2048: The Mongrel’s Tale

2048: The Mongrel’s Tale

A critique and parody of modern feminism.

By Sir Willie O’MacDickerson Jnr Esquire

Acknowledgments

I would like to recognise the influence of Douglas Murray, as I have attempted to live up to his intellectual rigour and replicate the thoroughness of his research in his enlightening book ‘The Madness of Crowds’. More importantly I have to doff my cap to George Orwell and Margaret Atwood and thank them for the imagery they gave us.

I wrote this at the end of 2019 and I was ready to put it out there, but then the pandemic struck so I shelved it, believing that getting political while people are dying in their tens of thousands was in poor taste. Then Clementine Ford complained on Twitter that ‘Covid 19 isn’t killing men fast enough’. So, here it is.

(https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/clementine-ford-apologises-after-tweeting-coronavirus-isnt-killing-men-fast-enough/news-story/f87086f85ce4adda0bed7249efdbe7ae)

I reserve all rights that being the author of this book entitles me to. However, in order to achieve the widest possible readership I give permission for this book to be freely distributed in print and online on two conditions:

1. No cost is attached to this book in any way. I’m not making money from it so neither should anyone else.

2. Nothing is added or subtracted from the text. If you’ve got something to say on the issues I raise then by all means write your own book, but you have no right to make changes to mine.

The Analysis

Years ago I had a conversation that literally changed my mind. I was speaking with a gay friend of mine, many years before the gay marriage debate was won, about the righteousness of equality for homosexuals. My friend explained that homosexuality should be completely accepted by the broader society because ‘it happens in nature’ so, therefore, being ‘natural’ it should be ‘normal’. I explained that I agreed with his conclusion that homosexuality should be seen as normal in our society but I thought that his example didn’t work because society itself is not ‘natural’, it is an intellectual construction, with the clearest example being that there are no parliaments or elections in the jungle, but if you’re going to make up a thing called ‘society’ it would be wrong if all the people in it were not treated equally. Seeing a flaw in his reasoning that others might exploit I added, ‘and anyway, you might not want to talk about homosexuality in terms of nature because other people might point out that pack rape, incest and cannibalism happen in nature, too’. That was the end of our friendship. It didn’t matter that I had agreed completely with his conclusion. He didn’t hear that. It didn’t matter that my only criticism was how he got to his conclusion. He didn’t hear that either. What he heard was me equating homosexuality with pack rape, incest, and cannibalism. It didn’t matter at all that I tried to explain that I was putting those terms in the mouths of people who would seek to use those arguments to oppose his conclusions. He didn’t hear that either. He had called me a homophobe and from that point on he stopped listening. The only way for me to survive that conversation without being labelled a homophobe was to accept the flawed thinking along with the righteous conclusion, but I recoiled from doing so. My friend had in his zealotry for gay equality reached a conclusion without really thinking about it. He had leapt over the process of reason as though it didn’t matter and, more alarmingly, when asked to think he had flatly refused to do so. Put simply, I was unjustifiably labelled a homophobe because he was a well meaning simpleton. I learnt something vitally important that day, which is that there is a world of difference between ‘beliefs’ and ‘thought’, and that pointing out the difference can be dangerous. I concluded that I had two choices: The first being to keep my mouth shut and by doing so blend in by pretending that I too am incapable of thought, or to speak up and by doing so end friendships with people who aren’t really listening to me anyway. Time and time again I have chosen the latter ‘and that has made all the difference’. This book is about thought. Its purpose is to mock piss poor thinking and the people who do it.

I am a feminist; the equality kind, not the revenge kind. On the basic pragmatic level of making sure humanity doesn’t waste half the intellects on the planet feminism makes perfect sense. More than that, on the human rights level I agree completely with the goals of the feminist movement. Female Genital Mutilation, body autonomy, child marriage, the international sex-slave trade, rape and domestic violence, lack of childcare and ‘luxury’ taxes on tampons are all just some of the problems that need far, far more attention than they are currently getting. But none of them will be solved by changing the shape of the Walk/Don’t Walk lights at an intersection(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-07/female-traffic-light-signals-melbourne-pedestrian-crossing/8330560) or stopping little girls from dressing up as brides (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7599161/Australian-mother-slams-Kmart-selling-6-childrens-bride-costumes.html) and it is piss poor thinking to believe that it will. The problem here is the same as with my gay (former) friend; criticising feminist ‘thinking’ will get me labelled a mysoginist, despite the fact that I agree completely with their goals. I’m going to do it anyway.

The reason I differentiated between ‘equality’ and ‘revenge’ feminism is that the feminism I grew up with was almost entirely devoid of misandry. With slogans like ‘girls can do anything’ it was positive, empowering and future focussed. Not anymore. The pervasive and utterly counterproductive misandrist narrative under the umbrella terms ‘The Patriarchy’ and ‘Toxic Masculinity’ is so damaging that it needs to be pulled apart to expose the piss poor thinking that supports it.

Dealing with them one at a time I will begin by declaring that while misogyny is rampant, ‘The Patriarchy’ does not exist. Geekfeminism.wikia.org defines it as ‘a term used in feminism to describe the system of gender-based hierarchy in society which assigns most power to men, and assigns higher value to men, maleness, and masculine traits’. The words ‘system’ and ‘assigns’ suggest an actual process, as if there is some kind of corporate structure to it with job titles like ‘Deputy assistant director for the unfair treatment of women in the real estate industry of the American midwest’. An example of similarly piss poor thinking can be seen in Urbandictionary.com’s definition of the International Jewish Conspiracy, which is ‘A group who runs everything in the United States government, and possibly the whole world.’ Now, IF the International Jewish Conspiracy exists the people who should be most upset are not the white supremacists who fear it so much but the impoverished Jews all over the world who, it seems, have been completely ignored by it. In fact, the existence of poor Jews is the best argument against the existence of any monolithic coordinated Jewish Conspiracy. The same applies to ‘The Patriarchy’. IF it did exist then the people who should be most upset are the millions and millions of poor men all over the world who have been ignored by their powerful ‘friends’. If The Patriarchy exists why is there such a thing as a homeless man? How long does he have to wait until he is ‘assigned’ a position of power by the ‘system’? That’s not to say that misogyny isn’t rampant, it is, it’s just not coordinated. But just as the white supremacists need the International Jewish Conspiracy to exist the Feminist movement needs the ‘The Patriarchy’ to exist. In Orwellian terms ‘The Patriarchy’ is The Party’s Goldstein or Napoleon’s Snowball, and in religious terms it is the Devil, the all pervasive ever-present amorphous enemy that requires permanent vigilance. In feminist theology, ‘The Patriarchy’ has to exist to validate the piety of the ‘believer’ and it ‘works’ because its definition is so sweeping yet abstract that any/every man can be accused of being a member.

If The Patriarchy is the Devil, then ‘Toxic Masculinity’ is the original sin. Defined as ‘Suppressing emotions or masking distress, maintaining an appearance of hardness, violence as an indicator of power’ by the NY Times. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/toxic-masculinity.html) It sounds genuinely horrible, and it can be, and ending its negative impacts on both men and women is a goal that I support entirely. But the problem is not in the goal of ending this behaviour and its consequences, it is the ‘thinking’ that is applied along the way which is that, just like original sin, men are all born guilty. ‘Toxic’ masculine traits are routinely railed against and yet, it seems, just as easily called upon when needed. It is amusing how an ‘appearance of hardness’ is a virtue when there is a spider to be gotten rid of but is ‘toxic’ when men are uncomfortable showing their emotions; it’s not a good look to be hiding behind the ladies blubbing like a child when the women are pointing at a huntsman screaming ‘kill it!’. It’s as if men are expected to toggle these characteristics off and on as women require them. The major flaw in this ‘thinking’ is that it seems that the way for men to cease being toxic is by becoming more feminine. Robert Jensen’s piece for Feministcurrent.com titled ‘It’s not about toxic masculinity or healthy masculinity, it’s about masculinity under patriarchy’ (https://www.feministcurrent.com/2019/12/05/its-not-about-toxic-masculinity-or-healthy-masculinity-its-about-masculinity-under-patriarchy/) lists the qualities of ‘healthy’ masculinity as ‘caring, compassion, and connection, or using our strength and determination to protect and nurture rather than control’ before claiming that these are traits that women are capable of too, and concluding that ‘embracing a healthy masculinity just means being a decent person’. The problem here is that women often fall woefully short of these qualities. In her NY Times opinion piece titled ‘Why Women Compete With Each Other’ (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/why-women-compete-with-each-other.html) Emily V. Gordon speaks from her own experience when admitting to feeling exhausted after years of ‘trying to understand how other girls could have gone from my closest allies to my scariest foes.’ She goes on to reference a 2013 literature review by Tracy Vaillancourt which “‘found that women by and large express indirect aggression toward other women, and that aggression is a combination of “self-promotion,” making themselves look more attractive, and “derogation of rivals,” being catty about other women.’” It seems logical to call this ‘Toxic Femininity’ by noting that there is nothing caring, compassionate or nurturing about it. Would this be an acceptable replacement for ‘Toxic Masculinity’? Would aggression and competitiveness somehow be acceptable in men if it is ‘feminised’ by being underhanded and perfidious? Unlikely. If toxic behaviour is the problem are men expected to reject both masculine and feminine toxicity and by doing so become a better person than most women could hope to be? Confoundingly, if you type ‘strong female characters’ into youtube you get a top 10 list of ‘Badass’ women (hashtagged international women’s day: https://youtu.be/IpRFF9g7tFk), all of them acting like toxic males: The first image is a woman with a shotgun shooting a man in the stomach and the rest of the 10 minute mashup is various female characters restraining their emotions while solving problems with violence. My personal favourite is the clip from The Lord of The Rings where Eowyn screams ‘I am no man’ before stabbing Sauron in the face. It seems that when men behave in this way it is toxic, so women tell them not to, then women do it and call it empowerment. No wonder men are confused about who and what to be. The essence of this problem is that few humans, male or female, manage to be decent people all of the time, most of the time, or even some of the time, myself included. If men, plural, are required to change then the question of what they are expected to change into remains unanswered, it is a void that men are expected to leap into blindly. A demand without remedy is just another example of piss poor thinking.

