On November 1, 2026, a circulating video appeared to show a woman physically assaulting two people at a political event in Michigan. Reports identify one of the people involved as conservative commentator Liz Benichou. The woman was reportedly arrested after the confrontation.
The video answers one question: a physical assault happened. The remaining questions are who the woman is, what led to the confrontation, and what charges will follow.
Online observers have identified the arrested woman as Temulun Togochog. That identification appears plausible, but it has not yet been conclusively confirmed through an official police statement, charging document, or court record. For now, the honest description is a woman identified online as Temulun Togochog.
That uncertainty does not erase what the video appears to show. Nor should it become an excuse for pretending that political violence is acceptable when the target is conservative, Jewish, or simply on the other side of an argument.
The contrast is impossible to miss
In December 2024, Temulun Togochog testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. She was then described as a 17-year-old, American-born Southern Mongolian human-rights activist whose parents had fled persecution from communist China.
Her written testimony praised the United States as a free and democratic country where she could learn her language, practice her traditions, and express her opinions without fear. She contrasted that experience with the suppression of Mongolian language, culture, and political expression in Inner Mongolia.
That testimony made a straightforward moral argument: coercion is wrong even when it is used in the name of a political cause. The state should not erase a people’s identity, and individuals should not be attacked for exercising their rights.
If the woman in the Michigan video is Temulun, the contrast is stark. A person who publicly defended liberty against authoritarian oppression now appears to have used physical force against political opponents in the United States. The irony is hard to avoid: condemning coercion when it comes from Beijing while allegedly embracing coercion when it is directed at domestic rivals.
Freedom cannot be selective
The larger lesson is not limited to one activist or one political faction. Human rights cannot mean freedom only for people who share our politics. Free speech cannot mean protecting only speech we approve of. Opposition to political violence cannot depend on whether the alleged victim is conservative, Jewish, liberal, Christian, Mongolian, or anything else.
There may be facts that are not yet public. There may be additional footage, provocation, or context. Those questions should be investigated through evidence rather than social-media rumor. But the available video should also be confronted honestly: a physical confrontation occurred, and two people appear to have been attacked.
An arrest is not a conviction, and online identification is not official confirmation. Those questions belong in the justice system. Yet the same United States praised in congressional testimony is precisely the country where an accused person receives due process and where alleged political violence should be investigated regardless of ideology.
Freedom is not proven by praising America before Congress. It is proven by respecting the freedom of people standing across the political divide.
Tags: Age Gap, Relationships, Personal Responsibility, Billy Corgan, Lindsay Clancy, Cornell Seven, Philippines, Marriage, Culture
Billy Corgan just set the internet on fire again, and this time it had nothing to do with music.
On the October 22 episode of The New York Times’ Popcast, the Smashing Pumpkins frontman was asked about the age gap with his wife, Chloé Mendel. He met her in 2012, when she was 19 and he was 44. Today he is 59, she is in her early thirties, and the gap runs about 25 and a half years. They married in September 2023, and they have three children: Augustus, born in 2015, Philomena, born in 2018, and Juno, born in March 2025.
Corgan said the gap was an “advantage.” In his words, his wife “hadn’t been wounded like so many people are,” and she was “really open to love.” He was careful to say there was “nothing wrong” with the women of his own generation. His point was that two hurt people struggle to build something whole. The Independent reported the backlash within days: sexist, patronising, infantilising, out of touch. You can watch the clip from Popcast yourself and decide.
I am not here to defend every word Billy Corgan says. I am here to ask the question nobody in that pile-on wants to answer. If a 19-year-old woman is an adult, why do we keep talking about her like a child?
The Adulthood We Hand Out, Then Take Back
Look at what the United States already trusts an 18-year-old to do.
She can vote. The 26th Amendment settled that in 1971, on the argument that anyone old enough to be sent to war was old enough to choose the government that sends them. She can sign contracts and take on debt. She can enlist in the armed forces, carry a rifle, and come home in a flag-draped box. She has been driving since she was 16. She can be tried and imprisoned as an adult.
But when one of them chooses a husband who is twenty years older, a large part of our culture suddenly discovers that the frontal lobe isn’t finished until 25, and that she couldn’t possibly have known what she was doing.
You can’t have it both ways. Either an adult is an adult, or the age of majority is a lie. If 19 is too young to choose a partner, then it is too young to vote and too young to die in a uniform. If it is old enough for those things, then it is old enough to say “I do,” to whoever she wants, at any age he happens to be.
Notice which choices get reopened. Nobody voids a 19-year-old’s vote or her enlistment contract because she was “so young.” The adult choices that get revoked after the fact are the personal ones, and almost always in one direction.
Maturity Is Not a Number
I am not pretending there is no such thing as predation. A 44-year-old pursuing a 15-year-old is a crime, and it should be. Coercion, fraud and abuse are wrong at any age.
But “he was older” is not an accusation. It is a fact about two birth certificates. Maturity is measured by what a person does: whether she supports herself, makes plans, keeps her word and owns the results of her choices. I have met 19-year-olds running households and 40-year-olds who could not keep a job.
The age-gap panic depends on treating young women as permanently impressionable. That is not feminism. It is a polite way of saying women cannot be trusted with their own decisions, and that the people around them, especially later, get to decide what those decisions “really” meant.
Rights without responsibilities is not equality. It is a one-way deal.
The Responsibility Gap
Here is the pattern I keep seeing. Western culture tells women they are fully equal: equally capable, equally rational, equally entitled to every door men walk through. But when an adult woman’s choices go wrong, a different script often comes out. Suddenly it is youth. It is hormones. It is pressure. It is a decision that, years later, has to be reinterpreted.
Take the case of Lindsay Clancy in Duxbury, Massachusetts. In January 2023 she strangled her three children, Cora, Dawson and Callan, then tried to take her own life. She has admitted to the killings. Her defense argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and could not be held criminally responsible. Prosecutors argued she knew what she was doing was wrong. In September 2026 her murder trial ended in a mistrial, with the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal by reason of insanity. On October 1 the judge denied her request for a not-guilty finding, ruling that the evidence was enough for a jury to find her criminally responsible. As I write this, prosecutors have not said whether they will retry her.
Postpartum psychosis is real. What struck me was the public conversation around the case, which often boiled down to this: her hormones made her do it, she could not control her hormones, so she is not responsible. Think about what that argument means if you take it seriously. If biology can erase a woman’s responsibility for the worst act a human being can commit, then on what basis do we say she is fully responsible for anything? You cannot argue that women are the equals of men in judgment and then argue that their judgment evaporates when the consequences arrive.
