A Federal Erection Ban

On Friday morning, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — effectively overturning the constitutional right that has allowed women to have reproductive rights and bodily autonomy for nearly fifty years. The message from the high court could not be any plainer: women have no agency over their bodies. Even though this decision openly contradicts any number of civil rights laws that have been designed — in theory, at least — to protect women from discrimination, the Supreme Court Justices have decided that past precedents were not settled, despite claiming so during their confirmation hearings.

But if women are not guaranteed a constitutional right to do what they want with their bodies, then the time has come to level the playing field and deny men any and all constitutional rights too. It seems only fair. And it neatly aligns with some recent personal developments that I feel an overwhelming need to shove down your unenlightened throats.

Before I introduce my ideas, I should note that, after many years of being an atheist, I have finally found religion. The Church of Gelding may be a little-practiced faith, but it is, as far as I’m concerned, the only one that matters. It is far more important than all strains of Christianity. Last week, I cut off my own penis with a hacksaw to find a new life of inner peace. There was a bloody mess in my apartment, but the holy ritual of severing my member has secured my position in the afterlife. In addition, my singing range on the high notes has dramatically improved. The Church of Gelding’s priests and archdioceses — operating out of a storage facility in Gatlinburg, Tennessee as we raise funds to build a proper church so that we may properly and hygienically castrate all members of our loyal congregation — have reviewed this essay. They have declared me a visionary for a faith that will soon be sweeping the nation. It’s all part of the new theocracy you haven’t yet heard about.

I propose a national ban on erections at the federal level. And if we’re fated to pull the RU-486 abortion poll from pharmacies, then there also needs to be an FDA ban on Viagra. After all, isn’t it unnatural for older men to have an artificially created erection? Since the pro-lifers insist that it’s “unnatural” for women to have abortions, then we need to ensure that all other unnatural male enhancements are also prohibited. Hair transplants, Botox, and, most importantly, septuagenarian men who foolishly believe that they are still twenty-five years old and who have cultivated the mistaken impression that they have the God-given right to fuck any twentysomething into the middle of next week. This rampant immorality must end today!

Let us establish a Federal Erection Bureau office in every city, giving every American male thirty days to undergo a surgical procedure that will block the corpora cavernosa — the twin chambers running along the length of the penis that are responsible for the bloodflow that causes the penis to grow. Those men who wish to have children with their partners can fill out a detailed 564 page questionnaire, submit this to the FEB (along with a credit report and a list of references), undergo a hearing supervised by a Propagation Consideration Panel, and, upon approval, have a temporary reversal of this surgical procedure. If they copulate with their partners without written consent, then let their treacherous corpses hang from the traffic lights as a warning for all men who do not abide by the new way.

If men were deprived of the testosterone that turns them into abusive and boneheaded idiots, then much of this behavior would stop. We would have fewer conflicts and wars. Women would not be bombarded with unsolicited dick pics. Because men would be too humiliated to photograph their shriveled and useless chorizos, thus finally understanding that the penis is a wildly overrated and fundamentally silly-looking anatomical appendage. I have learned this myself by finding God.

Men who insist on having erections — or who have erections in a speakeasy or through any underground network established to give men an illegal venue with which to have an erection — should be chemically castrated for the greater good. And the most egregious erection offenders should be castrated with a sharp axe. Imagine the diminished problems! Think of the great culture that America will create when more castratos enter opera halls and recording studios! You may not have been able to control yourself when you had a penis. But your new life (and your new voice) will set you on a new path!

If the five paleoconservatives on the Supreme Court seriously believe that women cannot be trusted to do what they deem right for their bodies, then it can be equally argued that men are just as incapable. Hitting any bar on a Saturday night will reveal quite swiftly that men are probably more incapable of not knowing how to control themselves in public. Men are especially clueless when it comes to reading a woman’s intentions, much less actually listening to what a woman has to say. Even when told “no” by a woman, this feeble and wildly overrated gender is hopped up on too much testosterone and has proven time and time again that it cannot comprehend a simple two-letter word.

Remove erections from the equation of life and we would see sexual harassment rates significantly drop. Unwanted advances and catcalls from men would disappear overnight. One source of an unwanted pregnancy would be nipped in the bud. And we would have far stabler families. Children who aren’t forced to live in poverty. And without their precious penises, men would at long last get in touch with their feelings and not be as afraid to cry.

