It's time to confront victim feminism's self-imposed disempowerment. Who's truly holding us back? Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash The persistent image of 'man-hating' has dogged feminism since, like, forever. It perpetually irritates some not because it's inaccurate, but because it isn't. More than ever. Power vs. victim feminism Naomi Wolf described two types of feminism she encountered in her 1994 book Fire with Fire: New Female Power and How It Will Change the Twenty-First Century. At the same time, feminist gadfly Christina Hoff Sommers detailed the same in her book Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women. They assigned different labels to the same descriptions: Feminists identifying with powerlessness and a fairly traditional image of women as weak, helpless, and in constant need of protection by, ironically, a largely male, 'patriarchal' state. Wolf called this group victim feminists; Sommers called them gender feminists. Feminists identifying with personal power and agency, who seek genuine equal rights for men and women, and who advocate women use their financial, economic and political power to achieve change for the greater good. Wolf calls them power feminists; Sommers calls them equity feminists. The misandrists populate mostly the victim feminist camp, although it's inaccurate to paint all victim feminists as man-haters. Having come of age myself in the early 1980s, when Second Wave feminism was in full flower, I became disenchanted years later after a growing internal reactionary mindset infantilized women, and with blinding lack of self-awareness, blamed only men for women's inequity. The problem, as I saw it, was that genuinely patriarchal institutions had clearly weakened since our great-grandmothers had fought for voting rights (the First Wave). Victim feminists seemed unwilling to acknowledge progress accomplished, which Wolf described at length in her book. Today, cognitive scientist and popular author Steven Pinker describes what he calls 'progressophobia' on the left--the fear of acknowledging the clear historical evidence for progress. I didn't appreciate feminism's growing misandrist mindset treating women as chronic perma-victims. It didn't jive with my own and other women's experiences that we held ourselves back as much as any systemic -ism did. I sure as hell couldn't 'identify'. As we march into the 21st century it's obvious we ARE making rather a lot of progress, and it's time to acknowledge what power feminists have recognized all along. Victims are weak, not empowered It's hard even for us power feminists not to fear our own power, let alone embrace it. Women have only begun to flex their muscles for a little over a century, after thousands of years of genuine patriarchy. Evolution takes time. I wrote recently about my admiration for U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who has never shirked from power and embodies the best qualities of strategic power--all aligned toward getting things done. What especially impressed me about Pelosi is how she boldly stated during her second run at the House leadership, "I'm the best qualified for the job." Men do that, not women. Why don't we? "That glass ceiling doesn't look so thick...." Public domain photo by scottwebb on Pixabay Nancy Pelosi does not fear men. One can offer the usual justifications for holding ourselves back--"When women are assertive we get called bitches!" "Who am I to say I'm the best-qualified?"--but maybe it explains why we don't get promoted as much. Leaders, well--lead. What men do right is they don't wait for anyone to hand them the power. They pursue it, and they don't care what you call them. Sometimes they take it too far, like trying to overthrow a government over an election they lost fair 'n' square, but you have to hand it to their leader for this: He won the first election fair 'n' square because he oozed confidence, however ill-fitting, and declared he was the best candidate. His opponent may arguably have never had a genuine chance at real power, but she was the first shot over the bow signaling women's time to lead the government is here. Now a woman is one heart attack away from the U.S. presidency, and in fact she was President for about an hour in November when the elected one underwent a minor surgical procedure. After the 2018 elections, over 100 women now warm Congressional seats and terrorize their toxic opposition on Twitter. It fetishizes weakness to blame 'The Patriarchy' as though it's some monolithic Illuminati. The world, and even North America, still retains many elements of patriarchy, but here at least, it's more like your wheezing elderly relation than, say, frat boy Tucker Carlson. It gives too much power to men and denies our own personal agency. With power comes responsibility, and too many feminists pay lip service to agency while remaining deeply conflicted about it. They, and sometimes the rest of us, don't even realize we think like victims. We face many genuine challenges in forcing men to share power, but no one ever gives it up willingly. Hence the MAGA backlash, as white people and male people realize people of color and women people want a seat at the table too. Like it or not, we need men to work with us on creating a more equitable society for all. Not all are on board with the MAGA set. Misandry pushes away our male allies Men are tired of being blamed for everything wrong with the world. As a member of an advantaged group myself--white people--I know many of us, too, are tired of being blamed for the same. I don't hold men today responsible for the grievances of the ancient past any more than I hold myself for any. I especially don't consider a birth penis (or a white skin) 'original sin'. Treating men as The Enemy pushes away our potential allies--some of whom lick their wounds with 'men's rights activists' or sexually entitled incels. Plenty of real men would like to see women succeed and are genuinely invested in creating a more equitable world. But they're neither blind nor stupid. They can see how women hold themselves back. How we need to speak up more. How rapists get away with it because we don't hold them accountable. How we're more risk-averse. How we fear too much what others will say about us. How we worry more about what we look like than what we've done, and what we can do. How we're afraid to seek power. When I make these points I get a certain amount of pushback, but men reach out to me publicly and privately to say, "Thank you. Thank you for saying what I don't dare say." I get them. I feel the same about 'victim antiracists'. They closely resemble victim feminists, except their fight is racial rights. Worthy cause, but, like victim feminism, self-infantilizing and bigoted (white people). Victim antiracists teach people of color they're perpetually oppressed and in need of constant state (white) protection. Sound similar? Still waiting to 'not be heard' In my thirties, I read an article by a newspaper reporter (she later became a friend) who wrote about how her voice became less important after she hit forty. Her bosses didn't listen to her opinion as much as when she was young and cute. Men were less inclined to turn to her in a conversation than they once had. I was perturbed. I was a few years away. It never happened. It seems when you're as loud and opinionated as I am, people hear me whether they want to or not. I'm hard to tune out without leaving the room. I don't always speak up. I don't always make myself heard. Like other women--like other people--I sometimes silence myself. Now I push myself more when I feel reticent about speaking out. Less clueful men will never learn to listen to women, hear our stories, unless we make them. Image by Tumisu on Flickr Be too strong for them to ignore you I wonder if we make it easier to victimize women when we don't take responsibility for ourselves and our lives. When we complain about harassment overmuch and exaggerate harm done, how serious do we sound? How overprivileged? How much does a victim feminist mindset train girls to think like victims rather than go-getters? My Life, As Interpreted By Victim Feminism It's one thing to be rightfully irritated if some jerk feels you up on the bus, it's quite another to turn it into an Epic Battle With The Patriarchy. Xena I ain't, and neither is anyone else. I reserve my outrage for the truly outrageous, like that American women's precious abortion rights are hanging by a thread over a malign Supreme Court stacked with newer members who couldn't hold an intellectual candle to a guinea pig. Or that Harvey Weinstein was allowed to operate in plain view for decades. Or that judges still worry more about what effect jail will have on a rapist than the convicted perp's rape had on his victim. Or that his dad called it 'twenty minutes of action'. There's nothing less weak-looking than women mistaking slights and 'microaggressions' for world-class oppression. #MeToo jumped the shark when Matt Damon was all but forced off Twitter for differentiating between a butt grab and a rape. As we move into the halls of power, how can we challenge ourselves more? How can we be stronger? How can we confront our personal power and use it for the greater good? How do we change the often-unconscious patriarchal paradigm and embrace our male allies rather than drive them away? What can we learn from good men in power? What do they do right that we don't? What don't they do that we do? What are we learning from good women in power? What are we learning from the ones who screw it up? (I'm looking at you, Elizabeth Holmes!) Are we acting like victims, thinking like victims, playing at empowerment while hiding in our little 'safe spaces', slapping at 'The Patriarchy' when it walks by, but failing to call the police if we hear our (female) neighbor in danger? Who's really holding us back, the Patriarchy or ourselves? Or each other? What are we doing to challenge the genuine man-haters? If misogyny is wrong, so is misandry. Men make up roughly half the world's population. We have to learn to live and work with them. I'd rather work with them than against them.

And you don't have to, either. Mother teaching daughter how to sit in yoga butterfly pose — depositphotos.com "Did you ever notice it’s the short guys who hit?” Michelle’s question came out of left field. My first thought was, What on earth makes you think I’d know? “No, I’ve never been hit by a man,” I replied in a steady voice, otherwise hornswoggled. “I’ve dated plenty of short men, but none of them had Short Guy Disease.” You know That Guy. The little man who struts around overcompensating for his perceived lack of manhood because he’s not towering over you like a cactus in the Arizona desert. Who’s more hypermasculine than Stallone and hits women because he thinks they’re secretly laughing at him. And because they’re weaker than he, and if he can’t get respect for his height, dammit, people and especially those bitches will respect his superior strength. Not the kind of man I ever went out with. Michelle believed this was normal, and part of every woman’s existence. She didn’t know I’d made conscious choices my entire life, thanks to the greatest gift from my mother. “Never put up with a man who hits you,” my mother instructed as soon as my hormones bubbled like shaken ginger ale. “If he hits you once, that’s it, he’s over. Don’t let him apologize and swear it’ll never happen again. He’ll give you gifts or take you out to dinner and tell you how much he loves you. He’ll shower you with crap and treat you great for a while, until you’re over it, and then it happens again. It ALWAYS happens again. ALWAYS.” Mom was never abused. Not by my grandfather, her first husband, or my father. Nor by any boyfriends. She never mentioned anyone she knew who was battered. Probably she didn’t know. Good wives knew how to whip up a great cake for a neighborly kaffeeklatsch. The best ones knew precisely how much vodka to mix into the pitcher of screwdrivers. Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay Mom taught me how boys and men manipulated women to get sex. “He’ll say whatever he thinks will get you into bed,” she said. “He guilt-trips you. He’ll say if you really loved him you’d do this for him. If he really loves you he won’t push you to do anything you’re not ready for. “Or he’ll claim he’s got ‘blue balls’ from sexual arousal. It’s a made-up condition. He’ll claim it hurts. He’ll say it’s your fault so you need to relieve it. I don’t know if it hurts if they get worked up but they can masturbate if it’s that bad. They don’t require you. “He’ll tell you all the other girls are doing it. Don’t believe them! He’ll threaten to find a girl who will if you won’t. Let him go if he does. If all he cares about is himself he’s not good enough for you!” Mom made it crystal-clear I had the power to say no to abuse, never to tolerate it. In the 1970s ‘those damn women’s libbers’ as my feminist-in-denial mother always called them, had begun to focus attention on the problems of rape, sexual assault, and battering. Mom was furious one night at dinner over a woman she’d seen on an afternoon talk show. “This dimbulb was married to this man who constantly beat her, and she put up with this for years, and you know what she did? She burnt him alive in his bed! She poured gasoline on him while he was sleeping and she set fire to him! How the hell can you do that to another human being, even if he was a monster? WHY THE HELL DIDN’T SHE LEAVE HIM? “And you know what the audience did after she told this story? They APPLAUDED HER!” Mom finished, livid with rage. The Burning Bed was published in 1980, the infancy of understanding the complex dynamics of abusive relationships. Fortunately, a seminal and better book was released the same year, The Battered Woman. Mom’s frustration with women who stayed with abusers was rooted in a common ignorance of how different life was for women who often came from violent, dysfunctional homes as The Burning Bed’s Francine Hughes had. But her underlying belief in women’s personal power, at least early on, is a vision we need to embrace today. Mom may have lacked compassion in an era with little common example or discussion about male abuse, but she recognized the personal power women possessed but didn’t use. She challenged the prevailing wisdom and imparted it to her daughter, who never allowed a man to treat her badly either. I got lucky in the birth lottery. Born middle-class with parents who cared deeply for my brother and I, we had our dysfunctions like every family, but we grew up without physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. Our parents made mistakes, some of which eat at me a bit even today, but I also keep it in perspective. My cobwebbed complaints are definitely small potatoes compared to the stories I heard from other girls in high school and came to believe I was the only girl in town who wasn’t being visited at night by her father or some male relative. I’ve spent a lifetime not being abused by men. I’ve been harassed, and subjected to misogyny and double standards and all the other female crap, but I’ve never been whacked around by a partner, never been seriously sexually assaulted, never dealt with any remarkable psychological or emotional abuse. I’ve been manipulated, sure. I’ve given up my power many times and I’ve been pretty damn lucky when I’ve pulled some seriously dumb shit which could have ended badly and for which I’d have been partly responsible, for putting myself in danger. I excuse no man for what he does to others, but I own my responsibility to myself. Mom taught me never to tolerate misogyny. I identified on my own some of the toxic male subcultures where one must tread with great caution and to recognize key elements — degrading comments about women, severe homophobia, hypermasculinity — as red flags. Photo by Vera Arsic from Pexels Mom, and the take-charge protect-yourself feminism of the times taught me how not to act like an easy target. I believe abusive men can detect a woman with a victim mentality, or who is compliant enough to put up with misogyny. I know women who are sexually assaulted have an increased likelihood of it happening again. I’m not sure why; no one else does either. It’s like predators can smell it on them. I’m doing something right. And I’m not doing other things right. I’ve never been attracted to abusive men, nor do I fancy Danger Boys. I act like I don’t take any shit. It’s like they can smell it on me. I want to help other women see they don’t have to tolerate abuse. And men too; I have an ex-partner whose ex-wife used to hit him, and he didn’t hit back because ‘You don’t hit girls.’ It’s controversial to say women have a certain level of choice but I recognize many are blind to it, and it’s not their fault. I want to open their eyes to their power, and break the toxic traumatic bonds with abuse. I want every baby girl to grow up with my mother. I want everyone to just say no to control, manipulation and abuse. This first appeared on Medium in September 2020.

