Porn created by women *for* women had to be light-years better than male-created porn, right? Right? Photo by Arianna Jadé from Pexels Feminist porn? WTF? Porn created by women for women? I jumped at the chance to attend Toronto’s Feminist Porn Awards several years ago. I knew women were making female-centered porn which I assumed, I hoped , meant it would suck less than male porn. My friend Janessa, far more a connoisseuse of sex, kink, non-cishet sex, and big dicks than I, headed eagerly to the Bloor Cinema to watch porn we expected wouldn’t involve a lot of tedious pounding of female orifices and ejaculations on faces, which has always struck me as disrespectful at best and degrading at worst. The music was far better with none of that mow-wow-wow crap and the camera work with an iPhone! —  an iPhone! —  was light-years better than I would have expected. The acting was clearly consensual , the actresses quite proud of their work, and, as one might expect from women who don’t have a male porn-manufactured objectified view of what’s attractive, they represented different body types. No cookie-cutter plastic-boobed underfed Barbie Dolls tiresomely found in male porn. No conveyor belt of gorgeous ready-to-go-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-foreplay women served up for the pleasure of guys who got the role because genetics favored their manly parts. Porn Is Intrinsically Toxic For Men (And Women Too) We watched foreplay, diversity, the female perspective and real orgasms, and a few told an actual story. This fulfilled my greatest fantasy for female porn — a plotline! Too bad it was even more boring, overall, than male porn. The WTF-ness of ‘feminist’ porn I’ve never been a porn aficionado, for all the usual reasons many women have. What’s in it for me? I saw some when I was in college. Sometimes it was hot, but usually, after ten minutes it got boring. I mostly laughed at the notoriously bad acting and the ridiculous Superfly-’70s-era music soundtrack. Git down ’n’ funkeeeeeeehhhhhh!!! The women were always raring to go, even with vintage porn’s famously ugly guys catering to male fantasies: The ugly guy always nailed the hot chick. I’d read about a female porn industry but never investigated it. Given how boring I found mainstream porn, it was hard to get arsed even about this. But I wondered: What does it look like? What would I consider exciting, erotic porn? For Janessa and me, the Feminist Porn Awards were even more disappointing than sex with Donald Trump must have been for Stormy Daniels. An hour of our lives we’re never getting back. While we agreed we didn’t find any of it erotic, we understood the movies’ appeal to others, given the contenders had been chosen to display the wide variety of female sexual fantasies and desires utterly lacking in mainstream porn. Still, some of it was so un-erotic we’d turn to each other and go, “What the fuck was that all about?” The first movie is best referred to as Trucker Chick, and ranked as the most unerotic porn flick I’d ever seen, at least until we got to the next one. Trucker Chick spoke to her lover — I’m unclear as to whether said lover was male or female — about how she’d wait on the highway for them to swing by and maybe take her somewhere for what sounded like dom-sub sex. LoverCritter didn’t show up and Our Heroine got gang-molested (not raped; this was the most sexless porn ever) by truckers emerging from the shadows. Um, ewwwww. What made me uncomfortable was how this came less than six months after a horrific gang rape and murder on a bus in India . However, the movie was too lame to be offensive. There was no sex or hot men. Just a lot of quick-cut artsy-fartsy scenes and images, interspersed with a seemingly unrelated subplot, if you can call it that, of some other chick being tied up in a pretty damn uncomfortable position from the ceiling. Not the last we’d see of that in the next hour. The next was so lame neither Janessa nor I could figure out who the hell would find it erotic. A woman in a white satin shift, in a dark, dirty-looking warehouse, hands tied behind her, jumped a rope twirled by various men who looked to be the brothers, boyfriends, and maybe husbands of the production crew rather than from a cattle call on Mandy , standing outside the spotlight. Creepily, I thought, they encircled her, watching her sweat her ass off jumping rope and bizarrely, drinking whiskey on the rocks and smacking their lips. Again I say, and Janessa was with me on this one, WTF?!?! Is there some bizarre female jump rope fetish we don’t know about? Every woman is different and many of our fantasies might be utterly mystifying to others, and I can understand one about enjoying the male gaze — I am, after all, an ex-belly dancer — but not dorky-looking guys drinking and watching me jump rope semi-bound. Chacun à son goût, as my mother likes to say. To each her own. Number Three featured full-frontal nudity and actual sex in the form of masturbation. Once again set in a dirty old building. Tight budgets, I guess. It didn’t do much for me but it was straightforward, and it wasn’t all artsy-fartsy WTF like the first two. The next was the closest any of them came to the sort of porn I might want to watch, even though it left me filled with hot raging — ennui. Its imaginative storyline appealed to my sci-fi side but still failed to fulfill my cis-heteronormative tastes. A married couple watch porn while having sex. The wife, with a click of the remote, brings the man in the video into their bedroom, where he joins them on the bed. A threesome, right? I hoped for something I hadn’t seen yet — intercourse between a man and a woman, but at no time during this hour did we see any woman’s vagina penetrated by dick. Maybe I’m too cis-het ‘vanilla’ for feminist porn. The biggest problem was the unconvincing actor playing the husband, who was clearly gay from the moment he stepped on screen. He tried to play a man attracted to his wife but it was akin to watching Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory allegedly fall slowly for Amy. Jim Parsons was too gay to convincingly pull off an asexual-turned-heterosexual geek. Not coincidentally it was a gay man who directed this entry. Big freakin’ surprise. While the wife’s vagina never came anywhere near either dick, we got to see some big body builder’s manmeat pounding the little husband in the ass — which by the way took it so easily I concluded the actor who played the husband was likely a veteran of gay porn. Is this what lesbians do for fun? The next was another masturbation piece bringing new dimension to the word ‘lame’. A gal in a latex suit lubed herself up and took a swim in a nearby pool. Oh yeah. Oh baby. It’s so hot. Another featured tying a woman into an uncomfortable position and hanging her from the ceiling. No nudity, no actual sex, just one chick doing her best to suspend my disbelief. I leaned over to Janessa and asked, “Is this what lesbians do for fun?” She’d know better than I, the little bisexual hedonist who’s done shit that would make Traci Lords turn blue. She didn’t get it either. The only film making any sense to us as eroticism was one about a physically disabled woman (Actual Porn Star name: MIA GIMP) who uses a special walking crutch that clacks down the street. She fantasizes about running and masturbating with the crutch. I guess this is what the selection committee meant when they said they chose diverse entries. We figured okay, if this is what folks with disabilities want to see, clack on, my friends! The last was the most comprehensible Not Our Sort Of Porn but it met our expectations of true porn — it had nudity, sex, and made sense rather than leaving us with the chronic WTF? feeling. The new boyfriend walks into the bedroom where his attractive girlfriend waits. They have a discussion about his family whom she’s about to meet. She confesses there’s something she hasn’t told him and starts removing her clothing. The gal is a natal man in transition. I failed to notice the penis in the underwear as it was undersized, due I assume to hormone treatments. Her body was otherwise fairly female, although she still looked a little male around the torso. The boyfriend is clearly vexed but he doesn’t say anything, he helps her finish undressing, thinks about it a bit and finally does her in the ass. We understood how this was a transgender fantasy, being accepted by the new boyfriend when he found out. Porn with a plot for boring-ass