Then there is the Cornell case. A former student says she was sexually assaulted in October 2024 by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity, now dubbed the “Cornell Seven.” In a public statement on September 28, 2026, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said her sworn six-page statement to police in November 2024 “did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped,” and described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.” His office declined charges on that basis. Nearly two years later she filed a civil lawsuit alleging something very different. Her lawyers say the police summary left out key parts of what she told investigators. Cornell’s own Title IX panel sanctioned several of the men, two of them with expulsion. Under public pressure, the DA has now reopened the case for a grand jury. No one has been charged, and none of it has been proven in a court.
I don’t know what happened in that room, and neither do you. The question is not whether this particular woman is telling the truth. The question is what a sworn statement from an adult is worth. If an adult’s account of her own consent can be revised two years later, and seven young men’s lives hang on the revision, then consent stops being something an adult gives. It becomes something that can be reassigned after the fact.
I’ll say plainly what I see. Many western women today want the privileges that men have always had, the freedom, the authority and the final say over their own lives, without always accepting the responsibility that came attached to them. Men have never been allowed to say, “I was young, my hormones were raging, and I’ve since decided I didn’t really mean it.” Equality that only runs one way is not equality. It is a ratchet.
This is not a claim that women are weaker or less intelligent. It is the opposite: women are fully capable adults, which is exactly why they should be held to the same standard as everyone else.
My Own “Age Gap”
I don’t write about this from a distance.
I married my ex-wife when she was 19 and I was 25. Six years. Today she tells people I took advantage of her youth, that I was “much older” than she was.
Here is who she was when we married. She had already moved out of her parents’ house. She was attending a top university on an academic scholarship. She was not naive and she was not dumb. She made her own decisions, including the decision to marry me.
Six years. If a six-year gap between a university scholar and a 25-year-old man is predatory, then the word has no meaning left. The story changed because the marriage ended, not because the facts did. When the outcome went bad, the choice was rewritten into something that happened to her rather than something she did.
What hurts most is that my children now repeat the same thing: that the age gap was “unfair.” They didn’t reach that conclusion by examining a marriage that began before they were born. They absorbed it. I love my kids, and I don’t blame them for echoing the parent they heard it from. But I want them to know the truth. Their mother was an intelligent adult who chose her life, and her choices were real. Taking that away from her, even in hindsight, does her no honor.
Different culture, different assumptions about who gets to choose.
What I See in Southeast Asia
I now live in the Philippines, and the contrast is impossible to miss.
Here, a woman of 18 or in her early twenties partnering with a man in his sixties or even seventies is not a scandal. I see these couples all around me: at the market, at church, at the mall, at the next table over at dinner. Some are happy and some aren’t, like relationships everywhere. Plenty of these matches are as practical as they are romantic, which was the norm for most of human history.
The difference is that the culture treats her as an adult who made a choice. She is expected to live with that choice, good or bad, and so is he. Nobody waits ten years to announce that she was a victim of the calendar.
I am not saying every age-gap match here is wise. I am saying it exposes how odd the western position has become. The West preaches female empowerment louder than anywhere on earth, yet it is often the place most eager to declare young women incapable of choosing a husband.
Adulthood Is a Package Deal
So back to Billy Corgan. His comments were clumsy, and I understand why “wounded” landed badly with women his own age. But Chloé Mendel was 19 when she met him, came from a family running an international fashion house, and has spent the 14 years since building a life, a family and businesses alongside him. She has defended the marriage herself as a partnership of equals. The people insisting she was too young to choose are not protecting her. They are overruling her.
Here is where I land. Adulthood is a package deal. It comes with agency, the right to choose your partner, your faith, your work and your life, and it comes with accountability, which means owning those choices when they go wrong. You don’t get one without the other. Not men, not women, not at 19 and not at 59.
If we want young women treated as equals, and I do, then we have to stop rewriting their decisions the moment those decisions become inconvenient. That is what we expect of every adult man, and it is the only standard that treats women as full human beings.
Anything less isn’t protection. It’s a permanent childhood, handed out selectively, and it’s dressed up as progress.
Eugene School District 4J cut 265 full-time positions for this school year and sent layoff notices to 177 people: 102 teachers and other licensed staff, 66 classified employees and 9 managers. Now the district is warning of another $30 million to $35.5 million hole for 2027–28, and the superintendent won’t promise that classrooms will be spared.
Over the last decade, Oregon has spent at least $49.8 million in public money on programs and services built specifically around sexual orientation and gender identity. That is a floor. Several of the biggest items have never been published by the state.
Money is finite. The school day is finite. Every dollar and every hour spent on identity programming is a dollar and an hour not spent teaching children to read, write and do math. Eugene’s results show what that trade-off costs.
149.77 licensed positions: teachers, counselors, speech and occupational therapists
83.14 classified positions: cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, secretaries
32.35 leadership positions, plus three executive positions
The district faced a $44.1 million gap. The cuts saved $27.7 million, and the remaining $16.4 million structural deficit was covered with one-time money. Career and technical education, academic support, middle school electives and instructional coaches all took hits.
More than half of Eugene’s students can’t read at grade level. Nearly two out of three can’t do math at grade level. That is the crisis. That is what a school district exists to fix.
Where the identity money goes
Our research team itemized ten years of Oregon public spending, FY2016 through FY2026, from state payment records, budget bills, agency reports and public records responses. The full report is linked in the sources below. The highlights:
$30.0 million in Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid) payments for gender transition treatment from 2018 to 2022, including surgeries, hormones and puberty blockers. $8.19 million of it was for patients 17 and under. Annual spending more than doubled, from $3.87 million to $9.20 million. The state has published nothing for 2023 onward.
Starting October 13, 2026, federal Medicaid money can no longer pay for these treatments for minors. Oregon’s answer was not to stop. The Oregon Health Authority will pay for them with state money for about 600 patients under 18 and plans to ask lawmakers for more.
$8.31 million in Oregon Department of Education “LGBTQ2SIA+ Student Success” grants since 2021. This is education money, run through the state’s education department, spent on identity programming instead of instruction.
$7.18 million paid directly by state agencies to LGBTQ advocacy and service groups from FY2016 to FY2025. Before 2021, it was under $51,000 a year. In FY2025 alone, it topped $2.7 million.
$2.14 million of that went to TransPonder, a Eugene organization, from the Oregon Health Authority.
$1.25 million in a 2024 budget bill for sexual orientation and gender identity research, paid through the Department of Administrative Services.
$472,995 from Trillium, Lane County’s Medicaid insurer, to a “Queer Resource Center” in Eugene.
Every one of those numbers is sourced in the report.
Inside 4J’s doors
4J doesn’t just sit downstream of state spending. It has written gender identity affirmation into district rules and built a staff structure around it.