The trial was a big win for sexual abuse victims CC0 image from Pixnio It shaped up to be a tough slog for witnesses testifying against Ghislaine Maxwell at her sexual abuse and trafficking trial, challenged to remember events as they happened twenty and thirty years ago. Wide speculation held it would all hinge on the credibility of the all-but-one pseudonymous victims. Would they be believed? The defense team did what they were paid to do, attempt to discredit them and render their testimony too questionable. It's every witness's worst nightmare, increased by the notoriety and sheer media circus surrounding Maxwell, the one that didn't get away. Nevertheless, the jury returned guilty verdicts on five of six counts involving sex trafficking and sexual abuse of young girls, some beginning as young as fourteen. Maxwell is facing up to sixty-five years in prison. They were believed. I marvel at the sheer courage of the four who testified how Epstein and sometimes Maxwell herself sexually abused them. I'm cowed by the horror they faced reliving the nightmare, describing in graphic detail the horrific abuse of their young bodies by these two sexual predators, ruthlessly cross-examined by a hostile defense team. Epstein can't be tried since he committed suicide in his jail cell a few years ago. But they got his raven-haired accomplice and partner-in-crime. She prospected, procured and groomed his victims for a man who allegedly wanted sex at least three times a day. It's hard for sexual abuse and other crime victims to remember what happened to them even just the night before, much less decades later. When the amygdala, the fear center of the brain takes over from the prefrontal cortex, the more rational part, they're no longer in control of what they pay attention to so they may not be able to answer questions like what was he wearing and do you remember the mole on his neck. It becomes easy to poke holes in memories of ancient crimes, when accusers give different details over several interviews, in this case spanning many years. The defense tried to portray the women as liars, shaming and blaming, but that tactic didn't work. Maybe we're finally coming to grips with #MeToo and the not-exactly-radical observation that rich, powerful men often think they're beyond the arms of common decency and the law. The defense argued the women did it for financial gain, except there was none to be had for testifying; they'd received money already from a victim compensation fund set up by the Jeffrey Epstein estate. All that was in it for them was reliving horrible experiences, being derided as liars and opportunists and--hopefully, making Ghislaine Maxwell pay for the way she colluded to ruin their lives for her eternally smug-faced friend. Yet they got five out of six guilty verdicts. Why were they believed? The defense brought to the witness stand a $600 an hour California psychologist and university professor, Elizabeth Loftus, who specializes in testifying for criminal trial defense teams to discredit witnesses. Loftus brought up many sound, established research findings into the malleability of memory, how false memories can be created, how memories change over time as we interpret them differently, how inaccurate details can be introduced and 'remembered' by witnesses, demonstrating just how suggestible and unreliable the human memory can be. It's unclear why this tactic didn't work as effectively here as it has in other trials. Perhaps we've become more knowledgeable about psychology overall; a jury didn't buy R. Kelly's defense that someone like him didn't need to 'force' young women to have sex with him and that point is pretty inarguable. It's only a credible defense if you believe men only ever 'force' women because they can't get them otherwise. Today, we know far more about male psychology, especially rape motivations, and the satisfaction some receive in controlling, dehumanizing and degrading others, particularly women, for their sexual needs. Perhaps #MeToo has done an effective job of highlighting just how much sexual abuse and harassment of women takes place, even among one's own friends and family. Women speak out more about the experience of having been controlled by an abusive partner or parent, and analyze why they stayed, why they put up with it, and how they were induced to submit. The believability of the Maxwell accusers is something feminists, rape activists and others would do well to study to determine why the highly accomplished Loftus's testimony wasn't accepted by jurors. How did the prosecution respond? What did they say that might have discredited Loftus in the jury's minds? We need to know why. Recognize this victory Here's a sexual abuse statistic that won't surprise anyone: One hundred percent of unreported rapes or sexual assaults result in zero convictions. One major obstacle to finding justice for abuse victims is that so many haven't historically been believed. Many victims may not even report because they're told by others, including other women, they won't be believed. Easier to just pick up your life and move on as best you can. Why go through all that trauma again just to watch the SOB walk free? Other times, the victim is believed and gets a conviction, but some judges are more concerned for the delicate sensibilities of a young rapist in the slammer than they are about the woman whose life he changed forever (perhaps not ruined, but sometimes). Rapists Who Get Off Easy Don't Get Off Scot-Free Still, we need to celebrate the small victories, the baby steps toward making real gains in seeking justice for rape and sexual abuse victims, and not fall prey to the 'progressophobia' of thinking nothing ever changes, or that conditions are worse than ever before for victims. We need to celebrate our victories. We must acknowledge progress. I wrote the above article on rapists to highlight that while convicted rapists may get lighter than hoped-for sentences, the accused still pay a price, even when they're acquitted. While Brock Turner got a light punishment for his conviction, his trial ended his dreams of Olympics glory and today works a low-paying job in obscurity while living with his parents in a small Ohio town. We forget that rape trials are traumatic also for the accused, who endure the massive anxiety of wondering what will happen to him. Of wondering whether the next time he's party to a rape he'll be on the receiving end, in prison. When you're sitting next to your lawyer in the courtroom, there are no do-overs. To quote Dr. Branom in Stanley Kubrick's movie A Clockwork Orange, "Here's the punishment element perhaps." The unpleasant fact is perpetrators must be reported and prosecuted more. A partial win is better than letting them get away with it. Of course, no one wants to be the one to pressure a crying, traumatized victim to report, although I don't see any other way around it. These crimes must be reported, the sooner the better. I hope the public experience of the Maxwell trial gives courage to others who suffered horrific abuses at the hands of entitled, above-the-law men, even those who aren't millionaires. These women were only four witnesses out of 150 victims who were paid out of the estate's victim compensation fund until the money ran out. I'm heartened Maxwell didn't get away with it. Her four accusers were believed and were rewarded with five guilty verdicts. This is a BIG win for sexual assault victims. Let's celebrate our victories, and build upon them for future trials.

When women write misogynist kink for women. Because, like, pirate rape empowerment or something. Photo by Sophie Dituri on Flickr What if someone, under a pseudonym, wrote a kink lit trilogy about a beautiful teenage virgin from a warm and loving home who is raped while unconscious and taken away by the rapist, with the reluctant permission of her parents, to a place far away where she is forced to be naked at all times, is strung up for a man’s pleasure over his bed, is spanked until she technically should have no ass left, is trained to be a slave and sexual plaything for, like, everybody, is beaten and tortured, and pretty much horribly mistreated 24×7 until her spirit is broken and she learns to like it? Then engages in increasingly weirder and abusive sexual adventures consensually — because looking to be brutalized more is apparently the only form of consent Our Heroine possesses in this quartetverse — because she was ‘awakened’ to how ‘boring’ her life had been before she was ‘rescued’ by a Prince who relieved her from the terrible, burdensome bonds of loving parents and personal safety? What if you learned that the mystery kink lit author was a man — especially an unpopular man — say, sex crime-probed U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz, or Alex Jones, or maybe schoolgirl killer Paul Bernardo? Betcha people would be screaming blue murder over the positive depiction of ‘hate-fucking’ and misogyny and violent imagery of sexual assaults on a woman and how just this sort of thing contributes to rape culture. Now what if you learned that it wasn’t Roosh who’d written it, or Bernardo, not even a screaming incel, but instead good ol’ vampire queen Anne Rice? (a/k/a A.N. Roquelare in 1982). And that it was written not for men but for women? Beauty and the Stockholm Syndrome I happened across a New York Times story from 2012 about how Rice’s hardcore kink lit BDSM Sleeping Beauty trilogy was re-issued to capitalize on the 50 Shades of Grey popularity (which made ‘mommy porn’ a household word. Who knew housewives could be so kinky?) One of the comments in the sidebar, though, written by a man, made me stop and think: So– I need to get this straight — men are pigs because they read and watch porn where women are dominated and sexually degraded (everybody knows this). But we now know that it is admirable for women to express themselves by reading “erotica… about being overwhelmed by a pirate, [because] that’s her right.” Huh…? Um….good point. Uh, conflicting messages about rape culture, ladies? I’ve read the first Beauty book, borrowed from a kinky friend, out of curiosity. By page 57 I was quite certain even the most dedicated spanking fetishists must surely be tired of all the damn spanking. I didn’t even think I’d likely finish the book, not because it was alternately offensive, horrifying and boring (boy oh boy did everyone have a thing for spanking) but because I’d vowed never to read another Anne Rice book until she’d learned about the Mysteries of the Plot Line, which were, IMO, missing in action in her first two vampire novels. I stuck with this one because even though its plot line was thinner than a Condé Nast fashion model’s breakfast, it nevertheless existed. Needless to say, I didn’t read the next two books, which I understand involve a move from spanking to sticking everything you can think of up southern regional orifices. Still, the whole time, I was keenly aware that I was reading porn for chicks. And that if it had been written by a man it would be held up as a classic example of What’s Wrong With Men And Misogyny. But…wow. I can see where men — a decent man, by the tone of the commenter — can be confused by the conflicting messages here. Violent porn is bad when men write and read it, but empowering when women do it? The thing is, even if I don’t understand what’s erotic about stringing a naked woman up by her ankles and wrists in the garden and smearing her ladyparts with honey to attract insects, I get that there are people who do. In the olden days I’d have guessed the prime suspects were, ‘men who virulently hate women,’ but now I know there are, apparently, empowered women who find this erotic. At least in fantasy, which is what the Beauty trilogy is. And I do understand the attraction of fantasies, even violent fantasies — because you, the star and producer, have complete control over what’s happening, even if your fantasy is that you have no control. No sane person wants to be in a real situation like that without full control — that’s why BDSM culture has safe words and rules and clearly delineated discussions about consent and permission. Beat me, hurt me, but hold on a minute, Wankel rotary engine, I need a breather. And no, you may not insert an egg beater up my hoo-ha, but yes, the spatula is just fine. Aunt Jemima me, baby!!! Maybe Anne Rice can ‘splain… We should ask the question the NY Times commenter asked — why are men pigs if they seek violent kink lit, but women are empowered when they do? I’m not condemning BDSM/kink lit or culture — whatever floats your boat in a free society, baby, and as long as you go about your somewhat risky business in as safe a manner as possible, which BDSM culture does, have at it. But consider what Anne Rice wrote on her blog about her re-release: It has to be remembered that within the frame of a sadomasochistic fantasy like the Beauty trilogy, the readers are invited to identify with and enjoy the predicament of the slaves. The books aren’t about literal cruelty; they’re about surrender, the fun of imagining you have no choice but to enjoy sex. Beauty’s slavery is delicious, sensuous, abandoned, and ultimately liberating. This is all part of the framework. Now imagine Matt Gaetz saying that. Or saying he identified with the Prince or other Master, and that ‘Beauty’s slavery is delicious, sensuous, abandoned, and ultimately liberating.’ Oh yeah. Or Donald Trump, Roy Moore, Jeffrey Epstein, any other misogynist man you love to hate, or even Ghislaine Maxwell. So how come Anne Rice gets a free pass? Standing outside kink culture, I don’t see any difference between the Beauty book I read, and the violent, humiliating, degrading and dehumanizing porn lit and imagery certain men are flagellated for consuming. Is Rice’s “erotica” more socially acceptable because it’s equal-opportunity abusive? Not just man on woman violence, but woman on man, woman on woman and man on man? 50 Shades of WTF Since I’m a woman who tolerates zero male control in a partner, I seriously don’t get the appeal of 50 Shades of Grey, but hey, I guess for women who like masochism and bondage and submission and especially nailing a filthy rich guy it’s awesome. (Mommy, where do stereotypes come from?) Beat me, hurt me, make me read badly-written erotica. Photo by Mike Mozart on Flickr There’s certainly a double standard going on, and I’m just as confused as the NY Times commenter. Let’s just say it out loud: ‘Erotica’ like Rice’s Beauty series (Ugh, she wrote a fourth one) is contributing to rape culture, an idea that will not sit well at all with the kink community and many feminists (some of which, I suspect, are privately as disturbed by the 50 Shades and Beauty popularity as I am). Let me make something perfectly clear: The kink/BDSM community doesn’t offend me. Violent, degrading, humiliating porn does. Regardless of who writes it and consumes it. Remember the olden days, when women helped pioneer rape culture with bodice-ripping romance novels? I’ve read only a few, they’re not my cuppa, but I always wondered about the rapes women enjoyed complete with orgasms. Is porn desensitizing men to violence against women? Shortly after Toronto’s Jian “I want to hate fuck you” Ghomeshi scandal broke, the Toronto Star asked Is porn desensitizing men to violence against women? Can she truly give consent in this situation? Read it and then consider the following questions. Go ahead, I’ll wait. If violent porn as described in the article contributes to rape culture by making violence against women seem more acceptable, then doesn’t Rice’s Beautyverse also contribute by making it seem like that’s what women really want, and does it ‘train’ some to be willing to accept that treatment? If the Beauty books are just ‘harmless fantasy’, then isn’t violent porn by men and for men as well? After all, as the writer notes, we can watch an action film without wanting to shoot up a mall, right? What about the 50 Shades of Grey series? I haven’t read any of the books myself, or seen the movies, but others argue they glorify rape. If you ask, “Why the hell would a normal, sane man want to watch a woman being choked nearly to death?” why then would you not ask, “What normal, sane woman would want to read about a teenage virgin getting raped in her sleep?” We condemn that up one side and down the other when high school football jocks do it to a drunk, passed-out teenage girl. Maybe the question now is, is violent, misogynist kink chick lit desensitizing women to violence against women? Serious question. Okay, but just remember the safe word is “Mr. Rogers”.

