Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[Snoopy]

Can't we all just compromise and agree that not every CEO deserves to be murdered outside a Hilton, but some do? It's Xmas people. A season of peace and goodwill.

[Nintex]

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-832343

Iranian-backed militias retreat to Iraq
Al-Hadath noted that the source said that hundreds of foreign fighters belonging to Iranian-backed militias from Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan are retreating to Al-Qa'im, an Iraqi border town.

Poor HamasEra.. it must be hard on them.

"Assad is not fighting, so why should we. Our brave soldiers are preparing to take on NATO on every front"    

"Wow look at all those dead Russians, they all died for nothing. What a mess it must've cost a fortune. Oh well who wants a McNugget"  

 

[DocWager]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/photos-showing-face-of-man-sought-in-killing-of-insurance-c-e-o-focus-manhunt.1052907/page-36#post-132632271 


I hope the FBI is keeping track on the people posting here

Remember Y’all, keep it on the Discords.

[DavidCroquet]

If Assad really was shot down and killed, the zionists need to be held to account. Destroying those who would defend an innocent dictator thus allowing him to be murdered is stochastic genocide!!

[Polident]

Assad goes and suddenly this forum loses active users 

[nachobro]

My observations so far:
- Can we get more women as options for tank? How the hell do we only have one?
- I hate that Wanda's coolest outfit is also one where she's whitewashed.

I'm very confused by this hasn't Wanda always been white?

No, Wanda is supposed to have Brown hair and her skin color is absolutely not supposed to be white. She's supposed to have at least olive-ish skin, if not a bit darker.

Depictions of Wanda being white as snow are actually very racist and have been since the 80s.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/marvel-rivals-ot-new-age-of-hero-shooters.1051272/page-43#post-132624168

Racist? 

this is why i only play black widow hitscan sniper and not at all racist.

Spoiler: also (click to show)(click to hide)

Downloaded it. Messed around in training mode with characters. Played one match and got 30/0 MVP as their Batman. Uninstalled it. Yeah. It’s good but I don’t think I have the self control to play this casually.

everyone's first match is against bots fwiw

[JoeBoy101]

Soon Benji is gonna be tracking our periods 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

uwu

My punctuation is always on point.

[killamajig]

Scrolling through old pages and what is shit like this? You need to be told what’s wrong with being transphobic? There is genuine mean ass shit being posted in this thread these days about trans people. It is in fact cruel to call someone who feels on the inside they were born the wrong gender a guy when they feel like a girl or vice versa. It’s fairly goddamn easy to just be decent and call them by what they feel whether it’s he or she. Takes zero effort at all.

Maybe it’s that fat fascist fuck being voted back into office that’s made me wake up and smell the coffee on stuff like this but it’s gross behavior that shouldn’t be tolerated or joked about.

suppose it's not a matter of genuine uwu pwease be nice to me kindness, but instead a thrill they get from forcing others to behave or speak the way they dictate? maybe even a sexual thrill, maybe it makes their feminine penis throb with excitement every time someone calls them "she"

are you genuinely happy to be complicit in others' fantasies this way, against your will?

have you considered that if it really was just a matter of kindness, that maybe this could be a two way street, perhaps THEY could be kind to others by not making such demands of them? takes zero effort just to let others be comfortable and use whatever pronouns they like for you, right?

the way pronouns work anyway is that the person usually isn't even present when you're using them, how is it fair that they get to dictate how others speak when they're not even around?

I demand that you never speak ill of me, whether I'm present or not, internally I feel like someone who is correct and above criticism and expect to be treated as such, it's fairly goddamn easy just to be decent and only refer to me in ways I prefer, takes zero effort at all

Don't be a stupid cunt. Referring to someone the way they would prefer is a low bar to clear and the only reason you wouldn't is to simply be a cunt and make them feel less than.

I don't want to be referred to as a cis man. 10 yrs ago I was just a male or a man. Then certain folks started calling me cis. Get them to take cis out of their mouths and maybe I'll call them what they want. It's used like a slur too. They started this pronoun stuff but don't want to abide by their own rules about decorum and respect. Look, there are even trans women that just want to be referred to as only a woman. OK, but why can't I just be a man? They have all these categories for people but won't give us a solid definition for those categories. If you can't even define what a woman is don't get me fired if I get it wrong. Also, mental illness has become some badge of honor now. I see bios listing everything from ADHD to Zoloft. The more shit they self diagnose the more clout. Being trans woman in 2024 is easy. You don't even have to shave. 

