But this. This I can’t abide. I can’t stay silent and watch this go on without saying something.

President Obama has said that a vote for a third party is a vote for Donald Trump. He’s not alone. There has been article after article, one think piece after another, about how voting for a third party is tantamount to voting for the Republican nominee and therefore wrong, or unprincipled, or “the worst thing you can do for American Democracy.”

No.

This line of thinking is cheap, manipulative, and wrong; liberals shouldn’t be peddling it, and third-party voters shouldn’t be falling for it.

The Myth of the “Protest Vote”

The argument that voting for a third party is somehow a petulant, petty, immoral thing to do rests on two big assumptions: First, that the people who are voting third party would have voted for Hillary Clinton if they didn’t have a third party option. Second, that the people who are voting for third parties are doing it to spite the Democrats for nominating Clinton (despite the fact that she won fairly).

Let’s tackle this second one first. While I know that Bernie supporters giving protest votes for third parties is a thing, there is no data right now that supports that said protest votes amount to a significant amount of third party votes.

Is there a contingency of former Bernie supporters who have now pledged their votes to Johnson or Stein? Definitely.

Do we know that all of them are doing it because they’re bitter about the Democratic primaries? Not in the slightest.

Let’s focus on Gary Johnson, because, frankly, Stein is not a factor in this election. What we do know is that Gary Johnson’s 2016 campaign has nearly 8 million dollars of funding, where his 2012 campaign only had about 2 million. The surge in funds has resulted in unprecedented media coverage, social media marketing, and general awareness that a Libertarian candidate has not had in my lifetime.

Maybe, just maybe, the 7.2% of voters who plan to vote for Johnson are doing so because they like his policies more than the others.

Maybe, just maybe, Johnson is seeing higher numbers than he ever has before because it’s the first time people have known they had another option (and are fully aware that their current options suck).

The killer is that at the end of the day, that is the exact same thing that many Hillary supporters are doing—voting for an imperfect candidate because they believe their other options suck. You don’t get to judge third-party voters for doing the exact same thing you’re doing just because their choice is different from yours.

The Myth That Those Votes Are Hers

The second assumption that people seem to be making is that if people didn’t have third-party options, they would be voting for Clinton. Thus far, that assumption is unfounded.

Americans don’t exactly have great voter turnout. Even if one takes into account marginalized communities who might otherwise vote if not for policies keeping them out, it’s clear that Americans have no compunctions about staying home when they don’t have a compelling reason to go cast their votes.

It’s just as likely that those 7.2% of voters would have completely unplugged from the election altogether as it is that they would have voted for the Democratic nominee.

And don’t forget: absent a third party option, these voters could just as easily vote for Trump. In fact, from what the last few rounds of polling show us, when people don’t have the option of voting for a third party, it either doesn’t have an effect on who would win, or it tips the sales in Trump’s favor.

Stop saying that a vote for a third party is a vote for Trump. That has no basis. If anything, third parties have just as much of a chance to save the election for Clinton.

No, Ralph Nader Didn’t Spoil the 2000 Election

The founding for the above two myths has its base in the idea that Ralph Nader caused the close runoff between George W. Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 election. Liberals in particular believe that, absent Nader’s influence, Gore would have won and saved America the next eight years of horrifying policies under George W. Bush.

This idea is simply untrue.

In 2006, UCLA professors Michael C. Herron and Jeffrey B. Lewis published a study examining votes cast in the 2000 election and showed that the idea of Nader “spoiling” the election is demonstrably false: 

Only approximately 60% of Nader voters would have supported Al Gore in a Nader-less election. This percentage is much closer to 50% than it is to 100%. One might have conjectured, that is, that Nader voters were solid Democrats who in 2000 supported a candidate politically left of the actual Democratic candidate. This conjecture, we have shown, is wrong: Nader voters, what participating in non-presidential contests that were part of the 2000 general election, often voted for Republican candidates. Correspondingly, [Reform Party candidate Pat] Buchanan voters voted for down-ballot Democratic candidates. Thus, the notion that a left-leaning (right-leaning) third party presidential candidate by necessity steals votes from Democratic (Republican) candidates does not hold.

In the abstract, the author explains, “The other 60% did indeed spoil the 2000 presidential election for Gore but only because of highly idiosyncratic circumstances, namely, Florida’s extreme closeness.” Florida still would have been close, we still would have had hanging chads, the SCOTUS still would have completely gone out of its authority to choose the president, and we still would have been stuck with 8 years of George W. Bush ruining everything. Ralph Nader didn’t spoil the 2000 election.

Oh, and by the way, neither did Ross Perot in 1992.

Clinton is Not Doing What She Ought to Be to Get These Votes

Many of these articles seem to be related to the Clinton campaign strengthening its efforts to dissuade people from voting third parties. Appealing to some kind of “civic morality” is precisely the wrong way to do this. If Clinton wants those votes, she needs to appeal to what those voters want.

Third parties, though once a legitimate force in American politics, now largely function as a way to get radical ideas accepted by mainstream candidates. Rabble-rousing by third parties and populist movements have inspired many governments to take on policies they wouldn’t have done otherwise.

Like gay marriage (part of the LP platform since 1972).

Or marijuana legalization (part of the LP platform since 1972).

Or ending police brutality and police militarization (look up Radley Balko).

Or a less invasive foreign policy (part of the LP platform since 1972).

Many of the so-called “liberal” policies that people want to see that Clinton doesn’t or hasn’t supported have been promoted by Libertarians for decades, and their work and research towards these ends is a large part of why they’re becoming visible and desired. Libertarians unflinchingly keep to these parts of their political vision, even though they were ridiculed for them before they became mainstream.

These are big issues for many of the people who are moving to vote for Johnson. For someone who has been touted a “listening candidate,” she sure isn’t listening to what these voters want. If she wants their support, maybe she should embrace some of those values.

A Vote for Clinton Isn’t a Moral High Ground Vote

Now, even if all of the above were not true, voting for Clinton to save the country from Trump would still not make people ethically superior.

If voting for Hillary Clinton is the lesser of two evils, it is still evil, and you don’t get to escape culpability for that.

Do you kill one to save five? Even in the face of better yet harder options? Our culture doesn’t seem to have an absolute answer to this question. Good people come down on either side of it and we can understand both. We sympathize with the decision to kill that one person—right up until they are proud of it. When they are, our stories treat that act as a negative part of that character. Because it is. Murdering someone in order to save five others is doing something wrong. It’s still murder, and there should be some reticence to that, not the lambasting of others for choosing to do otherwise.

When you vote for Hillary Clinton, you are voting for a candidate who kills people. Plain and simple. Just two of her policies—the War on Drugs and her foreign policy—are responsible for the death and disenfranchisement of millions. Trump would kill more. Undoubtedly. I understand why people would vote for Clinton—or would choose to kill one to save five because the better options aren’t likely to pan out. I imagine that’s how many Clinton voters feel.

That’s fine. It is an understandable and respectable choice to make. It’s just wrong to pretend that it’s a clear-cut, obvious ethical decision for which you are superior.

Look, I’m not trying to convince anyone to vote Libertarian or for Gary Johnson. Johnson has a lot of flaws, and I know there are lots of Clinton voters who think that free markets kill more people than any of Clinton’s policies. They can be wrong about that; they can feel superior because of that, and others will feel superior in their corner and we’ll all be smug at each other together (she writes, tongue in cheek). That’s all fine. That’s politics.

The point here is that if you are voting for Clinton because she is the “lesser of two evils,” you don’t get to be sanctimonious about it. Neither the data nor the ethics back up such an attitude.

I’m not.