There’s another option for angry, entitled incels besides sex workers and sexbots— and yes, I’m serious about this Public domain image from PxFuel If you’ve ever explored the incel movement — hopefully out of intellectual curiosity rather than a state of chronic sexual grievance — you know how entitled these guys feel to sex, and not just any woman, but with the crème de la crème — the drop-dead gorgeous wank fantasies of every California beach movie. Not you and I, my fellow mortals. Yes, I hear you, thank God/dess we don’t stand up to the exquisitely discriminating tastes of the ultimate arbiters of the female form. The involuntarily celibate famously don’t think women should be allowed to make their own sexual decisions. And because women customarily don’t spread their legs (or lips) for desperately misogynist spoiled brats (unless they’re rich — incels are right about that), said women, the brats opine, should be raped if necessary (‘blackpilling’ in their parlance). Elliott Rodger, the Killer Virgin, and now patron saint of people with dicks shaped like a bicycle handlebar grip, expressed in his lengthy, tedious, turgid pre-murder/suicide manifesto that essentially, No means Yes. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilised men of intelligence.— Elliott Rodger It’s the crux of what you’ll find in incel forums, man-boys throwing tantrums because their ‘10s’ won’t mate with them. It wouldn’t be surprising if even ‘2s’ and ‘3s’ wouldn’t touch their dicks on a triple-dog dare with a million dollars behind it, either. New York Times op-ed Neanderthal Ross Douthat argued incel murders were due to these guys not getting the opportunity to jack off into women’s orifices rather than that they were entitled, objectifying assholes. (Or “mentally ill”, as right-wing white people call it when white people engage in terrorist acts.) Douthat borrowed and then maimed ideas from an article by Oxford philosopher Amia Srinavasan who pondered whether sexual gratification from others was a human right, and concluded of course it wasn’t. (Which is what you’d expect from a woman.) Douthat twisted her words to make it sound like she was floating a debatable idea (which is what you’d expect from someone who looks like a former incel). Anyone who read her piece in the London Review of Books couldn’t fail to understand she did not think sex with others was a ‘human right’. We need a ‘redistribution of sex’, Douthat argues. He suggests sex robots or escorts could handle these guys (don’t escorts service men sexually already? Oh wait, they expect to get paid for it, the greedy bitches), or maybe we should return to monogamy and chastity — for whom, one might ask, since men as a whole have never considered either as a mandate for themselves. Especially chastity, except in a few cases, and no, Catholic priests definitely don’t count. He also mentions returning to that ‘special respect owed to the celibate,’ by which I expect he means female pre-marital chastity, since men have never been as interested in policing male virginity, not even in religions that mandate both parties should come to the marriage bed crystal-pure. There are no ‘Purity Balls’ for evangelical teenage boys. His argument for monogamy obliquely suggests bringing back the viability of marriage, but if these guys can’t even get laid, who’s going to marry them? Perhaps we need to bring back arranged marriages, not as uncommon or as ancient-historical as we think. We can find a shade of it as recently as the early twentieth century when families had the power to veto a woman’s marital choice, and force her toward the ‘right’ one. This happened to my ancestor who was pushed to married her alcoholic cousin, a ‘good catch’ instead of the man she wanted to marry. Big surprise: Her husband was abusive, and the marriage ended with a then-scandalous divorce. Won’t someone think of the embarrassed family? However, I’m down with Douthat’s sex robots idea. Incels can already buy a RealDoll if they can scrape together $6,000; maybe Walt Disney Corporation can trick them out with robotics to make each ‘10’ as realistically human as any dead President. Maybe the Incel Liberation Front can argue the government should give them a grant, not a loan, since Real Men don’t pay for sex, so they can afford RealDolls. The giveback, of course, is they don’t go on murderous rampages. But there’s another option beyond rape, sexual slavery and sexbots, for men who aren’t Jeffrey Epstein ( and by the way not all incels are white, not by a long cumshot). There’s a way for incels to get all the sex and blowjobs they want. Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels The suggestion isn’t as snarky as it sounds. I’m serious. Men have sex with other men for numerous reasons besides being homosexual or bi. Men have long made do with other men when necessary, and even when not necessary. Just ask all the Republicans and conservative evangelical Christian dudes who got caught schtupping other men. It’s not that difficult a step for incels. The first penis is always the hardest! I mean, consider this, boys: Y’all are obsessed with anal sex. Everyone looks the same from behind! According to a new book by a University of British Columbia sociologist, strongly-identified straight men engage in hookups and clandestine same-sex affairs on the side, and it’s often because they’re not getting enough sex at home. They don’t regard having sex with another man as cheating, and don’t engage in an extramarital affair with another woman because they’re afraid she’ll get ‘clingy’ and pose problems for their marriage. Still Straight: Sexual Flexibility among White Men in Rural America by Dr. Tony Silva notes they’re often politically conservative, including a small otherwise homophobic percentage and some felt sex with men lacked the pressure they felt when having sex with their wives. Most importantly, some did it because they were lonely and craved human touch and didn’t know a masculine way to get it platonically. So it’s not as much of a leap as one might think for incels. Sure, they’ll have to get used to the idea. But you know… Incels can shave really closely, or use a depilatory on their faces, then get together somewhere (after the COVID crisis is completely over, of course!), gather in someone’s basement, turn off the lights and get funky together. Who can tell the difference with all those smooth faces in the dark? And who knows better than men what makes a blowjob so good? (Oh, wait…yeah…not these guys. Ask questions, boys! Ask what he likes!) Men who have ad hoc sex with other men aren’t gay. They’re just making do until they can be with a woman. Incels will simply have to make do with making do. Or grow the hell up, get some therapy, and stop looking at women as living blowup dolls and calling us ‘cum sleeves’ and ‘roasties’. Try it, you’ll like it! Photo by Elvert Barnes on Flickr Men in the Middle East have been engaging in non-gay homosexual relations for centuries. This brings up one possible ointment in the fly. A guy might get to like it. Rather a lot! This happened to someone I knew from the Middle East. He related how the boys and men in his country had sex with each other because access to women was heavily restricted. He’s been with a fair number of women and had girlfriends (after he moved away) but he’s got a real thing for sausage now. “It’s true,” he told me. “I’m still not sure if I’m bi, bi-curious, or just acquired a taste for penis by accident.” He means the last part literally. He’s got a REAL taste for sausage, and I don’t mean Jimmy Dean. And of course, incels can get all the sex they want— or don’t — in prisons. Something to think about before they take up some wack job’s call for rape or mass slaughter since women won’t give it up like Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. Consensual or non-consensual? Your choice! Speaking of soldiers, they’ve done it on the front, and on the sly, as well. The understanding is you never speak of this. What happens in your man-cave stays in your man-cave. Especially with someone else’s man-cave. With a little sexual experience under their belts, incels will no longer be incels. You don’t have to have sex with the opposite sex to lose your virginity. Bonus: Anal sex may even prevent prostate cancer! According to an article my Jimmy Dean friend sent me. It’s not ideal, but it’s a real suggestion. Incels need to remember: It’s not gay unless you come to prefer it to women. Look, the Middle East is famously homophobic but it doesn’t stop them from doing each other. This is only until I get married in September, Ajmal! Your turn. Fast or slow? Teeth or no? Maybe when they’re less sexually frustrated they’ll be less inclined to shoot up a sorority or run down women from a van on a sunny day. The fact is, sex has gone downhill in North America in the last twenty years and we could all stand for a really good lay. No woman, though, will want to shag men raised on porn and misogyny who think vagina is a God-given human right. Imagine incels’ reaction if informed that gay men have a right to their assholes. The problem, of course, isn’t feminism or hypergamy but, you know, standards. Women’s. The kind incels today don’t meet, for some pretty damn good reasons. They want to date light-years out of their league, with women who wouldn’t make them happy anyway. But many mortal women aren’t looking for losers like rich guys Shia LaBoeuf or Mel Gibson, who no sane woman would touch with a ten-foot Hungarian if she wanted to go through life without black eyes or uber-Catholic-laced Sugar Tits abuse, nor do they even require a man to make six figures, let alone seven or more. They won’t nail Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, but they might nail a genuinely wonderful woman who loves him for himself, as long as he gives her something to genuinely love. So go ahead guys, meet up, shag like Spanish fly-crazed little gerbils, and maybe some day you’ll actually do a real live woman. Or, like my Middle Eastern friend said, “Try something new! Put that penis in your mouth and see if you like it!” “I never thought it could be like this, selftoucher04981.” “Yeah, I’m so glad for my dick to finally get to meet someone else, OralBill1991.” This first appeared on Medium in July 2021.