The horror at the extreme end of ‘Toxic Masculinity’ is of course rape which, coupled with its associated problem of consent, have rightly become the touchstone issues of modern feminism, which is why the confusing treatment of them is so striking. ‘Yes + Yes = Yes’ seems pretty clear cut and should ideally be the standard for all adult sexual interactions. If it were then logically there would be no more rapes, but it is far more complicated than a simple slogan can encapsulate. This complexity is well expressed by Jessica Bennett in The NYT under the title ‘When Saying Yes is Easier Than Saying No’ as she explains that ‘Sometimes “yes” means “no” simply because it is easier to go through with it than explain your way out of the situation. Sometimes “no” means “yes,” because you actually do want to do it, but you know you’re not supposed to lest you be labeled a slut.’ The fact that when a man asks for consent and the answer is ‘yes’ but it means ‘no’ makes me wonder if there is any point to asking the question, or more accurately, believing the answer. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/sunday-review/when-saying-yes-is-easier-than-saying-no.html) This already muddy concept of consent is completely undermined when people who see the world entirely through the prism of sexual politics attempt to apply it in places it has no reason to be, even with the best of intentions. In a well publicised interview Deane Carson claimed that parents should be asking their baby’s permission to change a dirty nappy. (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/permission-nappy-change-consent-sexuality-expert-deanne-carson-a8345581.htmlo). The reaction to the absurdity of this was widespread with a common response being to mock the idea that in the absence of a clear ‘yes’ from the infant parents should let their child sit in its own shit. Carson tried to clarify that it was all about ‘including’ the infant in the decision to create ‘a culture of consent’, an argument Michael Ungar Ph.D responded to perfectly in Psychology Today when he sensibly says ‘to use the word “consent” during diaper changes, Carson has, unfortunately, suggested something sexual about performing basic care for a child, which is of course ludicrous. And second, she has misunderstood the difference between personal empowerment and the need for a structured predictable environment that sometimes insists on imposing limits on our right to choose.’ (https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/nurturing-resilience/201805/should-babies-consent-diaper-changes) Or, to put it more directly, the parent’s responsibility for the well-being of the child overrides the body autonomy of an infant who is too young to go to the toilet. Or even more simply, It is reasonable to assume that a child sitting in shit would prefer not sitting in shit but cannot change that without adult assistance, and that desire is, in and of itself, a form of consent. Carson later explained that “When it comes to nappy changing, care and respect is telling a little person you have noticed that they are wet or dirty, asking them if they are ready to be changed, giving them a little time if they are deeply engaged in something else, talking to them and explaining what you are doing throughout the process, keeping an eye on their body language and facial expressions for any sign of discomfort or impatience and letting them know that you recognise what’s going on for them.’(‘https://newmatilda.com/2018/05/15/brave-new-world-nappyconsent-woman-deanne-carson-meant-passionately-believes/). This communication is all right and proper and sounds like best-practice parenting, but ‘care and respect’ is not the same as ‘consent’, no matter how she might dress it up. Associating the word ‘consent’, baggaged as it is with criminal connotations of rape, with ‘baby’ and ‘nappy’ is so shocking that it utterly undermines a concept that is already socially and legally complex. It seems that Carson is trying to achieve the idealised ‘Yes + Yes = Yes’ by inculcating consent as a concept into the next generation right from the moment of birth. This is a noble goal, and I applaud the intention, but the muddled ‘thinking’ is piss poor when the world needs more clarity on this issue, not less.

Proof that they see membership of ‘The Patriarchy’ as compulsory and ‘Toxic Masculinity’ as ubiquitous can be easily seen in the inability of feminists to use qualifying language in their ‘thinking’; ‘men rape women’ claims Clementine Ford, not some men, men, plural, as in all of them. In her piece ‘Clementine Ford: Good Riddence to White Ribbon’ (https://10daily.com.au/views/a191003itkdp/clementine-ford-good-riddance-to-white-ribbon-20191004) Ford states, ‘The general public will not tolerate conversations about women’s disadvantage that accurately name the source and instigators of this disadvantage -- men. Instead, we must pepper everything we say with disclaimers and caveats. Of course we know that not all men are like this. In fact, most men are wonderful and amazing and love women and would never, ever, ever do anything that would hurt a woman. In fact, how dare you even suggest that this could be anything other than the absolute truth! It’s such a tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of men who hurt women and in fact they can’t even be said to be men at all! They’re monsters! Evil monsters! Evil monsters who hurt women, but in tiny, almost statistically invisible numbers!’ This passage is clearly meant to be ironic because she then goes on to say that it is men, plural, who ‘rape’ and ‘beat’ women. This is the perfect example of piss poor feminist thinking; the caveats are the truth, the plural is the lie, but the lie has become the ‘truth’ because according to feminist ‘thinking’ all men are guilty. A whole generation of boys are growing up being told that they are ‘toxic’, a malignant cancer on society, and regardless of anything they do or do not do they cannot be cured. The lack of thought to the consequences of this puts this squarely under the heading of ‘revenge feminism’ because equality is simply not part of the equation.

This is not to say that feminists are incapable of using ‘disclaimers and caveats’ when it suits them. Rape and consent become terribly complicated when they hit the legal system where there are often no witnesses and no evidence beyond personal testimony. Adjusting court procedures so women can give their testimony via video link so that they don’t have to face the man they accuse is right and proper, but clearly more needs to be done. A recent report by the New Zealand Ministry of Justice stated that over a period of four years ‘Just 11% of sexual violence reports lead to conviction’. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/01/new-zealand-just-11-of-sexual-violence-reports-lead-to-conviction) It simply cannot be the case that a full 89% of reports are false. Clearly far too many men are ‘getting away with it’. Equally clearly this is something that people with long lists of legal qualifications need to be turning their minds to because it is obvious that too often justice is not being done. But false accusations of rape do happen, and when they are reported on in the media ‘disclaimers and caveats’ are everywhere. After the Kavanaugh hearings in America The Cut ran an article headlined (emphasis mine) ‘Almost no one is falsely accused of rape’ (https://www.thecut.com/article/false-rape-accusations.html). Reporting on the same case the BBC pointed to a U.S. study from 2010 saying ‘over the past 20 years only 2-10% of rape accusations are proven to be false’. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45565684) These are just two glaring examples, but on this issue you will find the use of the qualifiers and nullifiers everywhere. The message is clear; when talking about men as perpetrators, guilt is universal, yet when men are the victim it is minimised to the point of being trivial so it can be dismissed. The simplest test of the validity of this use of qualifiers is to ask when it is appropriate to stop using them. Does the word ‘only’ deserve to be dropped from the sentence at 15%, 25%, 45%, or would it be acceptable to say, ‘it’s only 65%, I mean, it’s not even two thirds’? The answer of course is that it shouldn’t be there at all. Applied to any other situation this tactic would be denounced for the piss poor thinking that it is. Could you imagine the outcry if the news reported ‘Out of control bushfires destroyed only twenty five houses today’? Or, ‘Recently released government statistics show that only 116 000 people are currently homeless in Australia’? (amounting to 0.5% of the population. Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/07/16/fact-check-homelessness/) Of course these statements would not just be absurd but also deeply hurtful to anyone who suffered in the fires or has found themselves dumped onto the street because they’re too poor to pay the rent. To put it simply, individuals matter. Is an injustice less of an injustice because it happens infrequently? No. An injustice is an injustice, even if it only happens once. To take the opposing position is not only piss poor thinking, it is callous.

The more insidious angle to this tactic is the fact that it excuses women committing crimes. It is illegal to make a false statement to police. Perjury is against the law. To say false accusations of rape are ‘only 2-10%’ is the same as saying ‘women are breaking the law, but there aren’t very many of them doing it so it doesn’t matter’. Is a crime less of a crime because it happens infrequently? To be clear in our definition, a false rape accusation is not an insignificant victimless crime, especially in the days of trial by social media. Before the court trial even starts it can lead to imprisonment due to denial of bail, termination of employment or expulsion from university/school, end marriages and his time with his children, and widespread denunciations online which not surprisingly lead to mental health problems, even suicide. ‘It doesn’t happen very often so it doesn’t matter’ is a revolting position to take and in the parlance of modern cancel culture, it’s ‘Not OK!’.