In 2021 the district hired district-level affinity group coordinators. Its Gender Sexuality Alliance had about 450 students.
The FY2023 budget funded two Directors of Equity, four Regional Equity Managers and five Student Alliance coordinators for affinity groups, “largely utilizing Student Investment Account funds.” That is state money meant to improve student achievement.
What 4J has not published is what any of it costs in total. There is no line item for stipends, coordinators or the equity office. A district that just laid off 177 people should be able to tell parents exactly what it spends on non-academic programming, down to the dollar.
Parents left out
4J’s own rules are blunt about who gets told.
Under 4J regulation JBC-AR, “District employees may not intentionally refuse to refer to a student by the name or pronoun identified as corresponding with the student’s affirmed gender identity.” The same rule says staff “may not disclose information that may reveal a student’s transgender identity” except as allowed by federal privacy law or “as authorized by the student,” and it acknowledges that “a student who identifies as transgender may not want their parents to know the identity they are expressing at school.”
The district’s 2016 best-practices guide goes further: “there is no obligation to contact the student’s parent. This is true at all levels—elementary, middle, and high school.” The same guide requires a parent’s signature to change a student’s name or gender in official records. So the paperwork needs a parent. The daily treatment of the child at school does not.
The state backs this up. The Oregon Department of Education’s 2023 guidance, Supporting Gender Expansive Students, tells schools that “as soon as a student asserts their gender identity, the school should begin treating that student in alignment with their gender identity” (p. 7). It tells them that “schools should refrain from revealing information about a student’s gender identity, even to parents, caregivers, or other school administrators, without permission from the student” (p. 13).
Read plainly: an elementary school child can be called by a new name and new pronouns all day at school, and the parents raising that child may never be told. The child decides whether the family finds out.
Parents are not a threat to be managed. They hold the legal and moral responsibility for their children. A school system that guides a child through something this serious while keeping the family in the dark has forgotten who it works for.
The bottom line
4J is cutting teachers, counselors, bus drivers, electives and career training, and it’s warning of more. Fewer than half its students read at grade level, and barely a third do math at grade level.
Meanwhile, Oregon has spent at least $49.8 million in a decade on identity-specific programs and services, $8.3 million of it through the Department of Education itself. 4J pays stipends and coordinators for affinity groups, writes gender identity affirmation into its rules, and publishes no total cost.
Schools exist to teach children to read, write, compute and reason. When the money runs short, that mission comes first. Not ideology. Not identity programming. Teachers in classrooms teaching the basics.
Before the next round of layoffs, Eugene parents and taxpayers should ask the 4J board one question: what do you spend on identity programming, and why does it come before the teachers you are letting go?
Shane Gillis joked about revealing gym clothes, and Hollywood responded with accusations of misogyny. Megyn Kelly called out the hypocrisy. Ryan Thompson explains why this controversy says more about selective outrage an
Shane Gillis Made a Joke About Gym Clothes. The Outrage Mob Proved His Point.
By Ryan "Dickie" Thompson | 2026-10-18
Categories: Commentary, Culture, Free Speech
I watched Megyn Kelly’s commentary about Shane Gillis and the latest manufactured outrage over a joke on Saturday Night Live. And I’ve got to say, I agree with her.
We’ve reached a point where a comedian can’t make an observation about the way people dress at the gym without television personalities turning it into a national conversation about misogyny, sexual assault, and the dangers of offensive comedy.
Are you kidding me?
We’re talking about a joke. A joke about gym shorts.
Not a law. Not a threat. Not someone getting physically harmed. A comedian standing on a stage, pointing out something ridiculous about modern gym culture.
And somehow, we’re supposed to treat that like a national emergency.
This is the sort of nonsense that makes ordinary people sick of establishment media and the self-appointed morality police.
Shane Gillis Said What Plenty of People Have Already Noticed
On October 10, 2026, Shane Gillis returned to host Saturday Night Live.
During his opening monologue, he talked about going back to the gym and noticing how much workout clothing has changed.
He joked about women wearing tiny, brightly colored shorts, the sort designed to emphasize every curve, while men are expected not to look.
He used crude language. He made people uncomfortable. Some people laughed, and others didn’t.
That’s comedy.
And here’s where I agree with Megyn Kelly: there’s a difference between making a joke about how someone dresses and declaring that every woman wearing those clothes is a bad person.
Gillis was making fun of a fashion trend and an awkward social situation.
You don’t have to like the joke. You don’t even have to think it’s funny.
But you don’t get to pretend every crude observation is an act of violence.
Let’s talk about the gym itself.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look good. There’s nothing wrong with wearing clothes that make you comfortable while exercising.
It’s your body. It’s your choice.
But let’s not pretend clothing has no social meaning. Some modern gym fashion is clearly designed to draw attention. People have every right to wear it, and other people have every right to find the trend ridiculous.
Freedom works both ways.
That doesn’t give anyone permission to harass, photograph, intimidate, or mistreat somebody because of what they’re wearing.
It does mean the rest of us are allowed to have an opinion.
Megyn Kelly Is Right About the Double Standard
In her commentary, Megyn Kelly pointed out something that ought to be obvious.
Television personalities make jokes about people’s appearances all the time.
Late-night hosts mock politicians. Comedians make fun of celebrities. Reality television has built entire businesses around physical appearance, sex appeal, personal conflict, and embarrassing behavior.
Hollywood sells provocative images every day.
Then suddenly, when Shane Gillis makes a crude joke about gym shorts, we’re told that commenting on how women look is unacceptable.
Really?
Where has that rule been all these years?
Kelly challenged the outrage from figures including Dan Levy, Sara Haines, and Jenna Bush Hager.
Her larger point is worth discussing: the entertainment industry often appears to change its moral standards depending on who is speaking and who is being criticized.
If somebody makes a joke about a conservative woman, we’re told it’s satire.
But if Gillis jokes about gym fashion, suddenly we’re getting lectures about the collapse of civilized society.
I’m not saying every critic of Gillis is dishonest. Some sincerely believe the joke was demeaning.
Fine. They’re free to say so.
But moral standards should be consistent.
If the argument is that comedians should never comment on women’s appearances, then apply that rule to everybody, including the late-night hosts you happen to like.
Otherwise, this isn’t a principle.
It’s selective outrage.
Dan Levy Has Every Right to Be Offended. So What?
Actor Dan Levy criticized Gillis and connected jokes about women being objectified with a wider culture that fails to take sexual assault seriously.
That’s a serious argument.
But here’s my problem with it.
It jumps from a crude joke to a much broader social harm without showing that this comedian caused that harm.
Sexual assault is a crime. Harassment is a real problem. Both deserve to be taken seriously.
