‘If you can read this, the bitch fell off’
Reflections of advocacy gone bad by a deadbeat male feminist scholar:
The fat biker on the Fat Boy whose jacket reads “If you can read this the bitch fell off” does not give a shit about you or me.
You can’t make a fat biker on a Fat Boy whose jacket reads “If you can read this the bitch fell off” listen no matter how hard you try.
A fat biker on a Fat Boy whose jacket reads “if you can read this the bitch fell off” is a stereotype with a hint of truth.
When writer and feminist Virginia Woolf wrote that women need a room of their own, she understood that women could not take the whole house.
When Virginia Woolf said that women writers need to strangle the angel in that house, she did not say we need to strangle men.
When Virginia Woolf said that women writers need to strangle the angel in the house, she did not mean we have to strangle women and girls we don’t like.
When Virginia Woolf said that women writers need to strangle the angel in the house, she did not mean banning young girls from YouTube because they are doing splits, showing toes, showing stomachs, are in swimsuits, bikinis, walking this way, dancing that way, eating, breathing, or doing anything that may in any way seem sexual.
Virginia Woolf wanted women and girls to be free.
“Freedom isn’t free.”
Censorship is never free.
Diversity cannot be diverse without diversity of thought.
Our hyper-vigilance and hyper-sexuality are not over-sexualization.
Our hyper-vigilance and hyper-sexuality are in our heads.
Girls should not be punished because they have nipples.
Boys are not punished because they have nipples.
Liberation does not happen when gymnasts change leotards to unitards.
Such liberation is trauma in disguise.
Running from reality keeps us all victims.
Trauma is not the problem; lack of resilience is the problem.
Child dancers are not pornographers.
Banning child runway models from social media is no victory; It’s running from reality.
We are all sexualized. We have penises and vaginas.
Dolls should have penises and vaginas because your child has them.
I won’t tell women what to do with their vaginas, if they don’t tell me what to do with my penis.
If you have not walked in one’s shoes, don’t ask them to walk barefoot on glass.
I may be a pervert, bloke—a dirty old man, but I am still a human being.
Sex is not the enemy.
Sex is not the devil, but it can be our vulnerability.
There is a difference between modesty and shame.
If you got it and want to flaunt it, do it.
If you got it and don’t want to flaunt it, don’t do it.
If you don’t got it, no worries; it never stopped men.
Girls and women have the right to be naked and the right to be clothed; regardless, they have the right to be treated as valuable and beautiful human beings.
Pole dancing is super exercise. You should try it.
Kids all over the world pole dance. They should try it.
Little black hands and white hands should hold one another; no need for middle fingers.
When we want to fix men, tell men what they can think, how to think, what to fanaticize to, and how to act, then that is nothing more than a dysfunctional relationship.
If we believe that, then China has a job for us in the Uighurs “education” camps.
If a sex doll harms and objectifies women, then so does a dildo objectify men.
If we run from human sexuality, there is no such thing as human sexuality.
Healthy sex must have been a woman’s idea.
Psychology and social work equal gender bias: check it out.
Salad is fine, but we all need some candy and dirty chocolate.
Non-existent victims have one thing in common; they are non-existent.
Men won’t change because you want them to.
Men don’t change unless they want to.
Women don’t change because men want them to.
Women change if they want to.
Think Ukraine. You’re next.
You cannot ask a man to sit at your table, invite him, and then tell him to smile, shut up, and listen.
The one certainty is that he is sitting there for a reason; he is trying.
There is a reason so few are at Putin’s massive table.
When a white man walks away from your table, where do you think he is going?
Relationships built on abuse will end in abuse.
Our opinion is not science, nor is it fact. Emotion does not equal scientific research.
Science is not perfect, but God said, “Not even I am perfect.”
Nature, evolution, biology favors existence over morality.
We favor magical thinking.
Morality can be evil in disguise. Ethics are ethical, sometimes.
There is a difference between ethics and morality, dear professor; you are not trying hard enough.
COVID is not being mean to you or I.
COVID is an evaluator that shows us where the human suffering has always been.
We are forgetting; Putin is betting on it.
What we’d like the world to be is not what it is.
There is a reason the world is the way it is.
The world, in its nakedness, is often a reflection of our actions.
We are the enemies to our own existence.
When I look at a pretty “girl,” I don’t see our trauma, our fear, our militancy, our hate, our disgust, our anger. I see a beautiful human being.
When I look at our trauma, our fear, our militancy, our hate, our disgust, our anger, I know that we are hurting but want to appear to be strong.
The kid on the runway is not you.
I refuse to be your punching bag.
I will not take self-righteous abuse.
If we push men too hard, men resort to male regressive violence.
Think Putin. He’s knocking next.
Male regressive violence is seldom undefeated. Check history.
Male regressive violence is historical insanity. Check Russia, or [put your history here].
Advocacy is important, but advocacy sucks.
The complexity of life does not fit neatly on a sign, but our magical thinking does.
We all have to accept that there are going to be things we just don’t like in this world.
If you want to save the world, you can start by trying to save yourself first.
Earl Yarington (LMSW) is a social worker and school bus driver. He taught literature and writing for nearly 20 years and spent 3 years working in forensic social work internships with offending populations, including work at Delaware Correctional facilities and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He has a PhD in literature and criticism (feminism/women writers) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Master of Social Work from Louisiana State University, and an interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Arts from Arizona State University, where he studied the impact of visual image and girlhood in media/social media. He also has an MA and BS in English from SUNY College at Brockport. The opinions and analyses that Earl writes are his own and are not necessarily the positions or views of his employers, the agencies he supports, or that of his colleagues. Reach out with comments or questions.