I watched a series about Ghislaine Maxwell. I did fall asleep during the middle of it, but basically what I saw showed how she did it all herself and no one helped her apart from the Duke of York and Jeffrey Epstein on sex fiend island. Although seemingly every high profile men of the 80s and 90s made their visit.

I don't know much about statutory rape law, but visiting probably doesn't necessarily prove guilt, unless prior knowledge was known of what was on offer during an island visit or you get there and figure out what''s going on and you lock your door and hide in your room if you had no prior knowledge. The law is a multifaceted thing, are you still guilty if you know it's going on and don't try to stop it? While this is the law sometimes, it may not apply to statutory rape on sex fiend island.

Apparently distancing yourself is enough to make you immune from prosecution as this clip shows and even if it happens in your home you are still immune, if you watch this clip as well.

It is awfully convenient that only Maxwell is to blame. I am not saying Maxwell shouldn't do time but she clearly is not the only culpable one here.

I remember hearing decades ago there was some high profile ring, but I didn't believe it was true. But now I believe it. I think the more I hear of the things men get up to the less I should be surprised by the evils of men; and certainly what their victims get up to as well. And I do think Maxwell had been a victim at some time in her life.

Belonging is a powerful need most of us share.

By this I mean we humans completely depend on our relationships with other people. It is part of our story of who we are, who our friends are, who your parents are, our relationships with our siblings, and our understanding of all these individuals relationships with us. Then there is what we do with our time. This is why amnesia and Alzheimer's disease are so utterly disorienting (especially for loved ones), why it is so difficult to make new friends, and why break ups are so daunting.

But being a victim does not give you a free pass to victimize others. To prevent victimizing others you will need access to alternative behaviors. Many victimized people do not go on to hurt others, but to not do so requires an awareness of alternative behavior. Victims tend to be isolated by their abusers so learning about alternatives might be difficult. And it might entail being okay with being alone, being able to find alternative role-models and enough self-awareness to ponder how the role-model might behave in such a circumstance. Even being aware of the possibility of asking yourself to empathize is a step towards preventing the perpetuation of abuse. This is based on my understanding of Lonnie Athens' research.

I believe hugging is better than sex, for what it's worth especially when that abuse was sexual.

I am currently reading Rebecca Solnit's book, The Faraway Nearby. And I am at the point where she is talking about money. I know I have often talked about money here but I think it is time to rant about it one more time.

Solnit is generally an excellent writer and a brilliant intellectual who I'd love to talk to some day, but I think she is wrong about money.

In my opinion we don't ask for favors because of the position it puts us in, Solnit thinks indebtedness, I think it puts us in the position of the person thinking they owe us something. I have asked people for things, like help opening jars for example, and the person thanked me for letting them help me. What I didn't realize was how he would grow to be obsessed with me.

People on the internet are calling this the Benjamin Franklin effect.

If anything, people want to reciprocate after a favor to make sure they don't incur unwanted attentions from the friend. And perhaps it works out as friendship for men, but for women asking for a favor from a man can provoke the obsession that I had no idea I was incurring. I don't know if it was the cause or if there was more at work, either way I think it is safer to stick to asking females for favors if you are female.

Money is the best way to avoid social interaction. You want/need something, you throw money at them and you don't have anything to worry about. You get your whatever... and you don't have to know anything more about the person.

Without money you have to talk to whoever is offering... whatever you want, and find out away to get it from them. Talking and time... I remember that when reading that book 'the kindness of strangers' as some guy hitched his way across America without money, in a vanity project where he carved a chunk of his life off and talked to people while they gave him lifts across America.

I think this is the root of why society has gone to a lot of trouble to keep money out of the hands of women. Women talk to people, find out about their lives, remember details, manage social interactions, because they have to to get what they want/need. But keeping money out of women's hands has the added benefit of making women a slave class.