The new-wave of trans people like being misgendered. That way they can go to the safespace and reaffirm each other. "Transphobia is the reason I'm in my parents house E-begging for toy money. Transphobia is the reason women won't fuck me." You ever see how excited the Trans Mafia gets when the new J.K. tweet drops? Literally popping corks and drinking wine, giddy as pigs in shit.

Out in the world among other leftists I've been called cis more than once and even though I say I'm just  a man or male. THEY won't use my prefered pronoun.

By your logic if they don't use my prefered pronouns then "the only reason you wouldn't is to simply be a cunt and make them feel less than."

If people want to be a cunt to me that's fine but don't tell me I'm a cunt for being a cunt right back at them. You haven't been reading Era if you don't think that Era transbians go out of their way to ruin other people's jobs and lives. It's a "Jeff Marvel Fact" the transbians main topic no matter the subject is how it's everyone else's fault they hate themselves.

They talk about equality but they don't want equality they want revenge. Revenge for the missguided notion that they would be doing great if it wasn't for the transphobes.

[killamajig]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-disappearance-of-literary-men-should-worry-everyone.1055082/

Majority of posts are..
Men suck 
or
I'm very well read 

[Propagandhim]

I think schooling is a big contributing factor to this. There was an "oh, shit" moment after high school where I realized that I could name maybe two books written by women in all of my middle and high school curriculum. Senior year being especially bad (20th century American lit) was a half dozen white guys. I definitely think it creates an implicit bias that the only literature worth reading is written by men.

If it wasn't for Emily Bronte and YA fiction authors, I could probably count the women authors I'd read on one hand at 18.

Again, another one of these "My personal education was horrible, and I have no ability to read books outside of what I was told to in school or have control over any aspect of my life, therefore everyone has the same experience of growing up like me".

[Shecky Fragbaum]

Path of Exile 2 is awesome, btw.

[books]

Path of Exile 2 is awesome, btw.

Ima wait for the Grim Dawn dlc instead. Can only do so many arpgs.

[Uncle]

 

[Boredfrom]

When it comes to the Middle East there are no external actors operating in good faith. That's not to say that we shouldn't worry about foreign influences, but don't try to put Iran or Russia on the spotlight and pretend that the US or Israel are nothing to worry about. Especially given the last year of atrocities. There are no "good guys" here but Syria has to do whats necessary to liberate itself from a dictatorship that's been running for 50 years.

Here it is. 

I agree that there are no “good guys” in these conflicts, but you are still trying to romanticize this shit to an unobtainable degree. Is not about abandoning your morals but admitting the world is difficult enough to not acknowledge the shitty or uncomfortable aspects of “your side”, just like you demand from the other side without any compromise.

Look at this frenchie idiot:

Israel manages to be the biggest fucking pest in a region that includes luminaries like Iran and KSA.

 

Or people bitching about bombing military targets:

Turkish and Israeli bombing campaigns in the middle of celebrations.

Can't have shit in Syria, apparently.

[Uncle]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-disappearance-of-literary-men-should-worry-everyone.1055082/
Majority of posts are..
Men suck  
or
I'm very well read   

I fucking found it

had to search for "reading is a dogwhistle" which led to an aghast reddit post



feb 7, 2018

https://www.resetera.com/threads/fascism-alt-right-nazis-the-importance-of-de-platforming-ot.21852/#post-4292718 (https://archive.is/gEDhW)

[Besticus Maximus]

Isn’t it so weird how the most media literate website on the internet only has people who read high school classics and fantasy novels

Here’s the problem. Boys don’t want to read YA shite about falling in love with difficult heroic women. And why should they? The same reason the girls want to read that is the same reason boys want horny , violent edgy books

You’ve basically bullied them out of the hobby, cunts

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-disappearance-of-literary-men-should-worry-everyone.1055082/

Majority of posts are..
Men suck 
or
I'm very well read 

It's very amusing how articles like this first need a disclaimer about "actually men suck" only to end "actually it's so important to have men write"

