Where I Draw the Line with the Left

I spent a great deal of time and effort staying off the political spectrum.  I strongly suspect that the political divide of left and right, or red and blue is a product of the governing class.  Government reform would require a united voter base.  So they divide and conquer.

Something I’ve observed is that those on the far ends of the political spectrum tend to have a great deal in common.  They’re loud.  They’re aggressive.  They assume the moral high ground.  They have questionable beliefs.  And they aren’t very reasonable when those beliefs are challenged.  I’m not the first to have noticed this either.  I think it’s referred to as the horseshoe diagram, and it suggests that the silent majority tend to agree on most reasonable issues.

On this political spectrum, it’s been well documented when the right can go too far.  Nazis.  When a right-wing ideology starts talking about racial supremacy, that’s a red flag.  When they start targeting those of a particular race or religion, blaming them for the country’s problems,  that’s a red flag.  When they start to deny science to advance their own political agenda, that’s a red flag.  An entire generation of Germans learned that in the most painful of ways.  So… if that’s where the right can go too far, do we not have similar standards for the left?  Equality is not equality unless we are all held to account.

Jordan Peterson has made this question a cornerstone of his debates.  He’s often confronted by media personalities who assume that he represents the ‘alt-right’.  In most cases, he addresses that claim and acknowledges that while conservatism and tradition can have value, there is absolutely a point at which it goes too far.  He often suggests Nazis are a clear example of when the right can go too far.  He’ll then ask the interviewer if they could give an example of where the left has gone too far.  In most cases, they can’t answer the question.  I’ve tried it myself and had a similar experience.  On the extreme ends of the political spectrum, it would seem as though you can do no wrong.  As long as you’re fighting for a righteous cause, your actions are justified.  But when both sides take this approach, and both sides believe in their righteousness, there is no middle ground.

I have no issues holding someone to account for a flawed ideology, regardless of it’s right, left, up, down or sideways.  Today, I saw a tweet that was posted to social media that has motivated me to say something.  This was a tweet by @legal_feminista.  It said:

Let’s enter 2019 with the right energy:

Trans women are women.  Sex work is work.  Black lives matter.  Rape culture is real.  Yes all men.  Fuck white supremacy.  Abolish borders.  Free Palestine.  Protect indigenous rights.  Support mental health.  Believe women.

Normally, I wouldn’t pay much attention to something like this as I’ve seen or heard most of it before.  But this tweet received about 60,000 likes and 17,000 retweets in about 48 hours.  This perspective isn’t an outlier, it’s mainstream.  So… let’s dig in and see what we find.

Trans women are women.  That depends on how you define women.  If gender is a social construct and not determined by biology, then sure, trans women are women.  But what about biology? If gender is a social construct, surely, sex must be biological.  Otherwise, we’re ignoring the significance of things like the female and male reproductive systems, or the Y chromosome.  And what happens when trans women start using the natural advantages afforded to a biological male to put women at a disadvantage? There are now various stories about trans women dominating against female athletes.  I’m not sure these competitors would agree that all trans women are women.  At some point, I think we’ll have to acknowledge that there is a very real biological component to being a male or a female.  But in addition to that, we have masculinity and femininity.  Part biology, part psychology, part sociology.. this is what gives us masculine women and feminine men, and really masculine men and really feminine women.  Traditionally, we thought that we should all be masculine men or feminine women and it forced many of us to pretend to be people we weren’t.  Now we’re a little more open minded.  Sex comes primarily in 2 flavors.. with a swirl here and there.  But who we become as individuals, well that’s a flavor that’s unique to each individual.  It includes how masculine or feminine you are, who you’re attracted to, how you choose to dress.. and as long as it’s consensual, it’s all good.  I genuinely think that if we had a little more love for all the unusual ways we turn out, people would be more secure and confident in who they are and less consumed with trying to become someone else.

Sex work is work.  Damn right.  Got your back on this one sister.  Making prostitution illegal is about as sensible as making alcohol and cannabis illegal.  By pushing it into the shadows, you put good people at risk.  By bringing it into the light, we give ourselves a chance of doing it right.

