Nov 10 2026

I Bet You’d Look Good in a Coffin, Katy Brent

Too anchored in feminine traditions/stereotypes I find detestable, but there were, for me, five nuggets:

“Fuck’s sake, men.  They’re putty if you’re stroking either their ego or their dick.”  p99

“Jesus fucking Christ, there is nothing I hate more than when grown men refer to themselves as boys.”  p102

“‘ There may have been some misunderstanding,’ he says, quietly.

“‘ Like she said no and you misunderstood her and thought she said yes?  Is that right?'”

…

“‘Why would she have come for a drink with me if she didn’t want something to happen?’

“Wow.”

p107

“It seems like privileged white men don’t even have a fear of mortality.  Imagine  living an entire life without feeling afraid.  It’s inconceivable to me.  A woman. …”  p109

“I hate it when men try to educate me.” p202

Nov 10 2026

Sweet Sixteen (fiction from Fighting Words)

It’s John’s sixteenth birthday tomorrow.  He’s coming of age.  His cousin, Jane, who lives just down the street, won’t come of age until her eighteenth birthday, and everyone said at the beginning how unfair that was, but truth be told, and John knows it, guys can do a lot of damage between sixteen and eighteen.

“It’s your sixteenth birthday tomorrow,” his mother had said that morning, in a carefully neutral voice.  “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know!” he’d screamed at her, as if she’d asked the question a hundred times before.  Then he stomped out of the house, slamming the door on his way out.  Standing in the middle of the yard, he’d called a few of his buddies, but they were all away.  Summer camp, vacation, whatever.  So he’d climbed into his old treehouse and sat there, alone, fuming.  It was all he could do not to kick the walls out.

What happened was, in 2035 organized religion finally went too far.  That might seem like an odd thing to say, given the institutionalized misogyny of Judaism that had Jewish men thanking their god every morning for not making them female, the Vatican’s decision to prohibit contraception and permit pedophilia, the routine defrauding done by various Protestant evangelists, the Taliban’s practice of beheading people, the Puritans’ tendency to cut off people’s ears and bore a hole in their tongues with a hot iron, the Inquisition’s habit of dislocating limbs and burning people alive, the witch ‘trials’, the human sacrifices of the Mayan, Inca, and Aztec theocracies …

Ironically enough, it was the Americans’ ramped-up military engagement with Islamic countries that made the long-time similarities between Christianity and Islam suddenly all too apparent.  People started to see the my-god-versus-your-god subtext and were hard-pressed to prove their own god was the one true god.  It wasn’t something they were used to doing, providing support, actual evidence, for their beliefs.

(It didn’t help that ‘salvation challenges’ became all the rage: people would challenge each other to jump off a cliff, each appealing to their god to save them and thus justify their faith.  It was hard not to notice that the winners were always atheists.  They were the ones with hang-gliders.)

So what, you may ask, was the thing that was considered going too far?  Because really, how much further can you go beyond torture and mass murder?

It was this: the American president was not only refusing to sign anti-nuclear accords and pro-environment accords, he was actively pursuing nuclear and environmental destruction to ensure that the Biblical prophecy of the apocalypse would be fulfilled.  He would thus prove once and for all that the Christian god was the one true god.  That there would be no one left alive to appreciate such proof seemed to have escaped his notice.

Immediately upon discovering this insanity, the Scandinavian countries organized a global boycott of everything American, and, upon further thought, of everything from every country that claimed, one way or another, to be a nation under god.

The world became atheist overnight.

And then philosophy finally, finally, took its true place in society.  The ‘Philosophy for Children’ programs run by various fringe ‘wingnuts’ were suddenly mandatory.  The brave initiative in Canada in 1995 to introduce philosophy into the high school curriculum, an initiative that flashed then faded, blazed back into popularity: both senior courses became mandatory not only in Canada, but also in the United States, and courses were developed for grades nine and ten as well.  At universities, Departments of Philosophy and Religion finally separated: Philosophy became a department on its own, and Religion was added to Folklore Studies or completely subsumed into invisibility by Ancient History.

And people, ordinary people, began to think.

Almost overnight, instead of hearing people talk on and on about sports, you could hear them, here and there, talk about things like how sure you had to be about something before you could say you knew it.  Epistemology in the pubs!

And without religion to issue decrees, suddenly questions of right and wrong were, well, questions.  Recourse to legal moralism was common among the lazier minds, but the presumed equivalence between law and morality did not go unchallenged.

People also talked a lot about rights and responsibilities.  It was almost as if they had been wanting to do that for a very long time, but had lacked a vocabulary.  The sudden proliferation of philosophy courses, as well as philosophy blogs, philosophy newspaper columns, philosophy talk shows, and even philosophical counselors (after all, many mental health issues are simply the result of not thinking things through clearly) gave them that vocabulary.

One of the first things to go was the right to reproduce.  “The Smiths and their Biochem Cubes” had become a staple in the grade eleven Philosophy course:

Suppose the Smiths make biochem cubes—biological-chemical cubes about one metre by one metre with an input for the resources required for sustenance at one end and an output for the unusable processed resources at the other.  Why do the Smiths make biochem cubes?  Good question.  Truth be told, the cubes are unlikely to make the world a better place.  And the Smiths don’t sell them.

Should we make allowances for the Smiths with regard to money (salaries, taxes, subsidies, etc.)?  After all, they have, let’s say, five biochem cubes to support.  If the cubes are to stay alive, the Smiths need to provide sustenance.  They need a bigger house.  More electricity.  More food.

Should we encourage their ‘hobby’?  Perhaps even consider it respectable, a rite of passage to maturity?

Or should we censure it?  Because once their biochem cubes become ambulatory, the rest of us have to go around them in one way or another.  And when we’re all dead, the Smiths’ ecological footprints will have been at least 50% larger than that of those of us who don’t make biochem cubes.  Even larger, if the cubes they made go out and make other cubes …

Suddenly everyone was aware of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous comment, ‘Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.’  That is to say, suddenly everyone understood that the crux of the matter for rights was that, and how, others were affected.  No right was absolute because no person was an island.  Everything, everyone, was connected.  Maybe not directly, maybe not immediately—if the change in the Earth’s climate had taught us anything, it had taught us that—but connected, nevertheless.

So a right to reproduce?  No.  It was a privilege.  One had to earn it.  And even so, it could be taken away.

Shortly after, the abortion question was finally seen as a simple matter of competing rights: the right of the fetus to develop versus the right of the woman to carry on with her life as she wishes.

And once it was decided that the fetus’ right didn’t trump the woman’s right, that the fetus didn’t automatically have a right to develop, a right to life—why would it? just because some man ejaculated into some woman and started the process?—it was a very small step for people to realize that they themselves didn’t automatically have a right to life.  After all, everyone was just the result of some man ejaculating into some woman.  Everyone was just someone’s biochem cube. 

 A lot of people resisted.  They struggled to argue for a right to life, an inalienable right to life.  But there was simply no basis for it.  Absent a god to grant it.

