​In 2006 I traveled from Mongolia (where I was serving in the Peace Corps) to China. I was traveling by train

​I had never been to China before and I was very excited. When the train stopped at the Mongolia/China border in the Chinese city of Erlian, the old white American expatriate who shared a car with me told me to stay seated. "They're changing the wheels," he said, "They're gonna lock all the doors to the car so no one enters China illegally from the train

​I looked out the window. The train was surrounded by soldiers. I remember thinking they looked so young, like children. None of the soldiers in their green military uniforms and dinner plate-like caps appeared older than 16. Still, they were soldiers. That was unmistakable

​Changing the wheels took hours. The air in the train car grew very stuffy. I realized suddenly that if there were a fire in the train car, we would be stuck. We'd burn alive.

​The air grew even more stifling. "This is awful," I said to my train companion, "I literally can't even breathe now. And they don't care at all!"

​"Oh yeah, it's cruel," he replied phlegmatically, "I've seen people literally faint, just fall down on the floor, when I make this trip."

​I left my compartment, hoping that walking would quell my panic. I pulled down on my already-lose shirt collar.. I noticed someone had cracked a window down the hallway. It was too small for anyone to climb through, but several passengers had lifted their toddlers to the open window, allowing the children to breathe more freely. 

​I went to the end of the train car and yanked at the door, even though I knew it would be futile. Looking through the window I saw a young soldier yawn sleepily. It was 1am at that point. He looked tired. He still stood at attention however, and he still had his gun.

​My experience in the train car was my first taste fascism. As a white American I had only known the concept of fascism rather abstractly. It was that totally-over-never-gonna-return government that my grandfather escaped from in the 1930s. It was your parents telling you that you couldn't watch Star Trek until you finished your math homework. That was fascism.

​I had never experienced what it was like to live under a government that never had to be held accountable to the people until I was locked in that train car in China. Mongolia is a Democracy. The US is a Democracy. China is not a democracy. And I learned a hard lesson about actually existing under fascism that day

​Fascism is not being able to breathe.

​Fascism is a boot on your neck. Fascism is George Floyd crying out "I can't breathe!" as a police officer murdered him.

​As I celebrate the 4th of July this week I still remember that moment almost twenty years ago when I thought I would suffocate in a train car. I still remember the slow walk of the train employee back to our car at 3am. He had been in no hurry to unlock the doors after the wheels were changed. I posted a selfie on my blog after reaching an internet cafe a week later. I am pale as a sheet and exhausted. Under the photo I typed "I look like a vampire. I hadn't slept well the other night."

​Now in 2024 we are facing (again) another crossroad between continued Democracy in our country. I see white progressive colleagues retweeting articles like Jared Golden's "Donald Trump is Going To Win The Election and Democracy Will Be Just Fine." I see people posting photos about how they are celebrating American freedom "under duress" because of Gaza or the lack of "Medicare for All."

​In the photos they are smiling. Their children are in their laps. And everyone is breathing just fine

I'll be real. I was scared to go to movies during the 90s. 

The 80s were rough for kids' movies, not going to lie. I still remember my mother escorting me out of the dark movie theater as I shivered and wept during Willow. Even now I'm kind of stunned that a KIDS' MOVIE starts off with a woman getting dismembered by wolves as she desperately throws a newborn baby in a basket into the river, hoping the baby would be saved. How messed up is that? 

​

I couldn't muster up the courage to go back to the theater again until the 90s. And that was another kettle of fish. If you mention Merchant Ivory to me even now I feel my stomach tighten in reflexive anxiety. You could be sitting in a theater next to your parents watching some safely boring costume drama and then BOOM! SEX SCENE! Helena Bonham Carter with tits out! And you just have to sit there next to your parents and ENDURE IT! I still have trauma from The Wings of the Dove. 

As the 90s proceeded and I moved from elementary school to middle school a different type of trigger developed. Books like Bridget Jones' Diary came out where women like Bridget Jones talked about how fat they were at 140 pounds. Movies like The Truth About Cats and Dogs were released which told women that if they were dark haired and ten pounds heavier than Uma Thurman, they were *possibly* still deserving of love. That is, of course, provided that they looked like Janeane Garofalo. 

Now please remember that if you are a teenage girl weighing 180 pounds and you are constantly exposed to media talking about how women are fat at 140 pounds and Janeane Garofalo is the "fat friend" in all the rom coms, you are bound to come out of the 90s with some issues. 

Even now on social media, any mention of Jeneane Garofalo will show a bunch of millennial women trauma-bonding in the comments about how badly the message of The Truth About Cats and Dogs backfired among awkward chubby teen girls. 

