Sep 16 2026

re choking during sex

https://theequitablehome.substack.com/p/choking-during-sex-went-from-rare

“T]elling a young man he might give a girl a brain injury was not sufficient reason for him to stop, but telling him it might land him in court was.”

Women, understand this. Remember this.

And this:

“So: choking is strangulation. Strangulation causes brain damage that leaves no bruise and accumulates with every occasion. There is no technique that makes it safe, and anyone offering her one on a phone screen is repeating something they read somewhere that was wrong.”

Sep 16 2026

Men Need Sex (fiction from Fighting Words)

We got so tired of hearing that.  Men need sex.  There were so many iterations, so many variations  … 

In 1943, Maslow, in his hierarchy of needs, included sex among the physiological needs that must be satisfied before anything else.  Unfortunately, his theory, along with an unforgettable pyramid illustration, became accepted as fact, men loving both hierarchy and sex, and dominating, along with everything else, the science of psychology.  Worse, psychology was the social science elective most often taken by business students, and the influence of the business worldview is near insurmountable.

Prostitution defenders, porn apologists—they too shouted that men need sex.  Never mind that they might have created the need.

The mantra was used, consciously or not, to justify not only men’s relentless sexual overtures in general, but also specific instances of pressure and coercion.  Rape.  First by husbands of their wives, then by boyfriends of their girlfriends, then by any man of any woman.

It was even used to justify the expectation that we sexualize ourselves.  Not just at night, but during the day, all day, every day.  It became our responsibility to keep men in a constant state of arousal.  If men needed sex, they needed first to be aroused.  Bizarre, really.  If you don’t have an itch, you wouldn’t feel the need to scratch.  Yes, there is pleasure—well, relief—not the same, note—when you scratch an itch, but wouldn’t you rather just avoid getting itchy?  Who would intentionally roll around on a patch of poison ivy?

And of course when I say ‘sex’, I mean ‘sexual intercourse’.  Penis-in-vagina.  Apparently masturbation won’t do.  An equally indefensible stance. 

Which is, of course, why they were so hell-bent on calling it ‘a need’ rather than simply ‘a want’.  Calling something ‘a need’ increases the chance that you’ll have it met.  Saying you need something makes it so much harder for others to refuse to give it to you. Because needs are, well, things one needs—they’re required.  Needs take priority to wants.  And, so, people with needs are important.  And all too many men simply must feel important.

Of course the argument could be made, indeed should be made, that one’s moral obligation to meet another’s needs holds only when to do so is not at one’s own expense.  But we’re talking about women meeting men’s needs.  In a male supremacy—and let’s face it, that describes every country in the world—women are expected to meet men’s needs.  We are, after all, according to the two religions that, combined, claim membership of half the world’s population, made for men.

More than that, we are expected to sacrifice ourselves for others.  Yes, in times of war, young men are also expected to sacrifice themselves for others, but at least to do so in that case comes with payment and honour.  Women are expected to do so daily, throughout their entire lives, with not so much as a thank you.  Let alone a medal and veteran’s benefits.

Case in point: pronatalism.  Despite the risks of pregnancy and labour, not to mention motherhood—loss of actual life in the former, loss of independence and aspirations in the latter—women are expected, pressured, coerced (through the withholding of contraception and abortion) to become pregnant, to go through labour, and, unless one takes drastic action (such as leaving your newborn on a park bench), to be a mother.  If women’s rights—specifically the right to be free of harm and the right to autonomy—were as important as men’s rights, impregnating someone without her explicit and expressed, nay, enthusiastic, consent would be illegal.  Not ‘an accident’.

So it did no good to speak up—and we did, loudly, clearly, and frequently—about women’s wants, women’s desires, women’s preferences.  It did no good to say ‘What about women’s needs?’

And since the argument (about obligation being limited by expense) was not made, at least not by most men, need implied entitlement.  Which simply increased the prevalence of coercion.

Of course many of us responded—screamed, actually—no, you do not need sex.  You need food, water, and shelter, but you do not need sex.  You won’t die without it.  As Signme Uplease said on Feminist Current, “No man has ever died due to a lack of sexual access to women.”

Well, guess what.

In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed himself.  Due to a lack of sexual access to women.  He said as much in the explanation he left: “I decided to go out in Isla Vista in an attempt to lose my virginity before I turned 22.  That was the only thing that could have saved me.  I was giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them.  … I will punish all females for … depriving me of sex.” 

Many women argued that Marc Lepine, who in 1989 killed himself, was patient zero.  None of the reports at the time link his death to a lack of sex, but one must keep in mind that most, if not all, of the reporters were male.  (It’s almost always men who write the stories,  edit the stories, ‘make’ the news, manipulate our world view.)  So even though Lepine killed fourteen women, they didn’t link his action to misogyny; they reported it as a crazed shooting, not premeditated femicide.  But any woman who reads the letter Lepine left behind can see quite clearly between the lines—”I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker.  For seven years, life has brought me no joy …”—that he was a so-called incel and fatally frustrated by his unmet need.

