I first published this piece in 2020 but it applies now, too. VOTE!!! (And write postcards – they work.)

Also if sleeping your way to the top is possible how can I do it because I am tired of being at the bottom

And it starts. The sexist attacks on Kamala Harris.

Are we surprised?

No. No we are not.

This is the way it goes – the way insecure, pathetic, weak men discredit women and yes, I am talking to you, Mr President, who has very very small hands that his own wife doesn’t even want to hold, and you, Rush Limbaugh, who called Harris a “hoe,” and any man who thinks that the fact that he has a penis makes him superior to a woman and makes him fit to run the world.

We are shrill. We are emotional. (Because anger is not an emotion so therefore men do not get emotional.) We have hormones and you know what that means.

And we use sex to get what we want.

(How does that even work? How does a person – a woman – even use sex to get ahead at work? Do you write a contract? How does the quid pro quo get established? Do you discuss the terms before the sex? Or is it just understood? Why isn’t there a handbook for this? Why have I done my whole life wrong? WHY WASN’T THERE A CLASS ON THIS AT BUSINESS SCHOOL? UT-AUSTIN YOU FAILED ME.)

A person I used to respect sent me a link to a story from January 2019 claiming that Harris had “slept her way to the top.” This was his triumphant proof that Harris is not qualified to be vice president.

I will save you the trouble of reading it. It says that Harris dated Willie Brown, who was the mayor of San Francisco, for a short while, when she was in her late 20s. He appointed her to two state commissions.

This is “sleeping your way to the top.”

My acquaintance thinks Trump is the epitome of brilliance and accomplishment and that Harris, who got into and graduated from Howard and got into and graduated from Hastings and was elected San Francisco DA and was elected California AG (twice) and was elected California senator and won huge court cases as a prosecutor, is the person who has done nothing on her own merits.

How many people did she have to sleep with to accomplish all that LORD HAVE MERCY SHE MUST BE EXHAUSTED.

So Trump, who didn’t take his own SATs, whose admission to Penn was facilitated by personal connections and a bribe, who inherited his money and has never accomplished anything on his own except drive businesses and an entire country into the ground, is the standard by which we should measure success?

But Harris, who has a resume that is so bright I need to wear sunglasses to look at it, is the loser who parlayed a few dates with Willie Brown into membership on two state commissions into a brilliant career but IT’S ALL BECAUSE SHE SLEPT WITH WILLIE BROWN?

She must be amazing in bed is all I have to say./sarcasm

Also – I have been on a city commission and I was just appointed to another one. Trust me when I say commissions are not the route to power. You serve on a city commission because you care deeply about the issue, not because you value your free time, not because you enjoy sitting in a windowless room until 11 p.m. on a work night listening to citizens testify in two-minute increments about a deeply controversial issue as they glare at you and imply that you are in favor of disemboweling kittens and puppies when the real situation is that the city just doesn’t have $15 million in spare cash lying around and you personally also do not have that in your checking account.

Commissions are work. That is all. They do not benefit the members personally. We do it as a labor of love because we care about our communities.

So.

1. Sex is currency that can result in career advancement
2. There must be rules somewhere
3. That I have never known about
4. Commissions are a pain in the ass

Which means that the commissions are a smokescreen and it was all the sex Harris must have had with Brown only he didn’t control the juries or the voters and I AM SO CONFUSED.

But the real takeaway is that very powerful men are scared of Harris and that? Is a very good thing.

Rock on Kamala. We are with you.

Part II: In which I do the math about Kamala and everyone she had to sleep with 

We can convince them! But we have to talk to them

Maybe we can win this.

Maybe if we all do just a little bit of work – even if you have never volunteered on a campaign before – we can win this.

Maybe if we all talk to a few people every day or every week – the woman walking her dog while you’re working in your front flowerbeds, the woman waiting next to you for a haircut, the woman in the long line for the ladies’ at a concert – we can win this.

And I left this part out at first because it didn’t hit me until the middle of the night to give you a script! I ask everyone I see (unless they’re wearing MAGA stuff) if they are registered to vote. If they’re not, I tell them to go to MyVote.WI.gov, which is the online voter registration site in Wisconsin. Your state probably has something like it. Memorize the address, memorize the registration requirements, and tell people. You would be surprised at how many people are not registered!

I know talking about politics is hard.

It’s even harder to talk about politics to strangers.

But the worst that can happen is that someone doesn’t want to engage or that she’s rude to you and oh well.

