F Boy Island

Isn’t that all places where Men congregate in which to get laid? I finally resumed watching that hilarious show now moved to the CW from Max which is their loss frankly, but ours as well as the budget has eliminated the shack the rejected F boys were sent to versus the Mansion the “nice guys” were sent to post eviction. If you have not watched this series you are missing out on one of the finer parodies of Dating shows that define reality TV. I find most of my time trying to figure how what job/profession they have other than “Entrepreneur”. Which now brings me to my synopsis of the other dating show, the Golden Bachelor that is still cooking up its stew of pain and rejection. I d o find it odd that despite the fact that given the ages of the individuals involved you would think they would have changed the equation somewhat; however, it may explain why they did only three hometown dates and cut it to only two “fantasy” ones, there is only so much a 72 year old man can handle.

I expected better from Grown ups, I would be wrong. I read this take on the show (below) from the New York Times and with that I agree with much of what is expressed by the Writers. The reality is that “reality” is all but avoided in these shows. The social isolation which we know from Covid is not healthy for one’s mental well being and I watched several women have clear issues over not being picked for a date, jealousy and of course distress over the concept of their “beloved” and hitting the “I am falling in love” mark right off the bat. Watching a 72 year old man navigate that with “You’re my girl” to finally saying it to one final contestant was to say the least weird. None of them should be even discussing that and should be realistic when even the Children expressed concern over how the distance would work in regards to courtship and longevity you could see them trying to be supportive but at one point when the cameras were off thinking or even saying, WHAT THE FUCK!” There Mothers/Sisters/Grandmother is going to sell her home, change her life and move to Indiana for a man she met on a TV show? Really, she is? But given what I saw the level of co-dependence and emotional instability that the final three demonstrated over a piece of ass was enough for me to think they would. Or not if a family member actually intervened.

When I watched the dates I recall the arrival of the Women and all were to say the least very attention seeking. One arrived on a Motorcycle, another came out of the limo with an old lady outfit and walker and stripped down to show a fit gorgeous woman in a slinky gown (she was the the one Prince fucked back in the day and that seems to be her entry ticket and free dinner invite) and the last was a Grandmother who arrived in a Bathrobe and said it was her Birthday and she wanted to arrive in her birthday suit and took off her bathrobe to reveal skin tight SKIM dress. Yes this woman is 71 years old. And all of them fit the “type” that clearly appealed to Gary, dyed long brown hair, thin and to say the least doe eyed and needy. The more interesting women were quickly dispatched and two self evicted wisely for family emergencies another for an injury sustained during Pickleball. Yes, bonding over trauma and physical disabilities is a theme here on the Golden Bachelor.

I am unclear why anyone would participate in this show, the dates seemingly were arranged to either invite terror or injury including flying in a helicopter when a Woman admitted being afraid of flying and heights. Another on an ATV vehicle that neither should be on and of course the rousing game of Pickleball, romance novel cover photo shoots and the ending which always is in hot tubs. Less about sexy and more about soothing frankly after the exhausting flash mob dancing and carnival riding adventure you need a good soak. Seriously, who thinks of this shit?

The family meetups are of course a process but as I have not watched the Bachelor in years, I know that the family is just that, the nuclear one and not extended one and certainly no Single Parents are included as that avoids sticky ex situations and well meeting one’s children. So to meet Grandchildren and involve them once again hit the icky mark and I did not find it cute. Shocking, I know. Not really.

Do people not go to therapy anymore and with that I knew instantly that too much revelation after weeks of avoidance is not a great way to meet and greet. The Woman from Benton City who lives on a farm is not a top choice. She has a lot of baggage emotionally and frankly riding a horse to the Tavern is not something I see happening in this man’s future. And in real life they would never meet and this would not be even a possibility. Then we the former sexy dancer (in case you have not heard that yet) in Minneapolis with the dead Dad at 16, and a forgotten mention that she has been married twice, and the real kicker – she is Jewish. I had not noticed the Star of David she wears and then I realized she knots it up with her other necklace at the Mansion but at home has it proudly displayed in her cleavage. Yeah, I don’t see WASP Gerry bringing that home to the family. But okay. This is why you discuss these issues of Religion, Race, Culture, Sex and Sexuality (as I suspect one of the Contestants son is also Gay) and the big one – Politics. Yeah, at 60 you are pretty vested in that one especially in today’s culture. Not having these discussions is deceptive and absurd. Again I did laugh when the Sexy Dancer (Leslie is her name) threw herself up into Gerry’s arms upon seeing him, and he immediately set her down. Yeah, that Hot Tub is looking good about now.

And this is why I love F Boy Island as despite that it possesses all the same principals and concepts, the Men are hilarious. They actually fight, establish Bro-mances and have no problem expressing their overall disdain for the Women when evicted. One just said, “I find you a Golddigger and btw I am a Nice Guy” Okay then! One whose Brother arrived as a part of the late entry clause where former contestants return, immediately said he was 40% into another Girl and stepped away from the sole Black woman to let his Brother have at it… having that his Brother was on last years show and won but needed I guess to come back to have another check cut. Yes that is the catch on FBoy. If the Woman picks the “nice guy” she gets 100K to decide to keep or share with her nice boy. If she picks an “F Boy” he decides the outcome. I love this show it is utterly without duplicity. Its about money folks, love no. Now that is one Golden Bachelor I would be totally vested in.

I have printed below the most recent discussion from the NY Times and with that I am glad this finally comes to an end soon, with the final two revealed and the Women Tell All (which may actually be revealing and honest). And then finally the fantasy dates, although I am switching to hard liquor as the fucking part is not something I care to see at all. Do you want a Blue pill or a Red one Gerry. Pick that Blue one Gerry you are going to need it.

Engaging and Aging on ‘The Golden Bachelor’

Two members of The New York Times’s Culture section discuss how a twist on a decades-old reality series has become must-watch television.

On the first episode of “The Golden Bachelor,” viewers were introduced to 22 women vying for the attention of Gerry Turner, 72, a widowed retiree who lost his wife in 2017.Credit…John Fleenor/ABC

By Sarah Bahr | Nov. 2, 2023 | The New York Times

In August, Julia Jacobs visited a Mediterranean-style mansion in Agoura Hills, Calif., the backdrop of “The Golden Bachelor.” The show is a spinoff of the popular “Bachelor” reality TV franchise, with a surprising twist: Participants are at least 60 years old.

“The show is coming at a time when there are expanding sensibilities around who is fit to fall in love on television,” said Jacobs, a Culture reporter for The New York Times who visited the set for an article about the reality dating series.

In the show’s premiere on Sept. 28, viewers met Gerry Turner (pronounced Gary), a 72-year-old widowed retiree from Indiana looking for romance, and nearly two dozen women hoping to court him on national television. Their relationships unfold on-air every Thursday.

Audiences seem to be loving it: The series premiere was the most watched debut for a “Bachelor” franchise season since 2021 and the most watched of any “Bachelor” premiere on the streaming platform Hulu.

But it isn’t all coming up roses: Amanda Hess, a critic at large for The Times, wrote in a recent column about how the show portrays older women. The contestants, she noted, engage in stunts like riding a motorcycle to set and performing a “ludicrous” striptease involving a walker.

“It celebrates older people, but only if they fit a very narrow image of youthful sexiness,” she said.

In a recent conversation, Jacobs and Hess discussed the series’s multigenerational appeal and the ways it differs from past “Bachelor” seasons. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Are you fans of “The Bachelor”?

AMANDA HESS I’ve watched many seasons, and I’ve been saying for years that they should do a “Bachelor” with widows and divorcées. So I was excited to see this version.

JULIA JACOBS I’m not a dedicated viewer, but I do really like writing about dating shows.

Some readers may ask: Why is The Times covering this reality TV show?

HESS It tells a story about how we see ourselves and how we see older people, how we see marriage and second marriage. It becomes an entry point for a conversation that I think our readers are interested in engaging with.

JACOBS It was a huge topic of interest on social media, and even at a senior center in New Jersey, where I went to watch the first episode. For some people, the “Bachelor” franchise feels like the same old show — season after season — and this twist was injecting something new and worth talking about.

Other than the age of the contestants, what sets this show apart from other versions of “The Bachelor”?

HESS The stakes are so high because many of the women have been married before. Many lost their spouses. They know what marriage is like. That, to me, makes the show both more compelling and harder to watch.

JACOBS There isn’t as much drama between the women. Typically you have a lot of women pulling each other out of dates like, “Can I grab him for a second?” But that doesn’t really happen here.

HESS The drama is happening within each person.

Why do you think this show is resonating with viewers across generations?

JACOBS The discussions between Gerry and the women he’s dating are more substantive. These women have already lived six or seven decades. They have careers and families. This show does not define their lives. And I think that has allowed them to be a bit more free in their dialogue.

HESS I’ve done several profiles of artists and celebrities who are in their 70s and 80s. People in their 20s are building their careers and their personas, but if you interview people who are older, they have already done that; they can tell you what they really think about how it all played out. And I think it’s similar for the women of “The Golden Bachelor.”

Julia, a statistic that jumped out at me from your article was that the median viewer age for ABC, the network that airs the show, is 64. Why has it taken so long for a network to tap into dating shows for this demographic?

JACOBS The producers said that this show had been in the works for 10 years. They didn’t have a clear answer as to why it had taken so long, but they said they felt as if it was coming at a time when they were seeing a lot of messaging about empowerment in aging. They mentioned Martha Stewart appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and John Stamos posting a nude photo on Instagram for his 60th birthday.

HESS The baby boomers are such a culturally dominant generation.

JACOBS They’re certainly dominant in terms of cable viewership.

We’ve talked a lot about the show’s successes, but what about it doesn’t work for you?

HESS I don’t enjoy seeing women at any age having to justify the way they look to men. If you’ve never watched “The Bachelor,” the first episode of “The Golden Bachelor” will seem like the most sexist, ageist thing you’ve ever seen; one of the women did this age-play striptease involving an “old” wig and dress, as if to say, Don’t worry, I’m not like those other old people!

JACOBS I want to see more unfiltered interactions. You often hear Gerry and the women talk about their connection, but you don’t often see it in action. I’m interested in the mundane conversations about who they are, where they grew up and what their families are like.

Anything else you want to add?

HESS I’m curious if there’s going to be a “Golden Bachelorette.” I would love to see a group of older men.

JACOBS That’s something we’ll definitely watch out for. Maybe that’s our next story.

Friends-Giving

With Thanksgiving now past we move into the core of the holiday season which actually concludes at Valentines Day in February. So for the next 10 weeks expect some sort of display, advertisement or article on how to stay sane/keep fit/find gifts and of course travel and do so despite rising costs of both travel and entertainment. Wow that sounds so fun!

I also will read numerous articles on loneliness and of course the rise in social isolation that has maintained since the onset of Covid in late 2019, when we thought it was just a simple virus and to be cautionary. Remember those holidays? No me either. I was still traveling between Nashville and Jersey and saw many travelers wearing masks as they were coming from Asia. I had been reading about the virus and knew instantly this was not something that will pass, little did I know how bad it would be. And then by the New Year it turned quickly to shit. Remember those fun pressers with Trump and the counterpoint Andrew Cuomo who would use their pulpit to bully and to coerce others into compliance and cooperation or sheer ignorance and little respect for others let alone their own health? Yeah and the rise of Fauci who retires next month and to never see him again either is fine with me. All three of these Stooges did little to assuage or comfort Americans with their endless polticizing, conflicting and contradicting messaging and of course the sheer bullshit that came out all of it from both sides of the political aisle. Not the first time I have seen a transmissible disease used as a political football, but hopefully the last. Nah, we had Monkeypox and that seems to have faded but that is fine as vaccines for diseases that are totally preventable are on the decline. Enjoy those pox/measles and the like at your holiday buffet and then when you have illnesses later thanks to the post affects of them, you can thank yourself and your family for their ignorance and lack of access to proper medical care. Folks few people have family Doctors and rely on Urgent Care and ER’s for their primary care which by then is now past the preventative stage. America, bringing back epidemics one at a time.

So with that we enter the phase of the moon where after three years of paranoia and hysteria we are to gather together and put all that aside to share a plate of food that may or may not cost more, taste any better or be worth all that time or travel to sit at a table and talk about what? Sports? TV? Movies? Books? Oh wait no one reads books they read Social Media that tells them about books. So they talk about I guess Book reports that they saw/heard on Tik Tok.

I go to a great deal of events of which I write about here, largely because this is self published and with that it is still considered published work and for that I can get some tax credits for the cost of doing so. I struggle keeping up the blog and was beginning another to draft fiction and see how to create work from what is ostensibly non fiction and turn it into fiction to avoid the whole concept of what is “creative non fiction” versus actual non fiction. Meaning that I can change names, situations and blur truth with well lies or made up shit isn’t that fiction, created non truths? Sometimes writing linear stories are boring and why most non fiction is not well read or sold other than a few bios that draw the eye and then the Author disappears back into the world to never have that kind of success again. The late Author, Julie Powell of Julia and Julie is a good example. She never had that kind of recognition and acclaim that began as what? A blog. From that drew attention and success which it evolved into a book and movie that was never replicated again in her brief time on earth. Or how about James Frey who wrote a creative non fiction book that was so beloved by Oprah, then it was discovered it was just that – creative fiction. His life ended in a similar fashion, once infamous now just sorta famous, a cultural footnote.

