Conquest By Concept – A Novel About the Culture War

Free Samples of chapters 1-3 are here.

Book Description:  Wars are fought in the mind, not just on the battlefield. John Gilbert loves Angie, his far-left Antifa girlfriend. Then he meets Edward Hall, a charismatic right wing figure. Hall makes John question Angie’s politics. Soon, John can no longer tell which side is good or evil.

Caught in a political ‘love triangle’ between the far-left and far-right, John Gilbert faces a choice. Will he stay true to Angie’s passionate progressive values, or can the seductive Edward Hall turn him to the dark side?

Summary of Chapters 1-3

In chapter one, John Gilbert faces a false sex accusation, and is almost caught up in the Me Too craze. John fears the reaction of his girlfriend, Angie, a feminist and left wing activist. He also changes his views on the high profile Kavanaugh – Blasey-Ford sexual assault case.

In chapter two,  Angie goes to an Antifa protest against a speaking tour by Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern. John tags along and is dragged into a brawl when mistaken for a fascist. This has surprising consequences.

In chapter three, John meets Edward Hall, a charismatic figure with views very different to Angie’s.

Conquest By Concept is available on Amazon, Book Depository, and other online sellers.

Amazon   https://bit.ly/ConquestUSA

Amazon Australia  https://bit.ly/ConquestEbk-AmAu

Chapters 1-3 are here.

Chapter 1

Meditation Made Me a Fascist

If you want to conquer evil, you have to understand it. To understand it, you may need to become it. When you become it, you may learn that evil was something different all along.

So, to the tale of how I became a ‘fascist.’ That’s a joke, by the way. I’m not a fascist, even if that’s what the Antifa called me when he tried to knock me out. Everyone seems to have gone mad these days. It’s now normal for complete strangers to attack each other in the street. I’m going to explain how we reached this point, or at least my own part in it.

For me, it all began that night I went to meditation class. It was a last minute decision to even show up. I hadn’t been to the Bronte Buddhist Centre for months. Too busy with work, study, and trying to live in harmony with Angie. That’s why a little inner peace was so badly needed. ‘You haven’t got time to meditate? You haven’t got time not to meditate.’ That’s what Dipak, the head Buddhist, used to say. Not that I was a Buddhist myself, I just liked to hang out with them sometimes.

So what started my turn to the dark side? It happened like this. I had dinner with Angie, drove to the centre, and parked my car. Then I meditated, came home, and went to bed. And if that lurid tale doesn’t lay bare the slippery slope to evil, nothing will.

Actually it was what happened the next day that did it. I got home mid-afternoon, slumped onto the couch, and heard my phone ring. It was Dipak – and he sounded weird.

‘John, we need to, uh, have a chat. Can you drop over for a few minutes?’

‘I just got home. What’s up?’

‘It’s a… um… a delicate matter.’

‘I can’t go out again now. Just tell me over the phone.’

‘It’s a bit awkward, to be honest.’

Dipak was starting to worry me. Clearly something was a big deal, but I wasn’t going to play guessing games. By the way, despite the fancy name, Dipak was a white Australian guy like me. His real name was Steve, but he changed it to Dipak when he became a Buddhist.

I sighed.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘whatever you’ve got to say, lay it on me.’

‘Alright. Is there something you’d like to tell me about… what happened last night?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Something you did that may have upset someone?’

Alarmed by his tone, I cast my mind back over the events of the night before, yet with no clue what he was on about. Then again, maybe I had done something offensive without realising. It wouldn’t be the first time.

‘Sorry, I’ve got no idea what you mean. Just tell me.’

‘OK then. Someone at the meeting last night… ’

There was a long pause.

‘Yes?’ I prompted.

‘Someone said they saw you… exposing yourself last night during the meditation.’

‘I’m sorry. What?’

‘Exposing yourself. During the meditation.’

The words finally registered.

‘Huh? What the hell are you talking about?’

I’m going to omit the next part of the conversation, as it would be in poor taste to start this story with a stream of profanities. Faced with such a bizarre accusation, you can’t really blame me. Still, it can be left out of the current account. Here’s a cleaned up version of what was said, and I’ll skip forward a bit.

‘I can’t believe you’re taking this seriously, Dipak. Do you really think someone’s going to go to the Buddhist centre, sit around in a circle with everyone else, and pull out his penis during the meditation? Do you realise how crazy that sounds?’

‘I know.’

‘Who would make such an absurd claim anyway?’

‘I’m not going to say who it was.’

‘So some nut job is allowed to destroy my reputation, and you’re going to protect her. It was a her, wasn’t it?’

‘I’m not going to reveal her gender.’

‘You just did. Jesus Christ!’

‘It’s a serious allegation and I’ve a duty of care to protect the victim.’

‘I’m the victim! I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. How can you possibly take this seriously?’

‘It is odd, John, I’ll admit. But why would she make such a story up? What would be her motivation?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist. It must be this Me Too mania. I mean, of course I support the fight against sexual harassment. Who wouldn’t? But if this is what it’s come to, it’s turned into a damned witch hunt – and I ain’t no witch.’

‘I believe you, John. At least I want to. Look, can you think of anything that might have caused this person to make a mistake? Something she may have misinterpreted?’

The events of the previous night flashed before my eyes, like in one of those near-death-experiences you hear about. There I was hurrying to finish dinner with Ange. Then I pulled a pair of long trousers out of the wardrobe, squeezed into them, and drove to the centre.

I like to meditate sitting up, and I remembered putting a chair in the circle, moving one of the red yoga mats aside to make room. Soon after, a young woman I didn’t know came back from the bathroom and sat down on the mat I’d moved. She’d seemed to frown a little, which seemed of no account at the time.

As Dipak began leading the meditation, we tried to get comfortable so we could sit still for forty-five minutes. I’d found it harder than usual, realising as I struggled that I’d put on a couple of kilos since last year and the trousers were a bit snug. It’s harder to lose weight in your thirties. In search of a comfortable posture, I’d undone the top button and loosened the zipper… by about one centimetre. Two at most.

No. Surely it can’t have been that. Then again, what else could it be?

The flashback continued. The aftermath when Dipak went round the circle ‘checking in’ with everyone about how their meditation was. I’d said mine was fine! Then the girl who’d given me the stink eye when I moved her mat had declined to comment. There was a sort of weird vibe when she said it. Yes – it was definitely her who made the complaint.

I returned to the phone call.

‘Look, Dipak. I think I know what happened. I haven’t been in for a few months, right? You might have noticed I’ve put on a little weight.’

‘Well… er… maybe a little.’

‘So my pants were a bit tight and I undid the button and put the zipper down a centimetre. But how did this nut job turn that into me exposing myself? What the fuck, man!’

I would never normally have sworn while talking to a spiritual man like Dipak, but I was rattled.

‘I know who it was too,’ I said.

‘I’m not going to say who it was,’ Dipak replied.

‘It was the girl on my left.’

‘All I know is she was extremely upset. She came up to me after the meditation almost in tears.’

‘Call me heartless,’ I said, ‘but I don’t feel a great deal of sympathy. I mean, I go in there for a little peace of mind and this happens! It’s outrageous.’

‘Look, John, leave it with me. I’m going to have a word to the person who made the complaint. See if she might agree she could have been mistaken.’

‘Sure, Dipak. You do that.’

I hung up and swore loudly. Then I texted Angie, ‘You won’t BELIEVE what just happened!’ Still seething in righteous indignation, I was about to call her.

Then stopped.

My mind flew back to our conversation from last month during the Ford-Kavanaugh sexual assault case in America.

Some judge named Brett Kavanaugh had been chosen to head the US Supreme Court. Then a woman, Christine Blasey Ford, made an accusation he’d assaulted her at a party thirty years before, when they were both teenagers. Kavanaugh was President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, and some said Blasey Ford’s action was a political stunt to get at Trump. Others said it was a scandal that a possible rapist could be given the highest legal job in America. So, was Kavanaugh guilty? There was no real evidence either way. It was just another he-said-she-said.

The case was a big deal, especially with the recent Me Too craze about women being sexually assaulted by men in power. Even here in Australia it was all over the news. Angie and I were sitting there watching it on TV one night. Blasey Ford, a middle-aged blonde academic, was in the witness stand wearing her fragile, brave survivor look. Later it was Kavanaugh’s turn, his dignified features tarnished by anger under cross examination. I had my hand in the small of Angie’s back, and felt her body tense up when Kavanaugh appeared.

‘Look at that jerk,’ said Angie. ‘Sorry, frat boy. You don’t get to be supreme justice if you abuse women.’

Angie is Australian but has picked up American terms like ‘frat boy.’

‘You think he’s guilty?’ I said.

‘Look at him. He’s just the type.’

I stared at the TV and saw a middle aged white man. He could have been my dad – and I mean that in the same way Obama said Trayvon Martin could have been his son.

‘What about Ford?’ I said. ‘What’s her type?’

‘She’s one of us. All of us,’ said Angie. She raised her voice and addressed the TV directly. ‘We believe you, Chrissie!’

Angie stood up, as if roused to action. Even angry, she was still gorgeous. Petite, pretty, with short dark hair. She turned to look at me, waggling her finger like an enraged pixie who’d caught me stealing her brownies.

‘Why is this case still going? He’s guilty!’

I hesitated.

‘It’s probably just the lack of evidence.’

‘You can’t expect evidence after thirty-five years!’

‘I suppose they just want to make sure.’

She stared at me with sudden intensity. ‘You believe her, don’t you, John?’

As she stood looking down at me, I was overwhelmed by her elfin beauty. I wanted nothing more than to pull her down to simultaneously comfort and ravish her. Yet it was hardly the appropriate time for that.

‘Of course!’ I replied. ‘As a feminist, as a male ally, I believe her. But what if she’s made a mistake? Or… or remembers things different to what really happened?’

‘Why would Christine make up something like that?’

‘I’m not doubting her for a second, but I heard she’s a professor at a top university, and she wore a pussy hat in the women’s march against Trump.’

‘Fuck Trump,’ Angie said automatically, in the way some people say ‘Bless you’ after a sneeze.

‘Fuck Trump,’ I quickly echoed. ‘But maybe there’s some agenda there. You know, to get at Trump through Kavanaugh.’

‘There’s an agenda alright,’ Angie said darkly. ‘To push back women’s rights and ban abortion and contraceptives. They want to send us back to the fifties. Kavanaugh’s a Christian, you know.’

‘I see.’

‘Only a small number of rapes get reported, John. You know why? Because the victims have to go through another ordeal in the courts. It’s like a second rape. No woman should have to do that, and it’s about time we started believing survivors instead of violating them all over again.’

‘Sure. I’ve got no problem with that. We should always believe women – and any man who’s done nothing wrong has got nothing to worry about.’

I jolted back to the present. After this meditation incident, maybe I was Kavanaugh now. Instead of phoning Ange, I went to my laptop and Googled ‘false accusations.’ The search results were too general, so I tried ‘false sex accusations.’ This brought up quite a few cases.

I then searched for ‘why we should believe women,’ which brought up a lot of feminist blogs, yet also a video, which turned out to be some kind of satire about the Ford-Kavanaugh case. To my surprise, it seemed to be mocking women in general, and Ford in particular. As a male ally to feminism, this seemed jarringly misogynistic. Yet after the shock of Dipak’s phone call, a part of me was newly receptive to seeing women treated as less than saintly, infallible beings.

A couple of lines in the video stand out, both of them voiced by women. ‘Because my inability to get over a two second ass grab from thirty years ago makes me a strong woman,’ was one. The other was, ‘Because a man’s right to due process is far less important than me showing I don’t like rape, like, at all.’ This was said in a foolish, vacuous tone of voice meant to represent people on social media. I laughed, then looked around guiltily in case anyone had heard me.

My phone beeped. What’s up? Angie texted.

I was about to text her back when the phone rang. It was Dipak and he sounded relieved.

‘John, I’ve had a chat to the person who made the complaint.’

‘Did you tell her what I said?’

‘She does allow for the possibility she may have made a mistake.’

‘She’s not a complete nut job then.’

‘You’ve got to understand, John. Buddhism attracts some people who are deeply troubled, one way or another. Whatever happened last night to trigger this person has got nothing to do with you.’

I felt my anger rise.

‘It bloody nearly did have something to do with me, though, didn’t it? People have had their lives ruined by this sort of thing. I’ve nearly finished my teacher training. Before you can even teach in schools, you need a police check to prove you can work with children. This rubbish could have ruined my whole career before it even started.’

‘I know it’s not fair.’

‘I mean, look at you, Dipak. You’ve known me for years, but you were ready to believe her.’

 ‘She was extremely convincing. She seemed so sure.’

‘I take it back then – she is a complete nut. Anyone who thinks a guy is going to sit around in a meditation circle and pull out his penis needs her head read.’

‘We should really try to sympathise. This person has no doubt been abused in the past.’

‘What’s that got to do with me? Sorry, but I’m not going to be collateral damage to whatever trauma she’s been through. Don’t expect to see me at meditation for a while. I’m going to stay as far away from this person as possible.’

‘I want you to feel welcome back anytime. We want it to be a safe space.’

‘If you keep people like her away, it might be.’

After our chat finished, I texted Angie.

Forget it. Just a mix up. See you when you get home.

I shuddered and sank back onto the couch, hoping that would be the end of it – and in one way it was, and in another way, it was only the beginning.

Chapter 2

Angela’s Antifa

I got home the next afternoon to find a posse in the living room. For a second I thought they were there for me, but it was just Angie and a few of her student pals.

As usual, I had a sense of being the ‘older guy,’ barely visible, but given some substance as Angie’s boyfriend. I was thirty-five, for Christ’s sake. Resisting the urge to greet them with a facetious ‘hello fellow kids,’ I sat down in an armchair. Some of them were wearing black masks, slipping them on and off their faces as if trying them on for size.

 ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was fancy dress?’ I said.

The remark drew no response. There was a strangely solemn air to the little gathering.

‘Why the long faces?’ I persisted. ‘Seems more like a wake than a party.’

‘Tonight’s the Nazi rally,’ said Angie. ‘I told you ten times already.’

That explained the masks. Angie’s Antifa comrades were suiting up for combat. Antifa, the anti-fascist group dedicated to fighting the new wave of right wing extremism.

‘Oh yeah – the rally.’ I raised a fist. ‘Bash the fash.’

Angie gave me a terse look. My jokey tone was only meant to cover social awkwardness, but perhaps it was coming off as mockery. I quickly moved the conversation on.

‘Who is it again?’

A young guy in a Che Guevara t-shirt answered. Leon, I think his name was.

‘See for yourself,’ he said, pointing at the flyers on the coffee table.

I picked up a flyer. It showed a bald, middle aged white man and a beautiful young blonde girl. The words ‘Hate Speech is not Free Speech’ were printed across the top.

‘Stefan Molyneux,’ I read out loud. ‘And Lauren Southern.’

Angie cast a hateful glance at the images.

‘Give me five minutes alone with that Nazi bitch. That’s all I ask.’

‘Me too!’ I nearly said, but remembered just in time the lecture on ‘rape culture’ Angie hit me with last month. Those sort of old school innuendo jokes were on the nose these days.

Leon took the opportunity to showboat in front of my girlfriend.

‘You get her, Ange, and I’ll take Molyneux. If only the pussies didn’t hide behind security. They wouldn’t even say where their rally was ’til an hour ago.’

‘Then how can people attend? I asked.

‘They keep the venue a secret ’til the last minute,’ Leon replied. ‘Shows how tough they are.’

‘What are they afraid of?’ I said, rather surprised.

‘Us,’ said a blue haired waif, who looked about sixteen. ‘They want to deny us our free speech to protest their event. Typical fascists.’

I hesitated to reply. The girl, Nina, was one of Angie’s best friends. She was tougher than she looked and had a fiery temper.

‘I suppose they’ve got a point,’ I said slowly, ‘if you’re trying to shut them down.’

‘They shouldn’t be here in the first place,’ Nina snapped. ‘New Zealand kicked them out, why can’t we? If only we had a strong leader like Jacinda Ardern instead of the pathetic racist government we’ve got here.’

I picked up the flyer and scrutinized it.

‘So they’re Nazis, are they?’ I said. ‘What have these people done?’

Angie snorted.

‘What haven’t they done? They’re Islamophobic, misogynist, racist. Did you see what Lauren Southern was wearing when she got off the plane? An It’s OK to be white t-shirt. Disgusting.’

I stared at her blankly for a moment.

‘Er… yeah. So what are you guys gonna do?’

‘We’ll meet up in town with everyone else, then stalk the venue and call out the lowlifes going inside. A few of us have got tickets to get in so we can really fuck those guys up. Anyhow, you’re coming, aren’t you?’

Angie stared at me with those big brown eyes. I looked away.

‘I would but I’ve got that assignment due Monday.’

‘Do it tomorrow. This is important.’

I paused. Staying in good with Ange was always a priority. I was still dreading the thought of her hearing about what happened at meditation, even though I was innocent. Better not push my luck. Besides, there was no way I could knock her back in front of her Antifa pals.

‘Alright, I’ll go.’

Angie took my hand.

‘Maybe you can do the movie with Leon.’

‘What movie?’ I asked.

Angie gave the flyer a withering look.

‘The bitch has made some propaganda film about South Africa. Probably wants to bring back apartheid. Can you believe it?’

‘How can they?’ I said. ‘South Africa’s majority POC, isn’t it?’

POC means people of colour, if you don’t know.

‘Like it always was,’ said Angie. ‘That’s imperialism for you. Ten percent of the population and they think they can run the country. We’ve got two tickets to the film, so someone has to go in and disrupt it.’

‘What do they have to do?’

‘Fuck them up, one way or another. Yell out. Get into the projection booth and smash the equipment. Whatever resistance you can come up with.’

I frowned.

‘Geez, I don’t think I can smash the equipment. Bit extreme, isn’t it?’

Angie rolled her eyes.

‘Yeah, like apartheid isn’t extreme or anything.’

‘If I get arrested, that means a criminal record. It might stop me working in schools.’

‘For stopping Nazis? That should get you more work not less. You should be teaching kids to oppose fascism.’

‘If I heckle and boo, will that do?’

Angie turned away with a disappointed look. ‘You up for it, Leon?’

‘Hell yeah. I’m a-gonna punch me some Nazis!’

‘There’s two tickets so someone has to go with you.’

She looked around the group. A young Somali woman raised her hand.

‘Not you, Bilan,’ said Angie. ‘I don’t expect a woman of colour to sit through that white supremacist filth.’

She looked round the room once more, until her eyes settled on me.

‘Looks like you’re it, John.’

I raised my hands in surrender.

‘Fine – but what will the rest of you do?’

‘We’ll be outside confronting the scum going into the show.’

‘Won’t they be at the movie?’

‘No, that’s just a warm up. The main event is Southern and Molyneux giving a lecture about their racist crap. As soon as the film’s finished, come and meet us outside and we’ll try and stop people going in.’

We picked up the train at Bondi Junction. Angie spent most of the trip texting, probably liaising with other members of Antifa heading to the rally. I spent the trip staring at Ange. It was kind of pathetic, really. I was like one of those teenage girls who writes her boyfriend’s name in her diary. John Gilbert plus Angela Gardiner. Not that I ever called her Angela, although I might on our wedding day, if that ever happened. Certainly never Angel. She might have punched me. But definitely Ange or Angie, as the mood took me. As she tapped messages into her phone, I sat by her side, staring at her impossibly cute features and dreamy creamy complexion, dark brown hair in a pixie cut, and cherry red lips. Yes, I was definitely one of those pathetic teenage girls.

She caught me, and laughed.

‘What are you staring at, you old perve?’

I laughed too, a little too loud. Yes, I was ten years older. So what? It was perfectly normal for a guy to date a younger woman. Ten years was nothing. When she turned forty, I’d only be fifty, and our kids would be in school.

I checked out my own reflection in the train window. Not bad, not bad at all. Not totally tall, dark, and handsome, but at least tallish, darkish, and handsome-ish. Conventional good looks – nothing wrong with that. I’d thought of getting a tattoo, but nah. It would look try-hard. I was a solid 7.5. Good enough. Yeah, Ange was a 9, but so what? It would even out over time. I gazed at our combined reflection. We looked good together, dammit. A handsome couple. Anyone would have thought so.

The sign for Town Hall station appeared.

‘Come on, John,’ said Ange. ‘Let’s go.’

We walked the few blocks to Darling Harbour. The first surprise was the size of the venue. The Convention Centre was no shady dive, but a modern glass-fronted building in the centre of town, and on the harbour to boot. Whoever was coming to this meeting, it looked like we weren’t dealing with the back street fascists.

‘Who knew there were so many Nazis in 2018?’ I said to Ange, walking beside me.

The second surprise was the number of cops. There must have been thirty or forty of them spread out around the entrance to the Convention Centre. There were also quite a few Antifa keeping an eye on the joint, clustered in groups a little further back. As for the people attending the event, those who were here for the propaganda film had already begun filing into the venue. Some had their heads down, aware they were under scrutiny. Others strode ahead, wilfully defiant.

Angie’s crew had already masked up, but as my brief was to infiltrate the movie, that didn’t apply to me. Angie came up and slipped the film ticket into my hand. She gave me a kiss on the lips, and with the romantic exhortation to ‘Fuck them up, babe,’ sent me on my way.

I joined the back of the line and began walking towards the entrance. As the line progressed, I was suddenly aware that to the watching Antifa, I must now look like one of the enemy. There were many more Antifa present than the handful we’d travelled in with, and most of them didn’t know me. Realising this, I turned to  the crowd with a cheeky wink as if to tip them off about my true allegiance. When this seemed to inspire a low rumble of anger, I put my head down and hastened through the glass doors and into the venue.

Once inside, I checked out my fellow filmgoers. They were mostly white and male, but with a scattering of women too. We took the escalator up a level to the main auditorium, a spacious arena which could have easily seated a few thousand. There were only a few hundred here now, although numbers would swell for the speeches to be held after the film.