I remember one guy who was writing something on a new economic model and I asked him about women being paid to raise children and he was shocked and said women do that for love. Love does not pay the bills or the rent or the mortgage. Raising children is expensive, time consuming, hard work. It's also a 24/7 job for pretty much all of two full decades and women are just supposed to do it for love? and if she does take a night off, and if something goes wrong, the first cry will be 'where was the mother'. And father's who stay with the mother of his child isn't doing it for love?

But primarily it's about cheap labor. Women are largely treated as slave labor, domestically, and this is why employers resist paying women as much as men, because men think of women as slave labor at home.

I guess this is why men used to pay a price for a bride and then there was the dowry, I guess to get rid of a daughter that is of no economic use to her father.

For what it's worth I believe Amber Heard. So many don't because for some reason some of us feel the need to protect men.

I haven't followed the story, I haven't seen any of her movies, yet I have seen many and often enjoyed Depp films, but enjoying a film isn't the same as liking everything about a person acting in the film.
Isn't it the function of actors to adopt a persona distinct from themselves?

Constantly we see women receive huge amounts social ridicule based on them telling us their stories.

This includes Joyce Maynard who wrote about her relationship with JD Salinger in her memoir.
And pretty much everything Hillary Clinton said was turned into a joke.

The sexism women endure who put themselves forward in testament against a man is horrific, whether it is if she is raped, the ordeal she must endure to get any form of justice within the legal system is indeed horrific. From the rape itself, the collection of the sperm sample, then the court system, the lawyers, the defendant staring at you, and the often pathetic sentence the perpetrator receives - why would a woman put herself through that?

Or if a woman kills her violent husband it is never treated as self-defense, because a woman seldom can take her husband on in hand-to-hand combat, she will pretty much always lose. She cannot stand her ground, the castle law doesn't apply, it is 'his' home after all...

The legal system is really about maintaining social hierarchy, and has little to do with actual justice.

Because this all comes down to he said/she said, and as I've said in this blog before, he is always the poor innocent victim and she is always the vengeful harpy.

So any woman brave enough to accuse a man of abuse of any kind is truly brave and so yes, I believe Heard.

But what is worse is now they want to take away a woman's right to be able to determine her own life. They don't target 'do not resuscitate' orders or men who don't wish to wear face masks, but probably the most powerless in society, poor young women.

No doubt Putin was emboldened by his success in the US and with Brexit to launch this war on the Ukraine. But Putin wasn't alone and no doubt was only successful because libertarians amplified and perpetuated his misogyny with their own.
I am so sorry Clinton wasn't elected in 2016 because I am sure many more Americans would've been alive today if Trump hadn't been elected and Putin would never have invaded the Ukraine if it wasn't for his success meddling with the 2016 election of Trump.
What I find bizarre is how many people never bothered to read Clinton's platform, never bothered to fact check any of the stream of lies spewed about her, yet ignored and refused to believe the stream of truths about Trump.
We have photographic evidence of Trump's creepiness yet people believed in droves the ridiculous pizzagate.
I remember some of the nonsense I heard which included Clinton was the reason for her husband's infidelity. I said to the man who said this tragic piece of stupidity: so if your wife cheats on you, we should blame you for her cheating?
There was no response. Yet we know there was cheating with Ms Daniels and suddenly cheating is completely irrelevant.
I don't know how many libertarians were actually Russian hackers, some, many... but there were plenty of Americans who believed the lies and propagated them, including Glenn Greenwald and Naomi Klein, who really should have known better. But Libertarians have never been credited with an over abundance of intelligence despite their self described superiority (are there better examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect?)
Yet libertarians kept offering alternatives to Clinton who had no hope in hell of being elected, which resulted in the election of Trump, and thus emboldened Putin to invade the Ukraine.

I often watch the murder channels, ie Investigation Discovery (ID), and they really do paint things differently for each of the genders, for instance a man should not have to live in fear in his own home, is one quote from one of their talking heads, I think this was a woman "expert". Of course I agree, no one should have to live in fear in their home, but that should include women and children too. Such a statement was never heard on ID.

