Is it Mad to Believe that Every Bullet Backfires?

On the spiritual cost of harming another.

Something in the way of my camera.

So there are some people born with internal twists and turns, dodgy wiring, under firing neurones to the amygdala part of the brain. Unable to immediately experience fear and so then also empathy, compassion. They literally have no worries about the consequences of their words or actions and what’s even more interesting (terrifying?) is they forget the consequences even if they do happen.

These people make up a pretty small proportion of the world. All though, interestingly a relatively high proportion of CEOs and surgeons. Presidents. In fact, the surgeon who supposedly discovered these chemical imbalances in the brain responsible for psychopathy realised that he himself fit the description.

Truth is, not all psychopaths are killers and bullies. But for the ones that are, capitalism rallies behind these minds because the entire infrastructure is built around financially rewarding anti-human behaviour. Don’t want to venture into that too much right now. This lot are on some other wave. And I hope that wave drowns a selection of the more prominent figures.

But in terms of every day actions against the betterment of the community that we’re in, I am so sure that those actions come at a deep spiritual cost. Abusing power. Hyper individuality. Greed. Personal theft. Acts of dishonour are a burden on the soul. And no, I’m not talking religious morality. I’m talking universal balance and common sense.

Everything is balance. For everything there is an opposite. It’s a guarantee. An infinite promise. What we take from another we take from ourselves. Or indeed, what we are lacking in ourselves. In a desperate attempt to reignite balance. Of course, oftentimes that results in further damage. An alluring loop of denigration.

There also appears to be some kind of innate sense of community that lives within all of us. A deep set unity. I find it emerges from whatever foreverness connects us in moments of huge tragedy or the delivery of new life. An understanding that babies are fragile. We can fight this understanding, but it’s there. Even the most hardened of souls will soften soon enough in the presence of simple emotional equations. The wag of a dog’s tail. The loving acceptance of transparency.

So when I’m asked how it is that I’ve found myself advocating for “women and girls”. My instinctive response, nowadays, is to suggest that it’s not, in any real sense, different from advocating for “men and boys”.

Yes, we are different. Social expectations. Hormonal make up. But it never alters the reality that we are half man and half woman. I am half man and half woman. Genetically. And we have made it so that reintegrating that “male side” or “masculine energy” into the female sphere is “socially acceptable”. Celebrated, intentionally. Exclusively. Wearing a man’s white shirt. A football kit. Being a female “boss”. Balancing energies can occur that way around. Of course there’s resistance, but it feels easier.

And then I find myself having to remind men around me. We are half woman. How have we made it so that we are pulled apart from half of ourselves. Or that ‘heteronormative’ requires a mocking or minimising of “feminine” qualities in men. Qualities that have always and will always exist. Qualities that change dependent on temporary cultural expression. Masculine ideals are honestly so flimsy when you think about it.

All you have to do is look at what men wore during certain eras. See how they expressed themselves. And wonder if that could fly now. We had crop tops and tiny shorts in the 80s. Flares and fat collars in the 70s. None of these, at the time, appeared to compromise a man’s sense of manliness. That kind of get up would be mocked nowadays in what we call the manosphere. A hub of delusional regression convinced that there was once a time when men and women were all just really happy. In spite of all evidence and resistance proving that, at most, there were just eras where certain groups were too defeated to stand against anything.

And even those examples are shallow. Clothes. Appearance. Point being any manifestation of expression we’ve deemed “feminine” resulting in ridicule is nothing more than self harm. I believe that misogyny is self harm. For men and for women. Which is why I care and want to fight against it. Much like patriarchy, it’s damaging to women and it’s also damaging to men.

In response to a podcast clip of me discussing drink spiking, a friend and I went back and forth about this very point. In the clip, the interviewer asks me if I had any potential solutions for a culture that has to teach people to be careful with their drinks rather than one that avoids creating men who want to spike them. My answer was that if we put more focus on the first 7 years of a child’s life, perhaps they wouldn’t feel it necessary to destroy someone else’s later on.

My girlfriend was spiked at a gay bar in LA a couple of years ago. It was fucking horrendous to witness. I was up with her all night while she struggled to even recognise who I was. The fact someone would want to create that kind of environment and lack of consent is sickening to me. Only someone who truly despises themselves can want that for another human. It’s self hate. That’s what I said. My friend made the point that unfortunately “some men just hate women”. To which I made my belief clear that to me that’s the same thing. Hate half the world, hate half of yourself.

It breaks my heart every day to know that there are beautiful children who experience such a hardship that their heart’s freeze. That nurture, or lack of, required their hearts to close. A separatist approach to life and community helps no one, in my opinion. Men who are outwardly dismissive of women, femininity, sexual fluidity, anything not considered “normal”, are more scared than anyone. Terrified of rejection. That lack of softness with self, if unaddressed, results in a lifetime of broken connection and neglect. A complete loss of intimacy, fun and play. Even laughter at the expense of others, which can feel revelatory in the moment, will leave a corrosive aftertaste that can last decades.

This goes for anyone by the way, not just men. This applies to misandry too. I don’t believe there is ever anything to gain from a vague dismissal of half the planet. My point is that a world that embraces love and connection and manhood and womanhood will be better for everyone. And that will never come at the expense of manliness. In my opinion, it’ll fertilise the grounds on which we can reconnect with what manliness really is. That groundedness. Protectiveness. Beauty. Intimacy. We can be big, strong, solid and open. It used to be that way. We’ve just forgotten. Or maybe it’s just less profitable.