What We Have Here

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Before I start this post, let me say that I’m not proposing we use genetic engineering to make men and women the same. As should be obvious from No Man’s Land, I don’t think that would solve anyone’s problem. It might make communication more easy in one front, but it will not fix anything as a species.

However, over the last few days I’ve become convinced that at least half of the “war between men and women” is a failure to communicate. Also a failure of the imagination, in that men can’t imagine being a woman. TBF women also can’t imagine being a man. The longer I live the more I think that Robert A. Heinlein was absolutely right and not kidding at all when he suggested we’re not two halves of the same species, but two symbiote species.

Please keep in mind this comes from a woman who has always had more male than female friends, and who does grok men more than women most of the time, partly because I grew up with my brother and his friends as primary influences, partly because of my interests, which run to politics, finance and action books. (And movies.)

So imagine my surprise when a meme was posted in my close-in fan groups, argument broke out and I was SOLIDLY on the female side.

It’s a communication issue. And the communication issue hinges on things men can’t conceptualize. Let’s say growing up male is different from growing up female in a way that’s very hard to understand, particularly since our culture, right now, is hell bent on telling us there is absolutely no difference (beyond the way you pee) between males and females.

The truth is that we’re different while still in utero, due to different hormone baths. And the brain structure of males and females are different. From a story perspective, btw, this was glaringly obvious when I advised my middle-school son’s writing club. All the girls, from the rough and tumble soccer players to the girly girls were writing deeply introspective “How I talked to my dead ancestress and found myself.” And every boy was writing “How I stopped the bank robbers, killed all the bad guys and got a medal.” (Of course by that metric, at 12, I WAS a boy, so this is not universal.) But those are relatively minor — note I said relatively — and if people are intelligent and willing to cross the divide. And some deep weirdos might have read enough action to present as boys. Ahem. Not that I own any mirrors.

However there’s a deeper divide we can’t bridge, and that’s: Females are smaller and weaker than men. Yes, even in shape, relatively buff females have no chance against ‘ninety pound weakling” males. Testosterone is a hell of a force multiplier, okay? Yes, I won some fights against males early on in life, but that was because I grew faster, and I had no actual brakes. When I fought, I fought for maximum damage. And fair wasn’t even in the world as my plans. (Which btw is typical female.) But also, in almost every case, I got LUCKY.

If a man is determined to hurt a woman, really determined, he’s going to hurt her. Badly. While a woman determined to hurt a man might hurt him. Maybe. If he’s careless and hindered by chivalry.

Note I mean PHYSICAL injury. Not emotional. Not mental. Physical.

With that in mind, this is the meme that caused the arguments:

Sigh. I get the woman completely.

Look, I’m sixty three (I JUST CHECKED, okay?) and I would not have accepted a tablet from a male friend when I was young. Unless he was one of the friends in my brother’s group who REALLY were all my ersatz brothers (and half of whom were medical students, which at the time meant practically jingled with free medicine bottles from medicine reps.) Even more shocking, I wouldn’t accept a tablet from a male (or female) friend now, except for a handful of you who are as paranoid as I am.

Right now, the main reason I wouldn’t accept a tablet, unless individually wrapped, still sealed (and even then!) is because fentanyl is known to be produced to mimic over the counter medicines, and while I’m not sleeping and kind of depressed, I’m not suicidal.

The reason I wouldn’t have accepted it then…

Well, for one, because you never take medicines, food or drinks from a male. Period. Unless he’s family and absolutely above suspicion, which the interaction above doesn’t read as. It reads as casual or “school” friend. I mean, if they’d known each other from childhood, or were relatives, he’d have said, right?

Even back in my day — GUYS EVEN BACK IN MY GRANDMOTHER’S DAY — blithely taking a substance handed to you by someone-not-a-doctor featured in what would now be creepy pasta stories. “And then I woke up, and all my clothes were off.” Or less dramatically “And then I woke up, and my wallet and money and my bus pass were gone.”

Seriously. Weaker people are very aware it won’t take much to overpower them. You just need to make them slightly tipsy or interfere with their judgement, and there’s tons of things that do that.

And if the men are now shouting “MOST MEN WOULD NEVER.” Thank you. We’re very aware of that. Look, we’ve got fathers, husbands, children. And we love your big shambling, grunting, hairy selves. At least those of us who are hetero and more or less sane do.

The problem is that we can’t be sure.

Right, so I’ve been doing a deep dive into true crime (I said I was depressed.) and one of the books I read was Anne Rule’s on Ted Bundy. I knew Anne Rule from having stumbled on her books before. I didn’t realize she’d known the ur-sex-killer of popular imagination, much less that she was friends with him. Her after-the book afterwords for republication are decisive about his being a monster etc. BUT if you read the book in sequence… well. She had NO idea. And in fact, while reading the book, I kept thinking “Wait, you’re still sending him money and worrying about him in prison? What’s wrong with you?”

What was wrong with her is that she wasn’t reading this in hindsight, where DNA has proved beyond doubt that yes, he did this stuff, and where I knew before I started reading what he was accused of. She didn’t. And even in the afterword she tries to reconcile the two images of him and can’t. Because the guy she knew, her CLOSE FRIEND shouldn’t be able to commit those horrific crimes against women and female children. And yet he did.

“Oh, come on, Sarah, a mass killer is a purely American phenomenon, and anyway psychopaths who are actual killers are very rare. How can you–.”

Very easily. Acktchually we don’t know how many KILLING psychopaths there are. I read this absolutely chilling off the cuff remark by a pathologist from Colorado who searches the mountains on the weekend for human remains. No, seriously. There’s a group of them, and it’s like a hobby.

How many do they find? Uh… I think they estimated (and I might be underreporting) that for every ten miles of forested area in a highway there will be an undiscovered corpse.

Wouldn’t everyone know if that many people were missing? Oh, dear. Look, we’re a highly mobile, relatively disconnected society. And our police departments build in “every teen is a potential runaway. Every wife is a potential deserter of family” (Every husband too.) People CAN and do disappear and never be noticed not to be there. And that’s without considering transients, recent immigrants, semi-nomadic professionals and oh, yeah, the massive group let in by the autopen.

I suspect the number of people who could disappear and never be heard of has gone higher too. More single people. More friendless people. More people working from home. More people without kids.

Look, I have kids, and if I cut communication, one would drive over right away, the other next weekend. Because I’m their mother, and my stopping answering would be profoundly weird.

However, if I didn’t, if it were just Dan and I, we could die, and our friends MIGHT notice. I mean, the one who has the keys to the house would eventually get worried if I stopped answering and come over, but since we exchange messages maybe every couple of weeks or so, and texts arrive at odd times and such, probably not for a couple of months.

Now, my case is a little different, because the close-in Discord group, the blog readers, the people at Instapundit would probably send someone over within a week. Still, that’s a week.

However, if I weren’t living my life in public…. and most people aren’t… How long do you think it would take?

As for Mass Murderers being American… They are only “A purely American phenomenon” because no one else labels them that way or make an industry of talking about them, except maybe the British. (And Portugal hides them if they can. I mean, they arrest the perp — maybe, last I heard their penal system… never mind — but they don’t talk about this much. It’s a cultural thing.)

Now that I’ve horrified you, the problem is that we don’t know who a mass murderer might be. Or just a plain bad dude. People can dissemble. Sometimes for YEARS. Psychopathy is much more common than it seems.

So just because you know someone and see no reason for the substance they gave you to be poisoned/adulterated… well, it doesn’t mean it isn’t.

And if you’re saying “But poison is a woman’s weapon!” Well, yes. Which means you big burly creatures also should be careful. It’s just a lot of you won’t. Because at the back of the brain, from childhood training, from a hundred playground scuffles you have “I can take care of myself” imprinted at brain-deep.

Women don’t. From youngest age, we learn we’re vulnerable. Even without the demonization of men, even believing most men are DECENT, we watch ourselves all the time. At least the ones of us who survive to be — checks again — sixty three (almost a Beatles song!)

This creates other adaptations: the men asked if that was the case, why give an excuse, why not just say “no.”

Because most women don’t. Look, if they’re friends, even casual friends, but particularly if she does consider him a romantic prospect, she won’t want to say a flat “No.”

Why not? Well, precisely. Because then he’ll ask “Why not?” and if she evades that without giving a reason, he’ll say “You’re afraid I’ll drug you!” and storm out in a fit. And if she keeps saying “Because no.” He’ll think she hates him, go home, think about it, realize she’s afraid, and then have a fit all over the webs. There is no way to win this. NONE. So we give excuses. “Oh, it’s not the right medicine.” “Not tonight, I’m washing my hair.” (Not, I really don’t want to go to isolated spot first thing out.) or whatever. We deflect. Try not to cause offense. Because we’re trying to protect ourselves, and we REALLY don’t think you’re a bad guy (or we’d have cut you off) but there’s just enough doubt that we have to protect ourselves. Because if we get in a situation where we can’t defend ourselves, we’re dead. You’re bigger, you’re stronger, you’re faster. Not just a little bit. A LOT. Again, the champion female soccer team can get beaten by an average MIDDLE SCHOOL BOYS SOCCER TEAM. Frankly, in a fight we don’t have a chance.

So, no, we’re not going to take a tablet from you (guys shouldn’t either. Mr. Chemistry doesn’t care if you pee standing up.) We’re also not going for a walk in that deserted park. We’re not going to close the door when we’re alone with you in a room. And in general, until and unless it’s absolutely required and we’re fairly sure you’d never hurt us (Or no one would ever get married) we’re not going to expose ourselves to danger. (BTW this is why I don’t care if you’re trans and identify as female. You still have male strength by and large. Don’t crowd us. And don’t try to get into a woman’s shelter.)

Now, in all fairness, the exchange above sounds to me like the guy is strong in the tisms, particularly his continued insistence and research to prove it would help her. And he’s probably innocuous. But I still see the girl as doing what’s only logical. And I WOULD DO THE SAME.

I just want to make clear why this is. We’re weaker. Physically you guys have the advantage.

Which, curiously, is why women should be taught to be gentlemen in business if they want to have a profession.

Wut? Sarah, you shifted gears so fast I heard the grinding. Oh, shut up. Look, I said above, women will delay fighting or fight by other means. Because we know once we have to fight we’ll likely lose. The problem is that when we fight, we don’t fight to win. WE FIGHT TO KILL.

This is set at the back of the brain. If this is a threat, you have to kill it, or it will come back and kill you. So for a woman there is no “Defeat, then friendship.” There is only “kill the threat. Eradicate it. Destroy it.”

The problem is instinct is a funny thing. This ports over to… business rivalry. Women in the C suite will absolutely over react and try to destroy competition. Which tends to destroy the business, or whatever they’re involved in, as well as a vast swath of men who are left wondering what they did to deserve this. (And some women. I am a bit dense on this, since I WAS raised to be a gentleman, and believe in defeat, then friendship.)

So, what we have here is not a war of the sexes, what we have here is a failure to communicate.

The guys, bigger, stronger, need to understand that we are smaller, weaker, and therefore have to be cautious beyond reasonable limits. Because a mistake can be fatal.