cis-het chicks ‘Feminist’ sounds like a bit of a misnomer for what I saw at the ‘Feminist’ Porn Awards. What we watched wasn’t political or ideological, just more inclusive. It lacked what I dig most: My boring-ass vanilla taste for cis-het man-penetrating-the-woman. Also, it still mostly lacked anything resembling a plotline. My experience with porn is limited; I probably haven’t seen anything produced after 1985. The few I’ve seen include the end of some sci-fi thing with a guy in a black outfit and a Woolworth’s C3PO mask getting blown by a woman who had trouble getting him to cum on her face. I haven’t seen Sylvester Stallone’s porno from like 1971, and what you see of it in this three-minute trailer shows zero nudity or ‘mature themes’, and he looks kind of silly and weird, but it’s STILL more erotic than anything I saw at the Feminist Porn Awards. Ladies, we can do better…! Taboo II from the series explored how the family that lays together stays together. My ex once brought home The Erotic Adventures of Alice in Wonderland which wasn’t too bad. Alice was an uptight virgin who embarked on a kind of cute journey of sexual discovery. One I liked, and watched again recently on YouTube, was Young Lady Chatterley II. Among its many charms included Adam West as a dorky repressed professor who finally gets laid. It wasn’t Oscar-winning storyline material, for sure, but it beat My son has a big thick cock, I think I’ll fuck him. Do you know what I’d like to see for feminine porn? Women’s romance novels, brought to the silver screen in all their throbbing-manmeat-penetrates-her-quivering-moist-love-flower glory. If nothing else it will eliminate all the tedious tortured descriptions of sex and genitalia necessitating the author’s ever-more-desperate search for descriptive euphemisms, a big challenge when every other scene is down ’n’ dirty and she had to search for ever-more-obscure euphemisms she hadn’t used yet. I’ve never been a fan of bodice-ripper romance novels, mostly because the heroines are too wussy for my taste (once again, I haven’t read anything written since probably 1985) but with a little modernizing to make them stronger heroines, it would work better. Or rework real movies as porn has always done. Chris Hemsworth starring as The Gunslinger in The Good, The Bad and The Underlaid! Ryan Gosling as The Lifeguard in Beach Blanket Bang-o! Salvatore Esposito in Under The Tuscan Buns! Justin Bieber in A Hardon Day’s Night! Marie Clare has listed 75 Porn Movies With Great Plots And Better Sex. I’m up for a few extra suggestions. Good, feminine, cis-het porn where the woman gets penetrated at least occasionally by guys. It’s out there somewhere, to quote The X-Rated Files. CC0 public domain at Pxhere Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

Have you got the labia to challenge your friends’ choices? Photo by Philipp Wüthrich on Unsplash She was so damned cute, reddish-brown hair and big brown eyes. And she had no idea. Why would she tolerate the emotional abuse from her ex? She could get a way better guy. Without even trying. He’d dumped her for reasons I no longer remember, but kept calling her, stringing her along, making her hope he’d come back to her. He tortured her with stories of his new women, and she listened. She listened. She accepted his phone calls. And cried. She gave him permission to abuse her emotionally. That’s called ‘blaming the victim’ in modern feminist parlance, but my mother called it ‘being a doormat.’ “Why the hell are you even talking to him?” I said. “He has no respect for you. And he’s cruel, bragging to you about his other alleged women, knowing how you feel about him. Why don’t you find yourself a real man, one who knows how to treat you properly? Never take a phone call from this asshole again!” You know why she allowed it. It’s the Achilles heel of female psychology. “It’s because I luuuuuuuuuuvvvvv him.” I don’t know if that girl, who I met only once at a party, took anything from that exchange, but I knew a lot of women back in my twenties who tolerated all kinds of abuse from men. There are women who are willing to take it, and women who aren’t. I’m the latter. I have never been physically abused by a man and I never will be. I would never allow it . Girlfriends don’t let girlfriends make excuses Feminists are too nice when it comes to stopping male partner abuse. They’re willing to politically challenge abusive men but are much less willing to challenge the choices women make that lead them, however unwittingly, down the path to partner abuse. The first choice a woman makes is in deciding who to allow into her life. The next choice is how she will allow him to treat her. And for how long. If she grew up in a family or culture or religion where women have less power, where misogyny is institutionalized and she’s indoctrinated to believe it’s her place to be submissive to men, she may have low self-esteem, not that that’s a unique problem for anyone, including her abusive partners. Welcome to the entire human race. The reasons why women permit abuse are multifaceted and complicated, so my interest is in how we can identify and challenge our friends’ choices earlier rather than waiting until she’s in the shelter and you’re thinking, I know he owns guns. Here’s something else to think about: Now your life may be in danger too. He might come after her friends. You knew he was bad news. You didn’t like him the first time you met him. You didn’t like how he looked at her, how he treated her, how he casually dismissed anything she said, how he subtly put her down and told her what to do. And she did it. You were appalled, but you said nothing. Later, she complained he was controlling and threatening. Why do you put up with this? you asked and she gave some bullshit excuse. Then she changed the subject and you let it drop. Why didn’t you challenge her? Maybe you were afraid of hurting her feelings. Or of pushing her closer to him. Or you thought it was none of your business. It’s time for us to challenge ourselves, to challenge our friends more, when they make choices you know are going to lead to a bad end. We can’t just let her walk down that path to abuse. And we have to find our own inner strength to do it. Have you got the labia? Stop Male Abuse When It’s Happening…Maybe? It’s hard. You don’t want to lose a friend. But you might not. What if she listened to you? It might take awhile, but what if she knew you didn’t approve of her partner and you made it very clear whenever she complained about him that you would never allow a man to treat you like that, and that she was far too good for him, that he didn’t deserve her. And to point out that the longer she waits, the harder it will be to leave him. To get out now while it’s still relatively safe. You’ll help her. So will your friends. You’ve got her back! How many of us have the labia to do that? Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels How can we nip abusive partnerships in the bud? In what passes for much of today’s ‘feminism’, the woman is never wrong. She’s never to blame, never a contributing party to any dispute that ends poorly for her. In a noble desire to correct legal and justice abuses of the past in blaming the victim, whether it was rape or domestic abuse, feminists have jumped the shark. Yes, in the past attention focused on the woman—What was she wearing? What did she say to make him so mad? — rather than the man with anger issues and zero impulse control and who actually broke the law. Regardless of what she said or did, it’s no excuse to beat her up. If she’s violent with him first, he needs to get to safety and call the police, not smash a decorative geode against her skull. Feminism today has sacralized ‘don’t blame the victim’ and turned women into eternally weak, helpless girl-children. By the time feminists turn out to help an abuse victim she’s endured far more trauma than was necessary. How can we nip abusive partnerships early before they escalate into far less manageable and dangerous problems? We need to stop tolerating abuse. Not just in our own lives but with those friends and loved ones who do tolerate it, who make bad choices , and even more critically, don’t learn from their mistakes. We especially need to gently but firmly challenge women who keep cycling back to abusive partnerships. Something in them is broken, some synapse fails to fire, and they need help bridging the judgement gap. Not yelling, not remonstrating, not asking judgmentally