It was only through Camryn Manheim, a woman who was very ahead of her time when it came to fat acceptance, that there was finally some real talk about unreal body expectations among women in the media. Manheim published her memoir Wake Up, I'm Fat! in 1999 and in it she discussed auditioning for roles as a young fat actress. 

I remember I once read a script, and the description of the character was, "An extremely obese woman, about 200 pounds, walks in." Now wait a second, an extremely obese woman, about 200 pounds . . . ?! Had I had an agent, I would have told them, I refuse to audition. But since I didn’t have an agent, I was grateful for every audition I got. So I swallowed my pride and I went to do some really great fat acting.
​
At the audition, I was told I wasn’t fat enough, to which I responded, I weigh a hell of a lot more than 200 pounds. You might want to reconsider the description of the character. 

I absolutely believe Manheim's story. In a world where Bridget Jones was considered "fat" at 140 pounds it was easy to see how casting directors considered 200 pound women as obese monstrosities that never leave the couch and end up with their skin welded into the upholstery.

Yes folks, that was the world of the 90s. And to this day I have PTSD about movies from the 90s. But hey, all stories have a happy ending. I love Helena Bonham Carter now, especially after she got married, had kids, and became middle-aged. I just rewatched her in Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp. Now don't get me wrong, Sweeney Todd is rated R like The Wings of the Dove, but only for massive amounts of gushing blood. Nobody gets naked. Which is a relief! 

Straight women are on strike.

If you’re a straight liberal woman, you probably have had a lot of male allies in your mentions the last couple of weeks saying “Women need to go on a sex strike until ‘Roe’ is restored!”

Here’s the thing though. Straight women have already been on sex strike for a few years now. In fact, most straight women seem to be on a general relationship-with-men strike since at least 2017.

So why exactly?

Let’s look at the stats. Marriage rates in America suddenly dropped in 2017–2018 after being stable for decades.

US marriages were stable during the Great Recession in 2008. US marriages were stable after 9/11. US marriages had been stable during all sorts of national crisis.

Yet, in 2017–2018, marriages declined rapidly.
​
Gee, I wonder why? What happened in 2016–2017–2018 to make people lose faith in marriages?

First of all, let’s look at the 2016 US presidential election. The 2016 Trump-Clinton contest was a referendum on male rage towards women. Trump, an accused sexual predator who was caught confessing to SA on tape, treated women in the most foul way imaginable. Trump channeled male rage against women effectively. He whipped up his male supporters against Hillary Clinton, who was his opponent. Hillary Clinton was the first female presidential candidate nominated by a major party in the US. Trump was able to boost male rage so well that Trump defied all odds and win the 2016 election.

Make no mistake. Trump would not have won the 2016 election if Hillary Clinton had been a man. The 2020 election proved that. Biden, if anything, had MORE baggage than Clinton. He was old, he was gaffe-prone, his son had a drug history…. but Biden won in 2020. Hillary Clinton lost in 2016.

Trump won in 2016 because of men. Pew Research breaks it down pretty well. More women voted for Clinton in 2016 than Romney in 2012. Romney lost of course, but so did Clinton. What was the difference?

The difference was men.

Men voted for Obama in 2012. Obama won.

Men voted for Trump in 2016. Trump won.

Despite Clinton making some (expected) inroads with women, Trump won because the vast majority of male voters wanted Trump. Trump won men by 11 points.

It was a stunning upset.

​I remember women everywhere, even women who hadn’t voted (don’t get me started THERE! But I digress) were horrified that Trump had won.

After the 2016 election American women turned to men and said “My God, you really do hate us, don’t you?”
​

In straight culture, men and women basically have stuck together throughout all crises. There have been world wars, 9/11, recessions and depressions but we have had each other’s backs. I don’ think straight women ever REALLY lost faith in men. Not really.

Not until the 2016 election.

Marriages dived in the succeeding years, starting in 2017. Marriages are still plummeting to this day, in 2022.
Men now, in 2022, are more likely to be single than women. According to Pew Research, a record number of men are single and either living with a parent or simply living alone.

Time Magazine wrote an article on the “30-year decrease in the rate of coupling.” (It’s not just marriage, it’s “coupling” in general).

Several sociologists are interviewed about why men are more likely to be single than women now, even though studies show that men are more likely to be looking for partners than women. They discuss the usual factors like how women are graduating from college at higher rates so they have higher salaries while men are unable to attain enough financial stability to get married. Women having higher education and salaries than men in the 21st century has been mentioned before, but that explanation seems a bit weak. Women college graduates have outnumbered male college graduates since 1990. Yet marriages still continued through the nineties and the early 21st century.

So why have marriages suddenly gone down now? Who should we blame for that?

