By now, three weeks into Trump's ridiculous shitshow of a presidency, I think there are two glaringly obvious things we need to digest as a country:
1) Resistance is working. The marches, the deluge of calls from constituents, it's working. Betsy DeVos was only confirmed by a tie-breaking vote from the Vice-President because two Republican Senators voted against her. Something that has literally never happened before in a cabinet confirmation.
2) Donald Trump is not who we should be looking at as the real danger. It's the people he's surrounded himself with.
Trump is reminiscent of Poo-Bah from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. Pompous, narcissistic, strutting around like the peacock with the biggest feathers and bestowing important-sounding titles on himself to cover up his ineffectual bumbling. The only powers he really has are to sign things and appoint people, and most of those things he signs must be approved by Congress before they even see his desk. Executive orders are really the only place in which he has any teeth, and as we've seen, even those are subject to judicial review.
It all goes back to his actual official title: President of the United States. He presides over the process of governing, and even his say isn't final; laws he signs can be overturned by the Supreme Court if challenged far enough, and his veto can be overridden by Congress with enough votes. He's not a monarch, no matter how many golden toilets he owns.
And unlike his more shrewd predecessors, he's a complete outsider to the governmental process. He quite literally hasn't got the foggiest clue what he's doing. This is a guy who, despite claiming to be the world's greatest businessman, doesn't even read shit before he signs it (literally failing How to Do Business and Not Fuck Up Royally 101). He gets his advice and strategy directly from cable news, and when something doesn't go his way, he whines like a pre-teen douchebag in a Halo tournament on Twitter. At best, he's a useful idiot to the people with the potential to do the real damage.
Trump is that old codger in the nursing home who will sign anything you put in front of him, just because he likes seeing his signature on things. It makes him feel important. Except instead of birthday and Christmas checks to his grandchildren, it's laws and executive orders and military action approvals that affect millions.
It's hard to describe these kinds of people, who are such malignant narcissists and pure fucking evil on every level, but the only reason they haven't gone full comic book villain and subjugated the entire planet is because frankly, they're too fucking stupid to manage such a task. It's why I don't particularly like the comparisons to Hitler; Hitler was able to do the horrifying, world-changing things he did because he was the triple threat of narcissistic, ambitious, and intelligent. Trump is more like Mussolini. Brutal, charismatic, and an utter fucking moron.
The real dangers of his presidency are the people he's appointed to his cabinet, and especially the Congress that confirmed them.
The President was intended to be a check on Congress' power. They can propose and approve all the bills they like, but unless the President signs them or pockets them for ten days in an active session, they don't become law. Think of the President kind of like quality control and safety inspector at a factory, while Congress is the assembly line. The President's job is to approve the product for distribution, or send it back to the assembly line with a list of reasons why it's defective.
If the QA/safety inspector will rubber stamp anything without actually inspecting it? Then the factory can produce whatever it wants, no matter how defective or dangerous. Trump is the QA inspector who is too busy worrying about his side business to care what comes off the assembly line, and has delegated that task to his aides and cabinet. Which leaves them and Congress with an extraordinary amount of power.
That's the reason why, despite committing multiple impeachable offenses, nobody in Congress has actually made a move to draw up those articles; Trump, being both a narcissistic, attention-starved toddler as well as rock fucking stupid, is the perfect broken valve through which a Republican Congress can pass all the shitty bills it wants. Pence isn't nearly so pliable, having real experience in public office and thus knowing how to read things before he signs them. Congress won't impeach him unless he does something which makes even that kind of a payoff not worth their while anymore.
The people Trump has chosen for his cabinet are right out of the narcissist's playbook. People who flatter him and who think much like he does. He's used to surrounding himself with spineless yes-men who, like the residents of Peaksville, OH, will tell their child overlord whatever he wants to hear in order to keep their jobs. And he fancies the U.S. government to be merely an extension of his business empire. Ergo, he expects the people he appoints to do whatever he says (despite that the opposite is literally the function of the cabinet; above all else, they're supposed to warn the President when a bill on his desk is a bad idea).
These yes-men that Trump thinks he's got in his pocket? Include Steve Bannon, an avowed white supremacist who literally wants to destroy the government. Jeff Sessions, a guy deemed too racist to be a federal judge under one of the most racist Presidential administrations in recent memory (Reagan, 1986). Rex Tillerson, an oil tycoon who was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship and is a close buddy of Putin. These are the people who have Trump's ear. The people he trusts to put stuff in front of him to sign, like the old senile codger he's turning out to be.
And just like the guy in the nursing home, he's not willfully signing away power of attorney to his eldest child that just replaced all his heart medication with Tic-Tacs; he simply signed whatever he was told to sign. Trump is hardly the danger, here. The real danger is the people around him who know exactly how to play him to do their awful bidding.
Those are the people we need to vote the fuck out in 2018. Provided we still have a country by then.
Statcounter
Monday, February 13, 2017
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
"Princess Mononoke" Is Still a Terrifyingly Beautiful and Chillingly Relevant Film
This month, Fathom Events screened Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 film Princess Mononoke in select theatres to celebrate the movie's 20th anniversary. And I think it's something sorely needed, for a new generation to see this movie. Because if anything, it's even more relevant now than when it was made, current events considered.
While many bloggers have declared Rogue One the movie we needed to see in order to affirm our resistance to oppression and fascism, I would argue that the message in Princess Mononoke is far more comprehensive. While Rogue One celebrates diversity with a great cast and the fight for freedom against a very oppressive (and very white) evil empire, at the end of the day it's still the simplistic space opera of the same stripe as the movies it's a prequel to; the good and bad guys are obvious. You know who to root for.
The world we live in, as much as we would like to believe otherwise, is not so clearly divided. It never has been.
In Princess Mononoke, the title character, Ashitaka, is the last crown prince of a persecuted ethnic group, the Emishi, that was supposedly wiped out five centuries before. In a battle to save his village from the crazed Boar god Nago, he is injured by the demonic presence that had driven the boar mad, and cursed with a demon mark that will eventually consume his body and kill him. As a result, he is ordered to leave his village to prevent the curse from spreading. And with him goes his people's last hope of survival.