Crimes by women are routinely dismissed or minimised while any hint of applying the same thing to male transgressors is (rightly) condemned. Brock Turner’s competitive swimming results were widely reported in the media alongside the details of his crimes. Emma Lord wrote for The Bustle in 2016 an article titled ‘Brock Truner’s Swimming Times Don’t Matter, So Please Stop Asking About Them’. In her piece she states that ‘with all eyes on the case, people are naturally curious for details about those involved. But with people wrongly focusing on the accomplishments of the perpetrator rather than the trauma of his victim, I caution against anyone looking for Brock Turner's swimming times or other athletic achievements, because they don't matter. In fact, not only do they not matter, but taking them into consideration also deeply undermines the very heart of this case.’ (https://www.bustle.com/articles/165135-brock-turners-swimming-times-dont-matter-so-please-stop-asking-about-them). She is exactly right, whatever else he’s done has no bearing on his crimes. When Professor Avital Ronnell was accused of sexually harassing her male student over a three year period, placing his hands on her breasts and calling him her ‘cock-er spaniel’ in emails, (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/sexual-harassment-nyu-female-professor.html) her international academic colleagues rallied to her defence. They attested to her ‘grace’ and ‘keen wit’ before declaring that ‘she be accorded the dignity rightly deserved by someone of her international standing and reputation’. This is exactly wrong. Whatever else she has done in her professional life has no bearing on her alleged crimes. I think it goes without saying that it would avail a similarly accused male academic nothing to say ‘But look at my international standing and reputation!’ At the core of this piss poor thinking is the newly doctrinal attitude: ‘believe women’. It is vital to note that it doesn’t say ‘believe the victim’, it says ‘believe women’, which is a problem if you’re a male victim of unwanted female advances, but this only ‘works’ if female perpetrators are humanised while their male counterparts are robbed of all context.

In 2016 The Wrap published a piece by Joe Otterson titled “Game of Thrones Accused Of Promoting Rape Culture and ‘Torture Pornography’ (https://www.thewrap.com/game-of-thrones-accused-of-promoting-rape-culture-torture-pornography/). He quotes The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, “This cocktail of pornography and twisted plot lines must be denounced as socially irresponsible, especially in an age when American society is struggling to combat the crises of sexual assault and rape culture.” The message is clear: in fiction men raping women is unambiguously bad, there is no room for any kind of moral discussion or ethical complexity. In 2019 the same publication published Brian Welk’s piece titled ‘How ‘Queen of Hearts’ Director Made a Feminist Film About a Bad Person’. (https://www.thewrap.com/how-queen-of-hearts-director-made-a-feminist-story-about-a-bad-person/) The film is about a middle aged woman called Anne who has an ‘affair’ with her teenage step son, with complexity being added to Anne as a character because her job is, wait for it, a lawyer who defends victims of rape. Welk’s piece begins by quoting the director, May el-Toukhy, stating ‘What can be seen as radical or controversial about that is that we don’t have enough female characters.’ The rape of a teenage boy is not controversial, the problem is that the movie has too many men in it. Welk admits that this ‘may not be the most positive of female narratives’, but this is the limit of recognition of Anne’s vile criminal behaviour, instead we are reminded that Anne is ‘strong, confident and powerful’ and we are told to conclude that ‘her morally corrupt behavior still makes her human.’ According to el-Toukhy, her purpose as director was to encourage the audience to ‘start a moral dialogue with yourself’, yet she appears to remove all moral ambiguity with the comment ‘I believe that she (Anne) is not an evil person. She is a human being. And that is what life is’. The message is clear: in fiction, when women rape male children there is room for a moral discussion and ethical complexity. More shockingly el-Toukhy congratulates herself on producing a feminist testament, claiming she and her cast stand ‘on the shoulders of female filmmakers and feminists before us’ adding that ‘by daring to depict the bad’ in women ‘a new sort of feminism is thriving’. Returning to my original point at the top of this document, this is not anything to do with equality, it is a poisonous form of ‘feminism’ that I find impossible to support, or even comprehend. It is insufficient to call this piss poor thinking. It is repugnant.

The belief that women’s crimes can be excused as long as they are looked at through the prism of ‘feminism’ is not confined to reviews of the fictional. In July 2019 Alex Carson wrote a piece for Marie Claire titled ‘Why Are More Mothers Killing Their Children?’ (https://www.marieclaire.com.au/mothers-who-murder-their-children) In trying to come to grips with the causes of these tragedies Carson acknowledges the complexity of dealing with the issue, stating (emphasis mine) ‘A mother at risk of killing her newborn because she is suffering from postnatal depression requires a completely different intervention strategy to a father who murders an older child during an impulsive, violent attack.’ The mollifying language of ‘suffering’ and ‘at risk of killing’ applied to the mother is starkly different to the ‘murder’ committed by the ‘impulsive’ father. Note that the word ‘violence’ is attached to the male murderer, not the female one; it seems that murder is gentle when a woman does it. Alarmingly, asserting that the problem is not that children are ‘at risk of being murdered’ but that women are ‘at risk of being murderers’ makes me wonder who qualifies as a victim here, the dead child or the murderous mother? Putting this to one side, I agree completely with Carson’s conclusions, the mental health support for women is often woefully inadequate and for the benefit of the mothers and the safety of the children this must change. What I take issue with is the ‘thinking’ along the way. Men are presented as contextless and backgroundless, as if they exited the birth canal as fully formed psychotic adults with animal-like impulses. Whereas women, and their crimes, are contextualised, humanised, they are deliberately presented as real people who need to be understood, they are ‘suffering’ which makes them objects of pity and compassion, the reasons for the crimes are explored, explained, accepted as a consequence of forces beyond their control, perhaps even justified.

This is why Todd Phillips’ film ‘The Joker’ is so important; it depicts a man’s descent into lunacy, disposing of the idea that men are simply ‘born bad’. Minus the clown makeup this story could represent any mass shooter, or indeed any of the murderous fathers Carson refers to. Phoenix’s character Arthur Fleck (‘A. Fleck’, as in an insignificant speck of dust) is suffering; he starts the film in pain before moving through agony on his way to madness. His crimes are not to be excused. I would have preferred to have seen the film end with his imprisonment, but the film shows that when it comes to crimes committed by men there is room for moral discussion and ethical complexity. He has been deliberately presented as a real person who needs to be understood. He is ‘suffering’ which makes him an object of pity and compassion. The reasons for his crimes are explored, explained, accepted as a consequence of forces beyond his control, perhaps even justified. Except they’re not allowed to be. The Daily Telegraph’s piece (Dailytelegraph.com.au) ‘New Joker Movie: Woke Feminists Blame it for Toxic Masculinity’ begins with ‘He’s a performer with mental health issues and the victim of abuse. So why isn’t the Joker a pin up for the woke brigade? Oh, that’s right - he’s a man. Cue the toxic masculinity rants’. Nailed it. The piss poor thinking behind el-Toukhy’s argument is the need for feminists to monopolise suffering on behalf of women. If men can be allowed to suffer then it becomes a human issue - and ceases to be a feminist one. Since no social phenomenon can be considered real until it has a catchy title I, borrowing from Orwell again, dub this ‘Singlethink: The art of removing from the mind any information contradictory to the goal of obsolving women/a woman of guilt’. It appears to be quite easy to do this, you just shake your head gravely and mutter ‘The Patriarchy’ in a dark tone.

The actor Patrick Stewart made it clear that It is not impossible to cope with the idea that both men and women can be victims at the same time when he spoke publicly about the domestic violence his father inflicted on his mother. (https://youtu.be/TqFaiVNuy1k)

Stewart explains that he represents ‘Refuge’, an organisation that among other things provides safe houses for women fleeing domestic violence because, as he movingly puts it, ‘I do what I do in my mother’s name because I couldn’t help her then but I can now’. He goes on to say that his father, because of his WWII experiences, was suffering from ‘severe shell shock’, with the attitudes at the time affording no help beyond ‘get a grip on yourself and go out there and be a man’, meaning it was never treated. Recognising the seriousness of what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Stewart also represents Combat Stress, an organisation which assists troops returning from combat zones to overcome this serious illness, who told him that ‘all the conditions of your childhood that you described are classic symptoms of veterans who were suffering from this serious psychological and physical illness.’ Stewart’s balanced understanding of the awful things he was exposed to as a child is summed up in ‘I work for Refuge for my mother and I work for Combat Stress for my father in equal measure’. Stewart is at pains to point out that ‘violence is never a choice a man should make’, and he’s absolutely right, but under the cloud of PTSD was it a ‘choice’? Was it an ‘impulse’ as Carson claims? It seems not. We don’t know the intimate details but reading between the lines of Stewart’s comments it could be said that his father did monstrous things, but he was not a monster. He, too, was suffering, he needed help and didn’t get it, and the feminist choice to wilfully forget this is piss poor thinking.

Which leads to the dangerously simplistic overuse of the term ‘victim blaming’. Make no mistake, the attacker is always and only to blame, just as Patrick Stewart’s mother was never to blame for the assaults she suffered. The term Victim blaming is rightly applied whenever questions of ‘what was she wearing?’ are raised. This is always entirely irrelevant. The clearest example is the beach, where women often wear bikinis so small there is nothing left to the imagination. These women are not there to make themselves targets of rape they are just going for a swim, period. The same applies to anything a woman might wear in a nightclub or on the street. However, the concept of victim blaming becomes thought-ending when it is applied to everything, including perfectly appropriate safety advice. Swim between the flags to avoid the rips, get vaccinated to avoid measles, wear your seatbelt to reduce the risk of death in a car crash, do your workplace fire evacuation drills to avoid burning to death, don’t walk down dark alleys at night because that’s the kind of place where some men choose to attack women; all of these are said with the same ‘keep safe’ tone, but only one of them is ‘victim blaming’. After the Eurydice Dixon murder in Melbourne there was a murderous rapist on the streets and in the spirit of ‘keep safe’ the police said they did not want people to "stop doing their day to day activities. However, we do ask all people to consider their personal safety and be aware of their surroundings. Unfortunately, evil acts like this do occur and, as police, part of our role is to provide advice on how people can increase their personal safety. We want to keep the community safe, so where possible we always encourage people to walk in well-lit areas and if listening to music … consider using only one headphone in."