So let the Republicans lead by example. Let Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh drop their pants and proffer their schlongs for castration. Let Justice Amy Coney Barrett be the one holding the knife and carving away at her colleagues’s dicks with the same gusto that she uses to hack away at the Constitution. Let every Republican who truly believes in life step forward and proudly announce that they will no longer be erect. After all, only the permanently wilted can grow a true garden.

Bill Kristol: An Enemy to Women, An Enemy to Human Rights

Yesterday, Bill Kristol — a vile and cowardly neoconservative opportunist who has deluded himself into believing that opposing Trump somehow makes him a more “reasonable” Republican — landed himself in rightful hot water when he tweeted for “civility.” Kristol, a repugnant man who has never known a day without a hot meal, rebuked protesters for protesting outside the homes of statesmen who stand in the way of autonomy, freedom, and a woman’s right to choose. Echoing the bullshit centrist line from Michelle Obama that has singlehandedly positioned Democrats into a wildly gullible and morally culpable party of eternal ineptitude, Kristol also urged protesters not to “intrude on people attending their houses of worship.”

Bill Kristol clearly does not have any significant understanding of human history. He also doesn’t seem to comprehend that his own wildly dangerous party is operating from a crazypants playbook created and practiced by vicious and duplicitous thugs who have openly flouted numerous judicial precedents that ostensibly upheld the liberties and agency of women and that now threaten to create a new form of slavery in which forced childbirth — even in cases of rape, incest, or when a baby that is fated to die — will become the cruel new norm.

In short, the unhinged assault on our democratic republic is very real — arguably one of the greatest perils to liberty in our lifetime — and it requires that we stop playing nice. “Civility” — or, at least, the bullshit bromides that Kristol cleaves to — hasn’t worked. The time has come to make the life of any atavistic scumbag who stands against women’s rights — and thus human rights — incredibly difficult — a living hell that will communicate in pellucid terms that the failure to respect a view that the majority of the American people support now — and even supported in the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade — is completely unacceptable in the 21st century.

Is this fool really so naive as to not know about the Haymarket affair? Hundreds bravely fought for workers rights. A bomb was thrown. And the anarchists who adopted an ostensibly “fringe” position were rounded up and falsely criminalized — including people who had not actually attended this 1886 protest in Chicago. One of the falsely accused defendants committed suicide.

Is this wildly irresponsible oaf unfamiliar with the civil rights movement? Also messy. Lamar Smith — a venerated World War I vet — shot in the streets of Brookhaven, Mississippi for urging Blacks to exercise their right to vote in 1955. Or how about Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965 — in which peaceful protesters were brutally attacked by lawmen in Selma, Alabama? Or Jonathan Daniels? Murdered by an unpaid deputy sheriff after picketing whites-only stores.

I could go on, but Google is free.

Did this nitwit truly deposit his fat complacent head into the blissful sands of clueless ignorance when Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves was interviewed by Jake Tapper — on Mother’s Day, no less — and said, with wanton sociopathic glee, that forcing women to carry pregnancies to term in any scenario was just peachy keen? Here are actual sentiments from a pro-lifer just yesterday: “You have no choice. Not your body, not your choice. Your body is mine and you’re having my baby.” If Kristol refuses to recognize the abhorrent tyranny here, the fight that any card-carrying humanist should not sit out, then he has no business opining in any form.

Weak mediocre men like Kristol are very much one of the reasons why we’re here once again, forced to fight even as we remain exhausted for a right that should have been codified decades ago. Pusillanimous fossils like Kristol not only cheapen the difficult choice that any woman faces with abortion, but they belittle the bravery of anyone who remains rigorously committed to human rights.

With all due respect, Bill Kristol, go fuck yourself. And please be sure to let me know your “place of worship” so that I can show up and say this to your face. You see, if there isn’t a safe place for women, then there really shouldn’t be a safe place for you.