As he journeys west, he soon discovers that Nago was transformed from a god to a demon because of what has been happening to the forests; man has been destroying the forests to build forges and get to the iron ore in the ground beneath them, in order to build weapons that they use to hunt the animals that guard the forest. Ashitaka soon learns that what drove Nago mad was rage at the forest's suffering, and the humans that have caused it. His fight is then taken up by Okkoto, another Boar god, who wishes to exterminate the humans and save the forest.
In particular, the humans of a village called Irontown, led by Lady Eboshi, and the men who follow her partner Jigo, a monk who seeks the favor of the Emperor against the local warlord Asano. In Irontown, Ashitaka is enraged to learn of the destruction Lady Eboshi's efforts have caused. But it's tempered by learning that the citizens of Irontown are the most downtrodden members of society. Brothel girls, lepers, etc. Lady Eboshi takes them all in and gives them a place to both feel safe and have a purpose.
But as a result of her destruction of the forest, Lady Eboshi has earned the hatred of the Wolf god Moro, and her three children: her two Wolf pups, and her human daughter San (the eponymous princess), an abandoned child that was thrown at her feet by her own parents when they escaped Moro's wrath. Rather than eat her, Moro adopted her as one of her own. Due to Lady Eboshi's efforts to destroy the forest for its wood and iron, San (and to a lesser extent, Moro) has made it her mission to kill her.
Later on, a plot unfolds between Lady Eboshi and Jigo to harvest the head of the Great Forest Spirit to gain the Emperor's favor. They're successful, but the result is that the Great Forest Spirit drains all life from the landscape while searching for his head. Ashitaka and San return it to him, ending the destruction and repairing the land.
On the surface, the film seems relevant only because of environmental issues. But it's so much more than that. At its heart, Princess Mononoke is a film about the destructive power of hatred, and how we must end the cycle with empathy and compassion for all creatures, not just the ones we belong to.
The four main characters are all foils to each other. Ashitaka represents the best that humanity can be; he wants a perfect solution, for everyone to stop killing each other and to coexist peacefully. As a direct contrast to him, there is Jigo, a self-serving scoundrel who doesn't care what kind of destruction he causes as long as he gets what he wants out of it. In the middle of those two extremes you have San and Lady Eboshi, two sides of the same coin. While San has renounced her humanity, Lady Eboshi completely embraces it, both the destructive and compassionate parts.
While it's true that Lady Eboshi wishes to destroy the forest to get to the iron, she does so because she wants to provide a better life for the people she's rescued. The old and sick, the brothel girls, the lepers...the literal dregs of society that nobody wants to take care of, and that other leaders (like Asano) were implied to be outright purging. As one of the lepers says, she is the only person to treat them as fellow human beings. Despite outward appearances, Lady Eboshi is a kind and compassionate woman...but only toward her fellow humans. She has none of that empathy for the forest or the animal gods that guard it. While she seeks to defend her own home, she has no qualms about razing the home of Moro and San and Okkoto to the ground.
On the flip side, the same could be said for San. She will defend the forest to her last, but has little compassion for the humans defending their home from her Wolf brothers. The only reason she doesn't kill Ashitaka the two times she has the chance is because he appeared to be on her side; the first human she's met who ever showed her any kind of compassion.
And really, that's what sets off the entire chain of events. Ashitaka's mission from the beginning is to see what's happening "through eyes unclouded by hate." And as a result of sticking to that principle, he not only lifts Nago's curse from himself, but ultimately ends the war between the humans and the forest gods.
And it's not an easy mission. Throughout the film, character after character asks, suspects, and demands to know which "side" Ashitaka is on. His motives are questioned by everyone because he doesn't act in the interests of any one person (not even himself, evident when he breaks up Lady Eboshi and San's fight and carries her safely out of Irontown with a gaping bullet wound). And throughout the movie, his motive is the same; to make everyone stop causing suffering.
But the most important part, and the one that is most relevant right now, is that even when it becomes evident that there is no negotiating and Ashitaka must choose a side, the side he chooses is always the side of the oppressed. San, the Wolves, the citizens of Irontown, the peasants being massacred by Asano's men. When Ashitaka must choose to help one side over the other, he always chooses the side that is disadvantaged in some way.
Where we are as a country right now? We need that. We need more Ashitakas. People who would rather see peace, but when forced to choose a side, will help those who need the extra hand most.
Because what we are fighting is not a war of land or resources. We're fighting a purely ideological war, but with the potential to kill just as many as all the other physical conflicts we've seen combined. Because like forest gods, like Jigo's men, like Irontown, like Asano's men, the soldiers in this war are motivated by hatred. And as Ashitaka demonstrated in the film and as millions before us have demonstrated throughout history, you can't fight hatred with more hatred. The only thing that will accomplish is to perpetuate the cycle of violence, suffering and pain. If you fight hatred with hatred, it will eventually eat you alive.
You conquer hatred with empathy, love, compassion and healing.
That's really what the whole movie is about. In order to break the cycle of war, you must have empathy and compassion for others. Even for others who are not like you. Even for others who are trying to destroy you. No, this doesn't mean roll over and take their abuse, but nor does it mean to strip them of their humanity the way they've done to you. Because if you become what you hate in order to win, then you don't actually care about the cause; you only care about winning.
At the end of the day, equality is not about revenge. Equality is not about making other people suffer as you have. Equality is about making sure nobody else suffers as you've done, that nobody else need go through the same pain and horror and hardship that you've endured. Equality is about leaving this world a better place than you found it.
We must see the world with eyes unclouded by hate. It's the only way we're going to lift this curse.
While many bloggers have declared Rogue One the movie we needed to see in order to affirm our resistance to oppression and fascism, I would argue that the message in Princess Mononoke is far more comprehensive. While Rogue One celebrates diversity with a great cast and the fight for freedom against a very oppressive (and very white) evil empire, at the end of the day it's still the simplistic space opera of the same stripe as the movies it's a prequel to; the good and bad guys are obvious. You know who to root for.