John wasn’t aware of any of this, of course.  He just knew that once he came of age, he had to prove somehow that he had a right to live.  He had to be useful or valuable in some way.  You got a free ride until then, that was the deal.  But once you turned eighteen, or, if you were male, sixteen, you had to earn the right to life, you had to prove your life was worth—well, worth the resources you used and/or worth the negative consequences you inevitably caused for others.

It was easier for girls, John thought.  Jane had been useful since she was old enough to wash and dry the dishes, standing on a stool at the sink.  She had a whole list of chores to do: dishes every day, dinner twice a week, dusting and vacuuming on Saturdays, babysitting on Sundays … 

She’d even learned to play the piano.  By the time she was fourteen, she was practicing an hour a day, and the last time he was at her house, she played something by Mozart for him.  She was useful and valuable.  And she wasn’t even sixteen yet.

When John saw how good Jane was at the piano—she’d even played some retro Supertramp for him once—he decided he’d become a musician too.  So he got a guitar.  But he had no idea how to play it.  A friend of a friend finally showed him a few chords, but even after fiddling with it every now and then for two whole weeks, it was hit-and-miss, so he gave up.  Clearly, he had no talent.  Jane was lucky, he thought, she could do shit like that.

He didn’t know why it was different for girls.  Maybe all that stuff just came naturally.  Guys were different.  For example, a couple weeks ago, he and his buddies broke all the windows at their school.  Every last one of them.  They’d had a race to see who could break the most.  And just last week they had a great time turning over everyone’s garbage.  He always felt a little bad the day after they did these things, seeing the mess they’d made, but a guy’s entitled to have a little fun, right?

It had taken Jane a good two hours to pick up all the stuff that had overnight blown onto their lawn.  Wads of tissue, scraps of soiled, unrecyclable packaging—  So, he thought, philosophically, he’d given her the opportunity to be useful.  Didn’t that make him useful?

Long ago, his parents had told him that he had to cut the grass, but he’d said ‘Fuck that!’ and took off.  They didn’t insist.  Truthfully, they were a little afraid of him.

All of the young men who in earlier times might have proved themselves useful as soldiers didn’t have that avenue open to them now.  There were no wars now.  Killing someone—remember, everyone of age had earned the right to live now, they’d proven themselves to be useful or valuable—killing someone, taking away someone’s right to life, was the quickest way to get your own right to life revoked.

And once people started thinking, they realized that football, hockey, soccer, basketball—these things did nothing to improve humanity.  So that avenue for young men was also no longer open.  The entertainment defence for that level of sport, for that concentration of resources for sport, was tried, but it failed.  As it did for pornography.  There was simply too much violence involved—and in the latter case, too much degradation—to grant entertainment value to anyone but vicarious sadists.

Even so, at the beginning it was easy for guys like John.  On their sixteenth birthday, guys like John would just start roaming the highways picking up the garbage that littered the ditches.  But a generation later, well, the kind of people who had earned the right to live weren’t the kind of people who tossed their garbage out their car windows.

The more ambitious guys got jobs.  But jobs weren’t that easy to find now.  Certainly John couldn’t find one overnight.  Even more certainly, he wasn’t doing well enough in school to argue that he was going to become a scholar, a scientist, or even an entrepreneur.

And the truth of the matter was that John wasn’t unusual.  A great many men by the age of sixteen hadn’t done anything, not one thing, to improve life for humanity, to justify their existence.

The same was true, of course, of a lot of young women.  Especially the ones who’d expected to get a free ride just by being somebody’s wife and/or somebody’s mother.  In fact, Brittany, one of John’s classmates, would have trouble a couple years from now.  In a previous time, she may have been useful as a prostitute, but once pornography became illegal, prostitution quickly followed.  The similarities were clear, once people thought about it, but also, the demand for it had significantly decreased.

Even so, even now, in certain cesspool corners of the world, to which John and Brittany could escape if they’d known about them, Brittany could have, would have, found herself useful.  But she would’ve been raped to death within six months.

And then John would have discovered just how useful he could be. 

Now, he just kicked at the walls of the treehouse.  Now he wished his parents had insisted.  Again, and again, and again if necessary.  That he cut the grass.  Or whatever.  It was their responsibility to make sure he was useful, wasn’t it?  They created him.  It was their fault he was in this situation!

He looked back toward the house.  Then came down out of the trees.  And went on one last rampage. 

Tomorrow he’d be sixteen.

And he wouldn’t be missed.

Nov 04 2026

Liberty Street, Heather Marshall – Recommended

Recommended read, but here are just a couple insights that struck me …

“Women—married women with children, specifically—always seemed to be telling Emily she couldn’t understand certain things until she was married.”  15

Yeah, I used to get that a lot.  I should’ve replied “Yeah, and you can’t understand certain things unless you remain unmarried.”

“But he says nothing, because in Rachel’s experience, men are allowed to just say nothing shen they’re wrong.  Women are always forced to apologize, defend themselves.”  47

“There was no law that could put teenage boys in prison for sneaking in after curfew, or impregnating a girl of another race.” 338

(The novel is about the Female Refuges Act, from 1927, but still in effect in the early 1960s, in Ontario, Canada whereby “a parent could bring before a judge any female under the age of 25 years who proves unmanageable or incorrigible” to be imprisoned for up to 2 years.  Similar for a woman found begging or leading “an idle or dissolute life”.)

Oct 31 2026

Difficult Women

“It actually doeosn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman.  That’s why there are so many of us.”  Jane Goodall

Oct 28 2026

Thinking about voting Republican?

Read this first:

“Report: Over 900 Women Arrested for Pregnancy Outcomes”, Jessica Valenti

https://jessica.substack.com/p/report-over-900-women-arrested-for

Oct 28 2026

One of the Good Guys, Araminta Hall

Highly recommended. 

Best prologue ever.

“…  you’ll always be a hero, just for doing what a illion women do everywhere every day.” p141

“I realize then that he is never, ever going to understand.  That, in fact, he doesn’t want to understand because it will mean giving up what he wants.”  p143

“If you challenged Cole on his behavior, he’d be shocked; he wouldn’t understand what you were talking about.  But that’s because the bar is low for men …” p262

“I guess women aren’t meant to be strategic or cunning.  Which seems unfair … Men are allowed to act, but women, it seems, should only react.”  p262

Oct 27 2026

What Sane Man (fiction from Fighting Words)

She pushed the chair against the wall.  It was a sturdy armed chair; that’s why she preferred this motel.  Then she helped him, still a bit groggy from the drink she’d doctored at the bar, from the doorway to the chair.  Using zip ties—impossible to loosen, let alone break—she lashed his wrists to the arms, then his ankles to the legs. 

When the sedative wore off, she put on the boxing gloves and started to hit him.  First, a few jabs to his shoulders, to get his attention.

“What the—”

Then one to his stomach.

He struggled for lucidity.  Then he struggled against the restraints.