I said in therapy the other night that living in this building, in these apartments, is the first time I remember feeling wholly and completely safe in my home. Where I’m not lying awake 2-3 nights a week, analyzing creaks in the place to see if someone’s gotten in. Where I don’t wake up in the middle of the night because I can’t hear my father snoring anymore, thinking he’s been killed and that person is coming for me. Where I can exit my apartment and take the trash out without being terrified that in the 2 minutes I’m outside, someone might hurt me. Where I’m reasonably certain that if I call the police, they will actually come.

It costs a lot of money to live in this building.

I have never owned a gun myself. I don’t like them and have never liked them. They’re loud and dangerous and too much effort to keep up with. But I have slept with a knife by my bed. More times than I can count. I have had my father show me where our rifles were, show me how to get to them quickly, load them, and shoot them—just in case. As a kid, I thought it was normal to be afraid at night, but that fear has never quite left me. I’m acutely, personally aware of how dangerous the world can be.

And look, folks. I’m white. No matter what other parts of my life may be lacking in privilege, the fact that I’m white will always afford me protection. It will always trump everything else. I didn’t know that then, but I do know that now. Can you imagine, if some little white girl grows up feeling this afraid, how scared and helpless people who aren’t white feel? Who don’t pass as cisgender or straight? Whose politics and fight for equality puts them in danger from the police or worse? Who legitimately fear for their lives from the state?

There’s this piece going around by Gerry Bello that I’ve been debating whether or not I should share. I think most of the people I see sharing it are white folks taking advantage of the fact that this guy is black [EDIT: Bello very kindly reached out to me to inform me that he is, in fact, white. Apologies for the error] to give a pass to gun culture. I don’t want to participate in that, but it’s a good piece and worth a read for perspective. Though I am clearly not a black left-wing radical (I am, in fact, a bisexual, white, cisgender woman who grew up poor), he says something that really resonated with me:

“Somehow, in all this, middle class liberals who have comfort of protection from a white supremacist state want the rest of us to be disarmed by that state. Their petitions and lobbying did not save my life. I saved my life through my own training and preparation. My life needed saving from people they hate who were being helped by the people that protect them because I putting it on the line for values and ideas they espouse. They can go back to their guarded gated communities and watch the rest of us earn, win, and live our own just society and decent lives.”

Gun control advocacy loses its teeth for me when it’s advocated for by people who are protected by the state. And that is largely who I see talking about this.

So let me be blunt. If you’re white and middle class, I don’t want to hear you scoff about danger from the government as if that’s not a reality. If you’re white and middle class, I don’t want to hear crap about the fine lines between different kinds of guns we should and should not allow, as if you’re ignorant of the slippery slope that ends with no one but the police having firearms. If you’re white and middle class, I especially don’t want to hear you talk about how people should be using the police for protection.

Basically, if you’re white and middle class, I don’t give a shit about your opinion on guns.

Take a step back and think about how your position in the world influences your opinion and what kinds of information and experience you don’t have. Adjust your image of gun owners away from rednecks with shotguns to see the broader scope of people with firearms. Include the people who need them to stay alive, who may actually need more than a handgun if, say, Donald Trump becomes president.

Our society should not be one where anyone needs a firearm to feel safe, but until that day comes, vulnerable people deserve to have that option.

Call out bad gun ownership, yes. Call out how toxic masculinity factors into a lot of gun culture, yes. But don’t forget how vital armed means of defense has been to guaranteeing rights and basic safety for marginalized communities in our country’s history—and today. Think about how legislation, no matter how well worded, is often disproportionately used against marginalized communities (Bello speaks to this as well). Remember that not everyone can rely on the police to come—or to not kill them when they get there.

Then, maybe, your opinion will be worth listening to.

As of right now, I am irritated to no end seeing the same people who are so careful about acknowledging their privilege so brazenly forget it here, and in so doing have the potential to make people who are already vulnerable even more so. I agree that we have a lot of work to do as a society on all the things that create violence. You’ll never hear me say otherwise. But until you fall asleep at night to the sounds of gunfire in the distance, until your children keep knives by their beds for fear of the serial rapist going through their neighborhood, until your neighborhoods are invaded by people who use force to intimidate or to get what they want and the police don’t care to help, I really don’t care what you have to say about guns.

When I looked on Sanders’ site a few weeks ago, he had an 11-step plan to fix America. That page seems to have disappeared, but I found an image put together by Occupy Democrats with the plan on it. As with the first time I read this, I found myself rolling my eyes. I wondered if anyone who is stoked about Sanders had actually thought about these points in detail. Are they feasible in this economy? Are they things a president could reasonably change? Are they even good ideas?

Here’s my breakdown of Sanders’ 11-step plan (because 10 steps weren’t good enough, I guess).

1. Invest in schools, roads, bridges, and airports

Leaving aside schools for just a moment, I like this. A lot. The United States’ infrastructure is slowly deteriorating, and government funding for these projects has slowly died in favor of more “exciting” projects. From a libertarian perspective, infrastructure investment (i.e. roads) is probably the most just role of government in a free society, and ours has sorely been lacking in this (you had one job, government…). I’d really like to see a presidential candidate bring these issues to the forefront. However, it is unclear how a president can affect more than a nominal amount of infrastructure, as so much of it is really governed by individual states.

I suspect he will find a lot of issues doing this because of federalism. Fixing America’s infrastructure would, really, only be possible for a President if he spent every waking moment of his two terms working on it. Obviously, that’s not feasible.

Schools are, of course, a separate consideration. As most people know at this point, pouring federal dollars into has NOT correlated with success at all. Despite federal spending at an exponential rate, test scores have, at best, stayed exactly the same. Of course, it’s not entirely clear what Sanders means by “invest,” but if he means more than just throwing money at the problem, it’s unclear what he means and what could be done at a federal level to fix the problem.

2. Transition from fossil fuels to renewables

I’m curious as to what he means by this, and I’d be interested in specifics. If any part of this means ending government support of oil companies, I’m all for it. If any part of it it means investing federal dollars into nuclear energy, I’m all for it.

However, I suspect Sanders probably has the same fear of nuclear energy that many do, and he will fall short in this regard. I also think he will find ending oil subsidies more difficult than he expects, as America’s government has, for a very long time, been propping up the fossil fuel and automotive industries while also taking token initiatives to support renewables. There is a lot of entrenched power there, and not all of it is going to be something a President solve. Sanders has to remember that he has to work with a Congress, and pretty much none of this Congress is going to support that plan.

3. Make it easier for workers to join a union

So, let me go on record here and say that I think the concept of unions is pretty okay. Giving individual workers collective power to bargain with their employer is a great idea and a great way to fix huge power imbalances. However, unions in this country have a really complicated history, much of it not good. Unionization just hasn’t taken hold in the way it has in European states, such that many unions are corrupt and self-serving/self-perpetuating. Neither the desire for nor participation works in the U.S. the same way it does in Europe. And even in Europe, that history has not always been pretty, with unions strangling governments to make decisions that are in their best interest rather than society’s as a whole.

Of course people should have the freedom to join whatever associations they wish, but I’m not sure the emphasis on unions — which are just another form of a large, corporatized body — is wise here.

4. Raise the minimum wage

There is so much literature on the minimum wage, and a great deal of it suggests (though there isn’t a firm consensus), that raising the minimum wage causes employment rates to suffer. While of course there is room for disagreement, what minimum wage advocates essentially advocate for is a trade off: fewer jobs that are higher paying.

Now, I don’t particularly care to get into a minimum wage debate  here. I’m not an economist and am not particularly qualified to make a solid case one way or the other. But my main beef with this point is that, while Sanders recognizes that many people are not able to live based on the income to make, that problem goes way beyond wage. Sanders, and many liberals who support him, have not yet recognized that the issue isn’t necessarily greedy corporations trying to profit at the expense of unskilled laborers, but rather that what to do with unskilled labor is a larger societal problem that we don’t yet know how to fix. And it’s going to take more than raising the minimum wage to fix that problem.