And that is the struggle for many who despite having had fame, fortune and success is finding a path that maintains this course of life and that the creative fuel or inspiration maintains. It ain’t easy. I can do small doses of inspired thought and then like any drug, it lasts for a moment and then back to real life. I get why people do drugs as they cannot handle the let down, the sense of high and with that the power it brings that makes one feel unique, special, loved. Read Modern Love in the New York Times or LA Affairs in the LA Times. These are the stories of the heart and head that talk about the success and failures of finding love and romance in the big city. I find them incredibly amusing, boring, sanctimonious, sad, or interesting. I don’t read them all the time but I do occasionally pass over them. I read one today, “When love calls, go.” My first thought, “Hang up the phone or don’t answer.” Honestly I did not get one word of that as it was a cultural story that one would have to understand the history behind the concept of race, identity, religion and belief in the institution and dogmas that are embedded into the belief of arranged marriage and its import to one’s family and history. But it continued to reinforce my belief that religion is the bane of all existence, especially to Women. Had that woman stayed in Hong Kong, had a thriving career, remained with her family and met someone on her own or not, what could have happened could have been equally if not more satisfying or joyous than meeting a dude and marrying him and moving across the globe to satisfy what appeared to be her family’s wishes, not her own. Wow. Just wow.

And in that same paper they had a story about a Breakup Bootcamp. It charges 4K to mend a broken heart. I knew in my heart I had potential to be a cult leader as I watch the Vow Season 2 on HBO and yet I also could not go through the charades and machinations to maintain such bullshit and duplicity. I mean once I cleared that first million I would be out of there and claiming that we must end this and go on our own journey to seek knowledge and freedom. Then I would immediately move to Switzerland.

I am not going to comment on any of that absurd bootcamp but it is about the same cost for some visits to Therapist over a brief period and add Yoga, a Sex Worker and a short vacation, it adds up so this is fine frankly if that is what you need to feel better. I am sure the ESP/NXIVM folks felt the same after their thousands of dollars dropped for bullshit jargon and coaching from ostensibly two white people that look like Middle School Teachers. Wow. Just wow.

But it is this pervasive FEAR of being alone. This has fueled many of the shooters who have no social ties and cite a lack of a “girlfriend” as their reasoning. The most current crop that shot up a Bus, a Walmart and a Gay Bar seem to have the most diverse reasoning or lack thereof as to why as one committed suicide (the Walmart employee) and the others “motives” at this point will either evolve or never fully be understood as again it is less about the why but more about the how. How they get a gun and ammo and feel compelled to act upon their rage in a manner that kills and harms people just living their lives is the only thing I care about. This is not about mental health as you are already crazy to start amassing guns, get tactical gear and ammo to then act on your rage. Yes, you are crazy. The end literally and towards people who had nothing to do with your rage or anger. The exception it appears is the Walmart crazy who while working their expressed paranoia, delusions and rage yet not one co-worker or supervisor felt compelled to listen to him and inform those around him that this is a problem. And that may explain his list and targets. We truly do not actively listen, we patronize, ignore or simply are that self involved to not. Almost all shooters have expressed similar anger prior to their acts and yet again and again we go “mental health” but hey its clear we have no fucking clue what defines mentally healthy.

And again we have this insatiable belief or idea that you must be partnered off, have a hand count of life long friends whom you rely to be that family of another kind. Great my family were nuts so would this be a sane family and what is sane. While I found my Parents challenging as parents they were not bad people so being their friend is not an issue and with that I accept their limitations and have moved on the therapy stage of blaming them for all my ills. What I did learn was independence and the ability to rely on myself which can be overwhelming and at times I would appreciate someone else to do the heavy lifting. I would actually really love someone to plan something and include me in a genuine offer of friendship. This would be inviting me to a play, a movie, a walk. An ACTUAL invite with the exchange being that they do the planning/organizing or get the tickets and I will pick up a meal, drink or something in the future in which to reciprocate. I can truly say that will never happen. The last time I was invited to something was in Nashville to a baseball game that I did not want to go but felt I could not say no as to not hurt their feelings and I dressed and was ready with a no show text about 20 minutes before. I knew it was a lie and was furious and it was then I decided to lie and fuck with that individuals head from that point on. But is that mentally healthy? No, but I found it by far more entertaining and when I left I finally did admit that I made it all up I could in fact write fiction! I was by far more creative when I put my mind to it but it also changed how I saw people and the limitations I could foresee as I moved forward in life. And that led to the policy of No Compromise. Since landing in Jersey City I have had two social encounters with two different Artists, one I went to Governor’s Island with (which turned out to be the longest and best thing of that) and another who I met for coffee and she drank none and we walked around Union Square for about an hour. It was boring and neither of them I have seen again nor even remember their names. But again effort made, it was stalled and I moved on. No harm no foul and no compromise.

And this weekend I read the below article in the Washington Post from of all things an Economist who is concerned about the concept of Social Isolation. What resulted was not a far reaching discussion on health, loneliness and the overall affects it can pose on mental or physical well being. This was about the issue of choice and of situation. Yes the rise of mental health issues and the like that can be serious when we speak of those who are alone, and wish to be otherwise. That is completely different when one chooses be alone and or is simply alone, and yes folks I was in a marriage of one so you can be in partnerships that are of that nature. I refer to my Parents who again were the role model of that which I duplicated to a tee, so yes I do now know that boundaries and interests and relationships do not need co-dependency in which to thrive. And yes folks that my Parents did not do things together, sleep together, socialize or have interests together they were utterly co-dependent on that dysfunction that I thought that was “normal” or “healthy” and today I find myself content with the idea that yes that works for me now. Irony I am back to where I started only now I can articulate that and am sure I do not want a partner to live with me or fuck me. I just want a great friend whom I can do things upon occasion and have trust and respect as the foundation of such. That will never be a Woman they are incapable of it. We women are an unhappy lot and I just look to the Karen who lives in 946 below me and that performance in my Apt. on October 10. Then last week to get on the elevator with me and act as if she had no clue who I was confirmed it, she is what? Crazy. Just not gunshot crazy. And that is what falls under the umbrella of a mental health disorder.

And when I read the article and the comments that followed they too confirmed the reality is that most people choose to be alone, they are bored, frustrated, exhausted. Some come to it from years of having to care take and be the primary care giver, have had tremendous loss and want to be alone and some manage to have a healthy relationship with their partner/family and feel no great urge to be the life of the party. I am a great advocate of the “random” where your path crosses for an hour or two and take great pleasure in that exchange and then move on. I finally accepted that and often do make an offer of a future time but I don’t mean it and I really do. That is being polite. Most often I don’t remember their names and make sure that I am appreciative and thankful but I am done with it. The nice man I met with his friend (and yes I do recall both their names they were delighful and deserve that respect) on my Birthday whom I had dinner I die offer to reciprocate. My first attempt was in that same week to meet by coming into the city and running errand and saying I was stopping for coffee so if he was around to let me know and left it there. His response, “I don’t drink coffee.” So I told him to have a nice day and keep in touch. He did and with that I have been deeply bored with the texting and after my disaster at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the German Actor in Hamlet I realized I was truly done with plays and theater. I had my few tickets left and was going but not going to discuss or pursue any further drama, literally or figuratively. So this weekend I planned a trip to Baltimore in January to see the John Waters exhibit and attend their acclaimed Symphony. As I planned it I recalled that the Gentleman was coming to see Death of a Salesman again (where we all met) on the 13th but I simply dismissed it then moved on with my plans. And sure enough the very next day I got a text with all the tickets and theater he was planning on attending that weekend. It was packed and unless I attended one of them on the same day and time I could not possibly reciprocate with dinner. I was secretly relieved. But with that I responded. “Wow great choices, shame I don’t do Broadway anymore and with that schedule I doubt we would have a chance to get together anyway. Enjoy”. His response was Happy Thanksgiving anyway. Loved the deep inquiry into “What you don’t do Broadway anymore?” Yeah, like coffee. Again the lack of curiosity and interest said more than had he expressed as such. Even if I wasn’t going to Baltimore that weekend I am back Sunday morning, but with a short window and his lack of coffee I am not sure what he thought we could do. Have Breakfast? I actually don’t do breakfast. So with that I suspect it is done. I am relieved as we had nothing to talk about but the play. There is only so much to talk about there. I am not sure he thought we were to be anything more than friendly acquaintances but the inability to communicate and speak about things other than a single subject be that theater, politics or sports is a problem folks.

I find it fascinating that people find me so “intelligent” which is great but it is really that I simply read, retain and seek knowledge and experiences. It takes so little effort to find things to do that I like. I went to see the play, Piano Lesson, with a very star studded cast on Tuesday. I have been a fan of August Wilson as despite all his plays taking place in Baltimore where he once lived, he lived his later years in Seattle and it was from there is how I became familiar with his work and life. He lived a short distance from me in Mt. Baker and sadly our paths never crossed but I am sure he would have been a lively conversationalist. And with that I decided to stay in the City for the night as to avoid another drama at my home And at what had to be the best find of hotels in Manhattan, Public, in the LES. I have fond memories of that hood, often staying there when I would visit. It is still a mixed but thriving area and with that easy access to and from Midtown and the PATH exchanges. I had the best time at Public, from a room upgrade to a bottle of Prosecco on the house, I can not say enough good things about the service or the hotel. It is a must go to stay or just to dine, drink or visit. I am going to have to find another excuse in the future to stay despite my disinclination to attend Broadway in the future. Yes that much was true as there is nothing next season I plan on seeing unless I buy day of or lottery. It is not worth it. Two more to go with an Off Broadway show, Man of No Importance and the Musical 1776, my calendar is now full of Opera and some Cabaret. But theater is no longer my muse and with that we will always have our moments but it must be exceptional in every sense of the word.

And you do atttend Cabaret you can reserve a table or sit at a bar seat and with that I will never sit anywhere but a bar seat. I am seeing Sandra Bernhardt next month and Joe’s Pub to end the year and wisely will take the bar. I did Below 54 last week as well and they “upgraded” me to a table. I shared with a Mother, and a Daughter and another young woman who also joined the table. I knew after I was cut off mid sentence I had nothing more to say so I listened to their conversation progress and the best part was the Young Woman was originally from Nashville, confirming that I needed to keep my mouth firmly on my wine as flashbacks and reminisces were not on the menu. So I listened to the table next to me discuss their theater going and thanks to that convo again reminding me why it was time to forego it as they defined the “type” of NYC theater audience. Their discussion defined pretentious but while they trashed one production the irony was that next to them at another table was the Stage Manager of said production. Ah NYC folks it is a small town. I have come to the conclusion that yes I am smart and smart enough that small talk is being polite but silence is golden, like the Tony Awards.

So why are people alone? Read Bowling Alone a 20 year old book by Robert Putnam. It explains it and shows that little has changed but the methods in which we did connect and socialize have eroded and with it today’s Social Media is anything but a manner in which to meet and find others just like you. We are all now algorithms, and as in math, like finds like to solve the equation. Math is Hindu-Arabic, its own language and you read it right to left and we are Americans who suck at math. That may be why as we are also not bi-lingual and we assume that all of the rest will come to do as we do, as we do it. Yeah okay.

So embrace aloneness, do not confuse it with loneliness. If one suffers the one prospers and you must find the ways to those tiny relationships that can boost self esteem and self worth. My stay at the Public Hotel did that. With that I found out 946 was gone for the week, but I am glad I did stay regardless; I needed to treat myself to civility and dignity. And that is how you meet others in that orbit of positive energy that enables me to thrive and survive. I have let the thoughts of suicide pass over me and that is all they do – pass.

I spent Thanksgiving watching old movies. First was Blackboard Jungle (which irony had Sidney Pointier as the bad student which only decade later he would be taking on the redeeming Teacher role and my influencer in To Sir With Love) and folks there may be more closeness to reality than I imagined when I read this about a former Teacher at one of the many schools I subbed at in Nashville – Johnson. This was,the last stop before Jail and I knew this Teacher but the story was right out of the movie. That school had many problems, including that at one point Nashville Police quit as they did not feel safe there. Yeah no one did, it was literally a block away much like the other school in Jersey City Bright St which was, until this year and it explains why I subbed there as well, but not one moment did I feel safe. There was no learning, no security and frankly no point. So after that flashback, I then watched the original Boys in the Band from 1970; a film about a Birthday party but in reality a gay night of anger, rage and recrimination by a bunch of Queer friends who define the word in a dysfunctional way, not a fun “gay” way. Toxic friendships are just that toxic and with that it shows that even Men straight or gay have anger issues. Yikes, how perfect for the holidays to remind yourself maybe being alone is not that bad of an idea.

Opinion Americans are choosing to be alone. Here’s why we should reverse that.

By Bryce Ward

November 23, 2022. The Washington Post

Bryce Ward is an economist and the founder of ABMJ Consulting.

The covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on our social lives. Cancellations, closures and fear of a potentially deadly infection led us to hunker down and avoid acquaintances, co-workers and extended family. Time spent with friends went down. Time spent alone went up.

Thanksgiving was not spared. Americans spent 38 percent less time with friends and extended family over the Thanksgiving weekend in the past two years than they had a decade prior.