I am currently reading a book 'Mothertrucker' by Amy Butcher, where she claims about 25% of women live in a dangerous home. And while I am sure there are men who also live in dangerous situations (a lot of them in gay relationships), is it likely that 25% of men live in such dangerous situations with their female partner?

A lot of this abuse comes because of religious teachings, that women are the source of temptation, the bane of male existence, and no doubt gay males feel at odds with their partners because the church has taught them that men shouldn't lie with a man...

Of course there are many wonderful religious people who believe in loving one another and accepting differences, but these wonderful people are often eclipsed by the not so tolerant fundamentalists.

I have been watching some old skool Perry Mason also, and I am shocked at how flippantly they treat domestic violence and predator husbands (and the overt sexism often on the show) - has it taken 60 years, really, to know how dangerous family environments can be?

However, I do recommend you read Mothertrucker, which is being turned into a movie. It is a difficult read at times, but definitely worth knowing the truth of the daily horror many women experience in their homes. I guess it is not surprising that it's only been 60 years since the sexism of Perry Mason, when you read some of the reviews of MotherTrucker on Amazon, and the quote from Rebecca Solnit:

"Countless women are being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property, now or ever."

Especially in light of the experience Joyce Maynard had with her memoir of JD Salinger, At home in the world. So many people outraged that she would write of her experience.

But back to ID, one of their talking heads (a woman, because she was elected by women to represent them all) said women deny they live in a dangerous situation when in fact they do. So basically the quote went something like, if a woman says she's being abused, she's lying. Putting 'domestic violence' into the google search bar very quickly brings up how to defend yourself against false domestic violence claims. I could find no actual evidence of the statistics of false domestic violence accusations, but I am guessing it is a he said/she said situation, so he is always the victim of some vengeful harpy... after-all all men are innocent and all women are bitches :( The only known instances of domestic violence are when the women is found murdered by their (former) partners. And it very much seems on ID at least, the only good woman is a dead woman.

Or could it be that men are oblivious to how violent they can be? We see shouting as violence, and they see shouting as lively discussion? We see physical violence as violence and they see a substitute for affection? We see sexual violence and they see us being coy about saying yes because then we'd be sluts??? Perspective?

I often wonder at why they paint women so badly on ID and someone suggested it was if you build private female prisons you have to put women in them... and there is a good reason law firms want men to fight all those 'false accusations of domestic violence' - men's money.

And there is very good reason men want to keep money out of women's hands, power.

Mothertrucker teaches us that money gives us independence. Independence is the domain of men, men like to think of themselves as something like islands and I once said before that money frees us from social engagement. (It gives men the illusion that makes them think they can say stuff like: I built this all by myself.) To live without money means to be completely dependent on others. Women know in fact that we are totally dependent on others, and the economy teaches us how inter-dependent we are. Money gives us the illusion that connection is irrelevent because, you give me what I want and I don't know anything about you (and you have to deal with whatever shit I dish out to get my money). Without money we have to talk to people, we have to ask them questions, it is time consuming and emotionally draining (see the book: kindness of strangers by Mike McIntyre. Another road trip book about a guy who travels across the US without using any money). It's the stuff that women do, because more than anything, we have to. Thus money affords us the opportunity to pick and choose who we want to connect with.

The reality is happiness is found in our quality relationships with each other. 'Love' is a fairytale we teach girls so they chase it, it disguises connection and stops loneliness. Love is the domain of men, it is a luxury only they can really engage in because they have the power of time and money and once they are done, they can move on... Movies teach men that men have to do little to earn love.

Jane Austen made all this clear in her book 'pride and prejudice' when Charlotte Lucas goes hard for that job interview with Mr Collins, a man who thinks he's entitled to whoever he wants as a wife (or slave).

As a scientist I know are how important logic and testing/experimenting ideas and theories is, but it seems to me that charisma is required to sell a scientific idea and make it accessible to the field and then the public.