Frankly, I’m still pointing the finger at the 2016 election. And it looks like at least a couple of sociologists are slowly moving in that direction as well, according to Time Magazine.
​
​University of Virginia sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox agrees: “You get women who are relatively liberal, having gone to college, and men who are relatively conservative, still living in a working class world, and that can create a kind of political and cultural divide that makes it harder for people to connect romantically as well.”

It’s not unusual for men and women with differing political views to stay in happy marriages. Before 2016 however, people who disagreed about politics in the US just disagreed. That was it.
​
​Now, in today’s political environment, conservative men have become violent. Women are right to be hesitant before they involve themselves romantically with conservative men.

Men being single is bad news.

For men. 

Any medical statistician can tell you that single men have shorter lifespans. Married men who have diabetes, heart disease or even cancer have better rates of survival than single or divorced men. Men who live alone have higher markers for inflammation and heart disease than married men (or single women).
So yeah, if you think women should protest the overturning of “Roe” by going on a sex strike…. don’t worry. It’s already happening and apparently has been happening since 2016. We women have already lost all faith in men.
​
But will making men feel increasingly lonely change anything? Or will men just get more bitter? Who knows?
Frankly though, if straight men want women to have more faith in them as romantic partners…. men have to start behaving better. Period.

Bernard Hill died a few days ago. And man, that just gutted me.

​For those who do not know Bernard Hill, he was a British actor who is most famous for playing King Theoden in The Lord of the Rings and the captain of the Titanic in the movie Titanic. 

King Theoden is certainly his most beloved character. After news of Hill's passing hit the interwebs, people everywhere posted scenes of King Theoden marshalling his small, demoralized kingdom to fight (and die) against the vast legions of Mordor. "Spears shall be shaken! Spears shall be splintered! A sword day, a red day, and the sun rises!" 

It's an amazing scene. Really gets the blood pumping.

​The Lord of the Rings, like all good movies, continues to pop up in the national conversation over the last 20 years. The timelessness of themes like duty, friendship, honor, patriotism and sacrifice for a greater good resonate. The story acted as a balm when America recovered from 9/11. The dialogue between Frodo and Gandalf (taken word-for-word from Tolkien's original book) where Frodo laments the horrors he is witnessing circulated widely during the pandemic of 2020. 
​

Nowadays people are mulling over the crisis in masculinity. Men have been judged so poisonous and dangerous that women online have overwhelmingly said that if faced with a man or a bear in the forest, women would rather confront the bear. The consensus online is that men are more likely to be harmful towards women than bears. 

The "Man vs. Bear" debate is a bit tongue-in-cheek. Speaking as someone who hikes a great deal and has encountered both men and bears in the woods, I prefer men. Bears don't get scared if you threaten to call 911. Also, truth be told, most male hikers I meet usually just say "good morning" while the one bear I encountered literally growled at me. 

Of course the debate of Man v. Bear isn't about the literal woods but the wider social tilt towards toxicity when it comes to desirable masculine traits. The 2020s have seen the rise of "Redpill" podcasters, young men who purposely invite young women onto their podcasts in order to publicly humiliate the women. Andrew Tate, an influencer who celebrates beating, controlling and assaulting women, has a cult-like following among his male audience. Harrison Butker, an NFL quarterback and commencement speaker at Benedictine College, mocked the female graduates listening to him. He told the women that they had been victims of "the most diabolical lies" and that women should refrain from being proud of the degrees they obtained after four years of study and the "promotions and titles you're going to get in your career" because "I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world." 

Marriage rates have tumbled and Gen Z women now talk about going "boysober" (aka celibate) because of the intolerable shift towards nastiness among men. 

This bitter, rage-filled definition of masculinity that has become so entrenched in American culture stands in stark contrast with the portrayal of masculinity in The Lord of the Rings. In The Lord of the Rings, masculinity is defined by self-sacrifice. Tolkien's work elevates fighting and dying for a cause, whether it be a kingdom, a destiny or even the entire future of the known world.

Masculine self-sacrifice in The Lord of the Rings, however, is not an individual effort. No one character in Tolkien's work is able to make a victory without the close coordination of many other people. This necessity of fellowship is also the linchpin in Peter Jackson's movie adaptation. Aragorn is Gondor's true king returned, but he cannot succeed without King Theoden, Gimli, Legolas and Gandalf working with him. Frodo may be the Christ-like figure forced to bear the burden of the One Ring, but he cannot succeed without Sam helping him every step of the way.

And of course Sam and Frodo cannot succeed in destroying the One Ring without the armies of Gondor distracting Sauron's eye outside of Mordor's interior.​

American masculinity depends on the lone individual saving the day against all odds. Only one man is the hero so frankly only one man deserves the praise. This view of masculinity implies that if a man's heroism is dependent on other men's heroism assisting him, then that man is not masculine in any positive sense of the word. 