5. Equal pay regardless of sex, gender

I’m honestly confused as to why this is here, except that it’s a nice thing that liberals like to think they can fix. I don’t think that there is anything, constitutionally, that Bernie Sanders could possibly do to decrease the pay gap. He can’t regulate employee pay across the country (holy shit, what an undertaking!), he can’t tell employers what and how to pay their employees, he can’t fix subtle sexism, and he can’t fix the not-insubstantial problems of gender-role-influenced choices that women make about their jobs.

This is a nice idea. I’d love to live in a country and a world where I don’t have to worry about being paid less than my peers for my work. But this is not a change a government can make. This is a societal change that needs grassroots support and a shifting of norms to happen. Sorry, Bernie.

6. Reform trade policies that send jobs overseas

So, I’m not really clear on what this means, exactly (if someone can explain this to me, please leave a comment!). But I’m going to hazard a guess that this has to do, again, with the problem of what to do with unskilled labor. It seems the impulse here is that companies are moving factory jobs overseas so they don’t have to pay high wages to workers (see above) or comply with other kinds of regulations that get in the way of successfully running a business. Dodging safety regulations notwithstanding, the only thing that keeping businesses from moving jobs overseas is going to do is make them move their entire business overseas. What will Sanders propose we do then? Not trade with companies that are made outside the U.S.?

I don’t want to say more, because it’s an issue I don’t know a lot about, but this seems counter-intuitive to me.

7. Make college affordable

Okay. Okay. Seriously? Do we not remember what happened when we said “make owning a home affordable?” NOT GOOD THINGS. And while I realize that the home ownership market is different than the college one, and it has different effects on our economy, many of the same lessons apply. You cannot make something universally accessible and it have the same value as it did before. College is not job training. College is specialized academic study, and not everyone can or even wants to do that.

Look, I sympathize with many of my peers who exit college without the knowledge of how to get a job or pay off debt. But making college “affordable” doesn’t solve that problem. Instead of making college affordable to everyone, Sanders should be concerned with a culture that makes a college degree required to have a decent standard of living. Sanders should emphasize that universities should teach students how to market their marketable skills. Is there anything he can do about this as a President? Probably not. But making college “affordable” is not going to make the problem of unskilled labor better — it will probably just make it worse.

8. Break up the big banks

Ha. Okay. I’ll just be here eating popcorn while I watch that train wreck.

9. Make healthcare available to all

I suspect here that he’s talking about a single payer health system. Which, all things considered, I don’t mind all that much. I don’t think that America’s health infrastructure, as it is, could sustain that, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. Single payer is not ideal by any  means, but the Affordable Care Act is a policy disaster that has had to have the Supreme Court essentially rewrite in order for it to be functional and constitutional. It’s shafted, in general, young people who are already struggling. It’s replaced one kind of inequality for another. Obviously, my preference would be to deregulate and free up the healthcare market, but since that’s not going to happen, I’d prefer it if people’s ability to have healthcare weren’t dependent on their job status.

It must be said, however, that this is a pretty pie-in-the-sky plan point. ACA isn’t really going anywhere, and if Sanders thinks he can pass single payer healthcare when Obama couldn’t, he’s got another thing coming.

10. Expand Social Security, Medicaid, and food stamps

I gotta give him credit for this one for sheer balls. But I gotta say… wasn’t Medicaid already recently expanded with the Affordable Care Act? Are we expanding this more, and to what extent? Same thing goes for the other programs. What does this even mean? Honestly, I find this plan point really confusing. It also must be said: with all the investment into infrastructure, schools, healthcare, etc. is he going to get the money for this as well?

11. Reform the tax code and close corporate loopholes

Again: what does this mean? I’d love some tax code reform. I’d love to abolish the tax code and replace it with a flat tax. But I doubt that this is what Sanders has in mind. From his website, it seems that he simply wants to increase taxes on corporations and the rich. You know, again. I’m not necessarily one to cry rivers over the rich’s money, but income earners making over $200,000 in this country already pay 70% of the nation’s taxes. I’m not sure how much more we should expect them to pay. As for corporations, increasing taxes on them is only going to push more businesses overseas (which might cause a problem for #6) or decrease the benefits allotted to laborers.

It seems to me that, before reforming the tax code and increasing taxes on the rich and corporations, the federal government should focus on balancing its budget, paying off its debts, and downscaling the spending it does. Otherwise, what is really happening here is that government is forcing people to pay for its own ineptitude and mistakes. Regardless of whether the person paying for that mistake is an poor individual or a multi-national corporation, that is not fair.

–

There are a lot more things to say, particularly to the list as a whole, but I know I have spilled much digital ink on this, so I will leave with only a few overall thoughts. Bernie is a popular, populist candidate because he presents what seems to be easy solutions to America’s labor and economic problems. The problem with using this to get elected is that Sanders, and the American public, will soon find that implementing these ideals is far from easy, if possible, for a president to do. And some of them will make the underlying problems much worse.

For this, I can’t really support Sanders as a presidential candidate. It’s not that I don’t like the picture that Bernie is painting, I do. It’s a wonderful, idealistic, United States society in which everyone is cared for. It’s just that he’s viewing it from too far away, and when he gets up close to it, he’s going to find it’s a giant mess.

Lately, I have noticed a trend towards negativity in myself as well as some of the people I know. Because of what I have learned about neuroscience, this concerns me, so I’m switching into personal trainer mode for this post to give you a reminder to take care of yourself and your brain.

Nobody likes being stressed out and bummed out, but on top of that it doesn’t help anything. Whether you are stressing about all the bad things happening in the world or something going on in your own life, you probably know that excessive stress is bad for you, and if it is making you cranky and irritable your stress is bad for everyone around you too! What you may not realize is that the brain already has a negativity bias and by constantly focusing on negative things you can actually exacerbate this bias, wiring your brain to be more negative and anxious, even changing your DNA. It’s called experience-dependent neuroplasticity, and it works in reverse as well. Positive images, experiences, and thoughts can rewire your brain for the better. If you are going to fight for liberty and a better world, you can’t let yourself be dragged down.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist, best-selling author, and a Senior Fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkely. He claims that rewiring your brain for the better requires positive experiences, and enriching and absorbing those experiences. If you are feeling tense, anxious, or irritable, it’s time to take a break, take care of yourself, and give your brain some positive experiences. Even though you might never be quite as positive and joyful as this guy, you can reduce stress and improve your life and the lives of those around you by balancing the negativity you encounter with these tips.

Take time to laugh – After too much time spent watching the news and being reminded of all the hate and ignorance in the world that hit a little too close to home, I found myself in a very unpleasant mood. My sister added a little humor to my day by playfully making fun of me, causing me to laugh out loud. I instantly felt less depressed and irritable. Laughing is good for you and fortunately, it’s contagious.

Notice and seek out the good– Personally, I like to watch The Ellen Show to remind myself of the positivity in the world. Sometimes I also like to check out some of the stories of cases won by the Institute for Justice. Whatever it is that warms your heart and keeps you calm while reminding you that the world is not all bad, take time to notice it and even seek it out in your daily life.

Do a workout – I know many people don’t consider exercise a “positive experience.” However,  we all know that exercise is good for us. Being active even reduces stress. Exercise doesn’t have to be a  thing of dread for you. If you want to increase your chances of sticking with regular exercise and make it a more positive experience, find something you enjoy. There are lots of options. Check out these unique gyms and unusual fitness classes. If budget or time constraints prevent you from trying some of these options, check out some of the workout plans at Shape.com, try some of the workout options on YouTube, or just jump rope or dance to your favorite music! If your version of enjoyable exercise is twerking to a Taylor Swift song, go for it!  I’m laughing with you not at you! Laughing is good for you, remember? The point is to move and have fun. Even if you don’t have much time, just a little bit of exercise can help reset your mood.