Black lives matter.  Yes, because all lives matter.  My issue with the black lives matters movement was that they weren’t on board with all lives matter.  I agree that racism against black people exists.  I agree that it shows up in matters of police brutality.  But I disagree that police brutality is a race issue.  Black lives matter had an opportunity to open their doors and champion an All Lives Matters movement that would’ve forced police everywhere to reevaluate how they interact with the public.  It could’ve been the solution to police brutality for people of every color.  It could’ve been an opportunity for the black community to be leaders for all of America.  Instead, ‘all lives matters’ was understood to be an attempt at dismissing their cause or taking the spotlight off the black community.  What a missed opportunity.  And meanwhile, you have prominent leaders within the BLM community speaking about black racial supremacy to crowds of cheering fans.

Rape culture is real.  Maybe.  It depends on how you define it.  Growing up, my understanding of rape was someone being held down against their will, being fully aware of the experience as it’s happening, kicking and screaming for help, and dealing with the emotional trauma afterwards.  It was easy to understand that as one of the most terrible crimes a person could commit.  I’m now told that if two people get drunk and have sex, they’ve effectively raped each other because you can’t consent if you’re drunk.  I was also told that if a woman gives consent, but changes her mind during sex without telling her partner, if the partner continues, he’s a rapist.  I think we’re losing sight of the difference between a violent rape and a regrettable sexual encounter.  By no means am I condoning any behavior that remotely resembles rape, but I do think that it’s important to recognize degrees of severity.  I think it would be more accurate to say that we have a culture of sexual harassment.  But if you stop here without asking why, you’re missing half the equation.  I don’t think men want the responsibility of pursuing women for sex.  Most are terrible at knowing whether or not a woman is interested in them.  Most are clueless at figuring out how to flirt.  And most take rejection pretty hard.  And to make it worse, in the same way that men have been socialized to pursue sex, women have been socialized to withhold it.  If we’re going to find our way out of this mess, I think it starts with honesty and respect.  Personally, I vote for women to take over the role of asking guys out for a bit.

Yes all men.   No.  This is literally sexism 101.  It’s like saying that all women are neurotic.  Or all black people are prone to crime.  Or all Muslims are terrorists.  Just because you’ve had bad experiences with some men doesn’t justify you treating all men with the same contempt.

Fuck white supremacy.  Fuck all racial supremacy.

Abolish borders.  Sure.  but how?  Who would you pay your taxes to?  What area would your democratically elected official preside over?  What would be the jurisdiction for the laws you voted for?  Or was this just about firing back at Trump for garbage immigration policies?

Free Palestine.  We should all look for opportunities to put the guns down and hash things out like like reasonable adults.  Unfortunately, religion prevents that.

Protect indigenous rights. Or maybe recognize that indigenous rights, voluntary segregation, and systematic exploitation have destroyed America’s indigenous cultures.  I think it’s time to try integration.  There’s a great deal we can learn from Native American culture, including finding a more balanced relationship with nature.  I think it’s about time we took a real look at their history, and show respect where respect is due.  And once we’ve rewritten history to accurately reflect the role of Native American’s in the development of modern western culture, we can begin to heal.  And part of that will be learning to heal as one family.  If done right, indigenous rights should be no different than any other human rights.

Support mental health.  Absolutely.  Mental health isn’t as obvious as physical health… but can be that much more impactful.  We’re waking up to this reality now.. and there’s a lot of work to be done.

Believe women.  No.  It would be just as foolish to say, ‘Believe men’.  It’s interesting because the last time I saw this, it was ‘believe the victim’.  But what happens when the victim is a man?  Is it still so believable?  The problem isn’t in who we believe, but rather the fact that we should to believe anyone in the first place.  Believing someone is assuming they’re telling the truth without knowing if they are.  Once you have evidence, you can understand whether or not someone is telling the truth.  Without that evidence, you’re left with assumptions.  While some women might think so what, it’ll do more good than harm, consider this:  What would stop someone from paying a woman to make false claims against a man?  Do you believe the woman?  Or do you presume innocent until proven guilty?  On multiple occasions, people have paid women to make false claims against men.  If we believe all women, this will keep happening.  No victim is worth abandoning the right to innocence until proven guilty.  We should trust those who tell the truth.  We should support those who have experienced hardship.  We should hold accountable, those who caused harm to others.  Regardless of what’s between your legs.



A Belated International Men’s Rights Day

This entry was originally inspired by me being banned from Reddit’s r/feminism community.  It made me sad.  It’s a community I had followed for some time and while I didn’t agree with some of what was being said, I was there to learn.  When I completed the entry, I left it in the draft pile instead of posting it.  I didn’t like the tone.  I don’t mind discussing things that I think are negative, but I prefer to connect them to something brighter.  There’s nothing wrong with a little darkness when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Without the light, I’m much less interested in painting the darkness.