If heroism is dependent on fellowship and not individuality, then that necessitates that masculine heroism involves a minimum level of empathy. You can't have others fight and die by your side if you're unwilling to show empathy towards them. Aragorn is willing to fight and die with King Theoden at Helm's Deep despite Aragorn having no real duty towards Theoden. Theoden is willing to fight and die to help Gondor despite Gondor having abandoned Rohan earlier when Rohan was attacked by Saruman's forces. Sam sticks by Frodo with a fierce and unambiguous love that has touched readers for decades. 

The version of masculinity seen in The Lord of the Rings is a version that is dependent on empathy. Every line in the film soars high above the sneering condescension that passes for masculine virtue in 21st century American culture. We can go back to Harrison Butker, who said in his reviled Benedictine College commencement address: I think it is you the women who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. .. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.... As men we set the tone of the culture and when that is absent disorder, dysfunction and chaos set in. This absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men. 

Butker's words cannot be more different than King Theodens's dialogue in the scene in The Return of the King where Theoden talks to his daughter Eowyn before he departs to fight in the war against Mordor. "The people are to follow your rule in my stead," he says,  "Take up my seat in the Golden Hall. Long may you defend Edoras."

"What other duty would you have me do my lord?"  Eowyn asks sadly. Her world is crumbling around her. She is being left behind to die with the women and children while those she loves ride off to war. 

"Duty?" Theoden replies, "No. I would have you smile again. Not grieve for those whose time has come. You shall live to see these days renewed. No more despair." 

Theoden showing respect for his daughter's leadership while also sincerely wishing for her happiness is extraordinarily different from Butker's mocking of female professional leadership and condescending assurances that female happiness only comes through serving men. The character of Theoden beautifully shows the virtuous masculinity that is sorely needed in our culture now.

RIP Bernard Hill. You will be missed. 

​Cynthia Nixon, the actress from the show "Sex and the City," has announced that she will go on a hunger strike in front of the White House as a protest of Israel's bombing of Gaza.

It's not going to be any hunger strike. Oh no! It's going to be a hunger strike for TWO WHOLE DAYS!

Wow!

Okay, now call me an old curmudgeon, but my impression has always been that hunger strikes actually have to have an element of risk to them. Like, "I will literally die of hunger if this objective is not met." That's the whole point of their effectiveness. When highly charismatic people like Mahatma Gandhi went on a hunger strike in the 1930s to protest the British separating India's electoral system by caste, it was effective. Gandhi was putting his life on the line in good faith, knowing that people would be concerned enough about him to put pressure on the UK. And even if his hunger strike did not work, Gandhi was willing to die for his cause. That is the root of what makes a hunger strike effective: the willingness to give your life for your goal. 

Cynthia Nixon on the other hand is doing.... what exactly? A two day juice cleanse? 

Let's listen to what she has to say in her own words. 

 “We are here hunger-striking just to sort of mirror to [President] Biden the kind of deprivation that is happening in Gaza and how he has it within his power to make a ceasefire happen,” Nixon said at the rally, according to Time and Times of Israel. “None of this is normal. None of this is routine and none of this can be allowed to continue.”


And to Cynthia Nixon all I can say is: Please don't. Please don't. There is nothing more empty than a rich woman carrying out a performative hunger strike. It doesn't help the Palestinians to see a Hollywood actress carry out a glorified coconut water detox by choice. It is sheer buffoonery for lawmakers to join Nixon in a hunger strike "for up to five days" according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Girl, how is this helping people in Gaza exactly? It's almost like you're rubbing it in their faces that you have food and water and power and and wealth and comfort and you're performatively giving up a portion of that for a delicate two day period because.... you're bored? You want clout? You see the trauma of a nauseatingly complicated geopolitical situation as an opportunity to elevate yourself? 

Cynthia Nixon has wealth and she could have used that wealth to help refugees arriving in this country find housing and find jobs. There are refugee aid organizations everywhere that always need volunteers. The problem is that letting an immigrant family stay in your house, tutoring refugee children and spending hours driving around delivering food is hard, unglamorous work. It is easier to participate in an ostentatious, limited fast or make endless Tiktok videos than to actually help refugees and those who have suffered from war.

Let us not fall into the trap of using overseas horror to boost our social media profiles while pretending we are merely "raising awareness" or "speaking out." 

There have been enough words. Words only help to a limited extent. Unless you are feeding, housing or giving tangible material help to those who are less fortunate, your beneficial impact on this world is very small indeed. 

Beijing, according to Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), has a "magic weapon." This magic weapon seeks "to influence the American people and interfere in democratic societies."

Well, let me cut to the chase. I can tell you right now without reading the report put together by the Select House Committee on China that Beijing's "magic weapon" is probably TikTok. 