Why do we still not understand this? Free for commercial use photo from PxFuel I haven’t wanted children since I first gave it serious consideration, as I prepared to catapult into adulthood upon high school graduation. Growing up, I’d always assumed, as most people do, that I’d have children one day. It never seemed real, and once I actually began to consider it (not soon!) around 17, I found that kids didn’t fit into my plans. Granted, my ‘plans’ at the time were pretty stupid: I wanted to go to Hollywood and be an actress. My father had other plans: I would go to college, which he had been saving up for since I was nine. I wouldn’t have cut it as an actress. I was like Penny on The Big Bang Theory — more enthralled with being a Movie Star than any real interest in the craft. I’m glad I stuck to my guns on children rather than my childish fantasy. I thought it through, like birth control and what I’d do if I got pregnant anyway. No question: Abortion. Not everyone should have children. Too many do it without thinking, or by default. Oopsie, I’m pregnant, well, I don’t want to make the ugly abortion decision so I guess I’ll have the baby. Worse, society takes a dim view of adoption and women who consider it are ‘mom-shamed’ with, “How can you possibly give up your own child?” If they’re not ready for parenthood, they shouldn’t assume the mantle. They deny that child the possibility of a better life. (I’m thinking of someone I know whose mother did the right thing by choosing the adoption route.) The decision is easier for the guy. He can choose to opt out if he wants. It’s not fair, but that’s biology. The onus is mostly on the woman. Still, both need to take the potential oopsie seriously. Men need to think about where they shoot their seed and women need to consider harder whom they allow to shoot their seed into them. Because raising children isn’t for the uncommitted, and ruining children for life is always a joint effort, regardless of who’s present, or not. Recently I wrote about the toxic vulnerability in female psychology that impels some women to fall in love with abusers or even worse, serial killers and other prison cons. I am reminded once again of just how much some people shouldn’t have children. Like, the sort of people who breed abusers and serial killers. The research started for a friend’s movie project, just as I was finishing up, ironically, a book called When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence by Canadian writer Patricia Pearson. She describes how female serial killers and abusers may be far more common than believed, and how polite society is far more willing to excuse violent female behavior than males’, especially if she claims prior abuse. The abuse defense doesn’t hold for men raised in similar circumstances. Prior to the Pearson book I re-read James Gilligan’s now-classic Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic which catalogues how some of the most violent men in prison can detail hair-raising stories of physical, sexual, and mental abuse growing up. Tales of being locked in closets, burned, starved, neglected, raped, tortured. Consider this: Behind many hateful, misogynist, violent men are little boys who were abused and neglected by Dear Old Mom. Not all men abused by the early women in their lives grow up to become abusers. Some learn to be victims. Not all women growing up with abuse become victims; some become abusers. Until very recently, women haven’t had many career options apart from traditional roles like nurse, teacher, and the wank fantasy of misogynist men everywhere, the stay-at-home mother. Throw in some pretty outdated expectations in a seven-billion-and-counting world that we need to ‘go forth and multiply’, and you’ve got a helluva lot of people making babies who shouldn’t be, not without a LOT of forethought and soul-searching. After all, not all abuse victims grow up to be abusers. Some make the deliberate effort to be a better parent than their own. The Hallmark moment. Image by Bessi from Pixabay Children who are beaten by their fathers tend to grow up to become victims, whether they are boys or girls. Children who are beaten by their mothers, on the other hand, are more likely to become victimizers. — Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence We don’t appreciate the awesome responsibility of raising another human being nearly enough. I have maintained for many years, quite literally, that being a parent is the most important job in the world. Raising another human being to the best of your ability makes all the difference as to how that human will impact their environment and the people around them. You can’t avoid making mistakes, and sometimes you do your level best and the child still turns out a huge disappointment. Good parents sometimes raise mass murderers not because they were bad parents, but because the child is genetically predisposed somehow. Humans are incredibly messy, complex creations. The human brain, many scientists agree, is THE most complex creation in the entire Universe. As any engineer knows, the more complex a system (like 100 billion neurons in our brains with up to 15,000 connections for each), the more likely things will go wrong. Child abuse, whether it’s physical, sexual, emotional or psychological, creates disturbed adult humans. Most aren’t extremes, but they often become victims or abusers or maybe a bit of both. We speak mostly about male abusers and female victims and don’t ask about the abusers’ childhoods, nor do we seem to much care if they grew up in the circumstances under which they now make their spouse or partner suffer. We use abuse histories to excuse women’s behavior and ignore men’s. Pearson notes just about every woman in Da Clink blames her violence on prior abuse. Courts often grant more lenient sentences to women who claim this, or who fall back on a traditionalist, patriarchal facade of helpless woman without agency to excuse her violent behavior, even for murdering her own child. When we think about child abuse, we assume the abuser was the father. After all, men are more violent, right? Pearson explores SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) and whether they’re all as accidental as advertised. Deeper forensic investigation reveals ugly truth sometimes — when it occurs. Often it doesn’t because it’s widely believed maternal infanticide is rare. Some maternal murders that are undeniably not accidental, like the woman who put her incessantly crying baby in the middle of the road and ran over it with her car. Pearson examines women with cases of Munchhausen-By-Proxy, who make up or even create fictitious illnesses for their children, and in the most extreme cases kill them, seeking the love and attention they get from people afterward. Because no one believes women can be murderous predators, especially regarding their own children, they can get away with it for an incredible amount of time. One mother killed eight of her nine children before police investigated. Those are the kids who don’t grow up to be abusers or victims. What happens to the ones who do? “Children who are beaten by their fathers tend to grow up to become victims, whether they are boys or girls. Children who are beaten by their mothers, on the other hand, are more likely to become victimizers,” Pearson notes. And if they victimize the ‘right’ people, men, like serial killer Aileen Wuornos, they’re admired and sympathized with. “Imagine,” Pearson asks, “a TV movie about the Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy, assaulted by his father as a boy…Or the movie Helter Skelter, about child abuse victim Charles Manson, pitching him to us as a pitiable. From infancy, Manson was unwanted, neglected, mistreated, bounced from one rejecting adult to another.” Or Henry Lee Lucas, beaten all throughout his childhood and forced to cross-dress in public by his mother. And we wonder why he hated women? Yes, by all means let’s have a TV movie fetishizing these guys for striking a blow against ‘The Matriarchy’ for a change. NOT. I’d rather we not make excuses for either gender. Equality means we treat men and women equally, and give up flimsy excuses for victimhood. No one’s childhood is perfect, and we can all reflect back to try and get at the source of whatever emotionally or psychologically ails us. Parents aren’t perfect, and they’re never responsible for everything wrong with our lives. The quick jump to blame parents for everything, the mindless go-to for too many lazy therapists and others in the psychology profession, abrogates critical thinking. We are more than just our parents, after all. Our peer groups, for example, impact us as well. But no one, except maybe people in weird religious cults, think it’s a good idea to raise children in abusive environments. Parents who abuse contribute future abusers and victims, even though not all abusers/victims were necessarily mistreated in childhood. As we debate victims and abusers, as we challenge traditionalist thinking and previously unchallengeable narratives about who’s responsible (the abuser, ultimately), we need also to challenge the same thinking and narratives surrounding parenthood — more specifically, Is parenthood right for me? Enough already with what you ‘should’ to do please others — your family, your friends, your church, your insular community where things have ‘always’ been this way. What kind of a parent would I make? Am I really willing to put my full effort into raising children? (This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work or be made to feel guilty for doing so.) Do I truly understand the ‘sacrifices’ I will make raising other humans? Better decisions before birth may well result in fewer violent people, fewer victims of violence, and a psychologically healthier world overall. We need to think longer-term, to prevention rather than cleaning up the messes afterward. We feel horror, pity, and sorrow when we read about a small child starved or beaten to death by their caretakers and wish we could have done something to save him or her. Perhaps decades later that child would have grown up to horribly victimize others, with many screaming for the electric chair. It’s easy to feel sorry for a helpless child, much harder to feel sorry for an adult accused of raping, torturing, and murdering. Something to think about. This post originally appeared in The Bad Influence on Medium in August 2020.

Why do personally strong women refuse to challenge the outdated feminist narratives in their head? Confronting our inner dinosaur. Image by Lothar Dieterich from Pixabay I’ve always been disappointed when personally strong female friends, who would never take crap from a man, much less outright abuse, passively enable continued female victimhood with their outdated, unchallenged views. This ain’t the ’80s anymore. Second wave feminism was barely old enough to get into bars when I became a young adult and could only legally drink super-light beer. In university, I took part in my first and only feminist protest march for Take Back The Night. Violence against women was greater, part of a crime spike that began in the 1960s and didn’t abate until the ’90s. Rapes and sexual assaults were far higher, and women weren’t much believed by the courts. The victim received the blame. Nobody talked about male privilege. It was much harder for women to get better-paying jobs, and fewer graduated from college or university than they do today. We had little political representation in Washington. In short, the same problems we have today except — back then, with far less economic, educational, and political power. Not all women yet understand we’ve made a lot of progress in the last 35–40 years. Some still point the finger at men, which they should do, but only if they point their other finger at themselves, which they rarely do. Disappointing women are the ones I know to be strong and personally powerful, but don’t seem to have challenged the narratives in their head as dated as the coifs from bad ’80s hair bands. Anyone who thinks dinosaurs and humans haven’t lived together isn’t alive in the 21st century. Lead singer of the ’80s band Def Lizard. Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash Most recently, a friend and former roommate in the year or so after I graduated university accused me of ‘blaming the victim’. I forget why, but it was probably one of my Facebook feminism critiques observing how much women allow mistreatment of themselves. She was quite liberal back when we lived together, and still ‘progressive’ (the newer word) today. I think I’d upset her suggesting, as I often do, that women now have more control over how they’ll be treated by men than we acknowledge. I’d expect her reaction from a garden-variety younger feminist, the kind steeped in victimhood mentality, but I knew this gal to be strong and powerful even when she was twenty. She’d dated a friend of ours who was famously controlling and ‘patriarchal’ (a word we never used back then) and she never took any of his shit. He had to accept her as a full equal. There are many other examples I can think of where she exhibited the kind of take-no-shit attitude you found among many feminists back then, before they neutered themselves in the ‘90s. I responded, as I always do to her cliche, “Why are some women BEING the victim?” It dismays me to think that in the 35 or so years since we’d lived together, her feminism was as calcified as the outdated views of the Trumpies who are still fighting their feminism Waterloo. She hasn’t challenged her Inner Dinosaur. She hasn’t acknowledged how too many women are aiding and enabling female victimhood by ignoring what women do to put and keep themselves in danger. She’s never, to my knowledge, been abused by a partner and neither have I. She’s still on her first husband, thirty-plus years and counting. Any man who tried to bitch-slap either of us in the ’80s would have found himself hanging by a tree from his testicles tied around a low-hanging branch. I want other women to be as intolerant of abuse as we were and still are. I just wish my friend would embrace it for all women. Other friends I’d considered strong women got mad when I took a more balanced view of Toronto’s Jian Ghomeshi trial a few years back. The scandal that erupted in 2014 and culminated in a ‘sexual assault’ trial in 2015 was a personal watershed moment, when I realized just how weakened modern feminism had become. Ghomeshi was accused by a few women, 10+ years after the fact, of ‘sexually assaulting’ them even though by my own admittedly American standards it was physical rather than sexual. Not only was it weird to see face-slapping and neck-throttling defined as ‘sexual’ under the flimsiest of pretexts, but the trial turned into a giant feminist embarrassment as emails dug up by Ghomeshi’s attorney demonstrated the women weren’t nearly as traumatized as they’d claimed. Victim feminists twisted themselves into knots to avoid admitting these starstruck groupies deliberately put themselves back in danger trying to get into Ghomeshi’s pants after each initial physical assault. Then the case really fell apart when the court discovered private collusion between the witnesses. Ghomeshi was acquitted. Victim feminists threw tantrums