---

(You can also write postcards! You don’t have to talk to anyone.)

---

Attitudes are changing. You never know.

My mother voted for trump in 2016 because of abortion but within a few years – my mom whom I had never heard talk about politics before and who doesn’t spend all day immersed online reading the news and opinion pieces (do you read Heather Cox Richardson’s daily letter? You need to.) – started talking about what a horrible man he is and how much she hates him and how he could not be elected again in 2020.

I have never in my life – EVER – before this heard her talk about a president or how she feels about him

---

When I was doing doors in a working-class conservative neighborhood in the fall of 2022, I was (happily) shocked at how many older women I spoke to who told me they hated the idea of abortion and never would have wanted one for themselves, but they would be damned if they would tell another woman what to do with her body.

---

The Republicans wanted to criminalize abortion and now they have it and guess what maybe conservative women want abortion available for themselves and their daughters after all.

---

I have been talking to almost everyone I meet about the Wisconsin election on August 13. These are not conversations about Kamala but about some (very bad) proposed amendments to the Wisconsin Constitution.

But yesterday, at the Wisconsin State Fair, when I asked a woman working at a history booth if she knew about the election, we got into a larger political discussion.

Woman at State Fair: This is the first time I will ever vote for a Democrat.

Me: Do you mind telling me what changed your mind?

Woman: He’s an asshole! And I care about our democracy. I watched January 6th and I was horrified. I realized I couldn’t be a single-issue voter anymore.

Me: Was abortion your issue?

Woman: Yes but even that troubles me now. I want autonomy over my own body. Guns are the other thing. We watched 20 children get slaughtered at Sandy Hook and wouldn’t do anything about guns? What kind of country are we? And his attitude toward women! I have too much respect for myself as a woman to vote for him again. I would vote for Mickey Mouse against him. Anyone but him.

---

My friends.

These are the issues that I think can convince conservative women to vote for Kamala:

• Bodily autonomy for them and their daughters and granddaughters
• Their children’s safety

Talk to the women around you about who gets to make decisions about our bodies.

Talk to them about fearing for our children’s and our grandchildren’s lives.

And when they say things in reference to bodily autonomy like they don’t want to be told they have to put a vaccine in their body, either – as the woman at the fair did – just smile and nod because vaccines not what we are talking about. We’re talking about democracy and women’s rights and children’s safety and an anti-vaxxer vote for Kamala is still a vote for Kamala.

WE HAVE THICK SKIN WE CAN DO THIS IN DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY.

Nobody thought we could lose rights. But nobody is immune from a dictatorship

My friend lives in a state where abortion is legal. Let’s say New York.

Her daughter lives two hours away across the border in a state where abortion is legal but barely. Let’s say Pennsylvania.

Daughter and her husband – both in their early 30s – want to start a family.

Friend has told daughter repeatedly that once she’s pregnant, if anything happens – if there is any threat to the pregnancy – to get in the car and come straight to New York. Do not go to the hospital in Pennsylvania.

“She doesn’t seem to recognize the gravity of the situation,” my friend said.

“It seems like young women don’t know how bad this is,” I agreed.

“They take it for granted,” friend said. “Which we wanted them to do. They have no idea.”

She paused. “But then I guess I used to take the separation of church and state for granted.”

We both used to take democracy for granted.

---

Mr T and I were in Spain a few months ago. Spaniards are horrified at the possibility of another orange presidency.

They remember.

They remember what a dictatorship is like.

So do the Chileans. I lived in Chile a few years after Pinochet stepped down. Even then, people did not talk about politics – they still didn’t feel safe. I had friends whose family members had been Disappeared. A friend’s father had died of a heart attack because he dared to have it in the evening after curfew had started and they couldn’t take him to the hospital.

But there are always the blind ones. The complicit ones. A Chilean woman told me that at least during la dictadura, there was no rape.

I shook my head and answered that during the dictadura, nobody reported rape.

---

We have taken so much for granted.

We have been lucky.

Not special.

Lucky.

Nobody in Chile thought they would have a dictator. Chile was a democracy!

Nobody in Spain thought they would have a dictator. Spain was a democracy!

And yet.

---

This is a guess, but I am pretty sure that neither Franco nor Pinochet said – before they seized power – that they would be a dictator. “But only for a day.”

When they want her so bad but she would never want them

They just can’t stand it, can they?

They cannot stand a woman with power.