And now for the scarier news: Our social lives were withering dramatically before covid-19. Between 2014 and 2019, time spent with friends went down (and time spent alone went up) by more than it did during the pandemic.

According to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey, the amount of time the averageAmerican spent with friends was stable, at 6½ hours per week, between 2010 and 2013. Then, in 2014, time spent with friends began to decline.

By 2019, the average American was spending only four hours per week with friends (a sharp, 37 percent decline from five years before). Social media, political polarization and new technologies all played a role in the drop. (It is notable that market penetration for smartphones crossed 50 percent in 2014.)

Covid then deepened this trend. During the pandemic, time with friends fell further — in 2021, the average American spent only two hours and 45 minutes a week with close friends (a 58 percent decline relative to 2010-2013).

Similar declines can be seen even when the definition of “friends” is expanded to include neighbors, co-workers and clients. The average American spent 15 hours per week with this broader group of friends a decade ago, 12 hours per week in 2019 and only 10 hours a week in 2021.

On average, Americans did not transfer that lost time to spouses, partners or children. Instead, they chose to be alone.

No single group drives this trend. Men and women, White and non-White, rich and poor, urban and rural, married and unmarried, parents and non-parents all saw proportionally similar declines in time spent with others. The pattern holds for both remote and in-person workers.

The percentage decline is also similar for the young and old; however, given how much time young people spend with friends, the absolute decline among Americans age 15 to 19 is staggering. Relative to 2010-2013, the average American teenager spent approximately 11 fewer hours with friends each week in 2021 (a 64 percent decline) and 12 additional hours alone (a 48 percent increase).

These new habits are startling— and a striking departure from the past.Just a decade ago, the average American spent roughly the same amount of time with friends as Americans in the 1960s or 1970s. But we have now begun to cast off our connections to each other.

It is too soon to know the long-term consequences of this shift, but it seems safe to assume that the decline of our social lives is a worrisome development. Spending less time with friends is not a best practice by most standards, and it might contribute to other troubling social trends — isolation, worsening mental health (particularly among adolescents), rising aggressive behavior and violent crime. Americans rate activities as more meaningful and joyful when friends are present. Friends and social connections build on themselves and produce memories and fellowship. They also boost health and lead to better economic outcomes.

We can hope, as covid-related barriers recede, that people will change course.Time with friends did increase in 2021 after the vaccine rolled out; however, at the end of 2021, it was still an hour below the 2019 level. Furthermore, a Pew Research Center survey made public in August suggests that covid might have changed us permanently — 35 percent of Americans say that participating in large gatherings, going out and socializing in-person have become less important since the pandemic.

The potential harms of these trends are sufficient to demand that Americans devote some resources to understanding and reversing them.

You can help reverse these trends today without waiting for the researchers and policymakers to figure it all out. It’s the holidays: Don’t skip Thanksgiving with your family. Go to that holiday party (or throw one yourself). Go hang out with friends for coffee, or a hike, or in a museum, or a concert — whatever. You will feel better, create memories, boost your health, stumble across valuable information — and so will your companions.

Put effort into building relationships that you can count on in good times and bad because, as the song goes, that’s what friends are for. Besides, you just might have a good time.

Womyn

That was a proposal by Radical Feminists to remove the male root from the word and make Women that. And with that you thought Binary was a tough one to learn. And with that I reject both as I am a WOMAN and proudly one.

I have no problem with rights being bestowed among all of us equally, be that of gender or of sexuality or of normative choices regarding ones gender and with that religion or culture. I chose to not capitalize any of them as they are smaller in reference as when you put the capital on that it becomes a proper noun as related to IDENTITY. And we have learned that we can CHANGE all of them. Yes if you have read Black Like Me or understand that when Rachel Dolezaal decided to choose her race as Black she was demonized. Really? We elected to actually abuse a woman who felt more connected to another race due to oppression or emotion or simply cultural norms that should have been perhaps snickered at but fuck it if she wants to be Black have at girl, go with it and get with that program of being further marginalized and ignored as any Black girl can tell you. And with that I want to say that if you are Biracial do you do a genetic test to see which is the predominant genetics to CHOOSE which Race you select on the form you check? Maybe in this new state you will have to.

Even with race there is a complex nature of genetics and culture. African American, Caribbean, Afro-Caribbean, and with that shades of Black that is very important among many Black people as you think there are 50 shades of Grey? Try Black. I was corrected on this recently when admiring the style and presence of Shaye and her Mother, Lady Ruby in the recent Congressional Hearings. They were striking in their looks and clearly were very engaged in that world as Lady Ruby discussed that as her business and work aside from being a poll worker. I loved that she had on a clearly dark purple wig and gorgeous white outfit during her Deposition and was the Lady in Red at the Hearings, sitting behind her daughter. And when I shared that I thought this woman in our building who is a Nanny how she is always decked out in the most outrageous of outfits and even when her hair is in curlers I think it must be intentional as they seem more an accessory than a hair product. And when she looked up the women, she informed me she is nothing like them as they are Chocolate. I knew instantly that my remark was thought a put down and she was clearly offended. I informed her that shades of skin is her world not mine and I was only commenting on shades of fashion not giving shade to anything. And I left it at that. So with that is Michelle Obama a chocolate black and Iman a vanilla black? Does that matter to me and should it? I found this from 1977:

The Journal of Negro Education
Vol. 46, No. 1 (Winter, 1977), pp. 76-88 (13 pages)
Published By: Journal of Negro Education

And as I have said that among any culture there are also equal distinctions and sense of identity that can cause division and disagreement. See how Asians view themselves in regards to the world and their place within. Folks it is more than what us white folks do over our political identity and by far more insidious as it contributes to the concepts of racism and identity. And with that comes again the argument over the word Women and women who support women and see those who identify as Trans as just that, women who were once men who transitioned to becoming a woman. And with that they are going to have to accept all that comes with being a woman but also add another stigma that being trans adds to one’s life; however, it doesn’t let you cut in line. And with that I ask if I get to change gender to male, can I finally get al the privileges and positions denied to me as a woman, as now I am the pinnacle of the top of the charts, a WHITE MAN!! In a word no. I never will ever be a member of that club as no matter how to slice it my DNA is XX. How I feel and look and move throughout the world will always enable some access but again I will never be a real boy Pinocchio. But if I am happy that I can do that, be that I believe I should have been it is better than not and that is all that matters. But again I can’t cut in line and say I have it tougher, as I could have stayed a woman and bitched about that as another problem in and of itself; I could have been a Lesbian and added that to the roster but I again CHOICE and BELIEF matter more, so great, but don’t think that you get a pass.

And I read today the singer Macy Gray agrees that a woman is one born with boobs and a vagina. Again I agree with her and it does not mean we are anti-Trans we just understand the physiology that makes a woman. Identifying, believing and surgically becoming one is not the same as having lived as a woman when one is BORN one. And with that I support the same concept that Rachael Dozeeal did when she believed and identified as a Black Woman. Her body, her choice.

And when a Senator is asking a prospective Justice to appoint to the Supreme Court, “define Woman” I think that is what she wanted to know, how do you define a Woman that is word being eradicated on the left and demonized on the right?

I reprint the below opinion piece as again the pendulum is swinging to extremes on both ends and they are both equally Misogynistic in the approach. It is why I said I am out when it comes to the current climate regarding the right to choose as apparently since I CHOSE to not give birth, never had an abortion and managed to live to age 63 without children of any kind, I am NOTHING and NO ONE. Well then I can’t write you any checks can I?

The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count

July 3, 2022

Pamela Paul Opinion Columnist The New York Times

Perhaps it makes sense that women — those supposedly compliant and agreeable, self-sacrificing and everything-nice creatures — were the ones to finally bring our polarized country together.

Because the far right and the far left have found the one thing they can agree on: Women don’t count.

The right’s position here is the better known, the movement having aggressively dedicated itself to stripping women of fundamental rights for decades. Thanks in part to two Supreme Court justices who have been credibly accused of abusive behavior toward women, Roe v. Wade, nearly 50 years a target, has been ruthlessly overturned.

Far more bewildering has been the fringe left jumping in with its own perhaps unintentionally but effectively misogynist agenda. There was a time when campus groups and activist organizations advocated strenuously on behalf of women. Women’s rights were human rights and something to fight for. Though the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified, legal scholars and advocacy groups spent years working to otherwise establish women as a protected class.

But today, a number of academics, uber-progressives, transgender activists, civil liberties organizations and medical organizations are working toward an opposite end: to deny women their humanity, reducing them to a mix of body parts and gender stereotypes.

As reported by my colleague Michael Powell, even the word “women” has become verboten. Previously a commonly understood term for half the world’s population, the word had a specific meaning tied to genetics, biology, history, politics and culture. No longer. In its place are unwieldy terms like “pregnant people,” “menstruators” and “bodies with vaginas.”

Planned Parenthood, once a stalwart defender of women’s rights, omits the word “women” from its home page. NARAL Pro-Choice America has used “birthing people” in lieu of “women.” The American Civil Liberties Union, a longtime defender of women’s rights, last month tweeted its outrage over the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade as a threat to several groups: “Black, Indigenous and other people of color, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, immigrants, young people.”

It left out those threatened most of all: women. Talk about a bitter way to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

The noble intent behind omitting the word “women” is to make room for the relatively tiny number of transgender men and people identifying as nonbinary who retain aspects of female biological function and can conceive, give birth or breastfeed. But despite a spirit of inclusion, the result has been to shove women to the side.

Women, of course, have been accommodating. They’ve welcomed transgender women into their organizations. They’ve learned that to propose any space just for biological women in situations where the presence of males can be threatening or unfair — rape crisis centers, domestic abuse shelters, competitive sports — is currently viewed by some as exclusionary. If there are other marginalized people to fight for, it’s assumed women will be the ones to serve other people’s agendas rather than promote their own.

But, but, but. Can you blame the sisterhood for feeling a little nervous? For wincing at the presumption of acquiescence? For worrying about the broader implications? For wondering what kind of message we are sending to young girls about feeling good in their bodies, pride in their sex and the prospects of womanhood? For essentially ceding to another backlash?

Women didn’t fight this long and this hard only to be told we couldn’t call ourselves women anymore. This isn’t just a semantic issue; it’s also a question of moral harm, an affront to our very sense of ourselves.

It wasn’t so long ago — and in some places the belief persists — that women were considered a mere rib to Adam’s whole. Seeing women as their own complete entities, not just a collection of derivative parts, was an important part of the struggle for sexual equality.

But here we go again, parsing women into organs. Last year the British medical journal The Lancet patted itself on the back for a cover article on menstruation. Yet instead of mentioning the human beings who get to enjoy this monthly biological activity, the cover referred to “bodies with vaginas.” It’s almost as if the other bits and bobs — uteruses, ovaries or even something relatively gender-neutral like brains — were inconsequential. That such things tend to be wrapped together in a human package with two X sex chromosomes is apparently unmentionable.

“What are we, chopped liver?” a woman might be tempted to joke, but in this organ-centric and largely humorless atmosphere, perhaps she would be wiser not to.

Those women who do publicly express mixed emotions or opposing views are often brutally denounced for asserting themselves. (Google the word “transgender” combined with the name Martina Navratilova, J.K. Rowling or Kathleen Stock to get a withering sense.) They risk their jobs and their personal safety. They are maligned as somehow transphobic or labeled TERFs, a pejorative that may be unfamiliar to those who don’t step onto this particular Twitter battlefield. Ostensibly shorthand for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” which originally referred to a subgroup of the British feminist movement, “TERF” has come to denote any woman, feminist or not, who persists in believing that while transgender women should be free to live their lives with dignity and respect, they are not identical to those who were born female and who have lived their entire lives as such, with all the biological trappings, societal and cultural expectations, economic realities and safety issues that involves.

But in a world of chosen gender identities, women as a biological category don’t exist. Some might even call this kind of thing erasure.

When not defining women by body parts, misogynists on both ideological poles seem determined to reduce women to rigid gender stereotypes. The formula on the right we know well: Women are maternal and domestic — the feelers and the givers and the “Don’t mind mes.” The unanticipated newcomers to such retrograde typecasting are the supposed progressives on the fringe left. In accordance with a newly embraced gender theory, they now propose that girls — gay or straight — who do not self-identify as feminine are somehow not fully girls. Gender identity workbooks created by transgender advocacy groups for use in schools offer children helpful diagrams suggesting that certain styles or behaviors are “masculine” and others “feminine.”

Didn’t we ditch those straitened categories in the ’70s?

The women’s movement and the gay rights movement, after all, tried to free the sexes from the construct of gender, with its antiquated notions of masculinity and femininity, to accept all women for who they are, whether tomboy, girly girl or butch dyke. To undo all this is to lose hard-won ground for women — and for men, too.

Those on the right who are threatened by women’s equality have always fought fiercely to put women back in their place. What has been disheartening is that some on the fringe left have been equally dismissive, resorting to bullying, threats of violence, public shaming and other scare tactics when women try to reassert that right. The effect is to curtail discussion of women’s issues in the public sphere.

But women are not the enemy here. Consider that in the real world, most violence against trans men and women is committed by men but, in the online world and in the academy, most of the ire at those who balk at this new gender ideology seems to be directed at women.

It’s heartbreaking. And it’s counterproductive.