She concentrated on his face.  She broke his nose, one of his cheekbones, his jaw.  He’d heal, but it would leave a mark.  Not exactly a disfigurement, but people would be able to tell.  He’d been beaten.

“Smile,” she said.

“Fuck you,” he drawled, then spit out a tooth.

She broke a few ribs.  Then pummelled his shins.  That hurt.

“Smile,” she said again.

At the beginning, he’d shouted.  Then he’d screamed.  Then he cried.  Finally, he just moaned.

When she was done, she took off the gloves, bagged them, snipped the ties, then left.

She didn’t ask for his number.

She didn’t even know his name.

At first, the men who’d been beaten didn’t report it.  They were embarrassed.  Ashamed.

Then a few started doing so.  But the police laughed at their claims.  Dismissed them as cover-ups for intoxicated who-knows-what.  S&M gone wrong or gang-related retaliation, they didn’t really care.

In a few cases, when the victim was actually believed, no charges were pressed.  Because how could it be proved?  Had the victim recorded it on his phone?  Had a credible witness been present?  (Besides, what had they been doing in a bar in the first place?)

And because even when the incident had been recorded—and posted online at one of the many websites dedicated to such things—Boys, Boys, Boys, Beaten; Another Dad Bites the Dust; Black Men and Blue; Knocked Out Dudes—the women got off.

“And did you believe he was consenting?” the woman’s lawyer asked.  In a crowded court room.

“Well, yeah.  A friend told me he was into this sort of thing.”

“And you believed her?”

“Sure.”

“It didn’t seem implausible?”

“Nah.  You see it all the time.  Men fighting, punching each other … They like it.”

“But that’s crazy!” the victim cried out with indignation.  He’d intended to assert his objection by rising forcefully to his feet, but all he managed was a painful crouch.  “Who would consent—  To this?”  He pointed to his face, still swollen and bruised.

The judged looked pointedly at the prosecutor, who nodded then gently pulled at the man.  “Sit down and be quiet,” he hissed.

“But I said ‘Stop!’,” he protested.  “I’m sure I did!”  He met his assailant’s eyes.

She shrugged.  “‘Stop’ means ‘Continue’.  Your face said ‘Continue’.  Your screams said ‘Continue’.  Your moans—  You enjoyed it!  You know you did!”

“What sane man would have consented to what you did?”  He stared at her in disbelief.  “Let alone enjoy it?”

“For centuries,” the woman’s lawyer continued with her case, initiating a slide show on the projector screen, “men have enlisted in order to fight—”

“But this man isn’t a soldier,” the prosecutor interrupted.

“They have voluntarily entered the ring to be hit again and again—”

“But—”

“And every day we see movies and video games—a great number of movies and video games, all easily accessible—depicting men willingly engaging in physical fights.”

“That’s TV!” the prosecutor objected.  “They’re actors!  Acting!  Real men don’t—”

“And although they often minimize their injuries, it’s clear they’re very proud of them.  Win or lose, the men, and their injuries, are imbued with the heroic.”

“There is nothing heroic about this!” The prosecutor presented one of his own images, the victim’s chest, an ugly mess of purple and yellow.

“Regardless,” she continued, “as my learned counsel well knows, it’s the mens rea, the state of mind, of the accused that determines whether or not a crime has been committed here.  She believes he consented.  Perhaps with good reason, perhaps not.  Either way, ergo, no crime was committed.”

And so the woman went free.  As did the next woman.  And the next.  And the next.  Not convicted of a crime, nor even of a tort: when damages were mentioned, lawyers pointed out that at least the defendant hadn’t left victim with a squalling infant to look after.

Worldwide, women went about beating up men.  After all, that’s what men were for.  Fighting.  Being beaten up.   Women took out their frustration, their anger, on men.  Television and video games started showing women beating up men, started showing men enjoying being beaten up by women.  It became common.  It became normalized.  One in four actual men were beaten.  By women.  Few reported it.  What would be the point?

Oct 19 2026

Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino – quotes and comments

from Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino

I found her opening essay, “The I in the Internet” enlightening:

“Because there were so few search engines [in the 1990s] and no centralized social platforms, discovery on the early internet took place mainly in private, and pleasure existed as its own solitary reward.”  p5 

Interesting comparison.

“What you did on the internet would become intertwined with what everyone else did, and the things other people liked would become the things that you would see.”  p6

Ah, peer pressure on steroids.

“… personal lives were becoming public domain …” p6

“Twitter  … was where everyone … bitched about articles that had been commissioned to make people bitch.”  p7-8 

I had no idea that intentional antagonism had such a long history.  (I’m old and non-urban, so I was very much a late-comer to the Internet.  When all you have is dial-up, you don’t waste your time with shit …)

“the existence of social networks that must continually aggravate their users in order to continue making money” p11

What is wrong with people?  That they are so attracted to aggravation?

“But lately I’ve been wondering how everything got so intimately terrible, and why, exactly, we keep playing along.”

Exactly.  (Though I don’t include myself in the ‘we’.  I don’t really do social media.  People’s addiction to it is quite puzzling.) 

(As is their addiction to cellphones; I would HATE carrying a phone with me at all time, being interrupted all day long, having to answer it every time it buzzed or whatever, being available to everyone all the time … Why would you do that unless you were a surgeon on call?)

“How did a huge number of people begin spending the bulk of our disappearing free time in an openly torturous environment?  How did the internet get so bad, so confining, so inescapably personal …?” p11

She’s asking the right questions.

“It has already become the central organ of contemporary life.  it has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyperawareness and distraction while overloading us with much more sensory input than was every possible in primitive times.  It has already built an ecosystem that runs on exploiting attention and monetizing the self.”  p11

She then identifies five problems: the internet is built to distend our sense of identity, it encourages us to overvalue our opinions, it maximizes our sense of opposition, it cheapens our understanding of solidarity, and it destroys our sense of scale.  p12

Unfortunately, the rest of the essays … well, I don’t know who she’s talking to, really.  Certainly not me.  “The ideal woman”?  Not my ideal.  Even her many references to feminism—that’s not feminism, I want to scream at her.  I guess it’s a generational thing.  I’m a second-wave feminist.  And I don’t think many of us consider third-wave or ‘popular’ feminism to be feminism. 

For example, she says “Feminism has faithfully adhered to this idea of beauty as goodness …” (p79).  What?  No!  Not at all!  Honestly, she often sounds like a 1950s woman, and that’s interesting: what has caused this regression?  Saturation in social media?  So when young women today say ‘I’m not a feminist, but …’ they really mean it.  They’re not feminists; they’re Stepford wives.

Her essay titled “Always Be Optimizing” is horrifying.  I’m very glad she’s not talking about me or my life.  Young women, why do you accept all that shit?

I’m glad I read on, though, because her chapter about American churches was enlightening.

“the dominance of Southern evangelicals and extractive Texan empires” p131

I had not put the two together.

The megachurches … Now I understand a bit more why American political campaigns are so much spectacle.  (So little substance.)

