Why Female Violence Gets a Free Pass

So on June 3rd, 1968, Valerie Solanus walked into a Manhattan office building and shot Andy Warhol. And then, when asked all she simply said good to the question of whether her victim might die, "Valerie, why did this happen?" "Because he's a..."

"Well, let's clean it up a little. What did he do to you?"

"Well, let's say, you know, my organization SCUM. You know, he wouldn't want anything to control SCUM. Yeah. Well, he wanted SCUM and he got it."

"You know, he may die."

Hollywood, then in 1996, turned her story into a biopic and made her something of a folk hero for her manifesto, SCUM. And now, 30 years later, the film is getting a 4K restoration and a triumphant return. And this is just a very good example of how culture bends over backwards to excuse and, even in this case, romanticize female violence.

So, welcome back to PsychoBabel. I'm Hannah Spear, and today I'm joined by Dr. Janice Vango, Tom Golden, and Dr. James Nuso. Hi, guys.

"Hello there."

"So, Jim first brought this to our attention with his tweet of a Guardian article of this movie. And Jim is so good at following all these things. So if you want to make sure you never miss anything, then go and follow him on X. And, um, we're going to start by running one of the clips from the movie and then, Jim, you can take us through what you thought of this article and the movie and the double standard you pointed to in your tweet."

"She possesses much initiative and always meets her obstacles by setting new goals."

"The male is a biological accident. The Y male gene is an incomplete X or female gene. Has an incomplete set of chromosomes. It's not technically possible to reproduce without the aid of males and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so."

"Jim."

"So, tell us, what is this all about?"

"So, believe it or not, about once a week I check the Guardian and I check the feminist women's rights section of the Guardian to see what they're up to. And I happen to..."

"Thank you. Otherwise, we wouldn't have any content."

"A couple weeks ago, um, I came across this, um, article. One reason it caught my attention is because I believe in our previous chat that we had, um, about, uh, hating of men. I believe Janice brought up this, um, incident in our chat. So it was fresh on my mind because of that chat we had. I'm also very interested, um, in movies. So I clicked on the article and, oh my goodness, and I have since reread the article more closely and this is quite, um, something. So what I said in my tweet was, uh, 'Feminist violence gets a free pass. It is contextualized, if not celebrated.' And then I gave some quotes, um, from the article itself. So I'll just give a kind of a broad overview of the article. The first paragraph, um, just sort of states kind of a little bit what happened that day. Although I'm actually not even sure the journalist got the details correct and there, um, are some things missing from that description that are important, like other people she planned to kill that day, men. Then they quickly transition to what the whole purpose of the article is, which is to introduce this movie and how it's going to be restored and released in cinemas. And this is the movie called 'I Shot Andy Warhol.' And that's the segment we just watched is a segment from that movie. Throughout the rest of the article, then what happens is the journalist is quoting extensively from the director and writer, um, of the movie, who whose name I believe is Mary Hannon or..."

"Harry."

"...who also was the director of the movie 'American Psycho,' which I think says, um, a lot as well. This is from Mary Harron, interviewed in a different outlet, and this is about her movie-making. It says, 'Quote, "One thing I'm not is a moralistic filmmaker. I'm not trying to tell people what to do, and I'm not trying to lead. Americans always think they have to lead. I'm interested in ambiguity." End quote.' And, and she's a Canadian, uh, filmmaker. Sorry, Janice. Um, and, and that's very telling because then what you, what you see from her, all the quotes that come from her throughout this Guardian article is how she is saying that Solanas is sexy and really funny and brilliant and very, very smart and how she's so great and how this is just such a really important movie and she emphasizes, uh, empathizes with Solanas quite a lot. So that's the general overview. I've got a lot more to say about it, but I know that Janice has written about this, uh, in more detail recently, so I'm interested to hear what, what she has to say."

"That was fantastic. I, and I, I just wanted to say, Jim, that I, that is such a great quote to choose from Mary Harron. 'I'm not interested in leading.' Of course, she is. She wrote a and co-wrote and directed a movie that presents Valerie Solanas as a misunderstood genius, you know, a tormented artist, somebody who took the pain of her life and turned it into profound insights into the nature of male-female relationships. It's very, very clear what she was trying to do in the movie and what sort of, uh, impact it's supposed to have on people. So it's just nonsense to say that she's interested in ambiguity. Uh, and it's absolutely unimaginable that if a, um, man had, uh, walked into an artist's studio and tried to kill three women, uh, that he would have been, that that a documentary about his life would have emphasized his tormented genius and would have presented the attempted murders of these three women in the sort of bloodless, surreal manner in which the film does. It hardly cares. Like those, those attempted murders are just an occasion for taking us to the interesting story of this fascinating and, uh, you know, abused woman. So the irony of Mary Harron imagining herself some sort of nuanced and dispassionate chronicler of the complexity of reality is just a, a typical self-flattering portrait on her part."