And women need to understand: not every charming men, not even a sizeable minority of them, are Ted Bundy. (Though serial killers can get hundreds of kills, so still be careful.) And just because you feel threatened, it doesn’t mean it’s a threat. That thing you keep jumping on isn’t a spider, it’s your earbuds! Or if you prefer: stop treating competition as a lethal, to the death confrontation. It’s not. If you want to play in male fields? learn to be a gentleman. The politics of personal destruction are awful in politics. They’re even more painfully awful in business.

(Oh, and your political beliefs are not your children. They don’t need you to kill to protect them. And they should be subjected to rational discussion, even if it hurts them. Kipling was right. Stop being an idiot.)

BUT above all, remember we are different, whatever the “progressives” (into the 1930s) say. We are very different. And this colors even seemingly innocuous interactions.

If an interaction with a woman puzzles you? Ask your female friends. They just might think the answer is obvious. (Or not. Female psychopaths exist.)

For the sake of continued humanity, stop assuming an entire sex is stupid or irrational. They’re just responding to different physical realities.

322 thoughts on “What We Have Here”

    1. Not even necessarily that she didn’t trust the guy. Rather, she was just being extra safe.

      Yes, the difference is subtle, but it’s there.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. It is like industrial accidents.

        You have a policy that provides a hazard mitigation, the policy has costs, and the industrial accidents are more frequent where people don’t have good policies, or where they cheat at policies that would in theory be good.

        Liked by 8 people

        1. Yes, this. And THIS point actually gets right to the core of the matter, even beyond and beneath those “typical male vs. female thought patterns” points (which are useful and significant).

          This is a choice… a balancing of risk-reward-cost-etc. that only some people would ever want to (over-)simplify to the point of “of course I trust XY.” And it’s not only the risk-benefit analysis; it’s the (prior) meta-analysis that asks, is the likely reward even worth doing the threat analysis in the first place? Is it even likely worth my trouble to think it through, to ask my intuition, at all?

          Sometimes it’s easiest to just ignore the pain, really and no-kidding.

          And for some of us, “just take this pill” is firmly in the land of Ain’t Gonna Happen. Some of us tend to have… idiosyncratic drug reactions. (Novocaine works fine, only dissipates 2x-3x times faster than what is ‘normal.’ Then it leaves a several-hour, well, hangover best slept off. Likely fast metabolism + nasty metabolites.) So any new substance is, must be, slightly suspect.

          And that whole “just download an App from Somebody You’ve Never Heard Of and plug in your credit card number and other personal data, because parking” conundrum from yesterday is, well, is there a word for insane and infuriating at the same time? No, I’m not flunking that basic security intelligence test, thank you so very much for asking if I’m stump-stupid, but NO. There is literally ZERO risk of credit compromise or identity theft from pumping quarters into a real meter, or handing over Federal Reserve Notes — the others, not so much; especially in an obvious When You’re Not The Customer, You’re the Product setting. And bonus hard-sell/ambush tactics by Authority Figures only make it worse, not in any way better.

          Admittedly all the above is “security mindset” stuff; but for some of us (and more than a few), it’s quite literally instinctive. And learned (say from family members of the same persuasion), as well, and practiced, though never perfectly. To borrow a phrase from Datarepublican, it really is personal sovereignty; and it really is something we should do a better job teaching people, most especially to younger people.

          “An armed society is a polite society.” — Robert A. Heinlein

          And your most powerful weapon is always the one between your ears. Necessary, if by no means generally sufficient.

          Liked by 5 people

    2. It didn’t dawn on me either. And I AM female, I’m just Odd. Probably on the spectrum, so I didn’t get a bunch of what femaIes are supposed to just KNOW, instinctively.

      And yeah, I’d probably have taken a pill from a friend who produced it in factory packaging. especially once googling happened.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. You’re not just trusting the guy. You’re trusting his supply chain. For an over the counter painkiller, that’s not a giant leap – if you see him take it out of the bottle. If it’s a loose pill?

      He could sincerely believe it is aspirin (or whatever), but the bottle right next to it is the same size and he dumped into his hand in the dark bathroom before having coffee.

      I totally get this. Probably because someone offered me – hmm, best not give the details to the Feds – a thing. That thing was not 100% what it was supposed to be. There was something non-standard in it. My reaction was most unpleasant. The offeror had no idea because it didn’t affect him that way.

      There was no malice. There was no deception. There was a problem. It will not happen to me, again.

      Like

  2. “Will you still need me, will you still drug me when I am Sixty Four?” not the Beatles.
    It hurts not to be trusted, that’s the simple truth, it hurts men not to be able to help. We are designed to remove pain from women, to protect them and when fear destroys that it hurts.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. And I thought you’d had your birthday this year (and that you are a few months older than me, not several months younger).

    Like

        1. Not where I grew up. Drizzling rain, sure, but actually very green and that’s when the fireplaces get lit, jam gets cooked, the new wine comes out and they start selling roasted chestnuts on the street corner.

          Liked by 1 person

  4. Several years ago, I read a lecture that a woman gave to a bunch of other women about “why men don’t commit (ie marry)”.

    Basically (in my words), she said that men don’t like women’s underhanded attempts to change them.

    And of course, those women don’t believe that their men would realize what they are attempting.

    And if their men challenged them about those “underhanded attempts to change them”, the women would lie and launch an emotional attack on the men. (Something like “you don’t love me”).

    Why would any man want to marry a woman like that? [Very Big Nasty Grin]

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I believe it was the Victorians who had a warning about what we’d call “relationships” wherein “she means to reform him, or he means to educate her” (or, worst of all, both at once).

      Even transposed to today’s contexts — yikes!

      Liked by 3 people

    2. I’ve never tried to change Dan, unless his habit impacts my life. And in that case we talk about whether I could change my routine so it doesn’t affect me. Usually the solution is in between.
      Note the only GF younger son brought home we said “Ditch her!” told us her plan to change him.
      Did his wife change him? They changed each other.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Being a single guy (and not likely to marry), I think changing yourself is likely to happen to make a marriage work.

        And if “you” think “your” partner “needs to change”, it is much better to be honest with “your” partner about it than by “secretly trying to change the partner”.

        Of course, “you” better be willing to listen when “your” partner responses with “suggestions” about “how “you” need to change”. [Very Very Big Twisted Grin]

        Liked by 3 people

          1. Indeed when Wife and I were married we were 23 (me) and 21 respectively with her turning 22 ~3 months later. We have molded each other over time, so much so that our daughters joked that they never tried the ask mom and then ask dad or vice versa trick as they knew the answer would be similar in most cases. We also had while she was in grad school to get accustomed to each other because trying to maintain an infant in a 500 sq ft studio apartment with a Grad student working to all hours and a starting Software engineer seemed foolish. In addition, as a physical chemist, she often worked with known teratogens, and that made it seem unwise to start anything.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Similar. I still had two terms to finish when we got engaged. Married between the two terms.

              We have a little more gap between us 22 (me) and 26 (him, 27 two months later). But we had known, volunteered, and hung out in the same group, for 4 years before. We actually met when I was 17 (18 six weeks later). Did not date until after I turned 21.

              Our son too did not do the “ask mom, then dad” routine.

              Like

  5. When you mention “period-specific medication” my mind goes to Laudanum and maybe Oil of Earthworm. Guess it’s because I’m a male … 😄

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Hey Sophomore year in College I had on and off migraines. I had Butalbitol (Aspirin, caffeine, and a muscle relaxant) that I didn’t take with me because it knocked me on my backside for 2-3 hrs. My freshman girlfriend (now wife) offered me Midol (or a generic equivalent), it is Aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine at about the same dosages as the Butalbitol. I was a bit squeamish about it at first (given it was for women in a state no real male will ever attain), but I read the label, and voila, it solved 90% plus of the issue. Stocked it in my backpack from then on; got some odd looks from the female populace when I’d pull it out and take 2 from time to time :-) .

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Which btw I didn’t know existed until I was working on the last Victorian we owned in CO and just about dying of muscle/back pains (not period. I’d just had everything removed a month or two before. Just overwork) And then a MALE friend recommended it. I went and bought it, and still take it if I’ve seriously overdone it. THAT STUFF IS MAGIC.

      Liked by 3 people

  6. I’ve known families whose children were all girls and some whose kids were all boys, and neither group can really relate well to the other in the area of childrearing. We had three boys and two girls, and the difference was obvious from before they walked.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. I have two girls. Although I am male, (really truly) I am pretty frickin’ Odd so I have a hard time relating to small boys of a more generic sort. I do far better with older boys until they wander into talking about Football (either flavor) which I care about as much as Olympic Crochet (if such existed). I had one girly girl and one more tomboy one so I can cope with the whole spectrum of girl ( although the emotional drama often eluded my Odd male mindset).

      Like

  7. The meds I take would kill a person who doesn’t need them and have been used in murders, which very much skews my view on prescription meds, and makes one of them a bitch and a half to figure dosage because my being small and active make figuring how much I actually need and when a game of darts (I’m just over the minimum effective dosage, but split to take twice a day to prevent taking too much or not having enough in my system for it to do its job).

    Because in the meme? my mind immediately went to wondering how much larger, bigger, more active is he than her? because if the dosage changes based on any of that she’d OD. Also, if the dosage is baseline different for men and women there’s no telling what will happen.

    Liked by 8 people

  8. In the example she should have just SAID I don’t take medicine I haven’t opened the factory seals. The lack of communication was because she wouldn’t say the real issue. Hurt his feelings? She did anyway and he still has no idea why because of the dishonest, stupid, evasive reason. Been places where I told the waitress to bring me beer with the cap on. TOLD her that. Doesn’t like it? TOUGH.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Is it possible to agree with both of you?

        At least they would be talking about the same thing, even if they disagreed.

        Like

    2. The only way to possible avoid any of that is to go on a whole long discursus about “Okay, I know you are offering kindly and out of concern for my well-being, I know you are trying to help me solve a problem, and I appreciate both the kindness and concern and the attempt to help, but [insert denial of offered help here]”

      You have to have a lot of presence of mind to come up with that on the fly, which might be slightly more difficult when you’re in pain.

      And he’d still likely be offended. Because he’s your “friend” and you’re rejecting his friendship-actions.

      Liked by 2 people

  9. I can understand the paranoia a little, because I got way overboard into ‘cautious’ thinking as a child.

    There are definite and fundamental limits to my understanding, because I am a man, and not in the smallest third of men, and after some point I just started mentally adjusting to the fact that I was this size.

    Generally, the skilled predators can be assumed to have tuned to the common perceptions in whatever group of potential victims. So there is no reliable way for a person of ordinary or even extreme intelligence to be 100% sure.

    Liked by 4 people

  10. Various odds and ends –

    I don’t know how common actual serial killers are in South Korea, but there have been a number of K-Dramas with serial killer villains over the years (one of them, “Tunnel”, is a time travel story that’s very good; it was also adapted into a Thai series that follows it very closely). One K-Drama even had the killer adapt his tactics after the initial manhunt (which was over a decade before the story started), and start leaving the dead women up in the mountains instead of in town for people to discover. And after the cops found the first body and knew where to look, they found a lot more of them.

