hurting her. I float this idea for everyone, but especially for men who enjoy mainstream porn: What would sex be like if you didn’t want/require female degradation or lack of consideration to be part of the process? Secret pornboy, are you unhappier, more depressed because of the porn you watch? What would sex be like if you knew the woman was enjoying it too? What if it was better? What are you missing out on? I won’t call for an end to violent porn production, but for making sure the women in it aren’t trafficked. People want what they want and censorship would merely drive it underground. We women can’t force porn consumers to not want or watch it, but where we hold power is here: We don’t have to watch it ourselves, or allow these men into our lives. Trump supporters are finding it increasingly harder to get a date. Hooray! We need to marginalize violent, misogynist men the way we’ve begun to marginalize MAGAts and abusers. Let someone else fuck them. What if every woman decided to stop fucking violent men? What would the world look like? What would sex be like? Think about it. We Have The Power, ladies. The Power to Just Say No To Violent, Misogynist Men. And the porn influencing them. This originally appeared on Medium in September 2021. 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!

From ancient China to…I dunno, I forget… Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. "She Shoulda Said No!" (1949) It’s 4/20 Day! Stop whatever you’re doing at 4:20pm, or 4:20am if you’re really dedicated, and mellow out, show the world that reefer smokers are way nicer people than drunks, and really, really piss off Americans where it’s still not federally legal yet. Ha ha, with Mexico (sort of) legalized now the U.S. is sandwiched between us and them! Exhale north, nuestros amigos! Exhale south, nos amis! Here’s a brief history of weed, from those tuned-in stoners in early China to the turned-on Canadians (Hey, that’s us!) of the present day — 04/20 2022! 10,000 B.C.: (Before Cannabis) The Chinese are, thus far, the most likely first humans to discover and use weed. Beginning with the Middle Holocene Age, the Chinese left evidence they had hemp. Four thousand years ago, they grow it to make rope, oil and paper. Twenty-five hundred years ago, they brew it into a tea and call it ‘green’. China doesn’t invade anyone for 800 years. 1300 B.C.: India invents the pot brownie. Indians believe weed encourages sleep, lowers fevers, cures dysentery and improves the mind and judgement. It also makes them very horny. Pretty soon there’s more than a billion Indians. They’re so mellow and laid (back) they barely notice when the Mughals invade in 1526 A.D., but boy oh boy do they have some really mind-blowing art and statuary to show them… ALSO IN 1300 B.C.: Egyptians write what moderns know as the Chester Beatty Papyri, a treatise on colorectal complaints including the proper use of the original cannabuttnoid suppository as a digestion aid and hemorrhoid treatment. I dug deep into the bowels of medical archaeology and the annals of history to confirm the Egyptians brought us the marijuana BudButtBomb! Ponder for a moment who might have discovered that cannabis relieved the heartbreak of hemorrhoids: “I wonder if it would feel better if I stuck that up my ass?” Now you’re wondering, “Am I more ejimakated knowing this?” Probably not. You’re welcome. 4th CENTURY B.C.: Alexander the Great smokes a pipe full of weed and puts off conquering Asia Minor for at least three weeks while he contemplates the intricacies of his favorite concubine’s testicles. 1787: America’s Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia and attended by 55 delegates and 189 hookers, wraps up in September when the delegate from Virginia passes around some weed he brought back from his recent trip to Jamaica. That day the Founding Fathers invent the plan for something they call the electoral college. The next morning, after sleeping it off, no one can remember how the hell it actually works. Or what they’re all doing in the belfry of the Old North Tower. Or why they’re naked. Or why Steve is grinning like George III on Tax Day. History's first recorded Republican 1936: The movie Reefer Madness is released, horrifying Americans with its depiction of what kind of documentaries are made by people who’ve clearly never smoked reefer before. Public domain 1966: Marijuana is popularized by drop-out long-haired bell-bottomed Communist hippie weirdoes who never shut up about Ginsberg and Camus and Che and who listen obsessively to really far-out weird shit they call ‘psychedelic music’ and which their parents call ‘sound of cats being tortured .’ The new ‘reefer madness’ works to many new rock stars’ advantage as, for example, no one notices that Jim Morrison writes lyrics like a mentally-challenged banana slug and that Canned Heat guy can’t sing for shit. In 1967, Timothy Leary urges people to turn on, tune in, drop out. Everyone’s far too stoned to realize Leary is, at 47, waaaaay past thirty, which means they shouldn’t trust a damn thing he says. 1996: Famed astrophysicist Carl Sagan dies, and his widow reveals he liked to smoke weed while taking a shower with her. Sagan’s Cosmic Adventures come as a giant embarrassment to marijuana critics who contend that weed wrecks your brain and turns you into a total underachieving slacker loser. “Toldja,” says Harrison Ford, eyes half-mast. 2001: Canada becomes the first country in the history of the world to legalize weed for medical use. California’s all like waving its arms and going, “Hey! Wait a minute! We Photo by Pere Coba on Flickr legalized medical cannabis like five years ago!” and Canada’s all like, “Yeah, but you’re not a country,” and California goes, “But we were the first part of North America to legalize any sort of weed,” and Canada’s like, “Duuuuuude, will you knock it off? Nobody cares!” Conservatives, meanwhile, complain that those damn godless socialist lefties will legalize anything. What’s next, gay marriage? 2002: The Canadian Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs issues a report saying, in essence, marijuana should be regulated like tobacco because it’s less harmful than alcohol, which comes as no surprise to anyone who’s ever been to a Jimmy Buffett concert. Canadian conservatives, like, totally freakin’ lose their minds, prompting the Committee to issue a second report saying, in essence, chill, dudes. Photo from Reefer Madness: The Musical by The Chico State School of the Arts on Flickr 2010: California Proposition 19, also called the Regulate, Control, & Tax Cannabis Act, becomes a statewide ballot initiative. It would allow certain types of non-medical marijuana use although still prohibit the sale of it. Supporters argue it would help reduce the budget shortfall as well as force vicious Colombian drug cartel overlords to start shopping at Dollarama. It’s defeated by a powerful group of Republicans who object to the fact that the new law doesn’t negatively impact the poor, illegal Mexicans, legal Mexicans, old people, baby bunnies, and children of any age. 2013: Uruguay becomes the first country to completely legalize marijuana. Everyone’s all like, “What’s Uruguay?” because the country’s about the size of a soup stain and almost never makes the news. And that’s probably because, as a country, it probably sucks way less than wherever you live. According to Wikipedia, Uruguay ranks high in peace, democracy, size of the middle class, prosperity, absence of terrorism, economic freedom, income equality and 95% of its electricity comes from renewable energy. They’re just so much better than us, AND they smoked weed legally before everyone else. So NYAH! 2018: Canada becomes the second country in the world to fully legalize weed, and the first to get any international attention for it. Uruguay doesn’t make a stink about it like California did about the medical cannabis thing. Have a totally groovy day, amigos!!! 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!

Don’t blame the victim? Don’t BE the victim Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash Blame my anti-feminist mother for my belief that women are far more in control than many of today’s feminists would have you believe. That women in 2022 are not necessarily helpless victims of ‘the patriarchy’ and the smart ones define how they will allow others to treat them, particularly men. “Never let a man hit you! The first time he hits you should be his last! Leave him, right then and there!” “Never let a man control you, tell you what to do, or who you can associate with.” “Be very careful when a boy tells you he loves you when he’s pushing you for sex. They’ll say anything to get what they want. Take full responsibility for birth control; if you get pregnant he can walk right out on you.” “Don’t EVER let a man abuse or hit you. Did I mention this? My ex-husband never hit me and neither has your father. If he hits you once he’ll hit you again, regardless of what he says. Oh, he’ll apologize and try to make it up to you and swear it will never happen again, but it will!” I wish more women had grown up with my ‘anti-feminist’ mother. I’m mystified as to where she got her strong, empowering, personally responsible First Wave Feminist beliefs, because she was born during the Depression and got married after the war. She never seemed to have gotten any of this from my grandmother (who died before I was born), nor did my mom ever read much feminist literature, except maybe when I was in college and bringing books home. Still, my mother who used to rage about ‘those damn women’s libbers!’ was one of the most feminist women I’ve ever known. She taught me to be authentic to myself, to be personally responsible for my life and safety, and never, ever, to be a victim. It’s her fault I believe women have more say in whether they’re abused than they think. Because I decided never to let a man treat me that way. Because I paid attention to misogyny in boys and men — even though that word wasn’t in common use when I was young — and identified early on who some of the high-risk guys were. Military men. Athletes. Lawyers. Men from certain cultures and religions. Republican conservative men. Any culture, in other words, dominated by men and particularly an exaggerated sense of masculinity. While not all members of the aforementioned groups are necessarily abusers or misogynists, the smart woman approaches them with caution. She also is careful not to let herself be led astray by her hormones if she’s unfortunate enough to be attracted to ‘bad boys’ and hyper-masculine men. There’s still a part of me that thinks Adrian was out of her ever-lovin’ mind for falling in love with Rocky. He was a big dumb palooka whose thing was beating the crap out of other men. Why on earth didn’t she think he might turn on her when he gets angry? The reason why he didn’t is because it’s fiction and Sylvester Stallone wrote the screenplay. To my knowledge, he is not nor has ever been a physical abuser of women, and he’s famous for his hyper-masculine movie characters. So for sure, hyper-masculine doesn’t necessarily mean ‘abuser’. I wonder, though, how Rocky would fare in real life. I went out with a guy once who told me he liked to box. I went very much on my guard immediately. It wasn’t a deal-killer but my red flags went up. We wound up not going out again, though, because he was immature and turned things I said into double entendres for sex. He said he hadn’t been laid for over a year. I knew why. Some women figure out misogynist identification for themselves. I did too. I figured out on my own that homophobia is a red flag for potential misogyny. Not the sort of garden-variety homophobia from men who are okay with gay guys but don’t want a man looking at him at the urinal, but the kind of vicious, defensive homophobia that indicates a severe underlying insecurity, and hostility to women. (Add that to the Danger List, ladies!) Mom raised me to believe that I am in control of my life. That I decide who gets to spend time with me. That I should never allow a man to mistreat or abuse me. That the sooner I get out of a bad relationship the better. I don’t know how well that works, personally, because I’ve never been abused in a relationship. I’m not attracted to misogynist men, and they‘re not much attracted to me. Thanks, Mom! Not all mothers (or fathers) teach their daughters not to be victims. Maybe they don’t realize they have (or had) a choice. I don’t fault them for that. But I think feminism fails women when it mindlessly recites the mantra, “Don’t blame the victim!” There’s a place for that, certainly. Blaming women for the way they’re treated by how they dress, what they were doing, or whether they had the audacity to do it without a man around in a public place where any guy could just walk up to her and proposition her — it’s not harassment, man, she was just standing there lookin’ all hot and alone! — has been women’s lives since forever. Feminism challenged the notion that women are not responsible for their own victimhood, and that was a very empowering and important notion. But at some point, we need to recognize that while inequality exists, and men are still more physically powerful than us and that women must still, unfairly, be hyper-vigilant about the potential threat men pose, we also, in 2019, have more choices than your mama did, and, like my mother taught me, we too can decide who gets to spend time with us. Like it or not, victimhood stops with the image in the mirror. Like it or not, when a woman returns to an abusive man, especially early in a relationship before it’s gotten complicated by marriage and children, she gives him tacit permission in his Neanderthal brain that it’s okay to hit her again. He may not think that, consciously, and may even be genuinely sorry he hit her. But he will get emotionally triggered one day and he will lash out and it will be a little easier this time. The more she returns, as feminists well know, the harder it is to leave. Because at some point the choice really is removed. She’s so beaten down, or so legitimately scared for her life, or the safety of her children, that she doesn’t dare leave. But she has choice at the beginning. She has choice when she’s approached by the guy for the first time and he buys her a drink. She has choice the first time she has sex with him, an act which imprints on the controlling, misogynist male’s mind that she is now his property and he owns her. She has choice the first time he puts her down in public and she lets him. She has choice the first time he tells her what to wear or demands to know who she’s been with (I went out with my girlfriends tonight, I already told you that!) and she allows him to get away with that behaviour. She has choice the first time he hits her. She may not realize along the way she has these choices, which is where we must work harder to make sure she understands that she should never let a man treat her this way. Feminists are telling ‘good men’ they need to stand up to sexism, misogyny, and other expressions of ‘toxic masculinity’ more, that men need to be allies for women rather than just lip-service-paying ‘feminists’. I agree. I also think what’s good for the gander is good for the goose. We need to challenge ourselves, each other, to make the right choices in life and decide not to be victims. We need to challenge our friend when she gets involved with a man who sets off our Bastard Detector. We need to remind her that she can do better than that guy. That she deserves a decent man in her life, one who will treat her better. We need to make it clear by our own actions and choices that we decide not to let anyone who mistreats us into our lives. “Don’t blame the victim” has its place. But now our new, complementary rallying cry should be: “DON’T BE THE VICTIM!” Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