Regardless, similar incidents started occurring.  Many of the men identified their actions as part of the ‘Incel Rebellion’ started by Rodger, and the police identified the incidents as ‘copycat crimes’.  But given the exponential rate at which the incidents were occurring, it was soon apparent that the (male) police had misnamed the incidents.  Rather than imitation, we were seeing infection.  An epidemic.

It was also soon apparent that the infection was affecting not just incels.  Any man who didn’t get sex when he wanted needed it was at risk.  The epidemic became a pandemic.

At first, the prostitution business boomed.  Not that it wasn’t already flourishing better than every other business in the world except porn.  (Though of course, the distinction between the two was becoming more and more … obscure.  Untenable.  Given the cross-over in personnel, business practices—kidnapping, trafficking—and content.)  Mega-brothels such as those in Germany offering an ‘all-you-can-fuck’ option on their menu appeared on every continent, in every country, in every city … 

But the boom didn’t last.  As mentioned above, by mistaken logic, need implied entitlement, and men figured they shouldn’t have to pay for something they were entitled to.  After all, they pointed out, we don’t pay for the air that we breathe.  Nor, typically, the water we need.  That we do have to pay for food, as necessary for survival as air and water, seemed to escape them.  Perhaps because most men didn’t do the grocery shopping.

The porn industry also boomed. The illogical prerequisite need for arousal, remember?  Of course the rational thing would’ve been to just stop watching porn.  But men aren’t very rational.  ‘Course, neither are women, but then we aren’t the ones proclaiming superiority in that regard.

Since the men so often killed women before killing themselves, some fathers armed their daughters.  Alas, this was most often motivated not by love, but by outrage.  At the theft and dishonour.  As in the case of rape, femicide was considered to be a crime against men, not women; in this case, against the deprived fathers, not the deceased daughters.

Happily, since women typically have better hand-eye coordination than men, the girls often shot the boys first.  Surprisingly, in those cases, there was no problem arguing self-defence.  Why now?  Why not when girls and women killed their abusing boyfriends and husbands, and their would-be rapists?  Was it because now the men were about to kill them?  Surely not.  Many an abusing boyfriend/husband ended up killing their girlfriend/wife, and many a would-be rapist would have killed his victim.  Perhaps it was because by this time, there were more women serving as the arresting officers, the prosecutors, the judges and juries.   

In any case, the wives looked on as their husbands armed their daughters, considered the matter, and armed themselves.  Almost overnight ‘domestic abuse’ petered out.  Unfortunately, that meant there would be no justified use of the forementioned arms.  But if the forementioned wives didn’t kill their husbands, the forementioned husbands would, eventually, soon, kill themselves.  The wives figured it was better that way.

Even so, women asked—begged—for stronger gun control and a curfew for men (men seemed more affected at night, but that was probably due to cultural tradition, not the infection), but since the gatekeepers to legislative change were, still, for the most part men, their requests didn’t even get to the point of official debate.  There was no way men would suggest, let alone agree, that their right to bear arms or their freedom of movement—their freedom!—be limited.

So women curfewed themselves.  That is to say, they curfewed themselves more.

In fact, they essentially quarantined themselves, by establishing girls-only schools (and what an unexpected wonder they were!) and women-only businesses, mostly for essentials.  Such places had to have armed protection, but many young women were more than happy to become qualified and provide such protection.

And then something strange happened.  The rampages got shorter.  The men seemed to have less and less time, during which they killed others, before they were overwhelmed by the urge to kill themselves.  Soon, the men were able to kill only themselves.  Yay, mutation.

Of course, not all men.  Not all men were infected.  With the belief that men needed sex, were entitled to sex.  Some seemed to be naturally immune.  Others seemed able to resist.  It became a kind of litmus test.  Many women were unsurprised when their husbands, their boyfriends, became infected.  They were secretly—at first—not so secretly as time went on—pleased, or at least relieved, when said husbands and boyfriends killed themselves.  But many women were surprised.  Dismayed, actually.  Especially when it was their sons who proved to be infected.

Our best minds continued their efforts to understand the infection.   Was it an infection?  If so, was it viral?  Bacterial?  Something else?  Was it contagious?  What caused it in the first place?

Of course typical infections, whether viral or bacterial, are immune to belief.  Which is why many thought it was something else, some sort of prion infection, perhaps.

But the vectors of contagion were unclear.  In fact, the very real possibility of social contagion severely muddied the waters.  We knew that many opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and desires—and the behaviors, the actions, motivated by those opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and desires—were due to a sort of peer pressure rather than to any independent, conscious consideration.  Especially among young people who were plugged into social media sites 24/7.  Could the infection be caused by a sort of social virus?  If so, the cure would be what—social isolation?