    I suspect that many of your fights against males were before they hit puberty. No puberty means the testosterone difference and increased upper body muscle mass hasn’t yet come into play, which puts males and females on a much more even footing. As for the post-puberty difference, there’s a massive blind spot in society these days. It’s taken for granted by the majority of men and women in the US that a woman can beat a man, even one who masses considerably more than she does. Most fiction helps add to that belief, and a story making a deal out of the real way that the fight would go would probably be mocked as “unrealistic”. Despite that, there are many people who are aware of the disparity, and it’s a topic that comes up sometimes on X. Something I sometimes see is a post by someone talking about women claiming that they can beat any guy by kicking him in the crotch (a tactic sometimes seen in shows, which ignores that it’s also extremely painful when done to a woman), only to be informed that when the guy stands back up five seconds after taking the kick, she had better be in the next state by then because he will be enraged and out for blood. Some women believed what they were told. Others apparently persisted in their delusions.

    One story I sometimes tell to drive home at least the basics of the gender disparity is the story of Schwarzenegger at the fitness event in South Africa where someone kicked him in the back. He took just a single step forward, and then looked around trying to figure out who had pushed him.

    The corollary to all of the above is how mouthy women can be in many parts of modern American society, and not have to worry about having a male respond using his own clear advantages (i.e. with physical violence). I saw a post on X yesterday from someone who claimed that she had once been out with her boyfriend, and he had felt the need to pull her aside and warn her that if she didn’t watch her mouth, she was likely to get *him* laid out while trying to protect her from her own ignorant recklessness.

    Of course, guys can only get away with slugging the overly mouthy woman if the two don’t know each other. In a domestic violence situation, the guy is screwed either way. Either he’s a jerk who beats women, or he’s a wimp who can’t stand up for himself. This issue has led to some amusing short videos I’ve seen recently in which the woman is being mouthy to her male SO, secure in the knowledge that men don’t hit women. So he steps out of the room briefly, before returning in a dress and a wig. “She” is a trans-woman now, which means that it’s okay for “her” to hit a woman. :P

    Liked by 2 people

    1. One more story –

      I had a friend who was a Japanese national. She was just a bit shorter than I was, a touch older than I was, and I think had a normal build (not heavy set, but I don’t think she was overly thin, either). She used to sometimes greet me by coming up next to me and bumping my shoulder with hers. It was goofy, but not a particularly big inconvenience.

      Once (and only once), I bumped her back in response. It knocked her off of her feet, even though I didn’t think I’d bumped her very hard.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. The series I’ve read where the women, very few, are in battles with men, two things happen: 1) the fighting is setup so it is rarely one on one; 2) The discrepancy is made very, very, clear to the woman being trained.

        Essentially, not just strength is why the woman is pinned at the beginning of the lesson, it is the weight and upper strength of the man. Man VS Woman is not an equality contest. Women must fight men differently than they would fight another woman. They must use the man’s advantages against him. Better yet, fight at a distance, not one on one.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. Samurai’s daughters were trained, but in a kind of halberd — the length of the weapon helped with the strength problem. And the purpose was to defend the women’s quarters during a siege, or break out — both in which allowed women to concentrate forces and attack several to one.

          If the woman doesn’t have a magical or firearm equalizer, she needs to use craft and, if she can’t end it quickly, have an environment which she can exploit — things that can take her weight but not the man’s, for instance.

          Liked by 3 people

    2. “I don’t know how common actual serial killers are in South Korea, but there have been a number of K-Dramas with serial killer villains over the years”

      Anecdotally, I’ve noticed a lot of Korean serial killer movies and revenge thrillers on streaming. No clue if it’s a cultural thing or just selection bias, but some of them are pretty good.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Some of the scariest Japanese and Korean folktales, monsters, and “fairies” either revolve around or feature serial killers. Or the victims of serial killers who discriminate very badly between “innocent human” and “person who murdered me.” That’s partly due to the rage of the ghost at being murdered; they remain enraged until justice is done, or until they are banished. It often costs their (remaining) sanity in the process.

        It’s a genre in Korea and in Japan because their history and folklore includes LOTS of murders or murderous ghosts. One reason, reportedly, why Christianity made inroads in Korea is that the Christians didn’t need to be blind drunk to be “convinced” to take part in a funeral. Everyone else was terrified of the ghosts, so the only way to get the body through the cemetery and into the ground was to ply them with liquor, and lots of it!

        Liked by 6 people

    3. Weirdly, no. A lot of them, yes, but I was attacked a few times as an adult (Look, politics. Now you know why the election has taken my sleep.)
      BUT I have an ace in the hole: I berserk. Which means “I hurt myself” is irrelevant and Dan (who is the only person who can stop it when it starts) says I look …. strange. Those probably help. Plus my whole thing was “GET HIM DOWN and GET AWAY” I didn’t stay to kill him/give him another shot at me. Oh, yeah, and I was a marathoner.

      Liked by 5 people

    5. When Buffy the Vampire Slayer (movie or following series) came out, the twist was that a little petite blonde was killing monsters. And there were in-universe reasons for that, read MAGIC.

      Subsequent series took that concept and ran with it, without the magical influence, and poisoned the concept quite thoroughly.

      Liked by 5 people

  11. Finding bodies (or remains) in the woods…

    A few years ago, in a state park near me, a casual hiker found the remains of an unknown and (as far as I know) forever unidentified woman. This park is in the midst of Philadelphia’s western suburbs, not in the middle of nowhere. Probably has hundreds of visitors/day in the middle of winter, thousands on nice summer weekends. I used to use that trail myself – and still the body went unduscovered for so long it was a skeletal ID as a female. (So many deer get hit by cars and crawl into the woods to die that the stench is not that uncommon.) Get a serial killer who knows what to do? You may never find him.

    There’s one in Philly now that for years did porn films, and offed many of the women. They’ve found many remains at his house, still uncertain of the number. The victims were not really missed, by anyone.

    Let’s add in the “angles of mercy” who may just happen to oversee patients go terminal, again and again. They were all ill, who can know if their demise was assissted?

    On the bright side, vacationing in Italy right now and I’ve realized two important facts:
    1) Italy is not a first world country. Maybe a 1.5, on a good day.
    2) I’m never going to be able to eat mozzarelle cheese from America without judging it against what I’ve eaten here. The stuff in Naples and Sorrento is that much better.
    (Okay, I’m counting challenged) 3) The trains are between barely adequate and downright awful. Some talk about “European” trains, I think they’ve only ever ridden Swiss trains.

    Liked by 8 people

    1. To the extent that there is a gestalt “Europe” of orderly, predictable, politically correct “culture”, Italy is not really part of it, or at least the elites seem to be less successful at getting everyone else to play along.

      Liked by 1 person

          3. Did Italy get hit that hard with it? They fought a lot with Islamic fleets preying on their trade ships, and coastal raids from across the Mediterranean. But I don’t think they were ever under direct land threat (unlike the rest of southern Europe). The threat from the west never made it out of the Iberian Peninsula. And the Ottoman threat from the east didn’t get past the HRE and (later) Austria-Hungary.

            Like

          5. Not so civilized. Yes, it was the mob internally, (I yammer about patronage here

            https://writingandreflections.substack.com/p/power-patronage-problems)

            but if the Sabines actually refused intermarriage on the grounds they were robbers, they were right. The entire structure of society turned on going out to rob someone new every year, which gained loot and thinned out the ranks. When they had extended as far as they could rob, it started to collapse.

            Like

      1. I’m fascinated that this bit of Cold War terminology has somehow hung on. And it’s very Cold War, since First World was (originally) defined as “The US and its allies,” the Second World was “The USSR and its allies,” and the Third World was everyone else, although it quickly got redefined as “Everybody too unimportant (read: poor) to be worth forcing into either camp.”

        What would even define a Second World nation since the fall of the Soviet Union?

        Which doesn’t mean your intent is unclear; it’s just that the modern usage is poorly defined.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Mao ran with it after he broke with the USSR. His goal was to induce the Third World countries (which on his list didn’t entirely match up with the more traditional meaning of the term) to join a bloc that would orbit the PRC.

          I don’t think he ever had much success with it, though.

          Like

    3. I’m never going to be able to eat mozzarelle cheese from America without judging it against what I’ve eaten here. The stuff in Naples and Sorrento is that much better.

      You know, you could make a mint from making stuff Like There here, right?

      It takes paying attention to safety laws if it’s iffy, but you can.

      Like

    4. I was surprised by the amount and distribution of graffiti in Rome. It’s EVERYWHERE except the ruins. Apparently, anything older than 1000 years is off limits (or frequently cleaned). Everything else was fair game – “was” because it’s so covered now that there is no room for any more.

      Like

  13. I stopped reading after it became obvious you’re attempting to justify the fact you bints simply manufacture shit up in your head and expect us to play along.
    You perfectly demonstrate WHY men are walking away. NOT WORTH IT. You’re all looney. You literally think a male-cohort offering you some OTC Motrin MIGHT POSSIBLY RESULT IN A GREATER THAN 0% CHANCE OF ME BEING RAPED, SO NO NO NO!!!
    My wife said it was possible that I would divorce her one day and leave her stuck with 3 kids all by herself (state divorce laws weren’t actually consulted in this conclusion, but you’ll roll with her idea, because she’s a girl and I’m not), so that was why she wasn’t had to treat me as if I already had, to protect herself.

    You might stab me in the middle of the night, but I still sleep with the lights off… cuz I’m not a stupid crazy bint!!!!

    You’re ALL LOONEY TUNES!!!!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. You might stab me in the middle of the night, but I still sleep with the lights off… cuz I’m not a stupid crazy bint!!!!

      And you could easily kill any woman who tried.

      Liked by 7 people

      1. Not if I’m asleep! There is a 0% chance of me killing someone while asleep.
        This is exactly what is meant by you’re all nucking futs!!!!
        You have supported my argument with your attempt to refute it. Way to go, toots! Quit while you’re ahead.

        Like

        1. So not only are you insane, you’re ignorant.

          I was taught to wake up my uncles and specific other cousins by throwing socks from the door because yes, a sleeping man can still kill you.

          I’m just a little chick, but still nearly maimed a shipmate who woke me up the wrong way.

          Liked by 8 people

          1. Some people, no matter the gender, accumulate a hair trigger while sleeping due to stuff happens, and unless you know for certain you just don’t know, so the best bet if “hey, wake up” does not work is to do something like bump their foot from well outside any conceivable kicking arc.

            Anything along the lines of looming over and grabbing a shoulder is a really good way to get injured.

            Liked by 7 people

            1. Mom grew up with mice.

              My younger sister once got scared across the room (thank God not hit) when she dangled her hand down along mom’s arm to try to wake her up.

              Which is part of why “wake up male cousins from across the room via throwing socks.”

              Because while mom shoved my sister, my uncle? MIGHT HAVE KILLED HER.

              Liked by 4 people

            2. Both my brother and my younger son were impossible to wake up. My mom would send me to wake my brother, because what he required was “Tell me stories to wake up” I.e. someone babbling at him, until he was upright and in the bathroom showering. An almost 10 years younger sister was ideal for this job.
              And younger son must be natively non-violent, because one day I despaired of waking him, got a cup of ice and dumped it on him.
              HE CLUNG TO THE CEILING for a a while. Or at least that’s how I remember it. BUT he didn’t attack.