Tolerance for one group need not mean intolerance for another. We can respect transgender women without castigating females who point out that biological women still constitute a category of their own — with their own specific needs and prerogatives.

If only women’s voices were routinely welcomed and respected on these issues. But whether Trumpist or traditionalist, fringe left activist or academic ideologue, misogynists from both extremes of the political spectrum relish equally the power to shut women up.

Dating Women

I do and don’t mean the actual concept of dating women, as well writing as a woman, who is heterosexual I am not sure I would know how to tell anyone how to “date” a woman, be you a man, woman, or fill in the blank name/acronym you use to describe yourself. I had to stop dating when the last one tried to kill me, so that seems a good enough reason. But age and trauma aside, I was never good at dating, fucking sure, dating notsomuch.

Right now I am listening to another rambling incoherent lecture about Satan and sexuality from the mentally ill man-child Ethan, who is confused about this issue among many others in his 24 year old life. But with that I read the below article on the new dating shows that are modeled on the show Bridgerton. Okay, I have never seen it and may eventually if I get bored enough but I grew up on a heavy dose of Masterpiece Theater and the ethics and ethos of dating in the gentile era of another time and place. That clearly was a shitty lesson plan or model. Then came the Rules. I think I read it and may have filed it with The Preppy Handbook which I also failed to achieve/attain.

The Rules reminds me of The Secret, something Oprah peddled back in the day. Dear God, pun intended as I am listening to this preach shit about sex, why are there so many hucksters and how can I be one is the real question. And with that the Dating Game Killer died this past week and if you haven’t heard that true crime podcast add that to your list with the other true crime/cult ones that are the best on offer even in post-pandemic times. Just thinking about the Sweat Lodge Guru who was on Oprah it seems that we have been living in perpetual reality show culminating with the Reality President who had a hard time handling hearing “You’re Fired!” when it came to him. Irony much?

So have we in this time of the too’s learned anything, me? No, I knew that women are ignored and not believed and still are. The New York Times did a lengthy article that found out that sexual assault claims are still the least prosecuted and investigated. Shocking! No, not really. And when I read this essay from The Post I was more interested in the comment section which covered the reality of how those in reality see this, as bullshit. I have been through more manifestations of how women should be viewed than I have had hot dinners. And we are still not discussing sexuality or assault and how it relates to the Queer Community. Hello! Do men not assault each other? Yes they do.

This weekend I watched the HBO documentary on the 1999 Woodstock Revival and its overwhelming failure. What the time reflected was I think a shadow of what was to come, the overwhelming rage of the American White Male and twenty years later these are the same ones that raided the Capital on January 6th (which given the average age yes they are) or their sons. The women are also the same mistreated and abused women of that era who in turn are with these men, divorced them and now have children who thought Girls Gone Wild was sexually liberating so they believed showing their tits was harmless; and in turn, placed themselves literally in dangerous hands, as they were abused and assaulted repeatedly during those days and nights celebrating music and peace love and understanding or whatever bullshit the promoters were hawking; but with only three women on the bill and the rest of the acts loud angry white men singing about hate and rag, it only fueled the rage. MTV even ran from the campgrounds when they realized that this was not fun in any sense of the word. And they people are the ones who promoted this kind of shit, I can see why they are now off the air. This music festival is no Coachella and for that I am not going to it either. Either way/Neither way not something I would have ever gone too. I didn’t get it then, don’t get it now.

So history is supposedly a teacher and a lesson, and so now we are looking back at a fictional story about fictional people and somehow thinking that they have the key to success when it comes to sex and sexuality. Okay, sure, let me know how that works out.

Opinion: Every generation needs a dating philosophy. Better Regency romance than ‘The Rules.’

The Washington Post; Opinion by Alyssa Rosenberg Columnist July 26 2022

Every generation has its trendy philosophy of love, sex and marriage. The success of “Bridgerton,” Netflix’s spicy adaptation of Julia Quinn’s period romance novels, seems to have convinced TV networks that the next big thing is Regency romance.

Despite the perennial popularity of Jane Austen, love stories set in England during the end of King George III’s reign and his sons’ monarchies might not seem like they have a lot to offer modern singles. But frankly, we could do a lot worse than mannered public courtship that fuels explosive mutual pleasure in private.

Certainly, we’ve done worse. It’s hilarious and dismaying to look back at “The Rules,” the 1995 self-help book by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider that became a massive hit by selling what even they admitted was the old-fashioned art of playing hard-to-get as a surefire path to a terrific marriage.ADVERTISING

The book was an obvious response to a marriage panic embodied in Newsweek’s infamous 1986 cover story “Too Late for Prince Charming?” “When you do ‘The Rules,’ you don’t have to worry about being abandoned, neglected, or ignored!” Fein and Schneider pledged in “All the Rules,” a collection of the original book and its sequel. The pair presented the husband hunt as a joyless slog, lecturing that “Simply being a better person won’t get you the man of your dreams. You have to do ‘The Rules.’ ”

But by 2003, even the most famous Rules Girl, Charlotte in “Sex and the City” , had given up the gospel. After having followed that philosophy into a dysfunctional marriage, Charlotte found true love with a man she pursued with a total lack of cool detachment. If American women weren’t quite prepared to emulate “Sex and the City” libertine Samantha Jones, Charlotte’s tale gave them permission to chuck “The Rules” and to pursue a wider range of desires.

Enter, eight years later, E L James’s trashy, moderately addictive “Fifty Shades” series. The books, which follow the travails of traumatized kinky billionaire Christian Grey and the feisty Anastasia Steele, started as “Twilight” fan fiction.

But James hit the zeitgeist in her own right, arriving at a moment when many women were reckoning with the gap between their sexual and romantic aspirations and realities. How were young women supposed to close the distance between campus hookup culture that seemed unsatisfying at best and violent at worst, and the sexual liberation that “Sex and the City” sold?

James’s solution was contract negotiation: specifically, the document Christian and Anastasia used to govern their sexual relationship roles as dominant and submissive. The novels and movies prompted a vogue for floggers and nipple clamps — and underneath it all, some useful new values.

Certainly, the #MeToo movement has prompted some unwarranted anxiety among young daters about the ethics of making the first move. But the conservatives who mock millennials for checking in on their sexual partners every step of the way miss James’s key insight: Communication and negotiation can be a way of ramping up passion, not dampening it.

If James’s novels treated domination and submission as a kind of trauma therapy, Regency romance, as embodied by “Bridgerton,” takes a lighter touch. In these stories, everyone knows that the rules that govern relationships between young, unmarried people are ridiculous. Chaperonage is an easily evaded farce. A single smooch shouldn’t actually require the swift dispatch of wedding invitations. And yet, both nominally following these conventions and pushing up against their limits turns out to be a lot of fun for the characters.

No wonder NBC is planning a Jane Austen-inspired dating show, and Netflix is looking to build a “Bridgerton”-inspired live events business. Obviously, there will be concessions to modern mores: No one’s calling for the resurrection of the London marriage market or the end of sex education.

Rather, the genre in its current form makes the case for restraint and formality as forms of play. Experiment with — and push up against the limits of — convention, “Bridgerton” argues, not because men need to be tricked into marriage a la “The Rules,” or because passion requires formal safeguards, per “Fifty Shades,” but because it’s hot. As pornography and soft-core content become more mainstream and ubiquitous, holding back is more intriguing than stripping down.

That argument seems even more persuasive after seeing “Zola,” director Janicza Bravo’s recent adaptation of A’Ziah King’s epic Twitter thread about two strippers on a work trip that turns into a sex-trafficking nightmare. “Zola” is set in an anarchic zone, where women think of themselves as liberated sexual capitalists. But they find out too late that they can’t always enforce the rules that are supposed to keep them safe.

Better to have some agreed-upon guardrails, especially if they can turn into something fun. After all, if you put on a corset, whether for a pole-dancing class or a Regency reenactment, you can always take it off later.

The Bull in the China Shop

When I read this article in the Washington Post I was not shocked in the least as we have spent the better part of the pandemic in isolation and the debate about returning to the workplace has been one major issue the other is the role of women in the workplace and the setbacks they will face now as the economy returns and jobs have changed. They have? Well if you were an Accountant and a woman and you worked at home and had a baby you are still an Accountant and still a woman and still have a baby, albeit an older baby but still a baby. So how would you have taken care of the issues surrounding this before? Hired a Nanny, have hubby stay at home or now he can so that solves that or have your Mother/In Law or a relative care take? What did women do before the pandemic? The same as during and after, did it fucking all. What else is new. If you are both the primary breadwinner and caregiver in the family you did what you had to do and having Covid just put that on steroids. The pandemic may be winding down but women and their “work” has never had that opportunity.

I was watching my anthropological studies program on women, the Real Housewives, and marvel at how they are navigating new marital breakups, Covid and of course changes in family dynamics due to changes in work with children in quarantine, in school, now at home and of course hiring help to do the essentials when they were already doing that but now takes on a whole new meaning when that essential worker does not live and work in your home. It may explain why three of the housewives of Beverly Hills contracted Covid mid production. I am still shocked none of the New York women did as they seemed blithely unaware of it but suddenly elections and voting mattered when for the past dozen years I never heard a word of politic or current affairs ever be uttered by them once. Go figure they add a Black friend and now these bitches are woke!

What those shows do show is how women get along when booze is shoved down their throat and a cock is fought over and not the Rooster kind. It is embarrassing and largely entertaining but on average these are not average women, they are women of a certain kind of wealth and privilege that have enabled them to have delusions about themselves and the world in which they live and “work”. Only one had a normal job in the nascent days the rest seem to have carved out careers from being on the show, which tells you that being a housewife is an actual job. A better show that is Good Girls and that actually has women demonstrating with flaws and all how well they can function when pressed into a situation of need and desperation. Plus the cast is naturally diverse and interesting without seeming contrived or intentional.

I loathe women on average, I do not trust them, I do not find them interesting and more importantly willing to be open. I came up with no compromise as being a woman and dealing with women both personally and professionally, not because of men. Men and I have never even made it to that level, I just capitulated or walked away. Neither are great but I never put that much effort into it as frankly men think with their dick, I was fine with that and when not, not. But from early days in schools my girl friends were all mean and if not mean too afraid to not and that sums up women as adults. We are constantly afraid of all kinds of shit and it is exhausting. And when I read the article as a former Teacher I know these girls and the women they will be and I feel for them as they are in need of mentors and teachers and true friendships that will enable them to rise above the roles they needed to take on to survive school. We learn it all in our homes, racism, sexism, elitism and all the “isms” one needs to either be a perpetrator or be a victim. And all the Social Justice and Social Emotional learning, Critical Race Theory and the rest are for naught as when that child goes home and is dismissed, ignored and and it turn mocked by the adults who are there to support, mentor and teach them, expect little to change. Children are reflections of those who are holding the mirrors, and more often by those not. For if no one is holding them they find the one who is standing alongside of them mocking their reflection. The loudest voice in the room is usually the meanest. Imagine the blowhard Rush Limbaugh as a child, frightening thought no? Roger Ailes? Donald Trump? And the same for women. They marry those idiots and enable if not ignore their behavior as they need to hang on to their power in whatever means necessary. Explains the children too. Did anyone really believe Ivanka was not Daddy’s little girl?

No, women are not the better sex or the gentler sex they are who they are and their gender can have a role in determining how they are perceived and in turn treated but that also may be more about one’s color than sex. I saw a Black Woman yesterday with a shirt that said “Black Women Matter Also.” I so wanted to stop and ask her about it and yet I felt I knew the answer so I left it at that.

When I went against my instincts and volunteered I knew the minute I met the woman taking me on the tour by the way she spoke to me that I was not going to last. I was willing to give it a shot and had I not met her in my first hour I might not have ditched it so quickly, but once she spoke to me in the condescending manner and ignored my presence at one point it was laughable if not insulting. Age and experience kick in and so as I read the article and the thousands of comments that followed none shook me. I especially found this relevant.

I am 66. We old ladies don’t like to be treated like we should just be meek and obedient, and preferably die soon. We are not children. We have intelligence, initiative, and actual lives.

As I approach my 62nd year on the planet it has been an awakening to realize that acutally I was spoken to that way for years. Growing up in Seattle you were to be liberal but still accommodating and then I moved to the South and found out, yep that is the same way I just figured it out. I had never been that girl nor that woman and it was when I got woke. I look back on all the times I was asked in Seattle “Where are you from?” As if that mattered and when I informed them I was from Seattle, the response was, “Well you don’t talk like you are from here.” I got a version of that in Nashville and what that says is, we are tribal, you are not like us, not of our tribe and therefore we are done with you. If anyone in Seattle thought they were even 1/4th like a Southerner they would be horrified, well bad news they are. Passive aggression and Southern hospitality have a lot more in common than you would think.

So as they rebooted Gossip Girl and are bringing back Sex and the City I wonder how much the women have changed when it comes to their own predatory territorial behavior? And yes women can be predators as well. It is considered owning your sexuality. Really(?) And that was the Samantha character. And it was that actor, the former member of the tribe who chose not to return it was the cat claws metaphor that stood out. Do they do that with men? No. Sometimes you get older and move on and women should know this better then anyone. That character was like many of the men we now mock, who wants to carry that horrific torch any longer. And in reality people can change and choose to. And that in lies the real truth about women, they dump their sandbox friends anytime someone comes along better and this follows them throughout life.