The end of male aggression lies with us, not men. We can learn from our matriarchal cousins. CC0 2.0 photo by LaggedOnUser on Wikimedia Commons Let's be perfectly clear on this point: Women decide when violence ends against women, not men. The passive lessons of feminism past have gone as far as they can go. Enough with telling men to stop hurting women. They already know it's wrong. We have to force the ones who don't care. Patriarchal dominance isn't the only model. We know this now. Five to seven million years ago chimpanzees and humans diverged from a common ancestor. We both evolved a patriarchal model of male social dominance based on superior male strength. One to two million years ago, bonobos (pronounced bo-NO-bos), diverged from chimpanzees and evolved a matriarchal social model, despite superior male strength. One theory suggests food competition after the Congo River separated a chimp troop. The ones north had to compete with larger gorillas for food, under which male aggression evolved as a survival tactic that they adapted to control females for sex and resources. The ones south enjoyed a more plentiful food supply, enabling the females to form relationships and female social groups. The southern males who recognized that allying with females offered greater sexual and resource benefits mated more than their aggressive counterparts, and nice guys finished first. Today, our little-studied very close cousins live the lives human feminists only dream of: A world in which females have sex whenever they want, with whom they want, without all the slut shaming, homophobia or male partner possessiveness. Bonobo females also have plenty of male 'partners' assistance, as collective paternity means no bonobo male can be quite sure which children are his. A bonobo male who wants to ensure the perpetuation of his genes has to support all potential offspring. The village truly has to raise a child, when no one knows whose kids are whose. But don't bonobo males exhibit, like all other primates, the typical patriarchal desire to isolate a female partner from copulating with other males, with violence if necessary? Sometimes. But the ladies crush it like bugs. Whatever Shiba did, he will surely think twice about pulling any shit with bonobo females again. The key to bonobo female dominance Evolutionary understanding of humans owes a great deal to the study of our more common cousins, chimpanzees. The chimp male dominance model clearly parallels our own human history and experience. But what about our more peaceful counterparts south of the Congo? What if they demonstrate what might have been, and what could be? It's never too late to evolve. In fact, evolution can now be driven by conscious choice. Female dominance in bonobo society isn't as brutal as male dominance elsewhere. Bonobos are famously quite peaceful, mostly. Aggression is primarily defensive, for reminding forgetful males they're not in charge. Female power appears to be rooted in strong, broad female friendships, including those outside their groups. Female bonobos appear to share an understanding that 'We're all in this together.' Another element that might grease the peace: Everyone gets laid! Bonobos are, to cop a judgmental higher primate term, famously slutty. All of them. Bonobos will shag any time, any place. Males with males. Females with females. Males with females. Even the young get shagged by their elders but they don't seem to suffer from it. At least, they don't exhibit discomfort or submission in the videos I've watched so far. (Let's set aside the adults/juveniles couplings for the time being. I'm not arguing we normalize NAMBLA.) Bonobos, unlike many of our primate cousins, often copulate face to face like humans. They appear to exhibit wild orgasms. Sex is a bonding agent for bonobos. They often greet each other by rubbing genitals together. (Another practice I'm not advocating for humans!) "Hi Mabel, how's it going?" "Great, Loretta, good to see you. How're the husbands and kids?" "Oh, they're fine. So much to do before Christmas..." CC0 2.0 image by Rob Bixby on Wikimedia Commons There are no bonobo incels. Sex is about relationship building, not dominance, and every last one of them is having a lot more sex than you! So what does this mean for us? Bonobos demonstrate that the patriarchal dominance model doesn't have to be the blueprint anymore. We're not bonobos, but we're not chimps either, and they haven't evolved toward becoming a more dominant species like we have. (This may be changing. They've begun making spears for subduing prey.) Human dominance began with exploration into new lands