"Yes."

"Yeah. And I, I, I'll add that, um, actually, when you don't take a moral stance, that always favors evil because evil has the most to gain. The bad guy, the villain, always has the most to gain by you not taking an objective stance on what is right and wrong. And, um, in this case, most people with common sense know what's right and wrong and who the bad person is. But for some reason, she's not able to, um, fully understand what most people understand, which is that Solanas is supposed to be the bad person. But instead, she says, 'Ah, I'm just a little bit more ambiguous about it.' In fact, the title of the Guardian article is a quote from her. It says, 'It's not about heroes and villains.' And that's the problem. The person that made the film doesn't quite understand the difference between wrong and right."

"Maybe she did understand. You know, I, I think the whole thing's a farce, really. Because in the Guardian article, one of the things he says is that Harron says there wasn't enough information to do a documentary. We couldn't do a documentary because all we had was a couple of newspaper article quotes and the psychiatrist stuff, and we didn't really have. So what did she do? She created her own movie. She created a fantasy about what this woman was about. Not from reality, not from quotes from people who knew her, but from what the director thought she was like. It's like, come on, just, just bull from the beginning."

"Yeah, that's a great. Why not just..."

"For me, the way I look at a film like this, this is why historical dramas are are tough to make as interesting films sometimes. Just make it as a documentary. Just say what the facts are, or make an actual new drama that might articulate and show the world something important. So, for example, if, if, as, let's say you're a feminist and you're really concerned about the issue of Solanas, who was reportedly abused, um, sexually abused by her father. I don't know if that's true, but that's what some of the reports are. If that's an issue that you want to sort of get out there in some way, what I would argue the best way to make a drama is is take, for example, the character of Jodie Foster in 'Silence of the Lambs.' Okay? That sort of female character. She is maybe set out on this journey as a police officer or investigator. She wants to solve these crimes dealing with childhood sexual abuse because she was abused as a child. So she rechannels that energy in a positive way, and the movie depicts her overcoming these challenges and so on and so forth throughout the movie. But instead, what we get is 'I Shot Andy Warhol.' And so what is, like, what is a young person, let's say you were a young woman who was abused, what, what message do you take from this movie other than, 'Oh, I should go read 'SCUM Manifesto' and actually play it out'? I mean, that's what, that's what Solanas did. She, she actually did what she was saying people should do in the 'SCUM Manifesto.'"

"Yes. Mhm."

"And, and it's clear that, uh, exactly as you said, Tom, it isn't that that, um, Mary Harron is, you know, dwelling in ambiguity. Uh, she is celebrating the boldness and the righteous anger of Valerie Solanas. And the Guardian article affirms that. It says at one point that Solanas was filled with righteous, had righteous anger at patriarchal control of women. So no ambiguity there."

"The amazing thing to me is, if you look at how she was portrayed in the movie, arrogant, dominant, contempt for men, hatred of men, violence, entitlement, refusal to listen. All of those things describe what they call toxic masculinity. So, wait a minute. She's got all these things that we're saying today are terrible things to have, but she's put out there as, as a role model. Bizarre. And the whole thing's a farce. It's crazy, as far as I'm concerned."

"Yeah. But it's sexy. She chose her, chose a very, very nice-looking woman to, uh, portray Solanas, who was not in reality very nice-looking, and, um, you know, so, and, and she looks very sexy. You know, all those still shots, uh, of, of her holding the gun with a cigarette in her mouth and all of that. She's an anti-hero, a very romantic one. Um, and, uh, she's an outlaw, and everybody loves an outlaw, especially one who is taking down some sort of power structure, uh, whether it really exists or not. So, um, yeah, it's a very clear, um, moral drama is presented to us here. The male tries to convince himself and women that the female function is to bear and raise children, soothe, relax, and boost the male ego. When in actual fact, the female function is to groove, relate, love, be herself, discover, explore, invent, solve problems, crack jokes, make music, all with love. In other words, create a magic world."

"Create a magic world. Janice, you had a great Substack piece last week, I believe, detailing some of this and, you know, describing how the manifesto was actually rejected by the fe, that it wasn't rejected, and it probably, uh, should have been. Could you take us through this contradiction?"

"Mhm. Yeah. And one thing I did want to say about the movie, uh, in addition to what we've already said about it, is that it is punctuated with all of these black and white scenes in which the actor, um, playing Lily Taylor, I think, is the actor, um, who does a great job of portraying, uh, Solanas, you know, as, as, as the tormented genius, allegedly, and, and giving her this, this sort of pugnacious,..."