about how women are ‘never’ believed, a gross exaggeration in a case where pretty much everyone believed the women, only the hardest-core anti-feminists supported Ghomeshi, and even the judge said he thought he was guilty but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. I was as disgusted by my so-called ‘feminist’ friends whining about victimization when Ghomeshi’s dizzy bimboes were anything but. My friends’ Inner Dinosaurs ran rogue, unconsciously denying other women the agency that they themselves owned. I expect squishy reactions from the perma-victim set but I expect better from those who know their boundaries and have never, ever, let a man assault them. For whom a ‘date’ with Jian Ghomeshi would have ended right after the first slap-’n’-throttle incident. They’d have never emailed him ‘I love your hands’, or photos of the emailer wearing a bikini, or given him a hand job in a park later. Worst of all: “You kicked my ass last night and that makes me want to fuck your brains out.” Sure makes it sounds like she ‘enjoyed’ the abuse, huh? That’s what feminists with calcified thinking won’t question, even as they would never tolerate such treatment of themselves. Instead, they ignore female ‘agency’ and refuse to ask women to be as accountable for themselves as they do of men. My mother taught me well: “The first time a man hits you should be his last. No second chances. He’ll do it again if you let him.” They went back for more. But he had sex with none of them. One wonders what might have happened if he had. We should want for others what we claim for ourselves. We should also be willing to revisit what we believe in periodically and see if it still remains valid today. Back when my friend and I were twenty, ‘Don’t blame the victim,’ was pretty relevant. Women simply had less power back then and they weren’t supported if they claimed a rape. #MeToo has changed all that. The court of ‘justice’ may still not believe an assault victim but there’s much power and support to be found on social media. Today, women have far more power to Just Say No than we had. At least those of us who’d defined our boundaries. I don’t fault young women who don’t. They’re young and inexperienced. Not everyone had my mother growing up. So reciting the venerable mantra, ‘Don’t blame the victim,’ is getting a little tattered around the edges. I think of this as I better understand the dynamics of abuse for both the abuser and the victim as I finish up the book Why Does He Do That? Inside the Mind of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft. It was recommended to me by a fellow Medium writer. It’s an amazing book. He only touches upon the mistakes women make, how they keep believing the abuser’s lies and keep hoping the ‘good periods’ will eventually take over and eliminate the ‘bad periods’, and how they don’t listen to their friends and family who try to warn them this guy’s bad news. I wish he’d have acknowledged the bad decisions women make in this regard, but the book is eighteen years old so he’s a product of his time. I don’t know if he’s revised his views since then. Maybe it’s difficult, when you work so closely with abusers. An unwavering commitment to ‘don’t blame the victim,’ is an example of calcified feminist thinking. Asking why a particular woman did this or that or made this or that decision is more of a ‘post-mortem’, I believe, like the corporate world engages in after a completed project. You figure out what went right, what went wrong, and resolve to the right things again and to not repeat the wrong things. I can’t swear I’m not calcified in some of my thinking either, but I make an honest effort not to be. It’s why I’ve moved more toward the ‘Murky Middle’ politically, and try to see more sides than the blinkered view of my own ideological persuasions (still left, but closer to the center than before). I have never been abused or seriously sexually assaulted, partly due to occasionally doing dumb shit and being fortunate nothing bad happened, but more often because of the decisions I’ve made, most of all in who I allow into my environment, social circles and dating realm. Controllers and potential abusers get the boot pretty quickly. I make conscious decisions. I want that for other women. I especially want to get the word out to young girls and young women who aren’t as experienced. I want them to understand that they have more control over their lives than they know, and I want to empower them to make the right decisions. I seek my tribe of women, men and anyone else who feel empowered and want others to be as well. Who aren’t calcified in their thinking, ‘dinosaur’ lefties who haven’t had an original thought since Reagan talked about a ‘nuclear umbrella’. They’re no more able to think critically than the Trumpies who operate from their own increasingly-shrinking political bubble. The world evolves, and our thinking should too. Some values and beliefs never change — like that people of color are as entitled to the same rights and treatment as white people in America — and other values and beliefs may not be as applicable anymore. It ain’t the ’80s anymore. It also ain’t the ’60s, ’70s, ’90s or the ‘oughts’. As we head into Decade Three of the 21st century, we need to remember that one day it ‘won’t be the ‘Teens or the Twenties’ anymore. Whatever you believe today…..may not work as well tomorrow. This post originally appeared on Medium in September 2020.

Because guess what, we’re *all* narcissists! Seriously. “Are you a good narcissist, or a bad narcissist?” Creative Commons 2.0 image by Insomnia Cured Here on Flickr Calling someone a narcissist is like accusing them of being a carbon-based life form. Duh. I tend to roll my eyes when people talk about the ‘narcissist’ in their life or past, except for experts. I sometimes read Dr. Sherri Heller, a therapist who specializes in complex trauma and narcissism who writes extensively about genuine toxic narcissism. She’s an eminently more informed source for diagnosing it than the average layperson. Everyone else? Not so much, unless they have something new to say (they mostly don’t), or describe what sounds like a genuine malignant narcissist, or to learn more about the psychology of people who think they’re narc detectors. If you were to ask them if they themselves are narcissists, you’d almost certainly get a negative, if not outraged response. If you can’t even recognize the narcissist you see every morning when you brush your teeth, how can anyone trust you to recognize narcissism in others? Someone’s narcissism article caught my eye and it taught me something about narcissism I didn’t know — it’s not a character fault, it’s a spectrum, rather the way we now understand autism as a brain development condition with a wide variety of symptoms people experience universally, without regard to our identity labels. Some of us fall in the socially skilled range; they’re popular and well-liked, and others falling further down the spectrum are socially challenged and unable to function well with others in countless different iterations. Narcissism, as it turns out, isn’t much different. The question isn’t are you a narcissist, but what kind of narcissist are you? The article referenced an intriguing book: Rethinking Narcissism: The Secret to Recognizing and Coping with Narcissists by Dr. Craig Malkin. Snagged it! Malkin says psychologists and psychiatrists have begun to look at narcissism as something that evolved in us as self-preservation, and it’s a healthy psychological trait in moderation. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 isn’t the best place to be. It’s the worst, maybe even worse (personally) than being a 10. Who’s a 10? I don’t know, and Dr. Malkin doesn’t say, and everyone has an opinion. I expect Donald Trump springs to mind on the subject of the über-narcissist, with some pretty good cases made that he’s a malignant narcissistic psychopath with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (without evaluating him personally). It’s not a unanimous call, either. I’d call Trump the gold standard so far, along with Kim Jong Un and possibly Vladimir Putin. The way Hitler is our gold standard of ultimate evil, but someone one day might prove worse. On the lower end of Malkin’s narcissism spectrum, echoist narcissists (also called introverted narcissists) are about a 1–4. They’re the ones without enough narcissism. They don’t like being the center of attention; they give too much but fear taking; they don’t feel special at all, but ironically, unappreciated. They’re happy to tell you how much they give, lacking the Trumpian bravado of I’ve done more for black people than any other President! The high-ranking extroverted narcissists are at 7–10. These are the ones people read and write about the most. The narcissists for whom it’s all about me me me. Public domain image from PxFuel The kind of narcissist you want to be is in the middle, the communal narcissist, at around 4–6. Maybe 6.5. Who’s at the lowest end of the spectrum? The 0–2s? Malkin’s descriptions reminded me of the very most miserable men about whom American psychiatrist and author Dr. James Gilligan called the ‘living dead’ he found in prison hospitals with inmates so bereft of self-regard, so completely and utterly shamed, that ‘living death’ was, “The most direct and literal, least distorted way to summarize what these men have told me when describing their subjective experience of themselves. Many murderers, both sane and insane, have told me that ‘they’ have died, that their personality has died, usually at some identifiable time in the past, so that they feel dead….They cannot feel anything…They feel like robots or zombies…one inmate feels like ‘food that is decomposing’. Human beings, in other words, who had zero or near-zero narcissism. Men who wished for death because, as Gilligan notes, psychological pain can be far crueler torture than physical pain. You can heal a wound; not as easily a soul. Other interesting factoids from Malkin’s book Narcissists can change, but like other compulsive addicts (narcs are addicted to feeling special) they have to want to change. How do you know who can change and who can’t? If they can’t display empathy, they may not be a ‘lost cause’, but Malkin points out it’s not your job to be their therapist. People slide up and down the narcissism scale; it’s not a fixed born trait. One person can be an introverted, at other times extroverted or communal narcissist. Often people in narcissistic relationships blame themselves because it’s easier than admitting s/he’s never going to change. If you do admit that, then what? Do you leave them? Do you strike out into an unknown world alone? What if they’re right and you’re nothing without them? Separating is painful. Blaming one’s self becomes a good excuse to stay. The problem isn’t him/her, it’s me. Malkin describes self-blame as a powerful fear that you’ll lose love if you ask for what you want. Here’s a thought-provoking nugget on the lure of the ‘bad boy’ for women and, for men, the ‘bad girl’, often described as ‘crazy’. “Why are all the crazy girls so sexy?” one male patient asks, which reminds me of what women often say about bad boys. The bad babes may be high-spectrum narcissists, and part of their appeal may be the high drama and unpredictable excitement that only wears thin after awhile. Something to think about with the guy who complains all his exes being ‘crazy’. He might be an abusive asshole who blames women for his inability to sustain relationships, or he might be attracted or addicted to ‘crazy’ narcissistic women just like some women dig narcissistic ‘bad boys’ they know aren’t good for them. Hmmm…women who complain all their exes are crazy… Photo by Flood G on Flickr Melody Wilding, an executive coach and Human Behavior professor, notes that one can exhibit narcissistic traits without being a genuine narcissist. In an article in Business Insider on alleged workplace narcissists, she points out how much complainers of ‘narcissist’ bosses and coworkers often fail to recognize how their own self-absorption may contribute to workplace stresses. She argues against ‘pathologizing’ people with an uninformed psychological disorder label, that it stigmatizes people with genuine mental disorders, and trivializes Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is a very serious diagnosis that applies to less than 5% of the population. Where are you on the Narcissism Spectrum? “Where am I? Where am I? Where am I???” Exactly my narcissistic thought as I worked through the book. I wasn’t more than thirty pages in when I stopped and Googled Narcissism Spectrum tests to figure out where I was. I found short tests and longer ones and I tried to be as honest as possible. I scored myself in the communal range, which is exactly what you’d expect a supreme narcissist to do, right? Isn’t that where your off-the-charts ex would score himself? I took one of the shorter tests, but I also took a longer, more comprehensive one and came up with the same. I want to go back and do it again, and pay close attention to my answers, because it’s too easy to let your ego tell you what you believe about yourself, which may be different from how you actually rock and roll. It did force me to recognize the times in my life when I was lower on the spectrum, and higher. Lower? High school. Higher? In the ’90s, when I was writing for an alternative community newspaper and ‘putting people in their place’ when I thought they needed it, namely Republicans and Christian evangelicals. I cringe to remember some of the articles I wrote back then. It wasn’t what I said, but how I said it. All right, my fellow narcissists! Here are some good narcissism self-tests from respectable sources: PsychCentral’s 40 statements (PsychCentral is rated as High for factualism and Pro-Science by Media Bias Fact Check) Open-Source Psychometrics Narcissism Personality Inventory (Source cited in a number of journals) You can Google for others, and your mileage may vary. Are any of them truly reliable? Judge for yourself. If you search on your own, include the word ‘spectrum’ or ‘scale’ to find the ones that measure not whether you’re a narcissist, but what kind. Something to think about as you take inventory: Are you where you want to be? If not, how will you get there? Be honest. It’s hard. It’s why I want to set aside an hour to take the 40-question one again and make sure my narcissistic ego isn’t protecting me from the truth by telling me, Oh no, you almost never do that! Maybe once or twice. Under stress. Or something. People genuinely committed to being the right kind of narcissist will be more inclined to police themselves than others and make an effort to recognize when they’re veering off into the danger zone — which is likely acting a little narcissist occasionally rather than sliding up the scale. And, we can take a cue from Melody Wilding and ask ourselves how our own self-absorption contributes to narcissist drama. How many narcissists does it take to change a light bulb? “Me? Change a light bulb? Why? The illuminating light of my supreme everlasting being and intellect is more than enough to push back the darkness, you plebeian.” Public domain image from Pxfuel This first appeared on Medium in July 2021.