Yesterday was international men’s day and besides it not being a statutory holiday, I suspect that this is one of the more controversial holidays of our time.  I saw it show up in two places in my news feed: on The_Donald and I think on Jordan Peterson’s sub-reddit.  The_Donald, a sub -Reddit for Trump fans and Russian bots, seem to be trolls first and foremost.  Their celebration of men’s rights likely have as much to do with antagonizing feminists as supporting men who are struggling.  They’re not the most compassionate crowd.  But the feminists aren’t shy to give them ammunition either so perhaps there’s a natural dynamic of ‘accountability’ here.  The Jordan Peterson community is certainly more supportive and compassionate in their stance, looking to actually recognize the challenges that men are up against.  I found some of the stats rather surprising.  This is from a graphic which was shared:


76% of suicides are men

85% of homeless are men

70% of homicide victims are men

40% of domestic abuse victims are men

Men are the majority of victims of violent crimes

Men on average serve more than 64% longer in prison

Men are 340% more likely than a women to be imprisoned for the same crime


Just like with any set of stats, they need to be understood within context.  But even with context, it’s hard to deny that men have their own challenges.  But is there room in today’s world to support both men’s rights and women’s rights?  The logic in me says yes.  In fact, this is the premise for real equality and from my perspective, the only real way forward.  My personal experiences seem to suggest otherwise though.

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a rise in feminist rhetoric.  It didn’t concern me much as I had established myself as a feminist back in university.  I was teasing a friend for taking a women’s studies class after being egged on by his girlfriend.  He teased me right back and said, “you know you’re a feminist right?”.  I scoffed at him and said, that’s highly unlikely.   He asked if I thought that men and women were equal.  I said sure.  He pointed out that made me a feminist.  Really? What’s all this I hear about burning bras and a general hate towards men?  He told me that was just a misconception. Perhaps those individuals thought of themselves as feminists, but that wasn’t feminism.  Hmm… well alright then, I can definitely get on board with equality.

Fast forward to the present day, and perhaps we’ve lost sight of what feminism was supposed to be.  In it’s evolution, I think we’ve uncovered a rather destructive dynamic.  Classic feminists saw that there was a need for equality when it came to voting rights.  And equal opportunities for education.  And equal opportunities for employment.  And etc.  And etc.  They fought hard for their seat at the table and they’ve made tremendous contributions to our society as a result.  Modern feminists seem to have taken a different approach.

The current conversation seems to be one of power and oppression.  The argument has been made that all of society is dominated by a patriarchy which systematically oppresses women.  As a result of that power imbalance, women are at a disadvantage and the only way to remedy the situation is for women to become more powerful.  Generally speaking, we refer to the empowerment of women to be a positive thing.  But here’s the trick, power seems to be a zero-sum game.  Assuming that men are more powerful than women, in the interest of equality, it would seem sensible that we should make men less powerful and make women more powerful.   Yet throughout history, we’ve seen this dynamic play over and over again.  Power corrupts. Power becomes a means to an end.  At that point, it’s no longer about equality.

I don’t deny that there are powerful men.  But I also am quick to suggest that women are powerful too.  I think history would suggest that they have always been powerful in their own way.  If nothing else, the entire evolutionary course of humanity has been determined by their power to choose a mate.  In most cases, it’s rather easy to trace the actions of men back to the pursuit of approval from women.  But what if men no longer held on to the power than they leverage in their domains?  What if women did the same?  I think that’s the world we’re looking for.. but it’s not the world we’re pursuing today.

Earlier this year I was criticized for using Tinder by a woman in her 50s.  She told me that technology was destroying our ability to connect and that I should look to meet women in the real world.  I told her that in the age of #metoo, it’s hard to know when women in public want to be approached.  She suggested things like being in line at a coffee shop, or at a book store, etc.  Then one of her younger employees (20s) piped up and said something to the effect of “I don’t want men to approach me when I’m at <insert location> because when I’m there, I’m not looking to get hit on, I’m just looking to do <insert activity>.   It seemed like men were being criticized for not approaching women in a more traditional manner, while also being criticized for approaching women in a traditional manner.  As is often the case, there was this expectation that the man would just ‘know’, and if he didn’t, he was to blame.

