Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. -John Adams

It's very hard to find your own words - and you don't actually exist until you have your own words. -Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

...Male and female He created them. -Genesis 1:27 

After a seven-year hiatus with another Presidential election on the line - armed with a brand-new pair of reading glasses - it's time to break the silence.  

Looking through several of my previous posts, I'm impressed with the thoughtfulness, the attention to detail, and (surprising myself) the glimmers of wit and brevity as someone closer to her college graduation.  It's been almost two decades, now, since that occasion.  The eyes have gone a little dimmer; the skin, a few more wrinkles and dimples.  A surgery or two with scars.  Many Tough Mudders under my belt.  Four growing children, one who can vote by my side in November.  Too few words read, even fewer originally written.

But even then, what I read and wrote during a worldwide pandemic was so important, its impact cannot be overstated.  I found a community during the pandemic and we activated peacefully, locally, and strongly.  I earned some hateful insults ("grandma-killer" and "not-a-doctor" being two of my personal favorites, although sorely lacking in imagination).  The quiet observation of how a school board operates, admiring its processes but also observing how quickly it can turn against the public (unlike myself who was only nearly arrested, radio show host Shannon Joy was arrested during a school board meeting in New York for an improperly fitted mask.  She's currently pursuing legal action). 

And there's some wisdom acquired, too - not much, but enough to break silence and start existing (here, at least - ask my kids and husband based on Dr. Peterson's advice, I'm very much well in existence at home).

The two above quotes struck me not for the applicability to today's times, but also how they'd likely piss off a lot of people I know.  There are things I don't bring up during the holidays because I respect the peace my family enjoys.  But the other day during conversation with a friend about the general temperature of the country with gender "theory," I mentioned I'd come to know someone who had become a "transwidow" (a woman whose husband is no longer a man).

No one really addresses how the wife feels, I said while my friend listened.  It really is like losing a family member.  They even have a name for calling someone by their previous name - 'deadnaming'! 

Now in places like Canada and the UK, there is a concentrated effort pass laws to jail those who use wrong pronouns.

Now there are men taking victories from women at every level of sport. 

Trans-identifying male convicts (some violent) are being jailed alongside women in women's prisons - even with those who have been abused in the past and fear for their safety.

Then I said something somewhat out of character for me:  My gender is not for dressing up.  Just as people take offense to Blackface, I take huge offense at womanface. 

I'm not someone who is accustomed or adept at hot takes.  It's one reason I never really took a liking to X (formerly Twitter) because of the character limit.  Even though the char limit has been basically removed, I've never enjoyed the wit and brevity that some tend to have in spades.  I like the deep dives, the philosophical analyses, the jab and parry of ideas that simmer, not shock. 

But womanface is exactly the word I'd use to describe men who confuse themselves for women, and how men are able to enter into women-only spaces where we are quite literally naked and vulnerable.  We're in a country now where these men can claim to bleed, get sore breasts, and cramp.  We're where women in manface can claim that men get pregnant and have babies.  

So not only have men claimed bathrooms and periods, but now have claimed our wombs. 

The smaller vapid joys of womanhood - the makeup, the pretty dresses, the shoes, the sassiness - I didn't mind sharing that.  Whatever.  Fashions come, fashions go.  Makeup on, makeup off.  Drag queens love it.  I say enjoy it - that's not what makes a woman (although some could really fool you now, like those who were ironically defeated by a Catholic woman in the Miss Universe pageant). 

These men do not have to walk in a dark parking lot with keys clutched in hand, head on a swivel, with their parents' advice in their heads: keep alert, go straight to your car, do not dawdle. 

These men do not have to bear the burden of a sexual encounter gone wrong at the wrong time of the month (although babies are a glorious burden).  There's no morning sickness, no stretch marks, no counting baby's kicks, no OB/GYN visits, no Pap smears, no glucose tolerance tests for gestational diabetes, no kankles, no vaginal birth tears, no c-sections, no postpartum depression, no mastitis, no cracked nipples from breastfeeding.

These men do not have to bear the pains or the messiness of monthly cycles, the complex hormonal changes (and no, taking artificial hormones does not even come close to mimicking the organic hormonal cycle), the emotional burdens thereof, or the unique womanly burdens of healing from both regular and traumatic births, higher rates of eating disorders, perimenopause, hot flashes, or pelvic floor disorders.

Men don't get to lay claim to the fun, pretty parts of being a woman and leave the burdens to women.  At least with drag queens, we could get some entertainment out of it in an adult setting (although my bar is definitely higher than just slinging dead baby jokes around). But even that line is blurred when parents now take their kids to the shows.

My gender is not for your mental delusions.  It's time women took back what is fitting to us alone, because in order to enjoy the fruits of womanhood, we must also bear its burdens.  And men pretending to be women do none of that.

Whatever God has in store for this country in 2024, we likely deserve a leader much, much worse than a tripping, barely coherent, quadruple-jabbed dementia patient who should be in a home battling his nurses during his sun-downing hours and not trying to shake hands with an armless veteran while the sieve at the Southern Border makes the Great Replacement Theory look more like actual practice. 

More people need to turn to God.  There are a lot of Bible thumpers who don't do much other than thump, and thumping isn't doing squat in the spiritual war. The Great Experiment by our forefathers may indeed be coming to a disappointing, if predictable end.  Or it is just being rocked by predictable challenges as we accept more and more ridiculous premises like men can be women. 

Religious people, of those there are few, now more than ever after the pandemic; but I believed to be a time where at least most were moral.  Now, not so much - my time in public discourse has proven to be a place where many heartily enjoy embarrassing, aggressive, vulgar, and downright violent insults of especially women who simply don't agree with their ideas.  

By Dr. Peterson's criteria of words, their existence is amoral indeed.

May God have mercy on the United States this year and all years!