Perhaps it wasn’t an infection, per se, but an addiction.  This was one of the leading theories.  We knew that addition could literally rewire the brain, and we certainly knew—well, women certainly knew—men seemed to keep their heads firmly buried in the sand about this—that watching porn was addictive.  We knew that watching porn changed men’s attitudes—toward women, toward the acceptability of violence toward women …  We also knew that smartphone companies had entire departments researching dopamine triggers (a neurological update of the old-fashioned manipulation sought by advertising) in an attempt to get and keep our attention …  It would be no surprise if porn companies had been doing the same.  In which case the addiction to porn would be physiological as well as psychological (though of course, there was no clear distinction between the two).  It did seem that watching porn messed with men’s chemicals, a consequence very likely exacerbated by eating meat, ingesting the steroids fed to livestock …   If this theory were correct, the cure would be simple: stop watching porn.         Not gonna happen. 

Another leading theory, developed by Soong Malm, was that the Y chromosome, deformed from the get-go and long disintegrating, was making a desperate, and final (as it may turn out), bid for survival.  When the Y chromosome disintegrates to a certain point, she hypothesized, a hitherto dormant virus was activated that makes sexual reproduction—and hence survival of the Y chromosome—an urgent need.  The theory was supported by all the selfish gene arguments, popularized by Richard Dawkins, and by the work of the famous, but pseudonymous, TrustYourPerceptions.  Since the end result, in the case of the need being unmet, is the death of the male, it’s obviously a defective strategy, but then we would expect no less from a defective chromosome.  Regardless, this theory similarly doesn’t point to a cure. 

There would be a certain satisfaction in thinking that the cure could not be found because of ongoing, persistent sabotage—for surely every male scientist had a number of assistants, surely at least one of whom was female.  Such sabotage would be even more possible as time went on, because as the male population decreased, so many jobs, including high-level research positions, had to be—could be, finally—filled by women.  It made a difference.  Especially when a certain critical mass was reached.  Eventually whole teams, whole departments, whole companies (mainstream, not just the forementioned small essential ones), were run by women.  Most women were surprised at the change they couldn’t, at first, put their wedding-ringed finger on when they walked into, for example, a bank staffed entirely—entirely, including every single one of the managers—by women.  But some women, mostly radical feminists, were not surprised at all.  Such places were … relaxed.   But we simply do not know.  Whether sabotage is occurring.

What we do know is that few women are upset by the lack of a cure.

After all, most crime has been committed by men.  Most violence has been committed by men.  Men, by and large, have created and sustained the porn industry which overwhelmingly portrays women being hurt and humiliated.  As entertainment. 

The truth of it is that men are not only destructive, they are self-destructive.  Case in point: what they have done to our planet.  Its food, its water, its very air.  So, the mass suicides are just a personal expression of what they’ve been doing all along. 

So, we’re just … waiting.

Sep 10 2026

from The End of Men, Hanna Rosin

Recommended! 

A few quotes and notes …

“Women … make up almost 60 percent today [of pharmacists]…” p118

And the average income was $110,000/yr (and that was in 2012!)

“‘Get a college degree!  If you get a degree we will give you a shitload of money … and yet men are failing to get the message.’  Why are men failing to get the message? … It’s a mystery that Hannah’s mom, Dian, thinks she has figured out.   … ‘Lazy,’ she calls them.  ‘They don’t like to think too hard.’ ”  p126

“Women ear almost 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees … 60 percent of master’s degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees, and about 44 percent of all business degrees.  In 2009, for the first time women earned more PhDs than men … ” p149, 150

And that’s not just in the U.S.  The author provides similar numbers for Norway, Australia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Central Asia, the Arab States.

“Guys high-five one another when they get a C, while girls beat themselves up over a B-minus.  Guys play video games in their dorm rooms while girls crowd the library.  Girls get their degrees with no drama, while guys seem always in danger of drifting away.” p157

The description of a woman’s finance (p158)—he sounds like a teenager.

“Boys of every race and background have a much higher incidence of school disciplinary and behavior problems and suspensions, and they spend far fewer hours doing homework. … Teachers consistently rate girls as being less disruptive and putting in more effort than boys in high school.”  p163

And this has probably been the case either because they’re just less mature than girls, or because they don’t need to put in the work, because of cronyism and sexism.

“What used to be considered a marker of leadership—the ability to ac quickly, to remain in a state of pumped-up confidence—was recast as a liability.  At the same time, what was long viewed as a feminine weakness—hesitating, waiting for outside feedback and confirmation—now looked like a critical life-saving skill.  Researchers have even started looking into the relationship between testosterone and excessive risk-taking [duh], trying to discern whether groups of men, in some basic hormonal way, spur one another to make reckless decisions.”  p201

Ya think?