The same woman who thought I should be approaching women in public also reprimanded me for calling a few young women girls.  It was something to the effect of I’ll see you girls at the conference tomorrow.  I was told that using this language was belittling, demeaning, oppressive, and etc.  Something about making them seem younger than they were.  On one side, I understood what she was saying but on the other, I was so confused.  I told her that I thought I was using it as a term of endearment, in the same manner a woman would refer to a group of men as boys.  And wasn’t girl-power a hall-mark of feminism?  There didn’t seem to be any logical basis for why she was upset with me, but I was made to feel like I had done something wrong regardless.

I was hanging out with my sisters earlier this year and talking about dating in the #metoo era and how I was generally trying to steer clear of it all.  At one point, we discussed how many decent men were being painted with the same brush as those who genuinely needed to adjust how they were treating women.  They both gave me the same analogy: If you have a bowl of skittles, and you know that just a few of them are poison, you don’t eat the skittles.  I didn’t say anything at the time because I was listening and trying to understand their perspectives, but it registered as a ‘does not compute’.  I thought about it more later and realized it was sexism 101.  Judging all men based on the actions of a few didn’t seem fair at all.  The first parallel that came to mind was demonizing all Muslims because a few are terrorists.  If we can recognize the flaw in that, why not here?

As I understood it, the bigger problem wasn’t going to be empowered women.  It was going to be what comes next.  I was talking to an older feminist and told her that as much as I appreciate equality and that side of feminism, I’m less appreciative of neo-feminism or radical-feminism.  She didn’t understand and took the stance that all feminism was good.  I asked her if there were any examples of feminism which she didn’t agree with, or at least thought was counter-productive.  She flatly said no.  I can’t help but think that if you’ve lost the ability to hold your tribe accountable for anything, you’ve lost site of virtues like equality and have been consumed by the pursuit of power.  I told her that I was concerned.  Not so much by the prospect of powerful women, but by what comes next.

There’s a pendulum dynamic that has operated throughout history.  We mobilize ourselves in one direction and once we’ve realized the extent of that direction, we tend to try the opposite.  This can be seen in things like fashion, politics, the stock market, and of course, major social movements.  So in the age of empowering women, where does the pendulum swing next?

I maintain that if this movement was about understanding and promoting equality between the sexes, the pendulum effect wouldn’t exist in the same way.  Instead, it seems to be about making women more powerful.  All that momentum and all that power that women are enjoying now, will swing back to men.  Not because they deserve it, but because that’s how the pendulum works.  The harder you swing it to one side, the more potential energy you’ve stored for it to swing in the opposite direction.

It seems as though things have begun to swing the other way.  It’s not pretty either.  Feminism grew in part because of how many women felt hurt and angry at the world for a raw deal.  Well it seems as though men are starting to arrive there as well.  It’s showing up in the communities of incels and men’s rights activists… and because it’s mostly people who are hurt and lashing out, they’re being dismissed by feminists. Or worse, they’re being demonized for providing resistance to the feminist movement.  And this is where we have to take a hard look at ourselves and ask, if equality is really the mission here.  Does it matter that 76% of suicides are men?  Because if so, we could use some of that support we hear so much about.

And this seems to be where we stand now.  With feminism approaching terminal velocity, it’s time to prepare for what’s next.  Is masculism next?  Must we send the pendulum back out in that direction to find what we should both recognize is in the middle?  I’m happy to say that I’m not the only one who thinks that the path forward isn’t about feminism or masculism, but rather about humanism.

The video that got me banned from r/feminism was a TED Talk from a female, award-winning, documentary film maker.  She had been a staunch feminist who was filming a documentary looking to expose men’s rights activists and their wicked ways.  After listening to these men and studying their answers, she started to realize just how much prejudice she was carrying against them.  Rather than listening to what the men were actually saying, she would look for reasons to be offended and use that emotional state to dismiss any valid point the man was making.   When she fact checked some of their concerns, like higher rates of suicide, or higher rates of death on the job, or higher rates of incarceration, she realized that civil rights and equality wasn’t just a woman’s issue.  She went on to say that she no longer identifies as a feminist, but with a clear conditions.: She is compassionate towards the struggles of both men and women, and supports the civil rights of each.

She was met with a standing ovation and had I been there, I would’ve been one of them.  Thank you for helping to lead the way Cassie Jaye.