              Liked by 5 people

              1. Alas, I am one of those “wake remotely” types. And yes, reasons. Weirdly, my Miz Kitty can crawl on my hip without waking me. She is also the only thing on this earth that can wake me physically from certain nightmares without getting hit. And she does wake me, almost always from those bad dreams, with a gentle flex of claws on skin and a “MerrrrOW?”, to which my brain kinda goes “huh? WTF?”. Blessed to have the little thug.

                Liked by 4 people

    4. Well, sir, you’re a perfect example of someone who probably shouldn’t interact with ANYONE. Not even males. You have no theory of the mind and can’t tell other humans are really humans with their own consciousness.
      Thank you for the hint to block you now.

      Liked by 6 people

  14. I think I’ve been dealing with a variation of this. A man I assumed was a good friend asked why we hadn’t slept together. No problem, I answered the question and assumed the topic was over. Except that he won’t stop pushing, trying to get me alone.

    His latest trick is using “authority.”

    Likely he’s not dangerous in that sense. Doesn’t matter. The fact that he won’t acceot “no” as an answer and keeps trying to manipulate me tells me he has a problem. I won’t risk it.

    Liked by 9 people

    2. “His latest trick is using “authority.””

      Girl. Why are you talking to this man? That is the biggest flashing red warning signal I’ve ever heard.

      Arm yourself and stay away from that man. He’s dangerous.

      And by the way, why has nobody else in your life told you this? Do you live in a village of idiots?

      Liked by 5 people

      1. Several people have. Doesn’t change the fact when someone else calls me and tells me he needs a ride to wherever. He’ll call them, tell them he needs a ride, “suggest” that I might be willing, then the other individual calls me. If they suggest someone else, he refuses the ride. Yeah, boundaries.

        Liked by 7 people

            2. Oh, good. Sanity.

              I have a terrible memory of a old LARP/gaming friend who went to her grave saying “but he wouldn’t hurt me”.

              So very glad you see the problem.

              Liked by 3 people

              1. I know myself, know I’m paranoid as all get out and tend to think the worst of people automatically, so I often give people more credit than they deserve. It makes for some interesting mental gymnastics, trying to determine if the negative behavior I’m seeing is actually there.

                Liked by 3 people

                1. “…tend to think the worst of people automatically…”

                  This is your brain trying to save your life. When you see some dude and your brain says “wtf is that?!” then you should pay attention.

                  Pre-Covid, I might have been inclined to take it easy. Post Covid? They DESERVE to have you thinking the worst of them.

                  Liked by 1 person

          2. My response is “Oh yes, give him rides. When the car is stuffed full of OTHER passengers. Large, strong passengers you trust more than him [low bar, yeah].”

            After a couple times when the whole defensive line shows up for his “ride”, he will probably stop the coy workaround. (And try something else. I agree, NEVER EVER EVER be alone with this person.)

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Once upon a time..

              Freind of a girlfriend got sideways with an abuser. He tried to run her down with his car. Court became involved. Litigation. She was terrified because “anonymous friends” of his called to threaten her if she showed up.

              Well, aren’t we fierce!

              Yup. Just him.

              Some interesting folks decided, just at random, to observe court that day. Young Lady also arrived with a team of escorts, none of whom were under 6′. I was the lightweight at 200. (Grin)

              Sheisskoph looked worried. His lawyer looked…. very worried. Then the “audience” team shifted from the back rows to just behind the lady. All of them glaring. Bailiffs stepped over to query, but various “class assignment” statements and credential displays were sufficient to placate the uniforms. (Grin)

              Sheisskoph and lawyer looked…. rather concerned.

              Suffice to say, he had been counting on presenting the only testimony. Oopsie.

              It went decently badly for him. He left town before the month ended. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

              Liked by 1 person

            2. Mercy Said

              My response is “Oh yes, give him rides. When the car is stuffed full of OTHER passengers. Large, strong passengers you trust more than him [low bar, yeah].”

              Do not give him rides even then. This guy is WAY beyond the pale in his behavior. He feels rather psychotic; if he can’t get what he wants, he is going to cause trouble, and lots of it. As others down the thread have suggested, he is moving towards needing a restraining order if the behavior doesn’t stop immediately.

              Liked by 1 person

        2. Also, document document document. Specific examples, times and dates and whatever details. When he starts pushing boundaries with other people that way, say “He’s gone over the line” and then send them the documentation, because other people need to know that he’s buying red flags by the case.

          Liked by 4 people

      1. Yes. He’s dangerous. He thinks you are just being Coy by making other people call you for rides.

        He. Is. Not. Your. Friend.

        You. Are. His. Mark.

        Liked by 3 people

        2. I get it. I know you still will, but you do not need to worry about me. I have family nearby and others are aware. I’m armed at home, he doesn’t have a car, he won’t walk the five miles to my house and being who I am I have escape routes planned. I’ll make sure to check in and I’ll send Sarah a contact number.

          Liked by 1 person

  15. Not on the trust/vulnerability scale, but about ‘different’.

    It took me literally years to understand that most women think of their hair as a changeable decoration.

    Our daughter, between Junior and Senior year, dyed her hair a dark blue. It seemed silly to me, but harmless, so why not? Until it came time for Senior pictures, when she had the grace to realize blue hair would not be her best memory there. We spent quite a lot of money getting her hair back to something like a natural color On The Day Before Pictures. Would have been easier had she begun changing a Week Before.

    Talked to her last night. She is a probation/parole officer and we chat some about her case load. Some people Just Aint Right In The Head.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. LOL! My Niece liked to wear blue hair when a young Tween/Teen. School didn’t care as long as she behaved within limits. Good kid, just proudly Odd.

      New school: Freakout! “No way! Conform! Dye must be of natural colors! BadBadbad! Conform!”

      Yup. She dyed it Brown, Blond, and Red. Boldly. And when the HMFWIC told her to go home, she pointed out she met the written policy to the letter “colorS” (note plural, eh?) so no. My sis backed her up and backed down the HMFWIC. It took the Grundies a year to update the policy to ” a single natural color”, which she immediately did, changing weekly for a few months just to make the point she could and would make life difficult if they were difficult. “And I have been reading your policies and have found other interesting rules. Which I will share with classmates. Or can we go back to work now?”.

      I -LOVE- that kid! So proud!

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Good for her! It’s often fun Making Them Live By Their Own Rules.

        Son had some early academic performance problems in his first year of HS; they wanted to do Something with a negative consequence. Looked at the school procedures, and before they were allowed to do that, they required themselves to send an Official Notice.

        They missed that step, and backed down when I pointed it out.

        And then son and I had a discussion about Rules Lawyering, Necessity Thereof, and how I didn’t want to do that again. Performance improved.

        Like

    2. I view my hair like that. Maybe it’s being gay?

      I’ve got (goes to count) 36 different headshots that have been my work icon picture over 25 years.

      Liked by 1 person

  16. I’ve been team “men and women relate and communicate differently” forever, but my main issue with what he’s saying is that he’s wrong. There ARE different kinds of pain meds, that do different things. And if you take something for one kind of pain, and it actually requires you to take something else for relief, you’re just wasting time and effort. Also, period-specific meds like Pamprin and Midol contain other stuff that can help with the symptoms, not JUST pain meds.

    Otherwise, as long as it’s in packaging so I can tell what med it is, and you’re not just giving me something out of a pill case or whatever, I’ve never been that paranoid. And I wouldn’t accept an unwrapped pill from a woman, either. That’s just unsanitary.

    Liked by 6 people

    1. I will offer further that while we may teach girls not to accept food/drink/meds from guys, we don’t teach young men not to offer food/drink/meds, as far as I know. And we don’t teach them how to differentiate between an unopened bottle of water or a pain pill still in its package and a cup of jungle juice or happy pills. ANY offering must be suspect.

      So when someone is actively looking for happy pills or alcohol (like the Cornell 7 debacle)…

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Allow me to increase your paranoia.

        Anyone with bad intent, a hypodermic needle, and a soluble drug can contaminate an apparently unopened plastic bottle.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Yes, I’m aware. That will always be an issue, though, and isn’t really enough of a concern for me to change my habits.

          Like

      3. Of course we don’t teach men not to offer. Offering is an outgrowth of chivaley, meaning to an extent it’s baked into the culture. It also means that it simply wouldn’t occur to a guy that there’s any valid reason not to offer or accept.

        Meanwhile, LDS guys at events with a wet bar and in a mixed group of friends are advised to get their own drinks. There’ve been too many instances of “friends” pulling a “prank”, and arranging to have the server bring over something that’s not what the LDS guy ordered.

        Liked by 4 people

        1. We ACCIDENTALLY did this to our LDS friends. Dan invented a cocktail, and had it pre-mixed. WE had the recipe with it, but they thought “It’s the Hoyts. It’s never alcohol at parties.” And it didn’t TASTE it. Yeah, that was fun. We were forgiven, because we had the recipe right next to it, but….

          Like

          1. That seems familiar. Elder Daughter took a 1960’s culture class in High School. They had to bring some food or item in from the early 60’s She found a recipe for Grasshopper pie. The name seemed familiar from things my parents made, so I looked at the recipe and realized that the filling, if made as planned, would be 15-20 proof. We looked on the Internet, and I suggested she look for Baptist cookbook versions (as many Baptists are teetotalers). We found one and had a non-alcoholic Grasshopper Pie, although the teacher was dubious for the same reason I was until she assured him no liquor was used in the recipe.

            Like

            1. Oooh! and Tequila Sunrise Cake! Not a lot of tequila, mostly in the glaze, but one of my favorites.

              Yes, I would label or otherwise inform potential consumers.

              Like

        2. Or worse, people who refuse to believe you have allergies and deliberately setting out to prove you don’t.

          Like

          2. MIne too. She also denied I was color blind despite my repeatedly failing the test. We always knew when she had given number one son something he wasn’t supposed to have when she’d ask about his behavior after being with her. it was infuriating

            Liked by 2 people

        3. ROFL. If I go somewhere with friends I usually bring my own water. They’ve all heard the stories of how I react to caffeine and a number of them have stated they might slip me some just to see what happens.

          Like

          1. Ummm. Okay: I don’t know you, it’s none of my business, lots of commenters have already addressed the subject at least as well as I could, etc.

            Of course that’s not gonna stop me.

            A common tactic among human predators (financial and otherwise) is to make their prey feel bad for being uncooperative. With respect, from a total stranger whose business it ain’t none of: it sounds like that works on you a little bit.

            You have a predatory-sounding guy Not Taking No For An Answer, you have “friends” carrying news about you to him, and messages from him to you, and you think some of these “friends” might slip you “harmless” substances so they can watch your amusingly idiosyncratic reactions to them.

            Please put all those observations together and be guided by your conclusions.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. The people involved here are more mutual acquaintances than friends, but I get your point. Yes, it does work on me to an extent, but I’m aware and I’m working on it.

              Liked by 2 people

  17. My office is currently all men except for our boss. For a while, we had a young, athletic female coworker, too. Once she was showing a taxpayer something on her computer and this big, heavy-breathing man was standing right at her shoulder peering at the screen and I could not understand why she did not have the self-awareness to allow him to do that. I guess I was 10 feet away and this is a public office so why worry, but at the same time I strongly suspect that she had swallowed a lot of that “men and women are physically the same” kool-aid. Here’s hoping she never has that assumption challenged.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. It’s also possible that she had internalized another lesson–don’t antagonize someone who can break you in half. So she remains professional, doesn’t let him know it bothers her, then goes out to her car and shakes after work.