When the ‘mean girl’ is a woman: How to deal with an adult bully

By Cathy Alter June 7, 2021| The Washington Post

Thanks to the Queen Bee, I was pushed out of a friend group, disinvited from activities, tarnished by falsehoods and deserted by allies. No, this didn’t happen to me in the high school cafeteria. It was more recently, at a volunteer job I had held for six years. And my bully, let’s call her Carol, is a senior citizen.

While more head-scratching than gutting, the experience nonetheless worm-holed me back to high school, when I was tormented by a best friend who turned on me without warning, taking with her some of the meanest girls in our grade as her cheering section.

We never really leave the high school cafeteria. Even as an adult, I still recognize the former jocks, burnouts and prom queens — older and perhaps more mellowed but with their “Breakfast Club” essence intact. After experiencing my latest snub while volunteering, I had to wonder: Do mean girls just grow up to be mean old ladies?

“I don’t like the phrase ‘mean girls,’ ” says Rachel Simmons, correcting me as soon as we get on the phone. Simmons, an educator, bullying expert and the author of multiple books including “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls,” prefers to use “aggressive” instead. “Aggression is a human impulse,” she continues. “Everyone has the capacity to be aggressive.” (By middle school, Simmons says, boys pull even with girls in terms of engaging in psychological aggression. For this article, I focused on my own experiences with girls and women.)

In her research for “Odd Girl Out,” Simmons spoke to teachers in early-childhood development. “In kindergarten, the teachers could identify those girls who would be trouble in middle school,” she told me. These girls shared certain character traits: They were natural leaders, highly precocious and especially good at navigating relationships.

According to Simmons, the same attributes that allow girls to be socially intelligent also allow them to be aggressive. “They are drawing from the same skill set,” she says, adding, “Social intelligence is about being savvy enough to understand people and relationships. These are the same skills girls deploy when they launch lobbying campaigns to turn peers into a target, or to figure out just the right insult that will cut someone down.”

“Girls tend to use their highly attuned social antennae, instead of their fists, to wage war on other girls,” Emily Bazelon wrote in her 2013 book, “Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy.” “Girls can better understand how other girls feel,” she continued, quoting the work of Scandinavian psychologist Kaj Bjorkqvist, “so they know better how to harm them.”

It’s a lifelong skill. “The same behaviors that worked in childhood still work now,” says Cheryl Dellasega, author of six books, including “Surviving Ophelia” and “Mean Girls Grown Up.” “It’s what’s made them popular, because very rarely were they challenged.” What’s more, she continues, “by going along with the powerful aggressor, you stay with the ‘in’ group.”

Those bystanders who are watching are afraid to speak up because “they might be the next victim,” Dellasega says. Their silence only empowers the aggressor, who continues to lash out because they know their victim will not fight back. In what Dellasega calls a “preemptive strike,” an aggressor may continue her attacks, constantly distracting her gathered minions by focusing their attention on someone weaker so that her own deficiencies aren’t detected.

Dellasega was referring to what happened to me in high school, when my former BFF waited for an audience before launching her attack. But she could have been describing the passivity of my fellow volunteers, who, fearing retribution from Carol, were more interested in self-preservation — and getting first dibs on the best donations that came through the organization — than in coming to my defense.

“As a victim in the past,” Dellasega told me, “you are so sensitized to it [this form of aggression] that when it happens again, it’s not a new experience. You go right back to that place of being young and vulnerable.”

And the aggressor, she says, goes right back to a place not of power “as much as feelings of avoiding personal hurt.” Camilla Dorment, a D.C.-based therapist who works with people who have been chronically bullied, echoes Dellasega, saying: “Oftentimes, bullies have had their own experiences of being repeatedly exploited and mistreated. The desire for dominance over another creates a temporary feeling of power and control, which acts as a defense against deep-rooted shame.”

We all carry our injuries. It’s too bad we can’t go back in time and use a smudge stick on our former selves. But now, I want to be able to better face the Carols out there, who exist in the offices, checkout lines and book clubs of the world. Dellasega offered some scenarios and skills for recognizing and handling a mean girl in grown-up’s clothing.

“The most frequent form of relational aggression [Dellasega’s preferred term for bullying] is the ‘take-back.’ It’s saying something insensitive and unkind and then, when you realize it didn’t go over well, you say, ‘I was just kidding.’ ”

I instantly remembered my first job at Bloomingdale’s, when my manager pointed to my new Doc Martens. “Nice boots,” she said. “I had a friend in school who had shoes like that, but then she got her club foot fixed.”

One way of offsetting the take-back is with humor — “Haven’t you heard? Orthopedic is the new black!” — or using what Dellasega calls the broken-record ploy. Saying something over and over like: “Excuse me? I didn’t hear you. Can you repeat what you just said to me?”

This can make the aggressor recognize that they have said something inappropriate, as well as give the target some power to respond in a way other than joining in the mockery of, say, their questionable choice of footwear. “It’s all in the delivery, though,” Dellasega says. You don’t want to be hostile back as much as genuinely asking the person if you misheard them.

Another strategy is asking for clarification. “Saying something like, ‘Wait, I don’t understand. You knew someone who wore these shoes because of a physical handicap? I’m not sure how that relates to me,’ ” Dellasega suggests. If only I had had the wherewithal to say something this amusingly literal to my old manager.

Confronting a bully directly, however, can be profoundly difficult. Dorment says that for many, creating a safe space internally can be a good a way to tolerate the distress. “Visualizing a beach, a best friend or a mentor can provide an emotional resource in order to feel adequate and safe,” she told me. “This helps to develop the capacity to self-soothe.”

Launching a campaign, Dellasega says, is another form of relational aggression. “Someone in the friend group is trying to undermine and be hurtful to a person,” she explains. “And they expect everyone else to go along with them.” I recognized this immediately.

“The best advice is to remove yourself from the situation and regroup,” Dellasega says. “Don’t confront them in the moment, especially if she’s launched the campaign in front of a group.”

If this is a person you see daily, like a co-worker, head to a neutral space — the break room, the water cooler — and have a script prepared. “Saying something like, ‘We’ve been in some situations where I’ve said something, and you’ve rolled your eyes or whispered to the person next to you.’ Be calm and just state the facts,” Dellasega advises.

Offering concrete examples of behavior, she adds, is harder to refute than just accusing someone of not liking you or being mean. “If you get the response of invalidating your observations, you can reply by saying, ‘If it happened once or twice, I might agree with you, but it seems like a consistent pattern of behavior.’ ” Another option is saying something like, “That’s a relief. So, you’re saying that everything is good between us, and when those situations occurred it wasn’t about me?”

I took this route during a recent trip home to Connecticut, where my high school tormentor still lives. Even though we made up decades ago, I never asked her why she made my life a living hell back then. We met at a restaurant (neutral territory!), and I soon broached the topic. I wish I could tell you that she apologized, blamed her persistent teasing on troubles at home, or admitted to feeling insecure.

“I don’t remember that at all,” she said with a shrug.

Not the ending I was hoping for, but after a year of unspeakable loss and years of accumulated stress and disappointment, it’s easier to put things into perspective. Getting blacklisted from a volunteer job doesn’t seem as terrible in the scheme of things. And now that I’m armed with the antivenin, Queen Carol’s sting might not hurt as much.

Post Covid Mantra

For many that end cannot come soon enough. The reality is that we are depending on your location 419 days into the pandemonium. Huzzah tomorrow and I know how I will mark the date! The reality is that we are nowhere near a true ending with the vaccinations lagging off and the hybrid in India that has led to a series of changes from shutting down our border in an attempt to stave off what will come regardless, as Covid is one angry bitch and determined to be an insidious pest for at least the remainder of the year.

I began the annual year with doing inventory of my life, looking through photos, noting in journals and reflection and critical analysis of what, how, why and where I was in my life at this time. I concluded I was the terminal Runaway Bride always leaving every situation, personal or professional, as a means to avoid conflict and in turn resolution. I am not good at interpersonal relationships but I am a great temp in both professional and personal ones. It makes sense that I was and have been largely a “Substitute” in every way. The lack of long term personal ones finally caught up with me in 2012 when I was nearly killed by a date. And it does not define me as no one should be defined by the worst they have done or been done to; however, that will never be over in my head and yet, here I am across country and finally found myself where I believe is my permanent home. I do love New York City and while I am across the river I am fine with Jersey City to live in but it too seems only temporary or at least where I live is as I found myself loathing high rise living and would prefer a more smaller less “luxury/amenity” type of home. I do like privacy and I don’t have that here. When it also becomes a hamster cage the desire to escape becomes stronger and this has been that for the last 419 days.

I sat through a Zoom conference call about Women and the changes the pandemic brought to our lives. I barely listened and only one woman finally resonated when she said until the pandemic she had no realized she had run away from everything and work was the only thing that grounded her and without that she had to figure out what and who she was without that identity. If you see the original movie, The Apartment, you understand the notion of being a nobody until somebody decides to acknowledge you and even that has a purpose that is rarely about you but about what you offer. And that has been most of my relationships with work and in life. I loved Teaching and still do but Politics is the most critical element of that profession and with that I failed to manage that skill. That said it explains why everyone is so hysterical now about schools as they finally realized that Teaching sucks. It doesn’t if it mattered and to the kids that mattered it was the most amazing job ever and I long gave up on those who it didn’t, I just never let anyone know that. You pass them and move them on and pretend to care but in a 9-5 job it is the same. And so I have tried to be a Teacher outside the classroom and it is a waste of time. But now I do it to be polite and nothing more. I just wait and time clock that moment to get out of it as soon as I can.

With Covid I knew again a great deal about this disease as I simply read everything I could and with knowledge comes power and I was not afraid. It is a an airborne flu virus PERIOD. The endless shitty messengers and messages that were contradictory and confusing were of course due to the garbage that filled the White House and the varying offices of import. And I never listened to one of them and if I did I just laughed. Again folks do you not know about science, viruses and what they do and how they transmit. It is a goddamn flu that, however, is deadly as it seems to have no consistent form of behavior. On some it was nothing on others it killed them and that random shit was the real issue, but it is still a flu. But our death rate has more to do with our unhealthy habits and behaviors and that is something no one wants to talk about, our diets and lack of quality health care that puts us just barely above India and Mexico. We are a fucked up shitty country when it comes to drugs, fat fucks and shitty medical care that does little to treat the many who are often taking drugs to self medicate and in turn are killed by the Police or end up homeless. For a first world power we are more like a third world nation.

And with that came my Manta – the statement that I use right now to guide my decision making process and in turn remind myself who I am and want to be. That is NO COMPROMISES. Today in the Zoom Conference the women had many typical responses and of course we had the mixed panel of women, three white and one Black woman to show our diversity. I was bored out of my mind and had no connection to anyone other than the one who admitted her life path was to avoid and run from her past life trauma. That I could relate but when you are being talked at versus talked to there is little more to offer or give one flying fuck at and that is why I miss Teaching, the ability to listen and to hear. I like to talk but I really like to listen and then hear what my students have to say as that is how I learn. And with that then I can in turn teach.

The last time I mentioned this mantra was to the 30 year old idiot who was hitting on me. He works at the wine store and again over the year we had never exchanged two words to my knowledge and then about a month ago as the vaccine time approached we talked and laughed about the Covid bullshit as I went around and touched every bottle on a shelf telling him that should keep him paranoid and busy for an hour and require a hazmat outfit. He then asked to hang out which I took to mean just that. I was wrong. Once again it was the dodging and dancing of trying to explain that I don’t want a dick, a man named dick nor a big dick with a little dick or vice versa to be inserted into any of my body parts, I was done with it. I made that decision and if I am to change it it will be with a man closer to my age, with an education, a home of his own and a history to match it. I am too old to date a 31 year old BOY. I am truly old enough to be his mother and the only thing we would have in common is fucking. Wow that is sad to think I would regress back a decade to that concept of a relationship. It may have been a long pandemic but all that self work would be for naught and that alone is why I made NO COMPROMISES my mantra. Endless discussions about why I needed a man truly upset me and it again reminded me of how respect is an issue less about my age but more about my gender and that is where we are in America.

Today the New York Times had a story on a photographer and her recent exposition, Women Saying No to Motherhood. And like the revelation from the woman in the group today, it was revelatory to read the women’s comments and finally during the pandemic where I heard the expression endlessly, “You are not alone” it finally resonated.

One of the issues brought up was of course the idea of sex without reproduction. And yes in my 40s I had a shitload of it. I had always liked sex and once I had reached an age where conception was not much of an issue, yes I was still supposedly fertile but I would not practice anything but safe sex and if I did have sex today, still do so, it was freeing and much less an obligation or duty. Sex should be what men think it is, just fun. But it is not to men when you are their partner. The societal norms and values change and with that so does one’s sex life and men cannot function without some damaged views regarding that issue. I knew that with the 30 year old and his strange offers as dates; my house for wine, the park with wine – at night, going to the Jersey Shore, me ahead of him and him coming down around 4pm. I thought you said day trip? Then more odd ideas about gay bars and places clearly he did not want to be seen with me in public in the light of day. Okay dude I get it you want your dick yanked but really you think I am going to do that? Me? I was amused then finally insulted. And yet repeatedly asked why I did not think that he liked me and I should be flattered. Okay, then. Women are Madonnas or Whores and when you are not a Mother, well you know where you stand.