Men really like to line up behind other men especially when it comes to thinking. And the man's appearance seems more important than the idea itself.

And I think this contributes to the idea that some lay people have that science is just another belief system, after all we don't follow through all the thinking others have done before us, we listen to teachers, lecturers or professors and then repeat what they have to say, so it is easy to assume that it is nothing more than a belief system because it can sound like we are parroting what others say.

At the bottom of this science allows us to trace back through the logic and reasoning to see how an idea is substantiated. But the problem is what are the assumptions that allow us to come to that same conclusion.

For example, Richard Dawkins claims there is no god. I assume Dawkins laid out a proof but he is assuming we know everything about the universe. And we know we don't know everything about the universe. In my opinion, atheists can only ever be agnostics, depending on your definition of 'god'.

But Dawkins has a lot of charisma or enough that people line up behind him. There is no one lining up behind me agreeing that the best we can be is agnostic, perhaps I am just not charismatic enough, perhaps I am a female, perhaps I don't look like what you expect female scientists to look like. But my logic is sound and avoids the problem of assuming we know everything about the universe, when we definitely do not (although if you want a glimpse into the full rabbit hole, I assume I know as much about the universe as the next person, and that scientists working on learning about the universe don't know everything there is to know about the universe otherwise why would they still be researching the field? Of course I am assuming other people really exist and that I am not the only conscious being in the universe - would that make me the goddess then? hmm - who knows?)

The problem with Dawkin's argument is his assumption. This article claims science has superstars, what I've called charismatic proponents of a theory and Planck said it's when the superstars die that allows new ideas to flourish in a field.

I think we underestimate the importance of touching so much so that we often disguise it as something else, especially for men. I've said many times, it's okay to have sex as a man, but there is no way a man could ever *need* affection. Men like to think of themselves as islands with no need for anything... especially not *affection*. Indeed, there is something *creepy* about needing to touch and/or be touched. So it's okay to tickle little kids (but not touch them because that sounds creepy), it's okay to be violent perhaps (if you're a man), but it's not okay to need affection, when in reality, there is nothing all of us need more.

So many of our problems could be solved if we just realized we need to touch and be touched - we are mammals - we were in-utero for 9 months before we were born. If men accepted they need to touch and to be touched, perhaps they would stop their need for violence, war, rape... if we could call our needs what they are, needs, perhaps men could realize they are not entitled to sex. If men could realize no one is asking for it.

Sex therapists and others tell women they should give their husbands sex, which in my opinion is the equivalent of saying men are entitled to sex, and we are told constantly that sex is a metric for how well a marriage is doing, nevertheless google tells us sexless marriages are a thing and not necessarily a sign the marriage is in trouble. If a marriage is based on the realization that affection is fundamental rather than sex, then it would remove so many problems for women, because women carry most of the burden for birth control even in marriage, which despite the variety of birth control methods available are often invasive and dangerous for women. Sex is only necessary for procreation and if we feel the urge... it can be satisfied in so many ways other than by having (often painful for women) sex.

But would men feel manly if all they get is a cuddle and a kiss? Perhaps we should first ask why does a man need to feel manly? When life has been harsh? I think perhaps if the mans needs are actually met he'd actually feel happier. If his partner puts her (or his) arms about him he might actually feel more comforted than to disguise his feelings with pretend machismo.

We all know thoughts lead into each other, it's like one tangent leads to another, so it's pretty much impossible to say where anything begins or ends, and perhaps all things echo throughout the universe endlessly... in light cones (aka Einstein), but we know vibrations do end and so we're left with the impression that things do separate into distinct units, but at least on a quantum level they don't and perhaps because our experience is pretty much limited to friction world, a planet spinning seemingly endlessly in a frictionless environment. oh the irony.

I digress (of course).

So I was thinking about the cruelty of small children, and/or adult men.