Why don’t you just leave him, but to ask more helpful questions like, Why do you let him treat you this way? Why do you let him control you? How far are you going to let this go? You weren’t like this in high school, what changed? Questions that emphasize her own personal power. She has it, she just doesn’t know it. She needs to be reminded, especially if she’s fallen prey to the popular cult of feminist victimhood addiction which infantilizes women far more effectively than any ‘ patriarchy ’. The feminist word for the day: Prevention. Like it or not, abusive partnerships start and proceed with the choices women make and continue to make. As we all know, the longer one stays in an abusive partnership with a man, the harder and more dangerous it becomes to leave. We all know the statistics on the heightened risk for a woman when she leaves an abusive partnership. This is why it’s absolutely critical that we address how to help each other avoid these partnerships before they begin. In many feminists’ perfect world, men stop abusing women when all of them finally get the message. In my perfect world, and I think more realistic fantasy, abusive men can’t laid because no woman will put up with their shit. Change, or die incel. What If Women Refused To Have Sex With Abusive Men? It’s easier to fall into an abusive partnership when a woman is young, less experienced and so desperate for boys or young men to fancy her. Especially in junior/high school when there’s so much pressure to have a boyfriend. When it’s wired into women’s brains to please others, augmented by socialization that reinforces it, and addled by raging hormones that reduce their ability to think straight when they’re around Captain Superhot, young women will do just about anything for his attention, including overlooking his misogynist comments or inappropriate remarks about her body parts he finds most pleasing (or doesn’t). I remember what it was like. I used to put up with that shit too. Plenty of young women can challenge their friends when they recognize what their hormonal friend can’t see: That Captain Superhot is really kind of a dick. We have to have the labia to stand up to abuse not just when men perpetuate it but when women tolerate and make excuses for it. We aren’t living in the Third World. We have agency, power over our lives, good jobs, and we’re educated. Even if we haven’t gone to college, we can still self-educate. We don’t have the excuses that our less-empowered sisters elsewhere have. We can make choices. And we do, every single day. The challenge: Show some labia! (Figuratively…) Sometimes those choices are poor, or downright awful. We need to kindly but firmly make it clear that abusive men, whether their abuse is physical or not, should never be tolerated. We need to help her figure out why she settles for low-quality men when there are so many great ones out there who aren’t abusive dicks, who know how to treat a woman, and who are getting overlooked because they’re not ‘bad boys’ or hypermasculine (both of which are big red flying Bad News freak flags). The #1 Red Flag Of The Abusive Man After all, you as the friend have skin in the game too. Her bad choices might lead to you being stalked, harassed and threatened too. She has no right to put your life in danger like that. She has a responsibility to her friends and family when she makes partner choices. REAL friends don’t want her to get hurt, or die. And a quick note for men Ditto. Don’t tolerate abusive, toxic women. You’re too good for her. Don’t let her physically abuse you. The moment she starts hitting, get out of her vicinity, call the police, and later, you can tell her she either gets therapy for her anger management and impulse control issues or you’re out of there. That’s what REAL equality looks like. You don’t have to put up with her shit, either. This first appeared on Medium in September 2019. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

And here’s why it never happened again Photo by ramzi hashisho from FreeImages (cropped) “Ugly dog!” I heard that a lot my last two years of high school. Mostly from Dan. We were in the same vocational class which meant three or four consecutive periods of togetherness. He also liked to call me Wolfwoman, and he called a suspiciously gay friend of mine Tinkerbell or Tink for short. Dan had some serious masculinity issues of his own. He was crazy about wrestling and his idol was Sergeant Slaughter . He was forever trying to get the other guys in headlocks. Make of that what you will. He loved to walk around the classroom intoning, “He a MAN!” Especially if one of the other guys did something he thought was unmanly. He was always pointing to his dick as though someone should give him a blowjob. As though he’d ever known what female lips felt like down there. He almost got fired from his grocery store job when he made homophobic comments at my suspiciously gay friend while he was shopping with a neighbor. The neighbor insisted on reporting Dan to his boss who forced him to apologize and warned if it ever happened again he'd be fired. Dan was my worst bully in high school. I was angry at him for years after. For all his declarations that I was supremely hideous and no man would ever want me, I never knew Dan to have a girlfriend in high school. One day Dan hit me. Our lockers were next to each other and that was always a prime opportunity for verbal abuse. I forget what our altercation was about, but he whacked me upside the head, and then skittered away, just like a five-year-old boy. Yeah, right, he a MAN!!! I was really pissed, but I let it go. What was I going to do, chase him down the hall? What a wuss, to hit a girl and then run like one. But, I already knew the school principal wouldn’t do anything about him and neither would the teacher. Back then, no one worried about bullied teens bringing guns to school. Good thing, because Dan remains the only person to this day I ever felt like I could have murdered if I’d known I’d get away with it. That was kind of a scary thought at sixteen, thinking that if I was alone in a room with a knife and Dan and no one knew we were there, that I might kill him and do the world a favor by ridding it of one useless and (in my mind) irredeemable bully. I was too young to realize he’d eventually outgrow it. It took him awhile, longer than the rest of us, but he’d finally become something resembling a man by our five-year reunion. When he called me Ugly Dog or Wolfwoman I’d call him Yellow Belly and ask if he was still fighting girls. One day, he hit me again. I knew he would. This time I was prepared for his hit-and-run. We’d been outside the school working on a class project together, Dan and I and maybe one or two other classmates. He’d been his usual abusive self, and in the hallway he didn’t like that I wasn’t moving fast enough with something and he whacked me upside the head like the last time. And of course he ran away — he was taller than I — laughing. Nicole and Dan prepare to meet on the field of battle. Ugly dog photo by Faithnow22 on Flickr and Yellow-Bellied Marmot by Alan Vernon (CC0) I went back into the classroom. He came in a few minutes later, lugging something heavy and laughing. “Hey Nicole, is your ear ringing?” WHAM! “Is YOUR ear ringing, Dan?” He dropped his heavy load and came at me. This time he wasn’t going to run away. He also wasn’t going to get away with hitting girls without the entire school knowing about it. I’d planned for this moment for nearly a year. I went for his face with my fingernails. When he realized what I was going to do he turned around and kept his face away, so I clung to his back and scratched viciously at his neck. By the time our other classmates pulled us apart, Dan had ugly red streaks on both sides of his neck. I kind of regret not taking the opportunity to take one last swipe at his face after the fight ended. If you’re wondering where the teacher was, he was in his back office smoking up a storm as usual. By the time he came out it was all over. Now Dan would have to explain to everyone the next day how he’d gotten those scratch marks on his neck, and admit to fighting with a girl. I’ve always wondered what he told his father that night. Was Daddy-o sympathetic, or was he ashamed of his son for being a big wuss? I mean, who was teaching Dan to be such a pseudo-masculine wanker? Although it’s possible that Dan was just a dick. He never hit me again though. I knew he wouldn’t. We got along