Leon and I went to opposite sides of the auditorium, working on the theory that yells from each side would create the illusion of a bigger protest. We agreed that half an hour or so into the film, Leon would start chanting slogans, and I would immediately join in from my side, possibly also making an assault on the projection room itself with the hope of stopping the screening. Yet as I settled back in my seat, I decided projector smashing was out of the question. Some loud yelling should be enough to show Ange I’d ‘done my bit’ to stop the march of white supremacy, after which I’d beat a hasty retreat and rejoin the comrades outside.

The film began and my eye was drawn to the evil Lauren Southern herself. What a doll, I thought, before quelling the shameful sexual objectification from my mind. Still, there was no denying her beauty. How could it be that a maiden so fair was infected by the curse of fascism?

Southern started by giving a brief history of South Africa. In truth, she was less arrogant than I’d imagined. I’d expected a smug supremacist. Then again, this was a propaganda film, and no doubt she’d been told to tone it down so as to draw in the gullible.

As for the film itself, it was mainly Southern interviewing local South Africans, mostly whites, and a few token people of colour. Again, I was a little surprised. I’d always had an image of white South Africans as aloof imperialists, yet these people seemed like decent folks. Given that most of them were farmers, this wasn’t really a representative sample. And, to be honest, the tale they told was a little harrowing.

Southern’s film, Farmlands, was about the plight of white South African farmers. The claim was that since Nelson Mandela’s ANC party came to power in the 1990s, conditions had declined for the white population. Now, with Mandela’s relatively benign influence gone since his death, hostility to whites had escalated. Land owned by whites was being reclaimed by force, and even the black government itself seemed on the point of making this legal. More shockingly, there had been several – perhaps many – cases of white South Africans being murdered on their own farms by blacks out to avenge the apartheid years and reclaim the land in the name of justice. Or so the film claimed.

Southern did one interview with a blonde lady farmer who described, in graphic detail, how her own father had been viciously murdered by intruders in the very living room where they were now speaking. All the while I was trying to manage my surprise, telling myself this was nothing but propaganda. Yet the woman seemed authentic. Shortly after, there was another interview, this time with a black government official who said land repossession would soon be a legal right.

I was speculating that Southern had paid some poor wretch from Soweto a few dollars to perform this fictional scene, when there was a commotion on the other side of the theatre. My comrade, Leon, no doubt thinking along the same lines as myself, had risen to his feet and was creating a ruckus with a chant of defiance.

            Fascists, go away

            Come again no other day

            Hate speech, spreading fear

            Nazis are not welcome here

I was about to join in, but was stalled by the chorus of boos from the crowd on Leon’s side of the room. Truth be told, I was reluctant to go up against a roomful of racists on my own. I could make out Leon scuffling with a couple of attendees, and it wasn’t long before security seized him and evicted him from the theatre. To his credit, he continued to chant as he was dragged away.

I opened my mouth to take up where he’d left off, then stopped. After what had happened to Leon, what would be the point? Perhaps I could do more good as an observer, assessing the propaganda film and reporting back to Ange later that night. I settled back in my chair.

The rest of the film was a grim tale of a country in danger of falling into civil war. When Mandela had come to power twenty years before, we’d heard talk of a rainbow nation and a new age of racial harmony. If you believed this film, it was nothing of the sort. The white South Africans seemed to hide behind walls, in the city or on their farms, and the murder rate was as high as anywhere in the world. What had happened to Mandela’s rainbow nation?

I walked out of the theatre in a pensive mood, intending to meet up with Ange and the rest of the crew. I joined the other filmgoers and began filing out of the building. As we got near the glass exit doors, it was clear the size of the crowd had swelled considerably. People who had showed up to hear Southern and Molyneux speak were milling around near the entrance, and the numbers of Antifa had also risen. The mutual hostility was palpable.

I once read a book called Legends of the Firm, about football hooligans. It was a bunch of interviews with members of the ‘firms,’ as they called their gangs, of which there was one for each football club. Apparently, violence was some kind of bizarre hobby for them. Standard procedure was rival firms setting up some kind of ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ whereby they’d meet up before or after games to beat the crap out of each other. These clashes could be between rogue units of five or ten thugs from each firm, right up to full scale battles with hundreds on either side.

That’s what it was like tonight. Antifa was on one side, most of them wearing their anonymous black masks, and the fascists here to attend the meeting were on the other. It seemed about to boil over at any minute.

And it did. Just as I cleared the glass exit doors, fighting broke out some twenty metres to my left, the very direction in which we were moving. I resolved to press on, hoping to meet up with Ange and her crew somewhere among the throng. As it happened, there was little choice due to a surge in the crowd behind me. Within a few seconds I found myself spat out of the line into a little laneway with about five of my fellow filmgoers. As bad luck would have it, the space was filled with ten or fifteen masked Antifa, who immediately set their sights on us.

‘There they are!’ one of them yelled.

Realizing my predicament, I raised both my hands and my voice.

‘Wait! I’m one of you guys!’

A burly, masked Antifa laughed at me.

‘Bullshit. I saw you go inside. Let’s see you wink now, you fucking Nazi!’

‘What! I’m Angie’s boyfriend, you fool. She’s high up in Antifa. Give me a second and I’ll phone her.’

I pulled out my phone and tried to dial Ange but the Antifa guy knocked it out of my hands with a violent swipe.

‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ I said, now more angry than afraid. To which he replied – and I’ll never forget this –

‘What’s wrong with you, you white cunt?’

On impulse, I reached out and grabbed his mask, ripping it away from his face. He was whiter than an albino’s ghost. I looked round the group and saw the skin showing, up above their masks. They all were.

Then it was on. The Antifa dude threw a right hook at me, which I just managed to avoid. The rest of his masked mates joined in, fighting the half dozen filmgoers who’d been spat out of the line with me. The next minute was a chaotic mess of punches, kicks, oaths, and cries of pain. I’m no brawler but was surprised to find that cometh the hour, cometh a capacity for self defence previously unknown.  I landed a blow on the face of my assailant, who went down hard. Yet just as I was standing over him in an uneasy haze of triumph, disgust, and adrenaline, I felt a surge of pain from a blow to the back of the head, and my consciousness went out like a light.

Chapter 3

RP 4a WC

I woke up with a headache and two guys standing over me. There was a tall, gangly fellow, and a thickset stocky one. I made a weak attempt to snap back into fight mode, then realised I was no longer in the street. It looked like some kind of cheap hotel room. I was lying on a tatty old couch at the side of the room.

‘Take it easy,’ the taller guy said. ‘Don’t try to get up.’

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘Fucking Antifa,’ the stocky one replied. ‘Lucky for you our hotel was only a couple of blocks away. You can crash with us, but you’d better stay here. We’re going back to the show.’

Realisation dawned.

‘So you guys are from the Nazi rally.’

The tall guy laughed.

‘The Nazi rally? Yeah, just like you, mate. Are you OK? You were out cold.’

I tried to stand up and winced. The guy put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me gently back down on the couch.

‘You’d better sit this one out, old boy.’

A thought occurred to him.

‘Hey, give us your ticket. I know someone who needs one. May as well use it.’

I felt a rise of panic. When they found out I had no ticket to the event, my cover could be quickly blown. I sat up and went through the motions of searching my pockets.

‘Oh no. I must have dropped it in the fight.’

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Come on, Davo, let’s go.’ He gave me a backwards glance.  ‘Catch ya later.’

I lay on the couch for a few minutes. When the two Nazis didn’t return, I got up and made a cautious inspection of the room. Despite its cheap look, it was quite spacious, almost like a living room. Two single beds on one side; the couch on the other, and a table and chairs in the middle near the door.

The room itself was on the second floor above street level. I looked down and saw traffic and a few pedestrians. I tried the door, half expecting my new friends to have locked it from the outside, but it opened easily onto a hallway and a flight of stairs leading back to the street. I was about to make a hasty exit when it occurred to me I’d have to head back to the rally to meet Ange. Having been knocked out once, going back to a riot wasn’t an appealing prospect.

What then – go home? It would look a bit weak if Ange came back and found me home in bed, having bailed out of the fight. Maybe I should stay where I was. Hell, this might even be a happy accident. I’d managed to infiltrate the enemy’s camp without even trying. What if I stayed for a while, got talking to them, and found out their plans? Acting as a double agent, I could eavesdrop on their white supremacist talk and win big points with Ange when I reported back to her with the lurid details. If nothing else, it would make a great war story and put Leon’s film arrest in the shade.

Then again, facing up to these fascists wasn’t very appealing either. If I gave myself away somehow, they could murder me in this room and no one would ever know. To make matters worse, my head was still aching from the blow. I decided to lie down for a few minutes and think it over.

I sank back onto the couch and closed my eyes. I must have dozed off because the next thing I heard was the sound of a key in the door, as the two white supremacists came inside. The taller guy led the way, followed by the stocky one holding a carton of beer. As soon as they were inside, he placed the carton on the floor, relieved at laying his burden down. He tore open the top of the box, took a bottle for himself and handed one to his colleague. Then, catching sight of me, he gave me a bottle too. Not knowing what to do, I sat up and accepted the beer, then took a big swig to settle my nerves.

‘How you doing, mate?’ said the taller one. ‘On the mend?’

‘Not bad,’ I replied. ‘Still got a bit of a headache.’

‘I’ve got some painkillers in my kit.’

He rummaged round in his backpack and pulled out a small plastic bottle. Removing the cap, he tipped a few red pills onto the coffee table. I eyed them suspiciously and took another swig of the beer.

‘I shouldn’t mix those with alcohol,’ I said. ‘Could be dangerous.’

‘I’ve done it myself and never had a problem.’

‘You sure?’ I put my hand to my aching head.

‘You’ll be fine.’

I sat down at the table with them. Hesitantly, I reached out and took one of the red pills. It was bitter to the taste so I took a big gulp of beer to wash it down. Gradually the room came into sharper focus. I looked at my ‘captors’ for the first time. The tall gangly fellow seemed to find it hard to fit his body into the table and chairs. He had to twist his limbs slightly to fit. He was pale skinned, dark haired, and a short, straggly beard gave him an unruly look. I guessed his age to be in the mid-forties.

The stocky one was younger, early-thirties, and your classic Aryan blond. Muscled and coarsely handsome, he would have fitted right in at tonight’s event.

The tall fellow stretched out his hand.

‘I’m Ed. Edward Hall.’ He turned to the stocky one. ‘And that’s Davo.’

‘John,’ I said. I shook hands with them both, then accepted another beer. They were on the other side of the table; Hall to my left, and Davo on my right, between me and the door.

‘Was there any more agro?’ I asked.

‘Not really,’ said Hall. ‘A bit of push and shove on the way in, but it had all fizzled out by the time we left.’

I wondered when Angie had gone home and if she was worried about me.

‘So how was the… show?’

‘Brilliant,’ said Davo. ‘It’s one thing seeing their videos but live was another level. Met him and all.’

He got out his phone to show me a selfie taken with Molyneux.

‘Cool!’ I said, bunging on the enthusiasm. ‘You and Steven, eh.’

Davo looked at me quizzically. ‘What?’

‘You and Steven Molyneux. Awesome!’

‘Steven? What the – ?’

‘Stefan. I meant Stefan.’ I glanced towards the door, then back to the fascists. ‘Sorry. It must be the bang on the head!’

They laughed, but a look passed between them.

‘So what did he talk about?’ I said, trying to move the discussion forward.

‘Oh the usual sort of stuff,’ said Hall. ‘You know.’

‘Of course,’ I replied.

‘Why do you like him, John?’ said Hall. ‘What first attracted you to his philosophy?’

‘Me?’

I felt my face flushing and hoped it wasn’t obvious.

‘Yeah, you,’ said Davo.

‘What attracted me to his philosophy?’ I said. ‘Well, that’s pretty obvious.’

‘So what was it?’ said Hall.

‘Probably the same as everyone else, I suppose?’

‘But what specifically?’

I took another long drink of beer.

‘Well, gee… uh… the white power, I guess. The hatred for political correctness and people of colour. The PC and the POC!’

I laughed a bit too loud. Davo looked sideways at Hall.

‘White power?’

Suspecting I’d made some fatal blunder, but having no idea what it was, I tried to change the subject.

‘I’m more into Lauren really,’ I said. ‘That film! I never even knew about South Africa. Who’d have thought the black people of colour were killing the white farmers?’

Hall raised an eyebrow.

‘You’re an odd one, John. Who the hell says black people of colour?’

‘Well, I…’

‘Big fan of Lauren Southern, are you?’

‘Hell yeah.’

‘And Stefan Molyneux.’

‘Sure. Who isn’t?’

Hall sniggered.

‘Our friends in Antifa, for a start. So tell me, John. Apart from Lauren and Stef, what other YouTube speakers do you like?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What other rebel philosophers are you into with the same sort of views?’

I readied myself to bolt for the door. I’d have to burst past Davo though, so it might be worth trying to bluff it out one more time.

‘Look guys, I’ll come clean. I’m a bit of a noob. Stef and Lauren are the only ones I really know. Why don’t you give me some tips though? Who else is good?’

Hall sat facing me, arms folded in front.

‘Big fan of Lauren are you, John?’

‘Fuck yeah!’

‘Then answer me this. What do you think of Lauren’s plan to round up all non-white illegal immigrants, put them in concentration camps, and gas them if they can’t speak English? You agree with that?’

‘That’s not for me to say,’ I parried. ‘I’ll leave that up to the proper authorities.’

‘But do you agree with it?’ said Hall. ‘That’s all I want to know.’

I looked over at Davo, in mute appeal.

‘Answer the question,’ he said calmly.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘If you’re going to put me on the spot, I do agree with it. If those boat people come here illegally, it’s their own fault if they get gassed.’

‘So you agree with Lauren’s video on the topic? The one that came out last week that everyone’s talking about.’

‘Yes, of course. That one I definitely did see.’

Hall looked at Davo.

‘That’s weird, cos there ain’t no such video. Lauren would never say something as ridiculous as that.’

I jumped up and ran for the door. Davo stuck out a leg and tripped me. I went down, skittling a pile of the empty beer bottles stacked on the floor. By the time I regained my feet, Hall was blocking the exit. I tensed my arms and prepared for my second fight of the night.

‘Look, you  guys,’ I said. ‘If you want to be Nazis, fine. It’s none of my business. Just let me go, alright?’

Hall looked at Davo and laughed.

‘You believe this dude? He really thinks we’re going to murder him.’

Davo laughed as well, then seemed to recall something.

‘Hey, remember what happened just before the fight? John here told the Antifa he was one of them.’

‘Is that right?’ said Hall. He fixed me with a stern look. ‘Sit down, old boy. Better come clean.’

I sat back down at the table.

‘Alright, alright. Here’s the truth. I’m not really that political. I’ve never heard of Stefan Molyneux or Lauren Southern before today. I only came because my damn girlfriend is in Antifa.’

‘Really?’ said Hall. ‘Guess she’s a feminist then too.’

‘Sure.’

‘I suppose that makes you a male ally?’

‘I support equal rights, if that’s what you mean.’

Hall raised his eyebrows.

‘I support equal rights too. That doesn’t mean I’m a feminist.’

‘That’s what feminism is all about – equality.’

‘That’s like saying diversity is our strength.’

‘Well, it is, isn’t it?’

‘So I keep hearing. What’s your girl’s name?’

I hesitated.

‘Angela.’

‘Right. So Angela’s in Antifa and she’s a feminist. So, just a stab in the dark here, John, but does Angela also love globalism, refugees, and thinks Trump is literally Hitler.’

‘Well, not literally.’

‘But close enough. So, is she beautiful too?’

‘Beautiful and intelligent.’

Hall was about to reply, but changed his mind. He turned to his friend.

‘For Christ’s sake get John another beer. Bring the whole six pack!’

I was by now feeling the effects of the alcohol, with the pill having some impact as well. As it seemed the Nazis weren’t going to actually kill me, I decided to go with the flow. Hall gave me an appraising look.

‘So you’re not in Antifa yourself, but you’ll go to a protest just to stay in Angela’s good books?’

‘Well, you know what they say. Happy wife, happy life.’

‘You’re married?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then there’s still time. So, to please her, you’ll go out and protest something you know nothing about. What do you really think of her politics? Assuming you think at all, that is.’

‘Give me some credit,’ I replied. ‘Anyway, I do agree with her. I was born and raised on the left and voted Labor all my life.’

‘And you support her Antifa antics – fighting Nazis and fascists?’

‘Well… in principle. If that’s what she wants to do.’

Davo spoke up.

‘Who are the real Nazis here, John? We just wanted to have a meeting. It was none of your business but you showed up anyway to abuse and attack us. We don’t go to left wing meetings and do that. So which of us are the fascists?’

‘But you guys are racists. White supremacists.’

‘Says who? Your girlfriend? Your dumb Antifa pals? They’ll call Lauren and Stefan Nazis, but they’ll call anyone Nazis. It’s ludicrous. And look at you – you don’t even know what you’re protesting.’

‘So you’re not racists?’

‘No. At least, no more than anyone else.’

‘Look John,’ said Hall, ‘just because you question if diversity is our strength doesn’t make you a racist.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Let me ask you this. Multiculturalism was supposed to lead to a social Utopia, right? Everyone living together in perfect harmony. Is that’s how it’s turned out?’

I paused, unsure how to respond.

‘Not yet,’ I said at last. ‘We just need to give it more time.’

‘How long – another few decades? A century? Put it another way: if multiculturalism is such a great idea, why is it all we ever hear about now is race and racism?’

I answered a little recklessly.

‘Because of people like you who hate foreigners.’

Hall snorted.

‘There you go again with your assumptions. We don’t hate anyone.’

‘You guys want to stop immigration, don’t you?’

‘It wouldn’t hurt to stop for a while. At least until everyone makes up their minds if we’re supposed to be in the post-racial age or not. You can’t go a single day without people banging on about racism. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.’

I remembered what happened earlier that night.

‘I’ve got to admit things are getting weird. Like when I went up against that Antifa.’

Davo laughed.

‘I heard what he called you,’ he said. ‘Another self hating white person. These kids go to uni and get brainwashed into hating their own kind and the culture they grew up in. How’s that going to work out for us long term?’

‘Haven’t you noticed anything else?’ said Hall. ‘Something that doesn’t add up?’

I paused, then was apparently drunk enough to spill the beans to these extremists.

‘Yesterday I got falsely accused… of a sex crime.’

Hall raised his eyebrows.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘All I did was go to Buddhist meditation.’

‘Ah Buddhism, the religion of peace,’ said Hall. ‘The real one. They don’t eat animals.’

‘Anyhow, I showed up to meditate. Next thing I know, some nut job’s accused me of exposing myself during the meditation.’

‘And did you?’

‘Of course not!’

‘What did Angela say?’ asked Davo.

‘She never found out. I convinced the Buddhist guy it was a mistake and they dropped the charges.’

I went into further details of the sordid event. At the end of my tale, Hall shook his head.

‘Oh dear, that could have been very nasty for you, old boy. You nearly got caught up in this whole Me Too witch hunt.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘I read a blog last week and it said there are three kinds of women making these Me Too claims. First you’ve got the real victims, which is fair enough. Then you’ve got the ones who try to turn some trivial incident into something bigger. Finally, there’s the kind who use it to get back at men they don’t like, or bring them down out of spite.’

‘Is there a fourth category?’ I said. ‘Women who are mentally disturbed and imagine ridiculous things that never happened?’

‘Clearly there are, as you now know. Don’t forget twenty years ago we had the repressed memories craze. Some psychologists led their patients into thinking they’d been molested as kids and buried the memories. Trouble is, some of the cases were complete fabrications.’

‘Is that right?’

There was a pause. Hall seemed lost in thought. He turned to me with a conspiratorial air.

‘Well, Johnny, seeing as you’ve been straight with me, I’m going to be straight with you. Truth is, I used to be just like you. Good hearted, idealistic, a bit naive. Never had an Antifa girlfriend, but not far off. Finally, I wised up, but only by luck. A different fork in the road and I might still be drifting through life a blue pill normie like you. Now seeing as I had help, it’s only right I pay it back, and pass on the knowledge to you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Circumstances have brought us together, and you’re primed for a change of outlook. In the space of a few days, you’ve been falsely accused of a sex crime. You’ve been racially abused by someone as white as yourself. You’ve gone out to protest an event you know nothing about, and now you’re sitting here in casual conversation with so-called Nazis.’ Hall laughed. ‘If all that ain’t enough to prompt a little self questioning, I don’t know what is.’

Hall picked up a room service pad from the table, tore off a piece of paper, and handed it to me.

‘I’m going to send you some of our alternative media videos.’

‘Your fascist propaganda?’

‘Just an alternative to the propaganda you get from your usual news sources. So this is your Matrix moment, John. You’re going to write down an email address on this piece of paper and give it back to me. If you want to remain a blue pill normie, it’s easy. Just write down a false address. But if you want to take the red pill and start to question what you’ve been told to believe, write your real email address.’

He handed me the paper and looked me in the eye.

‘The choice is yours.’

Conquest By Concept is available on Amazon, Book Depository, and other online sellers.

Amazon   https://bit.ly/ConquestUSA

Amazon Australia  https://bit.ly/ConquestEbk-AmAu

Samples from The Vast and the Spurious: 25 Problems for Feminism

The Vast and the Spurious is a book about the gender war between men and women. Feminism has set the agenda but it faces a backlash. Some dismiss this as misogyny, but that is a mistake. Feminism can no longer assume it owns the high moral ground. Unless it answers its critics it will never gain mass support, and the gender wars will rage ’til doomsday. 

Reader Comments on the book:

“This is no angry polemic, but a light-hearted, fair and factual introduction to feminism’s various hypocrisies and contradictions.”

Karen Straughan, aka ‘Girl Writes What.’ 

“Whether for the uninitiated, the curious, or the indoctrinated, this book offers a witty rebuttal to modern feminist claims and exaggerations. Grounded in common sense and empathy, it makes the rational case, too rarely heard, for harmony between the sexes and respect for men’s contributions.”

Janice Fiamengo, editor of Sons of Feminism: Men Have Their Say.

I’m going to present a few short extracts from the book. Let’s start with the opening of chapter 1.