(http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-15/warning-on-personal-safety-after-eurydice-dixon-death-criticised/9873588) The ‘keep safe’ message was howled down as victim blaming, leading to the premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews contradicting his state police force by tweeting, "Our message to Victorian women is this: Stay home. Or don't. Go out with friends at night. Or don't. Go about your day exactly as you intend, on your terms. Because women don't need to change their behaviour. Men do”.

('We should not feel afraid': Women slam safety warnings after Dixon killing http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-15/warning-on-personal-safety-after-eurydice-dixon-death-criticised/9873588) This populist short-sighted nonsense is dangerous because it ignores the fact that the threat is real - there IS a murderous rapist on the streets - and advises women to take no precautions. Would he have been taken seriously if he’d said ‘there are rips at the beach so swim between the flags, or don’t, measles is out there so get vaccinated, or don’t, there are drunk drivers on the roads so wear your seatbelt, or don’t’? Of course not, which is strange because what he really said was ‘there is a murderous rapist out there but if you want to go to the kinds of places where you’re likely to be attacked then you go right ahead - and feel righteously empowered while you do it’. Irresponsible to say the least. The silliest part of his comments is the phrase ‘on your terms’, because a person being attacked is never in control, the rape is never happening on the woman’s terms. As usual I agree completely with the goal, it truly is some men who need to change their behaviour, but it is absurd to believe that this will happen overnight just because it should. It makes as much sense to argue that there would be no more overdoses if drug dealers would change their ways and stop selling drugs by tomorrow morning. It is heartbreaking to confront the fact that it will take generations for things to change, if it ever does. In the meantime it is piss poor thinking to ignore the police because ‘evil acts’ do occur and righteousness alone is no protection at all from people who want to do you harm.

The resentment behind the feminist response to men expressing concern for women’s welfare betrays a deeper prejudice which I call the ‘white men can’t talk’ policy. Feminists rightly demand that men demonstrate understanding of the myriad ways women suffer, but as soon as they do men are denounced as speaking from a position of ‘white male privilege’. Harriet Hall demonstrates this perfectly In her piece for the Independent titled ‘Joaquin Phoenix’s white male saviour speech at the Oscars was painful to watch’. (https://apple.news/AK_MTqsV8RZih9MndfHfREw). Phoenix begins his speech by saying that ‘we feel or are made to feel that we champion different causes’ before stating that he sees ‘commonality’ in the various righteous struggles going on in the world today, adding ‘I think, whether we're talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we're talking about the fight against injustice.’ - with ‘injustice’ clearly being the common element. Hall dismissively refers to Phoenix’s list as ‘box-ticking’ then notes that Phoenix went on to speak out against the dairy industry’s practice of artificially inseminating a cow and then ‘stealing her baby’. Hall sums up her critique of Phoenix’s speech by saying, ‘to speak of the injustices of racism, of the experiences of people of colour whose history is steeped in slavery, then to discuss women, whose rights to bodily autonomy are still being challenged by anti-abortion laws across the States, and to mention queer rights, when members of the gay community have been beaten, criminalised and banned from marrying their partners - to utter these causes in the same breath as milking cows really only highlights Phoenix's already startlingly obvious white male privilege.’ Hall is clearly passionate about gender equality, and Phoenix agreed with her by identifying gender inequality as an injustice, but what she heard was him equating women’s rights with ‘milking cows’, which if you take the speech in its entirety with its strong theme of the need to fight against injustice is not what he did. In her helpful suggestion that ‘perhaps if he'd chosen just this one cause to champion, instead of lumping everything together, it wouldn't have stung quite as much as it did’, Hall seems to be admitting that even if he’d chosen only one of these issues to champion it still would have been ‘painful’ to her because it was being spoken about by a white man - and white men can’t talk. Hall has effectively criticised Phoenix for his lack of myopia, and done exactly what my gay (former) friend did years ago, which is to ignore the common ground and look for ways to be offended. This kind of piss poor thinking is devastating to the feminist cause because it alienates men, and men are necessary to the struggle whether feminists admit it or not. If (white) men wanted to get involved in all the righteous campaigns of the feminist movement and improve the lives of their wives and daughters how would they go about it? Where could they start? How could they possibly have any chance of saying the ‘right’ thing in the ‘approved’ way when their words are already poisoned by their ‘startlingly obvious white male privilege’? It seems that it simply cannot be done. No matter how pious our prayers (white) men are denounced as ‘The Devil quoting scripture’.

Sadly, some men reading this will be tempted to see this book as some sort of ‘meninist’ manifesto. Don’t. It would be a mistake to assume that because I am critiquing the ‘thinking’ of feminists that I agree with you. I do not. Type ‘meninist’ into google images and you’ll get a meme of a woman with a black eye about to be punched in the face a second time with the caption ‘Women deserve equal rights, and lefts’. If you think like this, if you approve of this, if you find it ‘funny’, then you’re a fly-blown arsehole who needs to take a serious look at himself, but do it quickly, because you need to grow up and you need to grow up now. Feminism has progressed over centuries, evolving through various waves with brave women fighting for righteous goals like gaining the right to vote in the democracy in which they lived. In many ways, some of which I have identified, it has lost its way as younger generations of feminists reach for the extremes in order to just have something, anything, to say. The gap between righteous and ridiculous is where parody thrives. ‘Meninism’ is recent and reactionary nonsense. It is so new that even the name is derivative of the feminism it opposes. There is no noble tradition in ‘Meninism’. So-called ‘Meninists’ skipped straight over righteousness and landed squarely in the ridiculous, and outrageous. In their rage at the absurdities of extreme feminism ‘Meninists’ have forgotten that Female Genital Mutilation, body autonomy, child marriage, the international sex-slave trade, rape and domestic violence, lack of childcare and ‘luxury’ taxes on tampons are all real and serious issues that need to be dealt with. To forget this in the rush to your own extreme is its own form of piss poor thinking. I would love to write a parody of ‘Meninism’, but the problem is that it is simply vile, so there is literally nothing at all comedic about it.

Equally sadly, there will be women who read this and remain dogmatically dedicated to the idea that the ‘feminist’ attitudes I’ve outlined above need to be defended, even though they are no more sophisticated than the old schoolyard rhyme about slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails versus sugar and spice and all things nice. It is an absolute certainty that I will be called a misogynist by women who, if they had read my argument properly, would know this is nonsense. It won’t matter that I agreed completely with their goals. They won’t hear that. They’ll call me a misogynist anyway because of a phenomenon I call (this time without reference to Orwell) ‘Womanstanding: To refuse to understand a simple, logical, clearly expressed argument purely so you can tell a man he is wrong’. I am equally certain that the word ‘Womanstanding’ will be called misogynist even while they accuse me of ‘mansplaining’, which is somehow not misandrist. It has accurately been claimed that everything in The Handmaid’s Tale is or has been historically true for women in some way shape or form, which is why it is such an important and powerful work. None of what follows has the same historical basis for men. However, it is based entirely on things ‘feminists’ have said, (https://thoughtcatalog.com/jake-fillis/2014/05/23-quotes-from-feminists-that-will-make-you-rethink-feminism/) and if they meant what they said I must assume that they would be delighted if it came true.

The Narrative

It was a bright cold day in April, and all the clocks in Defeat Towers read ‘wake up’. Rapist 6079 sniffled and snuffled a little in his cot before heaving himself half upright. His cell was so narrow that the opposite wall was just an arm’s length away, near enough to support him while he coughed his lungs clear, and the toilet so close to his cot he didn’t have to stand to spit. He looked up at the clock again; ‘Eat’, it said. The circular frame of the old analogue clock was still there, but long ago the hands had been removed by The Motherhood, the ruling party of Landing Strip One, after they concluded that the aggressive rising and falling of the arms was a phallic symbol of The Patriarchy’s oppression of womben. In its place was the Tell-You screen, which marked the passage of tasks rather than time. Down the hallway an early riser’s kettle was whistling as the smell of his porridge ration wafted down the hallway, but Rapist 6079 wasn’t a morning person; not bothering with a glass he took a swig of what little remained in his ration of Vanquished Whiskey as he shuffled the handful of steps across the floor of his cell and gazed out the small porthole window.

Defeat Towers was one of the few remaining examples of the old vertically constructed buildings, almost all of them had been collapsed and replaced with the glass and steel breast-like domes that now dominated the skyline of Landing Strip One. The three biggest domes, far taller than Defeat Towers, were the center of The Motherhood’s administration, each emblazoned with one of the three tenets of The Motherhood: Men Are Wrong, Logic Is Optional, Tears Equal Victory.

Rapist 6079 caught himself daydreaming, and realised he was a step behind; the Tell-You screen now read ‘shave’. This was the most important part of the morning routine. The Motherhood didn’t care if you ate but all outward signs of masculinity had to be removed before a Mongrel left his cell. Having only a small circular mirror to work with was hard enough, but the outline image of Harvey Epstein acid etched into the glass made it even more difficult. Epstein, the evil mastermind behind The Patriarchy, the dark shadowy force The Motherhood existed to oppose, was the definition of Gendercrime. He was the archetypal rapist, the debauched defiler of womben; all Gendercrimes were subsumed in his example, and he was out there somewhere planning the one thing The Motherhood feared the most: The Uprising. When Rapist 6079 looked straight into the mirror it was Epstein’s eyes that filled his sockets, when he ran the razor across his face it was as if he was tracing the line of Epstein’s jaw; As The Motherhood intended Rapist 6079 had to look through and beyond the image just to catch a glimpse of himself.