      Like

  18. Weaker people are very aware it won’t take much to overpower them.

    Physically weaker, less trained… there’s a whole short but considerable list. And, though it is quite gender-disparate, for the reasons given, it’s not exclusively a female thing by any means. And that awareness usually extends to, ‘overpower them’ and then whatever they want to happen, pretty much does next… which leads quite logically to a very basic “use it or lose it” mindset.

    Authoritative Source (may all peace and blessings be ever unto him), Robert A. Heinlein:

    “Never frighten a little man. He’ll kill you.”

    Speaking personally, though I have The Testosterone Advantage and have been the proverbial six feet plus or minus only a trifle most of my life now, I don’t have much unarmed-combat training of any kind, formal or informal, and I was pretty much born without the gene or the instinct for “play fighting” that I’ve seen so prevalent in men around me. Sparring I do most certainly understand; but the idea of a “fair fight” that is essentially a social license for the bigger or better trained to beat the snot out of others not so fortunate or combat-effective more or less at will is quite extravagantly foreign to me.

    Couple this with a natural “security mindset” (like “a copy-editor’s eye” both a blessing and a curse) that sees into most things instead of blithely assuming the best… and I’m lucky very few people have ever “stepped inside the circle” far enough and fast enough to rouse that, very literal, self-defensive killer instinct.

    The best short summary of this — which I almost never say out loud — is, “I fight like a girl.”

    Or maybe the old Highland clan motto (not mine) is as good: Touch not the cat ‘bot a glove.

    Liked by 6 people

    1. Hear. Hear.

      Not that I can improve on Heinlein, but I gotta say: Never frighten anybody. A “little” man is just easier to frighten. You may be pushing a button that you didn’t think was that easily pushed.

      I don’t have the “fighting is for fun” thing either. I try to project a vibe of harmless goofiness, but I too am always ready to “fight like a girl.” One way or the other, it’s only gonna go for a few seconds.

      And like you, people don’t seem eager to Step Into The Circle; not with a harmless goofball who may bear the Mark of Cain.

      Liked by 1 person

  19. Not wrong about fighting to kill.

    When I was a teen my parents put myself and my younger sibs into martial arts together. (Mom told me I couldn’t date until I hit green belt, which I did in three months flat, and then couldn’t get a guy to say yes…) Once we hit black belt rank, the dojo hired my younger brother and I as assistant instructors. One day, a young lady with an adorable crush on my brother asked us what would happen if we fought.

    “We wouldn’t. We know better.”

    “But what if you did.”

    “Again, we wouldn’t. Master Chung has been very clear that using this to beat up or intimidate your brothers and sisters or even kids at school is wrong and you should not do it.”

    “But what if you did?”

    It was clear that she wasn’t going to stop asking, so I finally gave up. “Fine. If we were just sparring, he’d win, every time. He’s taller, he’s stronger, he has longer arms and legs.”

    This pleased the young lady with the crush. However, one of the moms was actually paying attention to what I said. She says, “But?”

    “But, if for some reason the lives of people I cared for hung in the balance, I would beat him every time. Because I’m meaner.”

    When I meet new people, specifically men, I consider ways they could attack me, and ways I could deflect, counter, and/or escape. Not because anyone has ever attacked me (other than my brothers in a play/teasing sort of way), but because you can’t be too careful, and you hear stories. Better to have a plan a not need it, then need it and not have it. Always better safe, than sorry.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. There are people who always size up whoever new they see in their vicinity, always locate the exits on entering a space, and who you may see do weird things like flicking their eyes along the rooftops every once in a while because, in the age of smartphones, nobody ever looks up.

      And then there’s the rest.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. You should always check what the nearest exit is. You do not want to stampede for the door you came in by if there’s a fire.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. The Jim Mattis rule: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

      And there’s always “Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.” I’m 77 in 3 weeks, and I’m armed. And I’m inclined to be mean, too.

      I stay home a lot …

      Liked by 5 people

      1. “If he is too old to fight…”

        Yeah. Because you can’t win at kung-fu anymore, and you can’t run because [list of injuries] so you’re going to do something sudden and decisive.

        And because you’re old, you’ve had a lot of time to think about it and create something special for the goblin who’s trying to beat up an old man.

        Like

        1. News in the past few years has reported a number of assaults on older Asian folks.

          They’re not all Gichin Funakoshi, but good heavens! Why would one take that chance?

          Then again, I’m not in favor of assaulting anyone. Victim selection is an art: from Jeff Cooper –

          If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury. Therefore what he must be taught to fear is his victim.

          Liked by 2 people

  20. However there’s a deeper divide we can’t bridge, and that’s: Females are smaller and weaker than men. Yes, even in shape, relatively buff females have no chance against ‘ninety pound weakling” males. Testosterone is a hell of a force multiplier, okay? Yes, I won some fights against males early on in life, but that was because I grew faster, and I had no actual brakes. When I fought, I fought for maximum damage. And fair wasn’t even in the world as my plans. (Which btw is typical female.) But also, in almost every case, I got LUCKY.

    Another angle is knowing how to use your body for a job– when I was a short 15 year old girl, I could change a tire and the boys in my class couldn’t.

    The only reason was that they hadn’t learned/weren’t willing to use their body in the correct manner.

    Contrast with Mach, one of my Marines, who just because it was funny and his first car was also a Neon, knew that four teen boys could lift a Neon and “park” it anywhere they wanted.

    I do not, did not, and never will short of a mecha-suit, have that much ugga-power.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Note:
      I know this because Mach was not shy about making it clear that anyone who “reparked” my car would be getting his attention, and demonstrated “hey, Fox! Did you know you don’t have to back up your car?”

      Liked by 5 people

      1. And digressing again— he was one of “my” Marines because I got assigned to help the guys who might fail, pass tests.

        He really didn’t need it beyond calming down and maybe a little work on test taking tactics, but he’s a nice guy, and also like central casting “I need a big Marine.” (Six foot eight, I believe. For those who have ever seen a Neon– yes, I did ask him to sit down in it, because I was not sure how he’d fit. Answer is: barely.)

        Liked by 4 people

        1. I’m 6’4” and I somehow fit in a Cessna 152 for all of my initial flight training when I was in college. I have looked closely in recent years at that airplane and have no frelling idea how I did that thing, with or without a headset.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Younger son spent an LC with his head tilted sideways in the back of the only rental we could get by the time we made it (late night) to Atlanta airport after a bad day of flying and delays. Yeah….

            Liked by 4 people

      2. Because physics is cool, you can also do that with a class full of pampered noodle-arm teen girls. As the physics teacher used to demonstrate on the chemistry teacher’s car. (The teachers were friends.)

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I never had anything to do with such, but there are believable anecdotes of Beetles on top of accessible school roofs.

        I did help unload the stone/concrete table tops for our new chem lab; I was early to my HS senior year and was impressed. Didn’t even get the ale with the King’s Shilling in it, first!.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Or put said Beetle Bug on someone’s front porch, or turn it sideways in the parking spot between two cars, or put it in the top administrator’s office then pack balloon in said office with it. “Where are *****?” was heard. Answer? “Falling down laughing.” Just some stories I have actually heard,

          Liked by 1 person

      4. The Reader knows that 8 drunk college students can pick up a British sports car, carry it partially up a steep hill and set it sideways on said hill. How he knows and the funny aftermath with the Reader and the head of the campus police are stories for another day.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. guys, guys, Portuguese drivers love parking in the tram line (TBF they park EVERYWHERE. Laws are for other people). So, trams carry two long poles. When there’s a car on the line, they pick four or six passengers and use the pole to move the car off.

          Like

  21. :reading greentext;

    Ah, yes, women just use specific blends of pain killers with other additives because we’re too stupid to realize “this makes stuff not hurting.”

    We totally pay more for the same result.

    Not pay more because one works, and the other does not.

    And that is before you acting like the kind of “friend” that needs to look up the meaning of friend, and it’s not “your boundaries do not exist.”

    Liked by 3 people

    1. It does come off poorly just in concept.

      If the guy could not contain his superior knowledge just one more second, I think the right way to go about it would have been to tell her the med name with “this works great for me” and leave it at that. No offers of “here take this” to creep anyone out or be misunderstood. Unless she needs an ambulance, assume she can source her meds herself.

      And as to “girl pain meds” one of the “one secret tricks” way back when in certain male circles was that Motrin kicks ass for pain, even if it was pretty much solely marketed back then to the female market.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Yeah, I’ve heard of young sports guys asking their female friends to buy them Motrin exactly because it works rather well, but Icky Girl Stuff.

        Going more geeky, mixing meds is bad juju. There’s very good reason that it took until recently for “dual action Advil” to be a thing. (It’s the advil that’s motrin and tylenol!)

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Rereading the stupid chan story, he’s just calling them painkillers, which I misinterpreted as meaning that they were prescription, which was a large part of my initial ‘hell no’ reaction.

          But even if they’re not, there are all sorts of reasons to not want random over the counter meds for specific problems. People tend to know what works for them and will stick with that.

          The only over-the-counter pain medicine my boyfriend will take is Tylenol because he insists that it’s the only one that actually works for him. I’m not going to argue that either because he’s speaking from his experience, which I do not have.

          From that angle, it feels like the girl in the story could be making the exact same kind of argument – she wants a specific medicine because the last time she had the specific pain she’s experiencing that medicine worked the best and it’s quite possible she’s had other stuff not work as well.

          Which makes it feel like the guy is trying to show, not only how good a friend he is, but how much smarter he is than her, by knowing that the medicine he’s offering will do the exact same thing as the one she knows works for her, her own experiences being irrelevant to the situation.

          Liked by 5 people

          2. “Which makes it feel like the guy is trying to show, not only how good a friend he is, but how much smarter he is than her, by knowing that the medicine he’s offering will do the exact same thing as the one she knows works for her, her own experiences being irrelevant to the situation.”

            Speaking from the male perspective, you’re still reading way too much into it. The OP literally thinks painkillers are interchangeable, so the woman’s friend must be wrong. He looks it up to settle the dispute, at which point she decides she doesn’t want to argue anymore and brushes him off.

            He’s not belittling her, manipulating her, or showing off. He’s just trying to solve the problem at hand using a faulty piece of information.

            Like

            1. Part of what I’m saying is based on the fact that he felt the need to post it and that the post was in the form of a green text story on a chan site. That it’s on a chan site makes me tend to assume certain things about the people involved, especially when they’re posting about certain topics.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. He posted it because he was confused by the interaction. In his mind, there were two possible responses she could have given: refute him or concede. Instead, she brushed him off, which read to him as rude (refusing to admit you’re wrong) and/or baffling (playing by rules he doesn’t understand). If she’d told him about Midol or made another excuse, he would have understood the interaction and wouldn’t have posted.

                This is part of a large genre of greentext of 4chan users not understanding basic social interactions. As Sarah said, a touch of the ’tism.

                Like

        2. How is Motrin icky girl stuff? It is literally the stuff the Navy gives people for pain. (“Take two motrin and come back in two weeks if it isn’t better.) It’s ibuprofen. Are y’all possibly confusing Motrin (Ibuprofen) with Midol (which is period meds that often contain caffeine and a diuretic AS WELL AS pain meds [actually, acetaminophen or tylenol]?