The world we live in, as much as we would like to believe otherwise, is not so clearly divided. It never has been.
In Princess Mononoke, the title character, Ashitaka, is the last crown prince of a persecuted ethnic group, the Emishi, that was supposedly wiped out five centuries before. In a battle to save his village from the crazed Boar god Nago, he is injured by the demonic presence that had driven the boar mad, and cursed with a demon mark that will eventually consume his body and kill him. As a result, he is ordered to leave his village to prevent the curse from spreading. And with him goes his people's last hope of survival.
As he journeys west, he soon discovers that Nago was transformed from a god to a demon because of what has been happening to the forests; man has been destroying the forests to build forges and get to the iron ore in the ground beneath them, in order to build weapons that they use to hunt the animals that guard the forest. Ashitaka soon learns that what drove Nago mad was rage at the forest's suffering, and the humans that have caused it. His fight is then taken up by Okkoto, another Boar god, who wishes to exterminate the humans and save the forest.
In particular, the humans of a village called Irontown, led by Lady Eboshi, and the men who follow her partner Jigo, a monk who seeks the favor of the Emperor against the local warlord Asano. In Irontown, Ashitaka is enraged to learn of the destruction Lady Eboshi's efforts have caused. But it's tempered by learning that the citizens of Irontown are the most downtrodden members of society. Brothel girls, lepers, etc. Lady Eboshi takes them all in and gives them a place to both feel safe and have a purpose.
But as a result of her destruction of the forest, Lady Eboshi has earned the hatred of the Wolf god Moro, and her three children: her two Wolf pups, and her human daughter San (the eponymous princess), an abandoned child that was thrown at her feet by her own parents when they escaped Moro's wrath. Rather than eat her, Moro adopted her as one of her own. Due to Lady Eboshi's efforts to destroy the forest for its wood and iron, San (and to a lesser extent, Moro) has made it her mission to kill her.
Later on, a plot unfolds between Lady Eboshi and Jigo to harvest the head of the Great Forest Spirit to gain the Emperor's favor. They're successful, but the result is that the Great Forest Spirit drains all life from the landscape while searching for his head. Ashitaka and San return it to him, ending the destruction and repairing the land.
On the surface, the film seems relevant only because of environmental issues. But it's so much more than that. At its heart, Princess Mononoke is a film about the destructive power of hatred, and how we must end the cycle with empathy and compassion for all creatures, not just the ones we belong to.
The four main characters are all foils to each other. Ashitaka represents the best that humanity can be; he wants a perfect solution, for everyone to stop killing each other and to coexist peacefully. As a direct contrast to him, there is Jigo, a self-serving scoundrel who doesn't care what kind of destruction he causes as long as he gets what he wants out of it. In the middle of those two extremes you have San and Lady Eboshi, two sides of the same coin. While San has renounced her humanity, Lady Eboshi completely embraces it, both the destructive and compassionate parts.
While it's true that Lady Eboshi wishes to destroy the forest to get to the iron, she does so because she wants to provide a better life for the people she's rescued. The old and sick, the brothel girls, the lepers...the literal dregs of society that nobody wants to take care of, and that other leaders (like Asano) were implied to be outright purging. As one of the lepers says, she is the only person to treat them as fellow human beings. Despite outward appearances, Lady Eboshi is a kind and compassionate woman...but only toward her fellow humans. She has none of that empathy for the forest or the animal gods that guard it. While she seeks to defend her own home, she has no qualms about razing the home of Moro and San and Okkoto to the ground.
On the flip side, the same could be said for San. She will defend the forest to her last, but has little compassion for the humans defending their home from her Wolf brothers. The only reason she doesn't kill Ashitaka the two times she has the chance is because he appeared to be on her side; the first human she's met who ever showed her any kind of compassion.
And really, that's what sets off the entire chain of events. Ashitaka's mission from the beginning is to see what's happening "through eyes unclouded by hate." And as a result of sticking to that principle, he not only lifts Nago's curse from himself, but ultimately ends the war between the humans and the forest gods.
And it's not an easy mission. Throughout the film, character after character asks, suspects, and demands to know which "side" Ashitaka is on. His motives are questioned by everyone because he doesn't act in the interests of any one person (not even himself, evident when he breaks up Lady Eboshi and San's fight and carries her safely out of Irontown with a gaping bullet wound). And throughout the movie, his motive is the same; to make everyone stop causing suffering.
But the most important part, and the one that is most relevant right now, is that even when it becomes evident that there is no negotiating and Ashitaka must choose a side, the side he chooses is always the side of the oppressed. San, the Wolves, the citizens of Irontown, the peasants being massacred by Asano's men. When Ashitaka must choose to help one side over the other, he always chooses the side that is disadvantaged in some way.
Where we are as a country right now? We need that. We need more Ashitakas. People who would rather see peace, but when forced to choose a side, will help those who need the extra hand most.
Because what we are fighting is not a war of land or resources. We're fighting a purely ideological war, but with the potential to kill just as many as all the other physical conflicts we've seen combined. Because like forest gods, like Jigo's men, like Irontown, like Asano's men, the soldiers in this war are motivated by hatred. And as Ashitaka demonstrated in the film and as millions before us have demonstrated throughout history, you can't fight hatred with more hatred. The only thing that will accomplish is to perpetuate the cycle of violence, suffering and pain. If you fight hatred with hatred, it will eventually eat you alive.
You conquer hatred with empathy, love, compassion and healing.
That's really what the whole movie is about. In order to break the cycle of war, you must have empathy and compassion for others. Even for others who are not like you. Even for others who are trying to destroy you. No, this doesn't mean roll over and take their abuse, but nor does it mean to strip them of their humanity the way they've done to you. Because if you become what you hate in order to win, then you don't actually care about the cause; you only care about winning.
At the end of the day, equality is not about revenge. Equality is not about making other people suffer as you have. Equality is about making sure nobody else suffers as you've done, that nobody else need go through the same pain and horror and hardship that you've endured. Equality is about leaving this world a better place than you found it.