"Self-possessed glory. You can really see it even in that one short clip that we get. All of these, uh, black and white scenes of her, sort of, as if she's presented out of time. Um, maybe we can imagine this is how she appeared in, uh, some film clips that Andy Warhol, uh, took of her. Um, and we, you know, this is, this is the enduring Solanas that we are to remember, uh, the, the woman of wit and righteous anger and insight, uh, who through her words penned her her righteous fury. And, um, it, you know, it sounds a bit pithy and, and aphoristic and sort of witty in that sense, um, if you actually read the 'SCUM Manifesto,' which I don't know whether I should recommend or not. It's a horrible experience. I think it's, it's not any of the things that it is portrayed to be and that Mary Harron clearly seemed to think it was. Um, it's puerile pap, you know, it doesn't have a program for change. It's utterly incoherent and self-contradictory in the claims it makes about women and men and, and society. Um, it's juvenile, repetitive, vulgar, crude. It's like the rantings of an angry 16-year-old who imagines tearing down the entire society. Let's get rid of the money system, let's eliminate all men, you know, etc. And it, it's just silly, actually. It's bombastic and embarrassing. And yet, it is glorified by many feminist, uh, scholars and feminist leaders, and it is certainly presented in the film as if it is a work of profundity. So, um, yeah. So, so, um, a little bit of historical context would be that as soon as Solanas shot Andy Warhol and also shot an art critic, Mario Amaya, I think is his name was, um, and, uh, attempted to kill Andy Warhol's manager, general manager, but the gun didn't fire. So, as soon as that happened, um, feminists reacted with exaltation and glee, as they so often do when a woman kills a man. And, uh, the leader of the New York chapter of NOW, the National Organization for Women, uh, tried to immediately organize a defense for her. She hired a, uh, civil rights lawyer, I think her name was Flo Kennedy, to represent Solanas. She visited her in prison, various, she, she opined that what she had done, that she was the first, uh, champion of women's rights, you know. So she immediately framed this action as a blow for women's rights. It was completely unambiguous again. And ironically, uh, Solanas herself was not pleased to be so championed. She hated the feminist movement. She felt it was far too tame because it was not trying to tear down everything. It was trying to reform society. And so what she said about it was, uh, she wrote to Atkinson a few months after she'd been visited by her in prison, 'Do not continue to mouth your cultivated banalities about my motive for shooting Warhol. Your gall in presuming to be competent to discourse on such a matter is beyond belief. In short, do not ever publicly discuss me, SCUM, or any aspect at all of my case. Just don't.' So, I thought that was kind of amusing, uh, that she was so disgusted by all of the feminist attempts to rehabilitate her as a champion of women's rights. But that hasn't stopped people. Uh, there's been a, a very admiring biography written about Solanas by Brianna Fos, uh, that portrays her both as an abused innocent and as a, you know, heroic, um, icon of resistance against patriarchal tyranny. Uh, there's been a very, uh, republication of 'SCUM Manifesto' by a boutique press in 2004 with a lengthy, very admiring introduction by, um, a feminist philosophy professor named Avital Ronell. Um, you know, all sorts of feminists have have talked about her as a kind of role model and as an interesting embodiment of, uh, feminist rage. So lots of feminists have been gratified by her action and not embarrassed, you know. And that's the thing that, uh, irritates me so much is if you try to speak to feminists about the instigation to violence, the provocation towards hatred in feminist words and claims about men, they'll deny it. 'Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's not feminism. Feminism is a movement for equality. It cares about men. It cares about the rights of men.' Then if you point out the cases in which, uh, women have actually acted on their own hatred, as in this clear case, she wrote about killing men and what a great thing it was, she tried to kill men, and they say, 'Ah, well, she's not representative of feminism.' 'Feminists, of course, don't, they, they don't support that.' Or sometimes they do support it, and in cases where they support it, then they make her into some sort of champion. So, the contradictions and hypocrisy, well, we're not surprised to find them, but they're still worth pointing out, I think."

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"I'll just add that I'm actually like quite concerned if this actually catches on because if you, um, read what, um, Mary Harron was saying toward the end of that article, was she was recognizing that she was re-releasing this film during a certain political climate."

"Yeah."

"She, she knows it. And, um, and, and she even says the words, um, where she's referring to, 'We're seeing increased authoritarianism around the world. We're seeing increased male dominance in politics.' And then the sentence after that is something along the lines of, and, um, 'and Valerie showed us, Solanas showed us what it looks like to stand up for women,' or something. And then so that's the end of the quote. But actually, that what would come next logically is that in order to push back against that perceived male dominance and that authoritarianism is that you should act like Solanas acted. That is the next, that is the implication of that statement. And, and she knows that she's releasing the film in this moment. There's reference to Luigi Manion in the in the article. So, it's just so stupid and so irresponsible."