This book discusses twenty-five problems with feminism. One of the main problems is you’re not allowed to criticise it in the first place. As I’m going to do so at some length, this will make me a target for attack. In that case, I’ll start by explaining my position and why this book has been written.

Some people think any critic of feminism must be a right wing thug who wants to send women back to the 1950s. But I believe women should have the same rights as men and be free to pursue any goal. Why shouldn’t they? Still, supporting the fair reforms of the 1970s doesn’t mean you have to endorse the cultish fanaticism that goes on today.

Of course, a movement as big as feminism doesn’t exist without reason. On some topics feminists are right, on others they are wrong. The aim of this book, The Vast and the Spurious, is to try to understand which ones. Where they are right, their efforts may lead to a better world. But where they are wrong, their mistakes will lead to a worse world – for everyone. #Feminism hurts women too.

I am male. For some, that disqualifies me from having an opinion on this subject. But as the modern agenda consists of hectoring men about their enormous power and privilege, it’s clear feminism is not just about women’s issues. They will accuse me of ‘man-splaining’ feminism, but as feminists have been woman-splaining for years how patriarchy ruined their lives, it’s only fair to return fire. Still, in deference to those who’ve gone before, let’s start with the ceremonial rites. As a man writing on this topic, I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Gender Studies: feminists.

Apparently they own the land. They get very angry if a man trespasses on that land by having a voice, or even a thought, about gender issues. This anger may be cloaked in the pretence that they don’t care what men think. They will sometime declare, with passionate indifference, just how much they don’t care. Indeed, when it comes to feminist books, it seems to be a genre convention for authors to assert that they ‘don’t give a fuck’ what men think of their field. Clementine Ford says this in chapter eight of her book. Jessa Crispin says it in chapter seven of hers. Probably a hundred other women have said it in theirs.

This is really a wonderful liberation for a fellow like me, for when I began writing this book, an inner voice would often be nagging away about whether feminists would approve. It’s a great relief to learn that they don’t care what any man thinks.

Still, having entered the field of feminist writing, it’s only polite to observe the genre conventions with the ritual words: I don’t give a fuck what men think about feminism. There. Was that OK?

Now the formalities are over, let’s get on with the book…

Chapters 2-4 discuss the key concept of ‘male privilege.’ From chapter 2:

The basic premise of feminism today is the idea of ‘male privilege’ – meaning a series of advantages for men and injustices for women. The idea is that women are deeply disadvantaged compared to men. There is profound bias against them and obstacles placed in their way. A key point is that the privilege is unearned. It’s a series of benefits men enjoy simply by being men.

Male privilege falls into two broad categories, as I see it. The first to do with opportunities, wealth, and power; the second with social norms and behaviour.

A recent public debate asked ‘is male privilege bullshit?’ Some feminists remarked that male privilege is such a certain and established fact it’s not even open to debate. Yet presumably some people do think it’s bullshit. Well, whether the theory of male privilege is a truth, an exaggeration, or an illusion, it surely needs more discussion before we accept it as a scientific fact.

One problem with the idea of male-privilege-as-fact is that the group who hates it the most – feminists – also owe their existence to it. What happens if male privilege comes to an end? Does that also mean the end of feminism?

It’s an odd dynamic. A group has a strong opposition to something but also a vested interest in believing in it, as it is their raison d’être and the motor that drives them forward. Though they may hate it, feminists have stronger motivation to believe in male privilege than to disbelieve it. This can lead to a questionable relationship with the evidence. Still, let’s take a detailed look at this topic …

Chapter 3 remarks on the strange idea that all men, past and present, are part of some kind of group identity.

Some Christians believe that because of original sin by Adam and Eve, all human beings live in a permanent state of guilt and have to repent.

Some feminists believe that because of historical crimes of men against women, all today’s men live in a permanent state of guilt and have to repent. Not only that, they have to pay reparations – for the sins they never committed.

It may be true that in past eras social systems favoured men, and there were many specific crimes by men against women. But despite what people may think, there is no connection whatever between men alive today and those alive in past eras. In the same way, there is no connection at all between women alive today and those in the past.

We are not a gestalt.

Some people want to join a lot of different individuals, dispersed in time and space, into a vast collective and treat it like a single entity. Any member of that group is then supposed to feel guilt for sins committed by other members, and make reparations.

The idea that women were historically maligned and should now have equal opportunity may be fair. The idea that they should get preferential treatment is not. To some degree, ‘reverse discrimination’ is opportunism masquerading as justice. It’s an attempt to leverage historical suffering for present day gain. In other words, some women today seek reparations for suffering they did not experience, and to punish men for crimes they did not commit.

Again, there is not some gestalt entity known as ‘men’ any more than there’s a gestalt entity known as ‘women.’

We should certainly learn from the past and not repeat its mistakes. But some want to impose a guilt narrative onto the entire male gender, who must make amends by giving females preferential treatment in everything. These are the reparations today’s men are supposed to make – for the crimes they never committed!

Today’s women should have the same rights and opportunities as men. They should be given jobs if they have the best credentials – but not just due to the historical suffering of other people to whom they have no connection except having the same type of genitals. It sounds a bit too much like a quest for – what’s that phrase again? – ah yes, unearned privilege.

Chapter 5 speculates that male-female relations have rarely been worse than they are today.

Hate. You’ve gotta love it. It sure makes for some thrilling contests on the sports field. On the field of gender relations, it fuels some vigorous fights as well. Except it isn’t a sports field so much as a battlefield, with real dead bodies on each side. Blood, orphans, flowers on coffins…

My guess is that there’s rarely been more hatred between men and women than there is now. Sure, there was plenty of anger from women during 1970s second-wave feminism, but today there is actual hate. Not just from women towards men, but from men towards women. There was no MGTOW movement in the seventies. That is, ‘Men Going Their Own Way,’ boycotting marriage and women altogether.

Feminists will tell you this is because men are bitter at losing their former positions of power over women. They’re angry that their ‘slaves’ have risen up. This is a weak explanation we must go beyond.

The line between anger and hate can be a little blurry. For example, the feminist Clementine Ford is often accused of hating men, a charge she rejects. A man who knows her work might say, ‘if Clementine doesn’t hate men, I’d sure hate to meet a woman who does.’ Still, with some effort, I’m prepared to believe her. Maybe she’s just an idealist who thinks people should behave better than they so often do.

Ford’s newspaper columns offer an ongoing saga about ‘the evil that men do.’ They’re part of her campaign for a better world. But you’d think from her writing it’s only men who do evil. Hasn’t she ever watched Deadly Women on the crime channel?

In discussing the evil that men do, let us – just for a moment – revert to the sexist language of yesteryear in using the term to include both genders. ‘Man,’ in that retro sense, is capable of some foul and despicable deeds.

For a window into the evil of which both sexes are capable, read Divorce Confidential by G. Nissenbaum. He’s a lawyer specialising in divorce among the super rich. The book shows the moral depths either sex can reach in pursuit of their own selfish wants and the wish to hurt others. To go a bit further down the socioeconomic scale, just watch a few episodes of Judge Judy. It’s the same sort of malice, only more petty.

There’s a famous quote that says feminism is based on the radical idea that women are people. And unfortunately, ‘people’ all have the same capacity for inflicting misery upon one another, regardless of their gender. In light of that, let me speculate on why relations between men and women have never been worse…

Chapters 6-8 discuss the battle between feminists and men’s right activists, and respond to a critique from one of Australia’s best known feminists.

The previous chapter was written long before I read Boys Will Be Boys, the new book by Clementine Ford. Chapters 6-8 of that book are a blistering attack on her enemies, including men’s rights activists (MRAs). Ford is one of Australia’s best known modern feminists, with over 100,000 Twitter followers. But as she doesn’t seem to understand MRAs, chapters 6-8 of my book will try to remedy the false picture of them she gives to her readers.

Doing this means stepping outside the gender war to look at the bigger picture of the ‘culture war’ which has raged in the West for a while now. This is the battle between the left and right, ‘progressives’ and conservatives, over the values and direction of Western nations. I’ll preface my comments by saying I supported the left side of politics most of my life, until realising what it has become.

People on the right tend to think leftists are mistaken but well meaning. Those on the left think rightists are mistaken and evil. Leftists tend to be Utopians who can’t understand why anyone would oppose them. Reasonable MRAs would concede that Clementine Ford acts from good intentions, but it’s doubtful she’d return the favour.

Ford attacks MRAs in general, and two enemies in particular: Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Elam. While I certainly don’t agree with everything those two say, the point is that you don’t have to. The demand for moral purity is a weakness of the left, and barely a week goes by without them hounding someone into oblivion for some social media gaffe, or decades-old faux pas. For those on the right, you might not like all of what someone says or does, but still think their views can have value.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a loose cannon who rails against the various holy crusades of the left, including feminism and political correctness. He’s part jester, part activist. Ford can’t fathom that Milo really does believe his trolling is ‘God’s work.’ She thinks he’s a force for chaotic evil and nihilism. Anyone who’s read Milo’s book would know that’s not true. He has a cruel side to his character, which does him no favours, but it’s silly to dismiss him as a nihilist. On the other hand, it is nice to see Clementine attacking a non-heterosexual man for a change.

So, let’s take a look at the war between feminists and MRAs and see if there can ever be any common ground between them…

Chapters 9-12 examine the idea of the ‘gender pay gap.’ It begins with an anecdote.

One day late in 2017, I walked into a cafe with a female friend. On the table was a newspaper with a headline about TV host, Lisa Wilkinson. She’d just quit her job over being paid less than her male colleague, Karl Stefanovic. Lisa was said to be on about $1.2 million a year while Karl was on two million. She protested by signing with another network who agreed to pay her the same as Karl.

My friend, who is a feminist, pointed to the headline with a look of approval. I got the sense I was meant to be thrilled, that perhaps I should jump up with a cry of solidarity and proclaim, ‘Hoorah! The patriarchy is no longer oppressing Lisa Wilkinson!’

Instead, I sat down and ordered a coffee, wondering why I should care about someone on a wage thirty or forty times my own being given a pay rise. Still, maybe I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. Sensing my lack of joy, my friend asked, ‘Don’t you want your wife to earn the same as the men in her company?’ ‘She already does,’ I replied. ‘It was legislated years ago.’

In other words my friend, an intelligent woman, had been so assailed by propaganda about the ‘gender pay gap’ that she believed my wife is paid less than her male colleagues, despite the Equal Pay Act having been passed in 1963. In most ordinary jobs, it is illegal not to pay men and women the same wage for the same work.

Naturally, this doesn’t apply to all professions. Anyone in the entertainment field, for instance, is going to negotiate whatever wage they can get. The footballer, Ronaldo, just signed with Juventus for fifty million Euros a year. It’s just possible there’s a small wage gap between him and his team-mates.

There’s no such thing as an Equal Pay Act in the entertainment world. In 2015, the actress Jennifer Lawrence was peeved to find out she earned less than her male co-stars for the film American Hustle. She still made fifty million dollars from the Hunger Games series that year, and was aware enough to know it wasn’t a third world problem. Otherwise you might say that anyone – male or female – who is on fifty million and complains about money should be instantly struck by lightning.

Back in the world of mortals like Lisa Wilkinson and me, let’s imagine I was in a different cafe – that one in Melbourne which charges men a 17% surcharge to reflect the gender pay gap. And what is this famous pay gap anyway? Well, if you take all the men and women who are working full time and compare their income, women are paid, on average, 17% less than men. As a protest, this Melbourne cafe has taken a stand on the issue by charging their male customers 17% more. So, if I ordered a coffee which is normally $4.00, I’d be charged $4.68.

Now suppose Lisa Wilkinson was sitting at the next table. She’d only pay $4.00 for her coffee because she’s a victim of the gender pay gap. It’s a bit odd when you consider Lisa owns a home in one of the more expensive parts of Sydney, while I’m paying a fair chunk of my salary in rent. Yet this cafe would charge me $4.68 for my coffee and Lisa $4.00 for hers.

I might go up to the justice-minded cafe staff and say, ‘I’ve heard about your income-based prices. If you adjust for our incomes, I’m the one who should pay $4.00 for my cappuccino. Lisa should be charged at least $200 for hers, and if Jen Lawrence or Ronaldo come in, they’ll be paying about $10, 000 for theirs.

What this imaginary scene shows is the silliness of identity politics; the absurdity of placing Lisa Wilkinson in a class with all women and myself in a class with all men, and using the single factor of our gender as a basis for policy.

So, on to the topic of the ‘gender pay gap’ – or the GPG for short…

If there is ever to be an end to the gender war, there must be some compromise – and an attempt to see the other side’s point of view. My book tries to be fair to both sides. For example, Chapter 13 is sympathetic to feminists. It starts like this:

Feminism was right about some things. Imagine being a woman before 1960. You were assumed to be less able and intelligent. You were given less education, shut out from positions of power, and largely confined to the domestic sphere. You were thought to be secondary to a man and dependent on one. You were expected to behave in certain ways and not others.

Most men would not like to be born into those conditions where the possibility of what they could do and be was so restricted. A key reason for feminism was to overthrow the limits on potential for those who happen to be born female. For the record, I support the right of any individuals to try to do or be whatever they want.

Chapter 14 is also sympathetic. It’s called ‘Dickheads Anonymous.’

My first memory of stupid male behaviour towards girls was as a teenager seeing 1. boys’ desire for girls to have sex with them, and 2. boys’ disapproval of girls who had sex with them. It seemed silly even at the time. This chapter will look at various types of annoying male behaviour which feminists are entitled to dislike and oppose.

 Chapters 15-17 return to the topic of ‘male privilege,’ making a detailed analysis of a list of male privilege on a feminist website.  Here’s one of them:

One of the strangest items on the male privilege list is the claim that girls get higher grades if they’re attractive. This is apparently a terrible handicap because it tells girls that they are valued for their looks, not their minds. It also means that girls’ grades depend on their appearance.

Almost all men would agree that their grades don’t depend on appearance, but on performance. As this is exactly how it should be, it makes no sense to call it a privilege. You’d hope girls are treated exactly the same. If you take this odd item at face value, surely it can only be female privilege if girls get higher grades for attractiveness. But somehow an unfair advantage has been turned into yet more injustice for women.

Suppose there is a girl who gets high grades and is also attractive. If so, one of the following is true:

1. She got those grades fairly because she deserved them for the work, and would be rightly annoyed if anyone said otherwise.
2. She got the grades unfairly and doesn’t know.
3. She got the grades unfairly, knows, but doesn’t care.
4. She got the grades unfairly, both knows and cares, and demands a lower grade from the teacher.

The only one to experience injustice would be the first girl for the implication she wasn’t worth the high grade. The second girl would be ignorant, the third immoral, and the fourth moral. Still, let’s say you took one hundred attractive girls with high grades, there would be plenty in the first three groups and almost none in the fourth.

Whatever else it is, it’s hard to see how this bizarre item is actually a form of male privilege.

Ch 18, ‘A Dream of Fecunda,’ takes a satirical look at the idea of a women only country. Here’s an extract:

How long have we had feminism? It seems like eternity but it’s only about fifty years since it really fired up. In those fifty years, there have been thousands of books, talks, and courses on the subject, but we’re still no closer to gender Utopia. I reckon it’s time to seize the moment and quit while we’re behind. We must rise as one people and many genders and say Enough! After all this talk, after all this trash, it’s time to give Fecunda a go.

And what is Fecunda? It is a magical land; a country never darkened by evil or sin. It is a holy realm without pay gaps, privilege, or rape culture. Fecunda is a land populated only by women.

Sounds pretty good, huh? But is Fecunda a real place, or one known only in legend? Well, if it ain’t real, it ought to be. Women have suffered too long at the hands of men. As one feminist said, it’s only down to their ‘immense compassion or immense foolishness’ that they continue to co-exist with men at all. Yet we can’t expect women’s love to be boundless. It’s time for the Dear John letter; time to go our separate ways. Women deserve a homeland. They deserve Fecunda.

The idea of Fecunda came to me in a dream. It was right after I saw Black Panther, that documentary about the awesome country of Wakanda in Africa. Wakanda is a really cool place with advanced technology they developed on their own, far from Western civilisation. Yet as we know, Wakanda is an ethnostate, only for Africans. Because of that, Wakanda has never had the problem of racism. It stands to reason there’s no racism in an ethnostate. In the same way, an all-female Fecunda will solve the problem of sexism. That means no more domestic violence, no more man-splaining or man-spreading. In fact, no more problems at all.

Sure, there’s the matter of reproduction, for without children, how can Fecunda endure? Should they take a few men as breeding slaves in a sort of reverse Handmaid’s Tale? Better not. No hint of toxic masculinity should ever taint the holy land of Fecunda. I guess the Fecundan scientists can figure out some kind of cloning system. But that is mere detail. The immediate need is to get Fecunda up and running. Men have held women back for too long. Women have earned the right to live under matriarchy, with all-female companies, universities, and families. Let them lead the way and show us how civilisation can be done.

Now, Fecunda is not for all women. It’s for those who have made it clear they’ve had enough of men. In other words, feminists.

It’s for Boston academic, Suzanna Danuta Walters, who wrote a famous article called ‘Why Can’t We Hate Men?’ Some people say feminism’s a hate movement. According to Walters, it has every right to be. Fecunda is also for Laurie Penny, who’s fed up with women doing all the work in relationships. It’s for Roxane Gay who says that in the age of Me Too, it’s time for men to confess their part in creating rape culture. It’s for all the authors ripping off Margaret Atwood and putting out their own versions of The Handmaid’s Tale. Really, it’s for everyone who thinks patriarchy has them in its vice-like, invisible grip. Men are the problem? Fecunda is the solution.

It’s time to give Fecunda a go. Just think of all the problems getting rid of men would instantly solve. Like I said – no gender pay gap, no rape culture, no male privilege. Fecunda would have 100% female CEOs, a complete lack of sexism, and the Me Too movement would be about as necessary as those bicycles that fish don’t ride.

If you want to do the thing properly, you could even wind the clock back to Year Zero. It’s a grave injustice that women in history were denied the chance to make all the great inventions and discoveries. A Stone Age Fecunda would give girls the chance to shine. Let the female Newtons and Darwins emerge as they will.

Or perhaps that is a bridge too far. Fecunda may be a social Utopia, but if it is to compete with other nations, let it have access to the knowledge male privilege has produced. Let Fecunda begin on an equal footing with everyone else. Then, it may shine as the model of what human potential can achieve once patriarchy is vanquished once and for all.

In theory, Fecunda should be exactly what feminists want. Let them keep all the advantages of modern life, but remove the one blight on their lives: men and the patriarchy. They could build their own society from the ground up. What could possibly go wrong? Well, maybe a couple of things.

The first problem would be finding women to do all the hard, nasty, or dangerous jobs normally done by men. The garbage collection, building, manual labour, and so on. There’d be no more men to do all that stuff. There’d also be no more men at the top running, inventing, or achieving things from which all others benefit. Still, there’s no reason women can’t step up and start doing all this. That’s what they want, isn’t it?

The second problem would be mental. Being human and living a happy life is difficult. All this time feminists have told themselves their problems are caused by men and the patriarchy. After living in that whole Excuse Culture, what are they going to do when the Great Excuse is removed?

Having played the blame game so long, they’ll find it extremely hard to change – which is one reason they’ll never leave. But imagine if they did. In Fecunda, there’d be no more blaming men for everything and thanking them for nothing. No more the eternal cop out. No more thinking ‘I could be anything but for the cursed patriarchy!’

When your whole mindset is one of grievance, this mode of thinking isn’t easy to give up. If a whole country was formed with people who think like this, it would be only a matter of time before a new scapegoat was found. Some new form of privilege or systemic unfairness would soon be discovered.

You can see this in the recent backlash against white feminists from women of colour. It is almost a matter of schadenfraude to see white feminists being chastised over their privilege, power, and even – Heaven forbid – the pay gap between black and white women. Still, we’d better not have any of that mean old schadenfraude stuff around here. It might lead to fantasies about what happens when people who do nothing but complain are forced to live with each other.

Chapter 18 then takes a more serious look at the controversial topic of ‘rape culture,’ in light of some recent tragedies. Chapter 19 concludes the book by asking where we go from here, and speaks of ‘The Surprising Liberation’ that is possible if we can put the gender war behind us.

That concludes the samples. They should be enough to give some idea of the book which, of course, goes into much greater detail on all of these topics.

The Vast and the Spurious is available on Amazon and Book Depository, among other sites.

This is a chapter from the new book, The Vast and the Spurious. A full description of the book is here http://bit.ly/VastAmAu (Australia) and here http://bit.ly/VastAmazonUS  (USA).

A Dream of Fecunda

How long have we had feminism? It seems like eternity but it’s only about fifty years since it really fired up. In those fifty years, there have been thousands of books, talks, and courses on the subject, but we’re still no closer to gender Utopia. I reckon it’s time to seize the moment and quit while we’re behind. We must rise as one people and many genders and say Enough! After all this talk, after all this trash, it’s time to give Fecunda a go.

And what is Fecunda? It is a magical land; a country never darkened by evil or sin. It is a holy realm without pay gaps, privilege, or rape culture. Fecunda is a land populated only by women.

Sounds pretty good, huh? But is Fecunda a real place, or one known only in legend? Well, if it ain’t real, it ought to be. Women have suffered too long at the hands of men. As one feminist said, it’s only down to their ‘immense compassion or immense foolishness’ that they continue to co-exist with men at all. Yet we can’t expect women’s love to be boundless. It’s time for the Dear John letter; time to go our separate ways. Women deserve a homeland. They deserve Fecunda.

The idea of Fecunda came to me in a dream. It was right after I saw Black Panther, that documentary about the awesome country of Wakanda in Africa. Wakanda is a really cool place with advanced technology they developed on their own far from Western civilisation. Yet as we know, Wakanda is an ethnostate, only for Africans. Because of that, Wakanda has never had the problem of racism. It stands to reason there’s no racism in an ethnostate. In the same way, an all-female Fecunda will solve the problem of sexism. That means no more domestic violence, no more man-splaining or man-spreading. In fact, no more problems at all.