“prosperity gospel” p132 ?? 

Oh my.  It’s the idea that wealth is evidence of divine anointment.   Well, that explains a lot.  About the U.S.

The chapter on scams was also enlightening.  (Young Americans are so fucked up.)  (‘Course, old Americans are too …)

“… making scamming—the abuse of trust for profit—seem simply like the way things were going to be.  it came after the election of Donald Trump, an incontrovertible, humiliating vindication of scamming as the quintessential American ethos.”

Yup.  So very fucked up.

“Lewis, as an inexperienced twentysomething, had found himself in charge of millions of dollars in assets without fully understanding what was going on.”  p163

Yeah, tell me again how that happens?

“Despite posting a $61 billion loss at the end of 2008 … AIG gave out $165 million in bonuses to its financial services division the next year” p165

After being bailed out with $182 billion of federal—i.e., taxpayer’s—money.

“The con is in the DNA of this country, which was founded on the idea that it is good, important, and even noble to see an opportunity to profit and take whatever you can.”  p167

Guess we have different definitions of ‘Christian’ too.

“The average CEO now makes 271 times the salary of the average American workers, whereas in 1965, the ration was 20:1.  Healthcare costs are staggering—per capita health spending has increased twenty-nine times over the past four decades—and childcare costs are rising like college tuition, even as the frontline works in both healthcare and childcare often receive poverty wages.”  p169-170

“On Facebook, our basic humanity is reframed as an exploitable viral asset.  Our social potential is compressed to our ability to command public attention” (p174)

So leave Facebook. 

“Bezos [owner of Amazon] is the richest man in the world, but his warehouse employees often made just enough to clear the federal poverty line. (Of course, this is part of the reason he’s the richest man in the world.)” p186

I’ll add a little nugget of information to that: I was recently notified by Amazon, that I had made too many returns, and they cautioned me to stop or they’d ban me from the site.  I did the arithmetic: to date, that year, I’d made 107 purchases (I live in a rural area, and a trip to the nearest Walmart, 45 minutes one-way, for each purchase, at $7/gallon gas, is very expensive; I don’t require next day delivery, let alone delivery for each item separately, as Amazon often does much to my annoyance; furthermore, regarding their labor practices [described by Tolentino on p186-7], I’d happily pay an extra dollar to the employee who processes my purchase and an extra dollar to the courier who delivers it) and I returned 7 purchases (less than 10%; in one case the purchase simply didn’t work; in another, the dB description online was considerably more than the actual dB, specifically the dB stated in the owner’s manual).

The section on Trump—p190-194—just read it.

But the section “The Cult of the Difficult Women”—again, I am stunned at Tolentino’s understanding of feminism: “Because of the feminist cultural reflex to protect women from criticism that invokes their bodies or choices or personal presentation in any way …” (p256)

What?  We have long criticized women for wearing make-up.  For example.

And the last section about weddings, again I wonder who she’s talking to, who she’s talking about.  The people she hangs around with, the people with which she identifies, airheads.

“And still I wonder how much harder it would be to get straight women to accept the reality of marriage if they were not first presented with the fantasy of a wedding.”  p289

Well, duh.  That’s why Today’s Bride (and Vogue and Better Housekeeping) are not on any feminist’s reading list.

So, among other benefits, reading Tolentino’s book has given me a glimpse at the huge chasm that separates second-wave feminists from whatever Tolentino calls herself.

Oct 15 2026

Justified (fiction from Fighting Words)

It was inevitable.

By 2035, almost overnight, all of my classes were two-thirds female, one-third male.  We’d finally achieved the critical mass I thought wouldn’t ever happen.   Correction.  I thought wouldn’t happen in time.  I was middle-aged when the most powerful county in the world elected for President not the former Secretary of State, but a business mogul who denied climate change.  People would rather die than be led by a woman.

Not that all of my female students were feminist.  You’d always have the barbies, it seemed.  But, now, enough of them were.  Would be. 

I say it happened almost overnight, but of course there were signs.  Geneticists had known about the Y chromosome for decades.  By 2013, it was, as one blogger called it, “a trainwreck of about 45 hangin’-on-by-their-pinkies genes.”

At roughly the same time—call it synchronicity, call it intersectionality, or call it all-about-relationships and you’d really nail the irony—there was an increase in chemical pollution, specifically endocrine disruptors such as dioxin.  Blithely released into the ecosystem by companies run by men, dioxin was thought to mess with the Y chromosome (as well as a great many other things).

Couples had been needing IVF for decades.  Of course, men thought it was the woman’s fault, not being able to conceive.  They didn’t know, refused to believe, that it was because they didn’t have enough sperm or because the sperm they had was swimming in the wrong direction.  (Never mind that so many of them jerked off every day to online porn.  They didn’t know, refused to believe, that every ejaculation reduced sperm quality.)  No sperm delivery, no Y chromosome delivery.

All of which is to say it was almost completely the men’s fault. 

Of course, they’d always been a minority, but 30% as opposed to 49% made them visibly a minority.  And for people who depend on strength in numbers (the gang mentality), for people so subject to the herd mentality (possibly related to the former), for people so focused on the quantitative, this was, in a word, terrifying.

You’d think the remaining men might anticipate that they’d be treated like royalty.  Correction.  More like royalty.  After all, they’d become rare.  And it’s too easy to equivocate being rare with being precious.  Women would compete for them.  (Well, the barbies would.)  And so they could’ve.  Become more like royalty.  Because, well, do the (male) math: there were now two women for every man. 

But, as I’ve indicated, they blamed women.  Of course they did.  It’s always the woman’s fault.   (When the porn users discovered they couldn’t get an erection any more with a real woman, they blamed those real women.  And pressured them, expected them, to turn themselves into porn robots.)  (Alas, all too many of them did.) 

And so—even so—they started (started?  continued.) killing them.  (And they say, have been saying for centuries, that men are the rational ones.)  (Their preference for sex with a make-believe female over sex with a real female, when their goal, one of their goals, is procreation—  Well, it boggles the mind.  The rational mind.)

It didn’t help that testosterone levels had risen.  Partly, this was a result of the growth hormones being fed to the animals that men ate (because real men eat meat) (as if they’d killed it themselves): the onset of puberty came earlier and earlier.  Partly, it was a result of the boost provided by Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, and the other seven, now on the market: it wasn’t just older men were losing their beloved erections. (And sexuality was that integral to their identity: I fuck, therefore I am.)  But mostly, it was a result of the increase in the use of testosterone gels (an easy step from the oh-so-common use of steroids) among men whose natural testosterone production was in serious decline.  (Because oh, the horror.)

