What Is Wrong With People!!!!!

A lawyer with advertising in Manhattan the other day decided he was going to decide what language the people who work at a Midtown restaurant should speak and not only berated the people who were speaking Spanish, suggested they were on welfare and in the country illegally.  He threatened to call Immigration Enforcement. Seriously, who does that?  Sadly it is not the first time he suggested that he was going to get someone kicked out of the country.  He did it to a young man from Boston who was in the city.  That video surfaced as well.  The irony of all this is that the lawyer has a practices that advertises 4 languages that they speak, including Spanish and oh he is Jewish.  So there is a good bet that at some point in his family history someone was persecuted for being a little different.  Also likely that if his family has Eastern European ties the first generation spoke Yiddish all the time, in New York, as they kept part of their culture while assimilating into America.  I have no real reference point to this kind of hate and bigotry aimed at strangers, just because they spoke a different language.  To publicly become hostile is just so outside what I would expect from a person who lives, works or visits Manhattan over a foreign language.  I wish there was more to the story to help me understand his reaction.  Maybe there is, but I don't know it.  What I do know is that the immediate reaction to him has been devastating.  He is an outcast on the street, being followed by both reporters and citizens.  He lost his lease for his office, which I am sure will be a huge hardship.  A mariachi band is playing outside of his apartment and he is up on ethics violations for his public antics with New York Bar.  All that said, he is not the first or the last person this week to do something like this.  Social media has made these stories find people and there seems to be an epidemic of this kind of behavior.  This comes on the heels of a series of stories of white people calling the police on people of color they encountered in their walking around life.  You know a new neighbor moving in is black, first reaction call a cop, black family barbecuing in park--call a cop, AirBnB check out--call a cop.  Is it because these people are scared that a black person in their immediate surrounding doesn't belong so must be up to no good?  If so that is a sad state of affairs.  It does tell you that there is a sense of white privilege in the world of some of these people.  A white girl falls asleep in the common room of a dorm, nothing happens, a black girl,--call the cops.  We have to stop. 

But here is the thing.  This kind of stranger attack without cause is not just for bigots over race or culture.  We heard this week that employees of Cheesecake Factory accosted a young black man for wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.  They even threatened violence.  The restaurant fired two of the employees involved and questions some of the story, in the end, people working at a public establishment threatened and verbally attacked a man for his political views that he was broadcasting in a not threatening and passive way.  That is simply wrong. 

Have we gotten to the point in our culture where this is going to be the new normal.  That is you go out in public more people will be comfortable not simply making a passing comment, that happens all the time, but being verbally assaulted by a total stranger because of your accent, dress, language you choose to speak or simply being of a color that makes someone uncomfortable?  That is not the America I want to live in and neither should you. 

I will say that recently a man attacked a woman for wearing a Niqab in a coffee place.  He made fun of her and then told her he hates her religion.  More of the same kind of nonsense that started because he wanted to make a snarky remark about her dress.  Well the people in the coffee shop were not having it and told him so, in words I won't use here, but the coffee shop also refused to serve him.  He was forced to leave. 

These toxic people are everywhere it seems and they are driving down the discourse in our country.  But there are more of us than there are of them.  Don't let this be where we are going?  This is not reacting to an overt statement or action, these examples, and many more, are attacks on a person for their mere existence.  You don't have to like anyone and if you have a bigotry toward a race, culture, religion etc, you are entitled to have that.  But when you single out people in public because of it, often based on ignorance, you are crossing a line we shouldn't cross.  If we allow that to go unchallenged then we are giving the person a lift over that line.  That we can't do.   

Incel Movement and it's Violent Extension

When Alek Minassian drove his van into a crowd in Toronto, a motivating factor was to strike a blow for the Incel movement.  Incel, short for involuntarily celibate is a mostly mens ideology that has taken over sections of the web.  They argue that they are oppressed because they cannot have sex, even though they want to be sexually active.  This is a growing voice that even found a home in a recent New York Times article.  The article  quotes Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist as saying:


 If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous? 