“Get dressed” commanded the Tell-You screen. In Defeat Towers the uniform was a set of gender disguising overalls. Rapist 6079’s had once been bright fluorescent red but over the years they had faded to a sickly washed out orange, and where once he had filled them out with a barrel chest and powerful arms they now drooped; sagging from the straps across his shoulders they seemed to hover around his frame. The Motherhood had never seen fit to replace them, but his Genderguilt was renewed annually when he was given a fresh new patch for the front and back with his number and the word ‘Rapist’ in big black letters, and told to stitch it on.

In the safety of the control room a guard turned a key to simultaneously release the electronic locks of all the cells on the floor. As his door slid open Rapist 6079 stepped into the breach and waited for the order to begin the slow march down to the factory.

While the cells were small the hallway was broad and high, big enough to accommodate the guards in their Physical Equivalence Neural Interfacing Suits, a hulking contrivance of steel struts and gears connected by wires to the mind-reading helmet on the head of a Womban guard. It made her as fast as Usain Bolt, as strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger and as ugly as Sylvester Stallone. One of them had already stomped into the hallway.

‘Line up, Mongrels!’

Rapist 6079 stepped forward, as did every other Mongrel, to form two long opposing lines; there were hundreds to his left and hundreds to his right.

‘Mongrels, turn!’

With military precision they spun on their heels to face the stairwell at the end of the hall.

‘Mongrels, march!’

They moved as commanded, but it was more of a shuffle than a march, and they immediately bunched up as the Mongrels in front bottlenecked at the stairs.

As they trudged the words of the Prophetesses resounded along the corridor. Multitudes of different womben had been recorded pronouncing the teachings of the mental giants who were the ideological birthers of The Motherhood. Some voices were louder, some softer, suggesting one voice was closer while others were further away. Often one quote started before the other had finished, implying the urgency of individuals each yearning to be heard. This effect created the overall impression of a crowd of angry women on either side of the hallway.

‘Women have the capacity for understanding and compassion, men are just incapable of it’ pronounced one voice, confident but with a warble to her voice suggestive of a matriarchal age. A younger voice, with a hint of Southern drawl, spoke up, ‘To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo’. She was quickly replaced by the voice of a young girl, so young it was easy to imagine her clutching her teddy bear while she spat, ‘I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.’ An Asian accented voice spoke over the end of the young girl’s sentence, stating ‘Man is a hating rather than a loving animal’ and she in turn was spoken over by a voice with the clipped consonants and rounded vowels of a champion public speaker, ‘The male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.’ A gravelly voice with Ebonic rhythms stated, ‘Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless piece of shit’ before another cool clinical voice blandly stated, ‘I hope it hurts every time a woman laughs at your tiny excuse for a penis.’ Then the recording started over again on a continuous loop. By the time Rapist 6079 reached the stairs he had heard it dozens of times, leaving him with a feeling of being pecked by a flock of vultures too impatient to wait for their meal to die.

Waiting for the Mongrels at the bottom of the stairs was the Workhouse, an enormous basement room with conveyor belts snaking around the concrete pillars that supported the ceiling, each one feeding the chopping and slicing machines that the Mongrels were there to operate. ‘Men are wrong’, was written in large bold letters on one wall, ‘Logic is optional’ on another, ‘Tears equal victory’ on the third, but on the fourth wall was an enormous portrait photograph of The Superior Mother, the leader of The Motherhood. Her short cropped hair had been dyed a harsh crimson-purple and pinched upwards into spikes, opening up her face and accentuating her cool blue eyes. Her cheeks were plump enough to fill out any wrinkles, making her age hard to determine, but her expression was unambiguously admonishing, unmistakably scornful, smugly uncaring.

Rapist 6079 took his place at the machine he had been working far longer than he cared to remember. A carrot, long and firm, rattled and rolled down the conveyor belt and stopped within the reach of his arm. He picked it up and placed it in the tray, then reached up for the handle and slammed it down, the impact of criss-crossed blades above and below reduced the carrot to a pile of tiny cubes. Rapist 6079 shot a brief glum look at Rapist 4044 who was working on the cucumber slicer; they both knew they would repeat that movement thousands of times before dusk. Then he noticed that the zucchini masher was silent. There was a brown haired boy beside it, looking small in his oversized overalls rolled up to his knees and elbows. Clearly nobody had told him what to do.

Shocked to see so young a child in Defeat Towers Rapist 6079 broke the ban on speaking and asked him directly, ‘What do they call you?’

‘Protorapist 8089’

Amazed, Rapist 4044 asked, ‘But, how did you get here? Who denounced you?’

‘My little sister’.

‘Little sister!’ Exclaimed Rapist 6079, ‘You didn’t…’

Keen to defend himself the boy interrupted, ‘No, nothing like that, she just wanted her own room, so she said I touched her boobie, then they put me in here.’

The story was so familiar the grown men shared a wan smile.

Rapist 6079 handed the boy a long and slightly bent zucchini and showed him how to slam down the masher.

They should have spent the rest of the day in silence, but the ice had been broken, and curiosity briefly defeated fear.

‘So how did you get here old timer?’ Rapist 6079 asked Rapist 4044.

The answer began with a sigh. ‘I told a female colleague she looked nice and a tribunal of post graduate students from the Gender Studies Department convicted me of the crime of LookSeeNotice, you?’

Rapist 6079 looked over his shoulder, there was no P.E.N.I.S to be seen. ‘My wife had a baby’ he confessed.

‘So there was proof you had sex.’

‘Yep’

‘Let me guess’ continued Rapist 4044, enjoying a chance for some conversation, ‘you didn’t have a written statement of consent.’

‘No, I did.’

‘Really? So how did you end up here?’

‘It wasn’t notarised.’

Rapist 3036 was next to them on the conveyor belt and couldn’t help overhearing.

‘So you got charged?’ It was more of an assumption than a question.

‘Yeah,’ replied Rapist 6079, ‘they were really quick too, the hearing was the same day.’

‘What sentence did the magistrate give you?’ asked Rapist 3036.

‘Oh, there was no magistrate, my Genderguilt was affirmed by the Upper Cumbucta West Lawn Bowls association, acting Deputy Vice President Lorna Patterson-Smith presiding. She sentenced me to life.’

Rapist 4044 had been slicing cucumbers while he listened, it was dangerous to fall behind quota. Glancing at Rapist 3036 he asked, ‘You?’

‘Kinda the same. We wanted a baby too, my wife said she was ovulating so there was no time to get an auditor.’

‘For the Continual Consent Audit?’

‘Yeah’

‘Probably better’ Rapist 6079 mused, ‘In the short term I mean. It must be difficult to do the deed with a woman in a lab coat standing at the foot of the bed ticking boxes on a clipboard.’

The boy was bemused, he had no understanding of these adult concepts, but the grown men were openly chuckling. Then the alarm sounded and all the machines automatically locked.

‘Quick’, Rapist 6079 grasped the boy by the shoulders and whispered, ‘Hide under the machine, and hope they’ve forgotten about you.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Just do it!’

A guard in her P.E.N.I.S strode out into the middle of the factory and announced it was time for the Twenty Minute Self Hate.

‘Confess!’ The guard commanded.

En masse the men began to mumble. ‘I am wrong. I am always and forever wrong. I am wrong in my mind and in my body. My thoughts are wrong because they stem from my corrupted mind. My actions are wrong because they are performed with my corrupted body. It is my fault. It is all my fault. It is, was, and always will be my grievous fault. I am to blame for everything. My penis is the cause of all evil. As a tool of penetration it is an instrument of assault and subjugation. My penis is heinous, my dong is wrong, my erection is a weapon. I stab. I stab. I stab, and that makes me a Rapist.’

‘Louder!’ she shrieked.

‘I am wrong. I am always and forever wrong. I am wrong in my mind and in my body. My thoughts are wrong because they stem from my corrupted mind. My actions are wrong because they are performed with my corrupted body. It is my fault. It is all my fault. It is, was, and always will be my grievous fault. I am to blame for everything. My penis is the cause of all evil. As a tool of penetration it is an instrument of assault and subjugation. My penis is heinous, my dong is wrong, my erection is a weapon. I stab. I stab. I stab, and that makes me a Rapist.’

‘Again!’ The guard demanded, and the men complied, again and again, over and over. It was called the Twenty Minute Self Hate, but the duration was never exact, it had been known to go on for an hour or more, it only ended when somebody inevitably broke.

In a distant corner of the factory floor a wail preceded the collapse of one of the Mongrels. ‘I don’t want it!’ He declared, ‘Cut it off! Cut it off...take it away, I don’t want it!’ Smothered by the guards the man’s voice died away, but the mutterings of discontent that rippled across the assembled Mongrels quickly grew in volume and intensity. The guards had been watching from the corners, but they stomped out menacingly and the room fell silent.

One of the guards noticed that the zucchini masher was unmanned. She stomped over to deal with the malingerer, quickly found the boy cowering under the machine, and pulled him out by the scruff of his neck. It was the nerve twisting tone to the boy’s terrified squeal that made Rapist 6079 lash out. His blow was ineffectual, it was little more than a slap on one of the metal struts, but it was enough to condemn him. Gasping at the enormity of what he’d done Rapist 6079 drew back but it was too late, there would be no redemption.

The guard lowered the boy to the floor and shoved him in the direction of his designated machine, then she turned to Rapist 6079 and thundered ‘You will be taken to room O for conviction and sentencing. Move!’

