Rebel Yell

Rant of the inconvenient woman

Left alone with scissors at four. My first DIY haircut.

Kids these days think they’re so cool. They change their pronouns—ooooh. Big whoop. Back in my day we did drugs and had sex.

My daughter is seventeen. She doesn’t smoke, drink or take pills. She’s never been kissed. By the time I was seventeen I’d already slept with five (maybe six) guys. I’d done coke, acid, smoked weed daily and drank myself into a vomitous stupor a couple times. I had sex with a British pop star, at fifteen no less. Nag me a little and I’ll tell you all about it.

I’m no longer proud of any of that mind you. I’m wiser and have vast reserves of shame. But it’s real and it happened. And it shaped me into the inconvenient woman I am today.

Unlike Miss Miller, I came of age in a fatherless household. My brother, well, I told you about him. My dad liked to spoon me in his underwear when I slept at his house on the weekends. My older sister got me high—when I was in preschool—and my mom ignored the bulk of it, preferring the company of a Tareyton and a Stephen King novel.

Boundaries weren’t my family’s strong suit. Ditto treating people like dignified autonomous individuals. There was no conscious parenting philosophy when I was little—just survival, impulsiveness and chaos.

Who’s that girl—summer camp, 1984

Now that I’m big, I know a thing or two. I entered motherhood with a set of goals for my kids. I wanted them know that they were more than a cute object, a receptacle for my unmet needs or a target for my rage. I taught them that they are their own persons, separate from me, that what they do matters and what they offer to the world produces consequences. I worked to impart the concept of accountability, and that no one but themselves is responsible for their happiness or suffering.

Lessons I learned the hard way, I served to my kids like gold nuggets on a silver platter. But like most valuable life lessons, you have to walk through fire to earn your mettle. You gotta fall on your face a few dozen times before the lesson sinks in.

Popular culture has been promoting victimhood throughout Western society for decades now. I didn’t see it clearly until transgenderism became a craze. I’d been teaching my children to avoid victimhood at all costs, and here was society teaching them the opposite.

Victims are violent people. They need someone to blame, vilify, and force apologies and reparations from. They’re woeful and powerless, forever waiting for Prince Charming to come save them. Or Utopia.

I was a victim once. And it sucked.

Another thing I taught my kids was to trust their guts. When they were little I taught them the word pedophile. We practiced screaming it out loud. “Scream it and run, kids!” I’d tell them between fits of laughter. It was ridiculous and meaningful at the same time. “If you’re around a person who gives you a weird feeling, trust the feeling and get out.” They understood and agreed.

When I was in seventh grade, this kid Robbie had a thing for me. I wasn’t attracted to him; he accused me of racism. Robbie was black. I wondered if it was true. All of my crushes were on white boys after all. Did that mean I was a racist? Were my attractions bigoted or innocent?

A couple of my imaginary boyfriends.

Robbie couldn’t stand that I’d rejected him. Rejection hurts like a motherfucker. He used to call me on the old rotary phone late at night and just breathe into the thing. It was creepy. Calling me a racist for not going out with him was a face-saving manipulation. The maneuver trashed my right to my attraction—or lack thereof—and couched it in politics, daring me to doubt my fundamental goodness, while he got to play the tragic victim. And that’s gaslighting.

Nowadays, lesbians are called transphobes if they don’t want to date men who say they’re women. Gay men are called the same if they refuse to date a transmasc “dude” with a “bonus hole.” That kind of emotional blackmail is also ironically anti-gay. Like what are you gonna do, make a flag for every made up identity? Oh wait. That happened.

The emotional blackmail doesn’t happen just to gays and lesbians. Straight people are accused of transphobia as well for not wanting to date trans people. (And they say gender identity has nothing to do with sex. Hahahahahaha.)

Meanwhile are you fucking kidding me? Sexual attraction is not political. It’s pre-political.

Regarding the suffix “phobia,” I don’t think people are afraid of gay or trans people (unless they’re rapists or murderers). It’s just not their cup of tea. If anything, people likely have trans-fatigue. Like, oh God, not this schtick again, with an accompanying eye roll. If I’m exhausted witnessing fellow humans peacocking around, pretending to be the opposite sex, imagine how tired they are. Isn’t life hard enough? Jeepers.

But back to my point. I taught my kids to trust their guts, small as they were back then, and oh so cute. Then they go and learn that it’s bigoted not to want to date a trans person. That’s probably how Miss Miller anointed herself pansexual back in sixth grade, when the seed of this bullshit first sprouted in her mind.

Newly minted pansexual viewing the world through the pretzel of identity politics, age 11, 2017

The very fact that an eleven year-old was tasked with figuring out who she’s attracted to is ludicrous. She had crushes on boys as a little kid. There is no mystery. There was no deciding—just tingles. That’s how it works. Now there are analyses and quizzes to help you figure out how you feel about another person. Like, what the everloving fuck? This is the antithesis of trusting your gut, and it’s how pedos get in the door. First you get shamed into believing you should feel a way that you do not feel—and that the twisting of your insides makes you evil. Then you shame yourself.

This is closeted heterosexuality.

It took decades to learn how to trust my own gut and procure healthy boundaries. And now scores of kids are learning to ignore their guts, their hunches, the butterflies they get when they are actually attracted to someone. And they don’t even know it’s happening. Because they’ve learned not to question. To do so is considered “phobic,” for which the cure is “education,” aka more indoctrination.

Enough already.

You want to be a real rebel? Question trans.

🔥