But making a joke about clothing isn’t the same thing as assaulting somebody.
Those distinctions matter.
We cannot have a serious conversation about actual violence if we start treating every inappropriate remark as though it belongs in the same category.
Dan Levy can criticize Gillis all day long. That’s his right.
Gillis can tell an offensive joke. That’s his right, too.
And I can sit here and say Levy’s argument is exaggerated.
That’s how free expression works.
Nobody gets appointed the national commissioner of acceptable humor.
Remember When SNL Fired Shane Gillis?
The history makes this whole controversy even more interesting.
Back in 2019, Saturday Night Live hired Shane Gillis and then fired him before he ever appeared as a cast member.
Old podcast clips resurfaced containing offensive remarks about Asian people and gay people.
NBC decided he wasn’t a good fit.
People were entitled to criticize those remarks. NBC was entitled to decide whom it employed.
But being fired didn’t mean Gillis stopped being a comedian.
He kept performing. He built an audience. He found ways to reach people without waiting for network television to give him permission.
Eventually, he returned to host the very show that had dropped him.
He hosted in 2024, again in 2025, and again in October 2026.
Think about that.
The institution that once decided he was too controversial eventually invited him back three times.
Whatever NBC’s internal reasoning, one thing is clear: Gillis found an audience beyond the old network gatekeeping system.
That’s a lesson worth remembering.
In a free media market, losing the approval of one major broadcaster doesn’t have to mean losing your livelihood.
Audiences can support independent voices directly.
That’s a good thing.
The Gym Isn’t a Sanctuary From Other People’s Opinions
I want to be clear about something.
Women have every right to wear revealing workout clothes.
Men have every right to wear ridiculous outfits, too.
And everybody has the right to exercise without being harassed.
But nobody has a right to control every thought or joke another person makes.
There’s a difference between noticing somebody, staring at them, harassing them, and making a general observation in a comedy routine.
We should be intelligent enough to recognize those differences.
If somebody is secretly filming strangers at the gym to shame them online, criticize that behavior.
If somebody is harassing women while they exercise, hold that person responsible.
If somebody tells a joke you don’t like, turn off the television.
It’s not complicated.
The problem comes when people confuse personal discomfort with moral authority over everybody else.
I don’t need Dan Levy, NBC, or a daytime television panel telling me which jokes I’m allowed to laugh at.
And neither do you.
Free Speech Doesn’t Mean Freedom From Criticism
Here’s where the libertarian principle comes in.
Freedom of speech isn’t a promise that everybody has to like what you say.
It also doesn’t mean a private television network is legally required to employ you.
Gillis can tell a joke. Levy can condemn it. Kelly can criticize Levy. And the audience can decide which argument makes sense.
That’s the way things should work.
The First Amendment limits government censorship. It doesn’t force private companies to give anybody a microphone.
But the broader culture of free expression matters, too.
If every controversial joke becomes a campaign to destroy a career, the result is a culture where people are afraid to speak plainly.
Not because the government passed a censorship law, but because powerful institutions and public pressure can make expression costly.
There’s a difference between criticizing a joke and demanding that the joke disappear.
And there’s a difference between genuine accountability and an endless search for somebody to punish.
A healthy society needs the ability to laugh at itself, including the parts that make us uncomfortable.
Hollywood’s Selective Morality Is the Bigger Joke
Megyn Kelly highlighted the contrast between the outrage directed at Gillis and the way other entertainers speak about women’s appearances.
To me, that’s the most important part of her commentary.
We have an entertainment industry that sells sex appeal, rewards public embarrassment, and makes enormous amounts of money turning people’s private behavior into content.
Yet some of its most visible personalities act shocked when a comedian comments on the same culture.
You cannot spend decades selling a spectacle and then act scandalized when somebody makes fun of it.
And you certainly shouldn’t suggest that making a joke is equivalent to encouraging a violent crime without evidence.
If we’re going to criticize objectification, let’s have an honest conversation about the entire entertainment business.
Let’s talk about social media platforms that reward attention-seeking behavior.
Let’s talk about influencers who film strangers in public gyms.
Let’s talk about corporations that profit from turning every aspect of life into advertising.
But let’s not pretend Shane Gillis invented these problems because he made a joke on Saturday night.
Offensive Comedy Has a Place in a Free Society
Some comedy is brilliant.
Some comedy is stupid.
Some comedy is offensive, and some simply doesn’t land.
None of that changes the basic principle.
A free society has room for uncomfortable speech.
It has room for artists who push boundaries.
It has room for people who disagree with a joke and people who laugh at it anyway.
What it shouldn’t have is an unofficial class of cultural authorities deciding which subjects are off-limits and which comedians deserve to be punished for crossing an imaginary line.
Sometimes people laugh because a comedian has pointed out a contradiction everybody recognizes but nobody wants to discuss.
That doesn’t make every joke true.
It doesn’t make every comedian a philosopher.
It just means comedy can expose the absurdities of everyday life.
Gillis made a joke about a trend in gym clothing and the social tension around looking at people.
Kelly defended his right to make that joke and challenged the public figures who condemned him.
I’m with her.
Not because every word she said must be accepted without question, but because her central point is sound.
We need to stop turning ordinary jokes into moral emergencies.
My Final Take: Grow Up and Learn to Take a Joke
Nobody is required to laugh at Shane Gillis.
Nobody is required to agree with Megyn Kelly.
But the rest of us aren’t required to surrender our sense of humor every time a celebrity announces they’re offended.
You can dislike someone’s clothes without hating them.
You can make fun of a fashion trend without believing people deserve mistreatment.
You can tell an offensive joke without endorsing every ugly thing somebody might associate with it.
These distinctions used to be common sense.
Now they apparently require a full television panel discussion.
I’m tired of the selective outrage, exaggerated accusations, and constant attempts to make comedy answer to an imaginary committee of approved opinions.
Let comedians tell jokes.
Let critics criticize them.
And let ordinary people decide what they find funny.
That’s not dangerous.
That’s freedom.
What do you think? Did Shane Gillis cross a line, or has the outrage machine lost its sense of humor? Sound off in the comments.
Ryan “Dickie” Thompson Disruptarian Radio Disruptarian.com
There is something almost theatrical about the way Washington and Silicon Valley are presenting the next phase of artificial intelligence. The vocabulary has changed. AI is becoming “SI,” or super intelligence. The stage is bigger, the promises are grander, and the implied stakes are nothing less than the future of human civilization.
In the White House discussion with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the message was unmistakably optimistic: America must win the race, China is the main competitor, and the technological revolution can produce an age of abundance. Musk even floated a more generous successor to universal basic income: “universal high income,” or what some listeners are calling HBI.