beyond Africa, followed by the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago, which is where many human ills either first arose or were boosted: Slavery, income inequality, power imbalance - and the subjugation of women. There are three steps women can take to end male violence against women, although it won't happen overnight. Recognize we have the power, and the obligation, to end it. We'll need to widely convince victimhood-identified feminists that it's up to women to end male violence and that keeping the focus solely on the offenders no longer serves the movement. We've convinced all the persuadable men not to rape or abuse. Job well done! But we'll have to force the rest. Change is always driven by the oppressed. South Africa didn't end apartheid because whites finally understood it was unfair. The American civil rights movement began with a tired, fed-up black woman on a bus, and second wave feminism emerged from women tired of being treated as coffee-fetchers and sex-providers in the black civil rights movement and the white New Left. Homosexual rights began with the Stonewall uprising. Change begins when enough of the oppressed have had quite enough. The second step: Forge greater female friendships, far and wide. This means moving beyond identity politics as well as welcoming women from 'the other side' of the tribe: Those with whom we disagree politically. And who may need some persuasion just to recognize they have the power to end the madness. Identity politics divides rather than unites, which serves everyone's oppressors quite well. The race divide between white women and women of color today prevents us from uniting together against weaponized penises of all colors. We don't have to agree on Critical Race Theory or merit-based careerism to recognize what we do have in common: Vaginas, and weaker bodies, to which some men feel entitled and on which they'll force themselves if necessary. The Christian Right accomplished bridge-building quite effectively in the '80s and '90s when Catholics and Protestants, who vehemently disagreed on numerous theological points, came together to work against a common goal: To end abortion rights. Worked well, didn't it? How can we forge alliances across political boundaries and persuade others to join us in this fight, if not necessarily in some other fight? Because every single woman has a dog in this fight. And yes, we're talking about natal women now, not female-by-choice. The third step: A world in which women unite to shut down ad hoc male violence I helped shut down male violence myself, a few years ago, by myself. It was scary, but I didn't get hurt or murdered for my efforts. My feminist come-to-Jesus moment arrived: How feminist was I, really, when my neighbor was clearly in danger from male violence? What if women banded together when one woman was in danger from an aggressive male and forced him to back off? "What if we got hurt?" We might, but we might not. Bullies are, at their core, cowards. They won't take on a fight bigger than themselves and a bunch of weaker females can collectively take down a stronger male with the willpower and the culture to support it. [See: Shiba video, above] We can't do it without a broad, cohesive coalition of women, and it won't happen overnight. Just convincing victim-centered feminists and domestic violence specialists that women have the power to end male violence may take a generation or more. The left itself is riven with victimhood thinking and victims aren't powerful. It's a Matriarchy of Silence in which women discourage others from taking charge of their lives and reclaiming their power. I'd rather strive for a matriarchal model in which women collectively control male violence by introducing real-world consequences. I don't advocate one unfair to men, but rather one that offers real value for men, too. My next article will address that and will outline how the only men who won't benefit from a matriarchal model are those heavily invested in toxic masculinity. And if human women stop having sex with, and babies with, toxic masculine men, evolution will favour the 'nice guys's genes and our culture may come to resemble the bonobos' more than the apes. Because here's the funny thing about bonobo matriarchy: It doesn't look nearly as oppressive for males as human and chimp patriarchy is for women. We have the power, ladies. Are you ready yet to end male violence? Discuss. Debate. Explain. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