It also didn’t help that there was an increase in the use of porn.  Partly this was due to demand: porn is addictive—which means that more and more is needed.  More in terms of quantity, more in terms of quality.  Though I hesitate to use the word ‘quality’ in this context.  More accurate would be in terms of ‘ability to stimulate’.  And partly this was due to supply: the internet made it easy.  So easy that every second, about 50,000 men were watching porn.  (Up from 30,000 in 2016.)  So easy that 90% of all men, and boys (they started at eight), watched porn every day.  (Up from 80%.)  Someone once said that every new technology would eventually, or perhaps initially, be used as a weapon.  I doubt they included male masturbation aids in their definition of weaponry.  They should have.  Because 85% of all porn specifically humiliated and degraded the women portrayed.  And 95% showed her being physically hurt.  (Both, 5% increases.)  And of course, what you expose yourself to affects what you think, what you do …

And on top of that, the gaming industry exploded.  Well past car chases, so many of the games featured pornified women who could be raped by the male player.  (Player.)  Extra points if they killed her.

So.

Every week, every day, some man went on a killing spree.  Most were members of some group—the Incel Rebels, the Brothers of Lepine, the O-Jays, the Bundy Bunch, Jack’s Men—groups that had formed like cancerous tumours.  Like stage four cancerous tumours.  The word femicide came out of the closet.

At first, maternity wards were favourite targets.  Because there were only women there?  Or because the women there were birthing more women?  Or because they weren’t birthing men?  Hard to say.  Quite possibly all three.

Then they targeted schools.  At first, the young women tried not to clump together, tried to position themselves in the middle of a group of men.  But of course, that backfired.  Used to be that only—my god, did I say only?—used to be that only one in three men would rape if they thought they could get away with it.  Now it was two in three.  And the percentage of rapes that resulted in conviction, let alone the percentage that was actually reported?  It was a joke.  To them.

So I was ready.

I’d carefully considered the seating plan and put the boys at my far left, closest to the door.  I put the barbies in the middle two rows, and at my far right, my precious ‘grand-daughters’, the women who would save the world.  Marie was becoming a brilliant biologist; Kim, a mathematician or maybe a physicist; I figured Brett for psychology or sociology; Chandra, music; Ming was our class poet, nay, our school poet if my opinion counted for anything; Meg, likely an engineer … 

I moved my desk close to the wall, brought in a coat rack, squeezed it between my desk and the wall, then permanently hung my raincoat on it. 

And I was tired.

For thirty years, the boys in my class had demanded, hogged, my attention.  They showed up late, swaggering into class, daring me to send them to the office for a late slip.  (For which I’d be reprimanded: ‘But why don’t they want to come to your class on time?’)  They interrupted me, they challenged me on every bloody thing.  ‘Are you sure that’s right, Ms. Bennett?’  Too soon the mockery they slid into the ‘Ms.’ wasn’t enough: they called me bitch, cow, cunt.  Openly.

Was it just me?  The last time I peeked into Janet’s room, I saw the wall behind her desk covered with dried and hardened spit balls.  So I’m guessing no.

They didn’t do the work.  They didn’t even try.  And then they were outraged when they received a failing grade.  I stopped failing them after one took a knife to my tires.  Even so, the following year, another one took a knife to me.  Apparently, he wasn’t happy with the C+ I’d given him.

Worse, every time one of the girls, one of my grand-daughters, spoke up, they put herdown.  Called her a bitch, cow, cunt.  Threatened to shut her up.  For good if that’s what it took.

So when I heard the pops in the distance, I quickly moved to the coat rack and grabbed the automatic also hanging there.  And when the pimple-faced boy with scraggly blond hair calmly opened the door and walked into my classroom, I started firing.

I killed him.  Along with every one of the boys in my class.  There was no doubt in my mind that every one of them would eventually kill several of my granddaughters.  One way or another.  In fact, as soon as the pimple-faced boy entered the room, three of them pulled out their own guns.  And not to shoot back.

That they were killing us, had been killing us for centuries, (as well as each other), proves that our lives are more valuable than theirs.  They are irrational.  As I’ve indicated.  They are selfish.  As I’ve indicated.  They are a danger to society.  To a thriving society.

And so, yes, I was justified.

Oct 07 2026

The Conductor (movie recommendation) and Jarrett (a short story)

I’ve just watched “The Conductor” (tubi tv) about Antonia Brico’s struggle to become a conductor and her eventual creation of the New York Women’s Symphony Orchestra, and watched with dismay the stats at the end … of the top 20%, then top 50%, orchestras, not one has ever had a female conductor.

And I was reminded of a short story I wrote years ago and had forgotten about (it was the first of an intended collection that never materialized wherein each story was to be about a young woman’s experience of her first year of university – first year music, first year law, first year math, etc and the sexism encountered …).

Anyway. I post the story below. Sad to say that in 2010 I was still imagining what Brico went through in almost 100 years before.

Jarrett

She breezed into the room, wearing bright red coveralls, the sleeves rolled to mid-forearm, and white canvas basketball boots, unlaced.  Her left hand was in her pocket, and her right hung relaxed at her side, loosely holding her trumpet.  She gave the impression of arriving fresh from Mario Andretti’s track crew.  Or a skydiving flight.

Her steps slowed as she neared the centre of the room, and once there, she stopped to look around her in amazement.  The room was huge.  The ceiling was so high, and the windows so long, so tall.  And all this space.  She turned full circle slowly, a smile of wonder playing on her face.

She opened her audition with Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good”.  The first three notes, clear, and beautifully unrushed, didn’t break the silence, but, rather, slipped into it.  As the song progressed, she filled that silence, that space, more and more.  And more – the pace picked up and she was moving all over the room, dancing to the music, glorying in the resonance, feeling so good…sometimes supplementing the off-accents with a hip or a shoulder, or walking jauntily to the beat, or swinging her entire body upward with a surging note.  She played toward the end, moving less, as if to set up for a cadenza, then she stopped, profiled in the centre at the end of the room, and arched back for that grand penultimate phrase; in the rest that followed, she straightened, turned to face the adjudicators, and delivered the last phrase, with stunning simplicity.

 Then for the first time she spoke, to introduce her second selection as an original composition.  She walked over to one of the large cathedral windows and vaulted up to sit on the window seat, one leg stretched out along the length of the ledge, the other bent up to her chest. She was silhouetted by the sun that was just beginning to come through.  Her piece was a very sad, very beautiful, elegy.

When it was over, for a brief moment she rested her trumpet on her leg and looked out the window.  Then she nimbly leaped down, and walked over to the sound equipment.  She took a cassette from one of her pockets and put it in the player.  It was a ‘music minus one’ recording of Haydn’s Concerto in E flat for trumpet.  Jarrett took a central position nearer to the adjudicators’ table and standing quite motionless, played the concerto through, from beginning to end.

Dr. Martens applauded.  The others just stared.  Jarrett stood there, nodded a thank you to Dr. Martens, and waited.  Suddenly, recovering routine, Dr. Barton spoke to her.

“Uh – thank you,” he looked at his list, “Jarrett Reid. Uh – we’ll be in touch.”

She nodded again and walked toward the door.

When she had left, there seemed to be a collective sigh at the table, with the exception of Dr. Martens, who was still smiling, delighted.

“Well,” Dr. Barton said.