As the article states: Around the world, women who don’t procreate are often stigmatized, labeled unusual, unfulfilled and unhappy. A 2016 study on the stigmatization of child-free women and men in the journal “Sex Roles” found that some people even feel moral outrage at people who decide not to have children. The Catholic Church seems to agree: “The choice not to have children,” Pope Francis told an audience in St Peter’s Square in 2015, “is selfish.”

But what is more revelatory: About four in 10 U.S. adults under 50 without children said they didn’t expect to become parents, according to a 2018 Pew Research survey. And plenty of research suggests that nonparents tend to be happier than parents — especially in the United States. A 2018 study from the Institute for Family Studies, which looked at 40 years of data on children and happiness in America, found that married mothers were less happy than married women without kids.

What is truly distressing is that with Covid we are fucked to realize that many of the anti vaxx crowd have or had Mothers and they seem to think that they are superior humans. So there is some selfish right there. Many are in fact Mothers and they are sure that they too know better. I wonder if the Women in the late 50s, who gave their babies the new MMR vax for the first time, thought anything negative or in fact questioned the reasoning of this vaccine and what if this does this or this? And maybe they did as I born in 1959 I was an early guinea pig. But we have seen of late the consequences of this and again we seem to think that is okay, our narcissism and idiocy is acceptable. I have said repeatedly we have failed when few know science or history or even basic genetics. The kid downstairs who refuses and the other Concierge a Black Woman and Mother seem to think they are better and know more than all those who came before and to that I say – go fuck yourself. I just say it to myself as I still live here but they are a reason why I want to move and that too made me realize that is not about avoiding conflict it is about my health and safety. They already know my opinion and we are done with the subject and me basically done speaking to them unless forced. I already carried the weight here and this is where race and sexuality have come to a line drawn.

And this brings me to the last issue of the day and that of the birth rate declining – again – or since 2008, as this is big news in America. Why? As it once again CONTRADICTED the earlier prediction that there would be a baby boom. Surprise no. Anyone stupid enough to get knocked up during a pandemic and have a kid now is either well off, really brave or really stupid. Women do have the ability to still control their bodies, despite best efforts to change that, and having children is a full time job. We have little reason to believe as we either experienced or witnessed the overwhelming responsibility placed upon women to maintain home and family during the pandemic, from child care, teaching, nursing sick family members and trying to work. This again will destroy women professionally for decades to come and we do little to give one flying fuck. Well Biden has and this may be the hope and change we need. Hmm where did I hear that one before?

You are not alone

If I hear that expression one more time I am going to go Derek Chauvin on someone and pin their head to the ground with my knee and draw the life out of them. That is how sick I am of that here on day 413 of social isolation. For me I don’t see that changing anytime sooner than later but the move to open NYC by July 1 on one hand, means the other hand of Cuomo once he extricates it from a throat or a boob he is fondling (with him it is hard to know) means that at least I will have some level of flexibility and freedom that I currently do not. As for now we must schedule an appointment to go to a Museum, walk the High Line, or go to the gym. It grates and wears you down to the point where going seems more a chore versus a pleasure.

I spent the better part of the pandemic enjoying the odd single sense of being and freedom which I still appreciate but it has become boring and monotonous. The weather has been horrific with few days of actual pleasure in which to wander and to seek at least moderate adventure. Today is International Jazz Day and so I do what I do everyday, listen to Jazz. But I decided that the pajama day and lockdown was needed to avoid the endless confrontations I seem to have of late. This week I found a note to my door that said this:

HI THERE, WE TRIED KNOCKING BUT MUST HAVE MISSED YOU. UNFORTUNATELY, WE CAN HEAR EVERYTHING FROM YOUR APARTMENT. IT HASN’T REALLY BEEN AN ISSUE UNTIL NOW., AS OUR DAUGHTER IS ONLY 12 WEEKS OLD. SHE GETS WOKEN UP EVERY MORNING BY NOISE AROUND 5/5:30 AM. WE ARE HOPING YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO LIMIT ANY LOUD ACTIVITIES UNTIL ABOUT 7 AM. THANK YOU.

What is find distressing is that they claim to hear EVERYTHING. Really? I live above them, so what are they hearing exactly. I know for one they are hearing my washing machine as I do laundry at that time. I go to the gym at 4 am and work out until 5, shower and wash all the clothes from that and the day before. I have a small apartment and few towels so it requires laundry more often than normal. So they can hear everything and wait until day 409 to let me know. One of them is a Police Officer so that may explain the X-Ray hearing. Did he hear me fall off a step ladder and nearly break my nose? Did he hear me one day rage and cry for hours when my depression got the best of me? Did he hear me laugh outrageously over King Kong v Godzilla? Or my stumbling to bed one night where I drank myself into a stupor only to get up at 3 am and start all over again? What does he hear? I responded that it was l likely the laundry and I would discontinue that but other than that what did he suggest I do to eliminate any noise that is clearly been disrupting him and his family all of these 409 days? I never heard back.

The next was the 31 year old boy at the wine store, I am a good customer there as well aside from working out at 4 am, drinking is the other hobby, and in turn for the past 400 days he worked there I never spoke to him to my recollection until the week of my first vaccine March 23. He then asked me if we could “hang out.” I did not think anything of it other than he was bored too and thought he she seems nice so better than no one.. well I was wrong. Within a few hours the texts began requesting he come over drink wine and have light eats. Then when I said no, he suggested taking that to Liberty Park across the way and doing so. When I said no and suggested we have coffee he offered to get some at Starbucks and we go there to drink it. Did I mention he wanted to do that after he got off work at 10 pm at night?

At this point I wondered if I was losing my mind or were we all. I informed him that I would prefer a daylight adventure and he countered with a day trip to the Jersey Shore. I thought about how fun and agreed. Then again it got weird. He said I could meet him there at 3 pm after he got off work early one day. I asked what we would do and he thought well we could walk the boardwalk and if we wanted we could come back or not. I thought, well if we are going that late I get the staying over, but if we are going at different times I would get a hotel room he could meet me for dinner and if he needed to I would get a double bedroom or a sofa pull out so he would not have to drive back. That seemed to confuse him and finally, I had to after he continued to press on when this trip was to occur, I told him no. Honestly, why would I go alone and then have him drive two hours down to eat a meal with him and then be slumber pals? Are you fucking kidding me? I am twice his age and this was absurd since I told him that I was 61 not interested in any type of romance, sexual encounter, or anything remotely like that with a man his age nor frankly any man at this point given the pandemic. He threw a temper tantrum and walked out of the shop. Days later he suggested a true day trip and then days later informed me that there were shift changes and he did not think he could do it. Well, that saves that. He then continued to go on about going to a Gay Bar with him so he could see the one a customer just opened. Thanks, I want to be your beard. So I said, “Hey that drink and light eat a thing, wanna do it tonight?” He refused as he was going to explore the area and the bars in the hood. He did not invite nor ask if I would like to join him, so I assume he found a date of his own age. The word “platonic” he must have repeated to me several times and at one point I thought he was convincing himself that is what we are. We are not even that. We are not friends and we have no future of being so. But I tried but this comes after I had made the decision that I had to stop compromising, stop capitulating to make friends, and be one. Women are constantly being marginalized, gaslight, and exposed to micro-aggressions that exhaust you. It is hard being Black, yes I get it I really do. Have a pussy? It is largely the same thing. Being white doesn’t give me a free pass at all. It may have but with age that has been canceled quite a while ago. I have no value other than my checkbook at this point and as for the 31-year old I seriously could not believe that he thought that my pussy was that valuable either since I was clear with the comment “My pussy like my checkbook is closed for business.” Again this is a white man and they don’t get the message. And this includes the very well worn – no means no – which I also texted him. White men are big dicks with little ones attached in which to poke, prod and bore us to death.

So in the last encounter when I did what I did best, push buttons and see how far they will go I knew that he would once again prove me right. I said that during this entire pandemic I was alone, I had no friends, family, any place to go or to be that mattered or would recognize me if I wasn’t there. That I spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 407 days at that point totally without true human connection, and that where I go on my own is not exactly a treat for me to go with someone else. If I can and have why would I with you? My birthday and Christmas went without a card or an email from anyone I knew and the one person I had been good too, is now some anti-vaxx lunatic and I have cut off all communication with that individual so again, why would I go to Liberty Park or a Gay Bar with you when they are the places I go to without? So yes folks I am very much alone. And when a Police Officer tells me in a note he hears my comings and goings, my first thought is: Fuck what is next, a Breonna Taylor?

The last week I have read several articles about how friendships will evolve and to this, I doubt anyone can say that it will be a significant realization that most people pair off with partners. Their friendships are all based on the power of the pussy or dick and for many, this is whom they identify as their “best friend.” I never knew that sucking or fucking was a pre-requisite to being a friend but alas I confused sex with well sex and friends as those who did not require inserting an object into my body to define it. Watching the current Gaetz scandal in Congress play out that again shows how white men define friendship, by fucking and sucking together the same girls found online; however, I will give them credit they at least paid for it.

I found this interesting as again it shows that we truly don’t know who we are until we do and then we celebrate it. Celebrate yourself, you are worth it.

If You Don’t Want to Go, Say No

Most social obligations would be best left in the Before Times.

By Jesse Grosse The New York Times April 29, 2021

When I was in my early 20s, my friends started calling me “The Bailer.” I was infamous for making plans and then canceling the day before. Even at the time, I knew this was irritating and ungenerous behavior. But I made the plans with the best intentions: I love my friends! I want to see their faces! That spoken-word event in a dank, low-ceilinged bar sounded like fun when you told me about it three weeks ago!

About 24 hours before many social outings, I would start to feel sweaty and inert. After a long day’s work at an office, I would often feel drained from human contact and all I would want to do is buy an enormous burrito at the spot near my apartment, get home, take off my pants and eat it in privacy while watching reality television. After a few years of disappointing my friends last minute, I learned that it’s much kinder and less stressful for everyone involved to be honest with myself — and my friends — about what I would actually show up for.

I began to evaluate what I really enjoyed doing and what I valued about interactions with friends. I did not like standing for prolonged periods of time, for almost any reason. I did not like waiting in line for food. I did not like anything that included the word “networking.” I did like getting drinks or dinner in a place where we could really talk, or lounging in someone’s living room, or going to a party if there were going to be lots of people I knew there and ample seating room.

Having children at 30 was a great excuse for being the hermit I naturally am, and it also helped clarify my socializing needs even further. I was both more tired but also more starved for grown-up conversation. I opted for even more socializing in small groups without my daughters, and when I was with them, I experienced the joy of raucous dinner parties with a separate kids’ table. I learned the valuable skill of continuing conversations through multiple interruptions.

During the pandemic I added a few more types of socializing to my repertoire, including outdoor walk-and-talks, like I’m some jerk in an Aaron Sorkin TV show. Though some pandemic behavior comes easily to me, because I do hate leaving my house, this year of enforced isolation has been depressing, and even a shut-in like me has been missing human contact with people I am not related to.

That does not mean I will come to your spoken word performance in the future. I am still short on time on this mortal coil, and I imagine I will return to my previous socialization preferences.

While obviously there are some obligations you show up to because you love and honor your friends and family even if you don’t want to attend, I invite you to figure out what you actually like about seeing people in the “After.” Especially now that people are making plans with frenzied abandon, saying yes to all manners of activities without a second thought because they are so starved for socializing. Yes to that group sound bath! Yes to the wine-cooler tasting! Yes to the early morning rave! Oh honey, no. No. No.

Be honest with yourself. If you like the energy of a big crowd, say no to that intimate coffee and parry with a trip to a concert. If you hate going out, invite people to come over.

Tell people the real reasons you’re saying no for things you say no to. This has two benefits: it will give you deeper intimacy with friends who will know you for the true crank you really are. And it will mean that they stop inviting you to things that you really don’t like to do. My friends no longer call me The Bailer, because now I always show up.

The Electric Slide

This is a dance that seems to perpetually be done at Weddings and other markers of celebrations. Why? I have no idea but it beats two boots scooting boogie I guess. But the title is about how I feel right now as if I am on a slide that is akin to two pulling apart sheets from the dryer. That friction of motion and the slight shock is something you never really get used to despite it happening regularly. And that is my response to the shooting in Atlanta this week and another at a nightclub in Texas last night and another in Syracuse and another in Chicago. And there are others, some with victims, some with Police or by Police as there were two in Nashville the last week and some were just random shots fired. What this tells me is that all of them have one thing in common – guns. The ease in which one can purchase a gun, as the Atlanta boy bought his a few hours before going on his rampage, and the same reason guns seem to confuse Police into responding with force as they assume all encounters have an element of risk and risk means guns.

As this study found:

Police shootings of civilians are more likely in states with high rates of gun ownership, according to a new styudy by researchers from Northeastern and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“The take-home message from the study is that when people live in places where guns are more prevalent, the police officers are more likely to shoot and kill them,” said co-author Matt Miller, professor of health sciences at Northeastern and co-director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. “The relationship is pretty strong.

“The two factors that we looked at that were most strongly predictive of whether a citizen would be legally shot and killed [by police] were the overall rate of violent crime in that state and the overall rate of civilian firearm ownership.”