This is just a taste of what we might get if the Sun goes all megastormy on us this year. By NASA Goddard Space Flight Center — Flickr: Magnificent CME Erupts on the Sun — CC BY 2.0 Look, I don’t mean to panic you, I know you’ve got the coronavirus to worry about and stuff, but there’s a 12% chance a Sun megastorm could erupt this year, and it could be very, very bad for whatever part of the Earth is facing it. So said a Wired Magazine article from 2012 that didn’t seem to have appeared anywhere else except in one esteemed periodical like National Geographic, and somewhat a less esteemed source like UK’s Express, a nutty site that broke the major news story of a potential fairy space alien corpse in Mexico City. That’s according to Media Bias Fact Checker, which dings the site for being right-wing and factually mixed. If this goes down, you’re going to wish your biggest problem was a spiky little bastard that looks like a microscopic World War I landmine. It could be even more catastrophic than the last time, which was the 1859 Carrington Event, named after a guy named Carrington (duh) who happened to witness a mega-speedy solar flare that sparked beautiful auroras when it hit the Earth’s atmosphere, and set not-so-beautiful fire to telegraph stations. It also booted magnetic observatory recordings sky-high and made the scientists working there go all WTF??? Hawaiians and Chileans were all like, Ooooohhh, look at the pretty auroras! and New Yorkers were all like, Hello! I can read the New York Times by the light of the auroras alone! which is what Americans exclaimed until the far more modern Gadzooks! was invented in 1945. So, like, back in 1859 there wasn’t nearly as much of an electronic infrastructure as there is today. If the Solar Apocalypse hits us this year (Wired pointed out eight years ago it might happen ‘in the next decade’ so it might not be until next year, or the year after, or quite possibly at all), it will trash electrical power grids in a way that’ll make the Great Blackout of 2003 look like your drunk neighbor hitting the telephone pole outside your house. It’ll also hose up oil and gas pipelines, mess up GPS satellites and potentially destroy all radio communication on earth. But don’t worry, it won’t hurt actual people, animals or plants. I mean, we won’t get fried to a crisp like in a nuclear war. No, it’ll just be chaos and panic and doom and really annoying Jesus freaks on the street. Don’t think it’ll be all kum-ba-ya like it was during the Great Blackout because that only lasted a few days; The Great Blackout Of Like 202X will cost us trillions of dollars and last for an entire decade! Look, I’ll leave you and your overactive imagination currently on overdrive paying scalper prices for Purell and toilet paper, to speculate on just how bad the world’s going to get with no refrigeration, no functioning hospitals, spoiled food, and Gen Z going all Lord of the Flies on everyone without access to Instagram or TikTok. Greta Thunberg got downright stern and pissy in her media release about the potential impending doomsday. Greta Thunberg would like to have a word with you. Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license by Anders Hellberg on Flickr With brows knit together so tightly some reporters mistook them for two caterpillars fighting over the bridge of her nose, the teenage activist blamed everyone older than her, the oil companies and Donald Trump’s gross incompetence in failing to prevent this toasty nightmare, thundering, “How dare you! You have stolen my obsession with global warming and my heavily-exploited childhood with an even worse thing to think about than dead polar bears and banana crops in Canada! Entire social media ecosystems are collapsing! I can’t make a damn phone call! I’ll be nearly thirty before my ATM card will work again and I’ll have to run faster than the massive sewage blob chasing me!” Then she sent all world leaders to their rooms to think about what they’d done. Or not, as the case may be. So look, I’m just saying, you’re worrying about dying from something that most people recover from, and that can be washed away with old-fashioned soap and water, so you might as well worry about something that would wreak far more havoc than canceling tech conferences and the Summer Olympics. And which will probably never happen. And if it does, all the Purell in the world isn’t going to save you from F2F-phobic Gen Zs. This first appeared on Medium in March 2020.

And I enjoyed every damn minute of it. No apologies. Photo from PxFuel I blasted Celestria with my finest feminist are-you-out-of-your-damn-MIND face and exploded, “BELLY DANCING?” “Yeah, wouldn’t that be cool? I want to get Chabi to teach a class.” Chabi was a new addition to our Society for Creative Anachronism medievalist re-creation group. We learned the skills, created medieval ‘personas’, called each other by those names and lived a pre-Renaissance life in the past lane. “Come on, it’ll be fun!” Celestria teased. But I was a feminist, dammit! My recollection of belly dancing’s heyday in the ’60s and ’70s tasted a bit sour, shimmying visions of background decoration in movie nightclubs or a half-naked woman dancing for men’s, and particularly Sean Connery’s James Bond’s pleasure in From Russia With Love. It seemed vintage now, like beehive hairdos and pedal pushers. And while I didn’t object to flirting or suggestive dancing— Belly dancing? “I don’t have the body for those costumes,” I replied, cutting through to the heart of the matter. “We don’t have to perform, let’s just have fun.” It’s good exercise, I rationalized. Without the embarrassing belly-baring costume, and no need to perform publicly, I was in. Ha. Ha. Ha. Yah, okay, this is good. You can call me a witless tool for ‘The Patriarchy’ if you like, but I enjoyed every damn minute of my 15-year side hustle. “I’ll teach free weekly classes on one condition,” Chabi said at our first class. “You all have to dance for the Mongolian Horde this summer at Pennsic War.” Perform? That struck a level of terror historically reserved for the words ‘Mongolian Horde’. Okay, so this re-created SCAdian subculture to which Chabi belonged was far more civilized than the original Horde and treated women a helluva lot better than the era’s affluenza-addled yuppie frat boys. The ‘Pennsic War’ was a giant SCAdian weeks-long extravaganza featuring epic battles (of course) at a western Pennsylvania campground. This is what I did on my summer vacation for the next seven years Perform for the Horde? Oh what the hell, they’ll all be drunk anyway. “I don’t want to wear a skimpy outfit,” I said. “I don’t have the body for it.” “No problem,” Chabi said. “It’s not period anyway. Women covered up. You’re thinking of modern American cabaret style.” You mean like this? (Three months later.) I still felt sort of embarrassed and unfeminist about the whole thing. Then came the first lesson. Chabi taught us some hip moves and a simple ten-second dance routine set to the sexy throbbing, thumping Middle Eastern music of Eddie ‘The Sheik’ Kochak. As my hips swung, I felt an unexpected sexual thrill race through me. I felt strong. I felt confident. I felt, and I couldn’t believe I was feeling this, damned sexy. There it was. The Power. Moving and feeling like a beautiful, desirable woman flooded me with an unfamiliar wave of empowering sexual confidence. I am woman, watch me dance! The high school wallflower, about as desired as a pop trigonometry quiz, who’d agreed to this adventure never wanting a man to see her making an idiot of herself in a (too much belly)-baring costume suddenly wished her male friends could see her, even if she was only wearing a T-shirt and shorts. I imagined one of those stupid costumes. I’d be like those women in the movies! The Power felt anything but degrading. Feminism was deadly serious in the ‘80s. Women moved into the boardroom, with big-shouldered suits to emphasize their power in male-dominated corporations. A woman who’d murdered her abusive husband was considered a feminist hero and sexual assault was a bigger threat than it is today (The 63% reduction in rapes since the early ’90s is one of feminism’s greatest victories). Many feminists had no sense of humour, as I found when the biggest feminist in my feminist literature college class caught me dressed as a Playboy bunny for Halloween. The feminist narrative, enmeshed in a circle-the-wagons worldview, didn’t yet acknowledge the need to be yourself, or explore the many facets of being a woman. Female sexuality was a bit taboo except for those edgy and outré enough to chose lesbianism as a statement. Popular literature of the era abounded with political lesbian characters. We’d have to wait for the ’90s before women could explore pole dancing, stripping, burlesque and Girls Gone Wild before we could shake loose our restrictions and argue such actions were ‘empowering’ and ‘embracing your sexuality’. As I moved and shimmied in that first class, I reveled in the assertive confidence of The Power. I’d joined this class on a lark, figuring it would peter out after ‘Pennsic’. Now I was all-in, along with everyone else. "Hot buttered puppies!" In the months after Chabi’s classes began, we emerged like butterflies from a lifelong cocoon of never being attractive enough. We started losing weight. It was good exercise! My roommate Liliana and I belly danced to the music on the radio. Anything with a beat! Even The Monkees. JoAnn’s Fabrics drew excited neophyte dancers to purchase yards of fabric on sale for big brightly-colored Middle Eastern ‘circle skirts’ and bras. Excited, Liliana and I debuted our belly-baring costumes to Chabi and her partner Torogene, who exclaimed, wide-eyed, “HOT BUTTERED PUPPIES!” I still don’t know what that means but I think it was a compliment! In the fall I followed my parents to Connecticut after my father got a new job. I hated leaving Chabi’s class. I’d transformed from a baby butterfly into both a medieval and modern sex kitten. Feminists didn’t talk about ‘patriarchy’ much back then, but I was sometimes challenged for being a ‘tool for sexism’ . I never felt I was a ‘tool’ of something degrading, maybe because SCA men treated all women, of all body sizes, so well. About a year and a half later, Chabi encouraged me to explore doing ‘bellygrams’. I wasn’t sure I was good enough. Belly dancers weren’t common in New England SCAdian groups. I practiced and performed at SCAdian medieval events, but felt like I knew just enough to be dangerous. “You’re good enough,” Chabi assured me, having seen me dance again at my second Pennsic War. It was Gisele, not Giselle, but whatever. I insisted on covering up my face (rather than my belly!) for the next ad. I didn’t want my outside sales clients to recognize me. I terrorized forty-year-old (on average) birthday boys in a tri-state area for the next fifteen years. Fifty+ was my favourite age range. The older men got, the less they gave a crap who thought they looked like an idiot. They happily got up and danced with me. Feminism and I broke up in the ’90s, citing irreconcilable differences. My ex was fabulous in many ways, having pulled off numerous victories, real accomplishments that had made the world more equitable to women in the thirty-odd years I’d been alive, but feminism just got too — embarrassing. Women’s financial and political power grew, but so did a dismaying sense of ever-increasing female victimhood, rather than the accompanying personal responsibility that joins new power. Feminism seemed stuck in the ’80s, unwilling to admit it was making a real difference. Now it was the ‘90s. Why was it the more empowered women became, the more disempowered many seemed to feel? The lack of recognition for individual responsibility, the growing demonization of men and a nascent ‘political correctness’ disturbed me. I began calling myself an egalitarian. I still believed in equal rights for women, but I could no longer bear the f-word with pride. As a belly dancer, it’s ironic I received as little pushback from feminists as I got. A few made snide comments suggesting my activity was hurtful to women. I didn’t get mad. I’d felt exactly as they did before Celestria dragged me into this. So I explained and educated. How confident and assertive I felt, how I loved my audiences. How with few exceptions, men treated me very well. How men and women are different and we should embrace that. Vive la difference! The extra income for better accoutrements than the handmade costumes of my early, low-wage temp job days, and how I could afford to visit Europe didn’t hurt either. In an Irish bar in Torrington, CT. I never removed more than a few veils. I made that clear to those who confused belly dancing with stripping. I didn’t look down on strippers. Celestria and I, early in our tutelage, had a Stripper Adventure. We wanted to experience a strip club, so we asked a couple of our guy friends to take us to one of the better ones. We wanted to see good stripping, we stipulated, not amateurs. “We know just the place,” they said. These gals were impressive, with obvious formal dance training. Ballet. Jazz. Gymnastics. They were beautiful, slim, and seemed to enjoy teasing men, seated beneath them in supplication to the goddesses. I admired their joy in their bodies, and their hypnotic influence over their audience. They had The Power. It looked like patriarchy and objectification to some, but I recognized an unspoken mutual agreement between the dancers and their audience. By day they got paid for clerking and managing. By night they got paid for dancing. “The men aren’t allowed to touch them,” one of my friends whispered. “The guys get tossed out if they do. This place can lose its liquor license if they’re reported for anything sexual. The girls can’t touch them either, but they can accept money.” The dancers couldn’t show their breasts or nether regions. They pulled out their flimsy bikini bras and revealing panties (no g-strings), but my friend noted, “You never see anything. They know exactly how to do it.” Later, Celestria looked for me when I didn’t return from the bathroom. She found me teaching one of the strippers some of our belly dancing moves. The dancer made a fair chunk of extra money in addition to her regular job. Like me, she didn’t tell employers what she did. This was Bible-thumping Ohio, after all. She laughed about it. She didn’t seem to feel degraded, not unlike Celestria, myself, and the other aspiring goddesses in Chabi’s class. It was an art form, and it took a helluva lot of labia to do that. The only performing art harder than stripping, I think, is stand-up comedy. I know of darker corners where women who