A VERY sad story
I certainly feel sorry for Yael Wolfe below. She has had a a string of disappointing romantic experiences that have left her deeply wounded. She is now in her '40s so is precluded from having children, which makes the disappointment acute.
It is notable however that she blames the men she has known for her bad experiences. She shows no awareness that she might have behaved in a way to bring on her misfortunes. I know nothing of the details of her failed romances but I think I can make a stab at where she may have gone wrong.
It could be that she has simply aimed too high. We social pychologists see all relationhips as transactional. They are a "deal" where both people get a lot of what they want from the other. I think she just did not have enough to offer the men she sought out. Judging by the photo above, she may not be very attractive physically, for instance. So the attractive men she involved herself with felt that the "deal" she was offering was lopsided and, after exploration, acted on that by departing her life.
A woman who prioritized a kind heart over good looks would have done better. I have always chosen kind women in my life and have been richly rewarded for it. But that is a whole other story
I’m pretty sure I’m dead between the shoulders and knees. There’s nothing going on in there if you know what I mean. Not in my heart and definitely not southward, either.
Time of death: December 13, 2021.
Yes, I know exactly when it happened.
Cause of death? I know that, too. The sight of two, icy blue eyes staring at me on a video call embedded in the emotionless face of the man who had just, a week before, been talking about how we were going to be making love into our eighties. Until, that is, we actually did make love, and then he didn’t seem quite as interested in his daydreamed version of the two of us forty years in the future.
I can’t say I was surprised by the breakup. I guess you could say I was more surprised that he bothered to end things before disappearing from my life, though I’m the one who insisted on that conversation when he suddenly stopped texting me without explanation.
What does surprise me, however, is that our breakup forever changed me. No, not the way heartbreak leaves a scar that we will carry with us for the rest of the our lives. I mean it changed me.
I lost something that I don’t think I will ever get back.
How many times do we swear off dating when we are experiencing the aftermath of a breakup? I’ve been known to throw that promise out to the universe while curled up on my bed, crying uncontrollably. “Never again,” I vowed after a few early breakups.
Interestingly, it wasn’t the abusive breakups that inspired my decision to opt out of dating. I think it was simply youth.
By my thirties, I feel I was admirably resilient, if you don’t mind me patting myself on the back. In fact, I’m especially proud of myself that during the long, drawn-out breakup with the man who left me for a younger woman, I never once swore off men, never once felt anger toward men in general, and never once believed that my chances of finding a healthy relationship were over.
On the contrary, thanks to the fact that we had been struggling in our relationship for over a year before the breakup, I was positively itching to get out on the market again. I was in deep, deep grief, but I kept reminding myself that one day, the pain would ease and I’d be ready to try again.
Unfortunately, the next half dozen romantic encounters I had with men were absolutely disastrous. Every single one of them was like a burning meteorite falling from the sky right into my lap. I was putting out fires everywhere. Fires someone else had started.
By the time I genuinely fell in love with someone for the very first time since that awful breakup, a grueling seven years later, I believed my luck had finally changed. Due to our significant age difference, I wasn’t interested in pursuing a long-term relationship with this man. But a romantic fling — perhaps a year or two — felt like the perfect arrangement. We could remain independent and still have a beautiful experience that would be a win for both of us.
I couldn’t have been more stunned by the way that relationship unfolded. Let’s just say that I ended up naked with my feet in stirrups with a swab up my swollen vagina, which was then followed by a trip to the lab where they drew three vials of blood for STI tests.
He’d already exited my life by that point.
Though there has been some healing in that relationship since then — the only semi-healing I’ve ever experience with any ex — I still find it astounding that our romantic connection ended with such a humiliating, horrifying experience. As I mentioned, it wouldn’t have cost either of us anything to have ended things in a way that we both could have called a win.
Instead, the choice was made to end things at my expense, while he came out ahead.
The blue-eyed man entered the scene just weeks after that. We were already friends. Colleagues, he made me believe, though that turned out to be a ruse.
At the time, I still believed the best in people. I thought he felt compassion for me and everything I had endured because of that breakup. I thought he felt tenderness for me.
