Brad’s Tips for Growing your Home Garden

Today’s post is written by Brad E. Man

Hey y’all

I’m writing this today because Sunflower Punk can’t possibly comprehend this because she is a woman. I mean she tells me she’s “non binary”, but we all know that there are only two genders. Binaries are for computers and we all know women don’t know how they work.

Anyway, I’m here to talk to you about growing your own tomatoes.

Obviously this guy is a cuck.

It is not hard to grow your own food. Literally anything you say is a barrier is an excuse. Disabled? Nope. The only disability is your bad attitude.

Have kids? Should have kept your legs closed, slut.

Too busy at work? Do what I did. Don’t work and have your fiance pay for everything.

My Guide to Saving Money to grow tomatoes:

Step 1) have a fiance that pays for all your shit

Step 2) bully single moms on the internet

Step 3) profit (the profit is a tomato)

Really, that’s all there is to it. Step 1 was hard because some women have ridiculous standards like “don’t harass women online”. But I pressed on and after following PUA tactics, I negged someone enough to think I was the best they could do.
Which brings me to step 2. I was peacefully minding my business eating Doritos, drinking mountain dew and perusing return of kings. A woman I don’t know posted the above image. Obviously I had to point out how wrong she was.

She told me she’s homeless. Can you believe that? Homeless and on facebook! I bet she also has a phone. Ridiculous.

Another woman told me her budget and how it doesn’t cover enough to grow a home garden.

Excuses! My phone bill is $200/month, rent is $600 and our food budget is 181 dollars. All this is paid by my fiance while I stay home and tend to the garden. It is after all my pride and joy.

These women with their children and homelessness are haters and will continue to have bad luck because they wouldn’t listen to me.

Brad Every Man is a sometimes writer, all the time douche bag.  He enjoys tomatoes, sexism and classism. He has a cat who hates him.  

Brad’s Tips for Growing your Home Garden
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Mourning a Rando’s Dick

CN: t-slur

A man messaged me on a dating site to let me know how much my feminism was a “dick killer”. How as soon as he saw my picture he lost interest and would rather “fuck a hole in the wall”. How he thought I was interesting until he saw “feminist”, how he thought I was a “tr*nny”. And again reminded me how much of a “dick killer” I am.

Oh how will I ever go on? I have hurt this man. He was so confused. How dare my uninteresting face made him look at my interesting profile until he saw that dreaded F word.

I know this man’s pain. Many times I have walked into baseball stadiums to loudly tell every one how much I hate that game.

I once bought a cheeseburger and then angrily demanded my money back because of how much I hate them.

This poor man.

How will I ever go on knowing the hurt I caused this man? How will I ever go on knowing he won’t fuck me?

Tis truly a sad day him.

Let us all mourn this man’s dick’s death. RIP, dick. RIP.

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Mourning a Rando’s Dick

Fake Goths

It’s been a few months since the whole Cathy Brennan is a fake goth thing started. It had died down. And then some friends were locked out of their accounts for 24 hours for months-old posts. So it began again.

I haven’t been locked out but I’ve had several posts removed for calling Cathy Brennan a fake goth. (update: as soon as I published this, I discovered I was locked out from posting for 24 hours)

Fake goths aren’t persecuted. There aren’t people outside of Hot Topic waiting for scene kids to come out to then beat them. No one is doxxing fake goths, there isn’t legislation stopping fakers from using the bathroom.

Yet, fake goths can report a post and have it taken down immediately.

Facebook recently removed a post from The Body is not an Apology simply because it was standing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.
The Kinfolk Kollective and Son of Baldwin pages were unpublished for a few days.

Meanwhile Facebook doesn’t remove violent imagery, it doesn’t remove sexism, racism, transmisogyny and homophobia. Fake Goths can doxx trans women and that is totally fine.

Gender Identity Watch could harass trans women and Facebook did nothing about it. I can’t find GIW on Facebook so I’m hoping it’s been removed but how many times did it have to be reported before Facebook did anything?

On the other hand, posts calling Cathy Brennan a fake goth were removed almost immediately. It does not escape me that a white woman can so easily have posts removed.