 At the risk of sounding precious, I have to say that TikTok is TikToxic. I have been watching over the past few years, mouth agape, how rapidly TikTok makes people stupid and unkind. The way that TikTok erodes our empathy by elevating people who talk about the joys of "setting boundaries" and "cutting ties with families" while insisting that the world conform to their own extremely tailored sense of identity is alarming. 

Any quick scroll on TikTok shows masses of videos decrying Israelis settling on Palestinian land and how Thanksgiving whitewashed indigenous genocide.... and yet not one TikTok influencer described volunteering at a local reservation or North American indigenous organization. TikTok virtue is not real-life virtue. The loud morality of the average TikTok user is confined to the heavily-filtered camera lens.

​I do understand that the majority of TikTok users are adolescents and adolescents are generally jerks. Their brains have not really developed enough to cultivate empathy on a large scale and of course teens have not lived life long enough to understand the day-to-day sacrifices we must make to have society function. THAT being said, I have written about seeing  adult friends with advanced degrees fall down TikTok rabbit holes involving anti-Semitism, "self-diagnosed autism" and anti-vaccine conspiracies. 

That rant over, let's go back to why TikTok is Beijing's "magic weapon."

In 2016, the Kremlin revealed the awesome power that social media holds as a psychological weapon. Russia, by using social media, managed to pull off the impossible: electing Donald Trump as president. This was done, according many exhaustive post-mortems later, as a result of Russian intelligence using Facebook and Twitter to influence public opinion against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

China saw what Russia was able to pull off seven years ago and immediately leapt into action. China, through a private Beijing-based company Bytedance, put together a more addictive punchier social media platform to help influence Americans. This new platform, TikTok, involved an attractive video app that showcased dancing, eye-catching captions, filters that made anyone look like a supermodel, and fun "trends" that could maybe make you famous. More importantly, TikTok videos were short-form media content. TikTok videos were not allowed to be longer than a minute or so. TikTok videos addressing complex political issues couldn't afford to be nuanced and had to be condensed down to punchier, more polarizing one-minute segments. 

By limiting time on videos, TikTok became a breeding ground for conspiracies. Unlike Facebook or Youtube or Medium, platforms that had no limit when it came to how much content a user could post at one time, TikTok was more the video form of Twitter: a toxic stew of character-limited synthetic indignation.

TikTok was Twitter on steroids.

In 2022, Beijing decided to give their new election-interference machine a spin and see how well TikTok could interfere in American elections. China has had its eye on Taiwan for a long time, but China is aware that any invasion of Taiwan will trigger an American response, which would be devastating. China's best bet at this point is to hope for a Trump victory in the 2024 US election. Trump has already hinted that he would not interfere in any Chinese-led action against Taiwan, while Biden has pledged​ American support for Taiwan. 

China followed the Russia 2016 playbook to influence the US 2022 midterm elections and boost Trump-approved Congressional candidates. Using TikTok, Beijing targeted core Democratic voter groups for Democrats and tried to drive down voter turnout by attaching Democrats to highly misogynistic trans activist groups. TikTok boosted trans influencers, especially trans influencers that deliberately posted polarizing content. Fringe trans activists and their allies who demanded that women erase their own gender, allow biological males into their sports, and accept the most appalling drag queen-like acts as "real women" were often rewarded by TikTok with high views. In this way Beijing hoped that middle-aged feminists, usually reliable voters for Democrats, would stay away from the polls in disgust.  When Biden met with misogynistic TikTok clown Dylan Mulvaney Beijing must have been ecstatic. 

The strategy backfired. Middle-aged feminists, already appalled by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, did not let their disgust over Dylan Mulvaney deter them from voting for Democrats in droves in the 2022 midterms. More dismaying for Beijing was that their pro-trans TikTok trends actually charged up younger voters, a demographic that very rarely votes in American midterm elections, to go to the polls in 2022 and vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Democrats, with the unexpected help of younger voters, defied historical midterm trends and helped retain (and flip) several valuable governors seats in strategic states while also keeping the Senate. 

It would be fair to say that Beijing was dismayed. They have clearly gone back to the drawing board. 

Now, with the 2022 midterms one year in the past and the 2024 general election looming large in everyone's mind, Beijing is revving up its TikTok engines again. Instead of boosting misogynistic trans ideology again (Dylan Mulvaney's star has distinctly faded over the past few months) Beijing has fallen on a more traditional tactic: Hate the Jews. 