Sure, there’s the matter of reproduction, for without children, how can Fecunda endure? Should they take a few men as breeding slaves in a sort of reverse Handmaid’s Tale? Better not. No hint of toxic masculinity should ever taint the holy land of Fecunda. I guess the Fecundan scientists can figure out some kind of cloning system. But that is mere detail. The immediate need is to get Fecunda up and running. Men have held women back for too long. Women have earned the right to live under matriarchy, with all-female companies, universities, and families. Let them lead the way and show us how civilisation can be done.

The Case for Fecunda

Now, Fecunda is not for all women. It’s for those who have made it clear they’ve had enough of men. In other words, feminists.

It’s for Boston academic, Suzanna Danuta Walters, who wrote a famous article called ‘Why Can’t We Hate Men?’ Some people say feminism’s a hate movement. According to Walters, it has every right to be. Fecunda is also for Laurie Penny, who’s fed up with women doing all the work in relationships. It’s for Roxane Gay who says that in the age of Me Too, it’s time for men to confess their part in creating rape culture. It’s for all the authors ripping off Margaret Atwood and putting out their own versions of The Handmaid’s Tale. Really, it’s for everyone who thinks patriarchy has them in its vice-like, invisible grip. Men are the problem? Fecunda is the solution.

It’s time to give Fecunda a go. Just think of all the problems getting rid of men would instantly solve. Like I said – no gender pay gap, no rape culture, no male privilege. Fecunda would have 100% female CEOs, a complete lack of sexism, and the Me Too movement would be about as necessary as those bicycles that fish don’t ride.

If you want to do the thing properly, you could even wind the clock back to Year Zero. It’s a grave injustice women in history were denied the chance to make all the great inventions and discoveries. A Stone Age Fecunda would give girls the chance to shine. Let the female Newtons and Darwins emerge as they will.

Or perhaps that is a bridge too far. Fecunda may be a social Utopia, but if it is to compete with other nations, let it have access to the knowledge male privilege has produced. Let Fecunda begin on an equal footing with everyone else. Then, it may shine as the model of what human potential can achieve once patriarchy is vanquished once and for all.

Trouble in Paradise?

In theory, Fecunda should be exactly what feminists want. Let them keep all the advantages of modern life, but remove the one blight on their lives: men and the patriarchy. They could build their own society from the ground up. What could possibly go wrong? Well, maybe a couple of things.

The first problem would be finding women to do all the hard, nasty, or dangerous jobs normally done by men. The garbage collection, building, manual labour, and so on. There’d be no more men to do all that stuff. There’d also be no more men at the top running, inventing, or achieving things from which all others benefit. Still, there’s no reason women can’t step up and start doing all this. That’s what they want, isn’t it?

The second problem would be mental. Being human and living a happy life is difficult. All this time feminists have told themselves their problems are caused by men and the patriarchy. After living in that whole Excuse Culture, what are they going to do when the Great Excuse is removed?

Having played the blame game so long, they’ll find it extremely hard to change – which is one reason they’ll never leave. But imagine if they did. In Fecunda, there’d be no more blaming men for everything and thanking them for nothing. No more the eternal cop out. No more thinking ‘I could be anything but for the cursed patriarchy!’

When your whole mindset is one of grievance, this mode of thinking isn’t easy to give up. If a whole country was formed with people who think like this, it would be only a matter of time before a new scapegoat was found. Some new form of privilege or systemic unfairness would soon be discovered.

You can see this in the recent backlash against white feminists from women of colour. It is almost a matter of schadenfraude to see white feminists being chastised over their privilege, power, and even – Heaven forbid – the pay gap between black and white women. Still, we’d better not have any of that mean old schadenfraude stuff around here. It might lead to fantasies about what happens when people who do nothing but complain are forced to live with each other.

The Skeptics’ Attack on Fecunda

I’m not the first to dream of Fecunda. Of course, there were the lesbian separatists in the 1970s, but as recently as 2018 – at the height of the Brett Kavanaugh furore – some visionary on Twitter said, ‘Ladies, fuck it. Let’s start our own goddamn country.’

This set off a storm of replies. The most succinct of these was, ‘And yet you’re still here.’

Some insinuated an all-female country might not be a place of peace and harmony. ‘The weekly civil wars would be draining,’ said one. ‘Y’all would hate each other in 4 days,’ said another. A less optimistic forecast was ‘I’d give your country about 2 hours before it burns to the ground.’ One woman tweeted ‘A country with only feminists in it? I think I’ve heard of that one. It’s called Hell. But please go.’

Some men were in favour of an all-female country, albeit for different reasons. ‘You can take the blame for a while,’ said one guy. Another echoed the sentiment. ‘Do it. There will be no way you can blame men for your problems!’ Another said ‘For the love of GOD, please do. Take all the Feminists and the Soy-boy fruitcake men. Let me know where to donate. It’ll take you less than a year to have your own civil war when you realize that men AREN’T your problem YOU are.’

This was all terribly unfair. As one girl protested, ‘It’s funny how men think women can’t run their own country because omg “women hate women,” like they didn’t create the systemic internalised misogyny to begin with.’ So it looks like in Fecunda, men can still take the blame when things go wrong, even if they’re not there.

Then again, some women were keen to try it. ‘I’m in!’ one tweeted. ‘I offer super mad admin, commercial and legal skills … as well as being a homemaker.’ Now, while it’s true those skills are useful in any modern economy, several replies showed a concern that other jobs might be harder to fill:

I’m curious about this proposal. I’m interested to see if you’ll find enough workforce to construct the building, the roads, bridges, the power plants. Then there’s the sewage plants, the plumbing, the mining, et al. This would be fascinating & educational.

Go ahead. Some things to ponder. 1. What’s your constitution look like? 2. Who collects the resources? How are they distributed? 3. What’s your medium of exchange? 4. How do you protect yourselves? 5. Have a draft? Mandatory military service? I’ve got more when you’re done.

Who collects the garbage? Who climbs the cell phone towers? Who pumps your oil? Who frames your houses? Who defends your freedom? Hint: It’s not feminist ink spillers with ZERO job skills.

Perceptive readers will pick up a hint of skepticism at the idea a women-only country could work. Still, pioneers have always been mocked for having the guts to try something new. They laughed at Columbus when he set off for the new world. They laughed at Julius Caesar when he tried to conquer Ancient Britain. They laughed at Jimmy Jones when he took his People’s Temple to the tropical paradise of Guyana.

Don’t laugh. Goddamn it, let’s give Fecunda a try! Feminists have been saying for years women can do anything men can. Perhaps they’re right. Yet until the experiment is tried, it’s all hypothetical – and talk is cheap. That’s why Fecunda is the perfect chance for women to finally achieve their full potential away from the shackles of patriarchy and the soul-crushing privilege of men. All together now – Give Fecunda a Go!

As for who would rule, there’s no shortage of high profile leaders who could step up as Fecunda’s first president: Angela Merkel, Julia Gillard, or Justin Trudeau, just to name a few. Hillary might even step into the breach if she’s got nothing better to do. Maybe whoever it is could make some terrible empathy-based decisions like having open borders or something. Then again, that would defeat the point, wouldn’t it? Fecunda is all about keeping the right ones in and the wrong ones out.

Envy 10, Empathy 0

This chapter has been facetious in tone so far, but has a more serious intent. It’s a response to what seems to be a systematic resentment of men by feminists.

Contrary to feminist belief, most Western men are not princes, lords, or playboys. We do not have lives of astonishing ease, free of troubles and sorrow.

Men are getting pretty tired of the Envy 10, Empathy 0 view of them. We’re sick of being blamed for everything and thanked for nothing. We’re sick of being a ‘we’ at all. Men are individuals, not part of a team that can be blamed for every problem, real or imagined, women think they have. We are not a gestalt entity to be blamed for the crimes of our worst members.

But if feminists really think men are the problem, Fecunda is the solution. They should leave and establish their own society. Let’s see if it leads to any kind of Utopia.

Perhaps it will. Inga Muscio seems keen on the thought of an all-female space. In her magnum opus, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, she describes the life changing experience of attending the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, where it’s not only the music that’s female. The gatekeepers, bus drivers, and every other role is taken by women. Indeed the only men allowed to enter the site are there to empty the porta-loos.

Muscio contrasts this with regular life, where she cannot leave her home without being immersed in a male-created world. The cars, streets, and buildings are the result of men’s labour and design. Even the songs on the radio, or the movies she sees advertised, have been made by men.

This is quintessential feminist discontent. Instead of seeing our civilisation as something to be proud of or grateful for, it’s a source of annoyance. The whole damn thing is a tiresome imposition on women. To be fair, Muscio’s point is the frustration that women haven’t had more of a hand in creating it – and Cunt certainly is a good book. Yet in this section (from pages 206-07) the antagonism to men is so strong that maybe it’s time to trial some kind of gender apartheid. Why not? Why not trial an all female country where women can run the show? It’s time to replace the complaining with action. Fecunda would be like the Michigan Womyn’s Festival, but all the time. The only problem is the Fecundans will have to empty their own porta-loos.

Is feminism a hate movement? The official answer is no, but it does seem to be angrier than ever the last few years. My city’s main newspaper runs anti-male stories daily. One journalist used it to proclaim the Me Too movement a revolt against aeons of oppression. Another, writing after the murder of a young woman, raged against men as a class and said it was an act of folly for women to keep partnering with them at all.

In her infamous ‘Why Can’t We Hate Men?’ essay, Suzanna Danuta Walters argues that hate is justified. She says that right around the world, women suffer at the hands of men, just as they have through  history. Men are responsible for centuries of woe and the only way they can make amends is to get out of the way. She calls on men to give up all leadership positions and hand power to women to make up for all the damage they’ve caused.

Some expressions of hate are even more direct. During the Brett Kavanaugh affair, a lady I’ll call Amelia was outraged by all the men defending Kavanaugh on social media. She tweeted that they all deserved horrible deaths and feminists would ‘laugh as they take their last gasps,’ before castrating their corpses and feeding them to pigs.

As an aside, Amelia recently defended free speech on Twitter. I tweeted a reply: ‘For once I agree with you, Amelia.’ ‘You might agree with me on a few other things too,’ she answered. Not sure how to take this, I tweeted, ‘You may be right,’ before returning to meditate on my hopes for Fecunda.

So, let’s repeat: Men are the problem. Fecunda is the solution. If Danuta Walters wants women to rule, she could keep slogging away in the countries clogged up with men, but why not just move to Fecunda? Imagine how much women can achieve once their main problem is removed once and for all. I mean, on Christmas Day, 2018, someone called ‘Feminist Next Door’ sent out a special festive tweet on the same topic. The gist of it was to imagine that men vanished from the world for 24 hours. Mind you, they would not be harmed, just absent.

The day men vanished need not be Christmas Day itself. It could be any day. But it would be just like Christmas for people like ‘Feminist Next Door.’ The idea was for women to imagine what they could do on that joyful day, and given the nobility of the sentiment, let’s forgive FND for ripping off Andrea Dworkin. A couple of months later she answered a male heckler who said something rude about International Women’s Day. She said the other 364 days of the year were all International Men’s Day, so the heckler should shut up and let women have their one special day.

The trouble is ‘Feminist Next Door’ is way too modest in her demands. 24 hours? What can you do in 24 hours? You need at least 24 years to see what women can really achieve. It’s just possible that after 24 years, Fecunda might be the greatest country in the entire world, a superpower to rival Wakanda itself. In Fecunda, it will be International Women’s Day 365 days a year.

Rape Culture and Collective Guilt

As mentioned, this chapter has been rather flippant so far, but will now turn to a serious topic – the question of whether men as a class are responsible for individual crimes against women, and whether this entitles women to hate them. It is after such crimes, at least in my country, Australia, that feminist vitriol against men reaches peak intensity.

In June, 2018, a young woman named Eurydice Dixon was raped and murdered in a Melbourne park. This awful event stirred up a lot of anger. TV host, Lisa Wilkinson, invoked The Handmaid’s Tale in a tearful speech. Clementine Ford wrote a scathing newspaper column lacerating men for their collective sins.

This may seem odd, given that men as a class did not murder Eurydice Dixon. In fact, she was killed by a 19 year old autistic man named Jaymes Todd. But by some interpretations of feminist theory, men as a class did murder Eurydice, at least indirectly. She was a victim of ‘rape culture’ and systematic misogyny. Thus, if men as a whole are part of creating rape culture, some feminists hold them accountable.

Soon after the murder, a police chief spoke out urging women to take precautions – being careful where they walked at night, for instance. This drew an angry response: Why should women change their behaviour? Men are the ones who should change their behaviour. Stop raping women!

The feminists who said this weren’t just talking to rapists, but to men as a class. The idea of ‘rape culture’ is that we live in a misogynistic society where rape becomes normalised through various attitudes toward women and sex.

There’s a well known triangular diagram used to give an overview of rape culture. It lists twenty-one type of behaviour, at four levels. On level one are rape jokes and ‘locker room banter,’ for instance (although a different version includes ‘unequal pay’ and ‘sexist attitudes.’) Level two has cat-calling, stalking, and ‘revenge porn.’ Level three includes groping and sexual coercion, while actual rape and violence are up the top on level four.

The idea is that any act, no matter how trivial, is part of a spectrum in a general climate of misogyny. This makes rape more likely to happen, or allows its perpetrators to get away with it. That means any man committing the lower level sins – even on level one – is part of creating rape culture, so is to some degree complicit in rape itself.

Strangely, plenty of non-raping men don’t like this idea, and ‘not-all-men-are-rapists’ is a common refrain. Such protests don’t impress feminist, Clementine Ford. After the Dixon murder, Ford wrote, ‘I am increasingly disagreeing with the view that not all men are part of the problem, and it’s because I truly think most of them don’t understand that the problem is theirs to solve.’

Her column went on to harangue men over what they do to stand up for women. Do they challenge sexist comments and misogyny from their male friends? Do they stop their colleagues harassing women? She also asked if they do their share of housework and parenting, so perhaps failure to vacuum or do the dishes is part of rape culture too.

As for who is really to blame for the murder of Eurydice Dixon, the correct answer is Jaymes Todd, the young man who actually did it. But as the theory of rape culture tries to blame a whole class of people for the acts of individuals, it is worth pointing out some problems with the idea.

To do this, I’ll make two analogies. The first is to do with our treatment of farm animals. If there is one class of beings with a genuine claim to being victims, it is the animals we raise and kill for food. The morality of killing animals is a separate argument that I won’t go into here, but for the sake of the analogy, let’s say it is wrong. If so, then all people who eat meat are complicit in this and share whatever guilt is involved.

I’ve recently gone towards vegetarianism, but as I still sometimes eat meat, I share in the guilt. On the other hand, you can’t say vegetarians and vegans share that guilt, for the obvious reason that they don’t eat meat and actively avoid doing so.

So, going back to the murder of poor Eurydice Dixon, a feminist glaring at men and snarling you’re part of the problem is like someone scolding a group of vegans and vegetarians for their part in killing animals. Most men do not rape, and trying to smear them with some kind of collective guilt for the crimes of rogue individuals is not just unfair but absurd.

In terms of the analogy, a feminist might say being a vegan isn’t enough. You have to become a PETA activist and stop people eating meat. You can’t, for example, stand around at a BBQ while other people are eating sausages. You have to call them out on it or you’re enabling ‘carnivore culture.’ But no, individuals are only responsible for their own acts. Carnivores are guilty of eating meat; vegetarians are not. Rapists are guilty of rape; non-rapists are not.

The second analogy I’ll make is with Muslims as a whole being blamed for acts of terrorism. After terror acts by Muslim extremists, some people have tried to blame all Muslims, or Islam itself. It’s a good parallel for feminist attempts to blame all men for individual crimes against women.

Suppose there are two types of Muslims – moderates and extremists. You can’t blame the moderates for acts of terror committed by extremists. The moderates would have had no idea the atrocities were being planned, let alone executed.

You could argue there’s a systemic hostility behind such acts. If – as some claim – the ideology of Islam is anti-Western, you could say the ideology is partly to blame for extremists’ acts of terror. Yet even if that were true, you still can’t blame moderate Muslims for what extremists do.

You might theorise that there’s a ‘terror culture’ made up of anti-Western attitudes. This could be a four level spectrum like the one for rape culture. On level one are trivial acts like making anti-Western jokes or disapproving comments about Western morals. Level two might be refusing to serve Westerners in Muslim shops, or forming cultural enclaves. Actual terrorists acts would be at the top on level four. By this logic, using rape culture as a parallel, moderate Muslims who make anti-Western jokes are also guilty of acts of terror. But that is absurd.

It is true systemic hostility can lead to individual crimes, as anti-Semitism in 1930s Germany led to crimes against Jews. However, there are problems with trying to push this sort of collective guilt. First, a low level offence isn’t the same as one at a high level. A Muslim tut-tutting about ‘Western morality’ isn’t as bad as one who blows up a Balinese nightclub, as happened in 2002.

Second, you could say that if ‘terror culture’ helps normalise acts of terror, then those who refrain from such acts are actually more moral than they would otherwise be. If terror is normal, it is more virtuous than usual to refrain. Likewise, if ‘rape culture’ normalises rape, those who live in a rape culture and don’t rape are more moral than those who live in a non-rape culture and don’t rape.

Suppose there’s a culture where it’s legal to take child brides, for instance. Men who could take child brides but don’t are more moral than men who can’t take them and don’t. Obviously, cultures where child marriage is legal don’t see it as immoral, but for the sake of argument let’s say there are two men who believe taking child brides is morally dubious. One of them lives in Australia, the other in Pakistan. In Australia, it is illegal and socially unacceptable to take child brides. In Pakistan it is both legal and relatively normal. If both these men find the practice morally dubious, the man from Pakistan is the more moral for refusing to do it – because he actually could, but doesn’t.

To go back to the animal analogy, it’s both legal and acceptable to eat meat. There is no moral censure for doing it, no consequences at all. As a result, the decision to abstain, by vegans and vegetarians, is admirable because they are making a moral choice in the absence of any social pressure to do so.

Therefore, if we live in this so called ‘rape culture,’ where sexual assault is somehow endorsed and enabled by misogyny, men who live in it and don’t rape it are more moral than they would be if they didn’t live in a rape culture.

It’s a strange and fairly absurd argument to make, but that’s what you get when a young woman’s death is used as an excuse to shame all men for their supposed complicity.

Misogyny?

But why should we believe in rape culture in the first place? Taking the phrase literally for a moment, there’s not, to my knowledge, any modern Western country where rape is permitted. Taking it more broadly, there are reasons to doubt Western culture is deeply misogynistic, as some feminists believe.

First, there’s been a big push in recent times to promote women’s interests, in a number of ways. Why would that happen if society was misogynistic? Feminists may reply that this is all the result of their fight for justice, but if society really was misogynistic, those reforms wouldn’t get through at all.

At the same time, there’s been a lot of recent anti-male sentiment. Never mind men being the butt of jokes in sitcoms, or the steady stream of anti-male ad campaigns. You actually have in our universities, the systematic denigration of men, and especially white men, as being somehow to blame for all the world’s problems. Society is misogynistic? If anything, it’s increasingly misandric.

Just look at the main newspaper in my city. On any given day, you’ll find several pro-female and anti-male articles. It’s surely only a matter of time before the Sydney Morning Herald renames itself the Sydney Morning Feminist.

If we believe some theorists, the murder of Eurydice Dixon is the end result of systemic misogyny. ‘Rape culture’ is a spectrum of inter-connected behaviour, and any man who engages in a sexist act at the low level is also contributing to rape. So if we could just reform men and get rid of rape culture as a whole, acts of rape and murder will also cease.

Call me a skeptic, but if you really think calling out sexist jokes at the office Christmas party is going to stop some psychopath murdering a random woman in a city park, well, good luck with that.

Do rapist-murderers do it because they hate women? No doubt some do, but others won’t have thought it through that far. Obviously, some are immoral, acting from pure malice. Others are amoral in that they don’t care about the ethics of their actions, or the effect on others. They’re indifferent to moral questions. A third type are probably just stupid, with poor impulse control and no understanding of consequences. A fourth type are mentally ill and disturbed. The idea that all these men commit their crimes due to society-wide misogyny seems like a one-size-fits-all theory.

The real explanation of why some sick or evil men rape may be more prosaic. To put it in coldly clinical terms, rape may be a side effect of a system where supply and demand is heavily out of balance. That is, when it comes to sex, one gender can get it when they don’t want it and the other can’t get it when they do. Under those conditions, rape will sometimes occur from a minority of men who are evil, ill, or have poor impulse control. Of course, none of that is any justification for rape. But it seems a simpler, more likely reason for rape than the catch all theory of ‘misogyny.’

Those who think rape culture is the problem think stopping misogyny is the solution. This seems over idealistic. If you really want to address the threat of rape, better to acknowledge that, in those coldly clinical terms, sexual supply and demand are way out of balance. As a result, there will always be a small minority of ill or evil men who are a threat to women. That’s the reality of it. What you can do about it is a separate question.

There’s a great YouTube talk by a feminist and rape survivor, Wendy McElroy, on the fallacy of rape culture. She makes the point that if people are serious about stopping rape, it can only happen by addressing its real causes. Pushing an ideology about ‘respecting women’ is a different issue, worthy in its own right, but may not have much to do with stopping rape, at least in the Western world.

McElroy agrees there are rape cultures in some parts of the world. Cultures which permit, for example, child brides, rape within marriage, mistreatment of low caste women, and so on. You could make a case that those sort of rape cultures are tied up in misogynistic views of women in general. In comparison, claims about rape culture in the West look trivial. They insult not just Western men, but those women around the world who have a genuine claim to be living in a rape culture. At least, that is the opinion of Wendy McElroy.

Let’s Make Murder Illegal

Some feminists have said it is the responsibility of men as a class to stop rape and murder. It is ‘their problem to solve.’ How could men actually do this? Here’s a thought to get the ball rolling – why not make murder illegal?

After the Eurydice Dixon murder, men did try one thing. The Australian Senate proposed that women carry tasers, pepper spray and mace to defend themselves. That sounds like a good, proactive strategy, but it was rejected. A leading feminist was part of  a senate majority who opposed the motion. They had a better idea: teach men not to assault women.