We all know Facebook is racist as fuck. We all know that white people are racist. I don’t care that she’s posting pro-BLM stuff on her page. She benefits from the racist system Facebook has set up. Her privilege as a white woman is being used when she decides “fake goth” hurts her delicate feels.

Trans women, particularly trans women of color, don’t get that luxury.

All this to say that CATHY BRENNAN IS A FAKE GOTH.

Fake Goths

Ethics in Outing Abusers

CN: SA, r*pe, victim shaming

Sharing screenshots where an abuser admits to abuse isn’t morally the same as abusing someone. Sharing screenshots where an abuser admits to abuse isn’t morally the same as abusing someone.

Sharing screenshots where an abuser admits to abuse isn’t morally the same as abusing someone.

I cannot believe I have to say this. I said it last year during the Phoenix Drake fiasco and again, this year around the same time as well, concerning Dan Linford.

In both cases before any screenshots were available some people, mostly men, asked “where’s the evidence?”. Never minding the fact that both Phoenix Drake and Dan Linford admitted to rape. Never minding the fact that several people in both cases came forward with their own stories about these two.

But this post isn’t about not believing victims. Which honestly I could write a post about. No, this post is about the ethics in sharing screenshots. I’m writing this because, frankly, I am sick to death of having people not believe victims only to then shame them when they DO provide evidence. Why do they get shamed? Because apparently since both Phoenix Drake and Dan Linford confessed in private messages, they both have an ethical right to privacy.

This is where I call bullshit. If they had confessed to a mandated reporter, that person BY LAW would have to notify the authorities. This is no different. In both cases, confessions were made and the people who heard these confessions did the ethical thing and warned others. As you read in both articles linked above, these men infiltrated groups with vulnerable people, several times. This is important. They were able to do so because there hadn’t been a way for their previous victims to warn others.

But it stops here. This is how women and non-binary people protect ourselves.

Phoenix Drake and Dan Linford didn’t confess to eating too much chocolate and feeling bad about it. They confessed to rape. In both cases, they made excuses, they minimized what they did to their victims. They weren’t sorry for what they did (if they were, they would have turned themselves in, they wouldn’t have made excuses, they wouldn’t have confessed to women and NB folks and used them as emotional labor). They certainly didn’t show any ethics in their behavior.

Once someone shows themselves to be abusive they lose any right to privacy. There is no moral equivalence here. The unethical thing to do in this case would be to keep the confession to yourself. Rapists lose any right to privacy the minute they demonstrate they’re a danger to others. Indeed, it is because of this privacy that they felt confident and comfortable enough to be able to abuse again and again. (As an aside: Dan teaches philosophy and ethics. Let that bit of irony set in)

Phoenix Drake and Dan Linford will not and cannot get away with this. We will not let them. We’re tired of being abused, we’re tired of being gaslit. We’re tired of giving our trust to people unworthy of it. We don’t have many ways to defend ourselves, but we have this. I will be damned if anyone is going to guilt us for doing what we need to in order to protect ourselves.

Ethics in Outing Abusers

Deadlines Mean Nothing to NYCHA (UPDATE)

UPDATE Wednesday August 18th, 2015: I got the call today, just like the housing assistant had said. The supervisor I spoke with yesterday had no idea what she was talking about. She made me worry for no reason. I have my keys and move-in date. 

My daughter and I have been living in homeless shelters for close to five years. On Monday, July 17, 2015 I found an apartment in a low-income housing project run by NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority). I was told I needed to come up with 601 dollars by Friday, July 24, 2015 or I’d lose the apartment. I had no idea how I would come up with that much money in a week. My friends suggested I start a GoFundMe campaign. Thanks to the generosity of my friends and of complete strangers, I was able to raise the funds in less than a day.

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On Thursday July 23, 2015 I bought a money order and took it to the housing management office. The housing assistant told me the apartment should be ready within 15 days.  I saw the apartment and it was in need of a few repairs but nothing I deemed too worrisome. Since then I’ve called and emailed the housing assistant every day to find out the progress of the apartment.