“The picture emerging is a mirror image of the traditional gender map: men and markets on the side of the irrational and overemotional, and women on the side of the cool and levelheaded.” p201-2

“In May 2012, when Wall Street was scratching its head about how JPMorgan could have made the disastrous bet that led to a $6 billion loss, The New York Times came up with a novel and very relatable explanation.  The bank’s chief investment officer, Ina Drew, had been overseeing the team responsible for the bet. … Using coach-like post-heroic  leadership skills, she kept the traders’ huge egos in check.  In morning meetings, she would ‘huddle’ with them and get them to outline the risks they  would be incurring in trades that day.  … But Drew developed Lyme disease in 2010 and missed huge chunks of time at work.  The morning meetings turned into ‘shouting matches’ in her absence … Egos raged and ‘everything spiraled’ …” p202-3

Sep 08 2026

In every roomful of men …

https://zawn.substack.com/p/5-statistics-about-misogynistic-violence

“Dating men is statistically the most dangerous thing a woman can do—followed closely by living with and having children with men.”

Men, read that sentence again. And again. And again. Until you get it.

“The specific statistics each study uncovered vary a bit, as you might expect. But the findings remain incredibly consistent. They show that in any roomful of men, no matter how you define abuse or violence, there will be many men who have engaged in both.”

“Ninety-five percent of men admit to using sexually coercive tactics.”

Sep 08 2026

Excellent piece on calling women crazy

https://zawn.substack.com/p/why-is-patriarchy-so-obsessed-with

“We tell women deprived of sleep and support in the postpartum period that their exhaustion must be due to their crazy woman hormones. When girls enter puberty—and the world of dehumanization and male abuse it brings—we pretend their distress is due to vague “puberty hormones.” And when, after a lifetime of exploitation, women are angry, tired, and keen to get away from problematic men, we tell them their problem must be menopausal rage …”

“This woman-specific craziness somehow makes women incapable of ever being honest or rational …”

“Men are victimizing women en masse. It is men, not women, reacting in unhinged ways to normal human experiences like rejection. …”

“A woman is asked to go weeks or months without sleep while recovering from a major medical event, and almost always, she just does it, no matter how bad she feels. / Yet somehow we continue to believe that men are logical …”

But do read the whole thing!

Sep 06 2026

A woman alone

“When a woman is all alone, she stands out as a woman, but she becomes invisible as a person.” 

Malcolm Gladwell (in Revenge of the Tipping Point, p123) paraphrasing Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who is speaking about women in groups, such as at work or in sport.

Bbut I’m thinking it describes women in life, in general.

Sep 02 2026

Fighting Words (a story from Fighting Words)

She was so tired of it.  They all were.  Every day, as they walked from one classroom to the next, or to the cafeteria, or to the gym, “Hey, ho!”  “Gonna do me?”  “C’mere, I got somethin’ for you!” 

Then from school to the bus stop.  “Y’all jus’ bitches, you know that, right?” “She’s a slut!” “No, she’s a slut!” Laughter.  Always laughter.

And as they wandered through the mall.  “Hey, look, a bunch of cunts!” “Yo, slag, c’mere!” This last, with a British accent.

Of course, they’d all tried to respond in kind.  Problem was, there was no ‘in kind’.  ‘Asshole’, ‘dick’, and ‘prick’ just meant idiot.  ‘Stud’ was a compliment.  There was no word—

Then one Saturday afternoon, when she and her friends were standing in line to see a movie, one of the older boys they knew called out to a guy, “Oh, look at the little puss-in-boots!”  The guy was a young man, actually, not someone from their school.  And he completely lost it.

Someone called 9-1-1.  Everyone got it on their cell phones.  Mall security managed to stop the fight and hold onto the two of them until the police arrived.  Shortly after, the paramedics wheeled them both away, and they read all about it in the following weeks. 

There had been a number of nasty punches, resulting in one very broken nose and one seriously bruised kidney.

The boy charged the young man with assault.

The young man responded with the ‘fighting words’ defence. 

And won.

They looked up from their smartphones.  He won?  The same eureka-moment flickered on each of their faces.  They started googling, as they settled into more comfortable positions in Teague’s room.

Women had tried suing men for defamation.  After all, surely relentless sexual insult ’causes injury and damage to the woman’s character’.

“It fucking dismisses her character,” Teague muttered when they start read the definition.  

“Maybe the courts didn’t see it as making false statements,” Sophe suggested as she continued to read the rest of the definition.

Teague and Em stared at her.  Fuck.  She could be right.

“It also says,” Sophe read aloud, “‘The statement must have been made with reckless disregard for the truth, meaning the person questioned the truthfulness but said it anyway.'”

“Right,” Teague said with disgust.  “How often do men question the truthfulness of anything they say?”

Em nodded.

“They’ve been bullshitting so long,” she added, “they believe their own bullshit.”

“But,” Em pointed out, reading, “damages include ‘pain and suffering’, which covers ‘personal emotional reactions such as shame, humiliation, and anxiety’.”  She looked at them. 

Yeah. 

“And,” she continued, “‘being ostracized from a social group’.”

“That certainly applies,” Teague said, angrily.  “Every time a woman is called a cow or a cunt, she’s ostracized from humanity.”

“So,” Em said thoughtfully, “wouldn’t sexual insult be cause for a class action suit?”