better, too, with only the occasional insult tossed at each other. Now I had a new one. “Hey Dan, are you still fighting GIRLS?” I guess it was the only way he was ever going to touch one unless he grew up. Until then he had to settle for touching guys under the pretense of pulling wrestling moves. I often wondered over the years, and occasionally discussed with my gay friend, whether Dan was actually a closet homosexual. He was more homophobic than most teenage boys, many of whom outgrow it. Although he refused to call me Ugly Dog at the reunion, he hadn’t outgrown the homophobia. I accepted his Facebook friend request many years later because I was dying to know if he’d finally come out of the closet. His profile indicated he was married, with a photo of his son. Congrats, Dan, you finally got laid! Once, anyway. No man has ever hit me since then. I would never allow it. Obviously, you don’t always know it’s coming. And you can’t always fight back like I did with Dan. But you don’t have to tolerate it either. You especially don’t have to go back for more. My mother taught me never to tolerate abuse from a man, and that’s how I grew up thinking about it. That getting hit sometimes happened, but that you always had a choice as to whether it would happen again. Maybe not always, in some cases. Like if the abuser is in your family. Or you to go to a school where they’ll never address bullying until some kid blows away the ninth grade. There are other ways to fight back than physically. Like leaving the guy after the first incident, when it’s far less dangerous than after getting whacked around several more times. Or filing a police report. The reasons why women don’t do this are complex, but we need to talk more about the importance of getting out early and not returning and giving tacit permission to do it again. Because it is permission. That’s not a popular idea with some who think we should keep the focus on telling men not to hit women. I say that’s a feminist pipe dream and in the real world, women have to protect themselves. Because we have the power to decide how we’ll be treated. Not all women understand that, and unfortunately, they’re not always going to learn that from feminists. I want them to know they do have the power. I want young girls like myself back in the Jurassic days to know this, very early. They’re not all going to grow up with a mother like mine, who taught me to never, ever, be a victim. So we have to teach them NEVER to accept abuse. The challenge starts with ourselves, and our friends. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

Life is hard for men too. Deal with it. Image from Claudio_Scott on Pixabay North American women do love to complain. It’s a privilege of living in one of the two most advanced, modern cultures in the world, where they’ve got it immeasurably easier compared to women in days of yore, including the world I was born into. “It’s so haaaaaaaaard to be a woman today! It’s just exhausting!” I think the worst, the very worst part of being a woman in North America is having to listen to educated women of all types whine like little girls about how haaaaaaarrrd it is to be a woman. Oh please. Shelly Fabares had it right in Bye Bye Birdie. If it’s that hard to be a woman in 2022, you’re doing it wrong. When there was still a patriarchy thing Okay, I’m a lot more experienced at being a woman than most. I’ve been at it a lot longer. When I was born in the Mad Men era, women couldn’t own credit cards without a co-signer, had a harder time getting an apartment of their own (because she might Have Sex), couldn’t get a legal abortion in most places nor could she get birth control (See: Punishment. Having Sex. Nice Girls Don’t.) She also couldn’t attend certain exclusive schools. When people asked me that dumbass question they love to ask six-year-olds, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I said I wanted to be a nurse. I didn’t see a lot of career options. Like, also, mommy, secretary, teacher. “You could be a doctor,” my feminist-in-denial mother said. (She hated ‘those damn women’s libbers!’) “I can’t be a doctor!” I protested. “I’m not a boy!” “Girls can be doctors,” Mom said. “No one’s stopping them.” “Whoever heard of a woman doctor?” I asked, drawing on my vast experience with the only doctor I’d ever known. “There are women doctors,” Mom told me. “They’re just not very common.” Who knew there weren’t laws against this sort of thing? Victory for women? Move along, nothing to see here! When I entered university the Computer Revolution was underway. It was a little chickie-boo who liberated the (male) masses by smashing the patriarchy (literally) Feminism had a harder edge now, and young women like myself took it for granted we could be whatever we wanted. We had big-ass shoulder pads to prove it, too. Somewhere along the way, though, everything went — if you’ll pardon the expression — tits up. Women lost their edge, sort of pretended to be empowered, but their message became just — weak. They talked about this patriarchy thing as though it was the source of all evil. Patriarchy exists in regressive, retro parts of the world, but here in North America it’s more of a geriatric Fox News-addled old crank. Hey, great news! Harvey Weinstein just got sentenced to 23 years in prison for being a mass rapist! Not long after Bill Cosby got sentenced! Time to celebrate, right? Well, at least women didn’t *vote* for Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby… Dude’s 67. He’s going to die before he serves his sentence. What did she want, the Braveheart treatment? Let’s note: For once, the white rapist got a longer prison sentence than the black rapist. I mean c’mon, Weinstein’s been getting away with this for years. And Cosby even longer. Almost as long as I’ve been alive, when Sunni Welles became his first alleged drug rape victim . Honest question: Do women not report sexual assault more because they won’t be believed, or because feminists keep telling them they won’t be believed? Instead of celebrating a second big win, women downplay it and claim there’s no justice for women. Because Trump, or something. Victim feminists have a major phobia against ever admitting women are making progress every damn day. Naomi Wolf wrote a whole book about it. Mama Didn’t Raise No Victim Feminist No matter how good things get, no matter how much better women have it, no matter how privileged we all are, no matter how much justice we do see, no matter how much the rape rate has gone down (63%) since the early ’90s, (and maybe a few extra percentage points since Weinstein got arrested) all too many feminists can do is complain about niggling details instead of tackling real problems facing women, like how we can make it safer and less stigmatizing to report sexual abuse immediately. Some see a victim of patriarchal exploitation that only values women for their sexual release value; others see an empowered woman unafraid of her own sexuality or what others think. What do *you* see? Creative Commons Zero — CC0 on Pxfuel Men have it hard too Of all the stupid mental junk food modern feminists gorge on, the most ridiculous is the notion that men have it so much easier. You’d think life was just a cakewalk in the park for men compared to how haaaaard women have it in 2022. To be sure, men still possess an unequal amount of power, and let’s stop colorizing it, because in many parts of the world where women live with genuine patriarchy, their oppressors often aren’t white. ‘White privilege’ didn’t protect dozens of women from Bill Cosby, either. Men find existence pretty damn difficult too, and they’re dealing with a lot of the same problems women have. What’s the Hardest Part About Being a Man? I’m a Doctor and I Struggle to Help Men With Depression It’s no picnic being a man, either. I read a lot of articles about all the things women claim they aren’t ‘allowed’ to do. I’m not sure where that comes from. I see an awful lot of the very same messages to men , too, of all the things they’re not ‘allowed’ to do. Those forbidden things may be different from what women aren’t ‘permitted’, but men still receive numerous negative messages about how they’re supposed to be and act. They can’t have feelings, they can’t cry, they have to define themselves by work, they have to be strong and stoic at all times, real men don’t ask for help. They can’t complain if they get beaten by a woman. Or raped. Yes, it happens, and not always by another man, either. It’s difficult to ‘be a man’ when you have to be on constant guard against the Homo Police. Sociologist Michael Kimmel writes about it in Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. “Homophobia — the fear that people might misperceive you as gay — is the animating fear of American guys’ masculinity.” Teenage boys in particular police each other for signs of ‘gayness. It sounds exhausting. “It’s not like I want to stay in that box,” says Jeff, a college student. “But as soon as you step outside it, even for a second, all the other guys are like, ‘what are you, dude, a fag?’ It’s not very safe out there on your own….But now, in my fraternity, on this campus, man, I’d lose everything.” Men buy into society’s toxic lessons, as do women. Just type “women aren’t allowed to” in the Medium search bar, look at the articles it retrieves, and ask just who’s holding all these women back. Is The Patriarchy holding guns to their heads, or are they blaming men for their own lack of labia? It’s time for all of us to examine toxic social messages and ask, “Do I have to mentally consume this garbage?” Life is hard. For everyone. One thing that hasn’t changed for humanity since we first crawled out of the ocean 400 million years ago is that life is pretty damn difficult no matter who you are. Although we live longer and richer lives, we still torture people for fun like they did in the Middle Ages, although now it takes the form of bullying and abuse — gay-shaming for boys, slut-shaming for girls, fat-shaming for everyone. We are still tribal. The worst punishment is social ostracism, and we always find ways to push others to the outside. It’s universal. Life is hard no matter what historical time period you live in. It’s hard for everyone; all colors, all genders, all preferences, all religions, all cultures. While there are countless competitors in the Victimhood Olympics, I’m not sure there are any clear winners. How much one ultimately suffers is correlated to their degree of mental health, and how much they’re willing to torture themselves. How to make it easier to be a woman What makes our suffering worse is when our egos feed us narratives that make it all about ourselves. This is why I roll my eyes at feminitwits who are always droning on about how ‘misogyny’ and ‘patriarchy’ are everywhere. They invented much of it. Seriously, these obsessions are piling misery on Western women in an already miserable world. These ideas have their place, but mostly in textbooks, not between one’s ears. It’s painful to watch women mentally stab themselves over and over again with toxic interpretations positioning themselves, or women in general, as victims. Girls just want to have fun, but perma-victims live to suffer. 11 Instances of Everyday Sexism lists a few, to my eyes, miniscule misogynies women have to live with: ‘Shaming’ for having our period. Um, maybe in cultures where it’s still taboo, but in North America? What, because feminine hygiene products are still taxed in some places? Because trans women had to put up with the indignity of the Venus symbol on their sanitary napkins? (Is it just me, or do trans women activists seem even more entitled than born women?) Being told to smile. Maybe there’s only so much resting-bitch-face people can put up with on the train in the morning. Men should smile more too. Congenial faces might help to reduce some of the misogyny and misandry in the world. Can someone send Greta Thunberg a memo? Getting ignored by co-workers. Yeah, because that never happens to men. Missing out on networking opportunities. What, does LinkedIn have a virtual ‘pink office’ somewhere? ‘Mom shaming’ for not being a good enough mother. Do men have anything to do with this??? Has there ever been a mom-shaming on social media that didn’t involve a gaggle of self-righteous, supermommier-than-thou stroller tank jockeys? Being expected to have orgasms from intercourse. Okay, no one needs that kind of sexual pressure but I’d like to point out: When I was born, feminists themselves could barely find the clitoris, much less men. Be glad he even knows what a female orgasm is! Can You Find All 15 Signs Of The Patriarchy In This Picture Of A Tugboat? (Warning: Satire!) I want to scream, “Stop telling yourself such nasty stories! They’re not true! You’re poisoning yourself, and women!” People have it hard in a toxic society that grows ever more toxic every day. Suicides are at record rates , up 33% for Americans since 1999. Stress is up too. Teens rival adults . Racism is linked to faster aging in blacks , but white men still kill themselves at far higher rates than black men. So much for how hard it is to be a woman. It sucks for all of us, kids. It’s not a competition. Deal with it. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

But only once. Not sure what he saw in me. Surely not victimhood… Photo by Charles C. Collingwood on Unsplash He did a double take as he passed me walking through the mall, and stopped to chat me up. He reminded me a little of a young Frank Langella, so I let him. I’d just moved to Canada. “I’m sorry. I felt compelled to say something. You look so much like a friend who’s recently died.” It was one of the weirdest pickup lines ever, but I fell for it because of prior precedent in my family. My mother’s second love had done a double-take on the bus when he saw her. She said he looked so stunned she believed him when he said Mom looked exactly like the woman he’d been in love with who died back in Germany. He and Mom fell in love, but the romance went nowhere fast because he was already married. So, like mother, like daughter, n’est-ce pas? Well, except for the married part. His name was Sam, and he wanted to take me to lunch. Okay, I said, but first I have to apply for my Ontario Healthcare Insurance Program card. He went with me, and we talked in the waiting room. He seemed okay, nice and friendly, and I kind of liked him, so I thought I’d better drop the bomb that ended things quickly with a lot of Yankee men: I told him I didn’t want children. “Neither do I,” he said. Well okay, then! We couldn’t just eat in the mall, it seemed; he had some special place he wanted to take me. Foolishly, I got into the car with him and we drove somewhere. This is what I call women ‘doing dumb shit’ that puts us in danger. Dumb Shit I’ve Done I didn’t get raped, but I sure made it easy for them. Spoiler alert: Nothing bad happened. We went to some restaurant on the water — probably Lake Ontario. I had no idea where I was. He’d been pretty free with the compliments, oh how pretty you are, you’re so pretty, I just love being with you, blah blah blah. Guys say a lot of stuff. There was something not right about him. Kind of phony. He asked a lot of questions. He seemed eager to establish an early intimacy. “What are your plans for this summer?” he asked. I mentioned I was going to a family wedding in New York in September. “I’m going with you,” he informed me. “Um, excuse me?” “I’m going with you,” he stated. “Oh no you’re not.” “Why not?” I gave him A Look. “Because we don’t know each other well enough.” “We will by then.” “Why are you worried about September? You don’t even know if we’re going to make it to the weekend yet.” “Why wouldn’t we?” “You’re not going.” “But I want to meet your family.” “I’ll decide when you’re ready to meet my family.” Wisely, he dropped it. There’s nothing that sets a control freak back on his heels quite like an early sign that his victim doesn’t take any shit. Later he pushed my hand down and took the fork from me. “Let me,” he said, and he tried to feed me himself. What was I, two? “No,” I said, and I took my fork back. Did he think that was romantic? I found it infantilizing. After a little more conversation — oh yeah, we were sitting side by side, he didn’t want to sit across from me — he announced, “I’m in love with you.” Photo by Gage Walker on Unsplash I crinkled up my face and said something along the lines of, “What the hell?” “It’s true,” he replied. “I’ve fallen in love with you.” “After only two hours?” “I’m serious.” “Oh, cut it out!” I spat. “You’re not in love with me. That’s bullshit.” “I am,” he insisted. I’d had enough. This afternoon was growing tiresome. I realized I was somewhere in or around Toronto, nowhere near a bus line as far as I knew, with some joker I’d met at the mall and had idiotically gone somewhere in a city I didn’t know very well. Worst came to worst, I could call my roommate to come get me, but that would be