On Friday, August 14, 2015 I received an email from the housing assistant saying the apartment should be ready by Wednesday, August 19, 2015. I called him on Monday the 17th, and he said the apartment may be ready by Tuesday the 18th but “not to hold (him) to that”. We had agreed I would call him that Tuesday morning; today. One of the shelter case managers has been in contact with the housing assistant as well, and the case manager was told the same thing.

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I did call and was told he wasn’t in today. I asked to speak to the supervisor. She told me and I quote, “We have no idea when the apartment will be ready. The housing assistant should have never told you it would be ready by Wednesday.” When I reminded her that it had been close to a month since I gave them the money she simply replied with, “Yup. Sometimes it takes more than a month. When the apartment is ready you will get a call to pick up the keys.”

It’s simply unacceptable that I as a homeless single mom, came up with that much money in such a short amount of time lest I lose the apartment and now I have to wait. My daughter goes back to school in less than a month. I wanted to transfer her to the school near the apartment. I don’t know if I should leave her in the school she’s currently enrolled in. If I register her in the new school and I’m still living in the shelter, she’ll have to be bussed. She was bussed last school year. She was a victim of bullies. I do not want to put her on the bus again. But I will be forced to if I’m not moved in before school starts. The bus and train fare in NYC is $2.75 for a one-way trip. I cannot afford 55 dollars a week to take her to school, but she has to attend because otherwise I run the risk of having CPS called on me for educational neglect.

All I want is to move. On August 24, 2015 it would have been a month since I gave them the 601 dollars. They have been telling me “soon, soon” and now this. I feel like the apartment is being held in front of me like a carrot. We’ve been homeless for so long. I have so many plans but I cannot move forward with any of them until I move. My daughter wants to move. She’s so excited about finally having her own room. Her birthday is coming up and this is will the first in our own apartment. Hopefully she can have her Sailor Moon-themed birthday party. This Christmas would be the first time she’ll have a tree. These are simple things but to us they mean so much. My five-year-old suggested we sneak into the apartment and just start living there and if anyone walks in we should freeze like statues.

If I haven’t heard anything about the apartment by September 1st, 2015 I’m going to reveal the name of the housing project, office telephone number and names of the people I’ve been speaking with. I’m tired of waiting and I have to do something for them to take me seriously. NYCHA  cannot jerk me or others around and think they can get away with it.

Deadlines Mean Nothing to NYCHA (UPDATE)

Living with Domestic Violence

Trigger Warning: mentions of physical abuse, extreme violations of personal space/invasions of privacy, threats of violence, gendered slurs. This is a pretty heavy post.

Being in an abusive relationship is exhausting. You find yourself walking on eggshells, constantly trying to gauge your abuser’s moods and act accordingly; anticipating a bad day so you can prepare yourself for the impending damage, both mental and physical.

Once, I  came home after dark and he, claiming he was worried, didn’t let me go out alone after that. I could go to the library but I needed to be back home at my curfew which was before it became dark. If I wasn’t I was subject to beatings and “panty checks”. He was convinced I was unfaithful and so would inspect me to find any evidence of “another man”.

I was only allowed to use the phone to call my mother but he dialed and held the phone to my ear.

The bathroom didn’t have a lock, so I didn’t have any privacy there either. If I took too long in the bathroom, he’d come in and check on me. He was worried I was “washing (myself) thoroughly to get rid of any signs of infidelity”

When we’d go to bed, he’d wrapped his arms and legs around me. If I needed to get up in the middle of the night, I would have to wake him. He wouldn’t go back to sleep until I came back to bed. Cuddling was a trigger for a long time after leaving him.

He said I couldn’t love my friends because I had him.

At first, I wasn’t allowed a cell phone. He eventually gave me a prepaid cellphone but I could only use it for him.

I thought that once I went to live with my mom, I’d have a bit more freedom. I was wrong. He’d call constantly, or show up unannounced. When he wasn’t at my mother’s house, I was able to use the phone and check my social media accounts. As soon as I heard him at the door, I logged off. I learned to do this after he became angry that I was messaging with friends. I stopped using my mother’s phone when he was around because he’d monitor the conversation.