perform for men’s pleasure are treated very poorly. I know about the seedier side of stripping, along with stories of what it’s like to be a Playboy bunny or a Hooters waitress. The touchers. The misogynists. The sexual assaults. The harassment. The fat-shaming. For strippers, even worse if you’re not fortunate enough to perform in a ‘nicer’ bar. (The term ‘gentlemen’s club’ — ha! — wouldn’t be coined for several more years.) I once found myself in a dirty, grungy strip club. I forget why. The dancers were sad shadows of the women Celestria and I had watched, shaking in poorly-fitted makeshift costumes. They reminded me of the way I used to look at the end of a long nightclubbing evening. No one, I’m certain, was watching out for them. Nothing feminist about that. Period. I’m sure some belly dancers can tell grim tales depending on who they were, where they worked, and how much self-esteem they possessed. Belly dancing was a big tease for me, done with fun and enjoyment and rarely men-only. I adored my biggest fans, excited, wide-eyed little girls. I understood why. I was small during belly dancing’s heyday, when it was everywhere. And, growing up in Florida, I witnessed many hula dancers and wanted to be one when I grew up. I ‘got’ the sensuality of The Power on some deeper level even when I was three or four. These ladies were beautiful and I loved the way they moved. I lost that joy somewhere. Sensuality is almost verboten today, in an age ruled by a renewed feminist sexual puritanism, political and religious fundamentalism and men who are afraid to so much as look at women lest they be publicly excoriated for ‘misogyny’. Female sensuality/sexuality comes with many choices, complex and faceted. Some women argue they’re empowered by pole dancing. I agree. I understand. The Power. Other women find it degrading and downright embarrassing. I understand that too. I would never pole dance. Female sexuality and sensuality offers a strange dichotomy. First Night Hartford, 1993 As for ‘objectifying’…we all do it. Witness women lining the streets waiting to catch a glimpse of George Clooney during the Toronto International Film Festival. Or Beliebers screaming for their idol Justin. Girlfriends chucking down pinot grigio and rating the men in their social circle, married or otherwise, in the order of who they’d like to have sex with first. Belly dancing taught me how to move my imperfect body more confidently, to sew my own garb and create new ideas. It taught me how to flirt, how to play the doumbek and how to break down music. I performed in a troupe for a year. I learned how to dance with a sword — always a crowd-pleaser. I taught others, and watched them emerge from their cocoons as Chabi had once observed us. I was responsible for that. That’s a greater feeling than The Power. I made people laugh and feel happy when I danced, including a terminal man in a hospital just days before he died. Learning to belly dance is one of the most feminist actions I’ve ever taken. I was no tool for anything. Je regrette rien. This first appeared on Medium in June 2020.

It doesn’t love me. It doesn’t have my best interests at heart. It doesn’t want me to grow. And it will literally kill me if I let it. “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!” Creative Commons license photo by Daniel Oberhaus (2017) on Flickr Many mornings I wake up and think, “Shit, I’m still alive.” My favorite time of the day is night, when I sleep and enter oblivion — what death must be like, sans dreams, if atheists are right. I’ve read that a coma is one step away from death, and sleep one step from coma. Two steps from death, every night. Maybe one night I’ll get lucky, huh? I hate feeling this way. I’m not, by nature, an unhappy person. In fact my mental health support group sometimes wonders what the hell I’m doing there; I’m always smiling and cracking jokes and saying positive things to others. It’s no facade; that’s the real me. But I’m there because I’ve struggled on and off with depression since adolescence. I went through an entire life stage I call the Angry Drunken Bitch years. When sexually frustrated single guy George Sodini shot up a women’s gym in Pittsburgh screaming about feminists, I became fascinated with his blog because, as monstrous as his act and sexual entitlement were, I felt a certain uncomfortable weird kinship with him. Along with Elliott Rodgers, the Killer Virgin. I ‘got’ that sense of entitlement. They felt entitled to sex with women, and I felt entitled to romantic success, to love, perhaps spoiled by much easier pickin’s when I was under thirty and a popular belly dancer in a medieval re-creation group. It took me many years to figure out just how entitled I felt as an A.D.B. Now my jaded ennui has evolved from losing my job last year to a life re-evaluation revealing just how much my life has sucked for years and how I don’t want to do this anymore, but I don’t yet have an escape plan. Is it a good idea to just sell everything, move to an island, and die in a small community younger than I might have, or am I ignoring how I can stay put and find meaning and a happy life again right here? How much of my depression is actually my fucking Terminator trying to keep me from ever doing anything that makes me happy, and most of all personally growing? 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. The Terminator, i.e. Resistance, i.e. the yetzer hara, does not change and cannot change. — Steven Pressfield, Villain = Resistance American novelist and screenwriter Steven Pressfield writes books about the Resistance that dwells within us all and ceaselessly toils to keep us from achieving our true potential. It’s my fear of moving forward, the procrastination, the perfectionism, the excuses I make, the endless distractions I create for myself— Netflix series, movies, social media — so I can keep the Resistance — my own personal Terminator — at bay, where it waits patiently for me to get up to brush my teeth and go to bed, so it can resume whispering its destructive messages. You suck. You aren’t good enough. You’ll never succeed. Your business venture is a crock of shit. Don’t even think about trying to strike out on your own, you moron. Better than you have failed. What makes you think you can do it? You don’t deserve better. You’re the very definition of mediocrity. Yeah, you’re successful now but it’s all about to end. Then they’ll see the imposter you really are. Resistance is, as Pressfield explains, an ‘entirely negative force’ built into us whose ‘solitary aim is to block the soul from communicating with us and us from communicating with our soul.’ He defines ‘soul’ by the Jewish tradition, the part of me that wants the best for myself in a beneficent, non-selfish sense. The yetzer hara, Resistance, is my compulsion to self-obstruct and self-destruct. He compares it to The Terminator. Why the hell I have an Inner Terminator seems to be a mystery to brighter brains than mine, but we all have it. Even the most successful. It’s why so many young, promising musicians join the ’27 Club’. Why so many celebrity lives have been destroyed by drugs like cocaine and crack. I never understood why celebrities took such a self-destructive drug until I read about the sense of power and confidence it gives, especially before a big concert or performance. Okay, fair enough. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had to perform in front of 45,000 people in Shea Stadium who’d paid good money to see me do — something or other. Someone I kind of admired, who always seemed to have his shit together, who’s more successful and more educated and more experienced, born into more privilege than I, just failed at his third attempt at being a senior leader. I know he failed this last time and I suspect he failed at his first two. He gave what I thought were inauthentic excuses for why he’d left the other jobs so soon. He got demoted at his last position and left shortly thereafter for a new job — where he’s no longer in a senior management position. Pretty sure he’s dealing with his own Resistance, as on top of the world as he often was. Something stops him, I suspect, from examining why he’s not cutting it as a senior manager when his stars are otherwise aligned. Image by Markus Distelrath from Pixabay I’ve spent the last year attempting to confront my own Terminator, a seemingly disembodied entity that lives within me trying to tear me down the way one particular guy in high school did. Dan is sort of my psychological bête noire. No matter what I did, what I tried to learn or accomplish, he was right there with me in a lengthy class hanging over my shoulder assuring me almost every damn moment that I was ugly, stupid, a dog, a Wolfwoman, that I can’t do this, I can’t do that, I’ll never be any good at anything. He’s not someone I think about a lot anymore, at least not until the past year when I came to realize my Terminator is a lot like Dan. It’s always there to keep me from being better than I am. Telling me I can’t do that, it’s too late, I’m too old, that’s not for me, success is for others, who do I think I am, I’m mediocre and always will be. But it’s not fair to hang this all on Dan. I only realized he’s a bit of a bête noire after I re-read my old college journal and was struck by how I was still going on about him two years after graduation. At some point I got over it. Maybe after I became a belly dancer and proved I wasn’t such an ugly dog who’d never get a guy after all. The Terminator speaks to me in a chorus of voices synthesized into one. It’s my parents overprotecting their little girl; other bullies from school; the nutty bosses who were either crazy, stupid or gaslighters; the legions of single men who found me utterly unfascinating after 35. But most of all, there’s a little girl’s voice there, feeling not-good-enough on some fundamental level that can’t be blamed on her parents, who always encouraged her to do her best, who always felt a little left out and left behind and dreamed big dreams that would never come to be. Her Birth Terminator. My Terminator has worked against me my entire life, and underlies most of my depression. Adolescence is usually when things go tits-up for kids, especially young girls. My happy life in Orlando was uprooted by a bad economy, and Dad’s job search landed us in a small Ohio town where I had little in common with the other kids and from which I nurtured a lifelong resentment for why I had to put up with these Midwestern numbnuts when things had been so much better in Orlando. It’s only in very recent years I’ve been able to release that resentment, once I realized that not only would adolescence have ended my childhood innocence no matter where I lived, but, with 20/20 hindsight, I see evidence that my life might well have grown considerably worse had we stayed in Orlando, where I’d begun attending an integrated junior high school half-filled with angry, impulse-uncontrolled black kids shaping up to hate my white middle-class blonde ass in one of America’s most racist states. ‘The road not taken’ is sometimes the one best avoided. Now I challenge my self-doubting self-image, questioning whether I’m really as much of a loser as I sometimes think. Am I lazy and unmotivated, or is this a siren call to do something different that doesn’t make me want to rip my brain out of my head? I’ve explored freelancing and becoming a solopreneur as I realize what’s truly been missing is a sense of meaning or purpose. I’ve got a lengthy career in I.T. sales and the first twenty years were awesome; only in the last eight or nine did I start taking jobs for the money, which is almost always a recipe for misery. Now I’m preoccupied with personal development and growth, which the Terminator doesn’t mind as long as I don’t actually attempt to change anything. I’m always allowed to dream, I’m just not allowed to change. I do, though. The Terminator gets over it, but always worries about the next one. “Where there is a Dream,” Steven Pressfield tells me in a different blog post, “there is Resistance. Thus: where we encounter Resistance, somewhere nearby is a Dream.” There it is: The Terminator, Resistance, exists to keep me from achieving my dreams, unless I become very good at working to overcome it or just not fucking listen. It’s a sign, however, that I’m on the right path. The Terminator doesn’t care about unimportant pursuits. It only needs to keep me in the Safe Place where it doesn’t have to face potential failure, rejection or shame. What’s on my fridge. What’s the secret? How I push past The Terminator is what I’ve always known: Just do the work. Just fucking show up to work every day, whether that’s at an office, or to look for a job, or to turn my side hustle into a real business. A few things I keep in mind about The Terminator: It’s not personal. It’s not me holding myself back. My true self wants to be happy, to achieve, to accomplish, to live a meaningful life, as long as that definition is mine and not others’ standards. Resistance is there to stop me. I don’t know why; I can’t imagine what evolutionary purpose it serves. It just is, like the mold in my bathtub. I’ll be bock! Everyone on the planet lives with their own Inner Terminator, even if they don’t show it. I’m not alone. Everyone else fights my struggle too. I don’t need to be ‘motivated’. The Terminator binges on ‘motivation’. It kicks up and convinces me I need a ‘mental health day’, often with a lot of ‘navel-gazing’, which amounts to an utterly wasted day I could have spent moving closer to my dream, and now I feel like a loser because I allowed myself to be sidetracked. I can’t work toward my goal when I feel like it; I have to show up for work and do so every damn day. I can’t kill it. Just like James Cameron’s Terminator, it will be with me until I die. But it doesn’t have to be my giant robot Adversary, blocking me at every turn. Satan tried to distract Jesus in the desert by promising riches and power; Jesus was like, “Nah.” The most important thing I must remember about my own Terminator, though: It can kill me. I hear it in myself, and the voices of friends and colleagues who fall prey to the army of Terminators tweeting, posting and botting messages of hopelessness and despair. If I listen to that negative voice long enough, it will wear me down and one day I might toss in the figurative towel and say, “Okay, I agree. Enough is enough.” And then do the deed myself.This morning I woke up and The Terminator said, “Shit, we’re still alive.” And I said, “Fuck you, Terminator.” And I settled down to work. Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash This originally appeared on Medium in August 2020.