supremely embarrassing, not to mention a huge inconvenience for him. Still, I didn’t feel like I was in danger. I’ve gone through life largely convinced I’m not the sort of woman who gets raped and/or murdered. So far so good. He asked a few more questions, but I wasn’t in the mood anymore. “Tell me your hopes and dreams,” he said. “What???” “Tell me your hopes and dreams,” he smiled. Who the hell says that? What were my hopes and dreams? To make a new life in Canada. To find a job soon. To finish my dark fantasy novel and get it published. To be a famous writer. To meet a great guy and fall in love, after so much disappointment in Connecticut. “I don’t have any,” I stated. “What? How can you not have any? Everyone has hopes and dreams!” Sam cried. “I don’t.” “Sure you do. Tell me.” “Nope. I don’t have any. Sorry.” Stated with that smug sarcasm that says screw you, buddy boy! He tried, but he couldn’t pry any hopes or dreams out of me. I was done. I sat back. “I need to get home,” I said. “I have to start making dinner for my roommate.” Or some other stupid lie, I don’t remember. I wondered if he’d return me or just abandon me, but we got into his car and went back to the mall. He dropped me off there. The conversation was more real, less phony, so we kissed before I got back on the bus. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Today, that would be the end of it, but back then I was trying to turn over a new leaf. My last five years in Connecticut hadn’t been good after my ex and I split up. I call them my Angry Drunken Bitch years. But, there was enough about Sam to like and we’d talked a lot, so when he reached out for another date I agreed. I wanted to be less picky and judgemental. I’d been rather unfair to men, and my last foray in Connecticut, with a customer I’d met through work, hadn’t gone anywhere. The second time Sam called, I had planned to get a haircut. “Cancel it,” he said. “Let’s go do such-and-such.” I was a little taken aback, but I was flattered he wanted to see me so badly, so I did. The next time, I was en route to the salon when he called. “Let’s go do something." “Not this afternoon. I’m going to get my hair cut,” I said. “Cancel it.” “No. I did that last time.” “Do you have to do this today?” he asked. “No, but I cancelled it last time for you. This time I’m getting my hair cut. Some other time, Sam.” For some reason, he expected me to just drop everything when he decided we should go do something. Once or twice I reached out to him, but he said he had other plans. I didn’t ask him to cancel them. I wondered if it was another woman, but I didn’t ask. None of my business; he wasn’t my steady boyfriend. One day we went out to lunch. No annoying comments or pushy suggestions this time. Then we went to see the movie Cinderella Man. All was fine until he tried to push my head down on his shoulder. I pulled it up again. He pushed it down again, more forcefully. “Stop it, that’s annoying,” I hissed. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he trying to force this intimacy? It was like when he tried to feed me. And told me he was in love with me. He’d said the love thing several times since but I never said it back, and he didn’t ask why. I didn’t believe him either. Five years of bad dating experiences taught me not to believe anything men said anymore. We went back to my place and made out on the couch a little, then he had to go. And after that, I heard nothing. Not a thing. I was pissed. Still quite insecure, I had outdated ideas of how dating was supposed to work. I’d been out of it for awhile. The ex and I were together for over seven years, with a split in between, so by the time I moved to Toronto things had changed a lot, but no one cc’d me the memo. I thought if Sam really cared he’d call. It was out of the question that I call him. I don’t remember if I was just being an idiot or testing him. The silence drove me insane. My roommate and I decided to spend a weekend at Algonquin Park, a huge nature preserve north of Toronto to shoot some moose. Relax! This is the only way we shoot moose. Although that mofo does look like he’s contemplating pulling some shit with me, doesn’t he? I enjoyed myself, but I also stewed a lot. I never believed Sam’s love bullshit, but it always aggravates me when men meet my low expectations. So much for his great love if he couldn’t be bothered calling! Then I accidentally almost dialed him since I’d either forgotten or not gotten around to deleting his number from my mobile. I hung up quickly. A day or so later, he called, seemingly out of the blue. “I’m so glad I found you!” he exulted. “I’d accidentally deleted your number, and I couldn’t remember it. I tried everything to get it again but I couldn’t remember your last name either. Finally I saw you called!” “How come you didn’t have my number written down somewhere?” I asked as I rode the bus. “I never thought to do that, I’m sorry.” “I thought you were madly in love with me. If that were true you’d have made damn certain you wouldn’t lose my number.” “I should have, I apologize. “Or bothered to learn my last name.” “Uh, yeah. Where are you?” “On the bus.” “Well get off. I’ll pick you up wherever you are. Let’s go out to dinner.” “I can’t. I just got a job offer and I have to go do the paperwork.” “Can’t you do it some other time?” “NO! Sam, for god’s sakes, it’s a new job!” “Okay. I really want to make it up to you for losing your number. I’ll take you out to a really nice place I know. I’ll pick you up tonight, then.” “No, I have plans tonight,” I lied. “Cancel them,” he said. “Fuck you,” I replied. “What?” “Thursday night is better. We’ll go out to dinner Thursday night.” “I can’t. I have plans.” “Cancel them,” I said. “I can’t.” “Why not?” “Because I can’t.” “Just call her and tell her you’ll meet her some other night.” “It’s not another woman.” I highly doubted that, but I honestly didn’t care anymore. “Thursday night is best for me. If you want to go out, that’s the night to do it.” “I can’t. I told you. I have plans.” “I’m expected to drop everything when you call. Now, I don’t actually give a damn whether we go to dinner or not. I’ve over you. You want to do this, we do it Thursday night. We do it on my time now. Otherwise forget about it.” “I can’t cancel.” “Okay, we’ll just forget about it, then.” “I still want to take you out!” “Nah,” I said. “I’m over this. You disappeared. Out of sight, out of mind." Not true, but I’ll bet he believed me. I always wondered what Sam’s deal was. Everyone’s obsessed with narcissists, so I wondered if maybe that was his problem, but I tend not to go with pop-psychology labels, so I figured maybe he was just a manipulative little bastard. At any rate, I lost no further sleep over him. That Cancel them crap had gotten on my nerves more than anything else. It wasn’t until I watched a TEDx talk by a domestic violence social psychologist named Dina McMillen that I realized there was a possible explanation I’d never considered: That I was being groomed for an eventual abusive relationship. McMillen tells of over 630 violent domestic abusers, (95% male) she’s interviewed over the years in a client-doctor relationship in which she’s prohibited from telling on them. Without fear of punishment, these men have ‘dropped the mask’ and spoken with her quite freely about what they did to their partners, displaying male privilege at its ugliest and often evincing no empathy for their objectified partners. McMillen believes our solutions to domestic violence are too reactive rather than proactive. She advocates teaching young girls and women ‘in about two hours’ the ‘secrets’ abusers don’t want women to know about their psychological manipulation techniques. The mind-blowing, eye-opening takeaway for me was when she ran through the list and Sam ticked off several. Like: He needs you to trust him, plan a future with him, and fall in love with him. He pulled ‘too much, too soon.’ Early claims of love; artificial intimacy attempts; telling me what we were going to do; planning for our future together. All at the first meeting . I wondered if he’d read The Game or something that told him women think you’re serious when you speak about the future with them. McMillen spoke about pushing for constant contact but Sam didn’t do that. He did, however, want my attention like a cat: When it was convenient for him. He tried to get me to confide in him before he’d built trust. He expected me to drop everything and be at his beck and call, although he didn’t get mad when I wouldn’t. However, McMillen noted that often women go along with the little decisions these guys constantly make for you because we want to be liked and thought of as easygoing. Which I did. I’ve long believed our need to be ‘liked’ by men is one of the biggest vulnerabilities in female psychology. Whenever I’ve done dumb shit that put me in danger, like getting into a strange man’s car, it’s been because I wanted him to ‘like’ me. She offered several other red flags but you can watch the video for yourself. I strongly encourage it; it’s not graphic with no descriptions of violence. She was only able to speak very generally about her subjects and not identify anyone. “Holy fuck,” I said as I watched. She didn’t even list all the warning signs. It would take too long. She wrote a book about it, though. "But He Says He Loves Me!" - The Women's Abuse Prevention Manual Sam complained a few times about my ‘walls’ when he tried to get too close to me. He was right, but I felt pretty justified. He telegraphed his phoniness at every turn. I wonder what might have happened if I was more of a victim. Or what I might have done if I’d met him when I was more emotionally naive and trusting. Would Sam have had better luck taking advantage of me? Maybe, although I don’t think it would have advanced to emotional or physical abuse. I’ve never been abused by a man and don’t believe I’d have tolerated it from anybody. Do You Have A Thing For Abusers? Knowing the red flags will help you avoid them When I was young, I was, like many women, easier to manipulate with the carrot-and-stick approach. It’s unconscious and not specifically male; women do it too. It’s when you give someone just enough attention to keep them interested but you’re really not that interested yourself. Didn’t understand that one until I read the book He’s Just Not That Into You. I recognized how this had been done to me several times, but also, that I’d done it a few times myself. Wish I’d had this book when I was younger. I hope others will take lessons from this and realize that abusers can’t abuse you unless you let them. First and foremost, recognize their need to control and establish authority and resist it. And get out early. Because they can’t control a woman who won’t take their shit. This article first appeared on Medium in January 2020. Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

Systemic discrimination isn’t just to your disadvantage. It’s to mine too. CC0 2.0 photo by InvestmentZen on Flickr I’ll admit: I don’t have all the answers. I have a lot of diagnoses, and I do occasionally offer some answers, but they tend to piss off anyone resistant to the notion they have personal agency and might share some role in where they’re at. What I do know is this: United We Stand, Divided We Fall ain’t just a cheesy-sounding motivational poster phrase. It’s for reals. We’re proving it right now. Tribalism divides us equally — what’s called ‘identitarianism’ on the right, a dog whistle for ‘racism and other assorted bigotries’ — and ‘identity politics’ on the left, a dog whistle for ‘woke identitarianism and other assorted bigotries’. I’m tired of all tribalism. Tribes are drawing lines and saying You have to do this to make our lives better. You owe us this. You have harmed us. Keep your hands off our cultural shit, because, you know, it's ours , not yours . The antiracism movement is famous for this. Many want 'slave reparations' to compensate people who have never been enslaved from people who've never owned slaves. While I recognize the United States was founded on mind-bogglingly brutal systemic discrimination and injustice based on owning other people — dividing ourselves up with ever more precise labels (I’m a pansexual tripartite half-black one-quarter Native American Libertarian Satanic Scientologist who identifies as a Japanese otaku) and fighting for only our own tribe (of like two or three?) makes no sense. It sounds cheesy to say We’re all in this together, because we don’t believe it, but we really are, especially with the most non-racist enemy ever closing in on us all: Climate change. We’re going to be together a lot more closely in the coming decades as we began congregating in the islands of North America and elsewhere where climate change will be somewhat less traumatizing than wherever you live now. Midwestern Red States with an influx of California liberals moving east: I hope I’m still alive to see that! It may sound cheesy and ’60s and all kum-bye-ya to say it, but I’m done with tribalist thinking. I reject your tribe, including my own. If you can’t play nicely with others, you are not of my new tribe: Us. Not U.S. Us. Screw your tribes, and mine too Why am I fed up with you and your tribalism? I read Kurt Andersen’s book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History. It’s a forty-year revisitation describing how conservative masterminds remade America with subtle, behind-the-scenes political and economic changes, benefiting those with money and privilege and creating the yawning chasm of inequality we experience today (and if you’re still well-off, Matt Taibbi’s ‘vampire squid’ siphon is coming for you too). It’s a depressing slog through How The 1% Did It. I won’t get into the details — if you haven’t read it, buy it or borrow it. It’s an eye-opening read, especially if you’re old enough to have been an adult through all this mishegoss. You’ll find yourself nodding and thinking, “I remember that! So THAT’S how they did it! Holy crap, I had no idea at the time.” I had a news junkie friend who had a bit of a nose for prophetic news a while back. Fifteen years ago he regularly forwarded articles he thought interesting. One, from the mid-2000s, warned of the danger ARMs — Adjustable Rate Mortgages — posed to the global economy which came to pass just a few years later. A couple of years later, they came to pass in The Great Financial Apocalypse of 2008. Another article warned of the dangers of growing economic inequality, and how the poor had been siphoned dry, and the working class almost there, and how they were coming for the middle class next. This is exactly what happened, for many new members of The Class Formerly Known As Middle after the GFA2008. Trillions in investments were lost by people who weren’t super-rich, and those trillions went somewhere. Hmmm? ‘Middle’, of course, meant ‘mostly white people’. (Off-topic question: How much money does a black person have to make before they become a Republican? Discuss. Debate. Explain.) The article also warned the money will continue to flow upward, which meant the higher classes will come next, except for those able to scramble higher. But — now our ‘slightly betters’ can’t find people to work for them, since they’re unaccustomed to paying living wages to those losers, which puts their businesses and livelihoods in jeopardy. The 20% ‘haves’ will become 10% and then the 5% and then the 1%. Then, it will move to .5%. Unless something changes. Now. My bud’s articles didn’t speak much about climate change (though he sent articles about that too), and virtually nothing about pandemics driving many to commit suicide by conspiracy theory, which may change or delay the prophesies but the pattern is clear: We’ll get there eventually if we permit it. We can’t fight it with tribalism. Group-rights protests are critical for change but they can only accomplish so much when your message is You have to change a system that benefits only my people, not your people. How can social justice movements get everyone on board? What’s in it for me? The system doesn’t work anymore even for us privileged white folk. Some people just haven’t gotten the message yet, and that’s a whack load of white people and male people. You know, the ones at the top of the power hierarchy. I’ve begun to imagine what it might take to equalize the system for all of us. I’ve assembled some random thoughts on this to get others thinking. I have no hard answers, and even if I did we couldn’t implement them any time soon, perhaps even for generations after the Trump Epochalypse. But we have to think differently. Tribalism ain’t working for America and it never has. Not white supremacy and not identity politics — two sides of the same corroded coin. It only worked — and works — for some, and you can recognize an inequality system by its volume of civil unrest. CC0 2.0 photo by Chad Davis on Flickr The system ain’t working, period. Creative Commons CC0 