To be clear, I welcome the end of male dominance in literature. Men ruled the roost for far too long, too often at the expense of great women writers who ought to have been read instead. I also don't think that men deserve to be better represented in literary fiction; they don't suffer from the same kind of prejudice that women have long endured. Furthermore, young men should be reading Sally Rooney and Elena Ferrante. Male readers don't need to be paired with male writers.
...
But if you care about the health of our society — especially in the age of Donald Trump and the distorted conceptions of masculinity he helps to foster — the decline and fall of literary men should worry you.
...
These young men need better stories — and they need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling. Novels do many things. They entertain, inspire, puzzle, hypnotize. But reading fiction is also an excellent way to improve one's emotional I.Q. Novels help us form our identities and understand our lives. Like many other bookish Gen X-ers, I can't conceive of my formative years without the Douglas Coupland novel that gave our generation its name. This is why we need a more inclusive literary culture, one that will bring young men in from the cold.

[Uncle]

fucking everything always preceded by 10,000 caveats

"now I need to preface this by saying that of course representation is good, of course we've come a long way since the 90s and we need to protect and uplift marginalized voices, of course there are real problems that still need to be addressed, and it is crucial to deploy shields such as the word salad above to prevent being canceled on social media...

HOWEVER, WITH THAT BEING SAID... [common sense follows]"

[DavidCroquet]

It's very amusing how articles like this first need a disclaimer about "actually men suck" only to end "actually it's so important to have men write"

This thinking is so foundational to the baseline era consciousness. 

1. <DEMOGRAPHIC> is bad, to the point of being nearly--if not totally--irredeemable. 
   
2. <DEMOGRAPHIC> must be rehabilitated, or everyone outside of this group will experience harm.
   
3. It is not equitable for any group harmed by <DEMOGRAPHIC> to participate in this process, due to past harm and risk of future harm. 
   
4. Therefore it is incumbent on <DEMOGRAPHIC> to fix <DEMOGRAPHIC>, without any expectation of support from outside groups.
   
5. The failure of <DEMOGRAPHIC> to self-repair is a foregone conclusion due to their inherent badness.
   
6. Return to 1.
   

[killamajig]

Some light reading from Members only

Another discovers they have been a woman this whole time and didn't know it until "a really bad dysphoric moment when I read the spoilers for that movie "I Saw the TV Glow".

"I don't feel specifically female, but something feels "not right".

6 month update

 "I very much want to be seen as a woman by my peers, I want to pass. It's my deepest desire currently, to be able to walk into a room and no one to treat me male, or to treat me as a trans person , but I'm just another woman blended into society"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

how it began.....

Putting this out non-publicly but I experience really intense gender dysphoria from time to time... I've identified as nonbinary for most of my adult life but I feel really, really uncomfortable in my male body, like I'm trapped in it. I don't feel specifically female, but something feels "not right".

I just had like a really bad dysphoric moment when I read the spoilers for that movie "I Saw the TV Glow", and specifically seeing the director described in an interview the "eggcrack moment" physically harms me, just reading this now gives me insane nausea and feelings of dread... I don't know what I'm experiencing and I'm a bit scared tbh... can anyone trans or non-binary identify this experience?

update

so I've been on a 6 month journey into my transition as a trans woman and just had a lot of scattered thoughts I wanted to leave in a semi public location:

I've thought a lot about what I'm experiencing, feeling, thinking about what it means to be trans to me. I've read so much discourse over the years on whether or being trans is a purely mental condition, whether it's a medical condition, or really just trying to analyze what it really is that people are experiencing. I think most cis people from the outside have no ability to understand what it's like to be trans, and may come to very negative conclusions, like it's a choice, it's a fetish, it's just wrong. And I think many trans people also severely struggle with the weight of what transitioning is like in this world, which may involve losing friends, family, job opportunities, while also requiring very expensive health care that even in countries with free health care is difficult to receive. The discrimination you get as a trans person really can't be understated, it's basically everywhere in our current human civilization from schools, to hospitals, to the justice system, to just being able to walk in public as the real you without fear you may be attacked one way or another. Honestly, logically if I had a button to press to just make me cisgender that would make my life significantly easier than it is now.