An accomplished woman who has done more than they could ever hope to do with their petty little lives.

An accomplished woman who dares to laugh.

She’s laughing at them, they are sure.

They know she’s thinking about how she made it through law school and passed the bar and got elected more than once to public office and how she’s faced down criminals and hasn’t blinked.

They know that if she can bring down cheaters and frauds, she can also expose them.

They’re thinking about how she would eviscerate them. How standing in her light would cast deep shadows on their flaws and failings.

It’s bad enough to look bad compared to another man.

But to look bad compared to a woman?

And especially a woman they would want? A beautiful, warm, accomplished woman?

A woman who would never even look twice at the likes of them because what have they ever done?

Is there anything worse for a mediocre man?

---

Someone on facebook wrote that Kamala “was Willie Brown’s mattress – oops! mistress!”

When I noted that trump paid hush money to a woman he slept with while he was married to someone else, this guy responded that it’s not illegal to pay hush money and that he tries not to let a politician’s personal life affect his opinion of the politician’s professional life.

“So why did you bring up Harris’ dating life?” I asked.

He did not have an answer.

---

They hate women they can’t control.

They think they should be in charge.

They think our gains are at their expense and that we are taking from them things they deserve simply because they are white men.

They are going to be so sad on November 5.

And sign up to write postcards. Research shows that it works! Plus it’s an easy way to help the cause without actually having to talk to people.

It’s OK for us not to worry about hurting the feelings of people who are ignoring our feelings.

We women are too nice to obnoxious men.

There’s a guy in my neighborhood. Let’s call him Talky Tom.

He’s the backyard neighbor of my friend Delightful Denise.

A few years ago, the fence between TT and DD’s yard rotted and fell.

DD started to replace it, but TT got upset. The fence would block the sun from the plants in his yard!

TT was correct.

This would happen if DD put up a new fence.

(Let me note that we do not have any laws about access to sunshine here.)(And TT did not have that sunshine before the fence fell.)

So DD didn’t put up the fence.

And TT’s flora started encroaching on DD’s yard.

Her peonies did not survive the onslaught.

TT would see DD in her yard and come over to talk.

Which he does a lot of.

A. Lot.

DD planted some shrubs between their yards.

“I don’t even like those shrubs!” she said. “But I wanted a barrier.”

It didn’t work plus they cost money.

---

I was hanging out with DD in her yard when TT came out and started talking to us.

I have experience in this sort of thing – I spent ten weeks traveling over land from Chile to Austin, back in the days when I was apparently catnip to South and Central American men, who saw a woman traveling alone as a woman in search of companionship. That’s when I learned the fine art of ending a conversation quickly – especially a conversation I didn’t even start.

I applied this skill to TT.

“I’m so sorry, TT, but I’m going to have to steal DD from you!” I said cheerfully as I walked away. “We’re in the middle of something that can’t wait!”

DD followed me to her garage.

“THANK YOU!” she said. “Honestly my other neighbors come outside – they say hi – and then they go on about their business. But TT likes to talk!”

---

“Remind me again why you don’t rebuild that fence?” I asked DD.

She sighed. “He doesn’t want it and I’m afraid of hurting his feelings.”

I shook my head. “He is clearly not at all concerned about hurting your feelings!”

---

When I see little kids, I ask them if they are huggers or fist bumpers.

I tell them, “My feelings won’t be hurt if you don’t want to hug me.”

But what I really need to say is, “It doesn’t matter if my feelings are hurt. You’re allowed to hug or not hug no matter how someone else feels. You are allowed to put your feelings about hugging first.”

---

Remember my friend Joan? Who went to prison for a few weeks? And was reluctant to move to a seat away from the Loud Eater?

I saw her again yesterday. She’s back home now. We told the story about the Loud Eater to her daughter, who is visiting from out of state.

Joan explained that she felt bad about changing seats. “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings!”

“But he didn’t care about your feelings!” I reminded her.

“I know!” she answered. “And after you left, when they put me in the new seat, I thought about what you said. I had thought I could endure the Loud Eater for 21 days but then I thought WHY SHOULD I?”

“Good for you!” I said.

“But then they put me next to the Underwear Guy,” she continued.

“Yeah, you told me that,” I said.

“And he was so obnoxious! He sat down and asked me, ‘Are you wearing clean underwear?'”

“He asked WHAT?” I exclaimed. “Damn! Will the obnoxious men never leave us be?”

“Yes, that’s what he asked,” Joan said.