The words ‘Logic Is Optional’ loomed large over Laura’s head as she walked through the revolving glass doors into the lobby of the central dome. While waiting for the elevator she greeted her coworkers with a friendly ‘cursed be the seed’, and they responded in kind. As in every building there was an enormous mural of The Superior Mother but here, with all the Mongrels locked away, The Motherhood could afford to present her softer side. She was shown relaxing on a plumply cushioned lounge with her three non gender binary children, ‘It’, ‘Thing’, and ‘Object’ affectionately sprawled across her. Rumours abound that It has since adopted the name ‘Being’ and Thing has chosen to be called ‘Entity’. It seems that Object is still too young to object.

A highly organised person, Laura had placed a hook on the wall of her cubicle to hang her bag, she wore no-nonsense round framed glasses and all her work was filed and piled in a manner that demonstrated her capacity for order and clarity of thought, a trait that had seen her rise quickly through the ranks of The Empowerment Directorate. She had started her literary career as an Incinerator, stomping around in a P.E.N.I.S finding and burning any text that was obviously written by a man, such as William Shakespeare, Dillon Thomas and George Elliot, while saving texts obviously written by womben such as Mary Shelley, Jane Austen and Evelyn Waugh. But turning words into ash was not satisfying, she wanted to write, and eventually landed the job in the Cliterature Department, producing stories for mass publication and quick consumption by the womben of Landing Strip One.

At first it was gratifying to see a paperback she had composed on the Novel-writing Machine being read and enjoyed by ordinary womben on the train and in parks, and she enjoyed the autonomy of having complete authorial control. She would turn one knob to choose a genre, another to select a setting, several more to choose characters, and still more to set the sequence of events in the plot. When all that was done she flicked a switch which activated an algorithm that put it all together and spat out a book, which Laura was required to proof read. At first she was conservative in her writing, avoiding anachronisms and shunning cliche, but she quickly became giddy with the boundless creativity of it all. In one novel Boudicca and Jane Goodall teamed up to rescue chimps from the clutches of evil male poachers in Brazil. In another book Katherine Johnson invented the wheel and formulated the mathematics for domed pyramids as a monument to Anne Boleyn, succeeding despite by Guy Fawkes’ attempts to blow up the quarry. In yet another composition Joan of Arc invented the electric guitar and with Marie Curie on drums started a rock band called ‘The Rosetta Stones’. Laura’s most famous work involved Margaret Thatcher and Whoopie Goldberg as highly trained secret agents parachuting onto the deck of the Titanic to rescue the women and girls before taking a celebratory bath in an ocean full of drowned men and their frozen tears. This ending elicited a hand written letter of appreciation from the Superior Mother herself. It didn’t matter that the stories were nonsensical, only that they were empowering to womben, and the cognitive dissonance that produced was slowly driving Laura mad. Happily, her efforts had been so prodigious that she had flooded the market, and The Motherhood decided to turn her intellectual gifts to a far more substantial text.

It had been a mammoth task, but Laura had finally finished improving the Bible, aligning it with the ideology of The Motherhood. The names were the easy part, all she had to do was remember what she’d learned in primary school; ALL men are rapists. Adam was ‘the first defiler’, Mary was ‘Madonna the Unraped’ and her infant son was ‘The protorapist Jesus Christ’. The Crucifixion was easy, too, all she had to do was remember what she’d learned at Highschool; ALL men are toxic. With this in mind his death was nothing more than a vile expression of Toxic Masculinity, with his last words corrected to, ‘Don’t forgive them father, they know exactly what they’re doing and there are no excuses’. She balked a little when she reached Judges 4:21, concerned that Jael hammering a tent peg into the head of the sleeping Sisera was a crime too severe to excuse, but a little application of the Singlethink she learned at University let Laura conclude that Sisera was a member of the oppressive Patriarchy so the cold, calculated murder was in defence of herself and her sisters, absolving Jael of all guilt. And anyway, he was a Rapist so he deserved it. Such simple substitutions were dull drudgery, but what exercised her mind was the logic and attitude expressed in the grammar. Laura agonised over Genesis 5:3 and the semantic difference between ‘Adam committed rape and begat Seth’ and ‘Adam was a rapist who begat Seth’; the first one named the crime, the second labelled the criminal. In the end she decided on the second option because it specified ‘rapist’ and as she had been told all her life, that’s what ALL men are.

Laura had read and revised her work and was now confident that finally the word of God was politically correct. She was proud of her efforts, but something nagged at her, despite her long years of schooling in the doctrines of The Motherhood there were pangs of doubt, a nagging concern that something didn’t quite add up. The file finished uploading to the system and was ready to go. Her finger hovered for a second, then she clicked on ‘Submit to The Superior Mother’.

Rising to leave at the end of the day Laura accidentally bumped the hook that held her bag, which fell open on impact, spilling its contents onto the floor. On her knees to gather it all up she reached under her desk and retrieved her hand cream and wedged under the leg of her desk found a curious object that she barely recognised; an ordinary ball point pen. But it was more than that. Laura all at once saw it as an anachronism, a curiosity, a phallic symbol of The Patriarchy, and a banned object that she should have instantly destroyed. But she also recognised it as an instrument of communication too precious to snap and crush beneath her heel. After a nervous glance over her shoulder she resolved to insert it into her purse and never speak of it to anyone.

The Superior Mother was late, and without their Chair the Committee for Radical Tokenism could not begin their vital world-improving work. While they waited Verity worked on shaping her nails, Fleur absentmindedly chewed on her hair, Destinee scrolled through her emails, Brielynnaeja stared out the window and Loretta blew her nose. With the Superior Mother still absent Verity polished her nails, Fleur used scissors to trim her split ends, Destinee moved on to streaming cute cat videos, Brielynnaeja stared out the window and Loretta ran her thumbnail through her chin stubble. Still the Superior Mother kept them waiting. Verity rubbed moisturiser into her hands, Fleur scrunchied her hair up into a bun, Destinee laughed at clumsy kittens, Brielynnaeja stared out the window and Loretta scratched her testicles.

At length The Superior Mother arrived and took her place in the high backed leather chair at the head of the table, her aura of authority augmented by the Pieta inspired floor to ceiling mural behind her. In it The Superior Mother was Madonna the Unraped, cradling the crucified Jesus in her arms as she looked scornfully down on the insignificant suffering of a man.

‘Let us begin with a prayer.’ She intoned, whereupon the rest of the committee stood and bowed their heads.

‘Adam, the First Defiler, was formed in mud’ she began.

‘Dirt from dirt, filth from filth.’ They responded.

‘Eve came from Adam’s rib’ The Superior Mother continued

‘Oh, righteous birth giving flesh’ the womben replied.

‘Hail Madonna the Unraped’

‘She guides and protects us’

‘Cursed be the seed’ she sneered.

‘Cursed be the seed’ they spat.

As they resumed their seats The Superior Mother cleared her throat and announced, ‘As we always do, let’s begin by celebrating our achievements…’

Fleur’s impeccable nails hovered over her keyboard ready to immortalise every word.

‘...we have made real and practical improvements to the lives of womben by changing the stop and go image at the crosswalk from the silhouette of a male to the silhouette of a womban and we have solved the problem of child marriage by banning wedding dress costumes for little girls.’

There was a self congratulatory smattering of applause.

The Superior Mother continued, ‘Womben’s oppression has been alleviated now that we have banned the words hard, firm, stiff, rigid, turgid and erect because they are an expression of aggressive partriarchal rape culture…’ Fluer’s fingers flew expertly across her keyboard, capturing every word. ‘...Thanks to us no womban has to be confronted with a phallus of any kind, we have banned pens and pencils, and now that the Emasculation Camps are operating at full capacity the carrots are cubed, the cucumbers are sliced and the zucchini’s are mashed!’ The Superior Mother had forgotten to mention the banning of water bottles, but the earthenware bowls of drinking water on the table were seen by all committee members as a material reminder of their victory over oppression.

‘...Yet, I am certain that there is more work to do. Harvey Epstein is out there, he is writing his evil plan to bring on The Uprising and it is our responsibility to rub it out. We need to show him we won’t be intimidated and that our self-empowerment will not be denied. I’d like to hear from each of you about how you feel you’re being oppressed and what action we should take to alleviate your suffering.’

Fleur’s fingers hovered, waiting for someone to speak. For a long silent moment it seemed that, with so much already achieved, none of them could think of any way they were still suffering under The Patriarchy, until Verity spoke up tentatively, ‘Um, the tunnels’.

‘Interesting, please continue’ invited The Superior Mother.

‘Well, I was driving to work this morning and as I was getting closer to the entrance to the tunnel I realised how The Patriarchy had symbolically enslaved me.’

‘How so? Please share with us’ The Superior Mother entreated.

‘Well, as I hurtled towards the tunnel entrance I saw how intrusive it was, I was aware that I was about to thrust myself into it, it was so aggressive, as a womban I felt it was so...so…’ here she shuddered at the thought of saying the next word out loud, ‘…penetrative’.

Wanting to be noticed as the first to agree Destinee jumped straight in. ‘As an Asian womban I agree, something needs to be done.’

Fluer stopped typing for a second, ‘As an indigenous lesbian womban I demand action!’

Brielynnaeja looked out the window.

Opening up the room to inclusive decision-making The Superior Mother said, ‘So, what action should we take?’

‘Close the tunnels’ demanded Verity.

‘Yes!’ Enthused Fleur, ‘smash The Patriarchy!’.

‘Hold on’ said Loretta, ‘entering the tunnels might be yet another way that The Patriarchy oppresses women like us, but exiting the tunnels is symbolic of the gestational life-giving power of womben, and as an African-American trans womban I think that should be celebrated.’

