Yesterday it snowed all day and then this morning, air temps still in the 20’s F it began to rain gently. The snow from yesterday was covered with a thin crust of ice as the rain continued. I went to the outside of The Castle and pushed a shovel full of the stuff toward the edge of the new deck and it moved as one sheet. The deck underneath was smooth and dry. Quite a phenomena. It slid easily and the crust on top kept it all together until the drop-off the deck. I went to the Royal Car and found the same stuff. With one push I was able to remove a large portion of crust covered snow. It slid off Rocinante in sheets. Fun!
I have stopped shoveling the snow on the driveway. Nowadays I have taken to firing up the Royal Beast, my 1990 Dodge 4-wheel drive truck, and driving it over the snow to flatten the stuff and then Rocinante can just skip along on the surface with no trouble. The Royal Beast is the best, most improved shovel evah! We’ll see how this winter goes with my recent tactic for snow control. I hope this works. It is far easier and I intend to use the saved time to continue to educate myself and others about how badly we treat women.
In recent days, weeks, months there have been a great shift in consciousness in our society regarding the discomfort women have of men in general. Indications from the line of complaints from years old insults and bad behavior of men toward women seem to be dividing the population. I don’t see it as most other men do. Other men see this as a threat to general society whereas I see it as a series of battles in the war against the patriarchy. Men don’t seem to be getting the message that their privileged and expectant behavior has been constantly pressuring women to find their own way toward surviving. We men have alienated them from the time of their early lives all the way to forever.
I will not try to use my own words to pass along what I know now. I will put into this blog entry the words of my best friend in the whole world Neeley Fluke. I’ve known her for maybe 5 years or more. Something drew us together. I saw in her an educator. That I know. What she saw I haven’t dare ask. I’d love to know but I don’t know how to ask. Neeley has it together in her own way and I admire her courage, insight, and take on what women have had to suffer/endure for ever. I’ll let her words explain. I just want men to know that the recent press coverage on the sexual abuses that men are being charged with do not describe the situation. Not hardly. It is the patriarchy which allows men to remain ignorant, privileged, and filled with expectant ideas of how women ought to be. Men are totally fucked up and they are afraid of being educated to how they have messed up the lives of others resulting in messing up their own lives. Women have been at war with men for a long, long time. The war has been waged against the patriarchy. Men have been seeing the actions of women as confusing and illogical. Of course men have taken the liberty to extend the term to mean that women can’t be understood because they are unreasonable, confusing, flighty, senseless, incorrect, irrational, and absurd. From there it is not a reach to pretend that women are wacky, goofy, and crazy. The last adjective is the favorite. I know. I’ve used it to describe the women who have been part of my failures at relationship.
These charges of sexual abuse are only battles, men. The war is about the patriarchy. Take notes and educate yourselves.
Here is Neeley:
Compilation of Neeley quotes
Our biases are so strongly burned into our existence, they become a part of our unconscious and influence how we navigate our every day lives and decision-making.
Our own biases cannot be properly recognized without first making the conscious choice to truthfully investigate ones own biases and beliefs. This requires more than a little self-reflection over the course of an afternoon. Instead, it is more like a marathon – one that can take weeks, months, years, even a lifetime to complete.
But this conscious choice to run this internal mental marathon is the pillar for critical thinking. Without making this conscious choice to undertake this marathon of self-investigation one can never truly see the external world with logical or rational thinking. Without running this marathon you are missing the foundation in ability to think critically.
And this:
When I hear men discuss women’s clothes, or women’s mannerisms, or using women as practice in gaining confidence because “men can’t even approach a woman any more” or “how we supposed to meet anybody any more?” my inside scream. My insides utterly scream. How dare?! How dare you be concerned with such trivialities, out loud no less, when the odds are too good that the woman you want to use as practice for your self confidence has statistically speaking, likely been sexually assaulted. Probably more than once. But YOU are worried about YOUR fragile male self confidence.
People wonder why I spend so much time “arguing on the internet”. Your perception of ” arguing on the internet” is actually me, suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome and sadness and JUSTIFIED RAGE and the only way I can let it out and talk about it in the way I NEED to is online, where I can take the time I need to formulate my words, where I can leave the conversation when I need to and on my terms, where I can tell the other people that they are in fact NOT entitled to speak their vile opinions in my presence. Because, in person, I must put on a face of neutrality to these seemingly innocent comments about man’s self confidence and how hard dating is for men, and fake that these comments are not a piece of rape culture and I have to listen to men whine while girls and women and my insides are dying. Because, in person, if I let my “opinions” out about men’s opinions I cannot do so calmly or civilly. But the real reasons for my justified reactions are swept under the carpet en lieu of believing I am a feminazi or manhater who is willfully difficult just to mess with men.
*spits*
More:
Women and girls are dying a death of a thousand cuts.
As you all are probably aware, Jennifer Lawrence and other actresses had nude photos and videos of them stolen and released for public consumption. If this had to happen then I am going to use this bullshit situation to the best of my abilities to address strangers and friends who are men.
