If you want to be called "brave" nowadays, just do violence to words.
The English language is a living document. Purists and conservatives are fooling themselves if they understand what the founders of definitions were really thinking when they defined words with minutely specific groups of other words and then added multiple definitions full of groups of other words. Clearly they went through all that work so as to leave it open to interpretation.
That means we’re free to mold, fashion, and obliterate meaning in whatever circular manner fits our feelings at that moment, along with redefining the terminology used and getting mad at you for not keeping up with the new definition we just made up in our heads in the moment. Words are just things, and we can do with them as we want, so long as we have consent (and we do, you don’t). We’re like Shakespeare, sans the obviously inherent racism/sexism/misogyny/namism/pronounism/supremacy-ism all straight, white males emerge from their mothers’ vaginal canals ready to be accused and found guilty of. We can mold them to our truth and shout you into submission if you try to do the same or stick to traditional definitions. We can do that because we’re brave. You’re cowardly for sticking to your guns and you should find a seat and sit down and shut up and die and then double-die and then distribute your wealth to a person of color and then die again. You’ll be forever (or at least until your particular actions go out of vogue and in that case you’ll be cancelled) brave in our book if:
You didn’t like the way a man performed sexually and decided the next morning your consensual sex wasn’t consensual. What’s he gonna do? Cry boo when we release his name to the media, totally ruin his life, convict him in the court of public opinion, and remain oddly silent when he’s proven innocent/charges are dropped or never filed/you’re shown to have filed a faulty report? Not on our watch. At least you can shout “Dude it’s a prank!” to legally cover your ass when he confronts you/slaps you with a lawsuit.
Just decided you’re a gender with characteristics and adjectives more crazy and specific than a Jerry Springer guest? Just do violence to words. It’s so simple! And then get in the grill of those who have the audacity to bristle, take umbrage, or roll their eyes when you’re talking (our school of extrasensory perception specializes in behind-the-back eyeroll detection).
Lived your whole life and reached your sixties as a man and all of a sudden decided you’re an eight-year-old girl? No problem. Do a finishing move (we prefer the elbow drop but you can feel free to make it your own) to words that used to define what you were and publicly wish death upon the children of those who refuse to accept what you are.
Unable to compete with other men in track and field? There couldn’t be an easier fix. Do violence to words and call yourself a woman, set some records, and come back to being a man when all is said and done. You know, if that’s what you feel, because what you feel is your truth and we’ll dox anyone who denies it (your time is coming, Ben Shapiro).
This next one’s Progressive Social Justice Warrior Leftist Teen Woke Titan 101, but it works so well that it bears repeating. If you can’t be bothered with putting together a valid argument or even a cogent sentence, just scream racism. This one is a double-whammy if you’re black (we’re chipping away at the “I identify as black” one, so give us a little more time). In that situation you can be super cray cray racist to white people, justify your racism by claiming that black people can’t be racist, and sleep totally sound that night with a sparkling clean conscience free from conflicted feelings or confronting hypocrisies.
Call anyone occupying an elected position in the Republican party “worse than Hitler”. The emotional connotation and groupthink will do the rest, leaving you plenty of leisure time to find new an inventive ways to consume avocadoes and not reflect on the denigration of the memory (not to mention the blatant insult) of those actually oppressed and killed by Hitler. Same method of not reflecting on the memories of those who suffered works if you’re black and call yourself a slave in modern America.
Do identity politics and dismissing an argument out of hand make your genitals moister than Cardi B’s on Saturday night after more than a few sips of wine? Talk to the person you’re debating, use trifling and inconsequential genetic factors (if he’s white and straight, he’s already making your job easy) to reject even a glancing consideration of their ideas and talk in circles (“You can/can’t say that because you’re _______” is a tried-and-true method) until they give up and walk away in a huff, defaulting victory to you. “Did you see me win that conversation?” should immediately proceed out of your mouth to any bystanders.
Attribute nothing but negative characteristics to all men and completely ignore the good that men do while simultaneously ignoring any bad that women do while accentuating and exaggerating the good that women do. Go one and do some violence-ing to words and be called brave, girl.