Do something nice for someone else – If you get stressed about bad things in the world that are outside of your control, it can be tempting to become apathetic. However, There is always something you can do to improve someone’s life. Donating to a great organization, helping someone you know, leaving a bigger tip than necessary, or just giving a compliment can go a long way to improving the lives of people around you. Here’s an idea I like to use. If you see a customer being rude to service personnel, stick up for that person. Even if you don’t confront the person who is being an ass-hole directly, you can quietly say a word of encouragement to the person who took the brunt of the rudeness and even leave that person an extra tip. If we all just pay more attention to the people around us, there are many opportunities to make a difference.

Go outside – Spending time outside is another great way to reduce your stress. If you live in a place that is cold during this time of the year, it can be harder to spend time outdoors. However, due to the risk of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), this is the most important time to make sure you get sunlight. Take your workout outside, go hiking, or if you have snow, go play in it!

Listen to music and sing – Whether you like to get up and belt it out at karaoke, sing in the care or the shower, or crank up your favorite music while you cook dinner or exercise, music can help you manage stress and improve your mood.

Spend time with people you love – Social support is important for combating stress. Be sure you take time for family, friends, and romantic partners. Even better, you can do any of the activities on this list with someone else to increase the benefits!

I hope this will remind you of the importance of taking time to focus on the good, HAVE FUN, take care of yourself, and enjoy time with the people you love! Have a wonderful holiday season, and a fabulous 2015!

Something I tried to articulate in my previous articles and wish to emphasize now is that I believe that my differences with Molyneux are not so much because I am somehow “ideologically opposed” to him or because I’m a “hater” (both accusations levied at me that week) but rather that I’m concerned about his premises, self-serving “logic” and troubling conclusions. I worry that all the incredible good he did for the liberty movement is in the past, and much of his notable present work is not only destroying the credibility he had, but also damaging the credibility of a movement I love.

I was not the only public “critic” that happened to post that week in August; I had actually written mine as a response to an article which was removed from Buzzfeed following “complaints.” The next few days were a surprising explosion of activity on my article and others. A slew of people (including myself) found they were blocked from Molyneux’s Facebook page simply for sharing any of the articles or entertaining a discussion that cast Molyneux in a negative light.

Let me state clearly for the record, that there’s nothing wrong with choosing with whom you interact and opting to limit the things you choose to see. Though I personally don’t block people on social media, I know that it can reduce the amount of rage, frustration and annoyance for many, so I wouldn’t begrudge someone the ability to block people or things from their Feed that they don’t wish to see.

I do, however, have a problem with censorship.

Just a day or so after my article was posted, Michael DeMarco, Molyneux’s Director of Operations over at Freedomain Radio, filed complaints with YouTube regarding a series of videos produced by TruShibes, a YouTube creator who took clips of Molyneux’s radio show and provided commentary and analysis. I used a number of these videos in my links on the article I wrote, to illustrate examples of things he said that I found problematic or worth addressing.

Those videos, and eventually the entire channel, were removed from YouTube.

“Third-party claims of copyright infringement”.

The first problem with this is a simple personal annoyance: my article, which relied on many references, was visited many times the day of and after those YouTube videos were shut down. As a result, my piece was incomplete, and it wasn’t for a couple of days when someone created a Mirror of TruShibes’ account that I was able to fix all the broken links and have a complete article.

The second problem, however, is one of ideology. The method by which Michael DeMarco went to remove TruShibes’ video off the website was by Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint.

As many in the liberty scene have noted, the DMCA is two things: it is the “initiation of force,” as well as intellectual property (IP) protection. Many libertarians are on the fence regarding intellectual property, but Molyneux, an anarchist, doesn’t appear to be one of them — he’s made his  anti-IP views clear in numerous videos and posts. The fact that he would use governmental IP claims to censor a critic is baffling to many of his supporters and far from consistent with his ethics by his own reasoning.

When, understandably, fans and observers asked why Molyneux would assert copyright claim and use government force when he supposedly is opposed to either one, DeMarco stated in a post:

“I received messages from several listeners about their calls/images/videos from participation in our shows being used to bully them online. This was spread across two different channels and they asked if I could have the content removed. Going after listeners is completely unacceptable and I used the methods at my disposal to remove the material. If you attack listeners, you don’t get to use any of our material. That’s the line.”

Further, when Molyneux was questioned by Joe Rogan while a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, he stated that the videos were taken down due to alleged “doxxing” of featured callers. I was not aware that Molyneux had ever been particularly concerned with caller privacy before, and his public videos and podcasts from which any quotes were drawn are still up and available. The videos that do fit the description of the claim he made were not the videos I referenced, as I would never condone public harassment, abuse or “doxxing.” The video series I linked to, by TruShibes and others, had nothing to do with doxxing or bullying. He has still provided no explanation for their removal.

The biggest problem, however, is that there is an established process in the case of abuse stemming from a YouTube video. YouTube has an abuse/harassment policy in place. I would know. Full disclosure: I actually work with YouTube daily as part of my job, which is how I learned the next few details.

A DMCA complaint is only filed in the event of a copyright violation claim. The form is available on YouTube’s website. You must agree to the following conditions before submitting the complaint:

Click to view this larger.

“I understand that abuse of this tool will result in termination of my YouTube account.”

Molyneux’s representative, DeMarco, knowingly filed several DMCA complaints, under false pretenses, initiating the use of force and tying up YouTube’s already clogged support systems, which deal daily with real reports of abuse and policy violations.

It is entirely within YouTube’s private Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and partnership agreements between their creators that they can delete a YouTube channel that violates their policies. It deleted the TruShibes account when DeMarco complained. It should be noted that the creator of Tru Shibes, J. Raven, has responded to Molyneux’s censorship of her criticism with a lawsuit. The text of the lawsuit is available online.

Regardless of Raven’s actions or the results of the lawsuit, Molyneux could easily be found in violation of YouTube’s Agreements by YouTube itself. False claims are easily considered “abusing the system“. If and when YouTube gets around to reviewing his claims, he could have a problem: due to violation of his private contract with YouTube, his channel could be deleted at any time.

I’m sure a few of Molyneux’s critics may be pleased to discover this fact. He attempted to censor a critic using government force, it’s remarkably ironic that he may have censored himself in the process of doing so.

At the end of the day, the concept of his channel being deleted actually makes me uncomfortable, even if the reason it could happen is due to his violation of a private contract. There are a handful of videos of his I have saved in the event that it happens. He has certainly had a couple that I can agree with and would even like to share with others. I do feel that he has been an articulate voice for a cause it seems like he’s since abandoned. Even some of his fans, with whom I’ve spoken on these subjects, quietly complain that he’s gone “off the deep end” on numerous topics and strayed far from actual liberty philosophy, to his detriment.

I’m not here to try to destroy a fellow libertarian. The only way I want to see Molyneux’s problematic content “gone” is by Molyneux changing his mind, and deleting it himself. Or by it fading into complete irrelevance as his fan base leaves him for more principled individuals. The man is tremendously unforgiving, and by his own arguments, he has proven himself worth disregarding. However, I don’t live by Molyneux’s logic. I recognize that he is human, and flawed, and that doesn’t make him so “damaged” that he cannot be redeemed. I still like many of his old videos and the very occasional recent one. I still consider him intelligent, articulate, and useful—I’d just prefer it if his good content clearly outweighed his bad.