It’s pretty hard to believe an immediate, practical step was turned down on the basis of ideology – an ideology that believes stopping rape culture will stop rape. Even if you accept that premise, it would still take decades to achieve. In the meantime, why not carry some pepper spray?

Some women are angry at being asked to take precautions, but any person should take steps to reduce risk. Compared to women, men are far more at risk of violence in public places, so they try not to put themselves in danger. They know, for example, not to go out in King’s Cross after 1am. In the days of football hooliganism in England, peaceful football fans knew to stay away from rival fan areas. Generally, there are certain bars, streets, or events you should avoid. The reality is some men are violent, and other men have to take whatever steps are needed: learn self defence, don’t hang out with thugs, avoid bad locations after midnight. This is all routine and commonsense advice.

As for sexual assault, men don’t face the same risks as women, but in the Me Too era some of them have adopted ‘Mike Pence Rules.’ US vice president Pence has a rule to never be alone in a room with any woman other than his wife. This is to lower the risk of a false sexual harassment allegation. High profile men would prefer the risk didn’t exist, but it does – so they take precautions.

In a YouTube talk called ‘Are Men Responsible for Ending Sexual Violence?’ Janice Fiamengo refutes the idea that men could do so even if they tried. She says the demand that men eliminate rape conflates the truth that men have the individual power and responsibility not to commit sexual assault with the false claim they can stop it in others. It’s a ‘sleight of hand’ indeed.

Fiamengo makes an analogy with parenting. There are some terrible parents out there, (a small minority) but it would be unfair to make parents-as-a-class bear responsibility for what the bad ones do, and useless to imply they have any power to stop it.

A Hidden Source of Misogyny

Remember that ‘rape culture’ is a set of misogynistic attitudes that makes offences against women more likely to occur. Let’s look at this idea from another angle.

To be fair, fostering an attitude of hate towards a class of people does have an effect – or rather, a number of effects. One is that you feel less sympathy for that group and their problems. Another is you may feel resentment towards them, even an element of ill will. A third is you might want to have nothing to do with them. This is true of various types of people that are antagonistic to other types.

But if it’s true a systematic dislike of one group for another has consequences, one might argue feminists are responsible for creating hostility not just towards men as a class, but towards women as a class. How so?

Not all feminists hate men, but enough do to have real world effects. The Me Too movement, for instance, began as a protest against sleazy Hollywood moguls then turned into a much wider campaign with the potential for abuse. As Fiamengo said, ‘all women have now acquired a deadly weapon … and a significant minority are willing or even eager to use it.’

No doubt some feminists are delighted to bring down as many powerful men as possible. Some of those men deserve it, others do not. Yet if some innocent men go down as collateral damage, these feminists will shrug their shoulders, talk about male tears, and see it as some kind of payback.

It’s one thing to incite resentment of men, but a side effect is you also incite resentment of women. It may seem to feminists that their efforts to help women can do nothing but good. Where their causes are just, they may be right.

They may also think they’re helping women when they lie about the gender pay gap, give a one sided view of domestic violence, or support a pro-female / anti-male agenda in the media and education. In the short term, these actions may help women, up to a point. What they also do is create a strong tide of resentment against women as a class.

Among the many fruits of this are the MGTOW movement, the refusal of some male bosses to mentor women in the wake of Me Too, less sympathy for women, strong antipathy to feminism as a cause, and less inclination to support pro-women reforms one might otherwise agree with.

Apparently, ‘rape culture’ is made of misogyny. But if misogyny means antagonism towards women, it’s possible third wave feminism has created more antagonism than anyone else ever could. Feminism at its worst is self-defeating because it doesn’t inspire either respect, or support for its causes – and feminism is at its worst all too often these days.

The movement may have begun as a just cause, but over the years it has evolved into a hate movement. ‘Why can’t we hate men?’ says Suzanna Danuta Walters. Well, sure, you can. Just do it somewhere else. In Fecunda, ideally.

What is feminism today? Rape culture. Me Too. The gender pay gap. Envy 10, Empathy 0. Men-bad-women-good. Blaming men for everything and thanking them for nothing. And let’s not forget that men as a class are complicit in the rape and murder of Eurydice Dixon, an event which could only appal any moral person.

Soon after Eurydice Dixon’s death, Clementine Ford wrote an angry newspaper column berating men. As it was written in the emotional aftermath of the murder, one might forgive some over-statement. Yet the passage below is from her book, published months later, with only minor changes from the original column.

It is a mark of either immense compassion or immense foolishness that women continue to throw ourselves into the act of loving men despite amassing a lifetime of experiences that tell us how dangerous this decision can be. I am increasingly disagreeing with the view that not all men are part of the problem, and it’s because I truly think most of them don’t understand that the problem is theirs to solve …

… Women don’t need to be told to look for the goodness in men, because we try our damnedest to find it every day. We work hard to nurture it, even as we’re told to be grateful for it. For our own survival, women must believe that not all men are the enemy.

I’ve read both Ford’s books and many of her columns and was surprised by her claims about looking for men’s goodness. Perhaps in her personal life she tries her damndest to find the goodness in men, but she sure doesn’t in her published work. On the contrary, she seems to try her damnedest to find the worst in them.

Clementine Ford is entitled to her views. She’s even entitled to broadcast them through books and newspaper columns. But if she really thinks women take their lives in their hands by partnering with men, perhaps it’s time to go our separate ways.

It’s time to give feminists the space and opportunity they need. Go, and may the Goddess go with you. Goodbye Suzanna. Goodbye Amelia. Goodbye to all the feminists convinced they live in The Handmaid’s Tale. Please go – with our blessings and good wishes. We wish you well in establishing the Republic of Fecunda and creating your dream country free from our eternal sabotage. Go in peace – and good luck.

This is the first chapter of the book.

The Vast and the Spurious – Chapter One

This book discusses twenty-five problems with feminism. One of the main problems is you’re not allowed to criticise it in the first place. As I’m going to do so at some length, this will make me a target for attack. In that case, I’ll start by explaining my position and why this book has been written.

Some people think any critic of feminism must be a right wing thug who wants to send women back to the 1950s. But I believe women should have the same rights as men and be free to pursue any goal. Why shouldn’t they? Still, supporting the fair reforms of the 1970s doesn’t mean you have to endorse the cultish fanaticism that goes on today.

Of course, a movement as big as feminism doesn’t exist without reason. On some topics feminists are right, on others they are wrong. The aim of this book, The Vast and the Spurious, is to try to understand which ones. Where they are right, their efforts may lead to a better world. But where they are wrong, their mistakes will lead to a worse world – for everyone. #Feminism hurts women too.

I am male. For some, that disqualifies me from having an opinion on this subject. But as the modern agenda consists of hectoring men about their enormous power and privilege, it’s clear feminism is not just about women’s issues. They will accuse me of ‘man-splaining’ feminism, but as feminists have been woman-splaining for years how patriarchy ruined their lives, it’s only fair to return fire. Still, in deference to those who’ve gone before, let’s start with the ceremonial rites.

Acknowledging the Traditional Owners of The Land

As a man writing on this topic, I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Gender Studies: feminists.

Apparently they own the land. They get very angry if a man trespasses on that land by having a voice, or even a thought, about gender issues. This anger may be cloaked in the pretence that they don’t care what men think. They will sometime declare, with passionate indifference, just how much they don’t care. Indeed, when it comes to feminist books, it seems to be a genre convention for authors to assert that they ‘don’t give a fuck’ what men think of their field. Clementine Ford says this in chapter eight of her book. Jessa Crispin says it in chapter seven of hers. Probably a hundred other women have said it in theirs.

This is really a wonderful liberation for a fellow like me, for when I began writing this book, an inner voice would often be nagging away about whether feminists would approve. It’s a great relief to learn that they don’t care what any man thinks.

Still, having entered the field of feminist writing, it’s only polite to observe the genre conventions with the ritual words: I don’t give a fuck what men think about feminism. There. Was that OK?

Now the formalities are over, let’s get on with the book.

A Few Points to Begin

To be honest, that was a lie. I do care what people think, and maybe this book can even change a few minds. Not the hardcore feminists, of course. That will never happen. But the book isn’t written for them. It is for the open-minded woman or man who wants to hear a different view than the media allows. It’s for the kid starting university about to be force-fed identity politics for the next three years. It’s for those sick of the one-sidedness of the conversation.

Still, before criticising feminism in detail, it’s worth remembering why it exists, and the sort of thing that fired women up in the seventies and sometimes still goes on today. For example, I recall one time from my own university days when a pompous male academic lectured for an hour, then also dominated the tute group that followed. We sure got sick of his voice. Then there was a recent YouTube clip where a young woman gave a brilliant performance on the bass guitar. One of the top comments was ‘the best part of this video is her smile.’ This retro chauvinism would easily make that Everyday Sexism website.

So, while this is mainly an anti-feminist book, it is sympathetic to them when they have a fair point. Apart from being a matter of ethical fair play, there’s more chance of changing people’s minds if you show some empathy rather than just trying to blast them into oblivion. They might then start to listen and empathise with you too. Of course, if that doesn’t work, you can always fall back on plan B, which is to blast them into oblivion.

In the same spirit, this book won’t be taking any cheap shots at the physical appearance of any feminists. That sort of personal attack is irrelevant, and reflects badly on the attacker. Behavioural ugliness on the other hand – such as lying, bullying, or slandering – will be called out whoever is doing it.

For the record, I support some of the basic feminist causes, such as equal pay for the same work and a fair deal on housework and parenting. Ironically, the only way feminists will ever actually solve those problems is to stop lying about the ‘gender pay gap.’ That is, lying about its real nature and causes.

As for whether males and females have the same innate abilities, let’s just say people should be treated as individuals, and get the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

As for other issues, I support women’s right to sexual freedom and to not have to face blatant sexual harassment, but oppose the recent excesses of the Me Too movement.

Then there’s rape and domestic violence. It’s pretty obvious stuff, you would think. Domestic violence, for instance. You mean it’s wrong to beat up your own family? Who knew? But that applies whichever gender is doing it. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t just go one way.

What I chiefly oppose in feminism are some key delusions, some behavioural traits, and the overall mental climate these create. Among  the main delusions are that woman are always worse off than men, and that men are always villains and women victims. Another problem is the fixation on gender where it has no relevance.

As for behaviour, I oppose the feminist attempt to leverage historical suffering for present day gain, and its culture of bullying and intimidation. The overall climate all this creates is one of hatred between the sexes. While this is not all the fault of feminists, they have certainly played their part.

Origins of this Book

This book was prompted by several events, of which two stand out. One was reading a newspaper article about ‘male privilege,’ which is the idea that men are better off than women in almost all areas of life. The implication was that men cruise through life as pampered lords, while women struggle through like the damned in Hades.

The other event happened when the book was already half written. It was the attempted screening in Australia of a film called The Red Pill, which gave a sympathetic hearing to Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). This was an act of profanity for feminists, who protested and got the film banned. MRAs are those who challenge the feminist premise that women are always the disadvantaged sex. What’s striking about The Red Pill is it started out as a hit piece on MRAs, but its female filmmaker changed her mind once she got to know them. This was pure heresy for feminists, who called it a propaganda film. That was odd, because when I finally got to see the film, it turned out to be an alternative to the feminist propaganda we normally get in the media.

Really, The Red Pill just offered another view on gender relations, but the whole protest debacle shows there is something deeply wrong with feminism today. If the way you deal with critics is to silence them or lie about them, this is highly revealing about the sort of movement you are.

So, The Red Pill is ‘a propaganda film,’ is it? If by propaganda they mean someone’s opinion, then we are all propagandists. The difference is some people get to deliver their propaganda through national, mainstream media. Clementine Ford, for example, writes one or two newspaper columns a week – and while Ford is a formidable warrior for her cause, she only ever argues one side. Still, by all means read her columns and books. Then for the sake of balance, go and listen to a YouTube talk by Janice Fiamengo or Karen Straughan.

Karen Straughan is one of those evil Men’s Rights Activists you hear about. She’s popular with men due to her eccentric penchant for not hating their guts. I had actually never heard of MRAs when I began writing this book. Since then, and after watching The Red Pill, I’ve heard a good deal more about them.

Feminists need to move on from the idea that they have a monopoly on sorrow. Injustice takes various forms and is experienced by many types of people – even some of those white males they think are so privileged.

This book was originally two long essays. The first was called ‘Agony: Much More Painful Than Yours,’ (meant humorously, of course). It looked at twelve problems to do with the idea of male privilege. The second essay, ‘The Vast and the Spurious,’ looked at a further twelve problems.

I’ve kept those original ‘problems’ and spread them out over the chapters of the book. Some are dealt with briefly, others at much greater length. ‘Problem 25’ will make up the last chapter.

In fact, some of these are problems for feminism, not problems with feminism. For example, problems 12-14 are sympathetic to them. Here is a full list, with the names I’ve given them.

1. Trump or the Tramp
2. The CEO Problem: Check Explanation, OK
3. It’s Not 1970 Anymore
4. Female Privilege
5. Agony: Much Worse Than Yours
6. We Are Not a Gestalt
7. Gender Doesn’t Matter
8. How Dare You Resist My Attack?
9. Big Sister is Watching You
10. Misogyny vs. Misandry
11. The Gender Pay Gap
12. Yes, That’s Annoying
13. The Weight of History
14. Dickheads Anonymous
15. It’s Still Not 1970
16. What Ya Gonna Do?
17. Bullshit or Not?
18. Whinge, Whine, WTF
19. So Fucking What?
20. Stop Caring What People Think
21. Assert Yourself or Die
22. Do Something
23. Give Me My Privilege!
24. Turning Male Problems into Male Privilege
25. Addicted to Feminism

Apart from these twenty-five problems, the book has five main parts. Chapters 2-4 are about male privilege. Chapters 5-8 discuss the capacity for evil in both men and women, and respond to a feminist’s attack on MRAs. Chapters 9-12 deal with the gender pay gap, and the battle over work in and outside the home. Chapters 13-17 return to male privilege. Then, chapters 18 and 19 complete the book, and include the Utopian vision, ‘A Dream of Fecunda.’

It’s worth noting that this book is about Western nations, and does not discuss feminism or the position of women outside the West.

This is part one of the story “Marla Okadigbo,” from the ebook, The Tightarse Tuesday Book Club. Available here on Amazon http://bit.ly/TightarseTuesdayBookClub-US  and on Amazon Australia  http://bit.ly/TightarseTuesdayBookClub 

Marla Okadigbo 

The author, Winkler Jones, woke up one day to find his website had vanished. He rang his agent, Steve Cassel, who admitted he’d taken the site down but refused to say why – at least on the phone. If Jones wanted an explanation, he’d have to go to the office in person. It was with some annoyance, then, that Winkler found himself forced to take the train to New York.

Winkler fumed at home for a while, deciding not to go. Then he changed his mind and fumed for most of the train trip from New Jersey. Finally, he fumed a little more as he marched into the office of the Steve Cassel Literary Agency. He didn’t bother to say hi.

‘This had better be good, Cass. I’m on a deadline and you make me come into the city. We could have done this on the phone, couldn’t we?’

‘Sure, Wink. We could have, but whether we should have’s another story.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, just a little rule I live by. Never say on the phone – or in email – what you wouldn’t want printed in The New York Times.’

Winkler sat down, crossed his arms, and faced his agent over the desk.

‘So, what’s up?’

Cassel stared at him, his expression bland. Although both men were in their thirties, Cassel looked twenty years older. With his elegant attire, his agent had the look of mature respectability. Winkler, however, would look boyish into his fifties. Both appearances were useful illusions. In private, Cassel dropped the mask and spoke like the hustler he was. Still, his relationship to Winkler was avuncular. Today, and not for the first time, he found himself in the guise of a prudent uncle scolding an errant nephew.

‘How many times have I told you to watch your words?’

‘Who did I offend this time?’ said Jones. ‘Was it something I said?’

‘Something you wrote, actually – on your blog. That’s why your website’s ‘down for maintenance’ until we sort this out.’

‘That bad, huh?’

Winkler did a quick mental scan of recent blog topics: PC Halloween costumes; the state of modern pop music; people who like things ‘ironically.’ They weren’t that bad, surely.

‘I give up,’ he said. ‘What was it?’

‘Your books of the month.’

Winkler read a book every week, then at the end of the month, posted his thoughts in short, pithy reviews. Knowing how much work went into writing, he always tried to be complimentary. But the exercise would have little worth if, occasionally, he did not also venture some criticism.

‘What did I say?’

Steve Cassel swivelled round to his computer screen and pulled up Jones’ blog entry that he’d saved.

‘Let me refresh your memory. I’ll read it out loud.’

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

First published in 1985, this piece of oppression-porn is making a comeback. In The Handmaid’s Tale, a societal breakdown has stripped women of all rights. In some unspecified near-future, women have been reduced to a childbearing role and are subject to full male control.

Thirty years after publication, you have to wonder why the book is so popular. But with Third Reich Feminism’s campaign to persuade Western women they’re more oppressed than ever, it may have been taken for a work of documentary.

Jokes aside, the book is really a work of naked misandry. It’s based on the paranoid belief that men, given half a chance, are eager to put women in a state of slavery. It seems men want nothing less than complete control of women. This is shown in the pivotal scene at the point of societal collapse – shown in a flashback – where the handmaid’s partner, Luke, is secretly pleased to gain power over her.

This may strike a chord with those who think oppression lurks  behind every friendly face, and indeed, the new TV series version has found a ready audience. I haven’t seen it, but caught the previews, which feature women in identical nun outfits – albeit in a sexy shade of red. It seems the Handmaid girls aren’t oppressed enough to go ‘full-burka,’ but are still allowed to flaunt their faces. (Has anyone made the connection with Islam, or is that off limits?)

Atwood is a good writer – and I’m a fan of The Blind Assassin –  but The Handmaid’s Tale shows a preoccupation with the past. Why not imagine a better future full of empowered women? Oh wait, we already have the new Star Trek, the new Star Wars, the new Dr Who, and umpteen female superheros kicking the asses of men worldwide. Margaret, perhaps it’s time to update your tale and give the handmaid some superpowers to lead a Hunger Games type revolt to a new matriarchal Utopia.

In the meantime, it’s only a matter of time before an African-American author pens a dystopian tale in which slavery is restored. It’s gotta be a hit. Right?

Steve Cassel swivelled back around to face his client.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘Hmm – not bad. I think I got it about right. Don’t you?’

‘What were you thinking, Winkler? In three hundred words, you’ve probably managed to piss off the feminists, Muslims, and Black Lives Matter.’ Cassel shook his head. ‘And no doubt goddamn Margaret Atwood as well!’

Jones affected a look of innocence.

‘What for? What did I say?’

‘Cut the crap, Wink. You know very well what you said – and it’s not on. Not if you want a career. You hear me?’

‘Gee, Steve. Everyone’s so sensitive these days.’

‘There are some things you can’t say anymore.’

‘This is America.’

‘Don’t give me the this-is-America routine. You know you can’t say anything to piss off the liberals these days.’

‘Wait – I’m a liberal. Well, basically, anyhow.’

‘Then what are you doing taking pot shots at feminists?’

‘All I said was they’re a bit paranoid if they think men are trying to turn them into handmaids.’

‘You wrote Third Reich Feminism.’

‘Did I? Must have been a typo. I meant Third Wave Feminism.’

‘Sure you did, Wink. I guess that crack about the burka was a typo too.’

‘Well – a bunch of women wearing identical nun outfits and veils. What do you expect me to say?’

‘I expect some common sense, that’s all. Maybe you’d better lay off the book reviews for a while. Or at least run them by me first.’

‘Like that, is it? I won’t bother.’

Suddenly, Cassel thumped the desk.

‘For fuck’s sake, Wink, why can’t you just do the Trump-bashing like everyone else! What’s so hard about that?’

‘I could, but what’s the point? You know I hate clichés.’

‘At least people would know your heart’s in the right place.’

Jones looked unenthused.

‘I can see the headlines now,’ he said. ‘Artist boldly goes where five thousand artists have gone before by slamming unpopular president.’

Cassel shot him a suspicious look.

‘Don’t tell me you support him?’

‘Steady on, Cass, I don’t support any of them. I’m an independent.’

‘You’ve got to watch yourself these days. It’s all about perceptions now – and if you screw up, you’ll be all over Twitter for the wrong reasons. And if you’ve got any hopes of Hollywood ever adapting your work, forget it. You’ll be blacklisted – and nothing personal, but if you’re blacklisted our contract’s not worth a pinch of poodle poo.’

Winkler raised his hands.

‘Alright, alright. Wipe my review.’

‘Good man,’ said Cassel. ‘I’ll do that today, then put your site back up.’

Winkler yawned.

‘Jesus Christ. We really could have done this over the phone. Can I go now?’

‘Wait. There’s something else.’

An odd look came over the face of Steve Cassel, literary agent. A strange, furtive look. He left his desk, opened his office door to check for eavesdroppers. Then, satisfied, returned to his seat.

‘I gotta tell you, Wink, your review wasn’t all bad. In fact, you’ve given me an idea.’

The literary agent glanced at his computer screen once again, then read the last paragraph aloud.

‘In the meantime, it’s only a matter of time before an African-American author pens a dystopian tale in which slavery is restored. It’s gotta be a hit. Right?’

He turned back to Jones and looked him square in the eyes.

‘So how about it?’

‘I don’t follow you, Steve.’

‘The slavery book. When are you going to write it?’

Winkler Jones said nothing for a bit, then laughed.

‘Get outta here.’

‘Look, you said it yourself. It’s only a matter of time before somebody writes a book like that. Why not you? Are you going to let someone else steal your idea? Publishing’s all about timing, getting in ahead of the trend. Racism’s a hot topic right now, thanks to Black Lives Matter protesting against white cops killing black teens.’

‘You are serious! Looks like it’s time for me to give you a reality check. I can’t write a book like that cos I’m white. I’d get smashed.’

Cassel made a wafting motion with his right hand, as if batting away a fly.