“So I told him no I was not and what about it?”

Joan is my hero.

The rules never change

Joan looked around the cafeteria, wondering where to sit.

Even when you’re 101 years old and staying in an assisted living facility for a few weeks, it stinks to be the New Girl, not knowing anyone.

She finally saw an empty seat and made her way to it.

“When I sat down, nobody introduced themselves,” she said. “Nobody said hi.”

She turned to the people next to her and greeted them.

The man on her Good Side (the side with the hearing aid) just grunted in response.

And then he continued eating.

Loudly.

Really really loudly.

“I think that’s why the seat was empty,” she told me. “That man has some sort of disability where he can’t eat easily. It sounds like he’s grinding his food in his throat. He makes so much noise. It’s awful.”

---

I learned about the Loud Eater when I called Joan a few days after she had moved into assisted living.

I heard about him again when I visited a few days later.

“It’s unbearable,” she said. “He’s so loud. I can’t stand it. I don’t know if I can take two more weeks of this. The hacking. The phlegmy sounds. It’s disgusting.”

An attendant – a young woman, maybe in her mid 20s – knocked on her door, then walked in.

(Which I guess is common at assisted living? That they just come into the room without waiting for a “come in?” Maybe those are the rules. Most of the residents are not as with it as Joan.)

“Hi Joan,” she said. “Remember me? I’m Belle.”

“What’s wrong with the man who sits next to me and eats so loudly?” Joan asked.

“Joan!” I said. “You know they can’t tell you that!”

Belle laughed. “He has problems eating. We usually puree his food.”

But she didn’t explain why the Loud Eater had problems eating, which is what we really wanted to know. What is his condition?

“Do you want us to move you to a different seat?” Belle asked.

“No,” Joan answered. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

I gasped. “Joan! You are 101 years old. If you don’t get to prioritize your own feelings by that age, there is no hope for the rest of us.”

Belle agreed. “It’s really no problem to move you.”

Joan shook her head. “I don’t want him to feel bad,” she said.

“But what about you?” I asked. “What about how you feel?”

She shook her head.

---

It never leaves us, does it?

The desire not to offend? Not to rock the boat?

The desire to please?

The desire to meet external standards for acceptability?

I have seen women in their 80s in the gym locker room carefully primping their hair and applying lipstick.

When do we get to be free of these demands? When can we just *be* without worrying about what other people will think?

---

This woman has entered the Miss Texas beauty pageant.

She is 71 years old.

She looks fabulous! I am envious of her beautiful skin. She is also in fabulous shape, having been a dedicated gym goer her entire life.

But.

Damn.

Can’t we just *be*?

Can’t we just look our age and have that be OK?

---

Before Joan moved into the facility, she asked the director if there was assigned seating.

“He said no,” she said. “But when I was working as a dietician consultant to nursing homes, there was always so much drama about where people sat in the dining room. So I was concerned.”

“So you can move!” I told her. “There are no rules about where you sit!”

She shook her head. “I was raised Baptist. We’re supposed to think about other peoples’ feelings. How will that man feel if I move to a different seat?”

I laughed. “Joan, I can guarantee you that he is not worrying about your feelings when he grunts and grinds his food. I promise you he is not at all worried about his impact on you.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm,” I told her.

---

Joan gave me a tour of the facility. As we walked to the dining room, we ran into Belle.

“Joan, I found you a new seat!” she announced. “You can sit there for supper tonight.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” Joan said.

I looked at Belle. “When are we women going to worry more about ourselves than about total strangers?” I asked. “Women have got to get better about this.”

“It can be hard!” Belle agreed. “But Joan – I really don’t even think he will notice.”

---

I called Joan two days after I visited her.

“Well?” I asked. “Did you move to the new seat? How was supper? Is it better away from the Loud Eater?”

“YES!” she answered. “I can still hear him! But it’s not so loud! And you know what? I don’t think he even noticed I wasn’t there! I’m so relieved. I had thought I could tough it out but it was so awful.”

“I told you so!”

She continued. “But now I have the letch who talks about underwear instead. He was going to sit at the table with two women but they told him he couldn’t sit there – they didn’t want to hear him talk about underwear. I guess there is a hierarchy here. So he sat at my table instead. And he started singing the underwear song. But I can tune that out. At least it’s not phlegm sounds.”