“Oh dear,” Dr. Whitely murmured.  Then, “We forgot to do the interview with her.”

“Oh – ”  For a moment, Dr. Barton moved as if to call her back, but that would be awkward.  He hesitated, wondering what to do.

“Do we need to?” Dr. Martens asked.  The others looked surprised.  “I mean, ‘Why does she want to study music?’  She loves it, isn’t it obvious?”  They looked alarmed, a little uncomfortable.

“But – ”

“There are other questions,” Dr. Elderson reminded him, “testing her knowledge and – ”

“You have her high school transcript, what were her music marks?”

“A. A-. A.” Dr. Whitely scanned the sheet.

“All right then.  Besides, didn’t that composition of hers indicate any ‘knowledge of music’ to you?  And her interpretation of Haydn was well-informed.”

The others nodded, hesitantly.

“But – Chuck Mangione?” one said.

“And her technique?” another said.

“Look, I’m not the brass expert here,” Dr. Martens said, “but I know a good sound when I hear it. Dr. Peira, how was the Haydn?”

“Good,” he said. Then added almost reluctantly, “Very good.”

“Well then?”

“But – she’s – ” Dr. Barton floundered.  “I mean do you think there’s a place for her here at our faculty?  We have room for 125 new students and 500 have applied.  We have to be selective beyond skill and knowledge.  Will she fit in here? That’s the question.”

There was a silence.

“She’s so – different,” one of them muttered lamely.

“So?” Dr. Martens asked.

Dr. Barton resumed, “We haven’t room to take chances on students who won’t fit in, Alex.  The students who won’t make it, the ones who will drop out, or fail, or get married, or change majors – how’s her background, can she afford to stay with us for four years?”

“What?” Dr. Martens asked incredulously.

“Look, I know it’s unfair to have to consider these things but we have face facts, we’re a business as well as an educational institution.  You read the Dean’s report, this faculty cannot survive if third and fourth year enrollment isn’t as high as first year.  We have to be sure the ones we admit will continue.”

Dr. Martens sprang out of his chair and went to the window.  The others restlessly played with pens, papers.  After a moment, he wheeled around, gesturing in exasperation.

“Why didn’t we consider these factors with the hundred who have preceded her?” He paused and folded his arms. “What have you got against this one, this Jarrett Reid?” he asked.

There was another silence.

“Well, she’s such a – a performer,” Dr. Elderson ventured.

“This was a performance audition!  Look, you admit she has the skill, she has the knowledge, she certainly has the spirit or ‘musicianship’ – ”

“But Alex, she’s so different, it’s just we’re not used to, didn’t expect – ” Dr. Whitely broke off.

“I move we hand in our ballots,” Dr. Peira said.

Each of them finished up their adjudicator’s report, then submitted their ballot.  Dr. Barton tallied their evaluations – 3:2.  Jarrett Reid was admitted to the faculty of music for her first year.  She had passed.

The class was loud, as usual, but rowdier, more restless.  It was mid-term time, and anxiety, and activity, levels were at a high.  Today was her turn for the exam in Conducting 101: she was to lead the class through the rehearsal of a piece – she was to conduct.  Dr. Martens took a seat at the back.

Jarrett put two folios of music under her arm and stepped onto the podium.  She looked out at the class and waited for their attention.  It was not forthcoming.  She set the music on her stand and raised a hand.  Still no change.  She stood there then, shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and waited.

Eventually, gradually, the talk decreased, slowed, stopped.  Eventually they were looking at her.

She smiled, “So – what’ll it be: Beethoven’s Sixth or Louie’s Songs of Paradise?” Conversations were resumed almost immediately.  Again she waited for a bit, hoping they were discussing their options, then she raised her hand, again.  Silence was once more slow in coming, and she decided to interrupt.

“Shall we take a vote then?” She fought against shouting.

“You’re the conductor, you’re supposed to decide!” A student called out over the lessened but still continuing talk.

“Yes, I am the conductor, but that doesn’t mean I’m a commander too.”  By now, most were quiet.  She explained, “I didn’t think there’d be any point in working through a piece no one wants to play – ”

“Let’s go with Alexina,” the voice called out, singsonging the name.

“Nah – too weird, I vote for the Beethoven.”

“Bor-ing.”

She waited again until there was enough quiet to take a vote.  A count of hands showed Louie to be in favour.  She handed out the music amid increasing flurry: adjusting music on stands, tuning instruments, wetting reeds, then warm-up scales and arpeggios.

“Jack, you’ll need a bow,” Jarrett called out to the percussion player.  “I didn’t think any of our string players would be willing to lend you theirs,” she grinned, “so I brought an extra – it’s by my desk.”

She waited until all the strings had put on their mutes, then when she began to hear fragments of the first section, she tried to begin.

“Okay,” she fought against shouting again, “we don’t have a tam-tam – and Bob, since you’ll be required on the vibraphone, I think we’ll just leave it out rather than try a substitution, okay?”

“Okay,” he said after a pause – surprised when he realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“Now there’s a time change after the first two bars, from four-four to three-four, so let’s try just the first four bars.  I’ll count you in one bar.”  She had to wait a long time for silence before she could give the upbeat.  Half of the strings were a beat late entering bar four, still counting in four.  There was no reason for the error – especially if they had been watching her.

She looked at the string section. “We need more unison on the crescendo and decrescendo, bars two and four, and watch the metre change.”  She paused.  “Let’s try it from the beginning and go on this time.”

She stopped them at section B.  It had been dismal indeed.

She smiled playfully, “So how do you like it so far?”  Few smiled back.

“Look, at bar five there’s a rit.  Watch me, I’ll keep you altogether, ‘cuz at bar six we have to change speed, suddenly, ‘subito quarter note at 72,’ as opposed to the opening, quarter note around 50. Then at B, the score indicates getting faster little by little – at C we have to be at 88.  Now I know we’ll be nowhere near that since this is just a first playthrough, but we can certainly capture a change in pace, right? Let’s try it again.”

A general buzz followed her comments.  Eventually they were ready.  They got to E this time.  Well, most of them.  Again, the performance was much worse than it could’ve been, than it should’ve been.

“What’s the problem with the metre?  These are my patterns.”  She demonstrated two-four, three-four, four-four, and five-four with her baton.  “Okay?”  No response.

She tried to compensate then, “Great try, Steven. That oboe part is rather intricate, eh? And the balance is good, everyone, sounds good,” she added lamely.

They struggled through sections of the piece again and again.

Suddenly the first violinist interrupted.  “Excuse me,” he called out in the middle of a section.

“Yes?” Jarrett asked.

“Bar fifty-five, when I enter with the solo, I seem to disagree with your dynamic indications.  I’m entering mf crescendoing to f, and you seem to want me to enter at mp or p even. This is a solo – it’s supposed to stand out.”

Jarrett looked at her score.  “Well, the initial dynamic isn’t indicated.  So maybe you’re right, but even at p you do stand out, because only one other person is playing at your moment of entry – all we hear is a single flute tone – ”

“But starting at p is just too weak, too unobtrusive.”