I never want to see dissent silenced in oppressive ways. Perceived oppression leads to victim mentalities, and Molyneux has plenty of his own victim mentality already. I want to change people’s minds, not crush them to comply or censor them to silence. That doesn’t seem very libertarian, where the market of free thought should be determining the best ideas.

I think of censorship as being anathema to liberty. Freedom of speech and expression are essential to a free people and to libertarianism. We must be able to dissent, to disagree, and to dispute the assertions made by authority or those who claim to be the authority on a subject. By censoring those who oppose us, we lose the chance to have honest dialogues and challenge assumptions.

A free world is inevitably going to involve diverse ideas, and people coming to conclusions you might not – it’s how we are able to progress in philosophy and science and understanding everything around us. I am tremendously wary of people who claim to love liberty and freedom who would censor their critics. The beautiful anarchy that Molyneux and others discuss would be a world where many different ideas will flourish, and I wonder how he’ll manage his intolerance when he doesn’t have the government as a thug for hire. I can’t see it as an easy way to live, but he can believe and assert what he wants. In fact, I encourage everyone to try on different ideas for size, I just hope they don’t try forcing the ideas that fit them best on others.

As the quote often attributed to Voltaire, but was actually by Evelyn Beatrice Hall says:

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

I’m not the sort of critic who wants to see him silenced. I don’t believe that’s intellectually honest or useful to the movement. I want to see him held responsible by his fans and his viewers to make higher quality content, I want to see his problematic works called out. I want to see him apologize for what he did to TruShibes YouTube channel. I want to see him redeem himself with videos as unifying, thought-provoking and inspirational as “The Story of Your Enslavement“.

I sincerely hope that at some point, Molyneux rejects convenient methods of oppression such as censorship of dissent and threats of violence. It’s really hard to watch someone who has articulated how problematic these things are turn around and use them – and the harshest consequence of all of it could come from his violation of a private contract. By invoking government force, Stefan Molyneux grabbed the gun in the room, and if he shoots himself in the foot, the only person responsible for that is him.

I would precede that word with “happy,” but happy doesn’t seem to be the mood around the nation this year. And, while we are grateful for the time off of work, “happy” isn’t the overall mood of my house right now. We are sad, sombre, that not only is Michael Brown not alive to spend Thanksgiving with his family and friends, but the man who killed him is not facing the public for his crime.

Before I say much else, I want to apologize. While I have been sharing all that I can about Ferguson in an attempt to help people I know become more understanding on the issues at play here, I have not, as of yet, written anything about it from my own mind. Please know that this is not because I wish to stay silent, nor is it out of a desire to avoid argument with people whom I know will not agree with me. But rather it is because I have been unable to process  what has happened in such a way that I can say anything coherent. I have tried. Several times. And have failed. But now so much time has passed that I feel I must speak. Too much longer would be an injustice in and of itself. So, I am sorry for not saying anything before now. I have not abandoned my duty as an ally; I just needed time.

To give this piece some semblance of order, I’m going to start with the obvious. That the police officer who shot Mike Brown was not indicted was wrong. It was absolutely wrong. Regardless as to whether or not you think he would have been or should have been convicted of any of the charges sought, he should have been indicted. Instead, Darren Wilson essentially got a private trial with friendly prosecutors where he was allowed to defend himself, and evidence for both sides of a case were presented without a judge and in the absence of the adversarial process, brought by a prosecutor with deep ties to the police.

That is a mockery of the indictment process, as should be obvious to anyone looking at this trial. There is certainly probable cause to believe that Wilson violated the law, and the public and Mike Brown’s family deserved a public airing of the evidence to determine whether there was reasonable doubt that he was justified. That’s how the process is intended to work, but police/prosecutor collusion and racism kept it from working. It is wrong.

Second, I’m pulling out my giant, condescending, index finger and pointing it right at the libertarian community. There are a lot of positive examples of libertarians speaking out against Mike Brown’s shooting and the lack of indictment. And that is what I would expect. Reason has done great coverage of the process nightmare that is Ferguson and police violence all over the country.

But there are others, lurking in comment boards, on social media, and around the internet that are using this opportunity to either outright be racist or to show their racist leanings. To these people, I say: You disgust me, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

You don’t have to be a radical, anti-police anarchist to understand that what happened here is a collusion of state power of epic proportions. You don’t have to be a “social justice warrior” to know that police officers target black people for the same “offenses” that white people commit in the same numbers, and that black people are jailed more frequently and are more frequently a target of unwarranted police violence. I don’t even feel the need to cite examples here. Get off your lazy ass, stop listening to your racist friends, and Google it and see for yourself.

Libertarians. Bah. You who pride yourself on “individualism” and rights, yet are so quick to blame all of the Ferguson protesters for rioting when you know damn well that a few people can cause a lot of chaos. You who more than anyone should be aware of how monstrous state power is, are letting your racism override your good sense and love of liberty. If your racism wasn’t enough, your ignorance to your own state of mind is deeply disturbing. And that you let it trump your principles should deeply, deeply disgust you.

Quick aside here. Isn’t it funny how those who want to claim that white people have no collective responsibility for racism want to say that black people are collectively responsible for “black on black” crime? Huh.

To those of you—libertarian and not—who have remained silent, I am deeply disappointed in you. If you consider yourself to be an ally of people of color, then silence is really not an option for us. People around the country are speaking out against systemic racism, yet systemic racism is getting in the way of them being taken seriously. Media chooses to focus on the rioting rather than the peaceful protesters, who are much more numerous. White allies have a responsibility to use their power to help amplify those voices. To engage and not just shut out those who are racist. To help spread the words of people, especially people of color, who are writing about what has happened here. We have power, and with that we have the duty to use it well and to help those who do not. It’s hard. But what is right is not always easy.

I want to touch base again about the idea of the rioting. There is much more to be said there. One of the most consistent and troubling things I have been seeing are calls for peace from white people attempting to calm down what they see as unnecessary violence happening in Ferguson.

First, I must point out that the majority of the protests happening in Ferguson and around the country are peaceful. Much of the media has been focusing on the rioting partially because it’s more exciting, but probably also more because it fits into the “angry black people” vision that is more comfortable with most of white America. If you’re going to be critical of the media, don’t just be critical of it when it is telling you things you don’t want to hear.

Second, even if that ratio were somehow skewed, it strikes me as fundamentally tangential to what the actual problem is: Injustice in Mike Brown’s shooting. Even if there were violent protests, and even if that were wrong, the first injustice here was the fact that white people have been throwing brown people into prison for decades upon decades. They have been inflicting violence upon them en masse for centuries. This is just the latest, and it is just in a different form. The characters have changed, but the story is still eerily familiar.

How can you tell people who are being murdered and kidnapped en masse that peaceful protests are the answer? That is fundamentally ignorant of what is happening to black people in this country. If you want to stop the violence, then, it seems most prudent—and most just—to speak out against the behavior which is inciting those riots. But most people calling for peace don’t actually care about ending violence. They want people to shut up.

Third, and perhaps most controversially, given the full context of the Mike Brown shooting, there is certainly a strong part of me that feels that violence is both just and necessary. Why should people feel the need to behave by the rules of a society that is slaughtering them and robbing them at a chance for a good life? To protect those that are quietly benefitting from that collusion? Ha.

But, the takeaway here is that if you feel a need to “call for peace,” you probably just shouldn’t. Or, at the very least, call for an end to the violence that our society inflicts upon black people. If they don’t read this once a year already, white people should be re-reading “Letter from Birmingham Jail” right about now.

For those of you who don’t know, I got married this month, on the First of November, to a man I have been with for nearly seven years. My husband is a lot more extraverted than I am, and, as such, spends a lot of time out with his friends. Sometimes late. Being the worry wart that I am, I ask that he let me know when he’s leaving where he his, and that if he’s going to be home later than usual to let me know. I do this because he often returns late at night, and I’m worried about him.