We must see the world with eyes unclouded by hate. It's the only way we're going to lift this curse.
Friday, December 30, 2016
An Open Letter to the "Incel" Male, From a Woman Who Used to Think She Was Straight
Dear Whinging Little Snot,
First, I refuse to acknowledge or normalize your rhetoric by calling you that ridiculous word you've cooked up. You are not "involuntarily celibate"; let's get that shit out of the way right now. You are not willingly abstaining from sex for religious or moral reasons. "Involuntary" denotes that your lack of a sex life is as beyond your control as your heart muscle, and that's demonstrably, patently bullshit. What you are is insecure, immature, lazy, and selfish.
Second, no, this is not going to be a "take a shower/work out/quit playing video games all day" post, either. Although in many of your cases, taking a shower would certainly be an improvement (yes, I realize the shower is on the first floor of your mother's house and your basement has no elevator, but hey, you gotta put in a little effort, here). This is going to be the raw truth of why you are in your current situation, and how to get out.
Let's start with the "celibate" part. You are not celibate, so much as completely unfuckable (we'll get to the reasons for that in a minute). If a reasonable facsimilie of Jessica Alba walked up to you naked and asked you to fuck her, you would not be able to get your pants down fast enough. That isn't "celibacy" in any sense of the term. You want to have sex, and you are fully willing to have sex if the opportunity presents itself. There just isn't one.
Why? Simple. It's the same reason you're not a star athlete, famous musician, actor, or even a politician. And no, it isn't lack of looks, talent or a good resumé. Plenty of actors, athletes and musicians are famous, ugly and fucking terrible at what they do. And Donald Trump just proved you can be literally the stupidest, most unqualified person in the room and still get the job.
But even the dumbest, most untalented piece of garbage on your TV or radio gets more tail than you because unlike you, they don't expect said tail to fall into their lap purely because they happen to have a dick (even Trump goes out and grabs pussy). They take the risk of going out there and pursuing what they want rather than setting a trap for it and hoping it's just as stupid as they are.
You want tail? Then you have to get out of your mother's basement now and then and actually go out and look for it. Put in some goddamned effort. And no, I don't mean effort into your looks. Again, Donald Trump has proven you can look like something left in a dumpster outside a taxidermist's office and still marry three gorgeous women. The kind of effort you have to put in is all in your attitude. Because that is your problem. Your entire mindset is completely unfuckable.
When I used to think I was straight -- before I realized that while some men were okay in the brain and maybe the face, everything from the neck down was like throwing a bucket of icewater on a cozy campfire -- the boys I found pretty or even intellectually attractive all had one thing in common: positive attitudes. They were funny, upbeat, genuinely good-hearted people. They didn't have to disparage anybody else, either. They didn't have to talk shit about "normies" or "chads." Nor were they "pick-up artists." They were regular goddamn people.
Guess what? Many of them that I knew in high school are happily married now.
What's their secret? It's twofold. Fold the First is they aren't obsessed with sticking their dick in a warm hole. Fold the Second is they have the basic human decency to see women as more than life support systems for the aforementioned warm holes. The reason you guys get no action is because women can tell you're interested in exactly one thing no matter how much you think you hide it. We know because you all give us the same look my cat does when I have a plate of sushi in my hand. My cat is far more mature about it, though.
Having a romantic partner is all a matter of leaving your comfort zone and not being a predatory douchenozzle. And every minute you call yourselves "incels" you're doing both. You are refusing to face the possibility of rejection because your ego has all the integrity of a used dryer sheet, and you are quite literally being a douchenozzle. And a defective one at that. An object whose sole purpose is to be shoved into a vagina, and you can't even get that part right.
You want a girlfriend? You want women to think you're worthy of a chance? Then you need to grow the fuck up and have an attitude deserving of us.
Stop blaming everyone else for why you feel like shit. It's not society's fault. It's not women's fault. It's not "chad's" fault. It's your own goddamn fault because you have a defeatist outlook on your life, thus your entire situation is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Stop thinking of yourself as a "king" who has "had your kingdom stolen from you" by feminism/The Enlightement/whatever. You were never a king. And if you had lived before The Enlightenment, you would have likely been a serf anyway.
Stop thinking of sex as a) something you must have and b) something you're entitled to. Women don't owe you shit, kiddo. You won't die without it, and sex toys have been a thing since ancient Greece, so if you really need to relieve your "urges" there are ways to get around the whole not-having-a-willing-partner thing.
Stop thinking of women as your combination sex doll and babysitter. You're a grown-ass adult, so act like it. You are responsible for your mood and your outlook on life. Nobody else is. Women exist for reasons other than your petty, selfish amusement.
Stop thinking of women as all whores/sluts/evil bitches/etc. who are not deserving of your dick even though you want to stick it in us so bad it's torn a hole in your pants. In fact? If you hate women as much as your Reddit posts indicate, you'd be better off finding something that isn't a fellow human to bust your nuts in. You don't have to risk breeding, and nobody else need put up with your loser ass. Everyone wins.
The reason "normies" get laid and you don't is because "normies" actually put in the effort both at meeting other people and at being enjoyable to hang around. You lazy skid marks in the underwear of humanity do the dating equivalent of whipping out your dick and telling us "it ain't gonna suck itself."
No shit, kiddo. Of course it won't suck itself. We invented the penis pump for a reason.
First, I refuse to acknowledge or normalize your rhetoric by calling you that ridiculous word you've cooked up. You are not "involuntarily celibate"; let's get that shit out of the way right now. You are not willingly abstaining from sex for religious or moral reasons. "Involuntary" denotes that your lack of a sex life is as beyond your control as your heart muscle, and that's demonstrably, patently bullshit. What you are is insecure, immature, lazy, and selfish.
Second, no, this is not going to be a "take a shower/work out/quit playing video games all day" post, either. Although in many of your cases, taking a shower would certainly be an improvement (yes, I realize the shower is on the first floor of your mother's house and your basement has no elevator, but hey, you gotta put in a little effort, here). This is going to be the raw truth of why you are in your current situation, and how to get out.