          Liked by 1 person

          2. I typo’d vs Mydol– in no small part because I used OTC three times before I hit 18, in one case where we thought I’d broken my collar bone.

            My dad has a really epic weird reaction to Vitamin M, high as a kite.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. For weird, how about an allergy to aspirin?

              Had a patient with documented anaphylactic reaction; she said it wasn’t any fun.

              My mom turned out to be ‘allergic’ to Norco (Hydrocodone/acetaminophen); good pain relief, but hallucinations. 80’s and kidney function impairment mess with clearance.

              Liked by 1 person

              2. I have a sensitivity to ALL Opiates. it causes the most absurd reactions, ranging from complete lack of balance (like, falling over) to just …. interesting hallucinations.
                I always ask not to be given the stuff. Because I won’t take it.

                Like

                1. I found out after a bad motorcycle “incident” that opiates don’t work on me worth a damn. The Percodan label said “take 1 to 2 tablets every 2 to 4 hours” — which, when pill #4 after hour #2 still hadn’t done jack, I figured I’d better just write off Percodan, rather than see whether the Respiratory Depression part did work as advertised.

                  Liked by 1 person

                2. “sensitivity to ALL Opiates“

                  –

                  Same. Not same reaction. Much more mild. Opiates put me to sleep, until they don’t. By the time I was out of the hospital Oxi was not helping, and it was not putting me out at night. I quit taking it. Tylenol works fine.

                  Like

              3. About ’71 I had a girlfriend with an aspirin allergy. Her mother(!) had dropped off some cold capsules that day. My car was unavailable, so I called for an ambulance, as I understood what an anaphylactic reaction could entail. Slooowww driver, no attendant. She flatlined. Ear over heart, fingers on neck and wrist. Gone for maybe 4-5 minutes.

                Then a “thump”. After a bit, another thump. A bit more time brought another, and she twitched. By the time we arrived, she was conscious. The ER doc had dealt with her before, and after hearing my recounting of the transit, he advised her that if she encountered aspirin again, even in his ER, she was unlikely to survive.

                Each episode gets worse than the previous one, and that one was terrifying to me as a powerless observer.

                Like

  22. Well, for one, because you never take medicines, food or drinks from a male. Period. Unless he’s family and absolutely above suspicion, which the interaction above doesn’t read as. It reads as casual or “school” friend. I mean, if they’d known each other from childhood, or were relatives, he’d have said, right?

    A neighbor– one I trust with our children, although part of that is my kids nagged him before I got a chance to ask if I did trust him, and other mitigating factors like “no literally it’s either their field or our field and I can see it all”– brought over a tray of cookies after a big his-family crisis we helped with.

    If they hadn’t been Sam’s Club sealed cookies, I’m not sure we’d have accepted them. As it is, we did close eyeballing.

    For years, we’ve taken cookies or candies or similar treats to cop stations on holidays, because they work those days.

    “I take food from you” is, historically speaking, a gold standard sign of “I trust you with my life” because you are doing so.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. And that last point is seriously intertwined, in many cultures, with the “an offer of food is an offer of [peaceful] hospitality, and accepting it is agreeing to respect that peace” idea and cultural obligation. It’s one of those ideas that seems to be so widespread, because it works. To breach that standard by offering tainted food, especially deliberately, often marks you as outcast or outlaw or worse. (And also note the traditions of various more than just human People travelling in disguise, e.g. in classic Norse lore — socially useful as well as good sacred storytelling.)

      “The blessing of bread and salt” is common to more cultures than I could shake a stick at…

      Liked by 6 people

      1. And that last point is seriously intertwined, in many cultures, with the “an offer of food is an offer of [peaceful] hospitality, and accepting it is agreeing to respect that peace” idea and cultural obligation.

        :looks meaningfully at the “hey you can eat for free at mexican places because walking in to order doesn’t LEGALLY mean you’re going to pay:

        Liked by 2 people

          1. “Oh but I didn’t ACTUALLY PLACE AN ORDER so that was them freely choosing to give me the chips!”

            …. yes I do have three or four folks I will never turn my back on because they laid out that logic.

            Liked by 3 people

      2. And also note the traditions of various more than just human People travelling in disguise, e.g. in classic Norse lore — socially useful as well as good sacred storytelling.)

        Liked by 2 people

      3. Which is probably why we are the only species that bares its teeth as a sign of happiness and amity. “Let’s eat together.”

        Liked by 1 person

  23. “…the problem is that we don’t know who a mass murderer might be. Or just a plain bad dude. People can dissemble. Sometimes for YEARS. Psychopathy is much more common than it seems.”

    I believe this to be everyone. Yes, every single human, male and female and intersex. Young and old and in between.

    Everyone.

    You may not know where the line is that, once crossed, you do Bad Things. It’s a form of innocence that I very much approve of and think everyone should have, but that is not the way the world works. It is not psyochopathy, though that’s a different path that gets to the same end.

    Any and every person has within themselves the capacity towards violence innate. Even toddlers and infants with their innocent lack of knowledge of consequence have it.

    What stops this is, in my opinion, civilization. The civilized man chooses to rule his impulses instead of being ruled by them and, by and large, this works very well. This does not eradicate the impulse and capacity, but it does suppress it. Under the right (or wrong, as it were) circumstances, you, dear reader, could be a murderer. As could I.

    Avoiding the situations that could lead to increasing that small but still present chance helps, too. Avoid crowds. Steer clear of obviously insane people. Do not place yourself in situations near to trouble. Do consort with friends and family and those of like mind.

    You’ll probably not be a murderer, mass/multiple or the like. Very probably.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. This is not a pleasant contemplation to a lot of people; but anyone who’s read and appreciated much at all of Carl Jung’s work, and especially his idea of the collective unconscious, won’t find it any too novel. If we all, we humans, really are all connected at some level (some connections requiring a far deeper ‘dive’ down-and-inwards than others, of course)… then “nothing that is human is foreign to us.” Neither the “good” nor the “bad” nor the “ugly” — nor the beautiful.

      And it might be that all of these things exist, not by mere happenstance but for a reason, with a purpose. And I’m not talking about simply-superficial good-vs-evil pure and simple types here, but something deeper and subtler by far. Something along the lines of, “All things work together for good for those who love The Lord and are called according to His purpose.”

      All things. No ‘things’ excepted, given the stated terms and conditions.

      Carl Jung again, more or less word for word: “Personal growth is not achieved by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

      Some things you read stick with you; this next little bit has stuck with me to the point one of my characters (from the still-growing not-urban fantasy) quotes it to describe herself, in a half-punning but direct way. From the first Dorothy Grant book I ever read, Shattered Under MIdnight:

      “I, uh, saw what you did to that man, and…” His voice trailed off.

      “He should have told you to go on up, too. That’s not for good men like you two to see.” Akrep judged by the cut of shadow against the moonlit road, and slung his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “I’d pray you never have to learn to do that yourself, but I think God stopped listening to me on that topic a long time ago.”

      “Um.” The boy cleared his throat, softly. “What are you?”

      “I’m what they send in when the good men fail.” That was answer enough. He sighed.

      ___

      It may well be we, collectively, do need people to send in, when the merely-good men fail. To ride the demons of darkness, though always entirely and strictly in the service of light.

      Like

  24. I’ve given women Advil on a few occasions without incident. The ones who didn’t want any said “No thanks” without making up an excuse. I’m sure some women turn down any pill on general principal (fair enough), and I’m sure they use facing-saving excuses to avoid unpleasantness (sensible).

    But in a high-trust context (work, school, friends), it’s perfectly normal to borrow medicine, have someone else pick up your food, ask someone to watch your stuff, etc. It happens all the time. So absent further evidence, I interpret the punchline of the story as “Anon doesn’t know about Midol” and not “She thinks he’s a serial killer”.

    Like

    1. Not thinks he’s a serial killer. But doesn’t blindly trust him not to let him intrude that far.
      High trust? You must practically work with family. (I’ve taken medicine from family friends. I’d take food from them too. BUT as a young woman… uh, no.)

      Liked by 3 people

      1. In my experience, what I described has been the norm from college onward, across a wide variety of high-trust social contexts. That includes hanging out with friends, at work, and even coed sports trips. I’ve seen signs of the female safety calculus here and there, but the baseline behavior (among people who know and trust each other) is nowhere near as paranoid as what you described in the post.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. I’m sure it’s both. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been lucky to study and work in nice places with generally nice people. But the women I’ve met at those places are not nearly as cautious what you described.

            (And yes, the women’s shields went up around strangers, at parties, walking home at night, etc. I’m not talking about idiots. But their sphere of trust extended to at least some coworkers and teammates, in group settings, and not just immediate family.)

            Liked by 1 person

            1. It takes relatively little for the behavior to change. Rumors, so-and-so knows her cousin who went wild and moved to the City and Bad Things happened, not to her or anyone she knew but somebody she worked with’s ex’s last boyfriend’s sister’s aunt had it happen to her so you know it could happen to anybody.

              The culture is different in places like colleges and college towns and the like. Even different ones. An open carry state local college is quite different from a big name college town that pulls from the nearest five states. And female trust is not an infinite resource. There are limits and any man knows these boundaries can shift counties at the drop of a hat. A woman’s got to have her head on a swivel and a sharp eye out especially when she’s alone. And she is alone around people that may not have her best interests at heart.

              Any good mother teaches her daughters this. Why? Because a parent’s job is to prepare them for an uncaring world that definitely does not have their best interests at heart. Innocence is all well and good when one is a child. An adult carries both terrible power and heavy responsibility of making good choices.

              Just as a father teaches a man to measure and control his strength, not just because recklessness can hurt himself, just as we are taught and teach our young ‘uns to watch out for the women in the family, just as we are taught to earn our place every day, so do women have their own ways. Thou and I might be safe enough as men go, sure. But that’s not the safe way for an unknown woman to bet. And the wise ones prepare accordingly.

              Liked by 4 people

          2. :points at his interaction here:

            Stan “scans” as trustworthy, even when I’m arguing with him.

            And that’s before questions of if “no, thank you” was translated at all vs the meme.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. And in this case “trustworthy” means you can just flat say “no, thanks” rather than finding a reason to go “no, no pills from you, but said so you don’t go and scream on line about it or something way worse.”

              Like

  25. “Before I start this post, let me say that I’m not proposing we use genetic engineering to make men and women the same.”

    Yes, thank you. Genetic engineering is going to mostly make a mess of four billion years of ruthless natural selection. I think the Covid mad science shot has adequately demonstrated that to the current adult generations. Yes kids, the Covid shot is genetic modification. It modifies your very own cells.

    “However, over the last few days I’ve become convinced that at least half of the “war between men and women” is a failure to communicate.”

    Sarah, I feel you are being far too kind here. The “war” seems to be 10% failure to communicate, and 90% ultra-smooth grade horse manure.

    I bear (circumstantial!) evidence!

    Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) ·

    Absolutely incredible…

    "Wedgewood Polls" just admitted they are a fake polling firm and made up their polls.

    Their fake polls have been posted in both the NYT and Nate Silver’s averages. pic.twitter.com/ceZU2NdpK5

    View on X

    I do understand that this fake polling firm was not faking polls about the Man/Woman Wars specifically. I’m merely asking, is there ever only one fake polling firm? Like, is there ever only one cockroach?