When he fails to do these things (which happens; no one’s perfect, especially when they’re inebriated), I worry myself sick. Not because I’m afraid he’s gotten lost or been robbed or something to that effect, but because I’m afraid that a cop has decided that him walking home late at night is something to be suspicious of. And that because my husband is black, he will not ever make it home.

This is our reality. It’s time for some people to accept it—and work on changing it.

I grew up in an environment where religion was not just a part of my family life, but where religious beliefs determined every aspect of our lives—everything we did and didn’t do. In the very legalistic religious group we were in, emphasis was placed on the “didn’t.” We didn’t watch TV, listen to “unclean” music, or go to public school. For women, the rules were even stricter. We didn’t cut our hair, have jobs outside the home, wear makeup, or even wear clothing that was considered immodest such as shorts, short skirts, bathing suits or even pants. Yes, you read that correctly. To give you a visual, we basically walked around looking a little bit like the characters of Little House on the Prairie. That was just the beginning of the long list of rules.

Sounding  a little strange? It wasn’t to me. In fact, the world outside this religious bubble was all very strange to me throughout my early childhood. The group had a tendency to pick out small passages and obsess about their literal meaning. Corinthians II says, “come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.” Because of this, the group made a lot of effort to separate themselves from others who didn’t believe as they did.

I was taught that what was “out there” was evil and would send me straight into the fiery pits. What’s worse, religious leaders taught that even considering different beliefs was an insult to God and would make room for the devil. It’s humorous now, but not so much then. Since my parents kept me out of public school and away from television, most of my exposure to different types of lifestyles was through books. My family, the ones who are still close to me, often joke about my early obsession with books. Luckily for me, at that time my parents had no idea why books were such a fascination for me. Through them I learned about lives that were completely different from mine, people with entirely different sets of experiences and world views. Like the wardrobe into Narnia, books were my outlet to a completely different world.

My  entire adult life was really defined by a haircut, which was my first concrete step to rebel against my upbringing. I was twelve or maybe thirteen when I took this bold step to distinguish myself from everyone I knew. I was shocked when my parent’s decided not to punish me. Little did I know they were already having their own issues with the group. On top of that, they knew my action would not be without consequences. They were right. My friends no longer wanted to associate with me. Even if they did, their parents wouldn’t approve.

My parents didn’t tolerate this for very long. Propelled by witnessing the treatment I received for my actions and additional controversies within the group which included the infidelity of a religious leader and other interpersonal conflicts, my parents’ stringent beliefs began to shift. Soon they stopped going to the church we had attended for my whole life and began to reassess our lifestyle. I know this was harder for them than they ever told me. After all, this meant breaking deep family ties and losing close friendships. Since the group isolated themselves, they had very few connections with people who would not reject them because of their lifestyle change. For quite a while, my parents and my three sisters only had each other. Looking back, I think this might be why my family is so close now.

The transition into a different mode of living was not a smooth one.  We tried to do some catching up on the movies and music we had missed and acclimate to a completely different environment. My sisters and I were allowed to wear some of the clothing that had been forbidden, although my parents struggled with where to create new boundaries, and my youngest sister was still worried we were bound for hell. Old beliefs aren’t easily shattered.

Perhaps the most earth-shattering experience for me was getting a job. When I turned 15, I was finally able to gain a little more independence by working at a local ice cream shop, and my world really expanded. Still lacking in experience with interacting with people who did not share my background, I was painfully shy and didn’t say much. I just listened and learned.

Despite my attempts to stay under the radar and just make a few bucks, my manager took on my social awkwardness as her personal project and made every attempt to place me in uncomfortable situations. I see the humor in it now, but at the time I was mortified. It was bad enough that I lacked the frame of cultural reference shared by my peers, but now she insisted on putting the spotlight on me by asking pointed questions and pushing me to interact with people who were very different from me. Through this uncomfortable experience I gained confidence and broadened my perceptions of people.

Others wonder how my family could have believed they way they did. My parents are very intelligent people. I knew their religious experience was more complex than most people realized, but I struggled with understanding how things went so far with the group. In college, I took religious studies classes whenever I could fit them into my schedule. Studying religion not only helped me understand cultures and religions that were different from mine, it helped me understand my own family and look at them in a more understanding way. I began to notice that other people created lives around other beliefs—spiritual, philosophical, and political.

Later, when I started paying more attention to politics, I looked at it in light of my religious background and my study of religion and found parallels between political beliefs and the beliefs I was taught. These parallels became more fascinating when I took a class called Magic, Religion, and Science, which delved into the neurology of religion and belief in general. The professor told the class about people who dropped his class because they were uncomfortable or offended by these ideas. Given my background, I was not surprised this had happened. Whether the beliefs are religious or political, right or wrong, letting go of them is no easy task. My own unconventional background and the things I learned about belief have helped me realize some things that I can apply to politics. Here’s what I have learned so far.

1. Everyone is biased.

Different experiences lead to different perspectives, different perspectives lead to different perceptions of reality. One of my most valuable educational and life experiences was reading the book Born to Believe. This book helped me articulate some of the things I had perceived about beliefs and deepened my understanding of my own biases. Republicans, Democrats, and yes, even libertarians are all biased. The book lays out 27 biases that impact each person’s perceptions and beliefs. Here are some examples.

• Confirmation Bias: the tendency to unconsciously ignore information that contradicts our beliefs and emphasize information that confirms them.
• Perceptual Bias: our brain’s automatic assumption that our own perceptions and beliefs reflect objective truths.
• Perseverance Bias: The propensity to insist that a belief is true, even when contradictory evidence is presented because the beliefs become ingrained in our neural circuitry.
• Uncertainty Bias: the brain’s dislike of ambiguity and preference to eliminate uncertainty in favor of either believing or disbelieving.
• Bandwagon bias: the tendency to go along with the belief systems of any group we are involved with.
• Out-Group Bias: the rejection or disparagement of people outside our own group, particularly when their beliefs are very different.

Despite my recognition that they exist, my biases are something I must constantly strive to keep in check. I have struggled to keep my bias against religion in check by recognizing that other people have religious experiences that were not negative as mine were.

2. Interact with people who are very different from you.

This is a suggestion directly from Born to Believe. One of the main reasons the religious group I grew up in was able to maintain such extreme belief systems was by shielding themselves from “outsiders,” people who believed differently. Even though you might not intentionally separate yourself, everyone is susceptible to this Out-Group Bias to some degree. We can reduce its impact by exposing ourselves to ideas that are much different from ours.

3. Be humble.

Exposing yourself to other ideas is not going to be nearly as helpful if you go into the interaction, not to learn something new, but with the assumption that you are right, AKA the perceptual bias. When a person believes something strongly, there is a tendency to focus on talking rather than listening in an effort to convince. When both sides do this, nobody really gets heard. I like Penn Jillette’s approach to discussion with people who disagree with you. Listen at least as much as you talk. There is nothing wrong with being wrong or being uncertain. People are just people, each of us has limited knowledge and different experiences, and each of us can learn from others.

4. If something makes you uncomfortable, pay attention.

Like the students who walked out of the Magic, Religion, and Science class, it’s easy to become uncomfortable when foundational beliefs are questioned. It’s sometimes automatic to scoff and dismiss without even considering these types of ideas. However, if I had avoided the things that made me uncomfortable, I would still be in the religious group. I probably would have never gone to college or experienced the many opportunities I have enjoyed in my life.