We can’t do anything about Andrew Cuomo, but we can start setting boundaries with today’s baby Cuomos-in-training Photo of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, accused by multiple women of sexual harassment, by Diana Robinson on Flickr And you thought former-senator-now-Prez Joe Biden was bad. Six women have come forward with multiple claims accusing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of inappropriate touching, questions, and potential ‘trial balloons’ to see if they were amenable to a sexual affair. The predictable accused’s response to the outrage began with the usual denials, and, as more accusers stepped forward, the customary slow pivot to reluctant admission that certain actions from the past may have caused unintended pain to others, followed by the venerable utterly unconvincing apologies. One response one never hears from these touchy-feely Old Boys: Asking why the women didn’t say something at the time, let him know he’d crossed a boundary. Most perps would rather women didn’t; they don’t want to know. They want to remain unchallenged which works out well since many women won’t. It’ll only come back to maybe bite them in the ass if they are or become a public figure. We’re at a point in history where we have more power to challenge boundary breaches at the time when the offense occurs, and handled properly, it‘s arguably less risky. As in, a minor blip in your day versus a punishing shitstorm of Twitstorm. The question is, have we got the labia for it? We can’t do anything about Andrew Cuomo from a behavioral point of view, nor could anyone have forty years ago when he entered politics. He may resign, or get impeached, but his predatory misogyny is entrenched forever. We can, however, teach the baby Cuomos boundaries as soon as they offend, beginning today. This includes more adult harassers and offenders. We can’t easily challenge them all — yet — but we can begin with those closest to us in power and status, inside or outside the workplace. It’s quite simple, and relatively low-risk: Speak up at the time of the offense, if it doesn’t put you in real danger. Challenging male breaches of engagement starting with the offender is an idea introduced to me early by a new boss. If you’ve got a problem with me, he told the new hire and I, don’t go running to my boss about it. Bring it to me first, and let’s discuss it. Give me a chance to change or fix it. By the end of the first week, I prepared to have That Talk with him. I needed his flirtation and mild sexual harassment to end. But he never arrived at work. Management found out about the gun in his briefcase. The new hire and I were okay with it; the managers above fired hm. I don’t know how that discussion would have gone down, but his logical response would have been to say okay, no problem, and then stop, recognizing I showed him the consideration he’d asked for, and been grateful I didn’t complain to his boss (he was a relatively new hire, too.) That’s how I would have felt. I’ve never been accused of sexual harassment, but I have occasionally made others feel uncomfortable and I, too, would rather be addressed by the offended party first. Why not give people the opportunity to clean up their act before escalating things? Yes, men should know better, especially in the MeToo era. No, we don’t like confrontation. But it’s the lowest-risk way to handle minor overtures and if the guy is smart, he’ll realize you saved him a meeting with HR. Or didn’t pitch a feminist scene in a public place. Even if it’s a non-workplace offense, it’s a first step. Handled properly, it doesn’t escalate the issue. A few times I’ve told a handsy guy to back off. I do it politely but firmly. When women don’t speak up at the time, it gives the guy tacit approval to continue harassing, either her or others. Other times, it’s best to let it slide, but consider what you might do next time. I’m not judging anyone. Good reasons abound why one might not speak up at the time, and Andrew Cuomo is Exhibit A. He’s famously bullying and vindictive, and not only against women who’ve dared to speak out about his predatory behavior. His first accuser, Lindsey Boylan, published an article on Medium recently detailing the toxic work environment others have begun to speak out about. Now I wonder, theoretically, and without judgement of anyone today: What if women had challenged Cuomo when he was younger, newer, less powerful? I don’t know how long Cuomo has been a harasser but it’s not beyond the ken to speculate it began before he became governor. He’s 63 years old. He began his political career at age 25 working on his father’s gubernatorial campaign (Mario Cuomo served as Governor of New York for three terms). That was 1982, the start of a decade marked by entrenched over-privileged male entitlement. A former HR manager friend and I talked about the Cuomo allegations. I said the time has come for women to speak up when things happen, not months or years later. “I understand why women, especially young women, are afraid to,” she said. It’s an uncomfortable, frightening, and maddening position. Inside or outside a work environment, one worries about an embarrassing scene at least, damaged friendships, political/professional fallout, and physical danger at worst. Young women especially, we agreed, don’t often have the confidence to speak up, inside or outside the workplace, nor the career stability if HR doesn’t support them, which it often doesn’t if the man holds too much power, particularly over their own jobs. I understand why Cuomo’s accusers didn’t stand up to him at the time. Boylan’s article describes one helluva culture of enablement. But here’s the thing: When it comes to public figures and celebrities, I suspect speaking up at the time may carry less risk today than waiting to one day tweet your grievance on social media. MeToo has demonstrated how women are punished for challenging male power and bad behavior, even minor infractions. When women speak cobwebbed truths about handsy, huggy public figures, they face vicious backlash by trolls and cyberbullies. They’re inevitably accused of lying ‘for the attention’ (because nothing feeds your narcissistic desire for public idolatry quite like doxxing and swatting!) followed by ugly memes and a tsunami of misogynist derision. Whereas the fallout is often far less in the moment, especially if you handle it as maturely as you can. Hey, let’s keep our hands to ourselves. We’re friends/work colleagues/casual acquaintances. I wonder: What would happen to a 25-year-old overly-entitled man today continually challenged and reminded of boundaries? What will he be like at 63? My friend and I disagreed on how we would handle a touchy-feely man, especially a work colleague: She would employ ‘broken record’ reminders — no, this is not good, let’s don’t do this, this isn’t the place for touching, co-workers don’t touch each other, etc. I would handle each breach with escalating levels of firmness and attitude. Hey, we’re not touchy. Let’s keep things professional. Er, remember when we agreed we weren’t touchy people? (Note the editorial ‘we’.) Hey! We’ve had this conversation before! I will remind you: NO TOUCHING. (Or inappropriate questions. Or sex talk.) Dammit, I’ve had enough! If you want a date that badly the next one will be with the HR manager. (Or their boss, if no HR department.) One reason women don’t speak up more is fear of what might happen. I wonder what would have happened if campaign staffers made uncomfortable by then-Senator Joe Biden’s close physical style had challenged him. They might have feared losing their jobs, but what if someone had said to him, politely, “Hey Senator Biden, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t touch me. We need to keep the workplace professional.” Hard to think she’d have lost her job, unless she worked for Donald Trump. The woman photographed at a 2019 wedding with Cuomo clearly looked uncomfortable with his hands on her face. She described other minor physical liberties he took with her, touching her back and asking to kiss her. I don’t fault her for why she didn’t remove his hands from her face and said, “No touching, please.” But what if she did it to some guy who wasn’t New York’s infamous bad boy? Like her father’s work colleague or someone she’d just met? She might get more forceful. Like removing his hand from her back and when he put it back, saying, “Knock it off! Keep your hands to yourself!” I wonder how it might go down if she removed it again, turned to face him, and said, “No means no. Have you learned nothing from MeToo?” A reminder of what she could do later, now with photo documentation, might make today’s Young Cuomo think twice. Nobody wants to be MeToo’ed, but clearly the current Cuomo had already learned the rules didn’t apply to him, rather a lot like a certain former President who bragged women ‘let him’ do anything because of his fame. Challenging Cuomo today carries genuine risk. He clearly owns a history of bad behavior with women, and we may not have heard the last of it. Men continue to harass and assault because women refuse to challenge it. If we want it to stop, the movement starts now. Let’s not fault the victims and non-reactions of the past. Let’s acknowledge that predatory men are grossly unfair and we shouldn’t have to be put in the awful position of having to confront and challenge men who should — who do know better — to stop harassing us. Let’s also acknowledge the many circumstances under which it’s a bad idea to challenge, along with how not pushing ourselves to move beyond the freeze mode encourages men to continue harassing women, but more importantly we train ourselves to accept the harassment. The more it happens, the more we feel powerless to stop it — the more powerless we become. It’s one way we unconsciously run from our own power, pretend it doesn’t exist, fail to develop as assertive individuals with the confidence to challenge others taking liberties. We worry about the risks — and they are real — but this is our world. The risks aren’t always what we think. Life isn’t risk-free for anyone, including the guy doing the groping/grabbing/date-seeking. One reason why men continue to dominate in places of power is because they’re not afraid to take risks. They challenge others, they challenge power. Sometimes they lose and are smacked down. The ones who will succeed get up and do it again. They recognize it’s an unfair, hierarchical world and they fight to rise within it. Many women shrink from assertiveness, preferring the safe zone and allowing themselves to feel, and ergo become, more victimized. Taking these risks is a terrifying notion. I understand. I’ve been in a far more stressful position with a sexually harassing boss than the one I described earlier. Perhaps a future story. It’s not fair. It’s a shitty, patriarchal world we live in, and the onus shouldn’t be on us to make them change, but these men won’t until they’re forced. What if there’s nothing more than a lovely warm spring about a foot and a half under the bottom of the picture? Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay This ain’t 1965, when Bill Cosby is accused of assaulting his first rape victim, or 1982, when Clarence Thomas asked Anita Hill if there was a pubic hair on his Coke can, or 1993, when Joe Biden got handsy with his female staffers, or even 2017, when Harvey Weinstein made MeToo a household word. Here’s the bright spot: You may find your what-if fears are unfounded. He doesn’t make a scene, retaliate, gaslight you, or complain to his friends on Facebook what a bitch you are. We shouldn’t put ourselves in real danger. Sometimes it’s better to remove one’s self from the scene rather than make one. Just because we can’t do it with everyone doesn’t mean we can’t resolve to challenge men more today when they overstep their boundaries — whether it’s talking over us in a meeting, touching our back or shoulder, or asking if he can kiss us. ‘No, that wouldn’t be appropriate,’ is a polite but firm response. Refusing to tolerate men’s behavior, taking a few risks, pushing ourselves to assert our rights and personal boundaries strengthens us against future intimidations and even outright abuse. We can’t change or fix Cuomo, Trump, Weinstein, Cosby, R. Kelly, LaBoeuf, or other harassers or abusers, but we can challenge the mini-Cuomos, mini-Trumps, mini-Weinsteins et al, young boys and men today not yet with power, who need to learn early they can’t treat women like that. What will gender relations look like in twenty or thirty years if women began doing this now? Starting today? This first appeared on Medium in March 2021.