Forgiveness does not mean I have to let you back into my life

Mr T and I keep talking about this Carolyn Hax column, where the letter writer is encouraging her 19 year old son to give his abusive father – whom the mother divorced when the son was 14 because the father was abusive – another chance. The father has gotten therapy, the mother says.

Of course, he only got therapy after the divorce and after he lost his job for punching his boss.

I am not surprised at the people in the comments who think the son should give the father another chance.

I have people like that in my life – people who don’t understand why I cut Mr T’s parents and brother out of my life.

People who point out to me that Jesus told us to forgive.

To which I say that Jesus never told us we had to spend Thanksgiving with these people.

---

Actually, I’m not even sure what forgiveness means.

I have heard various definitions.

Pastor Gail, who performed our wedding ceremony, said forgiveness means we drop our end of the chain, but that we are not required to ever be with that person again. It’s not a re-set to zero, as if nothing had happened.

Someone else said forgiveness means cutting someone out of your life but wishing them no ill will.

Someone else wrote in the comments on the story above,

Forgiveness is part of an interactive process where the offender sincerely apologizes, expresses what they’ll do in the future, and makes an attempt to repair the relationship, and then you forgive them and move into a new relationship with them.

And then I have heard people who think forgiveness means we pretend as if the perpetrator never did anything bad and we should let them back into our lives without so little as an apology and a vow to change.

I’m with Pastor G. I will drop my end of the chain, but you are out of my life. You don’t get a second chance, especially if you have not asked for one and have not shown a sincere effort to change.

(And yeah I do kind of wish bad things to happen to jerk people.)

---

I don’t even know what to say about this poor woman who was raped repeatedly when she was a child by Pastor Robert Morris, a man who is currently active in the ministry.

Of course, we forgive because we are called to biblically forgive those who sin against us. But that does not mean he is supposed to go on without repercussions,” she said.

I agree that there should be repercussions because damn.

But I wonder what her definition of “forgive” is.

BTW, when she tried to file a civil suit against Pastor Robert Morris, his lawyer “suggested she caused the abuse on herself because she was ‘flirtatious.'”

She was 12.

TWELVE.

Twelve year olds do not know how to flirt with grown men and even if they did, it’s still illegal for that grown man – Pastor Robert Morris – to touch her breasts or her vulva or to penetrate her with his fingers or his penis.

It is not legal to have sex with underage children.

Even in Oklahoma, where Pastor Robert Morris raped her.

Even the lowest age for Romeo and Juliet laws is 13.

That is, there is no place in the United States where it is legal FOR ANYONE to have sex with a 12 year old.

---

It’s OK not to forgive people.

Not everyone deserves it.

And if they do, God can forgive.

I don’t.

I adore Mr T, but when he’s gone, I am going to enjoy being COMPLETELY ALONE EXCEPT FOR A BUNCH OF CATS

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A post shared by Mel Williams | Emotional Health & Relationship Mentor (@healingissexy)

I never wanted children. I thought I might, in college, but after I broke up with my (very sweet, kind) college boyfriend, I realized that children – and marriage – were impediments to what I wanted to do with my life.

I wanted adventure.

I wanted travel.

I wanted to read for hours without interruption.

I wanted to do what I wanted to do.

---

When I was a kid, I didn’t see a lot of moms around me who seemed happy. Mothers of my mom’s generation – especially moms whose husbands were in the military and the moms were continually uprooted and separated from family and friends – did not seem happy.

Even now, when you can call your family in another country more than once a year and you don’t have to wait two weeks for a letter on onionskin paper to arrive, women who are married to men in the military can get frustrated.

A really good friend is a lawyer, but after she married her Navy pilot husband and they were sent overseas, her career disappeared.

She said that the overseas base PTA was run by super-competitive women who used to have important jobs and now, suddenly, they were outside of the US, not allowed to work, not allowed to do anything but make sandwiches, clean house, and run volunteer organizations.

“This is the only place in their lives where they have any power,” my friend noted dryly, “and it shows.”

---

I had several marriage proposals before I finally married Mr T.

All I could think when these pre-Mr T boyfriends broached marriage was that I would be losing my freedom.

One boyfriend already had our entire life planned: We would have two children, to be named Grace and Stuart. We would plant a tree for each when they were born (which is actually very sweet). We would live in the town where he grew up, close to his parents (who were really nice people, so it wouldn’t have been like with Mr T’s parents, where I dreaded seeing them but still). Etc etc.

Another boyfriend just assumed I would move wherever for his career.