‘Of course it wouldn’t go out under your name. We’d give you a pseudonym.’

‘Really?’

‘And a black persona.’

‘A whole fake identity?’ Winkler rubbed his chin. ‘But what about publicity, interviews, book signings?’

‘Who needs publicity when Black Lives Matter’s making such a noise? Every time a white cop shoots a black teenager, they go crazy about racist oppression. They’ll do all your press for you. All we have to do is wait for the next time some cop caps a black kid, and away we go.’

‘Wow, Cass. I’ve gotta say you’re blowing my mind. You want me to write a dystopian science fiction tale where slavery’s restored and the negro’s back under the white man’s thumb again. And you think the Black Lives Matter movement will be on board with that?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Wink, if The Handmaid’s Tale works for feminism, I don’t see why we can’t come up with our own book to highlight America’s oppression of the black man. But you’ve got to be quick, before someone else has the same idea. Why don’t you bang out a book proposal and I’ll shop it around? If we do it right, a decent advance isn’t out of the question.’

‘How much?’

‘I don’t know. Quarter-mill, maybe.’

‘Really?’

‘Then there’s movie rights. I’m telling you, the sky’s the limit.’

‘Hmm. Maybe you’re right. Tell you what, that sort of cash would get Sonia off my back. She’s been busting my balls for a while.’

Cassel stiffened, as if Jones had said something deeply offensive.

‘Let’s get one thing absolutely clear,’ he said, enunciating each word precisely. ‘If this project goes ahead, it is a matter of complete secrecy. One word to Sonia, or anyone else, and you’re a dead man.’

‘Whoa there. I’m not a complete dunce. I don’t exactly trust her myself these days. A bit of a payday, though, might smooth over the cracks in our relationship.’

Winkler Jones was silent for a while, focusing on the internal vision running through his mind. At last, he turned to face his agent and stuck out his jaw.

‘There’s one thing I want to get clear, Cass. If I do this, it’s not about the money. I just want to do my bit to highlight the plight of the black man in America today.’

‘And woman.’

‘Yeah, and the black woman. I want to do my bit for the cause of race relations, to stand up for the black men and women of America in their continual struggle against the legacy of slavery. And I’ll do that by imagining a world in which slavery is restored in 21^st century America.’

‘That’s beautiful, Wink.’

‘The implication being, of course, that slavery really does exist even today. The chains may be invisible, but they’re there. They’ve just been internalised due to a racial hegemony which oppresses blacks systematically.’

‘Love it. I guess you can pull in the university crowd as well with that highbrow crap. Your book could become a mandatory set text. Hell – this is a home run for sure! Why don’t you write up a proposal right now so I can start pitching it?’

‘Can you just give me a couple of days to brainstorm it? You know, just to be sure in myself I can pull it off?’

Cassel looked peeved.

‘There’s no time to mess about. It’s only a matter of time before someone else does it first. But you know, if you don’t think you can, maybe Cantor could do the job. After all, he’s black.’

‘Piss off! It was my idea.’

Jones suddenly shot his agent a look of suspicion.

‘Hey, wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you ask Cantor to write it anyway? He’d have a bit more credibility.’

The agent contrived a hurt expression.

‘Professional ethics, pal. It was your idea.’

‘Come on, Cass. I know you better than that.’

‘Alright, you got me. I did think of sounding him out but I didn’t know if he’d go for it.’

Winkler Jones laughed.

‘Pitching slavery to a black man. Tough sell, eh. But old Cantor’s not seeing the big picture, is he? Well, I’ll take the job. Only by making racial oppression explicit can I show the racism that’s implicit right now.’

‘You got it, Wink. See – no one can write this stuff better than you. Now get the hell outta my office before I call the cops!’

End of Scene One.

This was part one of the novella, ‘Marla Okadigbo,’ from the ebook The Tightarse Tuesday Book Club. To see what happens next, the book is here on Amazon http://bit.ly/TightarseTuesdayBookClub-US  and on Amazon Australia here  http://bit.ly/TightarseTuesdayBookClub.

The book contains nine other stories.

When Dr Who began in 1963, it was meant as an educational TV show for children to learn about history. In 2018, it is again meant as an educational TV show, this time to teach children about progressive social values. That’s why the new series keeps giving us people of ‘diversity’ – black, gay, etc. It’s why the main characters keep turning into women. The Master is now Missy. UNIT, once led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is run by his daughter, Kate. And of course the Doctor himself has become female, with Peter Capaldi replaced by Jodi Whitaker.

This trend is driven by ‘identity politics,’ a way of thinking that insists on defining people in terms of their race, gender, sexuality, and so on. It’s also a system fixated on the idea of power and the conviction that women, gays, ‘people of colour,’ etc, have been heavily disadvantaged and must be raised up. The mission of social justice warriors (SJWs) is to give these groups greater power.

In that sense, there are good intentions behind this push for social justice. I won’t get into all the problems with the idea for now, but will note that identity politics also requires a villain. In case you haven’t noticed, the main group considered bad are straight, white males, who are thought to have had all the power up until now. Never mind that there are a huge variety of individuals in this group, straight white males are all to be treated as a class of privileged beings who need to be brought down a peg. Being ‘progressive,’ then, means elevating as many women, gays, and blacks as possible into roles formerly taken by white males. In light of this, I’m going to look at the Dr Who episode where the Doctor changed into a woman, which must be seen as a coup for the progressive crowd.

It’s an interesting word, ‘coup.’ It can have a benign meaning as in triumph or a more hostile meaning as in violent rebellion. There’s no doubt having a female doctor is agenda-driven and partly the result of pressure from those behind the scenes at the ‘socially progressive’ BBC.

I’ll preface my review by saying I don’t object to a woman doctor per se, so much as all the bullshit that goes with it. Tom Baker, the most famous actor to play the role, actually suggested a female doctor in the 1980s. But in today’s climate of identity politics, apparently such a move has to come with a fair amount of male-bashing. Dave Cullen, for one, has spoken about the blatant misandry in some of the recent episodes.

As explained here   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dU2RmLX6c&t=3s  and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcHY9Z7qeH8.

Dr Who boss, Steven Moffat, was in a difficult spot during his three year reign. He annoyed many of the show’s traditional fans with the progressive elements, yet he was also attacked by social justice warriors for his alleged sexism and other sins – and after all he, as a white male, was one of the enemy class. It’s no wonder Moffat decided to quit, yet he still took on the job of writing the 2017 Christmas special, the one where Peter Capaldi changed into Jodie Whitaker, thus making the male Doctor into a woman for the first time. This episode, Twice Upon a Time, seems to have little purpose except to make this change.

To achieve this purpose, SJW propaganda is laid on with a trowel, and in case you didn’t get it all, let me unravel it for you. The main device is the resurrection of the first Doctor from 1965, originally played by William Hartnell, now played by a lookalike. (For convenience, I’ll refer to him as Hartnell.) Hartnell’s doctor is back for one reason only – to chastise traditional Dr Who fans who object to the new female lead.

First, we’re told that the Hartnell doctor knows he has to regenerate to survive, but he’s holding back because he’s afraid. Capaldi’s doctor urges Hartnell to submit. ‘Either we change and go on … or die as we are,’ he says. This is pure propaganda meant to imply that Dr Who is a hopeless relic of a past age, simply for having a white male lead, and the only way the show can survive is by changing the demographic of its lead actor.

Hartnell, of course, is a proxy for the traditional Dr Who viewer. Moffat lectures that viewer along the lines that, We know you’re afraid, but look: the first doctor regenerated in 1965 and life went on. That’s exactly what will happen now with the first female doctor.

In a more blatant manoeuvre, Hartnell’s doctor is portrayed as a dreadful old sexist. He speaks down to Bill, the story’s female companion, encouraging her to give the Tardis a good tidy-up. Not that I recall Hartnell ordering his own female companions to tidy up the Tardis, but we’re dealing with indoctrination here, so lies are permitted.

If Hartnell is the awful sexist from the 1960s, Bill is black, female, and gay, thus ticking at least three of the BBC’s diversity boxes. Let’s not forget she’s also working class, as have been most of Dr Who’s companions in the last ten years. I suppose this is all part of being inclusive.

And what of Capaldi? As the story sets up a conflict between Hartnell’s awful old white male and Bill’s young, black, empowered lesbian, Capaldi’s role is to play the cringing, emasculated, 21^st century man. He winces in embarrassment at Hartnell’s sexism, walking on eggshells at the thought of the offence caused to Bill. He’s cringing in mortification, and indeed fear, at Bill’s possible reaction. Thus, Capaldi is a stand in for Moffat himself, already taken to task by progressive fans of the show for not being progressive enough. Incredibly, Moffat once said in an interview that educated, middle class men are ‘in a state of permanent, crippled apology.’ Well, clearly they were at the BBC in 2017.

In a more subtle piece of propaganda, at one point Capaldi’s doctor turns ‘white knight’ on Bill, ordering her to stay in the Tardis for safety, as well as doubting her true identity. His final words are ‘I want you to … respect me.’ It is now that Bill turns on Capaldi and yells at him that he’s ‘an arse. A stupid bloody arse.’ So what is Capaldi’s response? Does he tell Bill off? No, he just stands there and takes it like an abuse victim, a look of guilty apology on his face.

Capaldi’s doctor, therefore, has been turned into a feeble PC cuck bowing down to his progressive masters at the BBC. He’s a symbol of white male guilt, enacting – dare we say it – ‘internalised misandry.’ After one of Hartnell’s sexist remarks, Capaldi begs forgiveness from Bill, saying ‘we won’t ever talk about this.’ But Bill, victor of the gender wars, lets him off with ‘I hope we spend years laughing about it,’ thus combining contempt and forgiveness in a magnanimous benediction.

Following Bill and Capaldi’s confrontation, Hartnell steps out of the Tardis and warns Bill about her language, also threatening to give her a smacked bottom. This is pure parody – to say nothing of the ridiculous notion that Hartnell’s doctor has never heard of a male nurse, or doesn’t know what browser history is (and by extension, the internet itself). Thus any sense Hartnell’s doctor is a time travelling alien goes out the window. You see, his only function is to embody a 1960s British male, so, logic be damned. Why not just pretend Hartnell’s doctor never travelled any further into the future than 1960? When plot is secondary to message, who cares?

All this byplay is meant to harangue the traditional Dr Who fans, who supposedly equate to Hartnell. See? Steven Moffat is saying. If you oppose the new female doctor, you’re an awful old sexist like Hartnell. You need to cringe like Capaldi if you want to win the forgiveness of the new regime, embodied by Bill. Thus, Moffat simultaneously warns and chastises the traditional fans.

As if to hammer in the message even more, the story includes a British army officer who’s been picked up from World War One. He’s white and upper class, of course, to contrast further with Bill, the black, working class lesbian. At one point, Hartnell makes a joke about ladies being ‘made of glass,’ and the officer chuckles along, going so far as to say ‘Good one, Doctor!’ Have you absorbed your propaganda lesson yet viewers? If you make sexist jokes, you’re a dinosaur from World War One.

All of this is meant to usher in the glorious feminine takeover of Dr Who and the appearance of Jodie Whitaker’s new female doctor. Let’s recall the plot point that Hartnell’s doctor is apparently ‘afraid’ to regenerate. There was little suggestion of this in The Tenth Planet, Hartnell’s 1965 regeneration story. It has simply been tacked on by Moffat for convenience. The traditional Dr Who fan is being told: come on, don’t be afraid of the brave new world of diversity, and don’t you dare object to the new female doctor.

I can only speak for myself. I am, shall we say, ‘open-minded’ about the female doctor (or at least I was before being subjected to this episode), but it could have happened without all the nonsense that’s gone with it – among which are the tedious identity politics, the BBC-approved misandry, and the use of this classic TV show as a tool of social indoctrination.

So, what of the episode itself? It was visually attractive, well enough acted, and mildly entertaining, as long as you can ignore the colossal elephant in the room, which is the socially progressive propaganda lesson you are meant to absorb. And that was a bridge too far for me. I have certainly cringed through some Dr Who episodes in the past due to bad acting, bad effects, and so on. This time I cringed because one of my favourite TV shows is now merely a puppet show to serve the BBC’s political agenda.

An obsessed St George fan is haunted by the past in this odd tale. “Eleven” is one of ten stories from The Tightarse Tuesday Book Club ebook. Available here for $4.99 http://bit.ly/TightarseTuesdayBookClub 

ELEVEN

I

Graeme Hillman had just parked his Ford when ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ came on the radio. Instead of pulling out the car key, he lit up a cigarette. When the Elvis classic was replaced by the Stones’ ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,’ he stubbed out his smoke in the ashtray, got out of the car, and entered the offices of Dr Gideon Mackay, psychologist.

He sat in the waiting room, legs crossed, absently smoking  another cigarette. These visits always made him nervous. Frankly, he had no real idea why he was here, yet somehow these sessions had become part of his routine. He considered himself a man with very few complaints in life. Yet he found himself back in this office time after time.

For his type, Hillman was average in every respect. He was a presentable, thirty-three year old, dark-haired Australian man, just under six feet tall. He was neatly dressed in trousers and a light-blue collared shirt. Only the occasional twitch of his left cheek hinted at any inner unrest.

With a complete lack of interest, he thumbed through some old copies of Readers Digest. He assumed Dr Mackay was busy with another patient, for he’d been waiting over ten minutes. Yet when the receptionist called him through, no one came out of the consulting room. He stood up, stubbed out his cigarette in the glass ashtray and walked through the door.

‘Ah, Mr Hillman. Come in.’

In appearance, Gideon Mackay was a classic psychologist, as if he’d set out to model Freud himself. The neat, greying beard and scholarly spectacles were straight out of the textbook, as were the tidy bookshelves and soothingly bland paintings that made up the internal decor of his room. Mackay did not stand or offer a handshake. He remained seated behind his desk, flicking through a pile of papers.

‘Sit down, Mr Hillman. How have you been?’

‘Fine. I don’t even know why I’m here. I suppose Louise has got something to do with it.’

‘No doubt your wife cares for you a great deal. Are you still having the headaches? The memory losses?’

‘Every now and then. Surely there’s a pill for that. I don’t see why I have to come here.’

Dr Mackay levelled a long, blank stare at his client, before he spoke.

‘I think we’re both aware that your problems aren’t physical. If they were, I’d have sent you to a medical doctor.’

‘You saying I’m a kook? Is that it?’

‘Mental health,’ said Mackay, ‘is everyone’s concern. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Tell me, Graeme. When your car’s not working, what do you do? Take it to a mechanic. When your mind’s out of alignment, you take it to a mind mechanic. You’re just here for a tune up.’

‘OK, Doc. If you put it like that. I suppose there have been a couple of weird incidents of late.’

‘Oh yes?’

Hillman sat back in the chair and closed his eyes.

‘It’s not really an incident,’ he said. ‘Just a mood. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was playing golf. Nine holes, it was meant to be, but Browny talked me into staying on for eighteen. I was in a run of form so I agreed. But the St George game was going to be on TV. St George against Manly.’

‘St George? Ah yes, your rugby obsession.’

‘It’s rugby league, not rugby. Well, I rang my wife and got her to tape the game so I could watch it when I got home.’

Hillman lapsed into silence. It went on so long the doctor offered a gentle prompt.

‘Don’t tell me she forgot to tape it?’ he said with a smile.

‘Oh no. She knows what St George means to me. She knows I’d go off my head if that happened.’

‘I see,’ said Mackay, raising his eyebrows a little. ‘But tell me. If you’re such a big fan, why didn’t you go to the game?’

‘All the way to Manly? I’m not crossing the bridge for them. And truth be told, there was a little …  altercation last time. I reckon I’ll stay away for a while.’

‘Oh really?’

‘But that’s not the point. Point is, I got home, had a quick steak, then put the game on – and that’s when it happened. See, I’m sitting there all tense, swearing at the TV, getting into it like I always do. Then suddenly it hit me – I was only watching a replay. I realised the game was already over. It had been won and lost hours ago. By now, the players were showered and dressed, probably having a steak and a beer like I was.’

‘I’m not sure I understand the problem.’

‘Don’t you see, Doctor? All my cheering, my swearing at the TV, my excitement and fear … it was all useless. The result was already decided, so my emotions were completely futile. ’

Dr Mackay adjusted his glasses and looked at his patient closely.

‘Don’t you think you’re taking it a bit too seriously? It’s not a matter of life and death. It’s just a game of football.’

Hillman bristled and sat up in his chair.

‘Not to me it ain’t, Doc. St George is my life. Kearney, Provan, Raper, Gasnier. I live and die by those blokes. I’d lay down my life for the Red V.’

‘The what?’

‘The jersey. The all white with the big red V.’

Mackay said nothing for a few moments, waiting for Hillman to calm down.

‘Let’s get back to your … sense of futility. You say you felt useless, watching the playback of the game.’

‘Exactly. It was sort of artificial, you know, like there was no point cheering. As if the game had played out long ago, like it was all done and dusted and locked up in a museum somewhere. But that ain’t the worst of it, Doc. That was only the start.’

Hillman shuddered and ran his fingers through his hair.

‘The next week, St George were on TV again. The Souths game. This time I made sure I stayed home to watch it live.’

‘Live on TV?’

‘Yeah. So the game started and the same thing happened. I’m sweating, swearing, yelling at the TV. My wife even asked me to keep it down. That’s when I realised I was trying a bit too hard.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was trying too hard to get excited, to show that I cared about the game. But the whole time I had the same feeling as the week before – that it was already over and all my cheering was useless.’

‘You said it was a live broadcast, didn’t you?’

‘That’s the point. There was something off about the whole thing. It’s like the whole game was predestined to pan out a certain way no matter what I or anyone else did.’

‘And what does that suggest to you?’

‘That our whole lives are pointless. That everything’s all mapped out and nothing we do really counts.’

Dr Mackay regarded his client sternly for a moment, then smiled.

‘That wasn’t quite the answer I expected. I never realised football fans could be so philosophical. Did you ever study it?’

‘I’ve been studying football all my life.’

‘Philosophy, I mean. There’s a fellow named Nietzsche had a theory everything’s on a permanent loop. That’s what your predestination theory reminds me of. Of course, some other philosophers say there’s no such thing as free will. We feel like we have it, but it’s an illusion.’

‘I don’t know about any of that fancy stuff, Doc. I just want to get back to where I was.’

Mackay adjusted his glasses once more, and put down his pen.

‘Mr Hillman, there’s something I don’t understand. You say that when you stayed on to play golf, your wife taped the game for you.’

‘That’s right.’

‘How did she do that?’

Hillman frowned.

‘Video, I suppose.’

‘Then tell me – what year is this?’

‘What sort of a ridiculous question is that?’

‘It’s a simple enough question. What year is it?’

Hillman stared into the distance.

‘I always work it out by grand finals. We beat Manly in ’59, then Easts in ’60. That was our fifth premiership in a row. Then it was three against Wests, the last one in the mud. That was our eighth –  in ’63, the last one I remember. So – it must be 1964.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying, that’s an awfully roundabout way to answer my question, which, as you’ll agree, was a simple one. I asked you what the year is.’

‘You calling me a kook?’

‘I’m not calling you anything, Mr Hillman – just asking how your wife taped the game off TV in 1964.’

‘I told you – with a video.’

‘And what is that?’

‘I … don’t know. Look, who cares how it happened?  It must have been a replay. Yeah, that’s it. The ABC showed a replay on TV and I watched it that night when I got home.’

‘You seemed very sure. You said you stayed on to play golf and called your wife asking her to tape the game for you. It’s right here in my notes.’

‘What does it matter? Look, Doc, I don’t know what you’re driving at but I’ve just about had enough of this.’

‘I agree. That’s enough for one session. But I do want you to speak to my secretary and make another appointment.’

Dr Mackay picked up his phone.

‘Miss Ainscough, could you come in here a moment?’

The unusual name he pronounced as aynes-co. Almost at once, the door opened and a tall blonde woman entered the room.

‘Book Mr Hillman another session,’ said Mackay.

Hillman stood up abruptly.

‘Don’t bother, Doc. I’m done with this.’

‘It’s too late, Graeme. We have to go through with it now. Miss Ainscough?’

The secretary approached Hillman and slapped him hard across the face. He immediately put his hand to his cheek.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’ he cried. ‘You’ve ruined everything!’

He turned and ran for the door, but tripped and found himself sprawled on the floor. He turned his head and saw Mackay and Ainscough looking down at him.

II

‘Ah, Mr Hillman. Nice to see you again. How are the headaches?’

‘They come and they go,’ said Hillman. ‘It don’t bother me.’

He was back in Dr Mackay’s office again. He looked around at the white walls, neat bookcases, and soothingly bland paintings. There was a framed certificate on the wall licensing Gideon Mackay to practice psychology.

‘You’re feeling better then?’ Mackay said.

‘Have we met before? You look familiar.’

‘Mr Hillman, you’ve been coming to my office every year since 1956.’

‘Ah ’56. The start of our golden run. The greatest sporting achievement our country’s ever seen.’

‘I must say the Melbourne Olympics brought a tear to my eye too.’

‘Not the Olympics. St George. Eleven premierships in a row and it all started in ’56 with the win over Balmain.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘It’s God’s own football team. Provan, Raper, Gasnier, Langlands. We’ve never seen their like before and we won’t again.’

‘I see you haven’t forgotten your football obsession. But eleven in a row, you say, starting in 1956. It’s ’65 now so that must be nine.’

‘I stand corrected, Doctor. Nine in a row, and long may they reign, the mighty dragons.’

Dr Mackay made a note in his notebook.

‘Last time you spoke about your sense of despondency. Your feeling that everything’s predestined and all your actions are futile. Do you still feel that way?’

‘Well, Doc, that’s probably how all the mugs who don’t follow St George feel. Just imagine what it’s like kicking off another season against the might of Gasnier, Langlands, and co! Year after year they line up for another beating – Wests, Manly, Newtown, Balmain. As for Norths and Canterbury, I don’t think they’ve got a win over us in the last ten years. Even Souths have slunk away in shame and despair – how the mighty have fallen!’