"Yeah. Well, uh, I think many feminists are quite okay with the possibility that another woman who may be mentally ill or, uh, stoked up on her own sense of, uh, pathological narcissism or whatever, uh, will kill another man or men. They're fine with that. They really are. They've, they've made that clear over and over again. How many times can you celebrate the death of men and talk about it as a good thing without people having to finally take you seriously that you really do hope it will happen? And the only thing, you know, I think Solanas's incompetence actually is what led to more men not dying that day because I believe she actually intended to kill the book publisher first. They depict that in the in the movie. She went there to kill him, but he was away for the weekend. So that was going to be one guy dead. Andy Warhol was meant to be the second guy dead. Then there was, um, Mario, the guy who got shot. That was three guys that were supposed to be dead. And then there was, um, someone, I think, that ran into the bathroom or something and, and hid. That was meant to be, what, the fourth person. And then there was a guy, Fred Hughes, that she held the gun to his head and then it, it jammed. So at minimum, she intended to kill five men that day. And, um, the only thing that saved them was a, I guess, a bit of luck, but also her own incompetence in firing the gun and planning out the attacks. But the intent was obviously there."

"Mhm. Yeah. Doesn't matter."

"Yeah. She, she had righteous anger. So, uh, anything can be justified if you have righteous anger against patriarchal control. And she did, of course, you know, seriously, serious. She was almost successful in killing Andy Warhol. She seriously wounded him. He never recovered. Not only psychologically traumatized for life, but he was physically damaged for life. He had to wear a surgical corset for the rest of his life to hold his organs in place. You know, he, the intensity of his pain, uh, was, it was terrible. Uh, his, his, his art changed, everything about him changed. None of that, of course, is, um, of concern in the movie or generally to feminists. So, uh, so that's quite something. And yes, the, the, the promotion of the killing of men is, uh, a, a dominant strand in much feminist thought. So, so this is just one example of it. And then the question is, uh, you know, you know, what, what did she have? Was she mentally ill? I know that Betty Friedan wasn't, didn't really agree that she should be praised because she was mentally ill and came out and said that she was at first deemed unfit to stand trial and then got the diagnosis paranoid schizophrenia. And we can see a clip of that here."

"The patient is a 28-year-old single woman who was admitted to this hospital on June 5th. She was born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She describes a rather pitiful childhood including parental conflict, sexual molestation by her father, and separation from her home. By the age of 13, she had many sexual experiences. It was about this time her mother remarried for the second time. At age 14, she was sent to boarding school where she stayed for about two years. It was here that she had her first homosexual experiences. At age 16, she returned home. Her schoolwork improved and it was noted that she seemed to possess exceptional intellectual ability."

"Right? And, uh, you know, I have thoughts. I have some questions, you know."

"Because, uh, she, you know, the paranoid schizophrenics, I have met have not been in any state to produce anything of any coherence. And I mean, it's a very debilitating disease with hallucinations and it's, uh, hallmark is delusion. So I mean, you can ask the question, if feminism is some sort of mass delusion, I think there is an argument to be made there. Uh, but, you know, she was able to produce something that academia just took and ran with, something that was so coherent, and, and her achievements doesn't compute with me. Usually presents earlier. And, um, schizophrenia, it's, it's, it's not easy to diagnose. It's not something, it's a clinical picture. A lot is based on historical retelling. And, um, I see the diagnosis being used in places where I would perhaps call it something else, but of course, I don't know enough to say anything else than that. But there is this sort of, like Jim mentioned earlier, that we do immediately seek to excuse women. We, whenever they commit violent crimes, the first thing we do is dig for the origin story. And when they have difficult childhoods, that is immediately understood. But if you look at antisocial males, they're usually convicted of crimes. They very rarely have happy childhoods. There's always trauma then. Um, and that's okay, we understand it, but still they will always say that they have agency. So there's a lot of hypocrisy there. You know, we will always create a story to keep the women's moral innocence, and that is, I think, what they've done here."

"Yes. Okay. And..."

"I think it's worth pointing out too that the, from the very beginning, that that clip was from the beginning of the movie, they're portraying her as a victim. And then the movie itself, they show her being abused by men most of the movie, like the guy, the, uh, interviewer, the podcaster, not podcaster, but the interview guy, the talk show host, the, the publisher. I mean, these are men who are treating her poorly, you know, and she's, she's a poor, abused young woman. It's like the whole thing was, was a setup, you know, to show that she was a victim and that she was basically abused. You, that's, that's kind of the way I saw it."