Why do women care? What could we accomplish if we didn’t? “Do I look old? I don’t really look old, do I?” Photo by debra123 on Needpix I can’t find the original tweet, but I got flamed for having a ‘clownish’-looking face. I thought my profile photo, in which I held a copy of my then-just-published novel, was a good one. The Twitter twit thought otherwise, appearing out of nowhere to trash my face. It came, ironically, from a woman whose inartfully made up face reminded me of Pennywise. I didn’t get angry, but I did inform her of her own cosmetics misapplication because, damn, Circus-worthy, according to Pennywise Pennywise has no business flaming others about their makeup! A few years later, some Twitter dude took issue with something I said. Instead of returning with a reasoned response, he made fun of my hair in my profile photo, claiming I had ‘split ends'. Well, I usually do, but apart from quarterly haircuts, shampoo and conditioner, my hair care regimen takes like five minutes which is about how much time I will allot. The super-smooth look you see in hair product commercials requires a lot more than just their shampoo. Many women would have pitched a fit over ‘misogyny’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘sexual objectification’ and ‘unfair standards for women’. I recognized it for what it was: A mere cheap shot targeted at what the flamer hoped was a direct hit on my self-esteem. Looks-shaming: Everyone can play! I used to react more strongly when men looks-shamed me, but women are probably far guiltier and got more of a free pass. It’s easier to write them off as being jealous, or just catty. Or ridiculously unaware of their own bizarre-looking face. In high school a bitchy girl named Kristi reminded me every day during study hall that I dressed like a weirdo. Whatever I was wearing, she and her nasty little friends (one male, another female) reviewed, carefully within earshot, everything I wore, to put me down and make me feel worthless. It worked. I was sixteen years old. In retrospect, although Kristi was, in my opinion, very cute and had a boyfriend, she struggled with a weight problem and today I see the insecure teenage girl hoping to feel better about herself by dragging another down. A guy named Dan also reminded me daily I was an ‘ugly dog’ who would ‘never get a guy’ and who nicknamed me Wolfwoman. He’s the only person I’ve ever wanted to kill. Literally. Back then, we only fantasized about it. Dan was an even more insecure teenager, who grew up and refused to call me ‘ugly dog’ or ‘Wolfwoman’ at the five-year reunion even though I kept walking up to him after a few Fuzzy Navels with a big grin going, “Say it, Dan, say it! I haven’t heard it for five years! Say it!” Why did I care so much? For all the railing women do about ‘The Patriarchy’ and its high standards for women (Where do they come up with these standards anyway? Is there an annual Davos-style summit for The Patriarchy? Where does it meet? The Butler National Golf Club?), I bought into these beauty standards, fueled by the unrealistic images of late-’70s TV. The Love Boat. Shampoo ads with big-haired slim models (in college I’d learn they were artistically altered by clever photo enhancement techniques). And, gods help me, that bitch Cher, with her own TV show, standing on stage every Sunday night, her famously fabulous Bob Mackie designs clinging to her bony hips and shoulders. She was all belly button and awkward, gorgeous angles. I wanted to look like her. What I didn’t understand was Cher’s genetics mandated tall and slim and her Cherokee blood likely graced her with those gorgeous cheekbones. I didn’t have the Internet, or enough awareness, to challenge such unrealistic images. When someone wants to attack a woman with a quick low blow, insulting her looks, whether or not she’s OFU (Old/Fat/Ugly) is almost a guaranteed wounding blow. We, along with our girl gangs, can almost always be counted on to react with outrage. Why? Because no one buys into ‘The Patriarchy’s’ standards more than women. Between Cher’s and Farrah’s bad examples of how I ‘should’ look, and reminders from Kristi and Dan that I didn’t, not even close, I suffered lowered self-esteem, a growing sense I wasn’t ‘good enough’ and kept hoping maybe when I got older I’d be that pretty. I joined millions of other young girls and women frowning in the mirror and criticizing each body part with the relentless eye of a psychopath. Some women never challenge those norms, even those who rail about ‘patriarchal standards’. They budget for plastic surgery. They binge ’n’ purge. (I wasn’t disciplined enough for an eating disorder, thank Goddess!) They buy clothes, makeup and expensive skin treatments because someone said something mean and they believed it. She decides, like I did, she isn’t pretty enough. In its very worst manifestation, caring too much about one’s looks results in Body Dysmorphia Syndrome, when you pick out, obsess over and ‘fix’ flaws no one else can see. It’s permanently never feeling ‘good enough’. Jocelyn Wildenstein, the ‘Catwoman’ New York socialite featured on bad plastic surgery websites, started out as a very beautiful woman who embarked on a lifetime of plastic surgery. Wildenstein, then & now. Photos by celebrityabc on Flickr According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons’ 2018 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report, over 14 million procedures were performed on women vs. 1.6 million for men. At least some of these procedures will have been for reasons other than vanity, such as repairs from accidents or birth defects or body parts causing great discomfort, like oversized breasts. Ironically, our pandemic social isolation may have eroded our ‘artificial’ self-image. Women reported