‘Loretta is absolutely right!’ Declared Fleur, ‘As an indigenous lesbian womban I demand action!’

Destinee had a thought, and shouted ‘keys!’ before she could stop herself.

Loretta was quick to catch on. ‘Yes, you’re right, by thrusting keys into locks we are all complicit in our own oppression.’

‘Ban all keys!’ Demanded Verity.

Brielynnaeja looked out the window.

‘So, to sum up’ said The Superior Mother, ‘the consensus seems to be that keys must be banned to end our complicity in our oppression, and we should be able to exit the tunnels as a celebration of femininity but entering them should be banned to oppose the continuing oppression of womben by Harvey Epstein and The Patriarchy. I so move. All those in agreement raise your hand.’

Every hand shot into the air, except one.

‘Brielynnaeja?’

‘Sorry, what?’

‘Your thoughts?’

‘Oh, um, well, as a low socioeconomic, left-handed, Afro-Asian Hispanic-Native American redheaded lesbian muslim womban who is differently abled, I think it’s going to rain.’

Verity recorded the motion passed unanimously.

Room O was a bare concrete cube with a floor that sloped to a drain in one corner, with a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling directly above a stainless steel chair. Rapist 6079 had been strapped to it long before The Superior Mother entered.

‘You have been charged and convicted of rape.’ She announced.

‘When?’ replied Rapist 6079, defiantly.

‘When you were born, we’ve only just gotten around to formalising your Genderguilt.’

‘No, I mean, when am I supposed to have raped someone?’

“Irrelevant.’

‘WHAT?’

‘I said irrelevant.’

Rapist 6079 protested, “How can it be irrelevant? Either I’ve done it or I haven’t, and I have not raped anyone. It’s a lie!’

The Superior Mother persisted, ‘Give a boy a bike and he will want to ride it, give a man a gun and he will want to shoot it. You have a penis so of course you want to use it; you want to use it to penetrate a woman, which is an act of violence…’ a reverential mist seemed to wash over her eyes as she quoted the holy texts verbatim ‘...as the prophetess Marylin French teaches us “All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, in an act of violence perpetrated against womben”, therefore you are a rapist.’

The words ‘But it’s not my fault!’ burst out of Rapist 6079. ‘I can’t help being born male. And anyway, my wife came to me, she said she wanted another baby!’

‘Of course she did, but you’re victim blaming.’ The Superior Mother sighed as though she’d heard it all before.

Rapist 6079’s eyes widened, he thought for a second he might have caught her in a logical trap.

‘So you agree it was consensual?’ He ventured.

‘Of course’

‘So how can it possibly be rape?’

The Superior Mother wasn’t phased for a second.

‘The prophetess Shiela Jeffrys teaches us that “when a woman reaches climax with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticising her own oppression.” Your wife is the victim of the power imbalance in our society perpetuated by The Patriarchy. She was simply afraid of you and was acting in the submissive man-pleasing way she believed society expected women to behave. She did it out of fear, which is a kind of coercion, therefore consent was not given, therefore it is rape.’

Rapist 6079’s expression was pure scorn. ‘What? So no woman has any autonomy? No desires or intentions? Women are incapable of making a decision for themselves? They’re all just victims and nothing more?’

‘Can you hear yourself?’ The Superior Mother scoffed, ‘Womben being incapable of making a decision for themselves is the most misogynistic thing I have ever heard, are you even aware of how casually you belittle and diminish women? Your blatant, shameless misogyny is why we need to smash The Patriarchy.’ Once more the mist shrouded her eyes. ‘Like the prophetess Marylin French tells us, ‘As long as some men use physical force to subjugate females, all men need not. The knowledge that some men do suffices to threaten all women”’.

‘Rubbish.’ replied Rapist 6079, ‘That makes no sense. It’s like saying if a few black people hurt a few white people then all white people should be afraid of all black people.’

The Superior Mother gasped in horror. ‘Your racism disgusts me.’ She said, pointing an accusatory finger. ‘It’s bad enough that you make black people out to be criminals but then you blame them for the prejudice of white people.’

Rapist 6079’s jaw dropped. ‘You’ve missed the point. It was an analogy. I’m not racist.’

Her face turning scarlet with rage she spat, ‘Said every racist ever. This is just another example of your white male privilege. You’re so blinded by your power that you can’t see the suffering you cause others.’

Rapist 6079 prodded the air with his nose to gesture towards the ropes around his wrists. ‘What power? I’m tied to a chair!’

The superior Mother rolled her eyes, ‘So now you play the victim card? Have you no shame? You want sympathy? I have no sympathy for rapists.’ The reverential mist rolled across her eyes once more. ‘As the prophetess Marylin French reminds us, “all men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes”’.

‘That’s insane.’ He retorted, ‘You’ve just changed the definition of the crime, one minute it’s an act of physical penetration, the next it’s some abstract thing called a ‘code’. So, which is it?’

‘You’re just trying to muddy the waters by playing with definitions’ she scoffed. ‘You’re looking for wriggle room so you can dodge responsibility for the pain you have inflicted on your victims. It’s in your nature, the Prophetess Rebecca West instructs us that ‘Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.’ And the Prophetess Barbara Jordan is absolutely right when she said ‘I believe that women have the capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have. He is just incapable of it.” You are the perfect example.’

Finally losing his patience Rapist 6079 simply told her to ‘Shut up!’

‘Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? That’s the ultimate goal, to silence women, to keep us silent and subservient.’

‘Not at all, you can talk all you want, just stop telling lies and talking nonsense.’

‘I do NOT need your permission. I will say what I want when I want in defiance of your assumed patriarchal power.’

‘Don’t tell fucking lies!’

‘STOP trying to control me!’

Rapist 6079 finally lost his temper ‘You’re a monster! YOU are the only criminal here, and when The Uprising happens you should be put against the wall and shot!’

The Superior Mother spread out her fingers to use her hands as fans against the tears she was squeezing out of her eyes. ‘I...I can’t be around you…’ she said, hyperventilating, ‘...your aggression is just, really, really confronting, you just have to solve problems with violence don’t you. This is not OK. I shouldn’t have to put up with your toxic masculinity.’

Her face in her hands she fell to her knees and broke down into sobs. Cut to the quick by the sight of a woman in tears his emotions softened, and were he not tied to the chair he would have reached out with a gentle hand.

‘I’m sorry’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to…I’m really sorry. OK, I take it back.’

She stopped sobbing, and looked at him victoriously.

Immediately he realised his folly. He had been trying to reason with her. He had made the mistake of doing her the courtesy of treating her like an intellectual being capable of comprehending a sensible argument and acknowledging its veracity, and it had been futile. He had no way of determining whether or not she was indeed intellectually capable, he was only sure that she had no intention of participating in that way. The point had been to break him, by any means necessary. He never had any chance of successfully defending himself. This was her job. This is what she did all day every day, and she had perfected her Womanstanding. There was nothing he could say that she hadn’t heard before. No argument he could present that she hadn’t anticipated and could therefore dodge, deflect, diminish and dismiss. He cursed himself for having forgotten the three tenets of The Motherhood that greeted him every time he looked out his window. ‘Men are wrong’, ‘Logic is optional’ and ‘Tears equal victory’.

‘The truth should be obvious to you now. Claiming you’re not a rapist is like saying two plus two equals four.’ She stated blandly.

Confused, Rapist 6079 replied, ‘Two plus two does equal four.’

‘Not when you say it.’

He just looked at her, dumbfounded. Defeated.

‘You talk about The Uprising as though it is a certainty, but it is a hopeless fantasy. If you want an image of the future it is boots, a cute knee high suede pair with those darling little tassels, stomping on your testicles forever, Mkay.’

She promptly strutted out of the room, leaving him alone under the hot light of the single naked bulb.

The image of The Superior Mother as Madonna The Unraped had leapt off the wall and onto the cover of The Motherhood-approved version of The Bible; and the members of The Committee for Radical Tokenism were to be the first to get a copy. As a special kind of recognition The Superior Mother promoted Laura to the Committee, with her first act to be a presentation the fruits of her labours. But they had to wait. The Superior Mother was tardy as usual but Laura was so late that she missed the prayer, eventually bustling into the room carrying her box of books saying, ‘sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry, sorry…’ over and over until she found room on the table for the box and managed to take a breath. ‘I would have been here earlier’ she explained, ‘but I had to take the long way around. Some idiot put up signs saying ‘exit only’ across the entrance to the tunnels, I mean, how stupid is that? How are you supposed to exit if you’re not allowed to enter?’

There was a collective gasp of horror.

The Superior Mother’s eyes darkened. ‘Sit down’ she commanded.

Laura looked down at the box of books she had been struggling with all morning. ‘But I thought you wanted me to…’

‘We’ll deal with that at the end, IF we have time.’

Laura took the hint, and sat.

Taking a copy from the box and standing before the Pieta mural The Superior Mother paused for gravitas and solemnity. ‘Isaiah 14:21’ she began, lifting her chin as though she was projecting her voice to the back of the congregation, ‘Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise’. Then, as she slowly and silently closed the book, she added, ‘Fellow committee members, the prophetess Sally Miller Gearhart instructs us ‘that the proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.’ It is time we bite the bullet and confront the fact that there are still too many men, and while men still exist you can be certain that they are out there quietly plotting The Uprising’.

Desperate to be the first to agree Destinee jumped in. ‘I agree, something is stirring, I can feel it.’

‘What do you mean?’ Asked Verity.

‘It’s just an impression, it feels like somewhere unseen there’s a growing tension that will need to be released one way or another.’