Let's start with the "celibate" part. You are not celibate, so much as completely unfuckable (we'll get to the reasons for that in a minute). If a reasonable facsimilie of Jessica Alba walked up to you naked and asked you to fuck her, you would not be able to get your pants down fast enough. That isn't "celibacy" in any sense of the term. You want to have sex, and you are fully willing to have sex if the opportunity presents itself. There just isn't one.
Why? Simple. It's the same reason you're not a star athlete, famous musician, actor, or even a politician. And no, it isn't lack of looks, talent or a good resumé. Plenty of actors, athletes and musicians are famous, ugly and fucking terrible at what they do. And Donald Trump just proved you can be literally the stupidest, most unqualified person in the room and still get the job.
But even the dumbest, most untalented piece of garbage on your TV or radio gets more tail than you because unlike you, they don't expect said tail to fall into their lap purely because they happen to have a dick (even Trump goes out and grabs pussy). They take the risk of going out there and pursuing what they want rather than setting a trap for it and hoping it's just as stupid as they are.
You want tail? Then you have to get out of your mother's basement now and then and actually go out and look for it. Put in some goddamned effort. And no, I don't mean effort into your looks. Again, Donald Trump has proven you can look like something left in a dumpster outside a taxidermist's office and still marry three gorgeous women. The kind of effort you have to put in is all in your attitude. Because that is your problem. Your entire mindset is completely unfuckable.
When I used to think I was straight -- before I realized that while some men were okay in the brain and maybe the face, everything from the neck down was like throwing a bucket of icewater on a cozy campfire -- the boys I found pretty or even intellectually attractive all had one thing in common: positive attitudes. They were funny, upbeat, genuinely good-hearted people. They didn't have to disparage anybody else, either. They didn't have to talk shit about "normies" or "chads." Nor were they "pick-up artists." They were regular goddamn people.
Guess what? Many of them that I knew in high school are happily married now.
What's their secret? It's twofold. Fold the First is they aren't obsessed with sticking their dick in a warm hole. Fold the Second is they have the basic human decency to see women as more than life support systems for the aforementioned warm holes. The reason you guys get no action is because women can tell you're interested in exactly one thing no matter how much you think you hide it. We know because you all give us the same look my cat does when I have a plate of sushi in my hand. My cat is far more mature about it, though.
Having a romantic partner is all a matter of leaving your comfort zone and not being a predatory douchenozzle. And every minute you call yourselves "incels" you're doing both. You are refusing to face the possibility of rejection because your ego has all the integrity of a used dryer sheet, and you are quite literally being a douchenozzle. And a defective one at that. An object whose sole purpose is to be shoved into a vagina, and you can't even get that part right.
You want a girlfriend? You want women to think you're worthy of a chance? Then you need to grow the fuck up and have an attitude deserving of us.
Stop blaming everyone else for why you feel like shit. It's not society's fault. It's not women's fault. It's not "chad's" fault. It's your own goddamn fault because you have a defeatist outlook on your life, thus your entire situation is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Stop thinking of yourself as a "king" who has "had your kingdom stolen from you" by feminism/The Enlightement/whatever. You were never a king. And if you had lived before The Enlightenment, you would have likely been a serf anyway.
Stop thinking of sex as a) something you must have and b) something you're entitled to. Women don't owe you shit, kiddo. You won't die without it, and sex toys have been a thing since ancient Greece, so if you really need to relieve your "urges" there are ways to get around the whole not-having-a-willing-partner thing.
Stop thinking of women as your combination sex doll and babysitter. You're a grown-ass adult, so act like it. You are responsible for your mood and your outlook on life. Nobody else is. Women exist for reasons other than your petty, selfish amusement.
Stop thinking of women as all whores/sluts/evil bitches/etc. who are not deserving of your dick even though you want to stick it in us so bad it's torn a hole in your pants. In fact? If you hate women as much as your Reddit posts indicate, you'd be better off finding something that isn't a fellow human to bust your nuts in. You don't have to risk breeding, and nobody else need put up with your loser ass. Everyone wins.
The reason "normies" get laid and you don't is because "normies" actually put in the effort both at meeting other people and at being enjoyable to hang around. You lazy skid marks in the underwear of humanity do the dating equivalent of whipping out your dick and telling us "it ain't gonna suck itself."
No shit, kiddo. Of course it won't suck itself. We invented the penis pump for a reason.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
6 More Signs of a Toxic Friendship: Covert Ops
In my previous installment, I clued you guys in to 6 signs your best friend might be an asshole. And as I noted in that post, there are, in fact, way more than 6 ways to do it. Some assholes are a lot sneakier about their behavior, and won't be quite as blatant about the motives. At least not at first.
Some Toxic Assholes are more like Special Forces than first-line infantry. They use a much less overt strategy for extracting supply so as to avoid detection, because we're generally familiar with the more boisterous narcissists. But once you know the pattern, you can figure these people out before they have a chance to do you real harm.
So I'm presenting to you 6 more signs of a toxic friendship, with a lot more subtlety:
1. Their Sob Story Brings Everyone to the Yard (Damn Right, It's Always Better Than Yours)
Some people really are the fire hydrants in the dog park of life. But like actual dog parks, those fire hydrants are exceedingly rare. For the Toxic Asshole, life is just that; they are a special and uniquely abused person such that absolutely nobody can understand their pain because they have suffered more than your puny mind could ever imagine. Whatever problems you may have, they have more. If you had a bad day, they had a worse one. At all times there is an Olympic-level contest for Most Shat Upon Person On Earth, and they always take home a gold.
Guys? Real people who have had actual shitty lives don't do this, for a very simple reason; those experiences were fucking awful and they don't like talking about them for literally no goddamned reason. There is shame, vulnerability, grief, and bitterness in spades, and people who have experienced these events don't want to relive them. They certainly don't view them as bragging rights.
