The rich spread disease, breed like rabbits and are bad for the environment. We’ll test them for COVID, and eat the uninfected ones. Lunch in The Hamptons. Try it, you’ll like him! Photo by Evan Wise on Unsplash I think we can all agree: The global economy is a wreck, the world is forever hungry and we can’t count on Washington, the European Union, or any other governmental entity to fix anything. No matter which party challenges the other in the U.S. courts next week over an alleged fixed election, raging economic inequality will reign, and it’s time to rethink what we must do to fix it. I offer a tweaked iteration of an earlier thinker’s idea. Let’s eat the rich! I want to make it perfectl

Our own fear of personal power serves The Patriarchy quite nicely, thankyouverymuch. We need to uproot that #%^&. Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels “I want to marry a rich man,” some of my peers said in the 1980s. I tried to control my expression, since these were more often my office colleagues rather than close friends, few of whom valued themselves so little. These gold-diggers weren’t mired in poverty or hopeless circumstances with little ability to see a future over which they had any control. I worked in an upscale payroll services office crammed with overeducated entitlement-oozing ‘Yuppies’ in expensive suits and a certainty they were Going Places, all of which required flying First C

Women unconsciously collude with sexual predators. Know their tactics, and reclaim your power Women aren’t helpless little ‘targets’. We can fortify ourselves against males who seek to exploit our psychological weaknesses. Photo by SilviaP_Design on Needpix The smarter a girl is, the better it works. Party girls with attention deficit disorder generally don’t stick around to hear the routines. A more perceptive, worldly, or educated girl will listen and think, and soon find herself ensnared. — Neil Strauss, ‘The Game’ Loren blew into my life like a Highland warrior, the literal embodiment of the sexy, chesty, take-charge, long-haired hero of a medieval romance novel. We both belonged to the

I Game, you Game, we all Game for sex, love, and everything else “What do you REALLY want, baby?” “To crush Elon Musk!” Photo by Анна Хазова on Pexels Can you imagine all the effort they’re putting into that? If they took that effort and put it toward something constructive, who knows what they could accomplish. — Tom Cruise, in Neil Strauss’s The Game Who knew that couch-jumping, Scientology-worshipping Tom Cruise would be the nearly sole Voice of Reason in Neil Strauss’s The Game, the notorious exposé about the lives, lifestyles, and trade tools of Pickup Artists (PUAs)? He voiced what I’d been thinking. I theorized there were few better at comprehending the female mind than PUAs determine

20/20 hindsight, 20 years hence, with reverse engineering My mother country is self-destructing. I had no idea how lucky I was in 2000. Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay “You have a time machine, you can pick one thing in your life to go back to. Where, when do you go, and do you just observe it from afar, or do you change something?” Well, THAT was easy. “Piece of cake,” I responded. “I know exactly what I’d go back and change. The worst mistake of my life.” The question came via my friend’s weekly Friday evening Virtual Cocktail Hour, a tradition she started in April. After chit-chat, we answer one interesting pre-chosen question of the week. So, so many times I wished I could return to t

Never doubt the power of determined women Free photo from PxFuel The Buddha was silent for a long moment before he said, “It is not possible.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, Old Path, White Clouds Oh yes, it was possible. It was time for The Buddha, the Awakened One, to accept female disciples, or bhikkunis. He just didn’t know it yet. To be fair, he knew it would create a spitstorm with non-monastic society. It was, after all, 2,500 years ago, and Indian women lived in a highly patriarchal society. There were other details to consider: How would they live with the thousands of existing bhikkus, male disciples? Buddhism pledged sexual chastity for monks, and the Buddha knew human beings were all-too-sub

Roy Den Hollander shows just how utterly silly and irrelevant ‘men’s rights’ has always been. The movement needs a reboot. Graphic by Philip Taylor on Flickr Ladies Night? THAT’S what this moron had a problem with? I visited dead emasculated male Roy Den Hollander’s website to learn more about the so-called ‘men’s rights activist’ who gunned down a Hispanic judge’s husband and son and has been connected to the murder of a fellow MRA. I figured there must be a woman behind this whole thing and sure enough, he was obsessed with his ex-wife who he claims screwed him by marrying him for a green card. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s just his take, which is pretty massive. She claimed he abused her. M