But men are the ones who get to re/write history because women don't get much downtime and it takes a specific kind of person to do the writing. Then my mind slipped off to Austen's Mansfield Park were she likens poor dependent (female) relatives to slaves. After all she wrote about women, their status and how females gain employment, aka get married (and then possibly die, a lot of Austen's mothers die). But this is pretty much irrelevant to men because they are looking at the younger women anyway. (Is this why women go through menopause so they wont die in child birth? Although menopause comes too late for many women.) Anyway men live on to write the books because they are alive and have time and enough status that what they write matters. But I digress again.

I was thinking women have always been treated as slaves, and it's not just poor dependent female relatives. Women get to do so much of the scut work, cleaning house, toilets, kitchens, then meal prepping... and it's mostly very low paid/unpaid. Then they give birth to the next generation, raising that generation into the inheritors of the mess some adult men leave behind. I generalize of course. Some men do clean house and are paid well to do so, and there are women who refuse to do the scut work of cleaning and having children.

I like books and as such I spend some part of my day getting free books from Amazon and I have noticed that when men write a love story it's deemed literature (thus lofty and noble), but if a woman writes one it's chick lit (at best) or a romance. All signs of: run away, run away! (The equivalent of other culture - you know like mainstream culture is for a white male audience, and how white people don't watch other cultures' TV...)

Austen is often declared to be a romance writer. This infuriates me. She wrote about the female economic situation, not always but often. Men who write about economics are exalted (because they turn what is truly luck into a magic 8 ball with ridiculous formulas), but women, it's romance (which is so easy to dismiss). Austen wrote about more than getting married, and her books weren't morality tales either.

I realized that 'systems' is a kinda huge buzz word amongst scientist-wannabes, along with 'AI', 'quantum', even 'computer'... and apparently a Nobel prize was recently awarded for these dour faced men (as these men are always dour faced - seemingly so beyond us they don't have emotions, if a woman won a Nobel prize she'd be smiling) for systems.

My eyes roll.

If you want systems, go ask a woman who works in the home about systems.

It has occurred to me that men just can't think in systems. My husband has been carrying the housework load for a little while for us and he just can't get his head around the idea of multitasking - a concept so fundamental to women who manage a household. My husband is a super smart guy, he has a PhD in astrophysics, but he just doesn't manage multitasking when it comes to solving housework problems. Although he is getting better.

My guess is he has learned the importance of optimizing time with the multitude of tasks that need to be performed.

I know I have read these accounts of emotional labor and men's helplessness when it comes to doing housework. Perhaps some of it is men feeling annoyed they have to contribute during what they thought would be their downtime, housework is beneath them - besides there is a really interesting game on TV and here he is in the laundry, so they put the clothes in the washer and never turn the machine on... then he can say he put the clothes in the washing machine (literally. Of course that'd be extremely passive aggressive if it's intentional. But my husband is nothing like this)... I think it's more likely men just do not understand the problem.

Men seem to have a really hard time managing systems. Whereas women think men can do systems as well as they can because hey - all she is doing is housework... anyone can do this - right?

Well I think we've bought the lie that women have to live up to men's ability and standards. We think men can do all the things, and women have to prove they can.

The idea that computer software must have a bug in it is based on men writing the code for a system and the problem is men just can't do systems. I have written heaps of bug-less code. And I am talking about telephone systems and neural networks, symbol translators, code that writes other code... all completely bug-less, easy to maintain and upgrade.

This realization came to me when I saw on brain-games a segment about men having better spatial reasoning, that they can pack a car trunk for an outing more quickly and efficiently than women can in general. And perhaps that's true - if you don't mind the diaper pail next to lunch. Perhaps the women on the segment were solving the real problem - if you are going to access food during the journey, perhaps you don't want to have to pull out everything to get to a squashed lunch, to get to the diaper pail, or to find where the clean diapers were stored in the first place.

In my opinion, men are basically peacocks who love showing off, and tell how wonderful they are at showing off. In general, women prefer to just get the job done and hopefully get some recognition for it. Perhaps our assumption is wrong, that men cannot do everything as well as women can.