I didn’t understand then — even at 45 — that there are so many men who will swoop in right after a breakup. It’s a vulnerable time. How can you keep your defenses up when you are still tending to your wounds?
He was so convincing. He said everything I’d always wished a man would say to me. He treated me the way I’d always wished a man would treat me. He made promises to me I’d always wanted a man to make.
Once again, I didn’t realize what was really happening. He was reading my words, combing through my essays like an archaeologist, excavating the landscape of my heart.
I came to realize — far too late, I’m sorry to say — that during those months leading up to our first face-to-face meeting, he wasn’t wooing me. He was using what he’d learned about me to woo me.
Sowhat makes this breakup any different? Why did this encounter so completely destroy my capacity for romantic love and sexual desire?
These aren’t easy questions to answer. Certainly not in less than 2,000 words. How do you summarize a lifetime of being exploited and abused by male romantic partners and fully illustrate the impact that has on a woman’s life once she reaches middle age?
And after decades of therapy, self-examination, growth, maturing, and rigorous efforts at improvement, all of this culminates in the back-to-back gut punches of two brutal breakups. One that left you naked and trembling on an examination table, and the other that left you naked and trembling in the infinite emptiness of the cosmos. Because that’s what it feels like when you realize you invited a man who was pretending to be someone else into your bed.
None of it felt hopeless at the time. He had been so real, so sincere, so loving when we were dating. I was absolutely convinced that he loved me but perhaps felt overwhelmed or scared. He was afraid to let me in, right? Isn’t that what women always say to one another when trying to soothe over the rough edges of a breakup?
But my hopes for reconciliation were dashed a few months later when I reached out to him. He was so angry. So cruel. He couldn’t apologize, he said, because it felt so rote. And he didn’t want to apologize if he didn’t mean it.
I was stunned. How many times now had I found myself in a breakup with a man who had said this to me? Who had shamelessly told me he wasn’t sorry, at all?
How many times would it take for me to realize that they almost never are?
I’ve always been a very forgiving person. That boyfriend who left me for a younger woman…that wasn’t the first time he had an affair. I forgave him for the first one.
And believe it or not, I would have forgiven him for the last one. He’d always said we would be friends forever — how can you not when you’ve been through the seven years we weathered together? I thought for sure he would come back after he and his new wife settled down and apologize to me for his horrible treatment and propose we make peace. I would have embraced it.
But I never heard from him again. Nine years and counting.
The blue-eyed boyfriend had a similar pass. Honestly, even after the way he treated me, blowing through my life like a hurricane and then dumping me right before Christmas, I still would’ve forgiven him had he just treated me with compassion and expressed his regret over hurting me.
But that wasn’t in the cards. He couldn’t say he was sorry because he wasn’t sorry. He couldn’t show me compassion because he felt none. I’d never be a part of his kids’ lives because he’d never intended for me to meet them in the first place.
That’s when I had to come to terms with the fact that this man who had said he loved me, this man who had said we were going to get married, had lied to me just to get into my bed. He had never loved me, at all.
How bad does it have to get? How catastrophically do romantic relationships have to end? How many times do you have to experience a boyfriend cheating before it’s just too much? How many times do they get to push you, hit you, pin you to the floor before you break? How many lies do you have to endure before you can’t take it anymore?
And how many times can a woman look into the cold, icy faces of the men who had a fun time in the bedroom but are done now? How many times can we face that level of inhumanity before we stop feeling human?
Ihaven’t had any interest in dating since the last time Sam and I spoke. I haven’t had any interest in sex, either — at least not with another person.
Something has shifted deep inside me. I no longer feel aroused by a man’s naked body. On the contrary, I have a whole slew of other emotional responses, and for the sake of the feelings of the men reading, I will keep that to myself for now.
Sex with a man no longer feels like an option. It is guaranteed danger, according to my own experiences. Not a bit of a risk. No, it’s closer to inevitable exploitation and ruin.
People love to say that women like me are responsible for our own “bad luck” in romance. We purposefully chose abusive men to perpetuate our own need to be victims. And you know what I say to that: pure misogyny.
