No, it’s #notallmen. But sometimes we should pretend it is. — N.B. This article mentions sexual violence frequently enough that I thought I should give readers a heads-up. There are no graphic descriptions of violence, but some men do horrible things and I refer to them (as tangentially as possible) at various points. There’s nothing more frustrating as a writer than…

Equity is a poor imitation of equality. — 183 years ago, Edward Bulwer-Lytton observed that “the pen is mightier than the sword". And the proof of this is that in the three years since Ibram X Kendi published “How To Be An Antiracist”, millions of people have become genuinely uncomfortable saying they’re not racist. Instead, the options have…

Let’s talk about race & IQ. — In 1971, Michael Cole, and a team of his fellow psychologists, travelled to West Africa to settle a question about race and intelligence. They gave members of the Kpelle tribe various items (food, tools, cooking utensils, clothing) and asked them to sort them into categories. They then compared the results…

The days of ”no debate” are at an end. — I wasn’t planning to watch Matt Walsh’s documentary, What is A Woman. Mainly because, and I can’t stress this enough, Matt Walsh is a creep. Matt Walsh thinks the best solution if a father impregnates his 12-year-old daughter, is to force her to keep the baby (this is especially disturbing…

When does acceptance become a bad idea? — I wasn’t really listening to Cecilia’s interview until she mentioned the giant spider. It has yellow skin, a large, leathery body, and black legs. When it moves, its joints make a creaking noise that sounds like children laughing. Cecilia understands that the spider, one of her most frequent hallucinations, isn’t…

Nobody ever said thinking was easy. — In January 2020, two months before the COVID pandemic began ruining our lives in earnest, Republican Senator, Tom Cotton, questioned the Chinese government’s claims that it originated in a seafood market. Citing a Lancet study, Cotton claimed that fourteen cases, including the person believed to be “patient zero,” had no…

Welcome to the divided states. — Bo Hooper didn’t realise she had a problem until she started blacking out. Her friends started telling her about conversations she couldn’t remember. Classmates accused her of stealing from them or attacking them. …

Love is blind, but hatred isn’t. — You probably haven’t seen footage of the mass shooting that took place in Buffalo two weeks ago. Honestly, I’m not sure why I’ve seen it. Maybe I wanted to understand why Peyton Gendron, the 18-year-old who carried out the shooting, would do something so unforgivable. Maybe I hoped to catch…

Sometimes comedy gets too real. — Well, here we are again. Another Netflix comedy special, another hour of jokes about Christianity, Islam, AIDS, obesity, Chinese people, Tourettes, the Holocaust, dwarves, Eskimos, and punching disabled toddlers, and another slew of articles focused exclusively on transphobia. Whether it’s Dave Chappelle, Bill Maher, or most recently, Rick Gervais’ Supernature…