‘Why are you so obsessed with football?’

‘I’m not. I’m obsessed with St George.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we are the best. Ryan, Kearney, Walsh – what a side! Even ‘Poppa’ Clay had a stint in reserves, that’s how good we are. And him with eight grand finals to his name. That’s why St George always wins.’

‘Do they, Mr Hillman?’

‘We might drop the odd game through the season, but we always win when it counts – the grand final. We always win that.’

‘Doesn’t it get boring to win all the time?’

‘Never. It’s only right that we win. We are St George.’

‘I must say I admire your passion, single-minded though it is. I don’t quite understand it, but I admire it.’

‘Which team do you follow, Dr Mackay? Don’t tell me you’re a Norths fan. If so, we’d better swap chairs!’

‘I don’t follow rugby, Mr Hillman, I’m from Melbourne. I support Collingwood in the VFL.’

Hillman winced.

‘Never could make head nor tail of that sport. Aerial ping pong! Collingwood, you say. Are they any good?’

‘I don’t mean to brag, but we did win four titles in a row back in the twenties.’

Hillman stifled a laugh.

‘Four in a row! Well, well. I suppose not everyone can win eleven in a row like St George. Four’s not bad, really. We achieved that back in ’59, then kept going. Four in a row. It’s something you Melbourne people can be proud of.’

‘You never know. One day Melbourne might have their own rugby team competing against your beloved St George.’

Hillman laughed loudly.

‘Melbourne playing rugby league? They’ll put a man on the moon before that happens!’

‘You seem very sure.’

‘It’s ridiculous, Doc. Laughable!’

‘Why are you getting upset over such a trivial remark?’

‘Because it’s rubbish, Doctor Mackay. You’re supposed to be curing my headaches yet you insult my intelligence with an absurdity like that. I’ve had just about enough of this. I’m out of here.’

Hillman stood up and walked towards the door. Mackay picked up his phone.

‘Miss Ainscough?’

The receptionist appeared at the door.

‘Get away from me,’ said Hillman.

She slapped him hard across the face. He recoiled.

‘Ow! What the hell did you do that for? You’ve ruined everything.’

III

‘Ah, Mr Hillman, come in. Sit down.’

‘Thanks. Doctor … ?’

‘Mackay. Doctor Mackay. Still troubled by the memory lapses, I see.’

‘They come and go.’

‘Like the headaches, then.’

‘I don’t let it worry me, Doc.’

‘Let’s start with the basics, shall we? Just answer a few simple questions.’

Dr Mackay picked up a pen and his notebook.

‘Name?’

‘Graeme Hillman.’

‘Address?’

‘44 Barnaby road, Hurstville.’

‘Age?’

‘Thirty-three.’

‘Date of birth?’

‘May twenty-second, 19 … What year is it now?’

‘You tell me, Mr Hillman.’

‘I always work it out by the grand finals. Easts in ’60. That was our fifth. Three against Wests, the last in the mud in ’63. Then there was Balmain in ’64, and last year Souths with the record crowd. Must have been ’65. Ten premierships in a row – that’s unheard of!  And that means it’s 1966. So using my elementary powers of subtraction I guess I was born in 1933. Quite a coincidence eh, Doc. Born in ’33, and I’m 33.’

‘Why are you so obsessed with St George?’

‘I’m not obsessed, I just like to celebrate greatness  – and we are the best. Provan, Kearney, Langlands, Clay …’

‘Gasnier, Raper, Mundine,’ finished Dr Mackay.

‘Never heard of that last one, Doc. Must be one of your Collingwood boys.’

‘Five-eighth, wasn’t he?’

‘You’re mistaken there. Raper played five-eighth in the ’62 grand final, Pollard in ’63. Apart from that, it was Brian ‘Poppa’ Clay all the way.’

‘You know that’s not true. Why don’t you stop pretending?’

Hillman stood up.

‘Look at you. A Melbourne boy trying to tell me about the mighty St George! I’ll not stand for this, Doctor.’

‘I believe you just did, Mr Hillman. Now, if you don’t sit down again, I’m going to have to call my secretary.’

Hillman made a dash for the exit but tripped and found himself sprawled on the floor inches from the door.

‘Missed it by that much,’ said Mackay. ‘Go and sit down.’

Hillman shuffled back to his chair. Mackay regarded him sternly.

‘Why is St George so important to you? It’s just a football team, not a matter of life and death.’

‘Yes it is. This ain’t football, it’s war!’

‘Mr Hillman, please. You say you were born in 1933. That means you lived through a real war. Your father probably served in it, right? A little perspective, perhaps.’

‘Don’t tell me about the war, Doc. My father never came back.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like to talk about it?’

‘It was a long time ago. I’d sooner forget it. But who needs a father when you’ve got St George? There’s thirteen fathers every time they walk onto Kogarah Oval.’

‘And your wife? What does she think of your obsession?’

‘She puts up with it. Doesn’t understand it, but she puts up with it. Sometimes if I’m watching a big game on TV, I actually make her leave the house. She goes to her sister’s for the night.’

‘I see.’

‘Otherwise there’s no telling what I might do. I’ve been known to break things, throw stuff at the wall. I just get so involved in the game, know what I mean? My wife says I ought to show that much passion in the bedroom!’

‘But Mr Hillman, I thought you said you had a sense of futility watching the game, like the result was predestined.’

He picked up his notebook.

‘… as if the action had all played out long before. It was all done and dusted and locked up in a museum somewhere. That’s what you said.’

‘I don’t recall that, Doctor.’

‘I can’t help you if you lie, Mr Hillman. Answer me this: why does St George always have to win?’

‘Because we are the best!’ yelled Hillman. ‘We always win. Provan, Porter, Langlands …’

‘Blacklock, Barrett, McGregor,’ shouted Dr Mackay.

‘We won eleven titles in a row,’ said Hillman. ‘No one can ever take them off us.’

‘You said it was ten.’

Hillman leapt to his feet.

‘I never did.’

‘Ten! You said ten, soon as you came in.’

‘Ten, eleven, twelve, fifteen. We’ll win a hundred, because we are St George and we’ll go on forever!’

‘Sit down, Mr Hillman, or I’m going to have to sedate you.’

There was a standoff. Dr Mackay stared into Hillman’s eyes for a long moment, until Hillman at last looked away and sat down. He buried his face in his hands.

There was a long silence. At last, Mackay spoke, in calm, measured tones.

‘Mr Hillman. This has gone on long enough. Now, I put it to you that your memory losses, your headaches, leave you in a state of continual anxiety, which in turn leaves you desperate to cling to the one thing that feels certain – the supremacy of St George in rugby league. I also put it to you that the entire concept is an illusion, and that only by letting go of this false idea can you free yourself from your own enslavement. St George doesn’t always win.’

‘They do. It’s a historical fact. Look it up. Eleven in a row.’

‘They don’t. You know it. I know it. We all know it.’

‘We always win. We are St George. So it is and will always be.’

‘I put it to you further, Mr Hillman, that you were not born in 1933.’

‘I never said I was sure. I just counted back from our premierships.’

‘You never saw any of those premierships. You were born in 1966.’

‘I saw ’em all, goddamn you!’

‘You were a babe in arms when they won their last.’

‘You’re crazy. I’m not listening to this rubbish.’

‘You might not listen to me, Mr Hillman, but here’s someone else to tell it to you.’

The office door opened. Hillman looked up and saw a granite-jawed, rock-hard man. He looked like an old school cop, tough enough to put the wind up the hardest crim of 1960s Sydney.

‘Kevin Ryan?’ said Hillman in disbelief.

‘Morning, Graeme,’ said Ryan, extending his hand to shake.

Hillman felt his hand engulfed in the giant paw of the great St George forward.

‘An honour to meet you, Mr Ryan – but what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to give you the truth. Then I’m going to take you away.’

‘What for? I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘Don’t make me hurt you, son.’

‘I don’t want any trouble with you, Mr Ryan. Not with the hardest forward who ever took the field for St George.’

‘Not me. That was Billy Wilson. Kearney, Provan, Rasmussen … no one soft ever played for St George.’

‘Wait. I remember now. I remember what you did.’

‘Let’s go. Your time is up.’

‘Why should I go with you? It’s your fault we lost. You went to Canterbury in ’67.’

‘All things come to an end.’

‘Eleven in a row, then you went to Canterbury and helped them knock us out in the final. You’re a  traitor!  We could have had twelve, thirteen, a hundred!’

‘That’s football, son. Nothing lasts forever. Now, I’m warning you. Either come quietly or I’ll take you out myself.’

‘You betrayed us. All of us who sat on the hill at Kogarah and the SCG. You let down your mates. Langlands, Walsh, and Johnny King. What about Huddart and Maddison? They only got one title thanks to you. They could have had another three or four if you hadn’t left us. What the hell did you do that for? You’ve ruined everything.’

Ryan looked sideways at Dr Mackay, then turned and punched Hillman hard on the jaw. Hillman blacked out. By the time he woke up again, the psychologist’s office had gone and he was sitting in a darkened theatre watching a scene unfold.

IV

September 26^th, 1999. Grand final day. The great St George rugby league club had merged with another team, Illawarra, to become St George-Illawarra. Graeme Hillman, like many other fans, chose to ignore this. They were the St George Dragons and always would be. Today, in the grand final, they were up against another newly formed club, the Melbourne Storm.

He’d thought about going to the game but ruled it out. Crowds, transport, long queues for a beer, and no TV commentary. Better to stay home and watch it on TV in his comfortable lounge room at 44 Barnaby road, Hurstville.

Louise had been given strict instructions. She was to be out of the house by noon and not return for twenty-four hours. It was a rule applied whenever St George had a grand final, or a big semi final. Used to this by now, she’d arranged to stay with her sister.

‘Nothing personal,’ Hillman said. ‘But you know me. As soon as the game kicks off, the atmosphere’s going to get pretty volatile round here. Better stay outside a one mile radius.’

‘You’re a pain, Graeme,’ his wife replied. She was a petite brunette of Italian descent. After seven years of marriage, she accepted her husband’s odd obsession, but went through the ritual of complaining just to hold her end up.

‘It probably won’t matter,’ said Hillman. ‘I mean, it’s only the Storm. A rugby league team from Melbourne. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? But stay away, just in case it gets close – and don’t come back tonight. I’ll probably be that drunk after the game you wouldn’t want to come near me anyway.’

Louise glowered.

‘Just make sure you don’t break anything this time. If I find even one mark on the wall, you’ll be repainting. Got it?’

‘Come on, Lou. I ain’t broke anything since the ’96 grand final. Ridge was tackled and they let him play on to set up a try. What do you expect me to do? It was only the turning point of the game!’

‘I don’t care, Graeme. Losing a game of football’s not worth smashing up your house for.’

‘I’ll do anything for the Red V, by Christ! I’ll smash up my own house and the neighbour’s as well, if it comes to it.’

‘Calm down. It’s only ten to twelve and you’re already acting like a lunatic.’

‘Don’t say ten to twelve – it sounds like a losing score! Say twelve to ten for Christ’s sake. A bit of sensitivity please.’

‘I thought you said it was in the bag. You think St George will only get up by two points?’

‘We smashed them 34-10 a couple of weeks ago. We’ll probably win by forty this time.’

‘Then stop acting so nervous.’

‘Lou, no offence, but will you just go? You know you’re meant to be out of here by twelve.’

‘You’re a pain, Graeme.’

‘You already said that. I’m going out to buy beer. When I come back, make sure you’re gone.’

‘Maybe I won’t come back.’

‘Better bloody not – until tomorrow anyway.’

‘How about a goodbye kiss?’

‘No sex before the game. Oh alright, just a kiss.’

‘Right. I’m off. Good luck.’

Graeme Hillman got into his car holding a small bag, inside which was ten-thousand dollars cash. He’d made several withdrawals over the last couple of weeks, ready for this day. He drove to the TAB and put it all on St George. At $1.50 for the win, it would net him a neat five-thousand dollar profit. He placed the betting receipt in his wallet, then bought a carton of beer and a bottle of scotch.

He drove home and tried to kill time until 3pm. It was useless, but at least he could have a couple of beers to take the edge off. He suffered through the preliminaries, the build up, and the national anthem, until at last the game finally kicked off and the terror began.

Much as he tried, Hillman could not sit still upon the couch he’d placed at optimum viewing distance from the TV. After five minutes, he gave up and stood upright, shifting his weight from foot to foot every so often, clenching and unclenching his fists.

When Fitzgibbon scored for St George in the fourteenth minute, Hillman punched the air and ran around the living room with a cry of triumph. But that was nothing to what happened at the thirty minute mark when Nathan Blacklock gathered a kick and ran seventy metres to score under the posts. 14-0!

‘This is ours!’ Graeme Hillman shouted, opening a bottle of beer and drinking it in one swallow. At halftime, he smoked two cigarettes, basking in St George’s clear ascendancy.

Melbourne got a penalty goal just after halftime to make it 14-2. Then, at the fifty minute mark, St George were set to seal the win when Mundine chipped ahead and regathered – but he dropped the ball over the try line. That would have been the game. Hillman swore savagely and threw a plastic water bottle against the wall, where it left a clear chip in the paint. Looked like he’d be repainting.

That was the start of the Melbourne comeback. In an extraordinary eight minute period, they scored two tries to St George’s one. With ten minutes to go, Melbourne had clawed their way back to 18-14, just four points behind. Graeme Hillman swore and sweated through the terror, feeling each blow like a mortal wound. One more score and Melbourne could steal the game.

The wave of fear built to a crescendo just before fulltime when the Melbourne half, Kimmorley, put through a high kick which was caught over the try line by his team mate, Craig Smith, who was then knocked out by a tackle from St George winger, Jamie Ainscough.

‘He dropped it!’ shouted Hillman. ‘He dropped the ball. We’ve won!’

But something was very wrong and he knew it.

‘Oh no. St George could be in trouble here,’ said one of the TV commentators. ‘Ainscough’s hit him right in the head. Harrigan’s sent it straight upstairs to the video ref. This could be a penalty try.’

‘No. No,’ said Hillman, with a howl of anguish. The St George winger, Jamie Ainscough appeared on the TV screen, hands on hips.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Hillman screamed. ‘You’ve ruined everything!’

‘He would have scored for sure,’ the commentator said. ‘This could be a penalty try. That means they’ll kick the conversion from right in front of the posts. This is going to give Melbourne the game.’

‘No! No way!’

On the TV screen the Melbourne captain, Glenn Lazarus, could be seen walking away from the referee, Bill Harrigan, a look of disbelieving glee on his face.

‘That’s got to be a penalty try,’ the commentator said. ‘Ainscough’s slapped him right in the head and knocked him out. That’s a penalty try, no doubt.’

The head commentator, Ray Warren, chimed in. ‘I think you’ll find that Bill Harrigan is about to make one of the biggest calls ever been made in one hundred years of rugby league.’

Slowly, Graeme Hillman backed away from the TV screen. Step by agonised step, he reversed until his back was against the rear wall of the living room. Even from that distance, he could see the on-ground scoreboard about to flash up the decision. Graeme Hillman looked on in horrified refusal, a white-hot surge of fury forming inside him. Then, as he knew it would, the result flashed up on the screen. TRY.

When those three letters  T-R-Y appeared on the screen, something inside him snapped. With a violent oath, he launched himself in a full pelt charge towards the TV, lowered his head like a wounded bull, and butted the screen with the full force of his rage. In so doing, he knocked himself even more senseless than the Melbourne player who’d scored the winning try.

At least he didn’t have to witness the fulltime siren and the despair of the St George players and their fans.

V

‘Ah, Mr Hillman. You’re back.’

Hillman looked around him at the neat consulting office. There was the framed certificate on the wall licensing Gideon Mackay to practice psychology.

‘How are you feeling today?’ Mackay said. ‘Headaches still bothering you?’

‘They come and they go. I don’t let it worry me.’

‘I believe you’ve said that before.’

‘Sure thing, Doc. I’ve got déjà vu all over again. And you won’t believe the crazy dreams these headaches are giving me.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘I dreamt I was in the future. St George were called St George-Illawarra, and they played Melbourne in the grand final. Can you believe that? Insane! St George were up 14-0 at halftime, then one of the players dropped the ball inches from the try line, and another one gave away a penalty try in the last minute. It’s your classic nightmare! Then I charged head-first into the TV and that woke me up, thank God.’

Dr Mackay sighed. He took off his glasses and placed them on the desk.

‘You’re still in denial. I thought surely this time we’d get through to you.’

‘What are you talking about? I reckon I’m about cured now. It’s probably time I got home to the wife. Must have missed a couple of St George games by now. We’re not far off winning our eleventh title. Eleven in a row. Can you believe that?’

‘It wasn’t a dream, Mr Hillman.’

‘It certainly was – and a most horrible nightmare, too. The sooner I forget it, the better.’

‘It wasn’t the future.’

‘I agree. I mean, St George and Melbourne playing out a grand final. When it comes to the future, I’ll cop flying cars like in The Jetsons, but I won’t cop that.’

‘You need to face up to what you did. Your mind has been in denial – of St George’s loss in the 1999 grand final, and what you did afterwards. You’ve been in Purgatory ever since – for the last eleven years.’

‘What are you talking about, Doc? I thought you were a man of science.’

‘So strong was your denial that you hallucinated an entire fantasy life for yourself, set during St George’s eleven year reign in the fifties and sixties. You returned to a lost, halcyon age when St George were invincible.’

‘They were simpler and better times. I’m glad I was born to live through that era.’

‘You never lived through it. You were born in 1966. You were thirty-three when you died during the 1999 grand final.’

‘It ain’t fair, Doc! I always heard about the golden era but I never got to taste it.’

‘Your era had its own glory.’

‘The grand final win over Parramatta in ’77 when I was eleven. What is it about that number? It’s haunting me.’

‘Was that all?’

‘Sure, we beat the Bulldogs in ’79, but I was just a kid. Two titles, Doc, and that’s all she wrote. From ’77 then eleven times two – twenty-two years later and it’s 1999. We were due. It was our destiny to win it that day. Why’d you think I put on that ten-thousand bucks? I’m not normally a betting man but we couldn’t lose.’

‘Yet you did – and you lost far more than money. Until you accept what happened, you can’t move on.’

‘We can’t have lost. It’s a lie. A horrible nightmare. Thank God I’m back in my real life and the glory of St George. Gasnier, Smith, Walsh, Lumsden …’

Dr Mackay picked up his phone.

‘Miss Ainscough. I can’t get through to this fellow. We’ll have to pull out the big gun. Send him in.’

The door opened and a giant of a man filled the doorway. Hillman looked up, then froze in shock.

‘Mr Provan. What are you doing here?’

The square-jawed colossus walked forward and shook Hillman’s hand. Hillman turned to Mackay.

‘You see, Doc. The man himself. Norm Provan, St George’s greatest ever captain. He don’t look a day over thirty. You still want to tell me it’s not 1965?’

‘That’s not Norm Provan. The ‘man himself,’ as you call him, is still alive back on Earth. One of my colleagues has agreed to take on this form in a last ditch effort to reach you.’

‘That’s gibberish. This is the great Norm Provan or I’m not here.’

‘If you believe that, it’ll help us achieve the task of waking you.’

Mackay and Provan looked at each other, as if exchanging a silent signal. Then ‘Provan’ turned back to Hillman.

‘Time to go home, Graeme.’

The psychologist’s office vanished. Hillman found himself standing at the front door of 44 Barnaby road, Hurstville.

‘Got your keys?’ said Provan.’

Hillman unlocked the door and they walked into the house. They could hear the TV blaring from the living room. When they entered, Hillman caught sight of his own body, passed out in front of the TV. He was lying on his back, his head lolling slightly to the right. A small amount of blood had congealed on the top of his head and on the cream-coloured carpet, the red and the white combining in the colours of St George.

‘What’s this, Mr Provan? We’re back in the dream.’

Hillman glanced at the wall clock, showing 12.30pm. At that moment, there was the sound of a key in the lock, then footsteps and his wife’s voice. There was a note of apprehension in it.

‘Graeme, are you there?’

His wife entered the room and caught sight of his body on the floor. She ran forward and tried to rouse him, then turned off the TV and called an ambulance.

Suddenly they were in a hospital ward. Hillman looked down at his own body, hooked up to life support. He walked around the bed, examining his body from every angle, realisation dawning.

‘So it’s true, Mr Provan.’

‘I’m sorry, Graeme. You’ve got to face up to what happened.’

‘Did we really lose the ’99 grand final to Melbourne?’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’s not fair. We were up 14-0 at halftime. They only scored in the last minute to take it off us.’

‘The second half is as important as the first half, and the last minute is as important as the first. We should have beat Melbourne but we didn’t. That’s football, son. You can’t change the past. You can only move forward.’

‘I just hate losing.’

‘So do I, but in sport there’s always a winner and a loser. That’s why we play so hard. There’s no quarter asked and none given. If we win, we shake the opposition’s hand with good grace, and if we lose we do the same.’

‘Why’d Mundine have to drop that ball over the try line?’

‘Look how many tries he scored for us that year. We wouldn’t have made the grand final without him.’

‘Why did Ainscough have to knock that bloke out? If he’d just let him score out wide they might have missed the kick and we would have gone to extra time.’

‘That’s hindsight. He was trying to stop them scoring. Would you have done any better? We all make mistakes. Don’t we?’

He nodded at Hillman’s body, hooked up to the life support.

‘If you’d let your wife stay home that day, maybe she could have got you to the hospital in time. You always took it too seriously. It’s football. It’s not life and death. Except for you, it actually was.’

‘Can I go back and change it?’

‘Sorry, son. The fulltime whistle has blown.’

He saw his wife walk into the room with a doctor. She held hands with the unconscious body as the doctor turned off the life support. Hillman felt a dawning terror.

‘What have I done?’

‘You cared too much. There are worse sins.’

‘I wish I’d cared more about my wife than St George!’

‘It’s done and dusted now. You have to shake hands with your life. Own your mistakes and move on. Forgive yourself. There’s no one living or dead never made a mistake.’

The giant figure of Norm Provan turned to him with a kindly expression.