“But this is a subtle piece.  I think it shimmers rather than glares.  Besides, starting at mf doesn’t give you much room to expand, and the peak is clearly marked just f not ff.”  He seemed not to have heard her last comment – he was talking to the violinist beside him.

A few other musicians then had questions, comments.  After a while, they were ready to play again.  At several points, too many people got lost and they had to start again somewhere.

Jarrett tried to make a few of the fermatas over rests inordinately long, an attempt to use silence as a timbre – but the attempt was lost.  No one was with her: they all paused the usual extra 1.2 seconds, by conventional consensus, and went on more or less together.

Eventually the class was over.

Dr. Martens left the classroom and went directly to his office.  He sat down at his desk and went over the notes he had made during Jarrett’s conducting.  Oh she knew her hand signals, and they were very clear, and visible, she never confused functions of the right and the left hand, her cues were always ready and necessary, her tempo metronomic, her understanding of the piece impressive, in fact it was quite a commendable choice, Louie was not only contemporary, and Canadian, but a challenge to any conductor for the frequent changes in metre and the precise dynamic indications – but, well, Jarrett hadn’t conducted the piece, the orchestra had conducted themselves: when it came right down to it, her presence hadn’t made any difference, as a  conductor she had not succeeded, and he felt he could not award a passing grade. She had failed.

It was now December, a week to go until Christmas break, and the end of the first semester.  Student conferences were held during this week.  Jarrett arrived for her 2:00 appointment with her advisor, Dr. Martens.  She knocked on his office door, and heard him call out, “Come in.”

She opened the door, and walked in.  “Hi.”

“Hi Jarrett, have a seat.”

“Thanks.”  She sat down.

“So how’s it going?”

“Well – “ she smiled and settled deeper into the chair, stretching out and crossing her legs in front of her.  She put her hands in her pockets, then began to answer his question.  “Normally, I’m not too concerned with marks.  I’m here to learn about music and sometimes the marks reflect what I’ve learned and sometimes they don’t.  It really doesn’t matter to me.  But since I’m here, and since you asked – ” she smiled mischievously, “well, it matters to the university. My marks, I mean.”

“Yes?”

“You know I got kicked out of ensemble.”

“No.  I didn’t know.  Why?”

“‘An excessive number of flagrant violations of the dress code.’”  She grinned.

So did he.  “But wasn’t it explained to you?  There’s a reason for the dress code.”

“Oh yeah,” she paraphrased, “a concert is not a visual event.  Music is to be heard and not seen.  So any non-uniform attire and/or colour disturbs this, the eye distracts from the ear. But if it’s just an aural affair, why doesn’t everyone just stay home and listen to their stereo systems?”  She paused.  “And I move too much.  I detract, I upstage the others, I stand out.”

“And what did you say to that one?”

“That if everyone moved, I wouldn’t stand out.”

He laughed.

“I know what they’re getting at.” She rushed on then, “I go to concerts and I see what they want.  But I hate what I see.  Everyone in the audience is sitting in their best dress, stiff and still.  Like statues. Not one dares to move – not even to Strauss.  Ditto the orchestra.  Only soloists are expected, allowed, to move.  Orchestras have always looked to me like a crowd that wandered in from a funeral.  Deadpan faces in black suits and ties.  I tell you if I were the composer – ”

She corrected herself, ” – when I compose,” then carried on with excitement, “I’m going to specify: this symphony is to be performed con moto, literally, by people in colours.  All sorts of colours.  Music is played with the body, it’s an affair of the heart, not the head.  I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that most of the people in music are men, and men are notoriously inept at expressing their emotions.  Sometimes I think that’s how we’ve gotten to where we are – sober, except for the soloists, and even then, the emotional spectrum consists of ‘intense’ and ‘more intense’.  Seldom joy, celebration – ”

She continued to ramble over ideas and impressions, as if they were boulders on an oceanside hike. “Maybe it’s just men in groups – then again, no, look at any all-male pop, rock, or jazz group – they move, it’s clear those people feel the music they’re playing.  So maybe it’s just ‘serious’ music – hm, the name itself – maybe something happens to people who study music, people in academia – I mean, they’re the ones who eventually form the orchestras, right?  Maybe something – maybe I should get out while – ”  She stopped then, a bit self-consciously.

“No, I don’t think you should get out,” Dr. Martens finally had to say something.  But then couldn’t say any more at the moment.

She resumed then, with less animation. “I may not have a choice. That zero in ensemble isn’t going to help my average any.  You know that first year students must have a B average in all their music courses to get into second year, to stay in music I mean. And a B+ in the course they want to major in.”

“Yes…”

“The mark you gave me in Conducting – it’s not too helpful for my average either – or as my major prerequisite – “

Dr. Martens raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t realized until now that she wanted to major in conducting, that she intended to become a conductor.  It pleased him: in addition to having a special, superior, understanding of music, which he felt she, of all his students had, a conductor had to express the music physically, visually – he recalled her audition – why she’d be perfect!

Jarrett continued, or rather ended then.  “It isn’t a fair mark.  I think I deserve a passing grade in Conducting.”  She sprang up then and looked out the window, uncomfortable with this sitting so long. And saying so much.

“I see,” he paused, his mind racing to recall his reasons for the failure.  She hadn’t been perfect, she –

She turned to him then.  “Can we talk about it?  I mean, why did you think so poorly of my conducting?”

“Well,” he started slowly, “for starters, you didn’t have the attention of your orchestra.  A conductor must have attention to do a good job of it.  Perhaps you could’ve clapped your hands, or asked them to be quiet – ”

“Clap my hands?  Ask them?  No one else had to.  My presence on the podium should’ve been enough – it’s standard courtesy to be quiet when the conductor ascends – ” she gestured slightly as she spoke, as if conducting her words.

“Yes, I know.”  He paused, then tried again to put his finger on her problem.  “Perhaps it was your voice, not loud enough to get their attention.”

“But that’s it – I shouldn’t have to get their attention, I should have their attention, I’m the conductor.  You pay attention to your conductor, any musician knows that.”

“Yes, but your conductor is in control.  From the start it was clear you weren’t.  You let them make decisions, instead of making them yourself.  The first thing you said was ‘Which one do you want to play, Beethoven or Louie?’”  He paused. “What would you have done if they had chosen the Beethoven?”

“Nothing different.  I was prepared for both.”

He smiled.  She would be.

“But that’s not the point.”  She sat down restlessly, then leaned forward.  “Don’t you think that a group that has a say about what it does performs better?  Why not approach it as a collaboration, it really is a group effort, isn’t it?  There’s no point in playing something no one wants to play.  It’ll never sound good.  And that’s my responsibility as a conductor, to make the music sound good, right?”

“Right but then when the soloist interrupted you to quarrel about your dynamics, you let him!”  Now Dr. Martens rose to walk around the room.