I understand the optimism. I also understand the fear. The same machine that can help discover a medicine, write software, educate a child, or make a small business more productive can also make millions of human jobs economically unnecessary. That is the uncomfortable contradiction sitting underneath every smiling prediction about the future.
The race is not just about clever software
One of the most important points in the conversation was that the super-intelligence race is not merely a software contest. It is an industrial contest. Musk described a complete reinvention of the computing stack: processors, memory, algorithms, applications, and the energy required to run the whole system.
That is why the argument about electricity matters. Data centers do not run on slogans. They run on power plants, transmission lines, chips, cooling systems, land, water, engineers, and political permission. The United States may be strong in semiconductor design, software, capital, and research, but China has built enormous physical capacity. The transcript cites China’s electricity production as roughly three times that of the United States. The exact comparison deserves careful qualification, but the underlying point is sound: compute is physical, and industrial capacity is strategic.
The White House has openly framed this as a competition with China, while also describing a new U.S.-China dialogue over super intelligence. That combination—competition alongside communication—is probably unavoidable. If these systems become as consequential as their promoters claim, no serious country will simply opt out. The United States, China, Europe, India, and every other technologically capable region will be trying to secure chips, energy, talent, data, and influence.
But “winning” should not mean building the largest possible machine and asking ordinary people to absorb every cost. Communities near data centers need reliable power, fair rates, water protection, and a genuine share of the prosperity. If the benefits are privatized while the infrastructure costs are pushed onto households, the revolution will look less like abundance and more like another transfer of wealth upward.
America should lead—but lead for whom?
Trump’s contribution to the discussion was direct and nationalistic: America has led earlier technological revolutions and must keep leading this one. I do not object to national confidence. A free society should not surrender its industrial future to a centralized authoritarian rival. The United States has advantages that matter: entrepreneurial culture, open scientific exchange, deep capital markets, world-class universities, and a tradition of turning inventions into widely used products.
Still, patriotic branding is not a policy. “Go America” is a good cheer, but it is not a plan for who owns the systems, who controls the infrastructure, who audits the companies, or who receives the gains. If super intelligence is concentrated in a handful of firms and government agencies, Americans may technically win the international race while losing control of their own economic lives.
That is the central political question. Will super intelligence make individuals more capable, or will it make individuals more dependent on institutions that own the machines? A personal tool that helps a person learn, create, negotiate, and organize is liberating. A centralized system that decides whether a person is employable, creditworthy, medically eligible, or socially acceptable is a new kind of gatekeeper.
The answer cannot be blind trust in corporations, and it cannot be blind trust in government. Musk’s remarks about self-policing, group policing, committees, internal controls, and external audits sound better than no safety process at all. But powerful industries have a long history of grading their own homework until the public demands something stronger. Independent scrutiny, transparent standards, competition, and the ability to leave one provider for another will matter more than declarations written behind closed doors.
The UBI problem: abundance without purpose
This is where I part company with the easy optimism surrounding universal basic income. I am against a UBI in principle because it risks demotivating human progress and making people dependent on the source of the payment. A population that receives its survival allowance from a government, corporation, or algorithmic authority may be materially comfortable while becoming politically and psychologically captive.
Work is not only a paycheck. It is responsibility, discipline, social connection, competence, pride, and the feeling that one’s effort has consequences. A check arriving every month cannot automatically replace those things. If we tell an entire generation that its productive contribution is no longer needed, then compensate it for staying out of the way, we should not be surprised when despair, addiction, isolation, and political resentment grow.
Yet I cannot dismiss the problem that UBI is trying to solve. If super intelligence can perform most economically valuable cognitive work, and robots can perform much of the physical work, then “just get a job” becomes an empty instruction. Human usefulness may genuinely become less valuable in the market. That possibility does not disappear because I dislike the policy proposed for dealing with it.
This is why Musk’s phrase “universal high income” is more revealing than it first appears. If the machines create extraordinary abundance, perhaps the goal should not be a minimal stipend that keeps people quiet. Perhaps the goal should be broad access to the productivity of the machines: cheaper housing and energy, abundant medical care, high-quality education, powerful personal software, and ownership structures that let ordinary people share in the output.
That would be different from a dependency payment. A true HBI would need to come from abundance and ownership, not merely from taxation and redistribution. It would need to preserve choice. People should be able to use the new wealth to build families, start businesses, study, make art, care for relatives, volunteer, or pursue work that the market does not yet recognize as valuable.
Even then, the danger remains. If a person’s “high income” can be switched off by a centralized authority, it is not freedom. It is permission. The more powerful the technology becomes, the more important it will be to protect private property, local communities, free expression, and the ability to earn or create independently of the dominant system.
The human question cannot be automated away
The most persuasive part of the discussion was the list of practical benefits. Better medical research, faster education, improved software, and assistance with complex research could raise living standards. I already see the value of tools that can organize information, compare options, and turn hours of research into a usable report.
But usefulness is not the same as wisdom. A system can produce a beautiful answer and still misunderstand the purpose of the person asking the question. It can optimize a target while destroying the reason the target mattered. It can be efficient, scalable, and wrong.
The transcript also touches the issue of values. Musk compares SI to a tool whose behavior depends on how it is used, while acknowledging that systems may judge the user or restrict effectiveness based on their own rules. That is not a minor technical detail. It is the beginning of a constitutional question: who gets to decide what the machine is allowed to believe, say, recommend, or refuse?
American values such as free speech and commitment to truth should not be reduced to marketing language. They must be visible in the design of the systems and in the rights of the people who use them. If the United States wins the race by creating the most capable censorship engine in history, that is not a victory worth celebrating.
My conclusion
I want America to lead in super intelligence. I want the energy built, the chips manufactured, the research funded, and the tools made available to ordinary people. I want the United States to beat China because a freer society gives humanity a better chance than a party-controlled surveillance state.
But I do not want a future in which humans are declared obsolete and then managed with allowances. I do not want a UBI that turns citizens into dependents of the institution controlling the money, the model, and the rules. And I do not believe that a new acronym—SI, HBI, or anything else—solves the moral problem.
The real challenge is to make machines serve human independence. That means widely distributed ownership, open competition, personal control over data, serious limits on surveillance, reliable energy, and education that teaches people how to think rather than merely how to request answers. It means measuring success by the strength of families and communities, not just by GDP or the number of data centers.
Super intelligence may bring abundance. It may also bring dependence on an unprecedented scale. The outcome will not be decided by the machines alone. It will be decided by who owns them, who governs them, and whether ordinary people remain citizens—or become clients—of the new machine civilization.