How NPR “Covers” Our Obscene Dystopia

Last night, Politico leaked a draft opinion from the Supreme Court — the first time that any early ruling had ever escaped the sacrosanct chambers in the high court’s entire history — that called for the unthinkable: a complete and total overturn of Roe v. Wade (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey). One would think that such an astonishing calumny against women’s rights, the precedents upheld by all justices in the past, and the ostensibly noble practice of jurisprudence would be front-page news for every outlet. One would think that such a significant sign that patriarchal fascism can become a real possibility in the United States would take up every column-inch and every second of airtime. But don’t tell that to the gutless onanistic “minds” at NPR, who took to Facebook with a piece on the Met Gala! Because, as far as NPR is concerned, rich people and what they wear is real news. And women are merely ornamental animals to fuel the next several rounds of vacuous social media speculation. Never mind their rights. Never mind their lives. Never mind their agency. And never mind the fact that all that they bravely fought for in the last several decades is now being rolled back faster than the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket.

Let us be clear about why and how NPR is a dumpster fire. It is a radio organization run by toothless conformists with a long history of looking the other way while catering to an increasingly invented audience of “upper middle-class” listeners with oodles of spare time to devour every celebrity offering (when these privileged mouth breathers aren’t busy sucking up air) and, as any audio producer learns from the whisper circles of mailing lists and DMs, regularly in the habit of stifling and “correcting” any original or unique voice to suit its despicably vanilla and anodyne “coverage” of events, which challenges no one and reveals nothing.

It’s no surprise to see that this bullshit outlet — now a pathetic parody of itself — would rather prioritize an obscene display of vacuous spectacle and empty wealth over far more pressing issues such as the erosion of women’s rights, the rise of American authoritarianism, the growing disparity in income inequality, escalating international conflict, and political corruption — all of which are allocated mere snippets. In short, NPR is a fucking embarrassment to journalism and a significant part of the problem. It “serves” the public much as I participate in triathlons — which is to say not at all. These feckless dimwits lunge for the safe and sane. They never take chances. They never rock boats.

NPR’s superficiality is perhaps best represented by the smug and vapid talking heads on Pop Culture Happy Hour, who bray regularly about the most inconsequential offerings on television with a mildly snarky style that feels as antediluvian as the Tamagotchi. As of Tuesday afternoon, Pop Culture Happy Hour “star” Linda Holmes has said precisely fuck all about Roe v. Wade to her 139,000 followers on Twitter. You see, Linda Holmes is living a comfortable life and she’s eked out such a hollow and cozy existence that she’ll never take a real stand on anything. But she does have plenty to say about the Ozark finale, which nobody will give a shit about in twenty years. You see, for myopic mercenaries like Holmes, Ozark counts as real news! Apparently, Holmes’s biggest problem in life is breaking some superficial rule in which she continued to watch a show that she “did not think was actually good because I just wanted to know the ending.” Someone bust out the smelling salts and the fainting couch for poor beleaguered Linda, folks! Meanwhile, the life, liberty, and health of women have become significantly imperiled thanks to extremist justices who were anointed by an orange tyrant and his fawning sociopathic acolytes.

The reason why we have reached this barbaric nadir in our history is not just because highly gullible and treacherous dolts like Susan Collins actually believed (or, more likely, claimed to believe) that Brett Kavanaugh would honor Roe v. Wade, but because frivolous and completely useless lightweights like Holmes, who have never taken a real chance in their sad and miserable lives, continue to uphold the apolitical status quo. I can genuinely imagine Linda Holmes ratting out liberals as they’re sent to the concentration camps in a few years, not long after telling a reptilian autocrat, “Well, officer, she brought up politics at the dinner table!” By remaining silent about the Roe v. Wade overturn, Holmes — much like all NPR employees who say nothing — is among what Goldhagen called “willing executioners.” And these unprincipled cowards are as much of a menace to our culture as the people who take our hard-won rights away. For hell hath no fury like that of the uninvolved.

[5/9/2022 UPDATE: In fairness to Holmes, she did finally say something in a thread involving Danielle Kurtzleben on May 6th, 2022 — a good four days after the Supreme Court draft opinion was leaked. But she largely complained about how exhausting it was to say anything — as if anyone presently on the involved front lines isn’t exhausted! Exhaustion doesn’t mean that you stop fighting. And when human rights are on the line, you don’t show up four days late to the debate.]