they'd stopped wearing makeup, dressing carefully, or keeping up with their dye jobs, aided by shuttered beauty salons. A few years ago, when I worked from home, I put on makeup every day because it made me feel better. Now I only put it on if I have a Zoom meeting or I'm going to the grocery store. But even then it’s a five-minute slap-on job. Don’t like my split ends or wrinkles? Bite me. What if this became A Thing? According to a study from The Skin Store, the ‘average woman’ will spend about $300,000 on makeup in her lifetime. Not sure who ‘the average woman’ is, but I’m pretty sure she’s way more privileged than myself and many others. That’s a helluva lot of cruises and mortgage payments! The 3-Step Suffering Removal Plan Life offers countless ways to suffer, and I, like all of us, am an expert at amping it up. Suffering, as the Buddha pointed out when he discovered it on his first foray outside the palace walls, is an intrinsic part of life. The Four Noble Truths teach: Suffering exists; Arises from attachments; Disappears when you abandon your attachments; And The Eightfold Path provides the blueprint for how to free yourself from suffering. For those for whom quarantine hasn’t yet induced them off the $300,000 Hamster Wheel Of P̶a̶t̶r̶i̶a̶r̶c̶h̶a̶l̶ Self-Imposed Oppression, here’s what’s worked for me. I’ll apply the first three noble truths: Identifying, challenging, and changing perspective. I identified my problem. I would never please everyone. Despite a lifelong weight problem, I performed as a belly dancer for nearly twenty years at birthday parties and the occasional non-dirty stag party. So what if I wasn’t slim enough for some of them? No, I didn’t look like Cher! Hey, this was Connecticut, not L.A., and they were all so drunk they thought I was Cher anyway. As a quick aside, I never had to deal with the sort of fat-shaming many others have endured. I was never obese. The sort of relentless shaming reserved for those with a more serious weight problem is outside the realm of this article. I can’t speak to that personally. Others are better-acquainted than I. I stopped comparing myself to other belly dancers and women on the street (what Analog Gen-X had to do to keep ourselves down before Instagram) or wondering why I couldn’t look like them and resenting that they could. Wouldn’t my life be perfect if I looked like her? Well, I didn’t look like Sasha, whose impossibly long slim waist moved like a dancing cobra and I didn’t have the lush German girl’s body or her lovely Teutonic looks but so what, I looked like me and no one was complaining and I was still the biggest flirt on the East Coast! Many of these goddesses had the inclination to make more effort. I didn’t. I had other ways I preferred to spend my time. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with either choice, as long as you’re making it for yourself and not someone else. Hard to know the difference sometimes. Here’s what you don’t see: Even the most gorgeous performer or Instagram babe never admits how uncomfortably imperfect her off-stage, off-camera life is. I decided what I had was ‘good enough’. That’s where my own personal WYSIWYG was born. 2. I challenged my self-defeating conclusions. I asked, ‘Why do I care?’ Why did I take cues from ‘society’s standards’? Where did those standards originate? From others, in my head, or a bit of both? How could I challenge them? Who held me to those standards? Was there really some male club or ‘Patriarchy’, issuing orders from the ninth hole on that gentlemen’s golf course (“The Penis Facial. This is what you must do now to remain beautiful to our gaze”)? Was I making myself the victim? Was I cranking up my pain by taking a thoughtless comment and extrapolating it to be an attack on myself and maybe even all women worldwide? Was I in fact victimizing not just myself but all women when I filtered everything through a lens of what I thought ‘society’ dictated? “Get an eye lift, or we won’t like you anymore. And your cankles are gross. Fix them.” Photo from Wallpaper Flare It was illuminating the day I realized: If all men disappeared tomorrow, would any woman get a boob job? The ones whose back was counting the days until those triple D-cups could get whacked down were doing it for themselves. The rest were defining themselves by male standards of beauty because women don’t intrinsically care about big breasts! Evolution gave them to us to feed babies, not male wank fantasies! This led me to extrapolate — Who was I looking good for, honestly? Women? Men? Or myself? Beauty ‘standards’ internalize misogyny, sometimes fueled by being raised in a male-dominated environment. We all consciously or unconsciously buy into traditionalist dictates, until we decide to challenge ourselves. I searched within and explored why my beauty standards were what they were, where they came from, not ultimately to blame but because I couldn’t ease the pain without identifying the cause. I had to detach caring what others thought, especially after I started using the Internet. There were plenty of damaged people wandering around cyberspace looking to drag others down even before the rise of social media, and especially after it became easier to publish photos. If I took every nasty comment personally I’d never do anything, say anything, or accomplish anything. Now it was time for psychic surgery. No chicken gizzard fakery required! 