5. Be kind.

Look on people with different beliefs with kindness. You don’t know their experiences. Although beliefs certainly have consequences that can be very negative, a belief alone does not make a person good or bad. On top of that, you only help fuel the biases of other people when you treat them unkindly, creating unnecessary dualism that perpetuates hate and misunderstanding.

I know my life is definitely an extreme example, eerily similar to The Village, with the isolation, scare tactics, and manipulation by religious leaders. However, we all have beliefs that impact the way we process information and ultimately, the way we see the world. We all tend to surround ourselves with others who share similar beliefs and build lives around those beliefs. What seems strange or even ludicrous to you could be a strongly held belief for someone else. That belief might be wrong, but yours might be too. If we can recognize the limits of our own beliefs and try to minimize our biases, we can make more progress towards solving political problems.

Hate-reading is the well-recognized phenomenon of deliberately reading things which exasperate you. For example, if you’re a conservative, you might read The Daily Kos or, if you’re a liberal, you might stop by Fox News. This isn’t the intellectually-honest, exploring-other-ideas reading, but rather reading simply to become frustrated. By no means is hate-reading limited to the merely political: Rich Kids of Instagram collects examples of conspicuous consumption by teenagers, generally accompanied by tone-deaf statements of entitlement. It makes for perfect hate-reading, because who doesn’t like to mock the young, rich, and clueless?

In all cases, you are deliberately exposing yourself to exasperation and anger as a form of entertainment. There are other ingredients in this intoxicating cocktail: morbid fascination, a sharpened sense of superiority and, of course, some self-congratulation. I told you I would be honest; hate-reading is not part of the best and highest that humans have to offer. Above all, though, it’s simple curiosity. Hate-reading may be one of the best ways to really get out of yourself and expose yourself to truly different ideas and attitudes.

For me, my hate-reading material of choice was Men’s Rights Activist material. MRAs are activists who are (at least in name) dedicated to fighting for rights for men, but who are best known for hating feminists and women in general. They can be found at A Voice for Men, the mensrights subreddit, and The Red Pill subreddit. It should be noted that these venues are the home of the men’s rights movement, not a fringe element.

These websites are cesspools of anger, entitlement, and poor reasoning.

MRAs claim to be standing up for men’s rights in a world that is prejudiced against all men; some of their particular issues include male rape, prison rape (which they say predominantly affects men), male suicide and mental illness, a supposed bias in child custody courts, domestic violence against men and, of course, that well-known epidemic of false rape allegations.

Many of these are things that feminists (both male and female) have been working on for years. For example, it was feminists who pressured the FBI to change its definition of rape to allow for male victims–in fact, the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 was spearheaded by a feminist. Similar stories can be told for male suicide, male mental illness and the harm that traditional gender roles do to men.

Not all issues promoted by MRAs are valid; the “false rape accusation epidemic” so favored by MRAs is not at all accurate.

As one example of the culture of the men’s rights movements, consider how often leaders of the movement—including the A Voice for Men PR director, Judgy Bitch—use gender-based slurs to deride people they disagree with. Instead of moving away from rigid gender roles, which would benefit both men and women, the men’s rights movement delights in calling women they disagree with “whores” and men they disagree with “mangina.”

Hint: if you’re using a comparison to a woman as an insult, you’re not doing much to defeat traditional gender roles. And traditional gender roles, including the idea of a man as the unemotional financial provider, could be contributing to the massive numbers of unemployed men suffering from depression and other mental illnesses.

The truth is that the few real issues are used as a cover to complain about women. As J.F. Sargent pointed out in his excellent post, it’s no mistake that the “fundamental beliefs” of the Red Pill subreddit are all about how women are manipulative, irrational, and immoral. This is not a movement about helping men.

However, this article is not about the various problems with the men’s rights movement. More information about the failings and contradictions of the men’s rights movement can be found here, here, here and here. I think I’ve said enough for you to see what qualifies MRA blogs for hate-reading, at least for me.

And as I mentioned above, there are certainly ugly motivations for hate-reading, but I don’t imagine these are unique to me. Nobody is perfect, and maybe there’s a way to put our vices to work, to trick them into helping us become better people.  Honestly, hate-reading is how I became a feminist. I started reading Jezebel out of sick fascination with the self-righteousness and snarky liberalism, but particularly in the comments, I saw a lot of valid points that led me to become a feminist. I still read Jezebel, and I still roll my eyes at some of it, but I also ultimately changed my worldview based on it.

So how did hate-reading change me?

I View Men More Sympathetically

The first truth is that, as much as I hate to admit it, the men’s rights movement did lead me to view men with more sympathy. It’s not that I was anti-male before, but as someone without brothers or any long-term romantic relationships, I’d never been particularly acquainted with the unique problems that men face.

To that extent, the men’s rights movement does give a voice–granted, a hate-filled, invective-spewing, historically ignorant voice–to some of men’s problems. Under all the anger and the rage—and I would never want to be in a room alone with many of these people—I did see their hurt and disappointment. Online, it is possible to take a step back and see the pain.

I am more aware of men’s issues, such as prison rape, male suicide, etc., than I was previously. The men’s rights movement doesn’t actually do anything about those issues; in fact, feminists are better at getting their issues addressed than they are. But this is where I personally became aware of those issues.

I Treat Men Differently (Hopefully Better)

The second truth is that hate-reading MRA blogs did change my behavior. While I’ve always paid for my own dates because I don’t see why men should be responsible for that, I hadn’t worked out all the other ways in which traditional gender roles for men get reinforced in casual behavior.

For example, I used to love a good “compensating for something?” joke when I saw a man driving a huge pick-up truck, or telling men to “man up” when I thought they were being whiny. But if women shouldn’t be judged for their bodies, then neither should men. Small-penis jokes are just another form of body-shaming, and I don’t do that anymore. These are only a few of the small changes that have accumulated; in most cases, I already agreed with the precepts but hadn’t worked out all the conclusions. Unfortunately, rather than finding a way out of these stifling roles, in many ways they are reinforced in the MRM.

I Understand that There Is a Greater Sense of Us-Vs.Them

The third truth is the most difficult: Even as my understanding of men’s pain has grown, I feel a greater sensation of “feminists vs. sexists.” I know, logically, that this dichotomy is excessively simple, yet the effect of reading so many profoundly sexist things on MRA blogs and of seeing misogyny carried so far, is that I am entirely less tolerant of any of its milder manifestations.

Previously, I believed that there could be such a thing as a minor manifestation of misogyny; now, seeing how MRAs have elevated and extended misogyny into an all-encompassing worldview, I am more likely to regard anyone who says something sexist as “one of them.” In short, I feel a greater sense of identity with fellow feminists and less inclination to patiently educate those who aren’t. This is the side effect of reading so many attacks aimed at feminists; I feel a greater need to regroup, to have solidarity, to mark any non-feminists as the enemy. I am not claiming that this is good, only that I have noticed it in myself.

This contradiction may be unique to the men’s rights movement; after all, it’s always going to be difficult to extend the hand of friendship to people who compare you to dogs who must be trained (only one recurring example of the dehumanizing language often applied to women by MRAs). There is tension between my newly-expanded empathy and my emotional reaction to being attacked, even if in the abstract. However, since I am aware of this “us-vs.-them” thinking, I can work to correct it.

I Can Better Fight My Own Biases

This is the final and most important effect of hate-reading: with a little curating, it can lead to profound transformations in a person’s biases. The very silence of hate-reading is what allows actual transformations to happen. Trolling or arguing, even online, is far too emotional to allow for reflection. But as I read, I simultaneously watch myself and try to understand my own reactions and my own biases. There is both time and space to interrogate myself, and perhaps even educate myself.

There are, however, no cure-alls, and some things have to be kept in mind. The most important thing is context. Earlier, I mentioned that the context can help in understanding MRAs; if I heard a man in real life saying the sort of things these men say on the Internet, I would quite literally fear for my safety and never be in the same room with him.