And yet I would not push that button. Despite the discrimination, the loss of relationships with friends and family, the potential loss of human rights from the incoming US Administration, I love being me. I love being my true self. People talk so much about the difficulty of being trans, the dysphoria, but people rarely discuss the flipside; the euphoria. There is such a sheer joy and beauty in experiencing for the first time reality with your true name, your true body. Being able to wear the correct gender's clothes, to explore your new gender norms, to explore your true self is such a beautiful experience that I do not think cisgendered people can honestly fully comprehend. It is not a sexual feeling, it's not a fetish, it is a very rare and pure happiness that you experience constantly once unencumbered from the difficulties of society as a trans person or the separate anxieties and depression of your own mind. It's that kind of happiness you experience when you love your pets - the sort of unconditional endless love that you feel when you look at your dog or cat sleeping and you just want to burst with how cute it is. But you feel this about yourself, your own name, your body. Like just hearing someone say my true name feels truly wonderful and I could cry tears of joy from just being acknowledged as my real self. I honestly do not think cisgendered people experience anything like this, it's like a feeling that everything is right in the world for this one little moment. And I think I crave this unbridled as a trans woman to be perceived as my true self by others, to truly know other people see the real me like I can. There is such an urge to have people say my correct gender and name and treat me as a woman that I think others may see as trans people being "too much" or "seeking attention". And in a way you sort of are seeking attention when you follow what makes you joyous like this. But it's just such a profound experience to be recognized as your real self that I feel I very much want to be seen as a woman by my peers, I want to pass. It's my deepest desire currently, to be able to walk into a room and no one to treat me male, or to treat me as a trans person, but I'm just another woman blended into society. It's again not something I chase for attention, for sex, as a fetish, out of mental illness or confusion, but purely my motivation is the raw, true happiness that it brings me to be my correct self and to be integrated into society as such.

As far as I can tell, what I'm experiencing is a medical condition first - it has symptoms, it's cured via medication and surgery, and it seems to run in my family similar to diabetes or high blood pressure as I'm the third person I know of to come out as transgender in my family. I experienced different kinds of dysphoria related to it my entire life long before I even knew what being transgender was. I am in my mid-30s, I did not have a clear definition of what being transgender was until around 2010 or so. Growing up, I had a very strong sense that I did not like anything masculine, did not like being called a boy or man, and just felt somehow "different". I regularly chose the female option in video games if I had a choice, hell I even pretended to be a woman in my first World of Warcraft guild for 3 months just because I thought it would be "fun". Once I learned about the concepts of being transgender or non-binary in my early 20's, I immediately latched onto being non-binary as I felt no clear gender identity inside me, I just knew very strongly I wasn't a man despite my body.

It took another 12 years before I truly recognized that I was supposed to be a woman all along. I had thought for years for me to be truly a woman, I would have to have some sort innate feeling or voice that tells me I am a woman, and I never had that clear voice until essentially when I made this thread. Every time I had almost discovered this for myself throughout the years, it had triggered a panic attack and I avoided thinking deeper about why, it scared me and I ignored it. But on the night of the creation of this thread, I had a panic attack so bad from reading an article about the trans experience that I couldn't make the panic stop. I had to lean into it. It was honestly terrifying, I had to douse myself in my shower at the coldest water setting, numbing my entire body, and I sat on the floor in my shower feeling the deepest fear possible. And in that moment, for the first time, I felt my body clearly tell myself I am a woman. It was a feeling that came from deep within, past my conscious, past my subconscious, and I began saying it out to myself, not yet realizing the weight of what I was saying. Once I said these words to myself, the panic stopped. And once I felt the panic stop from just speaking these magic words, I knew it was true. There was no way for me to cause and release this panic attack, it was entirely involuntary, but somehow me admitting to myself I am a woman made my brain calm down. I don't know the science of how this works, I don't even know if there is science on how any of this works yet. But in that moment and ever since, I have had the absolute clarity of who I am. I ended up just sitting on the floor with the ice cold water on me for another 30 minutes, re-evaluating my entire life and realizing what now seems so obvious. Eventually I came back and realized I was freezing lol, but I knew I was forever changed. I realized then for my entire life I experienced a ton of brainfog constantly due to dysphoria, and once I finally accepted what my body had been screaming at me, it was like I could literally and physically see and think much more clearly, like I was able to finally find where everything is.