“You’d think so,” Sophe murmured, tapping away, “but the charge seems to stick only when lost income is at issue.  Figures.”  She looked up at them.  “Money.  Business.  The world.”

In any case, they discovered that defamation was considered damaging only when the statement was public; one-to-one didn’t count.

“Maybe it’s just as well,” Sophe said, leaning back, “because do we really want to limit freedom of speech?  I mean, remember that article we read in class?  ‘Freedom to Offend’?  The way to deal with something you don’t agree with is to make a counterargument.”

“But when they call us sluts, they’re not making an argument,” Em pointed out.  “So there’s no—

“True, but—”

“And remember Stoltenberg’s comment,” Teague added.  “Exceptions to freedom of speech exist because some speech causes harm that cannot be redressed or undone by more speech.  That’s why defamation is illegal.”

They turned back to their phones. 

Women had also sought remedy on the basis of ‘intentional infliction of emotional distress’.

“Also called ‘outrage’,” Sophe announced happily, looking at her screen. “‘This cause of action may be available for cases that involve just words or in cases that involve both words and acts’,” she continued with optimism, then deflated: “‘In order to be actionable, the defendant’s conduct must be extreme, meaning that it exceeds all bounds of decent behavior.'”

She sighed and leaned back.

“And that’s the problem,” she said.  “This sort of thing has become normalized.”

“Yeah.  Wonder how that happened,” Teague said bitterly.

Because they knew the answer.  The internet had made porn easily available, and therefore (therefore?) widely viewed.  And it had become, almost all of it, so completely degrading: women were invariably presented as subservient, doing, willingly or not, whatever disgusting thing the men wanted them to do.  And apparently boys, and even men, were unable to distinguish reality from fantasy: they came to believe that women actually existed to please men, sexually; they came to believe that they were entitled to women’s bodies.  And so boys, and even men, routinely reached out and touched women’s bodies.  Grabbed women’s bodies.  Not only their behinds, but also their breasts.  Thus routinely proclaiming that girls, and women, were sexually available to them.  Hey ho.

“Hang on,” Em had a thought.  “Schools already have rules about bullying … ”  She started tapping at her phone again.

Sophe nodded and joined the effort.  “Here we go.  ‘Bullying can be defined as repetitive, aggressive conduct growing out of an advantage in power and a desire to control.  Said conduct can include the repeated infliction of verbal abuse such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets.'”

“Perfect,” Teague said.

“‘While the techniques of bullies vary,'” Sophe continued, “‘their object almost always is to gain control over the victim by engendering shame, anguish, fear, and/or humiliation.'”

“Our entire sexist society bullies,” Teague said.  “It’s designed to enable bullying.  By men.  Of women.“

Em nodded.

Sophe continued.  “‘Most victims of bullying experience guilt, shame, fear, embarrassment, and diminished self-worth.  These effects can lead to anxiety disorders, depression, and insomnia.  The targets have an increased risk of suicide and other forms of self-harm.'”

They looked at each other.  Anorexia.  Cutting.  Two girls killed themselves last term.

Not to mention the self-fulfillment prophecy.  Call a girl a whore often enough …

They found dozens of articles in law journals about bullying.  But not one presented a gendered analysis of the phenomenon.  Not one specifically addressed males bullying females.

And bullying in itself was not a crime.

Go figure.

“Why can’t we just charge them with hate speech?” Em asked, then turned back to her phone.

“‘A hate crime'” Em read, “‘is a criminal offence committed against a person or property that is based solely upon the victim’s race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, or disability.'”

There was a moment of silence.  Then Sophe pointed at the elephant in the room.  “Sex isn’t on the list.”

“How can that be?” Em was aghast.  She looked it up again.  And again. 

Five definitions later, she echoed Sophe.  “Sex isn’t on the list.”

“Which explains why Reddit banned GenderCritical as hate speech,” Teague grimaced, “but continues to allow AntiFeminists and StruggleFucking.  Previously called RapingWomen,” she added with a grimace.

“Wait,” Em was catching up, “how was GenderCritical hate speech?  Gender isn’t on the list either.”

They looked at each other.  Blankly.

“So,” Teague concluded a long moment later, coming full circle, back to their starting point, “‘fighting words’ it is.”

Em nodded.  “If ‘puss-in-boots’ is considered an instance of ‘fighting words’, surely ‘cunt’, ‘slut’, ‘ho’—”

“Not necessarily,” Sophe interrupted. 

“What?  Why?” Em asked.

“They’ll consider the context.  For a man to be called a woman is more insulting than for a woman to be called a cunt.”

Sophe was right.  And they both knew it.

“A lot of men genuinely believe that,” Teague added anyway.

“So a judge might decide that calling a woman a cunt is … okay,” Em said, with disbelief, “because it’s just … “

“Fact.”  Teague’s voice was hard.  “Women are sexual.  They are to be fucked.  They are to be incubators.  End of story.”