A controversial Cornell lawsuit has reignited questions about consent, personal responsibility, public outrage, and the growing habit of treating adult women as helpless victims of their own decisions.
What happens when a sensational psychedelic story is forced to answer a basic journalistic question: who actually wrote the original story?
The new Blueprint video, The Toad Venom Formula That Changed Organic Chemistry Forever, follows Hamilton Morris as he revisits one of the most persistent legends in modern psychedelic culture. The video is not simply about a strange desert amphibian or a famous molecule. It is about a reporting mistake, a pseudonym, a pamphlet that escaped its original context, and the consequences that arrive when a captivating story becomes more influential than the evidence behind it.
There is an important limitation to state plainly. YouTube exposed no caption track for this particular upload, and the authorized server transcript path does not yet have an OAuth token for it. This article is therefore commentary on the video, its published description, and the supporting public record. It is not a reconstructed verbatim transcript, and it does not pretend to quote words that were not available.
The correction is the real story
The video centers on “Albert Most,” the name attached to the underground pamphlet Bufo alvarius: The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert. Public documentation for the later reprint identifies the author as Ken Nelson, writing under that pseudonym, with illustrations by Gail Patterson. The same documentation says Morris wrote a new preface after earlier reporting had misidentified the author. That is a useful reversal: the journalist is not protecting the neatness of his old story. He is reopening it.
That matters because media usually rewards certainty and speed. A memorable name, a mysterious author, and a supposedly ancient psychedelic tradition make an irresistible package. But a good investigation should be willing to unmake its own package when the record demands it. The correction is not an embarrassment to hide. It is the part that deserves the most respect.
Disruptarian has no interest in treating journalists as priests. The standard is simpler: show your work, identify what you got wrong, and let the audience see the correction. Morris’s return to the story is valuable precisely because it turns a media narrative into an audit trail.
Myth, marketing, and the danger of borrowed antiquity
The video also forces a harder question about the word “ancient.” Psychedelic culture often borrows the authority of antiquity. A modern practice is presented as timeless, indigenous, or sacred, and that label can make a product, retreat, or facilitator appear more legitimate. Yet recent conservation scholarship notes that there is no archaeologically confirmed record of entheogenic use of Incilius alvarius, the Sonoran Desert toad. The documented modern history of psychedelic use of its secretion is closely linked to the publication of the Albert Most pamphlet in the 1980s.
That does not make the animal uninteresting, and it does not make every spiritual experience fraudulent. It does mean that claims of inherited tradition should be examined rather than repeated because they sound beautiful. Respect for Indigenous cultures requires more than borrowing their names to decorate a modern market. It requires distinguishing what is documented, what is disputed, and what was invented recently.
This is where independent skepticism becomes more than a pose. The same suspicion we apply to a government press release should be applied to a retreat brochure, a viral documentary claim, and our own favorite story. A myth can be emotionally powerful and still be historically weak.
The chemistry changes the conservation argument
The Sonoran Desert toad is a real animal with a real ecological role, not a disposable container for a fashionable experience. Research describes its parotoid secretions as containing 5-MeO-DMT alongside other compounds, and reports that the species is under pressure from habitat loss and demand for natural secretion. Other conservation research describes a wider set of threats, including drying habitats, disease, road mortality, and the effects of extraction and poaching.
The central practical point is straightforward: if a desired compound can be produced without repeatedly treating a wild animal as raw material, the burden of proof shifts. Why harvest the toad when chemistry can provide another route for research? A peer-reviewed cell-culture study reported biosynthesis of 5-MeO-DMT from I. alvarius parotoid cells and described the approach as a potentially cruelty-free and sustainable source for research and drug development. That is not a license for reckless use, and it is not a completed answer to every scientific or legal question. It is, however, a serious alternative to romanticizing extraction.
Technology is not automatically humane. It can scale exploitation as easily as it can reduce it. The responsible question is what the tool does to the animal, the habitat, and the people involved. In this case, laboratory work may offer a way to separate chemical curiosity from wildlife pressure. That is a better direction than pretending the wild source is more authentic simply because it is harder on the ecosystem.
Correcting a story does not end the argument
There is a temptation to treat a correction as the final scene: the wrong name is replaced, the audience applauds, and the case is closed. But corrections should open the next set of questions. What did the original mistake cause? Which businesses, narratives, or cultural claims benefited from it? How many people repeated the “ancient medicine” story because it sounded authoritative? Who bears responsibility when an underground pamphlet becomes a global commodity?
The video’s title promises a formula that changed organic chemistry forever. The more interesting formula is ethical: curiosity plus correction plus conservation. Remove any one of those and the story becomes distorted. Curiosity without correction becomes hype. Correction without conservation becomes trivia. Conservation without honest history becomes another kind of myth.
There is also a lesson here for independent media. A creator does not become trustworthy by never making a mistake. No serious investigator can promise that. Trust is earned by making the chain of evidence visible and by returning to the scene when the record changes. The willingness to say, “I got that part wrong; here is what I found,” is more valuable than a performance of infallibility.
What the audience should take away
Watch the video as a case study in how modern legends are built. Start with the pamphlet, follow the pseudonym, separate the confirmed history from the later marketing, and pay attention to the animal at the center of the story. The point is not to endorse drug use or to provide a recipe. It is to ask whether our appetite for extraordinary experiences gives us permission to flatten history and damage the living world.
My own conclusion is deliberately unfashionable: the truth is more disruptive than the myth. A mysterious author is interesting; a real author, a real correction, and a real conservation problem are more important. The desert does not need our fantasies. It needs fewer extraction pressures, better evidence, and enough humility to admit when a compelling story outran the facts.
Safety note: This is commentary, not medical, legal, or drug-use advice. 5-MeO-DMT and toad secretions can carry serious health and legal risks. Do not handle wildlife or attempt chemical production based on this article or the linked video.
Frontiers conservation review — summarizes the toad’s ecology, modern history, conservation threats, and the limits of “ancient use” claims.
Transcript status: YouTube reported “No transcript is available for this YouTube video.” This article uses the video description and the cited public sources rather than an invented transcript.
A disruptive examination of COVID-era trust, vaccine skepticism, scientific uncertainty, and the pressure to treat institutional claims as unquestionable.
“Terrifying” Executive Orders? The Real Danger Is Unchecked Executive Power
Archived Disruptarian post. Preserved in the static blog catalog.
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In a world where words carry significant weight—especially those spilling from the oval office—some individuals choose to wield then like a rapier, while others employ a clumsy broadsword. Case in point: Julie Snell’s recent take on President Trump’s executive orders this week, which she deemed “terrifying, disheartening, and even bad science.” While I am always keen on discussing the merits of sound policy, it’s essential we also explore what this means for our economy and individual liberty, especially under the guise of executive authority.