After Hamas militants from the Gaza strip killed 1200 Israelis in the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, the far right Israeli government led by Netanyahu has led a bombing campaign of extraordinary brutality against Gaza. Isreal Defense Forces have used widespread bombing tactics in a tightly compacted area the size of New Jersey. Israel has been broadly criticized internationally for allowing too many civilian casualties to occur. Biden, who is staunchly pro-Israel, has stood by Netanyahu. TikTok pounced, elevating pro-Palestinian and even pro-Hamas talking points on their platforms. The anti-Semitic catchphrase "From the river to the sea" celebrating the complete eradication of the country of Israel has been boosted across the TikTok platform. Within the space of a month, Biden's approval among young voters has plummeted  15 points. People have been demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, while Israel has made it clear that there will be no ceasefire until Hamas is completely destroyed. 

So far TikTok's elevation of pro-Hamas videos on their platform (as well as generally badly-sourced "woke" talking points about colonization, blood-libel, Jews, Islam and Osama Bin Laden) appears to have done better than Dylan Mulvaney in putting a bite in Biden's approval ratings. Will it hold though? What happens if there is an eventual ceasefire? What happens when Israel and Gaza go back to the general slow simmer of hatred without outright hostilities? Young voters may move on and remember that they're still angry at Roe v. Wade being repealed. Older voters, placated by lower gas prices (and weary of more Trumpism), may return to Biden by next November. Eleven months is an eternity in politics, after all and you don't grow old in Washington DC without knowing how to play the game. And Biden is very old indeed.

     ​Alfred Hitchcock made two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much. The plots of both movies are basically the same. In each movie a stolid English-speaking couple has their child kidnapped after the husband learns of an assassination plan against a foreign dignitary.

     Each movie has an iconic climax scene in a massive concert hall. The assassin is supposed to kill a politician (Hungarian in the 1934 version, from an unnamed country in the 1956 version) during a moment in the concert where there is a massive crash in cymbals. The cymbal crash is supposed to mask the gunshot, allowing the assassin time for a clean getaway before people realize that the politician is dead.
​
    The 1934 movie starts with British tourist Jill Lawrence (Edna Best) competing in a sharpshooting contest with creepy assassin Ramon Levine (Frank Vosper). Levine makes a pass at Lawrence. She rebuffs him. Levine then allows his pocket watch to chime at the moment Lawrence takes aim at a clay pigeon, causing her to miss. She loses the contest but remains friendly, suggesting to Levine that they may compete again one day in a sharpshooting contest.

    ​Jill Lawrence in the 1934 film is a great example of stiff-upper-lip early 20th century feminism. She is a deadly shot with a gun. She matches men in any competition, whether it be shooting or exchanging witticisms. Her marriage with her husband is clearly an equal partnership. She even stops the assassination attempt at the movie’s climax. Lawrence screams at the opportune moment during the concert so Levine (the assassin charged with killing the minister) misses his shot. The moment is a call back (of course) to the first scene where Levine deliberately distracts Lawrence when she tries to take her shot in the sharpshooting contest.

      ​The film does not end there. Lawrence’s adolescent daughter Betty has been kidnapped by Levine and his associate Abbott (Peter Lorre, who frankly stole the whole damn film). After the assassination plot fails police officers surround the kidnappers’ hideout. Levine tries to kill Betty but Betty scrambles out through a window. Levine follows Betty onto the roof, his gun drawn. The police officer on the ground takes aim at Levine but he doesn’t dare pull the trigger for fear of accidentally hitting Betty. Lawrence grabs the gun from the trembling officer and she shoots Levine dead.
​
     Lawrence and Levine, in a way, did indeed have their sharpshooting rematch. And this time, Lawrence won. She shot Levine before Levine could shoot her daughter.

    ​The film then ends with Betty being taken safely off the roof by her father.

    Hitchcock made several more films in the UK during the run-up to the Second World War. He then fled London and landed in California where his golden age began.
​
    By 1956 Hitchcock was extremely successful. He remade The Man Who Knew Too Much with Doris Day in the Jill Lawrence role and Jimmy Stewart as her husband. In the 1956 version the wife’s name is Jo McKenna, a successful Broadway star who gave up her career to happily become a wife and mother.
The difference between Jo McKenna in 1956 and Jill Lawrence in 1934 is stark.

     ​Jo McKenna lives almost entirely under the thumb of her husband. Unlike her predecessor Jill Lawrence in the 1934 film Jo clearly has no inclination to compete against men. She isn’t shooting guns or bantering with male assassins. The marriage between Jo and her husband Ben McKenna is not an equal partnership. In one (unintentionally) horrifying scene Ben forces his wife to take sedatives when she doesn’t want to. The intent is supposed to show Ben as a caring husband. He wants his wife to be calm when he breaks the news to her that their son has been kidnapped.

        Because, you know, women are so goddamn emotional.