Geezus.  How the hell did they get here?

“Even ‘girls’ is used as an insult,” Sophie said.  “And ‘ladies’.  When they say it … The way they say it.  You know what I mean.”

They did.  Bottom line, it was insulting just to be called female.  What do you do when what you are is an insult?

“Regardless,” Em said, “it’s a defence, right? ‘Fighting words’?  So we have to be hit first?”  She wasn’t keen on that part.

Sophe started tapping again.  “‘Fighting words alone are not considered assault,'” she read, “‘but may be folded into an assault charge,'” she emphasized the word, “if accompanied by threatening acts, for example, raised fists—'”

“A grabbed crotch?” Teague suggested.

“What about a smirk?” Em asked.  “A facial expression is an act, right?”

Sophe sighed again.  “That would probably be hard to prove.”  And she wasn’t sure what ‘folded into’ meant, exactly.

“Wait a minute,” Teague said, “I thought I saw … Here it is.  ‘Fighting words are words intentionally directed toward another person which are so venomous and full of malice as to incite him/her to immediately retaliate physically.  … The offensive language is such that the person temporarily loses control of their actions.'”

“And that’s exactly why women are at a disadvantage,” Sophe said with frustration, leaning back again.  “We’re more mature than they are.  We have greater self-control.”

Em nodded.

“Which is truly ironic,” she added, “given the laws against contraception and abortion, which deny us self-control …”

“Well, we’ll just have to change,” Teague announced.  “The critical factor isn’t the retaliation per se, it’s that the resulting fight is a breach of peace.”  She’d continued reading.  “We just have to make a fuss.  We have to breach the peace.”

“And,” Sophe was thinking it through, “we just have to do it often enough to convince the courts that it may happen.”

“Exactly.”  Teague consulted her phone again.  “‘Provocative words may be justification for an assault, provided the person uttering the words understood or should have understood that physical retaliation would be attempted. The words must be ‘fighting’ words.'”

“And,” Sophe was getting on board, “since the court uses the reasonable person standard …”

“What difference does that make?” Em asked.  “I mean, it’s not always reasonable to retaliate—”

“Because the ‘reasonable person’ in courts of law has always been assumed to be the ‘reasonable man‘.”

“Ah.”  A reasonable man would retaliate.

“That’s interesting,” Teague said.  “Maybe we’ve been unreasonable not to retaliate.  By ignoring it all these years, we’ve been doormats.  We’ve let them insult us.”

“And so stayed alive,” Em protested.  “Atwood.”

Yeah.  Men are afraid women will laugh at them.  Women are afraid men will kill them.

“Hang on,” Sophe said, backing up.  “Isn’t it the case that if escape is possible, assault isn’t justified?”  She started tapping away again.  Teague and Em, as well.

“Here it is,” Em said.  “‘According to the Castle Doctrine, victims threatened with physical aggression are required to retreat if they can safely do so, before responding with force.  If the victim were to respond with physical force when she could safely retreat, she would be charged with a crime concomitant with the amount of force used and the harm done to the aggressor.'”

“Oh, sure, in that case they identify the person as ‘she’!” Teague said with disgust.

“But it’s everywhere now,” Em said, thinking about retreat.  “Where are we supposed to go?”

Teague agreed.  “Some days I feel like I’m spending all my time trying to avoid these assholes.”

“Wait,” Sophe said, still reading.  “It’s changed.  The Castle Doctrine has given way to the Stand Your Ground Doctrine.  ‘In the last ten years, most states have extended the Castle doctrine to both public and private places.  In these jurisdictions, everywhere a person stands is his or her castle.  That is, most states have jettisoned the duty to retreat.'” She looked up at them, a smile creeping onto her face, then continued.

“‘The major justification for Stand Your Ground laws is summarized most succinctly by the Supreme Court of New Jersey in State v. Abbott’, which says ‘The law should not denounce conduct as criminal when it accords with the behavior of reasonable men'”—she grinned at Teague—”‘The manly thing is to hold one’s ground, and hence society should not demand what smacks of cowardice. It is obvious that the interests to be protected by stand your ground laws are dignity and pride.'”

Sophe looked up to see both Em and Teague smiling, then finished the paragraph.  “‘So, if pride is a protectable interest … why should the law not protect other emotional and psychological interests …?'”

“Yes!” Teague almost shouted.  “Why shouldn’t we be able to defend our dignity and pride and everything else required for our emotional and psychological well-being?  Especially since defending one’s physical well-being is allowed!”

“Wait—” Sophe sounded discouraged again.  “‘Although the law is currently without protections for those who use physical force in defense of their emotional and psychological well-being,'” she glanced up, then resumed, “‘jurisprudence’—that’s the lawyers and judges—’has always vindicated the idea of physical force when certain non-physical interests of the victim are at stake.'”

“Aha!” Teague raised her fist.

They organized it on social media.  On one of the ‘by invitation only’ sites.

“I don’t know,” ChatCat posted.  “I’ve never hit anyone in my life.”