In that case, the context of a non-physical location makes it possible for me to hear them. Since I am not physically threatened by their anger, I can listen rather than fear for myself. But the lack of context also means I don’t know who they “really” are, or how large this movement actually is.

Another risk of hate-reading is that it might make the ideological division worse. I say this because hate-reading is closely related to shaming. As soon as I start sharing my hate-reading, it has become a social activity aimed at policing morality: shaming. But shaming, in my opinion, is the opposite of education. Instead of enlightening, shaming forces people ever further into an us-vs.-them ideology in which ambiguity is not tolerated and neither is betrayal. All these attitudes increase the social cost of change and make it less likely.

I Understand Why Hate Reading is Important

I don’t think I’ll ever stop hate-reading. I enjoy it too much. But despite the risks, I do think there’s a way to do it productively. Sometimes empathy is difficult, and it’s okay to rely on curiosity and a morbid sense of self-righteousness in the mean time. With that in mind, I’ve thought of a few rules for making hate-reading as productive as possible:

• Go deep. Don’t just choose one blog. Read a variety of “enemy” blogs. This exposes you to multiple voices and ways of reasoning.
• Read the comments. Sometimes, the commenters can provide the individual voice or necessary fact that makes the argument so much better and more personal.
• Take breaks. My experience with hate-reading is that the anger fades but the newly gained empathy remains.

Maybe, if we pay attention, we can actually use hate-reading to help us become more empathetic, instead of more angry. I believe the ultimate goal is to see others as human beings, to value them for their humanity; this means taking difficult journeys outside oneself, and hate-reading might be a short-cut.

First, let’s start off with some plain misreadings. James Caton, a teaching assistant and graduate student in economics at George Mason University states at Money, Markets, and Misperceptions that “Wheeler has chosen a poor time to defend a lack of transparency at the Fed.” However, a casual reader should notice that I stated in the first paragraph of my article, “More transparency in monetary policy and a clearer definition of the Fed’s powers are clearly needed.” I went on to say that increasing accountability and transparency is a “worthy cause.” Clearly, I am not against transparency. However, I am against the FRTA because while it provides transparency, it also gives Congress more influence over monetary policy by removing restrictions on auditing the internal communications and policy deliberations. I don’t think the transparency is worth creating a more politically motivated central bank.

Phil Magness, a historian over at the Institute for Humane Studies, made a post on Facebook, accusing me of “taking the Fed at its own word that it is “independent” and long-run oriented” while Steve Horwitz, Austrian Economist at St. Lawrence University, claimed in his own Facebook post that I am being a “tool for the powerful” for the same reasons. Here’s the rub with those claims: I never claimed that the Federal Reserve is completely independent from politics.  Although I didn’t go into detail, my article does mention the valid concerns over the current politicization of the Fed. As  explained by Goodman (1991), “Independence is a continuous, not dichotomous, variable.” I can see how my emphasis on independence might have been misunderstood as ignoring the nuances of political influences. However, that was not my intention. What I said was that the Federal Reserve was designed to be as independent as possible for a good reason, and that this legislation will only make monetary policy more directly subject to the whims of politicians.

In his Facebook post, Magness linked a lot of sources about the political influence on the Fed as if current problematic political influences on the institution justifies adding more political influence. Call me crazy, but I am not convinced. There is evidence that judicial decisions  are subject to political influence. Should we also believe this can be resolved by congressional meddling in those decisions?

Second, let’s talk about the willful misreadings and leaps of logic that have abounded in the wake of my article. It should be obvious that just because I am opposed to this particular bill does not mean I am opposed to all attempts to reform the Federal Reserve. Although I mentioned inflation targeting, I am open to the possibility of other research-supported alternatives. I don’t claim to know exactly what framework should be adopted. However, creating a research-based framework is not what  the FRTA does and is certainly not the focus of the proponents of this bill.

Instead, the proponents have focused the discussion around ending the Fed and giving monetary policy control back to Congress.  Representative Paul Broun, who introduced the FRTA, actually criticizes the fact that Congress was not allowed to vote on Federal Reserve policy actions and said “Congress needs to take that power back.” Suppose this bill passes. Are we supposed to  just trust Congress to use this increased power to improve monetary policy?

Finally, I have been criticized for using academic research published by the Fed.  However, the same people who reject the Fed’s research could be said to have an ideological bias, but that doesn’t warrant the dismissal of their research.  I see no reason why both are not equally credible. Unless the critics can demonstrate a particular issue with the methodology used in the research, I will stand by its validity. However, if the research I originally cited isn’t enough to convince you of the pitfalls of allowing more congressional influence over monetary policy, here is another academic paper that explains how greater independence helps minimize political pressures and points to the supporting body of research, such as Cukierman (1992) , Fischer (1995) , and Maloney, Pickering, and Hadri (2003). In fact, when the IGM Panel of Economic experts was surveyed regarding a similar bill, 70% disagreed with the idea that this type of audit  would improve the Fed’s legitimacy without hurting its decision making.

To come back to the critiques of my piece, Caton’s recommendation that “we implement both a good policy rule and framework for transparency” does not seem to be at odds with my position—when you read what I said properly—but, of course, that depends on the specifics of the legislation.

I appreciate his and others’ valuable input on the potential for nominal income targeting as an alternative to inflation targeting. However, I hope in the future that those who comment will abandon the personal insults which add nothing to the policy debate. As I stated in my original article, what we need are reasonable alternatives with a solid economic basis to make progress towards resolving the problems. Libertarians and other proponents of reforming the Federal Reserve shouldn’t just support any and all legislation with that aim. The piece of legislation we have is not good enough—we should aim for the best.

Note: I apologize for incorrectly stating a former university of Steve Horwitz. This article has been updated with the current information.

Libertarian Women Find Their Voices Online

October 15th, 2014
Contact: Associate Editor Elizabeth BeShears
liz.erob@gmail.com
(256) 527-8133

The online-only libertarian publication Thoughts on Liberty, a women’s political magazine, is celebrating its second anniversary this October. It heads into its third year boasting a year-over-year readership increase of 44.5 percent. Thoughts on Liberty, while it initially only had three writers on staff, has grown to host nine contributors, all of whom are female, and regularly publishes guest submissions and student writers.

Its growth online and boom in brand awareness speaks volumes to the increasing importance of women in the libertarian movement.

“A recent study by Pew shows that approximately seven percent of women are libertarian, far more than what has been reflected in the voting polls in previous years,” said associate editor Rachel Burger. “This number tells us that there are millions of women who value personal liberty and are interested in making those values a larger part of the mainstream conversation.”

In response to the growing demand for female libertarian voices, Thoughts on Liberty is building an interactive community that is engaged with both women and men across the political and ideological spectrum by producing quality long-form content and building allies both in and outside of the greater liberty movement.

“In the past two years, Thoughts on Liberty has shaped conversations in the liberty movement and pushed libertarians to think about a free society in ways they might not have before,” said Gina Luttrell, editor-in-chief. “This just goes to show what women in particular can add to our movement, and why there should be more of them.”

Thoughts on Liberty’s writers and alumnae have been featured national and international publications such as Forbes, Mic, The Blaze, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and have founded Citizens for Media Accountability. They have been quoted in The Los Angeles Times, Jezebel, and other respected outlets.

Thoughts on Liberty is a growing women’s publication that strives to be the premier site for women libertarian voices. Its aims to provide a focused platform for women already participating in the liberty movement  and to speak to show women at large why a free society is best. It proudly represents ideas across the ideological spectrum and promotes intellectual exploration among its writers. You can read more and subscribe at thoughtsonliberty.com