How can a woman access a healthy heterosexual relationship in a patriarchal culture? In a society in which we are seen as objects for men’s pleasure? In which men are taught to value women more for how they enhance their own social status and personal fulfillment than for their humanity? In which sex is conflated with love? In which porn teaches them how to interact with a woman’s body? In which rape and violence against women is normalized? In which a woman’s love is seen as worthless, except for the fact that its acquisition will give a man access to a woman’s body?
See the problem?
Even if I wanted to keep dating, the odds are not in my favor. And why would anyone choose to keep playing a rigged game?
Iknow this might surprise people, but I’m not sad. I feel no grief over the prospect of never having a partner, never again experiencing sex with another person, never again falling in love.
After everything I have been through, I feel I am losing nothing by remaining alone. I have never had a sexual experience that made what came later worth it. And I have no reason to believe the next man who utters the words “I love you.” I have seen what follows such a declaration, and believe me, it is not love.
I do grieve what I have lost to the men in my life. I grieve the dignity they stole from me, the pain they inflicted upon me, the love they threw away. But I don’t grieve the thought of never having an opportunity to experience a loving relationship with one. It no longer occurs to me that it is likely.
Sometimes, I think this is a good thing. If one of men’s greatest failings is their single-minded obsession with obtaining as much sex with as many new partners as possible (thanks to the patriarchy for that one!), one of women’s greatest failings is the way we’ve been conditioned to have the same single-minded obsession with fairy tale romance.
I truly never realized what a grip that had on me for so many decades, and the freedom I feel in its absence is staggering.
This is a good thing, right? This deprogramming from all the most toxic narratives about heterosexuality?
But I will admit, I do have some concern about the state I’m in. I am not sure it’s ever healthy to experience this level of apathy. Something tells me that’s a bit of a red flag.
And an ever bigger one? The fact that I experience a trauma response at even the thought of the naked male body. The overwhelming nausea that floods me at the idea of a letting a man anywhere near my own naked body. There’s the next chapter in my therapy journey, I suppose.
This, I do grieve. No woman should ever have to end up in a place like this. And god help us, I know so many women just like me who no longer feel safe to continue dating, who no longer are willing to risk their mental health for the prospect of meeting a potential partner. The stakes should not be this high.
Yet here we are.
I would have forgiven Sam. I would have forgiven them all. But, with one exception, they had so little regard for me that amends were not an option. Why apologize or attempt to make peace with someone you don’t see as a fellow human being?
Maybe it’s no wonder that so many women have gone numb. It’s not a good option — but it appears to be the best one available.
https://medium.com/liberty-76/how-my-last-relationship-changed-me-forever-ad1f349e6a50
******************************************The great Leftist hysteria in Canada: About something for which there is no evidence
Doubts are growing about the scale of historic abuse at Canada's notorious residential schools for indigenous children after a dig at one of the country's most high-profile sites uncovered no bodies.
The country has set aside billions of dollars in compensation and declared a 'cultural genocide' in the treatment of indigenous children who were taken away from their families and placed at the schools for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Teams using ground-penetrating radar claim to have found mass graves in the last two years containing the remains of more than 1,000 children who were buried in secret.
But no bodies have since been recovered, and researchers have now confirmed that none have been found during a four-week dig in the basement of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church, on the site of the former Pine Creek Residential School, where the remains of more than 60 children were thought to be hidden.
'People believe things that are not true or improbable and they continue to believe it even when no evidence turns up,' said Tom Flanagan, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary. 'People seem to double down on their conviction that something happened.'
James McCrae, Manitoba's former attorney general, resigned from a government panel in May after his skepticism infuriated some indigenous groups.
'The evidence does not support the overall gruesome narrative put forward around the world for several years, a narrative for which verifiable evidence has been scarce, or non-existent,' he wrote.
The issue has polarized Canadian society with inquiry chief Kimberley Murray accusing skeptics of desecrating graves by organizing digs of their own at suspected sites.
This week she called on the country's justice minister David Lametti to criminalize 'denialism'
'I think we need to send a message that it is not okay,' Ms Murray told The Globe and Mail.