“I’ll do it,” NotYrPrincess posted.  She was a boxer.

“Me too,” HockeyStick posted.

“Keep in mind that we don’t have to really fight,” Teague posted.  “We just have to retaliate in a way that causes a fuss.  The point, if we understand it correctly, is that the insult disturbs the peace or whatever.”

“And if you don’t feel comfortable with the physical part of it,” Sophe added, “that’s okay.  You can be one of the people at the edge getting it all on your phone.  We need people to post the incidents online.”

“We also need someone to call 9-1-1,” Em chipped in.  “You can be that person.”  She was going to be that person.

“And we need people who can write about it,” Sophe said.  “So everyone who blogs, tweets, spins …”

“We have to be prepared,” Ruby49 cautioned.  “The backlash will be vicious.”

“Agreed.  Hell hath no fury like a man one-upped by a woman.”  Sportster described an incident wherein she was playing basketball in a mixed league.  She’d set up such a perfect pick, the guy ran right into her.  Hadn’t seen it coming at all.  He was understandably embarrassed.  But so embarrassed, so humiliated, by a woman, that he actually came at her and proceeded to plow her right off the court.  No foul was called.  Duh.  She withdrew from the league. 

“And that’s how they do it,” ButListen remarked. “They don’t even have to pass any laws, to keep us offside ….”

“Yeah,” Sportster replied, “but it wasn’t fun anymore.  As it was, the guys hardly ever passed the ball to me.” 

“A metaphor if there ever was one,” said ButListen.  And everyone heard the sigh.

The first reported incident was textbook perfect.  If there’d been a textbook about this sort of thing.

“Hey ho!”

She glanced at her friend to make sure she was recording it.

“What did you call me?”

“A ho!” he laughed.

She started to walk toward him.  Three other young women walked with her.

“Take it back!”  one of them said. 

“No!” he laughed again.

So she shoved him.  So hard, he fell down.

Then, as predicted, all hell broke loose.  His rage!

Someone called 9-1-1.  The young man’s broken nose was tended to.  The young woman’s black eye was tended to.  They were both wheeled away for various x-rays.

And they were both charged with disorderly conduct and assault. 

The young woman’s lawyer argued that ‘fighting words’ had been uttered.  Six different videos proved it.

Within an hour, said videos had been posted.  Everywhere.

Accompanied by commentary that placed the blame, the responsibility, clearly on the young man.  None of this ‘A woman was raped’ shit.  No, it was ‘A man, with malicious intent, provoked an assault, with complete disregard for women’s moral right to be free of sexualized insult …’

Even so, the young woman lost the case.

But the idea spread like wildfire. 

Early on, someone suggested organizing ‘Take Back the Day’ marches, reminiscent of the ‘Take Back the Night’ marches of the ’70s.  Someone else suggested that ‘Take Back the Public Space’was more accurate.  But it was ‘Take It Back!’ that caught on. 

“But we don’t want them to say it in the first place,” Sophe had lamented.

No matter.  ‘Take It Back!’ got its own hashtag.

Social media exploded with videos and reports …  ‘Men triggered five fights today …’   Then ten.  Then twenty.

It was hard, though.  Women had to overcome a lifetime of ‘Don’t hit,’  ‘Don’t hurt’…

“And that’s how they’ve kept us subordinate all these centuries,” ButListen posted. 

And so the women who’d already broken through helped the others.

“Aim for their knees,” JustDoIt7 posted.  “Once a man’s down, their upper body strength isn’t as much an advantage!”

“Men have a weak spot,” FightFire posted, “front and center, that we have not taken advantage of.  It’s time.  Surely, it’s time.”

Schools had to hire extra security personnel.  They’d already had to hire guards to oversee metal detectors at the entrances because so many young men came to school with weapons.  Now they had to have personnel walk the halls all day.

Malls had to do the same.  They too had already put guards at the entrances to watch for ‘trouble-makers’. Now they had to have circulating guards.

Every day, the police lay more and more charges.  Breach of the peace, disorderly conduct, causing a disturbance … and, always, assault. 

Apparently, men couldn’t help themselves.  They kept up the insults, and once they were shoved, they could not just walk away.  Let alone take it back.  As requested.  Said request seemed, universally, to elicit a ‘Fuck you!’  Which didn’t help matters.

When was society going to get fed up with their young men?  (‘Young’ as in ‘under forty’.  That seemed to be the age at which misogyny—  Well, no, it didn’t disappear, it never disappeared, it just …  went underground.  Still.)  When would they be shamed for their immaturity? 

“I get it,” a prominent black man posted.  “I’ve been called a nigger my whole life.”

“Thank god for the SNCC, right?” a prominent black woman responded. 

“You know it, sister!”  He attached a smiley face.

“You do realize,” the prominent black woman then posted, “that Stokely Carmichael said the only position for women in the SNCC was prone?  Stokely Carmichael, the civil rights leader?  What does that tell you?”

