Dear Dave.

I'll be seventy, seven-oh, in September, and I look exactly like the cute gender-fluid dude with the cut-off top, slightly too much eye make-up -- for daytime wear, I would like to emphasize -- and fabulous, muscular legs.

And a grizzly bear turned up outside my igloo in Toronto last week, and all the dishy guys ran to ME. They didn't even call me "freak", which I suspect you were suggesting we call the cute gender-fluid dude in the hot pants.

I also voted for Kamala, in my imagination, and although she leaves a lot to be desired, for example, being a confused wishy-washy liberal who thinks beating her tom-tom for Manifest Destiny worldwide and desperately trying not to "alienate voters" by being weird (you know, by explicitly denouncing genocide in Gaza or saying the word "trans" once with her hand over her mouth), was a winning “strategy”, at least women wouldn't be dying in Texas through being denied essential health care.

Maybe. The right-wing is so empowered by mushy liberals, they probably would have just ordered the Proud Boys to bomb Planned Parenthood, right after Mexico.

But in the end, the Dems, who have long deserved the right-wing epithet "snowflake", offered nothing radical. They weren't left enough. It’s like they were trying to win over Trump voters, of all people. And why vote for Republican-lite when you can have the real thing? That's why women and young men once again voted in the whitest, male-est President available.

There's no such thing as "toxic femininity" for the same reason there's no such thing as "anti-white racism", even if you don't like the message women bear.

The reason is that the reins of power are held by (white) men, and it's (white) men who wield their power - institutionalized power - to assault women and deny them their civil and human rights.

Do you get this, Dave? It’s asymmetrical, institutionalized power, backed by the courts, the police, the army, and the capitalists.

Could women deny men the vote? Why is that not even a question? Could men deny women the vote? They’re already discussing it. So put away your “all genders matter” and “women are shrill, dude!” t-shirts.

(OK, I don’t know for sure you have those t-shirts. Maybe you have the refrigerator magnets. Same thing.)

I'm sure you're the soul of gallantry and I take your word about your liberal bona fides. But you are the exception, sort of.

And when women speak up about their experiences, they should be believed. Who else will tell us the truth about what it means to be a woman?

DR