The Toxic Asshole, on the other hand, sees having a shitty life as a status symbol. Something that makes them better than everyone else in the room. They will use their supposedly Dark and Troubled Past to gain your sympathy and to shield themselves from criticism, and as a bonus, they get to make you look like the asshole while they wear the Holy Halo of Victimhood. It's a perfect setup to milk all the attention until they're like a weepier, whinier Jabba the Hutt.
Now of course, nobody decent wants to assume that a person is lying out their ass when they talk about awful shit that happened to them, so that kind of puts us in a tight spot; if they're telling the truth, we'll feel pretty guilty for dismissing it as attention-grabbing, and frankly it'll make us no better than the people who defend actors and athletes instead of the people they assault.
Which is why it's important to remember that what distinguishes an actual fire hydrant in the dog park of life from the puddle of piss at the base of said fire hydrant is the person's behavior, not their history. If they're talking about what happened to them in order to make you feel less alone, and to reassure you that it's possible to face something horrific and still come out okay the other side? Not an asshole.
If, on the contrary, they talk about what happened to them in order to dismiss and downplay whatever has happened to you? Definitely an asshole. That's a dick move, no matter how you slice it.
2. They Constantly Inform You of Their Virtues
Genuinely empathetic, caring, generous, sensitive people don't have to tell you how empathetic, generous, sensitive and caring they are; they'll show you. Toxic Assholes will do the exact reverse. They'll tell you, every chance they get, how they're such honest people and how much they care about everybody and put themselves last, but their behavior will not line up.
They'll claim to love honesty and hate fakers, but when you give them your honest opinion and it's something they don't want to hear, they will absolutely lose their shit at you. They'll claim to be empathetic to a fault, but they can't seem to tell that their behavior is hurtful to you. They'll claim to be sensitive and always aware of the mood of a room, but for some reason they're unable to determine when you're stressed the hell out and need them to shut up for a while. They'll claim to be generous and giving, but you find they beg for gifts and money far more often than they bestow them.
They do this so you'll have a harder time believing what you see and experience, and so that other people are less likely to believe you as well. Particularly if they didn't witness anything shitty. It's a much more subtle form of gaslighting, in that you'll remember what they've said they are and internalize it through constant repetition, so that whenever they do something cruel, you'll blame yourself first. I mean, you know they're such nice people, they wouldn't do this without a reason, right?
It's a far sneakier technique than people realize, and some assholes are so frighteningly good at it they can keep the charade up for years (the one in my life, fortunately, wasn't the sharpest spork in the drawer, so it didn't take as long as it could have to figure out her game). But at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. If they're constantly informing you of virtues that their actions don't support, you're dealing with a Toxic Asshole.
3. They "Hate Drama" (But It Follows Them Around Like Nancy Drew)
Like #2, this goes in the "informed virtues" column, but deserves its own entry because the way it plays out is slightly different. It's perfectly possible for people who aren't toxic to get embroiled in drama all the time because they have lousy taste in friends (particularly if they were raised by Toxic Asshole parents, so they don't realize that that level of drama and chaos in a circle of friends isn't normal or healthy). But again, somebody who actually hates drama at the very least doesn't try their damnedest to make it worse.
A Toxic Asshole is the eye of a perpetual shitstorm. Drama doesn't just happen to them; it follows them, envelops them, and tears up everything around them while they remain that calm, smugly smiling center complaining about how they're always getting caught up in other people's shit. When in reality, they're the ones holding the spoon.
These types of assholes will invariably have a string of friendships and relationships that crashed and burned like a Michael Bay movie, and all you need to do is look at the common link between every single one.
It's particularly easy to tell because the Toxic Asshole won't ever shut up about it. They will rehash the story over and over and over again, often "remembering" embellishments they'd never mentioned before (especially if they're telling it to a new source of narcissistic supply). Because they hate drama the way a heroin junkie hates needles. It's a mildly annoying tool they use in order to get their attention fix.
4. They Swallowed the DSM Whole
I need to add a disclaimer to this part: mental illnesses are very much a real thing (street cred: I was diagnosed with major depression two years ago and am on medication for it). And being interested in psychiatry as a hobby is also a real and very harmless thing. These by themselves have nothing to do with being a Toxic Asshole.
This point is again related to #1, but deserves its own special mention because the way it plays out may be slightly different. It's very, very common for Toxic Assholes to be armchair psychiatrists and diagnose not just themselves, but their victims. Ironically, they will often accuse victims who have seen through their bullshit and walked away of being narcissists or "crazy."
This is, of course, a combination of projection and gaslighting. It's their attempt to make you doubt yourself and take the blame, and make you wonder if you're really the problem. If this has happened to you? Let me assure you right now that if you've thought about your behavior for any length of time, combing through your actions and motives for traits of narcissism and feel sick at the thought it might be true, you are not a narcissist. Narcissists don't have that level of self-awareness or ability to examine their own behavior, since the crux of the entire disorder is that they are infallible, perfect beings.
Toxic Assholes will also self-diagnose, and the more alphabet soup labels they can pile onto themselves, the better. They do it for a couple of reasons: 1) uniqueness, specialness 2) it gives them something to blame for any shitty behavior they get called on (the asshole in my life who inspired these posts diagnosed herself with bipolar, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, and at least two others that I forgot). But funnily enough, they'll never self-diagnose with narcissistic personality disorder.
On the surface, they'll even seem very knowledgeable on the subject. But their understanding of the material is shallow at best; they can only draw superficial correlations, and they refuse to pick up on the nuances of any of the disorders they claim they or others have. They're only interested in regurgitating information to sound smarter than you. An intellectual smokescreen to hide the fact they know they have no idea what they're on about.
5. They Fish For Validation
Because Toxic Assholes have no idea how friends, people and emotions work, they are constantly pushing you to see how much you can take. One of their favorite little tests is false humility: putting themselves down in order to get you to disagree and praise them.
Now, there are people out there who have self-deprecating tendencies and aren't Toxic Assholes; again, the difference is pretty telling. Someone who genuinely thinks horrible shit about themselves is not likely to scream it from the rooftops the way the Toxic Asshole does, and somebody who uses self-deprecation strictly for humor is going to smile and laugh when they do it to let everyone know they're not serious (because in order to use it as humor, these types have learned to laugh at themselves).