Now, before we dive deep, let’s talk about the implications of these executive orders in a manner befitting the spirited discussions typically found in a fervent libertarian debate. The very term “executive order” can evoke a flurry of emotions, ranging from excitement to sheer panic, akin to a surprise party that goes awry—everyone’s there, balloons are flying, but no one knows who actually invited the government.
Snell’s characterization of these orders as “terrifying” sets the stage for a grand stage of governmental overreach potential, a perilous slope that can lead to an avalanche of regulations that stifle innovation and freedom alike. It’s a sentiment many in the libertarian sphere have often echoed. When you think about it, government interference in the market often feels like a referee treating a soccer game like a wrestling match, with arbitrary rules that benefit no one—least of all the players on the field, or in this case, the economy.
This week’s orders arrive under the banner of “safety” and “science,” a phrase that has become a rather clumsy duo in our socio-political lexicon. “Science” has been branded about like the latest fad diet—everyone claims they’re following it, yet results vary by individual, raising questions we ought not to ignore. Are we following “science” that respects our freedoms or “science” that becomes malleable to the whims of the ruling elite?
Isn’t it ironic that in the pursuit of safety, we often end up creating more restrictions that bind our personal liberties tighter than a pair ofSpanx? The market thrives on freedom: less regulation fosters creativity and innovation, allowing people to experiment—risks that can lead to both incredible discoveries and sometimes spectacular failures, much like a cooking competition where one participant is the next kitchen prodigy and another just excels at setting things on fire. Both are equally valuable to the evolution of culinary delight!
Snell’s assertion of “bad science” is a phrase that echoes in many free-market enthusiasts’ minds—one must always raise an eyebrow when the science being used appears selectively advantageous. After all, real scientific inquiry flourishes best in environments devoid of political baggage; it requires a bit of distance, much like a fine wine requires time to breathe. The intervention of government has a way of suffocating this delicate process, transforming inquiry into mere propaganda and turning potential robust discussions into a monopoly on thought, leaving free market solutions out in the cold, akin to a shunned child at a birthday party.
Furthermore, the unintended consequences of such orders cannot be ignored. With the stroke of a pen, we risk sowing seeds of distrust in the market and the regulators who manage it. When businesses observe government mandates swinging like a pendulum, there’s a creeping apprehension that begins to permeate the air—entrepreneurs hesitating to invest money, innovation falling to the wayside, and consumer choice crushed under the weight of red tape. What’s more terrifying than government intervention? It’s the very real possibility of a lethargic market where consumers are left with a limited buffet of choices, akin to a cafeteria offering only mystery meat and soggy green beans.
In a free market, abundance is the key that unlocks prosperity for every individual. The notion that the government can simply decree a solution to a complex issue is not just optimistic; it borders on delusional. A libertarian approach champions the idea that solutions blossom naturally when individuals are free to pursue their own interests—like entrepreneurs brewing up new ideas in a marketplace of ideas, rather than bureaucrats fumbling through a government-issued cookbook written in the 1950s.
We shouldn’t underestimate the humorous irony of the situation either. Here’s a President—elected by a public apparently seeking liberation from the previous chains of regime—now issuing orders that, perhaps unbeknownst to him, risk creating new chains of their own. In the grand game of American politics, it seems we often find ourselves going from one oppressive regime to another, as if we are all unwitting participants in a three-act play about the absurdity of governance, complete with comic relief.
Snell’s disheartenment is understandable. Who wouldn’t feel a bit dismayed when observing the dance of politics resembling a tragicomedy? Yet optimism can be derived from the resilience of both the market and the individual—a taxpaying, freedom-loving entity not so easily put down. Let’s nurture that resilience, encouraging a culture of personal responsibility and voluntary exchange unfettered by governmental hand-holding. The flourishing economy, after all, is built on the principles of freedom, thought, and action—all while embracing a pinch of appropriate skepticism and laughter along the way.
In conclusion, while one may consider Snell’s comments as a sensible critique, we must remember our own values. A society that values liberty and entrepreneurship can find comfort—and even a little laughter—in the knowledge that a thriving economy is responsive and adaptable, like a well-trained dog learning new tricks. So whether government orders twirl on the brink of “terrifying” or “bad science,” individuals and entrepreneurs will always rise to meet them with cleverness, grit, and maybe a humorous quip or two!
The word patriarchy now moves through schools, corporate training rooms, government departments, family-violence campaigns, university seminars, and casual political speech as if it were neutral description. Sometimes it is used loosely to mean that men have historically held more formal power than women. That limited historical claim can be argued like any other claim. But the modern theory of patriarchy is not merely a complaint that some laws or customs were unjust. It is part of a larger ideological machine.
That machine has a recognizable grammar. It divides society into a ruling class and an oppressed class. It teaches people to see ordinary institutions as instruments of domination. It treats disagreement as evidence that the system is doing its work. It says liberation begins when the oppressed develop consciousness of the hidden structure and organize against the class that benefits from it.
That is Marxist architecture. The labels have been changed.
In classical Marxism, the central antagonism is class. Marx and Engels wrote that the history of existing society was the history of class struggles: freeman and slave, lord and serf, bourgeoisie and proletariat. The ruling class controls property and production. The worker is exploited. Freedom comes when the oppressed class understands the system and acts politically against it. The Communist Manifesto is not subtle about this structure.
Patriarchy theory takes that same structure and changes the main axis. Capital becomes maleness. The bourgeoisie becomes men. The proletariat becomes women. Property, law, family, language, sex, culture, religion, and school are treated as instruments through which male power reproduces itself.
That does not mean every feminist who uses the word patriarchy is a Marxist. It does mean that radical patriarchy theory grew inside a Marxist and New Left atmosphere, borrowed the class-war template, and redirected it from economics to sex.
Engels Put the Family Inside the Revolutionary Frame
The bridge was built before the 1960s. Friedrich Engels, co-author of The Communist Manifesto, argued in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State that the development of private property was tied to the subordination of women inside the family. Engels treated monogamous marriage, inheritance, property, and female dependency as political and economic structures, not merely private arrangements.
That mattered because it gave later radicals a ready-made language. If the family could be understood as a site of property, power, and domination, then the domestic sphere was no longer outside politics. Marriage, motherhood, sex, housework, and child-rearing could all be brought under revolutionary analysis.
The old socialist promise was that abolishing capitalism would dissolve the economic roots of oppression. Radical feminists thought that was not enough. They looked at the men around them in the New Left and saw activists who wanted revolution in public while keeping male privilege in private. So the theory changed. Property remained important, but sex became the more basic division.