       The scene is meant for a 1950s audience. Look at this man taking care of his weepy wife! It’s a scene, however, that has thankfully aged very badly. You can’t imagine Jill Lawrence the 1934 sharpshooter allowing her husband to treat her in this manner let alone a woman from the 21st century.

      When the 1934 Man Who Knew Too Much was made women enjoyed a certain amount of freedom. Men had died and countries were devastated first by WWI, then Spanish Flu and finally the Great Depression.

        Misogyny is an unaffordable luxury when everyone is hungry and the men are dead.

      Women had to pitch in just to supplement the household income. This was especially driven home during WWII when women simply had to work to keep the country going when the men went off to war.
The Nazis were defeated. America was victorious. The men came back from the front, saw a bunch of women working jobs that they wanted, and the backlash was swift. “Give us back our jobs and get back to the kitchen!”

       And of course men get what they want.

     You can see the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much as a retort to the 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much. Do you know what happens when women are given too much freedom? World War! Flu! Depression! Catastrophe! Dammit, we’re safer when the women stay at home where they goddamn well belong! And if women start mouthing off about it, well, just make sure they take their sedatives.
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    The danger is not with spies or assassinations or kidnappings or guns. The danger is women and making sure women do not know too much.

   ​My Facebook memories brought up my old New Year’s Resolutions from January 2020.

    Yeah. That’s right. January 2020.

    That was the last time I made New Year’s Resolutions.

    Before 2020 I usually made about 20 New Year’s Resolutions at the start of each year and emailed them to myself. Then, when the next year started, I would review the last year’s Resolutions and see which ones I had kept.
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    Now is the time of year where the parking lots of every LA Fitness are jam-packed. Twitter is in a lull as everyone tries to restrict screen time. My Facebook feed is full of posts about book recommendations and the best way to include more antioxidant-rich color in your salads.

    ​And you know what? It’s awesome. I love this time of year when people really do want to try to improve themselves. The rest of the year we live in a culture of fear. Despair and anxiety get clicks. Optimism fails in an attention economy. Oh, do you feel hope for the future? Fuck you. Enjoy your privilege Karen.

    Now, however, at the beginning of January people are willing to forgive you if you’re positive. Go ahead and have faith! Drop that weight and learn Italian. It’s great. And after a hard last few years we as a society deserve some good vibes.

     Still, after reading the Resolutions I hopefully wrote down in January of 2020, I feel some nervousness about making Resolutions for 2023.

     January 2020, of course, was pre-pandemic for most of the globe.

   “Start drawing classes,” “Go to the gym,” “Submit to more comics conferences.” I had no idea typing everything down in January of 2020 that fulfilling those Resolutions would be impossible. In eight weeks time everything would be closed. No schools. No gyms. No conferences. No coffee shops. Nothing.

   I hadn’t made any New Year’s Resolutions since that time.
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   Skimming over my past New Year’s Resolutions all the way back to 2010 has been a little embarrassing. My Resolutions for the year my son was born are cringe. I was 8 months pregnant that January when I wrote down my Resolutions as a soon-to-be new mom. “Study Korean every day,” “Take at least one overnight backpacking trip this year and one international trip as well,” “Slim back down to a 28-inch waist within two months of giving birth.”

   ​HAH!

   So should I make Resolutions for 2023? Or will I be jinxing myself? Would I trigger another worldwide pandemic? Would I just fail again and again? It’s been well over a decade since I’ve given birth and I still don’t have that 28 inch waist back.

  In the end, well, I’m probably going to write down some Resolutions. Yeah, I may not live up to the majority of them but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that I maintain momentum in my life. What’s important is that we as a whole allow ourselves hope.

  Being optimistic about our own abilities to improve our lives is not privilege. It’s necessity.

   You may not fulfill all your New Year’s Resolutions, but you will fulfill none if you don’t make them in the first place. Have faith!
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   And Happy New Year!

  ​I love horror fiction.

  My favorite book of all time is Max Brooks’ World War Z. It’s amazing. World War Z is not only the best horror fiction written in the 21st century, it sets a new literary genre: the post-post apocalypse novel.

   That’s right. Not post-apocalypse fiction (which is a very well-established genre) but POST-post apocalypse fiction.

   What is post-post-apocalypse fiction you ask? It’s fiction that takes place during a time after the apocalypse and after humankind was defeated and after humankind scrambled out of defeat, sort of got our shit together and managed to rebuild society back up to 80% of its previous capacity.

  Bet you didn’t know humankind could do that, could you? Come back from disaster? Nah, despair and fear is what drives the clicks these days. If you feel any sort of optimism about the ability of humankind to succeed these days well then it must be nice to have your privilege Karen. Be depressed or fuck off.