3. I changed my perspective I didn’t stop caring overnight, but I did stop caring. Giving a big figurative middle finger to external opinions was difficult, but I brushed it off and kept on keepin’ on. What’s more important to me than random strangers’ opinions is my work, my writing, my family and friends, my plans and goals. My hair isn’t YouTube-worthy. Deal with it. I’ve got a message to impart and people can listen or not. They can watch or not. If I make them hurl their tuna sandwich that badly they can go elsewhere. You know who don’t give a rat’s patoot what people are saying about their looks? Men who are killing it. They say, “I’m a wrinkled old fart, but I’m rich and my wife is 32.” Those may not be laudable values but they don’t give a crap if I think so. They’re getting things done anyway. The ones who do care what others think are often suffering the same mental pathologies as women. Male body dysmorphia exists too. I take my cues from women on the ascendancy rather than selfie queens or random tweetflames. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was credited with her decisive leadership and empathetic communication for shutting down COVID-19 infection like Donald Trump with a news reporter. She wore casual clothes during her national addresses from her den. She had more important things to think about than what people say about her outfit. German chancellor Angela Merkel, once described as ‘the most powerful woman in the world’, is a scientist with a doctorate in quantum chemistry. She handled the world’s most notorious orange-skinned bad comb-over'ed narcissist like a pro. She, too, was credited with keeping COVID cases lower during the final years of her administration and persuading Germans to cooperate early with COVID control efforts. What do female leaders who have distinguished themselves on pandemic crisis management have in common with successful male leaders? They don’t care about the Twitterati’s irrelevant opinions about their hair. The Goddess of taking crap about her looks is Hillary Clinton, and it didn’t stop her from running for the highest office in the land. Her critics cared far more about her pantsuits than she did. I want Clinton’s psychological resilience, even though I will never run for office. You don’t keep COVID deaths to <25 like New Zealand's Ardern did when you’re stressing about the nasty comment some jerk made about your tracksuit while you were addressing the nation from your den. I warned myself when I started making YouTube videos: The comments will be vicious. I know what bottom-feeders troll YouTube looking to thumbs-down videos and leave nasty comments. (Bonus, though: YouTube doesn’t distinguish good from bad. It counts it all as ‘engagement’ which for their algorithms is good.) I don’t victimize myself, I don’t blame ‘The Patriarchy’, and I don’t drag anyone else into it either. I’m responsible for myself and my standards. Here’s the thing: It’s not just women targeted with unhealthy societal messages. All that male body dysmorphia comes from somewhere. For a case study on just how damaging unchallenged societal messages are for men, read Susan Faludi’s interview with ultimate he-man Sylvester Stallone for her 1996 book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. The book gave me a much richer idea of the difficult challenges of being a man, but the Stallone interview opened my eyes to just how much like us men are when they don’t challenge societal standards (Is there a Matriarchy?). Stallone idolized Superman when he was young, but didn’t understand the toll maintaining that he-man image took until he gained weight to play a schlumpy character in Copland. It did a real number on his self-image as a rock-hard superhero, especially when fans recognized him while he was making the movie and their faces registered dismay and disappointment. All of a sudden, mirrors were no longer his friends. Nor did he receive validation from fans. Not challenging one’s own assumptions is psychologically toxic. I began to let go of my fear of not being ‘good enough’ when I refocused from people I wished I was like to people I actually was like. When I stopped to ‘look under the hood’ with others I found everyone feels insecure, and they, too, are targeted and absorb toxic messages of how they should look, feel, or be more successful. Even Sylvester Stallone. The key to not beating myself up became knowing what I valued, why I valued it, and how I created my own needless suffering. I can’t change the world’s, YouTube’s, or ‘The Patriarchy’s’ unachievable standards, but I can reject them. Less caring = Less suffering It’s my decision. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

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

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

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