The New Left Women Changed the Target
By the late 1960s, many women inside radical movements had already learned to think in systems. They knew the vocabulary: oppression, liberation, consciousness, class, structure, revolution. What they rejected was the refusal of male radicals to treat sex as the central political divide.
Redstockings, one of the best-known radical feminist groups of that moment, declared in its 1969 manifesto that women were an oppressed class. The group called for female class consciousness and named male supremacy as the basic form of domination. That is not liberal reform language. It is revolutionary class language moved onto sex. The Redstockings Manifesto makes the connection plain.
Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics turned sex relations into a theory of power, arguing that patriarchy was embedded in literature, law, culture, family, and sexual norms. Shulamith Firestone pushed the argument further in The Dialectic of Sex, treating sex class as the deepest division and reproduction itself as part of the political problem.
Catharine MacKinnon later brought the argument into legal theory. A common internet quote claims MacKinnon wrote that feminism, socialism, and communism are one and the same. I am not relying on that line here because it is not reliably sourced in the materials I could verify. The stronger point does not need it. Harvard’s own description of Toward a Feminist Theory of the State says MacKinnon uses the debate over Marxism and feminism as the point of departure for a theory centered on sexual subordination and the state.
That is enough. The verified record already shows the pattern: Marxism supplied the method; radical feminism changed the subject.
The Unhappy Marriage Was Still a Marriage
Heidi Hartmann’s 1979 essay The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism is useful because it came from inside the debate. Hartmann argued that Marxism and feminism had been joined unequally. Marxism explained capitalism but did not properly explain male power. Radical feminism focused on sex hierarchy but could flatten history and economics. Her answer was not to separate them completely. It was to analyze capitalism and patriarchy as interlocking systems.
That phrase, interlocking systems, is the key to everything that followed. Once the activist mind adopts that model, every institution becomes suspect. The market is suspect. The family is suspect. The church is suspect. The school is suspect. The law is suspect. Language is suspect. Even ordinary disagreement becomes suspect because it can be interpreted as defense of the system.
That is why patriarchy theory rarely stops at equal legal rights. Anti-discrimination law is not enough. Equal formal access is not enough. The deeper project is consciousness. People must be trained to see the system the way the theory sees it.
How the Theory Reached the Classroom
Australia gives a useful example because second-wave feminism entered education policy through official channels. After the Whitlam government created the Schools Commission, the 1975 report Girls, School & Society placed sex roles, curriculum, and schooling under national policy scrutiny. It argued that schools reinforced sex roles and that subjects such as home economics could channel girls away from academic and technical paths.
Some of that reform addressed real limits. Girls should not be treated as intellectually unfit for science, technical work, leadership, or public life. A society that blocks half its people from developing their gifts weakens itself.
But the radical inheritance matters. Once education policy absorbs the oppressor-oppressed template, a safety lesson can quietly become a political lesson. The message moves from ‘do not harm people’ to ‘boys must understand that maleness makes others unsafe.’ It moves from ‘treat girls fairly’ to ‘boys must recognize their class position.’ That is not neutral anti-bullying work. That is ideology in classroom form.
The modern gender and social-transition material that accelerated through the 2010s and 2020s did not appear from nowhere. It inherited a system-first view of identity. Children are taught not only to be kind, but to interpret themselves through political categories: privileged, marginalized, oppressor, oppressed, ally, unsafe, affirmed, erased. The classroom becomes a miniature struggle session with nicer posters.
The Failure of Group Guilt
The great failure of patriarchy theory is that it treats a statistical pattern as a moral identity. Male overrepresentation in recorded partner violence is real. Serious violence by men against women is real. Female intimate partner homicide is a real category and a grave one. Australian Institute of Criminology reporting should be read seriously.
But a true statistic does not make every man a danger, every father a latent abuser, or every boy a trainee oppressor. Most men do not assault anyone. Most boys are not plotting domination. Many men live quiet lives of work, duty, restraint, fatherhood, service, and sacrifice while being lectured by institutions that speak about them as a problem class.
Women are not one class facing men as one class. Women exist in every income group, every political tribe, every family role, and on both sides of harm. Some women are victims. Some women are perpetrators. Some are protective mothers. Some are destructive mothers. Some are rich, some poor, some powerful, some powerless. The same is true of men.
Look at the numbers that do not fit the script. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s suicide monitoring shows persistent male overrepresentation in suicide deaths and rates. A society that says it cares about harm cannot ignore dead men because their suffering does not fit the preferred political category. AIHW suicide data is not patriarchal propaganda. It is a warning light.
Filicide data also complicates the slogan that the adult male is simply the most dangerous thing in the home. The Australian Institute of Criminology’s national filicide report found victims killed by mothers, fathers, stepfathers, and parent-equivalent offenders. One AIC summary reports mothers killed 134 children and fathers killed 109 in the 2000-2012 national study, with stepfathers also heavily represented. AIC's filicide report does not support a cartoon view of household danger.
None of this excuses male violence. It does something more important: it refuses propaganda. Policy should follow evidence, not inherited revolutionary scripts.
Resistance Becomes Proof
The most manipulative part of patriarchy theory is its treatment of dissent. If a man objects, he is defending patriarchy. If a woman objects, she is accused of internalized oppression or betrayal. If parents object to classroom material, they are told they cannot see the system because they are inside it. The theory protects itself by turning disagreement into evidence.
That is classic ideological closure. Marxist systems did it with class consciousness. Radical feminist systems do it with patriarchy. Critical race systems do it with whiteness. The subject changes, but the maneuver remains the same: name the system, name the class, attack resistance as proof that the system is real.
This is why the word patriarchy is not harmless when used as a total theory. It does not merely identify injustice. It trains people to judge human beings by group guilt before conduct. It tells boys to inherit blame and girls to inherit grievance. It teaches suspicion before gratitude, resentment before responsibility, and politics before family.
The Point
A decent society should punish violence, protect women, protect children, defend due process, and tell the truth about harm wherever it appears. It should not turn boys into ideological defendants before they have done anything. It should not teach girls that freedom begins by seeing fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons as a hostile class.
The family is not perfect. Men are not perfect. Women are not perfect. Schools are not perfect. But the answer to imperfection is not to smuggle Marxist class struggle into sex relations and call it safety.
When someone says the adult male is the household danger, and that questioning the curriculum proves you are part of the problem, they are not simply reading data. They are using an old script.
The subject is sex. The method is Marxist. The result is politics in places where children should be learning truth, discipline, courage, and mutual respect.
Call it patriarchy theory if you want. But understand what it is doing.
A family argument about Donald Trump became part of a larger history of parental alienation, evidence, political judgment, and the cost of turning accusations into weapons.