I thought that once he started working I’d be free to come and go as I wanted. He’d be too busy to call my mother’s house to check if I was there. I was wrong. Although he lived in another borough, he managed to get a job 10 minutes away from where I lived. He worked full-time but still checked up on me every chance he could.

I wasn’t allowed to have a baby shower because it hurt his male pride. He said he would pay for everything the baby and I needed, and that I didn’t need anybody else buying me anything.

When we went out, I wasn’t allowed to make eye contact with people. I used to walk with my eyes downcast. I didn’t realize I did until after I left him and my brother and mom pointed it out. If I smiled at anyone, especially a man, I was accused of being unfaithful.

While I was pregnant, I slept a lot, of course. He’d come over and want me awake but I was so exhausted. He would  accuse me cheating. Why was I so tired? Never mind that he continually kept tabs on me so even if I wanted to cheat I couldn’t have.

He threatened to burn down a friend’s house so I couldn’t go visit anymore. He said he didn’t care who he hurt. No one was going to keep him away from me.

Since I was no longer living with him, and I now had a baby, I became bolder. He never hit me when I lived with my mom. I was too afraid to leave him, so I started doing things I thought would make him want to leave me. I would go to my best friend’s house with my daughter, TJ and not come back at the expected time. He hated this particular friend. He even thought I was cheating on him with her. I told my mom not to answer his phone calls. Eventually he did start threatening to leave me and I acted nonchalant about it. I didn’t care. I wanted him to leave.

My best friend was disappointed about not being able to throw me a baby shower, so she decided to have a welcome home party for TJ when we were discharged from the hospital. TJ got the presents and he had to deal with it. He hated that my friends would hold TJ.

Then he became jealous of TJ. He didn’t like that I breastfed her. He said TJ was just borrowing my breasts, that they were really his. He hated that my attention was hers and not his.

I slept when TJ slept. It was the only sleep I could get. He became angry that I didn’t stay awake to talk to him.

He was at my mother’s house all the time and as soon as he left, he would call me. He’d become angry that I didn’t want to talk. I told him that he had just left after spending the whole day with me. He said it didn’t matter.

He once made me call another best friend because he had became jealous of my relationship with him. I grew up with this guy. We’ve been friends for almost 20 years. Jekyll was convinced that this friend was in love with me. So I called my friend and apologized for bothering him but Jekyll “needed to talk” to him. Jekyll asked my friend what he felt for me. My friend said, “Well, I love her. We’ve been friends for a very long time. I’d do anything for her”. Jekyll’s whole face changed. I knew I was in trouble.

That night I got one of the worst beatings he ever gave me. I was a lying whore. I was cheating on him with my best friend who lives an ocean away who I barely even talked to, because of Jekyll.

Jekyll even scrutinized the music I listened to for hidden meaning. The Killers’ All the Pretty Faces was clearly a message for him. When Brandon Flowers sang “I don’t feel like loving you no more,” it meant that I wanted to leave Jekyll. The lyric “you’re not going anywhere without me” was used to threaten me. Jekyll told me not to forget that I was his, that I indeed could not go anywhere without him.

Even after I finally left him, Jekyll still felt entitled to me. Someone told him I had become friendly with the local shop keep. He threaten the shopkeeper for “touching (his) merchandise”. He said it didn’t matter that we were no longer together. I was his forever.

I ended up getting an order of protection.

I decided to write this because a lot of people believe domestic violence is just that, violence, plain and simple. They aren’t aware that although many times physical and sexual violence is part of domestic violence, it isn’t the only type of abuse to exist. Financial abuse, reproductive coercion and emotional/psychological abuse are ones that very rarely get talked about.

Even when speaking to other survivors, some are surprised at the severity of Jekyll’s abuse.

This isn’t even a full account of what he did. There some things I feel are too gruesome to talk about. There are other things I don’t talk about for privacy issues.

Music, social media, phones and even a goddamn bathroom break are simple things that most people take for granted. These things remind me that I’m lucky to be alive because Jekyll monitored them heavily when we were together.

Being with him was suffocating, in every sense of the word.

Living with Domestic Violence