I Like Solutions

As I stood playing computer games just now (which I do during/before breakfast most days; I just ate), my mind wandered off (as it often does) to the endless bullshit responses people give to statements about womyn's experience in patriarchy, or just facts about human male behavior. I've actually had a person disagree with me that males are more violent than females. Impossible to have a discussion with a person so removed from reality. And she had the nerve to ask me whether my opinion was informed by bias against men. Unbelievable. Person self-identified as female, but you never know online these days. Could have been a guy. Could have been another womon who, depressingly, furthers patriarchal bullshit. Yes, patriarchal bullshit, I'm not so eloquent as I could be right now.

These womyn who hold patriarchal beliefs, who side with men, who perpetuate male power (over females), they are a big reason I have no hope for human beings. There are worse things they do than post stupid opinions on the Internet; they live their opinions, their values. If not even womyn will side with womyn against patriarchy, what hope is there? It's just us, small group of hated feminists saying that hey, men deliberately have power over females and they are abusing it; this shit that is happening isn't accidental or just a fluke of human nature. It's male nature. That's why there are hardly ever any female rapists, serial killers, child molesters, war mongerers, school shooters, terrorists, etc. All the worst things a human can do are perpetrated by males. And they have a whole host of ways they specifically target females.

There is a centuries-old war going on between males and females, and males are and have been winning by far. We are suffering the worst casualties (cue some idiot saying that men have problems too). Men aren't the ones being sexually assaulted and harassed endlessly. All their big problems, like being sent off to war, imprisoned for stupid reasons, etc., are caused by other men, so they're not at all analogous to womyn's problems with patriarchy, which are largely problems with being the opposite sex.

So I was thinking about the stupid and irrelevant and sometimes hostile bullshit people respond to statements about reality under patriarchy. I made a comment about not wanting to live in an autistic community because it would be made up of mostly men, and I don't like being around men. And some asshole came at me with that crap about, I'm sorry about your bad experiences, but not all men. NOT ALL MEN. So tired of hearing that useless garbage. It doesn't matter that not all men, because there's still plenty of them, and there's no way to tell the good from the bad without putting yourself in harms way!

It's like saying to someone who lives in a dangerous neighborhood that she shouldn't be scared because not all the people in the neighborhood are violent. Well...that doesn't decrease the risk of violence, does it?

And on top of that, the majority of my distrust of men comes from my knowledge of what they've done to other womyn and girls, not what they've done to me. I actually haven't endured anything terrible. Pieces of shit just assume that people's opinions are based on personal experience. Christ I hate people. Endless disappointment. That's assuming the person wasn't just gaslighting me. There's ignorance and then there's gaslighting.

I was thinking about how much I like puzzles. I very much like to solve things. Even when I'm at my weakest, sickest, and worst cognitive state, I'm still trying to play some kind of puzzle, even if it's just the one where you line up balls by color, even if that's all the cognition I can manage. Puzzles are not just a form of intellectual stimulation, they're a way to distract myself from my medical problems. I think maybe that sheds some light on my repetitive thoughts: they're all about shit that cannot be solved. Stuff that's in the past or stuff that's too widespread and baked-in for me to solve myself (like patriarchy), stuff that requires other people to get their shit together.

But it doesn't look like people will get their shit together, and maybe that's why the thoughts keep coming back to me: the problems never get resolved. I can't let unsolved problems go. Can't count on men at all to end patriarchy; I'm talking about womyn mainly. Easiest way to end this shit is to drastically cut down on males. Stop allowing them to reach adulthood. Womyn have the power of life and death over males. You all keep birthing them. You keep adding to the pool of rapists and sexual abusers. How often to mothers of sons make the connection between the rampant sexual crimes and their offspring? Not nearly enough, obviously.

It would be so easy to end this. But it won't happen. And what's worse than living through it myself is thinking about the generations of girls to come, generations that will go through the same thing. Some of them will even grow up to be radical feminists, and have this same horrible realization that they can't even count on other womyn to do something about the shithole of violence and unnecessary suffering men have made of the world. That their mothers didn't teach them to distrust men. That hardly anyone ever talks openly, publicly about the myriad forms of subtle misogyny and sexual harassment. That the only things they've been taught to protect themselves (if anything) is to restrict their own freedom, to not go to certain places at certain times, to not wear certain things.

It's maddening. I still don't know how to live with it.

I tried calling my medical insurance yesterday and found out from the automated voice that the day was a holiday. I'm still not sure which holiday it was. Mother's Day? That's the only holiday I know of that's in May. Like I posted last time, I was going to inquire into a therapist. I was frustrated that I wasn't able to get that done, but now I'm ok with it. Maybe I won't seek a therapist after all. I hung up the phone and magically felt better after having some coffee. The whole fatigue/insomnia thing is really a huge part of my mood issues. I felt relatively good all day yesterday after that, and I feel ok today. The situation that I've been continually thinking about seems to be receding a bit from my consciousness, albeit very slowly.

I was finally able to deadlift again yesterday despite my back not being completely back to normal. It went well. Giving up deadlifts is difficult for me because it feels great to lift so much weight. They aren't necessary, and they're relatively dangerous, but I'm loathe to stop deadlifting.

Sitting on the floor on my backside is when I can feel the lower back pain the most. Actually, maybe that's the only time I feel pain; it seems like soreness the other times I feel anything. That's a small problem because on the floor is the only way I sit; I don't own any chairs, sofas, etc. I have a lawn chair on my patio that I don't use, and occasionally I sit on my weight bench to quickly do something I can't do standing, but, other than that, it's the floor for me. So I've been standing a lot more, using the computer at my standing desk.