"Yes, absolutely. And that is a very, very attractive story, as Hannah was just saying. Um, and as, as Jim pointed out, uh, and I find that, you know, every time I write on my Substack about a terrible thing a woman has done, whether she set her best friend on fire because he annoyed her one night when they were drinking and then shows almost no remorse, but a lot of self-pity afterwards, um, or in this case, when I wrote about Solanas attempting to murder various men, there's always a whole bunch of people, even anti-feminist men, in my comment section, opining about the pain that caused the action. Everybody immediately goes to that. They're not so interested, they may acknowledge the pain that was caused by this person's deliberate choices and actions. But there's a lot of emphasis on, 'must have had, must have been abused by men.' 'Must hate her femininity.' I always, that one always makes me laugh. 'Hates her femininity.' So what are we supposed to do about it? As if this is like a social problem that society hates femininity and we need to help women love their femininity more. Uh, you know, what was badly treated as a child and so on. Uh, so we do, um, long for, uh, expiation and exculpation of of, uh, these women's crimes. Um, I, I was mentioning when we were discussing this, uh, this whole issue, there's a fascinating book by Phyllis Chesler called 'A Politically Incorrect Feminist,' and the subtitle is 'Creating a Movement with Lunatics, Dykes, Prodigies, Warriors, and Wonder Women,' and she has a whole chapter in which she talks about the, um, dysfunction and pain and mental illness and just basically acting out bad behavior of a lot of the feminists who were at the beginnings of the second wave movement. She talks about the backstabbing, the bitching, the ideological divisions, the, you know, the constant arguments, the undermining that women did of one another, uh, the, the, you know, the shouting, the paranoia. And, um, she talks about specific women that she knew. She mentions Kate Millett for one, Shulamith Firestone for another, Andrea Dworkin for another, you know, all of whom were very, very difficult and undermined other women, were quite vicious in their attacks on other women. And her conclusion is, you know, this is what the patriarchy does to these women. So ultimately, their bad behavior is always the fault of men. And I find that over and over again that men themselves are quite happy to excuse women's bad behavior, even their lethal violence, by saying that some man must have caused trauma in this woman. And so we can celebrate the terrible things they do as acts of resistance to patriarchy and excuse it at the same time. And, um, yeah, that's, that's a favored pastime. Yeah. And, uh..."

"Yeah, so she, you know, she thought that the purpose of eliminating men was to to create a magical world. She, she said the word magical was going to be this magical kind of female-only world. Although she did have the exception for the, the men's auxiliary portion of SCUM, in which, uh, that group of men was able, she was willing to let them live as long as they, um, were willing to move forward with the long-term goals of SCUM, meaning the elimination of men. So if they go around murdering other men and, and were otherwise useful. But, um, yeah, she, she thought that she could create a magical world of only women. She also said something really interesting in 'SCUM Manifesto,' which, because, you know, I've gone through the academic cancellation thing, and she was accusing men of being, um, the sex more likely to do cancellations and censor other people. And I just thought that that was hilarious. She got some of that so completely wrong with what she thought this utopian world was going to be. She uses the word utopia in the 'SCUM Manifesto.'"

"Yeah. And she, she also claimed that men lack individuality, that they're terrified of doing anything that distinguishes them from other men. I thought, well, h that I have to say that that sounds more like women than like men to me. Um, so much of the 'SCUM Manifesto' is actually projection, I think. Even though she accuses men of being the ones who scapegoat others because they hate themselves so much, I'd say that probably that describes Solanas herself rather than the men she's, uh, excoriating. But, uh, yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, and again, like, if this were a one-off, um, we could say, yeah, she's just a deranged individual, um, and, uh, she doesn't really represent feminism. But there is a very, um, enduring and highly respected strand in feminist thought that does look forward to a utopia in which men will, if not having been, will not, ah, can't speak there, uh, men will have been, if not eliminated, certainly reduced. And, you know, there's all sorts of famous examples. And these were not crazy people on the street corner of New York, as one could say of Solanas. These were academics, these are professors, these are legal theorists, these are people who are given a lot of respect in elite society. They, they include Sally Miller Gearhart, who famously in an essay from 1982, will find that the proportion of men would have to be reduced to 10% of the human population. These include Mary Daly, professor of religion at Boston College, who agreed with Gearhart and said in an interview in the late '90s that yes, there would have to be a decontamination of the earth that would involve the reduction in male numbers. There are contemporary feminist academics and theorists who say similar things. A legal theorist named Maryanne Frank, for example, forget what college she's at in the United States, she's an American academic, highly respected and published, who has actually argued that, um, because there is an alleged discrepancy in in acts of violence between men and women, men commit more acts of violence. Of course, they commit them against men primarily. She doesn't mention that. But, um, in order to even out the violence, we need a redistribution of violence in which women will be encouraged and allowed to enact what she calls justified violence against men, and that their sentences for such violence will be reduced or even eliminated, and their violence will be promoted. Allegedly, that will then reduce men's, reduce men's violence because men will be afraid of what women might do to them. So she is explicitly..."

"Wow."

"...seriously advocating that women's violence be encouraged, sanctified, and blessed by the society at large. She puts this forward as a serious proposal, and she is taken seriously. She doesn't lose her job. She's not ridiculed and condemned. So this is the society that we live in. And yet again, um, we search for these mitigating explanations. We just cannot seem to take seriously the fact of women's violence and the harm that it causes."