Professor Flanagan compared the issue to the 'moral panic' over repressed memories and supposed Satanic cults, and University of Montreal history professor Jacques Rouillard said the actual scale of the horror is still not known.
'I don't like to use the word hoax because it's too strong but there are also too many falsehoods circulating about this issue with no evidence,' he added.
'This has all been very dark for Canada. We need more excavations so we can know the truth. 'Too much was said and decided upon before there was any proof.'
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Lankford Demands Answers on FBI’s ‘Unconstitutional’ Targeting of ‘Traditional Catholics’
Eight Republican senators are demanding answers from the FBI as the bureau continues to stonewall investigations into the Richmond, Virginia, office’s January memo citing the Southern Poverty Law Center to target “radical traditional Catholic hate groups” for surveillance.
“The U.S. Constitution protects the right not just to have a faith but to live your faith as well, and the FBI’s decision to label traditional Catholics as ‘extremists’ is a violation of that First Amendment right,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “It is unacceptable that the FBI is hiding the truth about how many offices and agents were involved in drafting its unconstitutional memo.”
“I refuse to let this blatant faith-based targeting continue,” the senator added.
Lankford joined seven of his fellow Senate Republicans in sending a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray Thursday. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, led the letter.
“Director Wray needs to shoot straight with Congress and the American people by providing a full explanation about the origin of this outrageous memo and his congressional testimony,” Grassley told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “My colleagues and I won’t allow the FBI to pull the wool over Congress’s eyes while public faith in the agency continues to erode.”
“We have seen one public example after another of the strong arm of federal law enforcement weaponized against ordinary Americans,” senators wrote in the letter. “Targeting Americans because of their ideas or political affiliations is always wrong and an abuse of the FBI’s power, but it’s especially alarming when it threatens the fundamental rights guaranteed in our Constitution, including the free exercise of religion.”
In January, the FBI’s Richmond office circulated a memo urging agents to probe the supposed nexus between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the SPLC and including a list of SPLC-designated “hate groups” for agents to target.
The FBI told The Daily Signal in February that it was rescinding the memo after FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin published it on UncoverDC.com on Feb. 8. The national FBI office claimed that the memo “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI” and promised to remove the document from its systems and “conduct a review of the basis for the document,” but it refused to answer further questions about the move.
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it has used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare its donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents. The SPLC places conservative groups on a “hate map” with KKK chapters.
After the SPLC fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, a former staffer claimed that the SPLC’s accusations of “hate” are a “cynical fundraising scam” aimed at “bilking northern liberals.” Critics across the political spectrum have voiced opposition and alarm at the organization’s “hate group” smears.
A terrorist even targeted an SPLC-designated “hate group” in Washington, D.C., in 2012, and he told the FBI he used the “hate map” to find his target. The SPLC condemned that act of terror, but kept the target on the list and the map.
The SPLC has also suggested that the Catholic Church itself holds a position on human sexuality that would qualify it as a “hate group.”
Grassley and his fellow senators expressed frustration about the FBI’s reticence to reveal how the memo came into existence.
“As we have expressed to you previously, the FBI’s memo from the Bureau’s Richmond, Virginia, Field Office inappropriately, and without evidence, relied upon blatantly biased and discredited sources to tie Catholic Christians to violent extremism based largely on their conservative political views on issues like ‘abortion rights, immigration, affirmative action, and LGBTQ protections,’” the senators wrote.
“Upon its release, we were pleased by the FBI’s swift and firm disavowal of that memo and its contents and were led to believe it was an isolated incident,” they added. Yet even though Wray testified that the memo was “a product by one field office,” the House Judiciary Committee revealed that previously-redacted sections of the memo cited work from other field offices, leading to accusations that Wray lied under oath.
The FBI contested that claim at the time.
“While the document referred to information from other field office investigations of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist (RMVE) subjects, that does not change the fact the product was produced by a single office,” the national office told The Daily Signal.
The senators noted that the FBI has promised to brief members of the House and Senate on its internal review of the memo’s origins, but the House Judiciary Committee revealed that “such a briefing could have happened much earlier.”