The Atlantic addresses this in this essay: The Overlooked Role of Guns in the Police-Reform Movement. And the author notes: Something is weirdly absent from the general discussion about police violence in America: the weapon most commonly used to inflict it.

The role of guns and weaponry was a key element to the insurrection attempt on January 6. Many of the “proud boys” and they are surely that, is a fear of having their guns taken from them. The endless hysteria of the Government taking away their arms. Why anyone thinks this is largely due to the drumbeat of media who frequently mentions this post shooting. Yes we have a problem with guns. How many goddamn guns does one need to feel safe? Apparently many as none these fuckwits can seem to leave their house without a varying types to fit every mood and match every outfit. They are to guns what Carrie of Sex and the City was too shoes.

Then we have men who fear that with the rising tides of Immigrants washing across the shores and plains, the ability of women to work and control their child production and in turn their body, that individuals can now change gender and those of the same gender can have a family, they will lose their dicks. Their dicks will just fall off and away and they will be Ken, Barbies non-binary man friend.

While many Americans seem to think Canadians are what Americans should be, think again. They are not less racist, more feminist and better at equality, they just are like us and play hockey better but other than that distinction no, no they are not a superior human life force. And I point to three men who have been in the news of late that define toxic masculinity. Peter Nygard, the Canadian Jeffrey Epstein. Jordan Peterson, the Canadian Dr Oz, only more annoying. And Gavin McInnes, Male Chauvinist. Wow that NAFTA treaty really opened the door to this border crossing and in turn they exported the rapists and murders that Trump warned us about, just the wrong border.

I did want to make a moment to talk about Jordan Peterson, who of late has been ignored as his role as a missionary in this movement of white small dick energy cannot be ignored. Part YouTube therapist and part raging asshole he has he same verbiage and messaging that adorns much of the web sites and messaging that the Alt-Right crowd embraced. I recall when Crazy Ethan saw that I had his book he asked what I thought and I only mentioned that he is hardly saying anything new but he is doing it in a new way which I found interesting. I neglected to mention that I thought he was much like all online evangelicals, just another crazy peddling bullshit masked as steak. Peterson has been busy after being the “it” boy and has a new book where he neglects to mention he became the very person he loathed and mocked.

I am not sure what to make of online Evangelicals, be they male or female, but they are just as flawed and as hypocritical as the tele-vangelicals were 20 years ago. I am missing Tammy Faye that is sure. But the male gaze is a strong as ever and it is focused now on men. Again the creepy almost strange gay thread that these men have going is not lost, from their theme songs to the the cos-play outfits and living with their mothers while espousing misogynistic language is not lost. When you are confused about your own identity you lash out at those who seem confident in theirs.

So as we try to tilt windmills to solve the dilemma of society we are actually debating on who Daddy HATES more. Does Daddy hate Women, Asians, Black people, Immigrants, Muslims, Liberals or himself. That last one seems to be the winner but what does it matter if Daddy hates one, there is likely that one is a member of another. No one is perfect and as my Mother said, “The perfect person is dead.” So that may explain why they want to kill them. My Mother used to talk a lot about jealousy and with that I agree as there is that aspect as well. Trump just wanted to be famous, liked and to belong. He never did until he found a group that loved rejects as they were also rejected by a larger society. I just want to be different like everyone else and conformity like familiarity breeds contempt, or is that security?

The idiot in Atlanta was “sex addicted.” So was Tiger Woods. So was Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, David Duchovny. Jack Nicholson, Robbie Williams, Billie Bob Thornton, Colin Farrell and many many more, some real hot so hey where are those meetings I may have a problem. I bet Armie Hammer will be there! But not of them were members of the Crabapple Church that pretty much put the nail and the hammer in the head about sex and sexuality. They are adherent to very conservative and oppressive views with regards to sex and that includes masturbation which the shooter had fixated on as destructive to his relationship to God. The issues of race were never mentioned by his roommate in the home he lived that was “treating” his addiction that clearly had no treatment but enabled him to hate himself more. And what is tragic is that he frequented the massage parlors and they were clearly providing him a sexual outlet and we need to realize that as he was a customer at one and in fact was inside for an hour prior to shooting the guests and workers. So we can imagine that perhaps things did work out as he wanted and that rage only further fueled his self-loathing. And out came his other dick and he jizzed the bullets and let the blood wash his anger and shame away. Just like Jesus. Religious kooks see Jesus in everything they do.

And one of the salons had been on the radar by Police in Atlanta so we can continue to ignore the reality that these women, three of them over 60 years old were working in the sex trade. How tragic. How grim. How pathetic. This is the real tragedy that we marginalize women and especially those who are not the “typical” model stereotype Immigrant. But do we really need to say or distinguish what kind of crime it is, it is a HATE CRIME. It was directed to women, who were Asian and were working in an industry affiliated with sex trafficking and prostitution and even if none of the women sexually serviced him or any men that day it is still about women and the perception of them as disposable and sexually deviant for encouraging, enabling or servicing a man. No wonder I don’t fuck anymore as frankly all sex at this point is work.

Which is why I am exhausted by all this male toxicity that seems to be everywhere all the time and I the endless shocks to my skin are blistering which cannot seem to heal. The documentary about Allen and Farrow and now the Andrew Cuomo scandal is just what has always been, powerful men not being held accountable for their actions and when called on it they flip the message switch and the victims become the perpetrators who caused the harm. Women are vindictive, mistaken, on a crusade or are slutty, stupid and what? Disposable.

The Cuomo nightmare is only shocking as it comes from the world watching this paternalistic asshole who love bombed the airways daily with his endless scales, numbers, scolds and warnings. Much we know now was false, was badly handled, that he doesn’t respect experts, more died than needed and then lied about those who died and frankly was incompetent from the get go. I don’t think any single leader in the United States handled this pandemic well and that is largely because of the failure by the U.S. Government led by Trump to actually take command and do their job properly. It allowed and enabled this bizarre piecemeal strategy put together by Governors with their ever rotating list of health care experts and some minimal if not constantly contradicting and changing CDC guidelines. And that has not changed but most of hit the wall and are going forward with re-opening their economies with little or no idea if this is a good idea or not. It is why I went ahead registered for a vaccine and pushed the “truth” in which to do so. There was no one going to be my advocate better than me. And that is what we have seen this repeatedly that few if any of the women from the Spas in Atlanta to the women who worked in the Cuomo office did either. Petty jealousy, arrogance and more important willing ignorance is why we have women 60 years old’s giving hand jobs to idiot religious crackpots and women in their 20’s wearing stiletto heels to get the Governor’s attention and respect. All while not even calling you by your given name or knowing the name of you, important colleagues or co-workers. Truly both are environment’s of abuse and disgrace, just one is in a statehouse the other is in a strip mall. We are all sliding down the electric slide and we are burned and scared from the trip. So what is a hate crime? The reality is that it took me 60 years to realize how as a woman I have been seriously ignored, and when not ignored mistreated. And often by women. To those women I go fuck you. To the men, go fuck yourself its hard work let’s see how good you are at it.

Compromise Less

In life and work we are always looking for a great bargain but in turn that often means reconciling our wants and needs and the reality of cost and expense be that financial or emotional. Spending money is always a compromise as you can buy whatever you want and end up putting it on credit and paying it off over time, but in the long run with interest costs the actual item will end up costing more than it was ever worth. A car is the best example of such an item. Clothing is another. Having just purged my closet of designer wear I realized out little I had worn any of it and the value of course only declines and with it so does the pleasure. When you are buying something to own just because it has the right label, are you really buying it for the name or is it something more? It could be the quality, it could be the reputation of the company and its policies or because you have a history with their legacy. Perhaps that Chanel Jacket is tied to the legacy of Coco herself and you find her story interesting, or that the late designer for the company, Karl Lagerfeld was one you admired. It could be the story behind the garment itself and how you recall many in history wearing this label and loved how it looked and fit, and when you finally tried one on you realized it was not hype and you too wanted that touch of class and history for your own closet. But in all honestly most of us just want to be rich, famous, and envied. So if you do buy that Chanel I suggest wearing it inside out as that way the label will be apparent and everyone can admire your taste and ability to afford it.

I struggle wearing clothing with labels on the outside as I am not that person, I am not paid to advertise them and in turn I am not sure what I am getting for everyone to read my chest to approve or not when it comes to my clothing choices. I was fascinated when I sat in on a Zoom dialogue between the designer Stella McCartney and the Buyer for Bloomingdales regarding clothing and sustainability. Yes when you spend $500 dollars for a handbag one hopes one keeps that for years or uses it until it falls apart. But when you spend $500 for a sweatshirt with her name on it, what is the point there. It seems contradictory to the message. I laughed when H&M collaborated with Simone Rocha and were calling the line sustainable. If you shop at H&M there alone is a reason we have fashion waste. I have a Rocha piece from her own line which I bought on a spur of the moment online and had no idea who she was but I loved the piece and it was cheap or marked down to affordable it was hard to pass up. One day I hope to actually wear it and that is the point, when you are sitting in sweats 24/7 and have no idea when you will wear normal clothes it becomes less a necessity and more an ideal. Like relationships, more idealistic and less realistic as we are seeing more and more anger and rage directed to those who are women, people of color and of course people who are not just like us. Who the fuck is? And like the clothes we discard those who no longer serve a purpose. Friendships are disposable like tech, a planned obsolescence.

And it was during the pandemic lockdown I had tons of time and hours of boredom in which to assess what my needs and wants were. I realized that for the last few years I had filled my time with people too young,who just by age or by matter of choice thanks to the cost of it the same as a Hermes handbag, were as educated or as informed as I, which fell into choice as opposed to cost; and just by life span, therefore, not as experienced as I. So to try to build a type of a friendship, I was spending way too much time and energy trying to meet them not in the middle but at their end of the spectrum. To meet in the middle would mean they would have intellectual curiosity, have a willingness to learn, to read, to travel and be open to a wider world. I have met few who have. I have met many who parrot me, nod in agreement as if they know what I am talking about, deny or just lie about their own ambitions or knowledge. And this crosses a large age spectrum, as living in Nashville I met a great deal of people from their 20’s to their 50’s who were to say the least living in a bubble, and that bubble was largely one made inside a Church. It was that reason I moved to the NYC area as I would be able to find more of a tribal sense and diverse set of individuals to whom I could associate. Well that pandemic ended that and old patterns re-emerged and I compromised again to befriend people that within moments of parting immediately hated myself and wondered why I was doing this. So I stopped. I am still polite and it bothers me that I feel compelled to do so but seriously you have to always remember to rise above and be just that. But the last encounter with an adult who was well past the age of idiocy, was so distressing I knew that I too was falling into something that shamed me and that was purposely setting up the individual to lie to me and I allowed it so I could loathe him and make fun of him later for it.

With Covid, this is the time to ask yourself and do inventory about it all. Why I did this was that this individual lied to me about having Covid last year at this very time in the early days of the pandemic. He said his wife had lost her sense of taste and smell and thought it was Covid but the company she worked for refused to test her. Oddly it was the same company that was providing the testing to New Jersey and already had been the cover of a NYT story about how they were strained getting results in a timely manner which was further contributing to the growth and spread of Covid. I told him to go to the public facility doing so and to lie and say that she had all the symptoms and had just been exposed by a colleague who went to China. A few days later I sat outside the same coffee shop where we had met just a few weeks earlier and had coffee prior to the lockdown, he was in a car, his wife was in with a mask on, his children also. He was half wearing a mask and he was enroute to the testing place in Jersey City. He came and got coffee and stood few feet away from me outside and rambled on incoherently about the testing and with Covid denial raging behind it, I knew he was sick, his wife sick and at least one of those kids sick. He took the tray to the car where i watched them drive off to the site. I went inside to the Barista and said “He has Covid and he just exposed us.” I made an appointment at a private physician for the test the next day and thankfully was negative. It was then I realized that it is airborne, it is close contact and masks and ventilation are the key. I was wearing masks early long before the requirement and in turn all Covid folks were told to wear one to testing sites even in those days but again being the denier he was not fully wearing it. Then just a week ago he confirmed it, he had it, his wife had it and one child who then transmitted it to his Father-in-law who ended up in the hospital. Denial working for you I see. Our conversation meandered a bit and I found him annoying as I already had him tagged as a liar and at this point what more can you say. He and his wife are social media influencers and are following that trail of idiocy going during this pandemic (which he doesn’t believe is one) to Tulum Mexico and to Hawaii. Apparently he is still traveling but I don’t do Instagram so the less I know..

Now this is why I have stopped compromising. What more can I say to this shithole who exposed me to Covid, who lied about it and in turn is still denying the existence of Covid. Compromise? No. And there is nothing wrong with taking a sabbatical from this and in turn finding other diversions in which to entertain or educate myself at this time. Then I read this essay in Modern Love about Celibacy and it is very relevant. I have long stopped even remotely believing that at this age I can compromise enough to work through a romantic relationship and now I have accepted that all relationships require it and so I need to just work on platonic ones as they are the ones that frankly matter. I have little more to give beyond that. But this is something perhaps we all need to do, to take inventory and ask ourselves what do we need and want and are we getting it in a way that is less about compromise and more about being honest and straight to those we are around and especially to ourselves. Maybe celibacy is not always about sex.

Why I Took a Vow of Celibacy

In my life, sex and love have been twisted up with childhood trauma. Time for a break.