"Yeah. Well, that is some delusion right there."

"I know. Exactly. Yes. Exactly. And, and it does, I mean, it certainly does raise the question, the larger question that I think we're circling around here, which is, you know, can we not say that feminism is the product of mental illness? Is it not the expression of mental illness? In the book I was just talking about by Phyllis Chesler, who admits that all sorts of the pioneers of the second wave movement were crazy. She says it herself. They acted out in all sorts of ways. And yet she says, 'But feminism isn't crazy. Feminism is entirely sane.' But how, how does that make sense? If the people who expressed it and theorized it and brought it into being were demonstrably not right, then how is the product of their thinking correct?"

"And it certainly causes mental illness."

"Mhm. Yes."

"But there's a good argument to be made there. Yes, that well, both that it attracts women who are already predisposed in some way to a mental illness or at least a, you know, maybe a personality disorder or a victim mentality kind of personality characteristic. It attracts that sort of person, and then it exacerbates the issues that they're already dealing with. And I don't, I really don't see how that can be denied at this point when we see more and more women who adhere to feminism having mental and emotional problems. And it, I mean, I really, I think we need to declare feminism a public health disaster, and it needs to be combed and addressed on a national level. Of course, we're nowhere near that, but, but I mean, I don't see how you can argue that it, it isn't that, given its results."

"Amen."

"It would be great if we could just start recognizing female violence, right? That that is where that they're sort of gaslighting us about female violence."

"Yes. Because the, as soon as you can sort of claim any sort of mental, not even mental illness or disorder, mental potential mental effect that justifies abortion, that justifies killing a baby. If you could say, 'This might make me depressed one day,' that is then that justifies violence towards an unborn child. And, uh, same with, we all know that the numbers regarding domestic violence, they are not as skewed as we are told to believe. Women are plenty violent towards their partners, towards their children. I mean, you've highlighted infanticides. I mean, all these things, they are, we're completely gaslit about the actual female violence. And they, and they are not all sociopaths and psychopaths. I disagree with psychiatrists who want to put it into, put all the criminality into a framework of sociopathy or psychopathy. I think violence is very much in our human nature, and we always have to fight our worst impulses, and women have them too. But feminism has, uh, led us to believe that we are somehow morally superior and incapable of it."

"Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And so we have all sorts of guardrails in society. We have general, you know, public discussions about the danger of male violence. Everybody recognizes it. Nobody denies it. Nobody celebrates and glorifies it and says men should, you know, just give in to their angry impulses because they're right to be angry and they should go out and murder. But we do say the exact thing of, we, we say exactly that to women. We do not recognize and condemn women's violence. It's, it's, it's quite amazing. And we, we seek to justify it in all sorts of ways. Phyllis Chesler again, um, was asked to write a, uh, a forward to a book, a collection of letters written by the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who has also been glorified in our society, who's embraced as a kind of folk hero. She murdered seven men, at least seven that we know of. Many of them she shot in the back and robbed and stole their cars, etc., while she was working as a prostitute. Phyllis Chesler tried to organize a defense for her, claiming that the, um, category of battered woman syndrome, which has already, as we know, been used, um, you know, to excuse and exonerate women's murder of of men in various circumstances where it seemed to me it didn't necessarily apply at all. Um, she wanted it extended to prostitutes and to say that prostitutes were so abused and, um, battered by the men who pay to have sex with them that it would justify their murder of them. And, um, so, you know, again, uh, just the, you know, there's absolutely no evidence in that case that the men, uh, that Eileen Wuornos murdered were in any way attacking her or trying to assault her or anything like that. She claimed that..."

"Just like Valerie Solanas claimed that she'd been abused as a child. I mean, it's a very, very, very convenient excuse."

"And, um, you know, what, what evidence is there? Do we, do we even expect to have evidence? Is it possible to find evidence? No. But, um, uh, so, so that, that notion that there's always a reason, always related to the patriarchy, and it means that the murder of men just doesn't matter very much because in some way, even if they were not individually responsible, they are men, and therefore they bear that burden of guilt and in some way deserve to die."

"Right. Prisons are full of men who grew up in abusive homes with, uh, stepfathers, and, uh, there are no movies about them praising their..."

"Mhm."

"...their writings. Literally reminded me very much of Anders Breivik who went on that mass shooting in Norway a decade ago. You know, nobody claimed he had paranoid schizophrenia. Um, spends his life in, in prison. He also wrote a very coherent manifesto."

"Mhm. Yes. Well, and, and, uh, if you're going to make the argument that patriarchal abuse causes women to murder men and therefore in some way it's justified, uh, you could certainly make the argument that, um, male serial killers, um, may have been abused by their mothers. Um, women are the number one killers of children. Um, it's hard to find the statistics, but I finally found them. Um, quite significantly above any other person, and they're also right up there in terms of, uh, child abusers, batterers of children. And, um, I read a book not too long ago about serial killers comparing the methodologies of male and female serial killers, and one of the things that the author pointed out was that, um, male serial killers, at least according to their own self-reports, were very highly likely to have been abused, especially by their mothers, if they kill women, because they were abused by their mothers."