The Toxic Asshole, by contrast, does the very weird combination of being totally humorless about how terrible they are while at the same time laying it on thick to the point of farce. And being the empathetic, wonderful people-pleaser you are, you fall right into the trap of counteracting their Woe Is Me with praise and reassurance of how great they are and how lucky you feel to call them a friend. Just as they planned it.
This accomplishes two goals. Goal the First is that it lets them draw their supply from you with very little effort, because you're all too eager to give it up. Goal the Second is that it builds the narrative of them being such a put-upon mistreated victim, and when the going gets rough they can claim you're Just Like All the Others and skip off into the sunset with their next schmoe.
Maya Angelou put it best: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." When the Toxic Asshole starts going on and on about how they're a shit friend and everyone eventually figures that out and leaves them, take it as the giant double hurricane flag it is and get the fuck out of there. Because there is literally no reason that someone who isn't a Toxic Asshole would say that (see #3).
6. They Make You Apologize For Calling Them Out
This is the granddaddy of all moves in the covert Toxic Asshole's playbook. A kind of confrontational judo where you bring up a grievance with their behavior, and before you know it you're apologizing for hurting their feelings. And you don't even realize it because they've thrown your footing off so hard you forgot what your own complaint was about. The hardest-to-spot Toxic Assholes are fucking masters at this particular brand of bullshit.
If there is one thing that will make the mask slip and the Toxic Asshole lose their shit faster than 0.5 past lightspeed, it's being called out on something they did. And the easiest way for them to restore the rightful order of their bizarro world is to make you say you're sorry for disrupting their delusion.
There are many ways of doing this, and they're all carefully honed from observing your own weaknesses over time. Some of the most common are sulking/silent treatment, agreeing with you in an over-the-top manner and declaring themselves unworthy of friendship, threatening self-harm or suicide, and dragging a third party into the crossfire. No matter the method, they all play on the same thing, with the same goal: making you feel guilty for speaking up.
That's really the aim of the covert Toxic Asshole. They want to make you so guilty and afraid of upsetting them that you stay and do their bidding because it's less painful than the consequences. As with their more easily detected counterparts, the strategy is the same.
Walk away. Block on social media. Do not engage. No Contact.
Once they've shown you what they are, believe them.
Some Toxic Assholes are more like Special Forces than first-line infantry. They use a much less overt strategy for extracting supply so as to avoid detection, because we're generally familiar with the more boisterous narcissists. But once you know the pattern, you can figure these people out before they have a chance to do you real harm.
So I'm presenting to you 6 more signs of a toxic friendship, with a lot more subtlety:
1. Their Sob Story Brings Everyone to the Yard (Damn Right, It's Always Better Than Yours)
Some people really are the fire hydrants in the dog park of life. But like actual dog parks, those fire hydrants are exceedingly rare. For the Toxic Asshole, life is just that; they are a special and uniquely abused person such that absolutely nobody can understand their pain because they have suffered more than your puny mind could ever imagine. Whatever problems you may have, they have more. If you had a bad day, they had a worse one. At all times there is an Olympic-level contest for Most Shat Upon Person On Earth, and they always take home a gold.
Guys? Real people who have had actual shitty lives don't do this, for a very simple reason; those experiences were fucking awful and they don't like talking about them for literally no goddamned reason. There is shame, vulnerability, grief, and bitterness in spades, and people who have experienced these events don't want to relive them. They certainly don't view them as bragging rights.
The Toxic Asshole, on the other hand, sees having a shitty life as a status symbol. Something that makes them better than everyone else in the room. They will use their supposedly Dark and Troubled Past to gain your sympathy and to shield themselves from criticism, and as a bonus, they get to make you look like the asshole while they wear the Holy Halo of Victimhood. It's a perfect setup to milk all the attention until they're like a weepier, whinier Jabba the Hutt.
Now of course, nobody decent wants to assume that a person is lying out their ass when they talk about awful shit that happened to them, so that kind of puts us in a tight spot; if they're telling the truth, we'll feel pretty guilty for dismissing it as attention-grabbing, and frankly it'll make us no better than the people who defend actors and athletes instead of the people they assault.
Which is why it's important to remember that what distinguishes an actual fire hydrant in the dog park of life from the puddle of piss at the base of said fire hydrant is the person's behavior, not their history. If they're talking about what happened to them in order to make you feel less alone, and to reassure you that it's possible to face something horrific and still come out okay the other side? Not an asshole.
If, on the contrary, they talk about what happened to them in order to dismiss and downplay whatever has happened to you? Definitely an asshole. That's a dick move, no matter how you slice it.
2. They Constantly Inform You of Their Virtues
Genuinely empathetic, caring, generous, sensitive people don't have to tell you how empathetic, generous, sensitive and caring they are; they'll show you. Toxic Assholes will do the exact reverse. They'll tell you, every chance they get, how they're such honest people and how much they care about everybody and put themselves last, but their behavior will not line up.
They'll claim to love honesty and hate fakers, but when you give them your honest opinion and it's something they don't want to hear, they will absolutely lose their shit at you. They'll claim to be empathetic to a fault, but they can't seem to tell that their behavior is hurtful to you. They'll claim to be sensitive and always aware of the mood of a room, but for some reason they're unable to determine when you're stressed the hell out and need them to shut up for a while. They'll claim to be generous and giving, but you find they beg for gifts and money far more often than they bestow them.
They do this so you'll have a harder time believing what you see and experience, and so that other people are less likely to believe you as well. Particularly if they didn't witness anything shitty. It's a much more subtle form of gaslighting, in that you'll remember what they've said they are and internalize it through constant repetition, so that whenever they do something cruel, you'll blame yourself first. I mean, you know they're such nice people, they wouldn't do this without a reason, right?