All my life previously had felt sort of distant, colorless, like I was in a dream. I never really was mindful of what I looked like or who I was or how I presented myself to others. I realized then that as a woman, I truly cared about my appearance, who I was, and I wanted to be a true participant in my life, not just a witness to it. I live and breathe now in a way that feels light and happier. The lights in my eyes glimmer in a way I could I could never do before, but now feels very natural. I catch myself randomly smiling now where before I had off and on struggled with deep depression. It was a truly profound experience I went through of how my brain finally seemed to catch up to my body in who I was. I now am on HRT medication in which my body switches from testosterone to estrogen, and I feel "cleaner" from it, I can feel the mechanisms of my mind working more correctly in my consciousness. I can also feel that it's really not connected to innate sexuality in myself, and that it's purely stemming from what my body seems to internally be coded as being in some internal biological way that is outside the realm of human choice in consciousness. I have taken a lot of psychedelics in my life and had a lot of therapy, so I have a very high awareness of how my mind works, and I can clearly tell I'm functioning as a person mentally and physically after realizing my true gender. Regardless of what I looked like and still look, I feel internally like a woman, and I can feel my mind telling me that's my correct gender now. I don't know how to explain it in any other way, and it does not seem to be anything related to my conscious or subconscious mind choosing it. It just is.

I've read so much online about people thinking being trans is a choice or that it's purely a mental illness, but it's so much more than that. It is very much a physical and mental condition with measurable values and symptoms. But it's not only the "condition", it's very much an experience, a wild experience, sometimes really scary, but mostly exciting and fun and beautiful feeling. Every day I wake up, I'm happy to continue my journey. I'm happy to me, in such an intrinsic way that I didn't know humans could experience before. I spent the first week of realizing I was trans trying to convince myself it must be something else. I kept looking at other conditions, other explanations, anything else. But I realized a few days into this that if I just truly feel happier as a woman, being perceived as a woman, looking like a woman, being a woman, I don't really need any further proof, I don't really give a fuck what diagnosis or condition or whatever I get. If I achieve true happiness this way, why would I want to stop it?

That's what kind of kills me though, is SO many people want to be unnecessarily cruel and want to rip the joy I feel away from me. People like J.K. Rowling and others want to remind me as much as they can how I'll never truly be a woman, how I'm lesser, what things my body will never do. I very much know I'm not a cis woman, I know there are biological differences, I know my current appearance is in a gray area between man and woman. But I can still feel with every fiber of my being that I have the mind of a woman and the extreme desire to be a woman, and a body that made to be a woman's body that went through the wrong puberty. I truly do not in any capacity care if people want to diminish this experience as a delusion, or mental illness, or a sexual fetish, it does not convince me that who I am is somehow wrong or incorrect. The experience I've been through is physiologically proven to myself, there's far too many physical and mental changes from going through this that can't be just wholesale written off as fantasy. It is a very real experience, and it truly makes me happier than I've ever been to be the real me that was in my body all along. Why do people hate my joy? It does not harm them, it does not even concern them.

It's honestly just deeply saddening that people are openly cruel about what seems like, if thought about in another way, is just a natural condition of the human body that can arise like anything else. Like imagine if people just constantly went up to a person in a wheelchair to remind them they will never walk. It's just needlessly cruel, but people seem to be ok with behaving like this to me just based on my appearance during transition. I ask that anyone who just has a dislike, disgust, hatred of trans people reading this to just think about, "What if at the end of the day this is just something that makes people happy inside? Why do I feel like I must take their happiness away? Why do I enjoy harming others?". Yes there's all kinds of quirky logistics in society to think about in regards to trans people with public bathrooms and sports and transitioning as a minor, but these are all small problems solvable by society without having to harm or discredit trans people for who they are, or perhaps even attempt to eliminate them altogether one way or another.

I've had all these contemplations in my head that I wanted some of the world to see brewing in me as I processed the journey I've been on this year. I do not know if anyone will care about these thoughts, but this thread is where this journey began for me, and I just wanted to leave what are for now my final thoughts on what it is to be a trans woman. I am truly content with who I am internally now even if I don't look or sound yet what I want to look or sound like. Please world do not take my inner love and happiness away from me, it is a candle that I cherish within me every day. 🏳️‍⚧️

[jooseloose]

TL;DR? Absolutely no chance I'm reading all that.