"Humiliated."

"Yes. Right. Exactly."

"Um, so, you know, we don't use that argument to justify their heinous acts, but, um, but we're quite willing to do it when it comes to women."

"Yes. Tom, would you like to say something on, uh, what this at the bottom of this is gyocentrism, right? Which is your field of expertise?"

"Boy, yeah. The whole thing is really about gyocentrism. I mean, you know, when a woman does something violent, we say, 'What happened to her to to drive her to do something like that?' When a man does something violent, 'That bastard, another violent man, kill him, you know, throw him out the window.' So, and what's going on there is this whole gyocentric bias that we all have. It's not something that some people are immune and some people are not. Most of us have it in one degree or another. If you think about it, walk into your favorite restaurant, as you're walking in, in the corner over there, you see a woman crying at a table and you go to your seat and you see her crying. What's the first thing comes to your mind? 'Poor dear.' I, I've asked this question at workshops for mental health professionals for years. 'Poor dear, she's upset. You know, she needs support, right?' Okay. Raise that image. Go back. Do the same thing again. Except this time it's a man in the corner table crying. What's the first thing that comes to your mind? Guess what the mental health professionals said? 'There's something wrong with him. Avoid him. He, maybe he's drunk, right?' This is, this is mental health professionals doing this. The general population will also have a different kind of viewpoint. And this is a bias that we all have, and we can see this in this movie so clearly, you know. But the problem is that this little bias we have, and it's a, it's not a big bias, it's a fairly small bias, it's unconscious, it happens automatically, you know, and it happens over and over and over again, and what it does, it creates kind of an unconscious bias that turns into a cultural narrative, you know, we start thinking in terms of this, then it's amped up by the media. The media only focuses on female pain, not on male pain. And so that creates social norms, gets embedded in institutions, and then it becomes policy. So from this little teeny unconscious bias, we end up with huge differences in the policies that we have. Look at domestic violence, family courts, you know, suicide, all of them ignore the pain of males, but look at the pain of females very clearly, you know. So that's my rant."

"Absolutely, Tom. Yeah. So true. I mean, and look at Sonia Star's research..."

"On plates to..."

"...criminal sentencing. Women, I think she found were had their sentences were 63% less severe for the same crimes. And, and that wasn't even, I think, to factor in all the other things. She said that women were twice as likely not to be arrested at all to begin with. If arrested, not to be charged. If charged, not to be found guilty. If found guilty, not to be sentenced at all. You know, they're often given suspended sentences of one kind or another. And if sentenced, then you get this massive discrepancy in the number of years they're given. And..."

"Yeah, just everywhere in the system, there's this generosity and empathy towards women's pain. And, and as she pointed out, men who become criminals have the same, usually mitigating circumstances. They too grew up in environments of deprivation and abuse. They too were often led into crime by somebody else, just as they always say about women, you know, they were led by a man. You know, all of the things are the same for for criminals, and yet we, we don't have that empathy."

"And this bias in the drinking water."

"It's in the drinking water. It's something we all have, and we need to start waking up, folks. We need to start waking up saying, 'Wait a minute. We got a bias here.' Now, this is a bias that we need to look at carefully. In fact, I'm writing a little book on this right now about all the different ways that has kind of moved in this pattern to create a policy that basically discriminates against men."

"Yeah."

"Anyway."

"Well, I'm going to push back a little bit because I think, uh, some of that is inherent. Some of that, you, you can't get. I'm not a fan of the unconscious bias research, and, you know, because that's taken us to this whole, uh, anti-racism gobbledegook. Um, the, I have no problem with us being protective naturally, um, to fe, I mean, it should be a protection of the mother and child unit, not just women. So that's what's inherent. Um, why, but the problem, why should it be?"

"Because the, a mother is physically vulnerable when she is with her small child."

"Okay. So if women have small children, they should be protected. Yeah. Good."

"But that's it. But when she is with that small child."

"Right. So it's, I, I think it's, it's natural for us, and that the mother and child unit should be protected. But the, what is lacking here, I think, what the gyocentrism we're talking about is that there's no opposing force. There is no, you then have to give something in return, and that has gone. And so this protection has now turned into special treatment in all circumstances because we will not then ask the question, okay, but what are women's obligations? What are women's duties? What is a good woman? What is she giving in return for this protection? That's gone."

"And gyocentrism has generalized to be for all women, not just for women who have small children. So we've generalized it out to make it something that's universal."