Looking at nude images and video of people who have not consented to sharing with you is sexual assault. You are violating that woman. I do not give a single fuck about “internet security”, YOU are the one that CHOSE to seek out those images/videos and look at them, knowing full well that they were stolen from those women and posted without consent.
These women that were targeted are not just random actresses, they are also known to speak publicly in favour of feminism. This is representative of what it means to be a woman on the internet and in general public. We are expected to be cheerleaders, we are expected to be caretakers, we are expected to go with the flow… and when we act against these expectations, men come out in full force to teach us a lesson.
Sexual assault/harassment is a common tactic used by men against women when a woman speaks about topics to which the man disagrees, feels uncomfortable, makes him feel cognitive dissonance, or takes power away from him. When it comes to women, men know that sexual assault or harassment will take that power right back. This does not mean blatant assault or blatant harassment, far more often these actions are coded. It is up to YOU to become educated in the many ways that we are socially indoctrinated to hate women, how we abuse women overtly as well as with microaggressions. This means seeking information, and it means listening to women speak on these issues WITHOUT interrupting or arguing with them. Digest the information that you are receiving, push aside your defensiveness and ego, and sit on that information for a while. I can guarantee you, whatever your “argument” is on these topics, us women have heard it all before and we will simply end the conversation with you because the fallacies are tired, and we will also have lost some (or all) respect for you. If you find yourself thinking “I don’t care”, “I can’t be bothered”, “I don’t have time”, then that is a convenience of your life, your power, your privilege, and I want you to know that I see your lack of caring, I see your lack of respect, I see your coded misogyny, even if you can’t see it. A narrow majority of the human population is female, yet you cannot be bothered to see how this majority is regularly abused and must experience a range of violent (physical or other) behavior BECAUSE WE ARE GIRLS AND WOMEN, and cannot be bothered to do your part in examining your own individual behaviors to try to lessen the burden on the women around you. You are choosing to live in the misogyny you were socialized with, and that makes you an oppressor, that means you are being willfully abusive towards a marginalized group of people.
Women’s bodies are treated like public property, whether you consciously acknowledge this or not. We are all socially indoctrinated in misogynistic, racist, and classist thinking, whether you chose to acknowledge this or not. Now it is YOUR CHOICE to think critically about the things that you hold to be true, examine your thoughts on sex, gender, race, and class, and figure out if your “truth” holds up to rigorous scrutiny. Odds are, most of your “truths” on these issues are not based on anything particularly truthful, but rather are the bi-product of common social beliefs (and the “common beliefs” are almost always constructed and passed down by those with the most power and privilege). By refusing to examine what you believe to be true about women, People of Colour, and those from marginalized classes, YOU are continuing to perpetuate oppression. YOU are continuing to perpetuate and promote systematic violence against those with less power, purely by being a person with societal power who chooses to remain ignorant of the struggles of marginalized peoples.
Being a “good person”, especially when you are a person with privilege of sex/gender/socioeconomics/race, is NOT EASY. You are comfortably blinded to the violence (of all kinds, not just physical assault) executed on the marginalized and oppressed. YOU have the power to make changes in your thoughts and actions, YOU have the power to challenge others like you to think differently. WOMEN and other marginalized people are counting on YOU to use the power that we do not have to challenge others with your similar power and privilege on commonly held beliefs that harm us. All I am asking is that you start with YOURSELF. When I see western men crying out in anger about how non-western women must exist a veiled life, yet turn around to blame Western women for the abuses committed against them because “they should have known better not to post naked pictures”, “they should have known better than to dress like that”, “they should have known better”, I KNOW that western men are thoroughly indoctrinated in our culture’s misogyny.
GIRLS AND WOMEN do not exist to be your life’s cheerleader and emotional support, WE exist in our own right with out own wants, desires, and needs. When you have expectations on what girls and women SHOULD be, you are subconsciously placing all women in comparison to this imagined woman, and when we don’t meet said expectations we are met with a variety of negative consequences. I am fucking sick and tired of tip-toeing around male feelings which are so easily hurt because I don’t meet his expectations of what women should be. I have been harassed, I have been abused mentally and physically, I have even been doxxed online (more than once, one of said doxxers was an ex-cop) because I was a woman on the internet challenging male opinions.
WOMEN and GIRLS are regularly violated in overt and subtle ways. Please do what you can to challenge yourself to stop the thousands of years long cycle. As much as y’all love to educate others, its time for you to realize that there is a lot you don’t know. GIRLS and WOMEN spend their lives losing self-respect, dignity, sense of value, and their individuality via DEATH OF THOUSANDS OF CUTS caused by men explicitly because we are girls and women. Stop being a part of the violence.
Thankyou, Neeley.
Playing Fair and Being Kind 
Whew! Neeley ROCKS! Thank you, George, for listening, thinking, learning, and teaching.
Neeley is the most complete thinker in my life. I love her beyond anything I’ve known before I met her. I am very lucky to be able to see what she is to the world. She is my teacher.