Because, feminism. And because I’m not going to eat you no matter what happens. Public domain photo from Pikrepo I have something in common with black men, which might impel some to yell, “I have NOTHING in common with YOU!” But here it is: We’re both members of privileged and non-privileged groups. A black man has male privilege; I’ve got white privilege. I won’t debate which is more powerful; it differs under the circumstances. White privilege protects me from cops but did nothing for 70% of Bill Cosby’s rape victims. Oh yeah, speaking of rape, let’s talk about the Mutually Assured Destruction black men and I hold over each other: They have the power to rape and kill me, by virtue of being

Keep your eyes on the p̶r̶i̶z̶e̶ past! General Thomas F. Drayton’s slaves, 1862. Public domain photo by Henry P. Moore, Wikimedia Commons My mother spoke a lot about her ‘dialogue class’ at the church where they listed topic ideas and picked one to debate. They never picked Mom’s: Integrate the schools by first integrating the neighborhoods. I guess it was a tough sell for Christians living in the formerly Confederate state of Florida in the early 1970s. Forced school integration had come to Orlando, less than twenty years after Brown v. Board of Education and Little Rock, with the force of several court decisions and a lawsuit by the NAACP. While others debated busing black kids to white sc

It doesn’t love me. It doesn’t have my best interests at heart. It doesn’t want me to grow. And it will literally kill me if I let it. “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!” Creative Commons license photo by Daniel Oberhaus (2017) on Flickr Many mornings I wake up and think, “Shit, I’m still alive.” My favorite time of the day is night, when I sleep and enter oblivion — what death must be like, sans dreams, if atheists are right. I’ve read that a coma is one step away from death, and sleep one step from coma. Two steps from death, every night. Maybe one night I’ll get lucky

Why do we still not understand this? Free for commercial use photo from PxFuel I haven’t wanted children since I first gave it serious consideration, as I prepared to catapult into adulthood upon high school graduation. Growing up, I’d always assumed, as most people do, that I’d have children one day. It never seemed real, and once I actually began to consider it (not soon!) around 17, I found that kids didn’t fit into my plans. Granted, my ‘plans’ at the time were pretty stupid: I wanted to go to Hollywood and be an actress. My father had other plans: I would go to college, which he had been saving up for since I was nine. I wouldn’t have cut it as an actress. I was like Penny on The Big Ba

My mother called Marisol ‘a doormat’ because she tolerated verbal abuse. I learned never to be one. Wipe your feet here. Photo by Zipnon on Needpix My mother was a radical feminist before it was cool. Not ‘radical’ the way we know it today. Her radicalism stemmed from her uncommon conviction that on some level, women possess a certain amount of control over whether they’re abused. Mom never suffered physical abuse herself, nor do I know of any friends she had who did. They sometimes suffered what today we recognize as psychological or emotional abuse. Including Mom, who could deal it herself if Dad provoked her enough. If men possess the physical edge over women, one can argue women possess

And you don't have, either. Mother teaching daughter how to sit in yoga butterfly pose — depositphotos.com "Did you ever notice it’s the short guys who hit?” Michelle’s question came out of left field. My first thought was, What on earth makes you think I’d know? “No, I’ve never been hit by a man,” I replied in a steady voice, otherwise hornswoggled. “I’ve dated plenty of short men, but none of them had Short Guy Disease.” You know That Guy. The little man who struts around overcompensating for his perceived lack of manhood because he’s not towering over you like a cactus in the Arizona desert. Who’s more hypermasculine than Stallone and hits women because he thinks they’re secretly laughing

Why do personally strong women refuse to challenge the outdated feminist narratives in their head? Confronting our inner dinosaur. Image by Lothar Dieterich from Pixabay I’ve always been disappointed when personally strong female friends, who would never take crap from a man, much less outright abuse, passively enable continued female victimhood with their outdated, unchallenged views. This ain’t the ’80s anymore. Second wave feminism was barely old enough to get into bars when I became a young adult and could only legally drink super-light beer. In university, I took part in my first and only feminist protest march for Take Back The Night. Violence against women was greater, part of a crime