Paint black people with a broad brush when it comes to their ability to procure Wifi, log into the internet, get directions to the DMV, acquire a state-issued ID, all after we said they were unable to achieve at high levels in coursework with objective answers during grade school. Taking their vote for granted is just the signing bonus on top of the gravy on top of the icing on the cake. Seriously, how else can we folks who swipe right for the DNC insult black people and keep getting away with it? Tell the world that it’s racist to expect basic cognition and motor skills from them? Am I right? High-five me. Let’s go get a milkshake for breakfast from Starbucks and call it coffee. VIOLENCE TO WORDS IS THEE ABSOLUTE BEST!
Bonus content alert
Speaking of doing violence to words, tell me Caitlyn Jenner isn’t pranking America. Let’s rundown some of the notable events in her life.
A person dead-named Bruce won a gold medal for track and field in the Olympics, then
Got on the Wheaties box, then
Got married and had a bunch of children, then (this is where it starts getting weird)
Married the widow of one of the lawyers who got OJ acquitted, then
Helped her raise her fashion-conscious and poofy-lipped daughters, then
Brought their mixed family to television screens and helped launch his stepdaughters’ careers as people who are famous for existing, then
Decided he was a woman all along (probably, maybe, but definitely completely unrelated to his termagant, domineering wife) and posed for the cover of a swimwear magazine that typically is used by straight men for masturbatory purposes, then
Was given an award by ESPN for female bravery, then
Was criticized, derided, cancelled, and excoriated by every conservative political pundit on both sides of the Mississippi, then
Killed someone in a car crash, then
Was embraced and heralded by the LGBTQWERTYSUPERCALLIFRAGILLISTICEXPALIDOCIOUS community for her bravery to be a super wealthy and influential woman on television bravely using her brave voice to be brave, then
Started a second successful television program with her stepdaughters, then
Demolished the mental health of the aforementioned alphabet community by campaigning and voting for bad-racist-orange-worse-than-Hitler-man-who-must-not-be-named, then
Spearheaded the charge to recall a democrat governor of California and announced her campaign to be elected as republican governor, then
Was simultaneously embraced by the aforementioned republican pundits and cancelled by the aforementioned alphabet community who didn’t need anymore damage done to their mental health but got it in the form of Caitlyn declaring that biological males should be kept from competing in female sports and who then proceeded to double and triple and quadruple and infinity plus infinity plus one cancel her by rejecting her ability to think for herself (not very feminist of them!) by accusing her of suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, then
Who knows what comes next?
See what I mean? This is why the phrase “stranger than fiction” exists. I defy that ol’ cuss Billy Shakespeare to come up with something this farfetched and compelling. This is why satirists are quitting their job. Satire is taking the facts and stretching them just a tiny bit for a laugh. This exaggerated version of America is giving them nowhere to go. Give writer’s block some blunt force trauma to the head and permanent amnesia and you’ll just about hit the nail squarely in describing what’s bound to happen. Even eccentric and nonsensical subplot-obsessed filmmaker David Lynch would throw his hands up in the air and declare “I can’t work with this material. Get me Terry Gilliam. We’ll try to bang something out but don’t hold your breath.” Are we all being Punk’d? Is Ashton Kutcher about to pop out and give us all an atomic wedgie and remind us he still exists? I’m pre-cutting my underwear and wearing a rear view mirror on my hat from now on, just in case. I just can’t deal right now. Imma go grab some sleep and process things for a minute.
Hey there, beloved reader! Don’t stop reading yet. I enjoy writing and creating content for you, but I don’t get paid to do it just yet. Recently, I took on the Herculean task of fixing America and wrote a book on the subject; the very literal-titled “I’ll Fix America Tonight”. There is a a link where you can conveniently add the book to your Amazon cart (if you’re flush with about $20 in cash right now) or your wish list (if around $20 in cash is a little too much right now, but hypothetically not too much in the near future). Buy it, and help end poverty (namely my poverty). Thanks for reading!
Caitlyn Jenner image taken from:
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/caitlyn-jenner-brands-compassionate-disrupter-1st-ad-seeking/story?id=77473990