[Bootsthecat]

Holy fucking autism. This kind of shit is why I laugh at these retarded motherfuckers

[Besticus Maximus]

Every single word of that bollocks sounds like someone in a hippie cult

[Potato]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-disappearance-of-literary-men-should-worry-everyone.1055082/

Majority of posts are..
Men suck 
or
I'm very well read 

It's very amusing how articles like this first need a disclaimer about "actually men suck" only to end "actually it's so important to have men write"

To be clear, I welcome the end of male dominance in literature. Men ruled the roost for far too long, too often at the expense of great women writers who ought to have been read instead. I also don't think that men deserve to be better represented in literary fiction; they don't suffer from the same kind of prejudice that women have long endured. Furthermore, young men should be reading Sally Rooney and Elena Ferrante. Male readers don't need to be paired with male writers.
...
But if you care about the health of our society — especially in the age of Donald Trump and the distorted conceptions of masculinity he helps to foster — the decline and fall of literary men should worry you.
...
These young men need better stories — and they need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling. Novels do many things. They entertain, inspire, puzzle, hypnotize. But reading fiction is also an excellent way to improve one's emotional I.Q. Novels help us form our identities and understand our lives. Like many other bookish Gen X-ers, I can't conceive of my formative years without the Douglas Coupland novel that gave our generation its name. This is why we need a more inclusive literary culture, one that will bring young men in from the cold.

Always with these people it's this idea that you can't have one thing without eliminating the other. 

There is absolutely no reason female writers can't exist alongside male writers. None at all. Why must male writers be marginalised and excluded for women to be heard?

[DocWager]

You know I wish I was able to be a 6’5” baseball player, and get depressed about it. Do I have Athletes Dysphoria.

[Potato]

TL;DR? Absolutely no chance I'm reading all that.

It should be incumbent on Benita to read that shit and summarise it given that he's into trans chicks and thinks we're all cunts for assuming that person is just a severe head case and should seek help. So please Benito, go ahead and read that shit and give us the notes.

[PogiJones]

Benita is one of my rescues I shepherded across the Red Sea, leave him alone

[Boredfrom]

Great to see Assad gone, now we enter a period in Syria that will be like Libya after Gaddafi but worse.

Death and suffering are by no means at an end in Syria.

How do you know so certainly ?

HTS, Turkey, Kurds, Islamists, Israel, Alawites, Iran, Hezbollah all parties involved in there and the land is already held by different groups.

This isn't settled.

And maybe all you Risk players with your crystal balls should wait and see how this plays out because once again I'm really tired of the very racist implication that there can be no coalition or nation building in the region while you all keep using the same two data points that are literally thousands of kilometers apart.

I'm not saying this will end well, I'm saying no one likes little know-it-alls.

The best way to fight any intellectualism is with anti intellectualism. 


He has been one of the most dumb and abrasive posters in the forum.

[killamajig]

i'm sure that now Assad is gone everything will workout just fine in Syria

[DavidCroquet]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-disappearance-of-literary-men-should-worry-everyone.1055082/

Majority of posts are..
Men suck 
or
I'm very well read 

It's very amusing how articles like this first need a disclaimer about "actually men suck" only to end "actually it's so important to have men write"

To be clear, I welcome the end of male dominance in literature. Men ruled the roost for far too long, too often at the expense of great women writers who ought to have been read instead. I also don't think that men deserve to be better represented in literary fiction; they don't suffer from the same kind of prejudice that women have long endured. Furthermore, young men should be reading Sally Rooney and Elena Ferrante. Male readers don't need to be paired with male writers.
...
But if you care about the health of our society — especially in the age of Donald Trump and the distorted conceptions of masculinity he helps to foster — the decline and fall of literary men should worry you.
...
These young men need better stories — and they need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling. Novels do many things. They entertain, inspire, puzzle, hypnotize. But reading fiction is also an excellent way to improve one's emotional I.Q. Novels help us form our identities and understand our lives. Like many other bookish Gen X-ers, I can't conceive of my formative years without the Douglas Coupland novel that gave our generation its name. This is why we need a more inclusive literary culture, one that will bring young men in from the cold.

Always with these people it's this idea that you can't have one thing without eliminating the other. 

There is absolutely no reason female writers can't exist alongside male writers. None at all. Why must male writers be marginalised and excluded for women to be heard?

Because who's gonna bother with an infinitely replicating garbage pile of YA novels, "women life is hard" confessionals, and nerd-themed cookbooks if men are out here writing Real Literature? 

(I kid because I love. I have nothing but respect for the many smart and talented women writers out there doing incredible work.)

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)