By Paula McLain Modern Love The New York Times

• March 12, 2021

Twenty months ago, I took a vow of celibacy that had nothing to do with religion. I had just come out of a two-year relationship that had ended messily, and I felt exhausted at the soul level. Not just by what it had taken to extricate my heart from this particular maelstrom of shattered promises and lingering disappointments, but by the whole thing, the dozens of relationships so much like this one that they seemed to exist in an echo chamber.

Two failed marriages. An ocean’s worth of love drama. The giddiness, hope and euphoria that invariably collapsed into conflict and doubt. And then the desperate attempts at relationship CPR, the talking and processing, anxious text messages, fighting and makeup sex, trying and failing to make something work that didn’t.

I was tired, most of all, of the voices in my head that would creep in as the latest enmeshment was disintegrating, telling me that all I needed to do was try again with the next one, the right one, somewhere out there.

This time, however, something shifted. When the voices began to whisper their usual “just keep looking” litany, I couldn’t bring myself to believe them. The jig was up. When the smoke cleared, I saw that I was lost, and that no love, no matter how profound, was going to help me find my way out.

I had been in this limbo for so long, desperate to find someone to save me, that I had lost track of where I had come from: the foster care system in Fresno, Calif. I was only 5 when my two sisters and I were sent to live with the couple at the root of all this.

A skinny, curly-haired, quiet girl, I had already learned to read grown-ups like maps of difficult terrain and to bend myself into whatever kind of child they seemed to want. This was my job, to watch and to please, so I wouldn’t be given away again. Because I had learned that as bad as any situation was, it could always be worse.

My sisters, who were 3 and 7, must have been coping similarly. But strangely we never spoke to each other about what was happening to us in that house, or about anything that had already transpired. Not about our mother, who had skipped town with a boyfriend the year before without saying goodbye or telling anyone where she was going. Not about our violent, shiftless father, who bounced in and out of jail and our lives. Not about our social worker, who showed up unannounced at our last placement, which had lasted only four months, and helped us pack our few things into garbage bags.

Had we done something bad? Were we not enough? No one said, and we knew better than to ask. We went without crying or even complaining, as if childhood was a kind of war, and we had been made soldiers.

There were an infinite number of rules in our new situation, which we followed without question. No sitting on the furniture, no food or water after 5 p.m., no raised voices. I must have gone to kindergarten and first grade there, but my school memories are blurry. I do remember days at home, stiff and cold as the plastic casing on the chairs and the sofas. The wife would tell us to play outside and then lock the door behind us.

At night, I shared a bed with my younger sister. We would sleep curled against each other like puppies, rubbing our feet together against the mattress to self-soothe — our oldest shared habit.

Some nights nothing happened. Other nights I would wake to a shape in the doorway, the husband’s inky silhouette. And then I would disappear inside myself, barely breathing, frozen. I vanished so expertly that I wasn’t actually in my body any longer as he peeled me away from my sister. I didn’t make a sound.

I think I was sleepwalking through those years — when I was 5, 6 and 7. That I went somewhere else, even in the daytime, far away from all the things I couldn’t control.

Do children ever belong to themselves? I didn’t. I was a chess piece, there to be moved, sacrificed. Grown-ups, and particularly my caregivers, seemed either uncaring or dangerous or both. There was nowhere to turn, and nothing to do but simply give up my body and hide far away, deep in the maze of my mind.

After two years, we eventually left that family. I was 7. I was so young, too young, but as a therapist once said to me, “The body never forgets.” Trauma leaves its imprint on you.

We were taken away because I had somehow mustered the courage to speak, telling the wife, in a shaking voice, about the molestation that had been happening. Though she never turned around or even acknowledged me, she later called our social worker to say she couldn’t take care of us anymore. We were taken to another foster home, and then another, each of them decidedly less abominable, but not without trauma.

At 18, when I aged out of the system, all I wanted was to reinvent myself as quickly as possible. Given a chance, I think I would have crawled out of my own skin, or even seared off my fingerprints. Whoever that throwaway girl was, I didn’t want to be her any longer.

I broke ties with our latest foster family, who had raised us for the last ten years, and also our biological family, the grandmother, cousins, aunts and uncles we had seen less frequently throughout the years. I let it all burn without looking back, making it a policy never to tell anyone in this new life how I had grown up. Not friends, and certainly not the boyfriends I blew through as if I were bent on revenge.

There was a desperate edge to those years. I enrolled in community college, all I could afford or even aspire to, and rented an apartment with my sisters. We lived paycheck to paycheck, well below the poverty line, but we belonged only to ourselves.

Every weekend, we went dancing, drinking Vodka Collins by the dozen. Sometimes I went home with strangers, telling myself I liked sex, when really, I would often feel myself sliding out of my body and going somewhere else during the act, like watching a mannequin going through the motions.

Sometimes I would burst into tears or flood with rage, wanting to fight back in a way I hadn’t as a child. And in these moments, which were like a terrible hijacking, I would feel embarrassed, ashamed, incapable of explaining to whomever I was with what was really happening, not even someone I cared about, a boyfriend, or later my husband.

Sex scared me, so I had more of it. Men bewildered me, so I obsessed over figuring out what they wanted and tried to become that, falling to pieces when it didn’t work. And if I was with a guy who was caring and attentive, I would feel claustrophobic and overwhelmed, poised to bolt.

This is the dance I have been caught up in for most of my adult life, through marriage and divorce, motherhood, a successful career. It’s the dark shape that is forever in the background, tracking me like my own shadow, driving me to seek what can’t be found.

“I just want to have some other argument with the universe,” I told my therapist when I made the decision to swear off relationships. “I feel like I’m fighting the same war, over and over. And the weapons are only ever pointed at me.”

Sometimes I feel as if I am broken and always will be, but I have to remind myself of an essential fact: I didn’t break myself. Maybe I can’t fully mend myself, either, but the first step must be to try to love myself as I am, though that often seems like the hardest task of all.

I want to carry what’s mine to carry, claiming my life experiences, my war wounds, instead of wishing I’d had some other story. I feel lonely now and then in this, my second year of self-imposed celibacy, but I’m hardly alone.

We’re all carrying something. In my neighborhood, I often find myself looking up and down the street in an almost sacred way, knowing that many of the men and women climbing into buses or sitting masked in coffee shops have also been damaged by sexual abuse or experienced similarly painful traumas. I marvel at how beautiful we all are, how human. And then I make my way home.

Bang Bang

Well we are finally returning to normal with a mass shooting done by a white male in the hot zone age of 21-28, a religious crackpot and of course a raging misogyny dosed with a touch of racism. Not the first time but a first as this comes when attacks on Asian Americans are on the rise thanks to the Denier in Chief who called Covid the “Chinese Virus.” Once that moniker was placed on Covid it made it easier to point fingers and lay blame on anyone other than he and his family of grifters and accomplices to do anything to actually contain, stop and save the country from what now has made him the greatest mass murderer of all times with over 500K in victims.

When I heard of the shootings in Atlanta at three spas with a large Asian workforce I knew that this was more than just another attack on the Asian community which has been raging across the country, that it was direct and specific and sexually motivated. Then when they identified the suspect, a white 24 year old, I took one look at went “Add Jesus in there and you got Ethan.” Ethan is my barometer of all things violent, sexually confused and warrior motivated to rid the world of anything his Jesus thinks is harming America. I was never sure about Racism with Ethan but Misogyny, rage and depression coupled with an obsession over Jesus was why I finally folded the towel in trying to communicate to someone that mentally ill. I saw variations in that the day of January 6th and see more of him as more come forward with arrests and identifications of allegiances to varying groups of male chauvinists.

We have a great deal of myths that surround race – the Angry Black Man (who so far have been way outnumbered by angry white men but then they must be the ones in jail as I don’t know them); the female equivalent which I do know and makes sense but then they have a right to be angry. Oh wait it is about being angry and no woman is to be angry, add race in the mix its just another level of the misogyny/racist trope. We don’t like angry white women either. I know. Then we have the Model Minority, this is the large cohort of “oriental.” I am bringing back the old term as this was used to apply to all Asians, be they East Asian that are of Indian/Pakistan decent, Vietnamese/Cambodian, or Samoan, or Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Philippine, Sri Lankan or Mongolian, etc. Seriously there are many Asian ethnic identities so let’s wrap them up in rug and call it a day! But the same goes for Africa. Folks it is Continent with their own countries within with their own cultural identity. On that note let’s just call anyone from Europe, Euros, like the money will save time. British folks, well you are on your own, Brexit! But again we love to label and place monikers on everyone we do it here with regards to where you are from (a question I have never heard since moving to the tri-state region, making it the best decision I ever made) and where you went to school (again another idiotic question that has no relevance what.so.ever). But that identity applies to largely most Asian/Indian communities and in turn the issues of late from contesting admissions to Harvard and then the pop culture Tiger Mother are factors in lending to this idea that Asians in fact maintain a separate but above equal reputation that white America likes. Integrate but segregate, with one’s own communities, workplaces, be invisible in school, and be successful. Hence I have said that many of the GOP’s own tropes appeal to this cohort as it is an uber conservative one, and lately the reality is that the Latin community fit that profile even more so as they are highly religious and it explains their GOP support. Yes they too are very anti-immigrant as the up by the bootstraps myth is one that they believe and accept given that they made it here and have joined the club of meritocracy. When you have had nothing and get anything that is better that is basically meritocracy, the Apple phone upgrade one.

And with the attack yesterday race will trump (we really need another word) the issue of misogyny and of course religion and sexuality that led to the decision to lead him to commit a mass shooting. It is nice to see that the Violence Against Women law has been resuscitated in Congress after once again the party of hate crimes into laws, the GOP, stymied it in 2019. This is one group that defines Male Chauvinism. And this was a hate crime – regardless of the race. And when we start to divide we are conquered, this is about a collective whole of one race, the Human race and then we can divide by gender, by ethnicity, by religion and by sexual identity and whatever other hyphen you wish to add. But let us try to simply focus on how we all share the planet, breathe the air, drink the water and try to survive in a planet that is dying, that we collectively are also killing.

The Lily, an offshoot of the Washington Post discusses the current state of affairs surrounding the concept of the “Model Minority” and the growing rage against Asian Women over their male counterparts in the last few years. Here I believe that the stereotypes of Asian Women, the Suzi Wong to the Mata Hari that depicts women of Asian decent of compliant sexual partners or dangerous spy’s. Ah yes a version of Mother or Whore with Geisha or Dominatrix the Asian counterpart. And Black women have the same, the Mammy or the Baddass. Yes this is how we see women, Mothers or Whores. Thanks for that. But again I cannot stress enough that this was more than literally targeting Asians, it was targeting women, it was about sex and confusion about that with regards to his religion, my personal favorite – The Southern Baptist.

Naturally they are of course having a come to Jesus meeting about this as they have to with regards to the insurrection. All because they are a cult and have made immense efforts to mix messages, target groups and define hate as a tool in which to divide and conquer those who don’t share their way of thinking. This was from the maniacs online Church service (again these are quite common throughout the religious universe, Ethan’s story mirrors the maniacs down to his epiphany at age 8 to his sexual frustrations and his love of a dead racist Evangelical pastor who is great at hate preach):

the Rev. Jerry Dockery, gave a sermon on the apocalypse. Christ was coming soon, Dockery said, and the world must be ready.

“We’ve had, what, 45 presidents in our brief history as a nation? How many other kings around the world? How many other rulers have sat upon thrones, claiming to be in charge?” he asked. “The King is coming again.”

When Christ returns, Dockery said, he will wage war against those who have rejected his name.

“There is one word devoted to their demise,” the pastor said. “Swept away! Banished! Judged. They have no power before God. Satan himself is bound and released and then bound again and banished. That great dragon deceiver — just that quickly — God throws him into an eternal torment. And then we read where everyone — everyone that rejects Christ — will join Satan, the Beast and the false prophet in hell.”

This is the standard hell, fire and brimstone I was forced to listen to placate Ethan and in turn I questioned my own sanity afterwards. And to a confused boy who needed a healthy environment to discuss sex and sexuality I doubt the Crabapple Church would be a safe space in which to do so.

These are very much tenents in the Southern Baptist church world, but each Church does decide how much hate to spread but this is some of their most recent issues:

The SBC denomination has been engulfed in a debate over race in recent months, especially since Southern Baptist leaders condemned “critical race theory,” an academic movement that views racism as central to society’s problems. Several Black pastors have left the denomination, and prominent Bible teacher Beth Moore revealed last week that she has also parted ways with it.

Long’s church is part of a group in the SBC called Founders Ministries that has pushed the convention in a more conservative direction in recent years. The group has described “white fragility” as “racism” and called critical race theory “godless and materialistic ideologies.”

As for the maniac he told the Sheriff upon arrest that he was having a “bad day.” Aren’t we all. But access to guns and a lack of cohesive structure in the pandemic has enabled many to act on that feeling as there is extensively a rise in crime across the country, but this is very redolent of the time before Covid. An angry white boy who had an issue – from not getting a date, not liking girls, not liking black people and not liking gays or whatever group, person or thing that made him angry enabled him to act upon it in violent and damaging way. We truly cater to these angry white boys who grow up to be angry white men and then take it one step further. We saw that on January 6th.