It's a far sneakier technique than people realize, and some assholes are so frighteningly good at it they can keep the charade up for years (the one in my life, fortunately, wasn't the sharpest spork in the drawer, so it didn't take as long as it could have to figure out her game). But at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. If they're constantly informing you of virtues that their actions don't support, you're dealing with a Toxic Asshole.
3. They "Hate Drama" (But It Follows Them Around Like Nancy Drew)
Like #2, this goes in the "informed virtues" column, but deserves its own entry because the way it plays out is slightly different. It's perfectly possible for people who aren't toxic to get embroiled in drama all the time because they have lousy taste in friends (particularly if they were raised by Toxic Asshole parents, so they don't realize that that level of drama and chaos in a circle of friends isn't normal or healthy). But again, somebody who actually hates drama at the very least doesn't try their damnedest to make it worse.
A Toxic Asshole is the eye of a perpetual shitstorm. Drama doesn't just happen to them; it follows them, envelops them, and tears up everything around them while they remain that calm, smugly smiling center complaining about how they're always getting caught up in other people's shit. When in reality, they're the ones holding the spoon.
These types of assholes will invariably have a string of friendships and relationships that crashed and burned like a Michael Bay movie, and all you need to do is look at the common link between every single one.
It's particularly easy to tell because the Toxic Asshole won't ever shut up about it. They will rehash the story over and over and over again, often "remembering" embellishments they'd never mentioned before (especially if they're telling it to a new source of narcissistic supply). Because they hate drama the way a heroin junkie hates needles. It's a mildly annoying tool they use in order to get their attention fix.
4. They Swallowed the DSM Whole
I need to add a disclaimer to this part: mental illnesses are very much a real thing (street cred: I was diagnosed with major depression two years ago and am on medication for it). And being interested in psychiatry as a hobby is also a real and very harmless thing. These by themselves have nothing to do with being a Toxic Asshole.
This point is again related to #1, but deserves its own special mention because the way it plays out may be slightly different. It's very, very common for Toxic Assholes to be armchair psychiatrists and diagnose not just themselves, but their victims. Ironically, they will often accuse victims who have seen through their bullshit and walked away of being narcissists or "crazy."
This is, of course, a combination of projection and gaslighting. It's their attempt to make you doubt yourself and take the blame, and make you wonder if you're really the problem. If this has happened to you? Let me assure you right now that if you've thought about your behavior for any length of time, combing through your actions and motives for traits of narcissism and feel sick at the thought it might be true, you are not a narcissist. Narcissists don't have that level of self-awareness or ability to examine their own behavior, since the crux of the entire disorder is that they are infallible, perfect beings.
Toxic Assholes will also self-diagnose, and the more alphabet soup labels they can pile onto themselves, the better. They do it for a couple of reasons: 1) uniqueness, specialness 2) it gives them something to blame for any shitty behavior they get called on (the asshole in my life who inspired these posts diagnosed herself with bipolar, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, and at least two others that I forgot). But funnily enough, they'll never self-diagnose with narcissistic personality disorder.
On the surface, they'll even seem very knowledgeable on the subject. But their understanding of the material is shallow at best; they can only draw superficial correlations, and they refuse to pick up on the nuances of any of the disorders they claim they or others have. They're only interested in regurgitating information to sound smarter than you. An intellectual smokescreen to hide the fact they know they have no idea what they're on about.
5. They Fish For Validation
Because Toxic Assholes have no idea how friends, people and emotions work, they are constantly pushing you to see how much you can take. One of their favorite little tests is false humility: putting themselves down in order to get you to disagree and praise them.
Now, there are people out there who have self-deprecating tendencies and aren't Toxic Assholes; again, the difference is pretty telling. Someone who genuinely thinks horrible shit about themselves is not likely to scream it from the rooftops the way the Toxic Asshole does, and somebody who uses self-deprecation strictly for humor is going to smile and laugh when they do it to let everyone know they're not serious (because in order to use it as humor, these types have learned to laugh at themselves).
The Toxic Asshole, by contrast, does the very weird combination of being totally humorless about how terrible they are while at the same time laying it on thick to the point of farce. And being the empathetic, wonderful people-pleaser you are, you fall right into the trap of counteracting their Woe Is Me with praise and reassurance of how great they are and how lucky you feel to call them a friend. Just as they planned it.
This accomplishes two goals. Goal the First is that it lets them draw their supply from you with very little effort, because you're all too eager to give it up. Goal the Second is that it builds the narrative of them being such a put-upon mistreated victim, and when the going gets rough they can claim you're Just Like All the Others and skip off into the sunset with their next schmoe.
Maya Angelou put it best: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." When the Toxic Asshole starts going on and on about how they're a shit friend and everyone eventually figures that out and leaves them, take it as the giant double hurricane flag it is and get the fuck out of there. Because there is literally no reason that someone who isn't a Toxic Asshole would say that (see #3).
6. They Make You Apologize For Calling Them Out
This is the granddaddy of all moves in the covert Toxic Asshole's playbook. A kind of confrontational judo where you bring up a grievance with their behavior, and before you know it you're apologizing for hurting their feelings. And you don't even realize it because they've thrown your footing off so hard you forgot what your own complaint was about. The hardest-to-spot Toxic Assholes are fucking masters at this particular brand of bullshit.
If there is one thing that will make the mask slip and the Toxic Asshole lose their shit faster than 0.5 past lightspeed, it's being called out on something they did. And the easiest way for them to restore the rightful order of their bizarro world is to make you say you're sorry for disrupting their delusion.
There are many ways of doing this, and they're all carefully honed from observing your own weaknesses over time. Some of the most common are sulking/silent treatment, agreeing with you in an over-the-top manner and declaring themselves unworthy of friendship, threatening self-harm or suicide, and dragging a third party into the crossfire. No matter the method, they all play on the same thing, with the same goal: making you feel guilty for speaking up.
That's really the aim of the covert Toxic Asshole. They want to make you so guilty and afraid of upsetting them that you stay and do their bidding because it's less painful than the consequences. As with their more easily detected counterparts, the strategy is the same.
Walk away. Block on social media. Do not engage. No Contact.
Once they've shown you what they are, believe them.
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