Another boyfriend didn’t even propose marriage – he just suggested that I quit my job and move to another state with him. That is, that I surrender all my financial security to depend on someone else without even having a contract in place.

No.

Thank.

You.

---

I didn’t want marriage. I didn’t want children.

I like children.

I just don’t want any of my own.

As far as I can tell, they are a ton of work and moms never have time to do anything for themselves.

I always wanted to skip children and go straight to adult offspring. My friends’ adult children are awesome. I liked them when they were kids and I really like them now. One of the great joys of my life has been forming adult friendships with the children of my friends.

And I got my wish when I married Mr T. He came with two stepdaughters from his first marriage and they are wonderful. I love them so much. They have married wonderful men and they have produced amazing children themselves and I have Bonus Daughters and Bonus Sons in Law and Bonus Grandchildren.

I feel very lucky.

---

I always wondered why a woman who is financially independent and doesn’t want children would marry.

When I met Mr T, I decided I wanted him in my life. I didn’t care if we were married, but it’s easier to be married than not if you share your finances so we got married, plus it pissed off his parents for him to marry me, which was a positive.

But when he’s dead, I’m not doing this again. I’m not getting used to living with someone new. I’m not arguing about who should clean the cat vomit this time. (Although if I’m alone, I guess I will clean the cat vomit 100% of the time instead of 100%- % that Mr T cleans it.) I’m not debating bedtimes. I’m not going to hike, which I do now because Mr T loves to hike and wants me to go with him.

---

My friend Ruby is 101 years old. She married her husband after she completed grad school. He died a few years ago.

I asked her if she was lonely. (She still lives by herself in the adorable house she and her husband built together on the lake in Madison.)

She laughed.

“I had roommates in college,” she said. “I had roommates in grad school. Then I got married. I had never lived alone until now.”

I braced myself for her to admit extreme loneliness.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she said, “AND IT’S SO LIBERATING TO LIVE ALONE!”

I exhaled.

She continued. “I watch TV when I want to watch TV. I eat when I want to eat. I read when I want to read. I wash only my clothes and only have to clean up after myself.”

---

Also. My mom had five marriage proposals, all from lovely men, in the first several years after my dad died.

She’s still single.

Enough. Said.

Well maybe a bear might punch someone who punched him first, but according to the National Park Service, “Stay calm and remember that most bears do not want to attack you”

I don’t know what happened before Jonathan Kaye, a white male New York City investment banker, punched a woman in the face and knocked her to the ground.

Who knows? Maybe there was a perfectly good reason for him to deck a woman in high heels who weighs 50 pounds less than him.

I, being nosy and human, of course want the full story, but what horrifies me even more than a grown man punching a smaller person who was apparently no threat to him is how many people – men, I suspect – reacted.

Twitter commenters offered lots of good reasons for a man to hit a woman.

He was acting in self defense. In response to her throwing a drink on him. In response to her throwing urine on him. In response to a taunt.

They noted that women apparently do not really want equality.

That the victim FAFOd.

That the victim was asking for it.

How will she know it’s wrong to assault men? Hopefully this resonates with her.

Nah fuck that bitch. They need a lesson in how men can fucking destroy them at the drop of a hat

That’s why women shouldn’t be morons. You don’t pick a fight with a man, unless you want to be knocked out.

I can think of a million scenarios where punching a woman is justified

So women only want equal rights when it benefits them?

Do something to someone and you deserve whatever reaction you get. Don’t want a reaction, don’t do anything.

He should’ve done worse

---

I knew there were men who think women should just shut up and make them a sandwich. A recent Pew survey shows that Trump supporters (in red – Biden supporters in blue) are more likely than Biden supporters to think that women’s gains have come at the expense of men.

But I didn’t know there were so many bitter, angry, violent, and, frankly, pathetic, stupid men.

---

I know a little bit about incel/women-hating culture. I have a relative – a young man – who is an Andrew Tate acolyte.

I know this not because I talk to this relative but because he posts his poison – that women shouldn’t have jobs, that women are whores (unless they sleep with him?), that women should just STFU – on twitter under his own name.

Which WTF how stupid can you be?

Or worse than stupid – he thinks his views are OK. That righteous people agree with him. That nobody of note considers his views abhorrent.

That’s why he’s comfortable posting under his own name.

---

men are so desperate for any excuse to beat up women, it’s wild.

This is why we vote blue. It’s not perfect, but it’s not taking us into the dystopian world that the Tate worshippers want.