"Like single 20-year-old women who are on average richer than their male peers. Why should they get this special protection? Do you know? I notice it when I'm out with my small children. And I'm like, okay, you know, I'm glad that that now happened that someone came to help me, and that is what's supposed to happen because, like, there are things that I cannot do when I'm carrying a toddler. So that is the natural, but then, you know, I am respectful in, in turn, that is what's supposed to obligations. Exactly. Yes."

"Yes."

"Yes."

"I'm not against taking care of people who are vulnerable. I mean, that's a good thing, and it's been a good thing for years and years. What I'm against is the one-sidedness of it. If you only have compassion for one group, something's wrong with that. And that's what we've got now."

"Well, and, and compassion can't be blind, uh, and, you know, completely, uh, indiscriminate either. Uh, we are compassionate to, we should be compassionate and protective of good mothers who love their children and are trying to protect them, as well as, of course, compassionate and respectful of fathers who are trying to protect and provide for them. We don't, we should not have, uh, empathy for women who kill their children or abuse them, and that's what we often do. Uh, you..."

Know, we, we, if we're going to train men to bring out the best in them and to um repress and control and redirect uh those aspects of uh masculinity that can be destructive, we should do the same with women. And if that means we have to have public service announcements telling women you should not throw your newborn baby into the trash, um, then, you know, let's do it.

Because if we really do care about uh children, uh, which is one of the things that uh compassionate society should care about predominantly, we should stop turning a blind eye to the abuse of children simply because they're abused by their mothers. I always find it so fascinating that um feminists will get very upset about sex selection in abortion because in in countries where the sex that is selected for is male. Uh, no, sorry, the sex that is selected to be aborted is female in countries that value male children, but they have no problem with abortion generally. So if an unborn baby is killed because she is female, that's a terrible thing. If she's killed because she's a baby, that's fine. And that to me seems kind of typical of the intense hypocrisy of feminism. It is never really been about women. It's never really been about compassion for women. It's about denying that women can do bad things. It's always about vilifying men, especially white men these days.

>> Yes.

>> And so if a, if a young girl is brutalized by her mother, society looks the other way. They do not care about that girl.

>> If a woman is killed by her lesbian partner, we don't hear about lesbian partner violence. It's because it's not really about protecting women. It's about vilifying men. And that's where we begin to see that the core of feminism is actually hatred. It is not protection of women. And that's why Valerie Solanas is glorified because she ended up trying to kill men. And that's okay.

One part of the hypocrisy I'd like to point out because it's relevant in Solanas's case is um and something I think we need to increase awareness of amongst women who take her viewpoints is they just seem to have no understanding at all what men bring to society. So every opportunity Solanas was trying to get from men. So she was dependent on Andy Warhol. She was dependent on the male book publisher. She was dependent on men to have sex with when she was prostituting herself out and getting money from those men. She was dependent on men the entire time. And that's just direct dependence. Of course, there's indirect dependence through all the streets that she walks on, the bridges that she crosses. And just none of that occurred to her. She did not point out a single thing, uh, good thing that that she got from men. And I see this still in feminist academic writing in academic journals. They just seem to have no idea what it is. So Valerie Solanas, if she was using a typewriter to type out that manifesto, who the hell do you think built the typewriter, like invented the typewriter? Who do you think brought you that paper? Um, who cut down the trees that allowed you to use that pencil that you wrote your notes on the paper? These women have invented the birth control.

>> Yes.

Anything. Men create the vast majority of things. And some women just completely don't understand it. So, I think if we could somehow shift that understanding, I don't know how you do that. Some mass education program. It should not be that difficult. But I just feel like some women are just walking around just un taking for granted what men bring to the table. And as soon as they develop that scum society with only women, they'll find out ve very quickly what men were bringing to the table.

>> Very good point, Jim.

>> Yes. Well, they will say that uh they, it's only because they weren't allowed. They were second-class citizens. So they were she's trying to anticipate what will be. All you have to do is look at the survivor.

>> Yeah.

>> The survivor episodes where they separated the men from the women and look at what happened. Duh.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The women are crying and dying of dehydration.

>> The men are having a great time building things, organizing sports, fishing. Yeah, I know. It's

>> Okay. Let's wrap it up. Uh, guys, uh, you'll find links to all these brilliant people's Substack in the description and also follow Jim Nuso on X. Follow all these. He's the one that brings us all this content.

Was going to say otherwise we'd have nothing. And then so check out the Nuso letter on Substack. Check out Janice's Famingo file on Substack. And she's also the author of Sons of Feminism and has an upcoming book, The Goddess at Fail. We're all really looking forwards to that one. And Tom Golden with the Men Are Good podcast. Go and check that out. His amazing Substack. And if you look underneath, you'll see him as collaborator. You can go and check out his YouTube channel as well and support him there. And uh, like and subscribe. We've got a lot more content coming. And have a nice day. Thank you guys for joining me so much. Thank you so much.

>> Thank you. It's good to be with you all.