    They’re pretty much lying, to my eye. Combination of clout chasing, click farming and Marxism.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Apparently their fake polling was instrumental in getting his opponent to drop out and clearing the primary field in Michigan for El-Sayed to cruise through. But they were just running an innocent practical experiment. Totally not fake-polling only in one direction all throughout this campaign cycle in order to make certain things happen, and only announcing their experiment when they were about to get outed by Independent press.

      Liked by 6 people

  26. I recently watched a documentary about The Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe). The documentary was not about Sutcliffe per se but about the history and culture surrounding the hunt for him (somewhat of a mess, at one point, the police had to reinforce the floor of the investigation team’s office because of the amount of paperwork).

    One thing that puzzled me was a woman who was angry because the police had recommended that women should not be outside unaccompanied at night. She, and a bunch of others, went on protests about the matter.

    The advice from the police seemed eminently sensible to me and I couldn’t understand why she was angry. Yes, she should be able to walk naked down any street in Leeds without issue, but was it sensible to do so?

    I could understand why people were frustrated about the time taken to catch Sutcliffe (over 5 years) and many mistakes were made but I don’t think being angry and protesting is a reasonable response. The police were mostly doing their best but faced a massive logistical exercise at a time when computers where large and require air-con.

    The irony was that Sutcliffe was finally apprehended by a sharp copper, rather than the massive logistical exercise, so these various protests were, in my view, pointless.

    I am not blaming the woman involved just don’t understand the reaction.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. You can teach men one-on-one. Isolate the perpetrator and administer the lesson. As you stated below, MOST don’t. There will always be bad people, and some men will express it that way.

        Liked by 1 person

      1. The human brain latches on to edge cases in the “bad, possibly dangerous” category for a reason. It kept the fragile apes on the African plains alive.

        That doesn’t mean that impulse isn’t blinkered from time to time. “Teach men not to rape” is about as dumb as it gets. And worse, it’s too low.

        Men of my years were taught to a much higher standard. Protect women, even if you do not respect the woman in question. Honor and respect are extended because that’s what you have if that’s what you are doing. “Don’t ever hit a woman” is lower on the scale in the same vein.

        It is down in the muck of things like “don’t aspirate the dihydrogen monoxide” and “do not deliberately set fire to your own house while you are inside it.” If you feel the need to tell a man “don’t rape, that’s wrong,” then I would argue the fellow in question left civilized behavior quite far back, long before things got to that point.

        Liked by 3 people

    4. See that comment I made above about the woman who was told to quit being mouthy by her boyfriend because otherwise he was going to get laid up trying to protect her.

      Some people will “get it” when it’s properly explained, as that woman did. But so much of our society is so “safe” that many people don’t “get it” until they take the axe to the face (at which point it’s too late).

      Like

    5. “…angry because the police had recommended that women should not be outside unaccompanied at night.”

      Ah yes, that one.

      Once upon a time I had an epic internet bun fight with the Usual Suspect crowd from Vile-666 and the camelflop blog. Teaching men not to grape. (miss spelled for the bots, you know. They’re everywhere.)

      A linky: https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2017/11/more-sjw-wankery.html

      TL/DR, certain women become offended if you even suggest that they might take some small responsibility for their own personal safety. Such as by not going out alone after dark, because there’s a killer on the loose. Because WE are supposed to keep them safe! THEY are supposed to be protected at all times, under all circumstances, BECAUSE!!! No rationality, just because, okay?! “But I’m a girl!” is a deeply rooted thing in some people, it seems.

      Hi, Bonnie! You’re famous again.

      Like

  27. Incidentally, you might not want better communication on this topic. Men don’t normally think like women, so they take the polite excuses at face value. The conversation gets a lot more uncomfortable if the man knows that “that’s the wrong painkiller” or “I prefer Pepsi” is code for “I think you’re trying to drug me”. At best, you’re in for an awkward joke, and it gets worse from there. (The men who would be chill about it are the same ones who would accept a simple “no” in the first place.)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Alas, the case in point is that the man didn’t take the polite excuse at face value, and indeed, insisted on proving that it was a polite excuse and not a “real” reason.

      If he had taken the excuse at face value, there would be no post on this topic.

      Liked by 3 people

      2. My point is that he was arguing (“sperging out over”) the efficacy of different types of painkillers and not whether she thought he was a serial killer/rapist. The argument stayed firmly in the realm of the excuse, which gives the woman lots of room to safely maneuver.

        Contrast that with if he knew what she was (supposedly) thinking. In which case the argument starts with him protesting “But I’m not a rapist!” and leaves the woman with only bad options to try to de-escalate.

        The excuse worked not because he accepted it, but because he accepted its frame. In a hypothetical world where men are clued in about this stuff, that might not be the case.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. OF COURSE the conversation gets awkward. Which is why we don’t tell them that. DUH. Because it’s not that guy. And that’s not the truth.
      It’s that we prefer not to play Russian roulette.

      Like

      1. Right. What I’m saying is that better communication between men and women on this topic (see: intro to post) might reduce the efficacy of a useful tactic that relies on men being somewhat clueless. The same way that “Let me ask my supervisor” stops working if word gets out that you’re self-employed.

        Like

  28. It’s not really mass murderers who are invisible in the world, as it is the lack of identification of serial killers. Mass murderers usually being considered people who kill a whole bunch at once (4 or 5 or more, and usually not a familial murder-suicide. Serial killers may have far greater body counts, but because they spread them out one at a time over a large area and large period of time, they’re harder to spot. And yes, they are very scary people, since they could be your best friend or even spouse sitting right next to you.

    Makes you wonder if vampires and werewolves could really walk among us and never be spotted.

    Liked by 4 people

      4. Or how Kaff Tagon from Schlock Mercenary got described when someone asked the doc if he was a serial killer.

        “If anything, he’s massively parallel.”

        Liked by 1 person

  29. In terms of dropping off the radar, I still remember the Gene Hackman business where his younger than him but not all that young wife died of a stroke and he, with dementia and unable to care for himself, died of dehydration in their home.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Why one of us, usually me, checks in with mom daily; or try to. She lives alone. Does not always happen. Almost a relief when she takes off on one of her jaunts. Jaunts are always with friends, other widows. Or the younger sister in Vancouver WA (put mom on train).

      What is sad, is a friend of mom’s. She has dementia and it is progressing fast. Bad news is there is no family locally, or particularly close. She does have a “significant other”. They do not live together. Problem? He is 98! She is early 80’s, I think. Problem is mom can be sympathetic, etc., I can help mom, but we cannot actually do anything. Even calling her son, which mom did do, was iffy interference. Sure in the heck cannot step in and straighten out her financial issues. Another thing mom did was discover that Eastern Star has an option for just this situation. The friend is in Eastern Star. That organization has reached out. Her son has come down. I do not know the outcome (even in general) of all that. But it scares me that she is going to be one to be alone and not found for awhile.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. This is why the Reader and better half are moving to be close to better half’s nephew. Once the Reader’s son passed we had no one we knew would check on us and tell us when to turn in our drivers licenses.

      Liked by 2 people

      2. I hear this one too. Besides mom, we have a number of *older neighbors. Not particularly “close” to any of them beyond the “wave, say hello” when seeing them out and about. But I have made sure they have family nearby and that check in on them regularly. One has a child across the street from her (the one directly behind us). Another recently sold to combine resources with only child’s family for a multigenerational family home on, if not acreage, a very large lot.

        (*) It is that type of neighborhood. More families with children now than when we moved in an subsequently raised our son. More now because the grandparents are being moved either in to assistant homes or died so the houses can be either rented out or sold.

        Like

  31. I read the box as she wants commiseration and he is seeking a solution. And yes, there’s a sluc of the ’tism in the gent’s reported replies. I know handful of young guys who would respond in exactly that manner.

    Liked by 4 people

      1. I’m told that prefacing one’s complaints with “Fair warning, I just want to vent, I’m not actually looking for a solution to this, so if you could just nod and make sympathetic noises at reasonable times, thatd be very helpful” tends to cut down on male frustration.

        Liked by 3 people

          1. Yeah. Providing a “vent warning” in this instance wouldn’t have worked because the guy had a solution readily at hand. It’s only really useful when the solution is complicated, or would take time to figure out.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Yeah. This wasn’t a case of that. It was “You’re not close enough for me to take meds from you.” OR alternately “I take meds from no one, because if I start making exceptions, I’ll make all the wrong ones.”

              Like

              1. I think we’re talking about different things here. I’m noting why a “vent warning” wouldn’t have stopped him from offering (because the apparent solution was so readily available).

                Liked by 1 person

          2. Indeed.

            That requires that the analysis correctly identifies the problem, though. Much of the discussion here is pointing that out.

            Mencken:

            “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”

            Such risk of solution errors, of course, include Mencken’s comment!

            Liked by 2 people

        3. Not always because some of us — even if not male — resent being the whipping boy for your frustration.

          Like

  32. “And if the men are now shouting “MOST MEN WOULD NEVER.” Thank you. We’re very aware of that.”

    Risk assessment is probability times loss.

    (For example – try getting a mortgage without homeowners’ insurance, even if your house is next door to the fire station)

    Liked by 3 people

  33. Another thing to factor into the male responses:

    For all of my lifetime, the feminist-poisoned overculture has hammered into us that ALL men are to blame for ALL wrong in the world, endlessly and constantly. And more and more of us are done with it.

    So, yeah, being treated as presumptively guilty is going to get a reaction. And if the reaction is unjust… well, we’re still waiting for even an acknowledgment that the decades of blame and shaming and belittlement we’ve endured was unjust. And I don’t think anybody’s holding his breath.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Dude! Little brother! Don’t blame us for what we didn’t do. I suspect most “feminists” are a minority. Or were, until the more recent generations of the indoctrinated. We’re in the trenches together.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m not blaming, I’m describing. A lifetime of suffering undeserved blame, shame, insult, etc., from what feels like every front even if it is not, is going to have an effect. And to call it an overreaction is to ignore that lifetime, and focus only on the one moment.

        Like

    3. “…we’re still waiting for even an acknowledgment that the decades of blame and shaming and belittlement we’ve endured was unjust.”

      I think, possibly only for myself but maybe for a lot of people, that the Sad Puppies Movement marked a time in the zeitgeist when we, the wronged, held out the Last Olive Branch.

      Looking over my blog for the ‘teach men not to grape’ foolishness, it reminds me that collectively this ATH/MGC commentariat doesn’t engage the Lefties anymore. We don’t even try, these days. The last time I personally attempted a reasoned argument with those people was probably 2018-2019. Since then my responses are basically “no, and f- off.”

      We do still get the odd troll, but those burn out after a comment or two. The really dedicated stupidity never shows up here anymore. They’ve walled themselves off.

      So it does feel like we’ve stopped being surprised, outraged, angry, or even regretful. We’re done. It’s over. The wider culture is certainly looking that way as well.

      And we’ve stopped even wanting an apology. Which is bad. When an apology is no longer wanted, what you’re really after is vengeance. A dish best served cold, so I’ve been told.