But it is, because you can't really redistribute sex. Unlike money, food property and even opportunity, these are all things that require the sacrifice of stuff.  Sex, to be redistributed, would require someone not willing to engage in a sexual encounter with someone to, in fact, to do.  The New York Times editorial seems to suggest that those who are unable to find a sexual partner will benefit from legalizing sex workers and the growing ability to use technology to replace actual partners.  Like a you in HBO's Westworld, where human-like androids will completely simulate any act you would like and using Artificial Intelligence, become indistinguishable from a real human.  Here is problem with that assumption.



The leaders of the Incel movement are not really interested in sex.  Let me be clear, because this is nothing new.  They are not interested in sex, this isn't simply about lust, it is about control.  It is about anger.  Elliot Rodger, who Minassian praised right before his attack, is a perfect example of this anger that leads to violence. in 2014 Rodger killed 6 people and wounded 14 others in a attacks that including stabbing, shooting and using his vehicle as a weapon before taking his own life.  In his manifesto My Twisted World,  Rodger wrote:


I'm 22 years old and I'm still a virgin. I've never even kissed a girl. I've been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous. College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. Within those years, I've had to rot in loneliness. It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because ... I don't know what you don't see in me. I'm the perfect guy and yet you throw yourselves at these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman


These sentiments are not new.  I have wanted to date both in high school and college certain girls/women to no avail, only to watch them date guys who treated them badly.  It is not an unusual circumstance, especially for non-attractive, non-athletic, or non-popular people.  In many shows about high school friends there is always the archetypal friend who is a little goofy, always able to be relied on, and yet completely undatable by typical girls.  But in real life and its reflection in the entertainment what often happens is that someone does find them desirable who may not be the most popular or physically attractive girl.  But they find a way to connect.  (sometimes the reveal is that they all clean up rather nicely and under bad hair and horn-rimmed glasses they are stunning, but that is a different kind of misogyny). 


 But that is not what these Incel members want.  Their world-view is that they should be entitled to the attention of the person they want.  That there is a fundamental principle that rejecting them is the result of evil intent and they desire to be punished for such.  That has led to Rodger and Minassian not to seek out women who may have similar interests and may well find them attractive but to stew in the fever swamp of the Men's Rights movement of the internet until they are so angry at the world that no one wants to be near them.  I have heard many women reject guys not because they aren't good looking but because they are just ugly to the core, always angry and filled with a sense of hate at an unfair world.  Sex robot and VR porn and even real-life sex workers are not going to be the answer to this disease that festers deep in the hearts and minds of these men (and to be fair a handful of women).  What we need is to start teaching at an early age about sexuality and how to build strong non-sexual relationships with someone you might find attractive.  If a man looks at every women he meets as a sexual object he is not seeing a woman he is seeing parts or tools. 


Teaching relationship skills from an early age could help develop positive friendship between people who have the potential to be physically and emotionally attracted to each other.  Some simple things we can do.


1.  Stop always separating boys and girls in activities in elementary school.  That is when real friendship can be taught free of over-active hormones of puberty.


2.  Eliminate the term friend-zone from our everyday vocabulary.  If a woman/girl just wants to be friends with a boy who is attracted to her (or the opposite a boy making the same decision) it should not be seen as negative.  It may be difficult for the rejected person but it is not a failure on the rejecter.


3.  Stop slut shaming.  It feeds the mentality that women who reject the advance of someone, while engaging in sexual behavior with others, is somehow being unfair or evil.


4.  Raise boys to not see sex as a hurdle to get over, or a achievement to obtain fast and often.  We do this when we think of sex like gain ground in a game, or when we use terms like virgin as an insult to a man. 


5.  Our sexuality is something we own ourselves, not the culture.  How we define it is up to us.  That isn't to say that consequences shouldn't be discussed, they should, but like everything we should educate young people how to properly explore it.  Frank, open discussions that are comprehensive are the best.  From developing relationships to intimate encounters, we need to give people the tools to express themselves.


There are too many angry people (mostly men) out there who feel the world owes them the ability to have the person they want, when they want, how they want.  Anything less is cause for rebellion, using their own words.  This is not a positive human condition.  We must stop blaming women for the men's failures to be worthy of partnership, and stop laughing off their anger.  People are dying.