Apparently the prominent black man had logged out.  No doubt, he had something important to attend to.

“I get it,” a prominent gay man posted.  “I’ve been called a faggot more times than I can count.”

“All in one day?” a woman asked. 

“And when it happens,” another woman asked, “do they reach out and grab your penis when they say it?”

Apparently he too had logged out.

And, as predicted, the men upped their game.  First, by outnumbering the women.  No insult was made unless there were ten of them present.  They were used to acting as a gang. 

Women responded in kind.  No retaliation was made unless there were twenty present.

“No fair!”  The beaten men cried.

“No fair?” One blogger responded.  “But gang rape—gang rape—that’s fair?”

Then the men made sure they were armed.  Baseball bats were too obvious, knives and guns could be discovered, and would most definitely lead to more serious charges, so they started putting palm-sized stones in their pockets. 

Women responded in kind.  And discovered it was relatively easy to swing a purse full of marbles.

Even so, fearing cracked skulls, those who already had pepper spray started using it.

Men started wearing face shields.  And using acid.

And then, in a long-awaited landmark case, a judge was convinced that the young man before him should have expected retaliation.  He should have known that a scuffle (yes, ‘a scuffle’) would ensue when he called the young woman in question ‘a fucking cunt’.

The young woman in question won her case. 

Sexual insults were considered fighting words.  No question now.

And then, much to women’s surprise, and delight, several of the lawyers who had been involved in pushing the ‘fighting words’ defence, pushed for sex to be added to hate speech legislation.  Pushed to make the insults themselves an offence.

They succeeded.

Sexual insults were considered hate speech.  No expectation of retaliation required.

And then, surprisingly, wonderfully, years later, when men no longer routinely called women sluts and hos, when they no longer heard other men routinely call women sluts and hos, they just … stopped thinking of them in that way.

But not after many, too many, young women had died from their injuries.  They were appropriately remembered as martyrs to the cause.  One headline that made mainstream news said it all: “Young woman dies defending our humanity”.

Aug 30 2026

“Don’t Have Children” by Kate Manne

https://katemanne.substack.com/p/dont-have-children

Aug 30 2026

Check out Feminist Works on Substack

https://feministworks.substack.com/archive

https://feministworks.substack.com/archive

I’ve just discovered this and already I’ve read several EXCELLENT articles …

https://virginiaweaver.substack.com/p/women-do-not-owe-you-your-manhood

https://sorayachemaly.substack.com/p/29-from-the-world-cup-to-the-senate

https://feminists.substack.com/p/who-elected-the-algorithm

https://badwoman.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-men-as-simple-creatures

Aug 29 2026

Man or Bear … and still clueless

So I recently posted this on a local Facebook page: “I’m looking for a woman with carpentry skills and tools to build a sound-absorbing enclosure for a generator. Please leave a message.”*

Three men and three women replied.

Two of the men made light of my preference for a woman (“I could be a woman depending on the hourly rate” and “Can I identify as a woman?”); the third asked why I specified that it be a woman.

Two of the three women considered the possibility that perhaps I had been injured by a man in the past and so was uncomfortable having one on my property/in my house (“Perhaps she has a reason for not feeling comfortable around a male. You don’t know her situation” and “No need to judge for someone wanting a specific gender, you don’t know her story!”; the third replied to the first man’s response with “That isn’t even funny.”

I was reminded of the general response to the ‘Would you rather meet a bear or a man in the forest?’ question, specifically the overwhelming cluelessness of men as to why most women chose the bear.

Over the past few decades, with great difficulty and at great risk, we have brought ‘domestic violence’ (basically, men hitting, punching, beating up the women they married) out into the open.  We’ve brought rape out into the open.  We’ve brought megabrothels and pornography out into the open.  How is it that the fact that (very many, but not all) men hurt women still, still, remains almost completely off (most) men’s radar?  And the fact that, therefore, all women fear (pretty much all) men?  (Because, as Sloan tells Don in that excellent episode of Newsroom, ‘No, you can’t always tell.’)

Is it that men don’t think that hurting women is problematic?  Because hurting is okay?  And, or, because women aren’t really full-fledged people?  They’re just walking wombs to bear their kids or just legs with holes for fucking?  (And not, oh, I don’t know, doctors and judges and architects and mathematicians and biologists and anthropologists and politicians and—oh, wait: maybe all of the women these men know [because they’re in the trades?] are just mothers and cunts.  Dudes, ya gotta get out more.)

___

*I’ve had 50 years experience working with both men and women, and I’ve read the literature on sexism for the same length of time.  My personal experience is that women are far more apt to take me seriously, listening to what I say and request; women are far less likely to be condescending and ‘mansplain’; women are more reliable, actually responding to a phone call or email; women clean up after themselves; women do not ‘hit on me’.  The literature indicates that this is not by a long shot just my experience and, furthermore, it suggests that women have to be twice as good to get half as far.  So, in short, I’d rather hire a woman than a man any day for anything.

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