“Although the FBI quickly disavowed the report and explained that it did not meet FBI’s standards, six months after the fact, information continues to reach Congress in trickles, member and staff inquiries are ignored, and the information that has come to light conflicts with the FBI’s original assurances that the report was limited in scope,” Grassley and his fellow senators wrote.
The senators asked Wray to “provide immediate explanation with respect to your potentially-misleading testimony before Congress, as well as a full explanation of information that came to light during the internal review.” They also demanded an explanation of the FBI’s “failure to produce information we requested that did not rely upon completion of the FBI internal review” and that the FBI hand over all documents it provided to the House on the matter.
The senators demanded answers by Sept. 7.
Six Republican senators joined Lankford and Grassley on the letter: Utah’s Mike Lee, Texas’ Ted Cruz, Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, Indiana’s Mike Braun, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, and Florida’s Rick Scott.
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Racism in Australian workplaces
The guff below is mostly misattribution. There are people of Chinese origin frequently to be found in almost all Australian workplaces -- from medical specialists to waitresses. How did they get there? There were clearly no racial barrier for them. They did what was needed to get the job and succeeded.
What is sytematically ignored below is that there are many NON-RACIAL barriers to certain jobs. A poor command of English is the obvious one. A person with poor English may fail to get a job because of difficulties in communicating with them. But another person of the same race with good English will get the job. It is commumnication difficulties that are being avoided, not the person's race
Similarly, overseas qualifications may be looked at askance because qualifications from the country concerned may be of unknown quality. Qualifications from India and Africa may be doubted because comparability with Australian qualifications is doubtful. A person from such contries may be rejected not because of their race but because of realistic doubts about the standard of their qualifications. It's not racism. It is realistic caution.
The pharmacy I go to is almost entirely staffed by people of Asian origin -- including a very black South Indian -- so you would have a hard job convincing me that their race held them back. They do their jobs well
The point of the whine below is to ask for racial discrimination. They argue that a person with sub-par qualifications should be given a job because of their race. Surely we all have every right to reject racial discrimination. It is almost always a call to treat someone else unfairly
Before lawyer Molina Asthana had begun working at an Australian law firm, she was being prepared for the problems she'd encounter there.
Recruiters regularly encouraged Ms Asthana, who is Asian-Australian, to apply for smaller firms, even though she already had years of experience and was highly qualified.
An acquaintance even made a point of telling her about doctors who've migrated to Australia who went on to drive buses.
"That's the first time I faced racism," Ms Asthana says.
The experience instilled a significant level of self-doubt in her.
When Ms Asthana did get a job at a top tier Australian law firm, she was one of only a few people of colour, and she often felt marginalised.
She says other employees had "studied at the same private schools, watched the same TV shows [and] barracked for the same AFL teams, which I didn't really follow". "I was constantly feeling isolated."
Working there took a toll on Ms Asthana's mental health and, after a year and a half in the job, she started suffering anxiety.
But Ms Asthana's story could have been entirely different.
However, she says we are slowly "gathering the data on what racism looks like in the workplace".
And it's important to understand that "even if we're not racist … our practices in our organisations might be".
"People immediately think anti-racism is about me not being a racist, an individualist attitude [or] prejudice that we can train out of people," Dr Fernando says.
She says it's much broader than that. Being anti-racist means addressing racism in "your practices, your procedures, your policies, the way you do things, how you put your communications out to the world".
"Race is about exploitation. Race is about putting somebody down. Race is about creating those ladders of upper and lower. It's an active thing."
'We lack the language'
Better understanding the power of race and the impact of being racialised requires gaining "racial literacy", Dr Fernando says. "Race is not taught. We don't get taught to understand race the way we got taught maths or we get taught about civics."
Consequently, she says "we don't have the words [to] actually talk about it. So [the conversation] is silenced. "We lack the language, we lack the critical thinking."
Dr Fernando says race education needs to be taught, and workplaces are an excellent place to do it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-01/anti-racism-in-the-workplace-needs-racial-literacy/102755866
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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