‘I haven’t felt anything’ confessed Fleur.

‘I’m not surprised’ said The Superior Mother, ‘They’re cunning, these Mongrels, it could be happening out of sight.’

‘You mean, behind our backs?’

‘Anywhere’ The Superior Mother confirmed.

‘Oh dear’ Fleur worried, ‘it’s never good to have an uprising from behind.’

‘Agreed’ said The Superior Mother, ‘I don’t understand why they have to sneak around. They have no courage or conviction. If they have to rise up, why can’t they do it publicly, proudly?’

‘You’re so right, Superior Mother’ Fleur confirmed. ‘If they had any self respect they would rise up right under our noses, that way we could grasp the problem with both hands and deal with it quickly.’

‘Exactly’ said The Superior Mother, ‘If there has to be an uprising let’s make sure it doesn’t last very long. Which brings me to my point. What do we do with the men? Attrition doesn’t seem to be enough to keep their numbers down. We starve them and we work them to death but they’re just not dying fast enough, and to make things worse half the babies born through the IVF program are male.’ The Superior Mother threw up her hands in faux exasperation. ‘But Destinee and I have come up with a humble suggestion I think you’ll like. Destinee…’

It was the invitation to speak that Destinee had been waiting for her whole life. Like a teacher’s pet she straightened her back and beamed as she spoke.

‘Well, the idea came to me in the supermarket. I saw all those sliced, diced and mashed vegetables and thought about how convenient it is for cooking, and I realised that all we needed was a cookbook, so I wrote one. We’ve got slow cooked shanks in red wine jus, sautéed back straps, ribs in spicy Texas BBQ sauce and, of course, rump streak.’

Laura couldn’t decide if clarification would increase or diminish her sense of horror, but she had to be sure of what she was hearing. ‘Sorry, are you suggesting we eat them?’

‘Only the protorapists, the adult ones are way past their prime. But it’s not just about food. I’ve got plans for a whole range of leather products from clutches to handbags to shoes and lampshades. I call it The Final Culinary Solution’ she announced.

Destinee beamed anew as the committee showed their support through rapturous applause. Verity was particularly interested, ‘I love the idea of the shoes, but have you thought about gloves?’ She suggested.

Laura couldn’t bear to wait for the answer. All applause ended when she shouted ‘You people are sick!’

Agast, Destinee turned to The Superior Mother for support, who growled, ‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit swift in your judgement, Laura?’

‘Yeah, Laura’, said the emboldened Destinee, ‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit swift?’

‘No’ replied Laura, ‘no, no, no, just...fucking...NO.’ Her comments were not just a rejection of Destinee’s plans but of the whole ideology of The Motherhood, and The Superior Mother took it as such.

‘Be very careful’, she warned menacingly, ‘If you go too far there can be no coming back.’

‘I don’t care, this is just wrong.’

‘Laura, you are the straight, white, able-bodied, cis-gendered diversity hire, be quiet.’

‘No, somebody has to stop this nonsense. Don’t you understand? You’ve become monsters, and you’ve done it in my name. It has to stop, now’. She reached into her handbag, pulled out the pen, and waved it from side to side like a sword in broad sweeping slashes.

Fleur immediately stopped typing and froze over her keyboard, Destinee cowered behind The Superior Mother’s chair, Verity crawled under the table, Loretta hid her face in her oddly large hands and Brielynnaeja looked out the window.

The Superior Mother screamed, ‘To the safe space!’ and bolted out of the room, leading the retreat from the front.

Laura followed them down the hall to a janitor’s broom closet.

‘She’s found us!’ Howled Verity.

‘Destinee, lock the door!’ Demanded Fleur.

‘I can’t, there’s no key’ she sobbed in reply.

Laura realised that as soon as she left The Superior Mother would simply walk out the door and escape. To prevent this she lay the pen down in the doorway so that it pointed aggressively into the room and left them there, huddled on the floor, whimpering and shivering among the buckets and mops.

In the basement of the middle dome was the Records Department, which held all the books by female authors that Laura had rescued in her time as an Incinerator, and tucked away in an adjacent mechanical workshop was her P.E.N.I.S, old and neglected. Looking at the rust in the gears she feared it may never work again, but after the vigorous application of a little lubricant it was good to go.

One floor below was a vast warehouse filled with the background files on every Mongrel who had been through Defeat Towers. They were so numerous that at first she thought her plan would be impossible to complete, but she quickly realised so many of them were labelled ‘deceased’ that what remained was easily transportable in the back of a single truck. By sunrise the floor of the Workhouse was filled with boxes.

At dawn, yawning and shuffling, the Mongrels filed out of the stairwell to find a box standing before their assigned machine, and ripped into them without hesitation.

Trying to restore their authority the guards screeched insults and cracked their whips, but a single burst from the flamethrower mounted on the left arm of Laura’s P.E.N.I.S was enough to make her point. The guards backed down.

Rapist 5047 was the first to open his records. ‘Hey, I’m Spartacus!’ He declared.

Next to him Rapist 3094 said, ‘I’m Spartacus’ and showed his neighbour the document to prove it.

‘No kidding’ came the amazed reply, ‘we have the same name, how weird is that?’

A cheer erupted as each man made his name aloud. Rapist 8028 was rapturous to find out he was really Victor. Rapist 2903 was ecstatic to declare he was really Maximillion. Rapist 5402 was a little disappointed that his real name was Brian. Rapist 6079 was more sanguine when he realised he had lived his whole life not knowing his real name was Winston. Finally, when all had been revealed, there was a silence filled with palpable anger directed at the guards.

‘Open the door’ demanded Maximillion, pointing at the roller door leading to the loading dock.

‘Let us out’ added Caesaro.

Fearful and defensive the guards retreated into their corners. One of them was brave enough to speak up. ‘I can’t’ she confessed, ‘The door is locked and there’s no key, they were banned by The Motherhood.’ Laura cut the Gordian Knot by ripping the door off the wall, and watched proudly as the men strode out into the dawn-lit street.

Laura would have loved to join in their celebrations, but her coup wasn’t yet complete. She wasn’t sure how far she was willing to take it; she didn’t see herself as a killer and half hoped that when confronted with The Uprising The Superior Mother would abdicate and go quietly to jail. But it was not to be. When Laura stepped into the doorway of the janitor’s closet The Superior Mother went on the offensive.

Referencing one of her own edicts she shouted, ‘You can’t bring a P.E.N.I.S in here, they’re banned!’

The instant Loretta let out a sob The Superior Mother realised her mistake.

‘I meant that penis’ she said defensively, pointing to Laura’s suit, ‘not your penis.’

Loretta sobbed again.

Fleur shook her head, ‘Hey, that’s not ok.’

Keen to be the first one to agree Destinee jumped in, ‘yeah, that’s not okay. Loretta is a womban like the rest of us.’

Unaccustomed to being contradicted The Superior Mother fell into a fluster, and spoke when she shouldn’t have, ‘Oh really? What’s in her undies?’

‘Irrelevant’ responded Verity.

‘How can it be irrelevant?’ The Superior Mother asked, pointing aggressively and incredulously at Loretta’s crotch. ‘There’s either a dick under that dress or there isn’t!’

Loretta’s sobs turned into a wail which only seemed to fuel The Superior Mother’s fury. ‘Oh, do shut up Norman’ she shouted.

Fleur shouted back, ‘How dare you deadname her!’

Keen to be the first to be seen to agree Destinee added her own raised voice, ‘yeah, you transphobe!’

‘I’m not a transphobe’ protested The Superior Mother.

‘Said, like, every transphobe ever’ declared Fleur.

‘Norman is a man in a dress. That’s it. I’m just calling a spade a spade.’ They would prove to be very poorly chosen words.

‘Oh-Em-Gee’ said Verity, ‘now you’re having a go at the colour of her skin. Your racism disgusts me.’

‘It’s just an expression’ The Superior Mother explained, ‘what’s wrong with calling a thing what it really is?’

‘Oh, so she’s a ‘thing’ now? Yes, well, I suppose a racist transphobe like you would be incapable of even seeing her as a real person.’

‘Not a thing, a man, one we should have locked up long ago.’

Fleur gasped in horror. ‘She wants to lock up womben!’

‘Oh, shut up!’ The Superior Mother spat.

Verity gasped in horror. ‘She wants to silence womben!’

For once Destinee knew exactly what to say. ‘She’s a gendertraitor in collaboration with Harvey Epstein and The Patriarchy trying to undermine The Motherhood, get her!’

Laura stood in the doorway and watched as they ripped at The Superior Mother’s hair, pulling away wet chunks of scalp before gouging out her eyes. They thrust their fingers in behind her cheeks and ripped them away from her gums until her ears met amongst ripples of flesh at the back of her head. Opening her stomach they pulled at her guts and flung her organs against the wall. They pulled her skin over shoulders, down her back, and stripped her body all the way to her feet, then stomped on her bones until they turned to powder. The more they cut, ripped and tore the more virtuous they felt. The more they sliced, pulled and stomped the more they demonstrated their virtue to each other. In a matter of seconds The Superior Mother was dead. Skinned. Eviscerated. Vapourised.

Cancelled.

Laura couldn’t watch. Searching the rest of the floor she found Brielynnaeja sitting alone in the boardroom looking out the window at a street full of men. Hearing Laura enter Brielynnaeja turned and said, ‘I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but as a low socioeconomic, left-handed, Afro-Asian Hispanic-Native American redheaded lesbian muslim womban who is differently abled I think the men are revolting.’ They were not. They were simply joyous that they had lived to see a world in which a man actually had to do something wrong before he could be called guilty.

The End.