2.0 photo by GoToVan on Flickr Here’s what I randomly muse when I’m out walking. Not all white people are created equal White skin isn’t the magic ticket to everything you ever wanted and a hassle-free, stress-free life the way I suspect some people of color imagine. Their 'Kyles' and 'Karens' are the Critical Race Theory antiracism set's stereotypes of the incels' 'Chads' and "Stacys'. If melanin deficiency was a fix-all, there’d be no such thing as Trump rallies because we’d all be sitting around in our hot tubs sipping Dom Perignon and checking our investments. We wouldn’t worry he might actually return in 2024. Republicans have juiced white fears of loss of privilege and power-sharing because they know how to manipulate their white inferiors. How all white people live, as envisioned by the CRT-addled. CC0 2.0 image by Christopher Porter on Flickr Trump supporters are what the Soviet Union's Communist Party called ‘useful idiots’, or people too ignorant and uninformed to fully understand the goals of the ruling party seeking to undermine them. Including some of the better-off ones who think the money siphon will pass them by. The system doesn’t serve many Trump supporters much better than it does POC, although MAGAs may arguably get away with shoplifting more unless they look like heroin addicts. Green privilege trumps white privilege Money is privilege, and its brother is celebrity privilege. The latter is icing on the cake for those who want to break any law imaginable. It blows my mind to think how long Bill Cosby got away with raping mostly white women when you consider how many black men swung from trees or worse for the alleged crime of raping white women. Was there ever a guilty black man lynched? I’d bet not in pre-civil rights America. A black-on-white rape would be the equivalent of a Slut Walk protest in Afghanistan today. Cosby is accused of having committed his first rape back in the mid-1960s. A black man genuinely raping white women, and he got away with it! His victims knew damn well his green privilege (and possibly his male and celebrity privilege) outranked their white privilege. Even in the 1960s. My mind boggles, because back then, had it come out, I’m not sure what would have happened to Cosby. It’s conceivable he himself might have been murdered, especially if he ventured below the Mason-Dixon. He might today be A Civil Rights Martyr, rather than a convicted rapist recently released after serving less than three years in jail. Just like a white man. O.J. Simpson got away with murdering a white woman and her white male friend. He could afford the hugely expensive legal ‘Dream Team’ most black men can’t. Also, O.J.!!! Heisman Trophy winner! Record holder! First-time 2,000 yards in a season rusher! Movie actor! Hertz airport-jumping guy! “If [the gloves] don’t fit, you must acquit!” said Johnnie Cochran even as someone said they heard O.J. confess to former footballer-turned-minister Rosey Grier. Green privilege trumps white privilege far more than we acknowledge. Some of us have more green privilege than others and there’s where you encounter fifty shades of white privilege. Plenty of white people are now left behind with the ones who were always behind. Plenty more of us will be joining them soon if we don’t all start fighting our common enemy. The 1% is everyone’s problem. I’m okay with a world where we share wealth and power with people who don’t look like me because… I actually believe that United Negro College Fund shit I appreciated the value of education and learning growing up even if I wasn’t so fond of school, where I was bullied, but also because I was the same young dipshit most American kids are, more preoccupied with the opposite sex and TV shows than lessons I found pointless at the time. I learned to value education more in university, and I agree with the United Negro College Fund commercial from the '70s. A mind really is a terrible thing to waste. I often wonder what the world would look like today if women and POC had been granted educational opportunities sooner, or never been denied them at all. I wonder how many great brains, how many amazing innovations and brilliant insights we’ve missed out on because we rely so heavily on white male thought leadership? Sure, white people have innovated and invented many positive contributions to Western culture, but always built upon the innovations of people who didn’t look at all like us. Thank the early Muslim world as just one example, bringing us pioneering surgical techniques, hospitals, medical knowledge encyclopedias, algebra, trigonometry, geometry, pharmacology, and numerous other progressive innovations, before it descended into ignorant fundamentalism about four hundred years ago like the U.S. is doing today. What would a genuine meritocracy look like? What if we made HR’s ATSes (Automatic Trash Systems — er, I mean Application Tracking Systems) work for all of us, rather than overqualified young people willing to work ‘entry level’ jobs requiring multiple degrees for less money than a Starbucks barista? What if employers were forced to run applications stripped of identifying information into the system and evaluated on genuine merit? If you didn’t know the age, race, gender, or economic class of the applicant? And those systems were regularly audited by third-party impartial firms to ensure employer impartiality? And hiring decisions were made based on true impartiality? Sounds impossible but how rock-solid airtight our most contentious recent federal election was is why I think this is imaginable and workable. How equalizing would a UBI be? We’ve begun revisiting nascent UBIs (Universal Basic Income) in the U.S. and Canada, where mini-experiments in a guaranteed ‘mincome’ have been conducted for decades. Read about Canada’s most successful one , which debunked a lot of conservative myths about lazy humans and was, unsurprisingly, shut down by a Conservative government (although it was begun by an earlier one). In 2020, CERB (Canadian Emergency Response Benefit) kept many of us from sinking into economic oblivion by offering $2,000 a month to those who qualified. (In the U.S., taxpayers received three different stimulus checks.) My employment insurance payments had just ended and I still had no job thanks to purple squirrel-seeking ATSs and a heavy dollop of age discrimination, so CERB saved my bacon, along with millions of other pandemic-shocked Canadians. Today Americans receive additional stipends that cause employers to complain people would ‘rather sit on their asses than work’, an utterly ludicrous claim in a society that worships ‘free market capitalism’. As Biden sarcastically whispered, “Pay them more!” Believe me, when I finally got a job with a freelance sales agency that paid more than CERB, I happily departed, and I would much rather continue working for them than go back on (less) government benefits. Also, I don't feel like a parasitic loser. The cost of living is shooting up everywhere. Time for wages to shoot up too. If you can’t afford to pay people more you may not be bright enough to run your own business. Hey, Mr. & Ms. Former Business Owners, I hear Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Dollarama are hiring! G’wan, they’re dying for people not too lazy to work! How do *you* imagine a more equitable world? I’ve focused on ideas that will mostly outrage conservatives, but I don’t want to leave progressives out of the fun. Dealing with a voracious 1% for whom too much is never enough is our biggest crisis (or maybe climate change; or maybe the next killer pandemic). The left at least pays more attention to social justice for which I can grant them that, but it takes too many cues from Christian fundamentalism and identitarian politics. And while the right destroys lives with policies and mass shootings, the left destroys them with social media’s ‘cancel culture’. As Dave Chappelle said in his controversial Netflix special The Closer , “When you destroy a man’s livelihood it’s the same as killing him.” Nice work, ‘Progressives’! This first appeared on Medium in October 2021.Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!

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

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

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

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

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

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