Toxic Femininity

I

 see in the news that a thirteen-year-old girl managed to escape from the man who kidnapped her, murdering her mother and father in order to keep them from being “barriers” to his violent project. I feel confident that Nancy Rommelmann and her fellow journalist Leah McSweeney will soon be explaining how this is an example of “toxic femininity” and urging that the girl “just get over” her parents’ murder and learn to live with things—you know, choose not to be a victim and all that.

I mean, gee whiz, shouldn’t we think of what poor Jake Thomas Patterson must be going through? What young man hasn’t at least considered murdering a teenager’s parents and carrying her off to a remote cabin in the woods? That’s just how young men are. It certainly shouldn’t be allowed to blight his future prospects—boys will be boys etc. Let’s all try to forgive him and put this whole unpleasant business behind us without getting into victim culture and all those sorts of distasteful things. Brett Kavanaugh would understand.

Think about it. In a few years maybe we’ll be seeing Justice Patterson nominated to the Supreme Court. He’s certainly got the qualifications for it—at least in the Dopey Don’s America. A callous indifference to human life, a strong desire to achieve his own ends whatever the cost to others—and not one, but two actual murders under his belt. Maybe they didn’t have the prominence of Jamal Khashoggi, but surely the removal of every “barrier” counts.

President Trump should consider it. That is, assuming he can ever manage to get the U. S. government open again.