  Anyway, I digress. Yes, World War Z is one of my top ten novels of all time. So when I heard that a new example of horror fiction, Manhunt, was hitting the markets in 2022 I was intrigued. When I heard that Manhunt was causing all kinds of controversy because it claimed to be pro-trans and genderqueer but seemed to express its activist message through scenes of women (sorry, “TERFs”) being killed in horrible ways I thought “I need to read this.”

   Full disclosure: I’m a huge TERF. Before I drag anyone over the coals for being misogynistic, however, I need to give that person a fair shake.

   I had to read Manhunt.

   Everyone on both sides of the trans culture war was talking about Manhunt. There is even a scene in Manhunt (allegedly) involving JK Rowling being burned alive in her castle while being torn apart by her girlfriend at the same time.

  (JK Rowling in real life is actually straight and has been married to her husband for years but never mind).

  After reading Manhunt I can now say that the book is horrifyingly misogynistic but also well-written. It would be a top-tier horror novel if it didn’t have such masturbatory woman-hatred oozing from cover-to-cover. If you are a woman who is not trans, and you are not a token mother-figure to trans people, you will be an enemy who deserves slaughter in Manhunt.

   No middle ground.

   I will say that Manhunt’s JK Rowling-burned-alive controversy is a bit over-inflated. We don’t actually see JK Rowling burned alive in the book and there is no real proof that happened during the apocalypse. The description of JK Rowling burning alive in her castle appears to be a tall tale told by a character around a campfire towards the end of the book. The reader never knows for sure if the story is true.

   Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts about this book.
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   Brace yourself for Part 1 of my review of Manhunt

​   Okay, so in the first few pages of Manhunt we are introduced to Beth and Fran. Beth and Fran are two trans women in a post-apocalyptic landscape. A virus called “T-rex” has attacked all people with high testosterone (so all men and trans women unable to find estrogen supplements). Everyone has the virus but as long as your testosterone is below a certain level you remain asymptomatic. If your testosterone goes above the maximum necessary level to remain human, you turn into a ravening, rapey hyena with a barbed penis, fur down your back, scabbed skin, and the intelligence of a rabid dog. This has become the fate of half the human population of the planet.

   ​Cis women are pretty well protected from turning into man-beasts. Trans women, however, need to hunt down the man-beasts and eat their testicles in order to keep their estrogen high enough to remain asymptomatic from T-rex. And yes, male testicles actual DO have high amounts of estrogen. I didn’t know that but apparently it’s true.

   Learn something new every day.

   The male brain also produces high amounts of estrogen but we don’t see the characters in Manhunt eat the brains of the man-beasts they kill. I’m guessing Gretchen Felker-Martin doesn’t have a kink for brain-eating. Not pervy enough.

   As a horror fiction fan I have to admit that the setup for Manhunt is good.

   Out here on the coast, the things that had been men were scarce at least. They couldn’t swim, so fish held little allure for them, and most of the big game had been killed off years ago. Still, sometimes one caught sight of you and before the echoes of its first scream faded there were thirty of the fucking things pelting after you on all fours through the rotting innards of a Walmart Supercenter like a pack of rabid dogs.

   “And if I ever run out of spiro and E, I’ll be one of them a few weeks later, and then some other t-girl’s gonna put an arrow through my skull and slice off my balls. Oh well. So sad.”

   I’m on board for this. A highly specific virus that turns half the planet into beasts? Awesome! Manhunt also avoids a lot of zombie movie tropes. Contagion from the virus isn’t a concern because basically everyone has it. The trick is remaining asymptomatic, and that involves the trans women main characters desperately scrounging up not-easy-to-obtain estrogen sources to keep themselves human.

     The tension is there and it’s real.

   I do have a lot of questions about this universe, which is a credit to how intriguing Gretchen Felker-Martin’s concept is. Did men with testicular cancer survive T-rex? How about older men or men with naturally low testosterone? New fathers also experience a huge drop in testosterone. Did they also survive the plague? Presumably not.

  Why didn’t men just gulp down estrogen to protect themselves before the plague turned half the population into beasts? Was maintaining their manhood so important that they were willing to turn into beasts rather than lower their testosterone? We know that in the post-plague world male children have their testicles removed before puberty to escape turning into beasts so why didn’t men do the same? Did men so treasure their masculinity that they were willing to turn into beasts before gulping down estrogen? Boy, that’s dark.

   But then again maybe that is realistic. Thousands of people died of COVID because they refused to wear a mask or get a vaccine. Of course men would rather turn into beasts than take estrogen to escape a virus.
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   Anyway I have a lot of thoughts about Felker Martin’s Manhunt. This Part 1 is running a little longer than I anticipated so I will cut it off here and continue my review in Part 2.
Hehehehehe. “Cut it off.” Lol. Sorry.