“Well what’s wrong with that?” She turned in her chair.

“Never ever let a member of the orchestra interrupt you – you’re the conductor!”

“But I’m not infallible, or omniscient.  He knows the violin better than I do – at least he should, it’s his instrument.  He may have had a valid point.  I’m open to comments, suggestions. Just maybe someone from the orchestra will make a suggestion that I’ve never thought of before, a suggestion that will change the piece, that will make it closer to what it was intended to be.  Two heads are better than one.  Thirty or fifty are fantastic!”

“But not when you have a job to do.  Not when you’re trying to lead them through a rehearsal.”

“When then?  My job is to bring out the best possible performance of the music and – ”

“But you didn’t do that.  What you got was a very muddled, pathetic performance.”  He paused, sat down, and tried again.  “Perhaps it was something else in your style – it was so – unauthoritative.  You smile too much.”

“What’s wrong with smiling?  Why should I be mean and militant?  Is that the only style people pay attention to?”

“Well, maybe!”  He shrugged his shoulders in frustration.  He knew he didn’t conduct that way.  “Look, Jarrett, they didn’t pay attention to you, they didn’t listen to you.  I don’t know why.  But none of the other students so far have had that problem, so it must be something you did or didn’t do, can’t you see that?”

“Yes.  All right, you’re right.  It was the things I did.  What I did was different.  But being different is no reason for failure.”

“But the others can conduct.  Their way works.  Your way doesn’t.”

“For now, it doesn’t, and only because it is different, because it’s not what they’re used to.  Their way works because we’ve been conditioned to follow that way.  Response to that which is different has always been reservation and reluctance at the least, rejection and rebellion at the extreme.  Surely you know that.”

“Yes,” he nodded, remembering again her audition, the heated interchange among the adjudicators afterward.  Yes.

They were both silent then.

“But I wonder if that’s just part of it, perhaps there’s more to it than what I did or didn’t do.”  She sounded back by the ocean, picking her way over rocks and roots.  “I’ve always thought, like you, that I was the problem – my differentness – I thought it was individual.  But more and more I’m wondering – it’s too bad there aren’t other women in the class.  I mean, haven’t you noticed that all the other students are guys?  Men?  So what I mean is okay maybe it is just me.  And maybe a guy like me, I mean acting like me, conducting like me, would have the same problems.  But maybe – there are many – ” she paused for the word, “‘eccentric’ conductors who are quite successful.  Male conductors.  So I wonder if part of the problem is that – I’m not male.  And maybe that in itself explains why they responded to me like they did – because I’m a woman.  Or, maybe because I’m a woman, I do things differently, maybe other women conductors would act the same, different way.  In either case, the end result would be just what we got, right?”

“Right – ” he was following her trail.

“I mean, when you stop to think about it, our society does not condition people to pay attention to women.  We’re not in the habit of seeing women as figures of authority, in positions of power – ”


“‘Wait till your father gets home’” Dr. Martens smiled.

“What?” she stopped, then found his path. “Yeah. I was thinking of times when I’ll say something, and no one will comment, and then some guy in the group will say more or less the same thing and then everyone responds to it.  Geez that bugs me.  It seems women and/or women’s ways are just not listened to.”

“So you’re saying you couldn’t help but fail up there on the podium?” he queried.

“Well, I’m not sure.  I’m just saying maybe it has less to do with what I did or said or didn’t do or didn’t say than with the fact that they’re simply not used to a woman conducting – tell me, how many female conductors have you played with?”

He didn’t have to say it.  None.

“So it’ll take some time for them to adjust, accept, realize that I deserve their attention. See I have to earn their respect first, while you men get it just because you’re male.”

Dr. Martens didn’t answer.

She grinned then, “I don’t usually talk this much. And if all I wanted was a good mark, well I would’ve done it differently.  I mean, I would’ve conducted the same as everyone else.  But I didn’t.  And unfortunately, the mark does matter a bit.  And the mark you gave me seems unfair.  I know how to conduct, and you know I do.  You marked me on how well the orchestra followed and somehow I feel I can’t possibly be responsible for that, and yet – ” she continued before he could object, “and yet, you are correct in saying that when it came right down to it, the orchestra conducted themselves, I didn’t conduct. 

“But,” she was back on the beach, with the waves crashing in, “I’m starting to see that every identity requires co-operation.  Maybe that’s hard for you to see because probably most of what you have tried to be has been accepted, recognized.  So you haven’t known that what you are depends on the other’s behaviour as much as your own: a leader isn’t a leader unless someone agrees to follow him, a teacher can’t be called a teacher if no one consents to be his student. Likewise, until someone chooses to recognize me and pay attention to my behaviour up on the podium, I am not a conductor.  All I’m asking is for you to wait until that someone does – and it’ll have to be soon if they keep seeing me up there – then evaluate my conducting ability.”

He sat silent for a while. “I suppose what you’re saying – in this case, it does seem that your success, my evaluation of your success, is somewhat dependent upon what other people do or don’t do.”  He paused, silent again.  “But,” he finally said, “I cannot change the mark I gave you.  Or, let’s be honest, I will not.”  He went on quickly then, “but there are many more conducting assignments during second semester – you’ll be on the podium twice a month instead of once during the whole semester.  So, they’ll have to get used to you.”  He smiled, then said seriously, “And I hope they do. But,” he continued with a sigh, “if they don’t, I mean, if another semester isn’t long enough, remember that half of the exam is written, and there are several written assignments from now until April.”  He paused.  “And,” and smiled, “I would consider extra work, for marks.”

She smiled then too.  “Well. I can’t ask any more of you.”  She rose and reached out to shake his hand.  “Thank you.”

Dr. Martens stood to meet her hand.  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

It was spring, fresh and bright outside. Inside corners were still dull with too much study, too little sleep, and the stress of final exams, but most students were finished, or almost finished with their year.

Jarrett noticed Dr. Martens’ door open, as she sauntered down the hall on her way out. She stopped a moment and swung partly into his office.  “Have a good summer, Dr. Martens.”

“Thank you, I will.  See you in the fall,” he looked up as she moved on.

“Yes, you will,” she called back.

“Oh, Jarrett – ” he got up quickly and went to the door.  She stopped then. “What have you got planned for your summer?”

“Oh,” she leaned against the door frame and crossed her feet.  “You know those street-corner musicians – ”

“Yes!  You’re going to play your trumpet in the open air, a summer minstrel!”  He was pleased.  “Good practice.  And a little money too.”

“Well, no – actually – ” she grinned. “I was going to be a street-corner conductor.”  He looked puzzled.  “I thought I’d take a whole bunch of music on tape, set up a small cassette player, then conduct it!  A bright t-shirt, shorts, and Stravinsky – that’s all I need!”  She laughed then, at his expression.  “Good practice, don’t you think?”  She waved and moved on.  Was she kidding?  He returned to his desk.

A second later she reappeared at his door.  He looked up, questioningly.

“If I left my baton case open, do you think anyone – ”

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