‘Let’s give this story a happy ending.’

Hillman turned to him in hope.

‘You’ll let me go back? Give me another chance?’

‘Not back. Forward. We’ll go forward in time another eleven years. October 3^rd, 2010. The 2010 Grand final where St George have finally made it back to the big stage. Do you want to watch the game?’

‘Who do we play?’

‘Easts.’

‘The Roosters, eh. We beat them in 1960. Not in ’75 though. The towelled us up 38-0. Langlands’ last big game. No, I can’t stand to watch it. Just tell me the result.’

‘Are you sure you want to know?’

‘Yes, Mr Provan. Give it to me straight. Do we win?’

‘Sure, son. We win 32-8. Gasnier’s nephew Mark scores the first try.’

‘Oh, thank God. At last.’

‘If you don’t want to watch that one, why don’t we go back to ’66? We can watch our grand final win against Balmain. The last in our eleven year run. Funny coincidence. We beat ’em in 56 as well to kick it all off.’

‘Can we do that?’

‘Let’s go.’

They travelled back to the SCG in 1966 and saw St George beat Balmain 23-4, with tries to Huddart, Pollard, and Ryan. The end of St George’s eleven year reign, the likes of which would never be seen again.

Nearby, in a modest suburban home in southern Sydney, a three month old Graeme Hillman kicked and gurgled in his cot.

VI

‘Last stop, Graeme,’ said Norm Provan. ‘Time to say goodbye.’

‘Where are we? When are we?’

‘Rookwood cemetery. October 4^th, 2010.’

Louise Parker, formerly Louise Hillman, walked into the graveyard, eleven years after Graeme had last seen her. She carried a wreath of red and white flowers. Although remarried, she never forgot her former husband. She laid the wreath upon his grave.

Graeme Hillman

1966-1999

Fondly loved and remembered

She stood in silence for a few minutes, dabbing at her eyes. Then, at last, she turned on her heel and walked away.

‘Louise. Wait! I’m sorry.’ Graeme called after her.

Norm Provan laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘She can’t hear you, son. Come on. There’s a time and season for all things, and this one’s done. It’s time to rest and recharge, then you’ll come back fresh and start again.’

The two men shook hands, there was a flash of light, and the graveyard was empty once more.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

St George’s run of eleven successive titles has never been matched. They reigned from 1956-66. They won the title again eleven years later in 1977, then in 1979. The club went on to lose grand finals in 1985, 92, 93, 96, and most famously, 1999 with the last minute loss to Melbourne. St George fans had to wait another eleven long years to play a grand final, which they won in 2010 against Eastern Suburbs. St George have yet to win another title.

They’re due in 2021.

Further Note – With due respect, the famous St George players Norm Provan and Kevin Ryan who appear in this story are, of course, not the actual people, but simply hallucinatory forms taken by Dr Mackay’s colleagues as a way to communicate with Graeme Hillman.

At the time of writing, January 2018, both of these esteemed gentlemen are still alive in the real world.

“Eleven” is one of ten stories from The Tightarse Tuesday Book Club ebook. Available here for $4.99  http://bit.ly/TightarseTuesdayBookClub

As a guitar teacher, I get to hear quite a few modern pop songs.  I’ve noticed most of them share a number of traits:

1. Very simple chord patterns, repeated through the whole song, often in both the verse and chorus.
2. Not much guitar and little value on musicianship.
3. Big, shiny production. Almost all songs have the same ‘sound.’
4. Pretty poppets and posers singing the songs.

When you put these traits together, what does it all mean? That pop music sucks now? Well, to some degree, the top forty has always sucked. People idealise the sixties, thinking only of the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, etc. But if you go back and look at the top forty from, say, 1966, you’ll find some pretty awful stuff. So this is not an essay idealising the good old days. I will say, though, that modern pop music sucks far more than ever before, and the particular way it sucks is actually rather sinister.

First, let’s look at these traits in more detail.

1. Simple chord patterns

There’s a comedy clip on You Tube called ‘Four Chord Song.’ It makes fun of the way so many pop songs use the I-V-VI-IV chord progression (e.g. C, G, Am, F). By now, songwriters should avoid that chord pattern like the plague, especially since that clip came out. But no, the pattern is still heavily in use.

Then there the minor key version VI-IV-I-V. Same chords, slightly different order! (i.e. Am, F, C, G). Used for example on the song ‘Despacito’, now at 10 million views on You Tube. Add in a woman shaking it in slow motion and you’ve got a big dumb product.

My first, fairly naive thought on hearing these sort of songs was ‘gee, modern musicians don’t have much imagination. Why would anyone write a song like that these days?’ But on reflection, it’s not a lack of imagination, it’s a deliberate attempt to dumb music down for easy mass consumption. Often these songs don’t even bother to change the chords from verse to chorus. And yes, the Beatles and Dylan had a few songs like that, but they had more complicated ones too. Modern pop is just a big, dumb lullaby with drums. I was going to call it a big dumb jingle, but in truth, even advertising jingles are far more creative than modern pop.

2. Not Much Guitar or Musicianship

The other day in guitar lessons, a student and I did a Thin Lizzy song. And sure, that wasn’t really ‘pop’ even in its own time, but the top forty did have songs like that. What stood out was the musicianship – those guys could really play the guitar. The music was original, creative, and it sounded like they meant it. Where are the riffs, the solos etc today? The guitar itself has largely disappeared from modern pop, unless playing very simple chords and phrases. 

3. Big Shiny Production

The other weird thing about modern pop is that it all tends to have the same ‘sound’. Pumping drums, big keyboard, layered and perfectly auto-tuned vocals.

There’s nothing wrong with big shiny production if it makes the song sound better. But just as there are different kinds of music and songs, there should be different kinds of production. If everything is given the same ‘treatment,’ it’s like churning out burgers at McDonalds.

The word ‘product’ is related to ‘production.’ That’s telling, because that’s what modern pop sounds like: a product. And of course, every saleable product should come in a shiny package, which leads on to …

4. Pretty Poppets and Posers.

In fairness, good looks have always been an advantage in pop music, but now more than ever it seems singers are what one commentator  has called a bunch  of ‘manufactured sock puppets.’

The Conspiracy

Now here’s where the conspiracy comes in. As I sat through yet another mega-dumb song with 50 million views on You Tube, my naive reaction was to note how bland music is now and how … ‘easily pleased’ are audiences. But it turns out rather more sinister than that, at least if you believe the reports below. It seems that a fair chunk of modern pop is created by a small team of professional songwriters, who no doubt hand it on to an approved group of music producers to complete. No wonder it all sounds the same.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/why-does-todays-pop-music-sound-the-same-because-the-same-people-make-it-8368714.html

So why does it matter?

1. Clones with no Soul

There have always been professional songwriters whose job it was to write hits. From Cole Porter, to Motown (self proclaimed ‘Hitsville’), or whoever. But most of them were good! These modern songs may as well be written by a computer program – which indeed they probably are.

From the 60s through to the 90s, we also had bands and solo artists determined to forge an original style. A unique identity which meant you could tell it was them within ten seconds of listening. Now we’ve got a series of soul-less clones.

2. Want Fries With That? Music as McDonalds

Chord I-V-VI-IV. Big beat, rinse and repeat. Music really is dumber than ever. Why do people listen to this simplistic, unoriginal crap? Because it’s easy. Clichéd chords, big shiny production, pretty poppets as the visual front in the age where You Tube is the global juke box.

Songs roll off a mass production line based on formulas and product research. It’s like musical McDonalds. Simple products easy to produce, easy to consume and enjoy, instantly forgettable and as deep as a puddle of piss.

3. Music Devalued

A while back in JB HiFi, a music chain store in a shopping mall, I saw a series of five album CD packages selling for $20. Therefore, at $4 each, an album was now priced the same as a cup of coffee selling in that same shopping mall. It seemed to sum up the way music as an art form has become so devalued from what it used to be.

Sales in music have drastically declined in the last twenty years due to first, music piracy through downloading, and second, streaming (You Tube, Spotify, etc). People expect music for free now, a sign of disrespect for both musicians and the art form itself.

With these sort of ethics at work in the mass psyche of music ‘consumers’ is it any wonder music ain’t what it used to be?

Great Bands are still out there

I’ve been talking about pop music. Having said that, there are still a lot of great rock bands out there working away. Indeed, thanks to the accessibility of technology for cheaper recording, there are probably more bands than ever before. Trouble is, most of them we’ve never heard of. They’re mostly eking out a tiny living in small pockets of obscurity. There are lots of talented bands and songs that deserve to be heard – but probably won’t be. Meanwhile, the latest piece of disposable pop crap is up to 100 million views on You Tube.

The Final Proof

Ever since pop and rock music was invented, there have always been a few old farts complaining that modern music is crap and music was better in the good old days. So, is this essay just another example of Old Fart Syndrome?

No, there is a crucial difference. In the past, arguments of this sort were always met with raised eyebrows and scornful laughter, as young fans embraced the music of the day as their own.  But for the first time in the history of pop music, some of the younger generation actually agree with the old timers. Instead of hearing ‘shut up grandad’, or whatever, you actually hear of young people agreeing that music in the past was better, and even wishing they had been born in an earlier time. This surely must be an absolute historical first.

And if that ain’t the definitive proof that modern pop sucks, then I don’t know what is.

For a far more detailed rant on this topic, take a look at this great video blog from Paul Joseph Watson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP0wuwJBdMI

 

Every so often I meet people who don’t read fiction. They’re proud of it too, in the way other people are proud of not drinking or gambling. But why? Today I’m going to try to understand the strange mentality of those who take up permanent residence in the fact world. They come in various types.

Mind you, the first two types can be forgiven for they are victims.

1. The BFZ – Book-Free Zone

The BFZ grew up in a house without books because reading wasn’t valued. They were never taught the pleasure of getting lost in a book. You’ve got to feel sorry for these guys. They’re doomed to spend a lot of time on the train playing games on their phones.

2. The RLM – Ruined by Literary Masterpieces.

The RLM also grew up as a non-reader, but decided to give it a try. Then he had the bad luck to start with some awful prize-winner or overhyped ‘masterpiece.’ Said masterpiece turned out to be an overwritten mess with no story and the RLM returned to watching Netflix, convinced fiction is not for him. He may still read non-fiction, valuing the directness and lack of artifice, but has been scared off fiction for life. (By the way, I will use ‘he’ and ‘she’ alternately, but all types come in both genders).

Some other RLMs have been made that way by being forced to read clever but dull literary works in high school.

Enough of the victims. We now move on to the hardcore anti-fiction types. These people make a point of actually avoiding fiction.

3. The OWSI – Obsessed With Self Improvement

The OWSI takes herself very seriously. She’s not concerned with self help, like poor cousin the OWSH, but self improvement. She has native high intelligence and wants to take it as far as possible. The OWSI has a commitment to learning. Her ultimate goal is to understand the true nature of the world before she dies.

The OWSI can be a little paranoid and wants to empower herself by learning about as many topics as possible – from business, to politics, to neuroscience. Ambitious and driven, she sees anything that doesn’t teach her a practical skill or improve her mind as a waste of time. She tends to dismiss fiction is a frivolity. This is a blind spot in her armoury, for the division of life into ‘true and false’ is too simplistic. Fiction would also enhance her sense of empathy – a highly practical skill.

4. The LAE – Life as an Exam

A close relative of the OWSI, the LAE is also obsessed with learning – partly from innate curiosity, but also the deeply instilled fear of failing exams. That ‘exam’ could take the form of dinner party chat on a topic the LAE hasn’t read up on, making bad investments, or falling foul of some local custom while overseas.

The LAE makes a point of reading serious non-fiction on as many topics as possible, and always at the back of his mind is that childhood nightmare of getting 49% on the ‘exam’ through lack of study.

The LAE is the type of person who takes a holiday but thinks only of work – because life is serious business and leisure is for losers. In other words, the LAE is a workaholic  and proud of it … and that’s not helping.

5. The OFAR – Only Facts Are Real

No doubt the definitive type of person who won’t read fiction, the OFAR doesn’t want to know about anything that is ‘just made up’- although by that logic he should also avoid songs and movies.

With his insistence that facts are real but fiction is made up and therefore worthless, the OFAR is extremely literal-minded. His view is that facts = real = useful, and fiction = non-real = useless.

He will read newspapers, textbooks, or other ‘factual’ works.  At a stretch, he may read a biography, but not a book about the life of a fictional character. An extreme OFAR may even regard movies as a waste of time. Indeed, if you’re trying to sell fiction to an OFAR, your only chance is by luring him into the next category.

6. The BOATS – Based on a True Story

The BOATS is an OFAR who has softened her stance and decided to read a novel (or watch a film) because it is Based On A True Story! Yes, it is for these people this catchphrase was made and tacked onto the end of movie posters. Imagine you’re trying to appeal to an OFAR. The conversation might be something like this:

“Have you read X? What an amazing story!”

“What is it – a novel?”

“Yes. It blew my mind. Wait til you read it.”

“I don’t read fiction.”

“But it’s incredible.”

“Exactly. It’s not real – it’s just made up.”

“But,” (winces internally) “I heard it’s … based on a true story.”

“Wait, what? It’s based on a TRUE story, something that really happened? OK I might check it out.”

And now, some honourable mentions. The following types will read fiction, but only in a particular way.

7. The CFL – Condescending Fact Lord

For a time, novelists were regarded as authorities on life, human nature, and other weighty topics. For the CFL, this role has been seized by those kings of the fact world, the scientists. The CFL now sees authors as little more than court jesters providing light entertainment for their betters.

The scientist Richard Dawkins is a cultured, well-read man, but also a CFL. He quotes with approval the late Douglas Adams. Adams said that while he once looked to writers for the great truths, it is now only scientists who can provide them. His own light comedies were perfect examples of Adams’ willingness to play court jester in the new world of the CFL.

8. The GPA – Guilty Pleasure Apologist

The GPA does read fiction, but only what she describes as ‘trashy novels.’ She’s a serious person over-concerned by what others think of her cultural habits. Believing she’ll be judged, the GPA allows herself to indulge her real tastes by using the ‘guilty pleasure’ disclaimer. Also known to apologise for ‘dancing to cheesy love songs after a few drinks.’

9. The GOOJFIC – Get Out Of Jail Free Irony Card

The younger relative of the GPA, the GOOJFIC is also worried about how others see him. He’s supposed to only like underground bands, along with obscure books and movies. In reality, the GOOJFIC actually likes some popular stuff too. Recent invention of the Irony Card allows him to enjoy mainstream culture while pretending to hate and disdain it, because he is ‘liking it ironically.’

10. The NFS – the Non-Fiction Snob

The NFS belongs to several of the above groups at once, and enjoys a constant state of smug superiority over other people. He or she will always be smarter, cooler, and more successful than you. Then again, at the end of the day, the NFS will still end up dead like the rest of us.

These are some of the main types of people who don’t read fiction. It is possible I’ve got them wrong, in which case I’m happy to be corrected. Send in your comments. In the meantime, here are my top five reasons why people should read fiction.

1. Life is Not an Exam

Working hard is good; being a workaholic is not. Workaholics are one of the few types of ‘holics’ who are proud of their disease. People who reads only non-fiction through a need for constant learning are ‘leisure time workaholics.’ That is, they can’t do anything in their spare time unless it has a constructive purpose. They can’t just go on holidays and lie on the beach with a novel, they need to do something worthwhile.

To those people I say ‘Lighten up!’ Life is not an exam. Well, not all the time anyway.  Read something for pleasure, not just the perpetual advancement of your knowledge. Besides, if you think you’ll only learn from non-fiction, you’re being way too literal minded.

2. Fiction is Truth in Concentrated Form

A good fiction writer can extract a truth about life and express it succinctly in a structured form. For ‘truth’ you could substitute the word ‘fact.’

A fiction writer can put a fact in a context that illuminates it. A good writer will clothe a truth through characters, actions, and a sequence of events, so it’s vividly understood. Anyway, documentary film makers work in much the same way, constructing a coherent narrative to show a truth – thus mirroring the techniques of fiction. The film maker selects from a large range of material to shape a story. More to the point, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is far less than one might think.

I could point out that many novels are heavily researched or based on lived experience, but that’s getting a bit close to the ‘based on a true story’ spiel.  It shouldn’t be necessary to sweeten the deal for the anti-fiction brigade.

3. Escape From the Self

One of the greatest tyrannies we face is being trapped within our own minds. A good novel frees you from this prison and allows you to enter the mind of not just the author but the characters in the book, whose personalities may be quite distinct from the author’s.

A novel can give you the power of time travel into the past, or the imagined future. As the saying goes, the past is another country, they do things differently there. This allows us to escape the pathological myopia of assuming the way things are now is the way they always were or will ever be.

Escaping from the self helps you realise there are other selves out there, each with their own concerns even if they are different from your own. In that way, reading fiction is a weapon against narcissism and chronic self-absorption, and in the age of the selfie we need that more than ever.

4. Fiction Is Better Than Life

The real world can be pretty damn tedious. There are plenty of things you would like to happen which probably won’t, due to blockages of various kinds. In fiction, you can skip past the tedium of mundane reality and the blockages of the fact world.

I’ll be the first to admit that in my own novels, what happens in, say, chapters 3-20 is dependent on events happening in chapters 1-2. In the real world, those events probably wouldn’t happen. This means that in life one is often stuck, so to speak, in the frustrating world of chapters 1-2. In fiction, you can get past those tedious limitations and reach the interesting world of chapters 3-20!  And that’s fine, as long as you don’t turn it into a ‘Mary Sue’, in which case your preference for fiction will have become pathological.

5. Who Wants to Hang Around With an OFAR Anyway?

Some  people are intelligent but not too smart. The guy who says only facts are real is usually on par with a robot still trying to pass the Turing Test.

The line between fact and fiction is considerably blurry. One has only to look at history. Many inventions and social changes started out as imaginative fiction before becoming facts. Many things once believed facts turned out to be fiction. Some of the great characters of fiction are far more real in the mass human psyche than actual people who have lived and died unremarkable – indeed boring – lives.

In the end, it’s unnecessary to set up any great opposition between fiction and non-fiction. Both can be enjoyable and educational. Yet reading is an end in itself, not just a means to an end. Still, if we’re going to take a utilitarian approach to the activity of reading, the bottom line is that reading fiction may or may not make you smarter or better informed, but it’s highly likely to make you a better person. There is no more practical outcome than that.

About the Author

Duncan Smith creates ‘music-novels’ – books that come with their own musical soundtrack albums. He is the author of The Vortex Winder and The Maelstrom Ascendant. His latest novel, Cultown, is about a charismatic man who creates the ultimate cult. All soundtracks, by Australian rock band Lighthouse XIII,  are available through iTunes.

Duncan Smith’s website and blog are here  https://vortexwinder.com/

There’s always one kid who goes too far, isn’t there. For a couple of years now, celebrities have been competing with each other to show how much they hate Donald Trump. Well, we finally have a winner. Comedian Kathy Griffin just pulled a stunt where she held up a wax replica of Trump’s severed head. Fake blood and all.

You might call this ‘edgy’ humour, so to speak, but it backfired. Griffin’s act drew condemnation from both sides of politics (and even from Chelsea Clinton) and she had to apologise.

First, let’s get the tedious disclaimer out of the way. I’m not a Trump supporter. As an Australian, I’m neither Democrat nor Republican, just an independent observer.

So what was Griffin trying to achieve? Really, she was just trying to jump on the bandwagon with the rest of the cool kids. Since Trump first ran for president, he’s been cast as the symbol of pure ideological evil and been a punching bag for the showbiz elite of America. For the last couple of years, US artists and celebrities have been falling over themselves trying to show how much they hate him. Streep, De Niro, and a cast of thousands. Even the lead guitarist from Metallica had a go. The whole thing turned into a giant celebrity circle jerk with each person grandstanding how progressive they are through voicing hatred for Trump.

In the wake of this, poor old Kathy Griffin waded in with the severed head and realised only too late she’d gone too far. Instead of eliciting waves of approving ‘hear hears’ and ‘right ons’, as she’d expected, she got condemnation not just from conservatives but from the people she’d been trying to impress. Because – who’d have thought? – maybe cutting people’s heads off isn’t that great, especially during these terrorist times when ISIS extremists do exactly that.

Having realised her mistake, Griffin made a public apology. Not to Trump, of course! To everyone else. It was basically: uh, guys, gee, we all hate Trump, but I guess I went a bit too far.

So how did we reach the point of fake severed heads? Well, one of the biggest problems with politics now is the simplistic division of left and right politics into good and evil. It’s all become a bit fanatical. If you start to think your team is wholly good and the other team entirely evil, your perspective gets more than a little warped. Self awareness disappears, as does a broader perspective. You start to think your side can do no wrong and the other side no right.

Probably a fair guide, when considering if something’s a good idea is to apply what I call the mirror test. Just think, ‘if the situation were reversed, what would we think? How would we react if our opponents did this to us?’

For example, imagine Hilary Clinton had won the election. What would have happened if thousands of Trump supporters had staged a protest march about the result? Everyone would have laughed at them as sore losers with no respect for the democratic process, who held on to an arrogant assumption of the right to rule. So if it’s not OK for the other team to do it, why should you? It’s the same thing. Before staging the post election march, Hilary’s fans should have asked themselves ‘does this protest march show us as defiant freedom fighters with right on our side? Or does it just make us look like jerks?’

That’s the mirror test. ‘What would we think if the other mob did this?’ So, before holding up a severed head, Kathy Griffin should have thought – ‘hey, would it be cool if one of the “deplorables” did this to Clinton or Obama?’

You’ve got to almost feel sorry for Griffin. So many celebrities have been virtue signalling with their public statements against Trump, all Griffin wanted to do was join in the fun and up the ante a little. She thought she’d get a few pats on the back. She probably thought, ‘hey Meryl Streep hit a homer when she made that anti-Trump speech, wait til they see this!’ But Kathy Griffin was ‘that one kid who went too far.’

Still, perhaps some good will come out of it. Because when your political protest starts to resemble something ISIS would do, maybe it’s time to calm the hell down a bit.