      Liked by 5 people

      2. After 2020? WHAT APOLOGY would be enough. BUT for the love of G-d, stop falling for the sex-war. That’s psy ops from the left. Women are just as mad as men. Except for a small, insane minority the left amplifies.
        WE DO HOWEVER have different styles of communication. It’s important for guys to get we don’t even suspect MOST men. But it’s a number games, and if you make exceptions….

        Liked by 1 person

  34. Oddly enough, this ties into a scene that’s been going through my head for a fantasy, where a guy drugs an isekai’d woman with a love potion. But not only is she autistic enough to realize this altered mental state is WRONG WRONG WRONG – she knows enough folklore to counter it.

    At which point, I realized, said guy was not walking away from this. She was going to kill him.

    No morals, no ethics, no waiting for the law. She has a sword and a temporary upper hand and she’ll kill him and worry about how she feels later.

    I suspect if I write this story that bit will divide readers. But… that’s how it would work.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “…if I write this story that bit will divide readers…”

      In a fantasy setting, “he needed killin’ ” is a supportable argument. Let her stick him in the middle and then cast ‘fireball’ on her magic sword.

      Liked by 2 people

      2. Thing is she’s not doing this in a hot fury. (Well, fury is involved, but.) Her motivation is not just that he tried to mentally enslave and rape her, but that people around her supported him in his pursuit because he claimed he was courting her, no matter how many times she flat-out said she was Not Interested. Leading to – among other things – an enabler giving the attacker a copy of her room key, which is how he was able to drug her in the first place.

        And if they didn’t stop him this time, they won’t stop him the next time either. And the next girl probably would not be so lucky.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. Basically – it’s not the “he needed killin'” I think will divide people, it’s the fact that a woman is in a position to decide “no one else will stop him, so I have to”. Guys tend to get clear with that in fiction. Women, not so much.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. If you can run off and never see someone again, sure, maybe just make one’s escape. But if Evil Guy lives in the house or the house next door, and there is no absolutely certain law enforcement… He probably does need killing.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I have one of those in the book I’m working on. It’s a functioning anarchy. No prisons, no courts, etc. Five off-planet agents steal someone off the street. Four of them are killed. The other is released by the victim’s request9th, and promptly blows up the house.

        Nope. Kill him dead the first time.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. One of my characters: “I almost killed him the first time. You should have let me finish the job. Now two innocent people are dead and a dozen more are held hostage because coddling a violent psychopath made you feel better about yourselves.”

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Replied to this, comment went into moderation as I expected, because I used the R word (meaning forced intercourse) without censoring it. Turns out that one *is* on the WordPress censor list. Would someone fish it out?

      Liked by 1 person

  35. Chris Avellone is a video game designer who led up teams on popular games such as Fallout 2, and Knights of the Old Republic 2. While he never worked for Bioware, he worked closely with them at his company Obsidian Entertainment. And he posted the following on X about hiring practices at Bioware –

    Smash JT (@SmashJT) ·

    Chris Avellone (Planescape, KOTOR 2, and Fallout: New Vegas) just dropped a MEGATON NUKE regarding BioWare's hiring practices…

    "…when applicants would apply to the studio, the producer would go through their LinkedIn to see what posts they liked, and if he disagreed with… pic.twitter.com/xTXI2mqNG8

    View on X

    Like

    2. “…when applicants would apply to the studio, the producer would go through their LinkedIn to see what posts they liked…”

      Yes, and you could tell because BioWare became a company making very woke games. And now they have gone broke. Asmongold has been laughing at their demise for three days. You play with the bull, you get the horn.

      In the wider realm of FAFO Reality, there are now entire companies that hire their services to HR departments, and their service is scraping the Internet for dirt on new employees. I saw a video from one of these guys that basically said if you have pronouns in your bio, or a nose ring, or a Palestine flag, or you’ve been active on campus in Lefty causes, or you were ten years ago and have since scrubbed your social media from 2016 of you getting arrested for demonstrating… you are not going to get hired by anybody.

      The Internet is forever. These guys go back to the beginning of Internet Time with the Wayback Machine and other tricks, to scrape your entire freaking life. There’s also facial recognition, Flock cameras, public records, Ring doorbells, your phone, these guys buy all the data and search it all.

      Then the company gets to decide if they want blue hair/nose ring girl with pronouns and Palestine flag or not. And most companies do not want that.

      I remember warning the Lefties that their New Rules were a bad idea, and they were going to regret f-ing with us like that. “Don’t do it!” I said. “Better not!” I said.

      But did they listen? Nooo, not them…

      Liked by 3 people

      1. these guys buy all the data and search it all.

        Couple of additional observations:

        1. These guys are in business. If the green is good, they’ll be just as happy to set their parameters to screen for MAGAts as blue hair/nose ring.
        2. Sarah wants to claim that “they” can’t search it all. With AI Agents, they most certainly can if they care to buy the compute cycles.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. “AI agents will make hilarious mistakes.”

            There are lots of cases turning up in the news of people being arrested/charged based on Flock/Ring camera evidence alone, and then it turns out the AI that did the identification was simply wrong. Like, extremely wrong.

            But they keep doing it anyway, so we were all right about it being a Bad Idea.

            Like

            1. The interesting thing is that, when you go into the weeds on the “arrested on nothing but currently scary video evidence,” it falls apart.

              Like the gal who spent two weeks in jail?

              According to the federal lawsuit, Isaacs and her attorneys allege that the FHP troopers lied, which led to Isaacs being arrested. The lawsuit alleges that the FHP troopers swore under oath that her vehicle had scratches and other evidence supposedly linking her to the deadly crash, when in reality, there wasn’t.

              Isaac’s attorneys said the investigative findings were not up for interpretation and that, in fact, her car was spotless. FHP reviewed the evidence and also found that there was no damage to Isaac’s vehicle.

              According to the lawsuit, a 911 caller described a completely different vehicle as being involved in the crash and had a partial license plate number. It also alleges that FHP never downloaded the “Event Data Recorder,” kind of like the black box on a plane, to review.

              https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-woman-wrongly-arrested-deadly-i-4-crash-sues-fhp-troopers-lawsuit

              The lawsuit was “settled,” hopefully in the form of Sgts. Tiffany Jateff and Joshua Buday facing investigation for filing false reports.

              Pattern repeats over and over, though– and makes me wonder why it’s only an issue that folks are failing to do their jobs, often in a criminal manner, when there’s something that can absolutely prove their failure involved…. and the solution is “get rid of the thing that made it so we know they f’d up.”

              Liked by 1 person

              1. The instantaneous reaction of bureaucrats seems to be cover their 6 and stall. Doesn’t matter what’s at stake, that’s what they do.

                This is why we don’t like them, and why it is a bad idea for ubiquitous surveillance to exist in any form.

                This goes double for foreign concerns. They can -buy- Flock and Ring data, they don’t even have to hack into it. It seems utterly insane that such things are being installed at a time when the USA is in a shooting war. But there they are, doing it.

                Like

                1. You’ve been misinformed about Flock, not sure about Ring– data’s owned by, and under control of, whoever bought the camera, and there’s a non-deletable record of who accesses it even if you do leave it wide open. (Tweely called “guardrails to support responsible data practices.” That, and a flat “no we do not sell the data to third parties,” are literally their biggest selling points.)

                  Doesn’t stop people from doing the equivalent of leaving the router wide open with no password, then blaming the equipment when they decide they didn’t want that, of course.

                  I have suspicions about the attempts to whip up a mob against a security camera company that does what folks have been saying needs to be added to stop abuses for decades– that cop who was using police resources to stalk his ex? He got caught because NOBODY could delete the record of him looking up her data on Flock. And then it recorded that he deleted the file he’d accessed, too, trying to cover it up. Which let them find evidence for what he’d been doing before the company ever existed.

                  Liked by 1 person

        2. “If the green is good, they’ll be just as happy to set their parameters to screen for MAGAts as blue hair/nose ring.”

          We’ve already been through the Conservative Purge in the institutions, we all know what it looks like. Seeing the Lefties on the receiving end is filling my schadenfreude quota for the week. But a morsel of personal satisfaction isn’t worth the damage to society.

          As a thing, going forward, this type of ubiquitous surveillance is a catastrophe and we can’t allow it to exist.

          Like

  36. Most women don’t understand men—because they don’t want to understand men. If they really grokked men and how men think, they’d have to admit to themselves that a lot of the rubbish they’ve been fed by their mommies, sisters, female friends and television stars is 90% garbage.

    Just for starters—I once found out that the woman I was seeing had chattered to her worthless girlfriends a lot of intimate details about me. When I was upset, she honestly didn’t understand. I get it—women bond by sharing secrets and intimacy. But I knew damn well that if she’d found out that I’d been regaling my male friends with details she thought should be private, she’d have hit the ceiling. I dislike hypocrisy.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. “…the woman I was seeing had chattered to her worthless girlfriends…”

      There do seem to be women who view a boyfriend or even a husband as a possession that they are entitled to toy with. I have occasionally met men who treat women as something to be conquered, or tricked. Replaceable and disposable.

      I feel that such an existence is it’s own best punishment. Particularly when they get old and they’re not so purty no more…

      Like

  37. I’ve mentioned him before, but Marc MacYoung has an on-point book from a couple years ago – “Beyond The Picket Fence: Life Outside the Middle-Class Bubble”

    Not so much M/F but inter-culture. I am so middle-class, white-bread clueless; I learned a lot from that book.

    Fortunately I have long engaged in what I hoped was constructive paranoia; I am one of the above-mentioned folks who looks for exits, watches people come in/walk by. Not a phone addict, but admittedly don’t look up at rooflines.

    Liked by 2 people

  38. Re: serial killers, the Canadian true crime series called Crime Stories has some horrific Canadian ones, and Australian serial killers are notoriously bad. German ones too.

    Most of the world, you just never hear about the bad ones, but there are lots once you start looking.

    Liked by 3 people

  39. Pingback: Good News / Bad News – Marked Up

      1. I could use that excuse. It’s better than “can’t write girls”. I _assume_ that most LitRPG readers are male, but I don’t know that. They probably wouldn’t notice any more than I’d notice while writing it badly.

        Liked by 1 person

  40. Running into MIL-STD-1472G, Human Factors was a revelation. Discovering that a 95% female was only mostly as strong as a 5% male, and that a 95% male could be 4x strong than a 5% female rather shifted my perspective on writing male and female characters. And I can say I still don’t entirely have it down.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I still don’t entirely have it down, and I have been female my whole life.
      Honestly, this week, home safety videos. For a woman to stay safe “Lol, live with a man” (or pretend to) Unless you’re both past 75. In which case, live with a son/nephew/whatever.
      Uh.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. Just yesterday I was discussing with my wife “Which of the characters in (sci-fi book) would be the one to go do that EVA if you were writing a fanfic where it wasn’t the guy who did it in canon?” That particular EVA involved wrestling with heavy equipment under dangerous conditions, so we immediately ruled out the female characters and considered only the men. Because, as I said, “testosterone is just plan cheating when it comes to muscle-mass and strength advantage”. And the mission commander handing out that EVA task wasn’t dumb, so he’d give the mission to the person most likely to succeed. Which would not have been any of the women on board at the time, no matter how competent they were in other areas.

      Not mentioning which book, because if I did, even the fact that there’s an EVA scene might be spoilerish.

      Liked by 1 person

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