Thomas Wictor

One of my favorite films is Altered States, starring William Hurt and Blair Brown. It’s about a man who searches for meaning and feels entirely cut off from everybody. I love Charles Haid’s epic rant that ends with, “I’m not going to listen to any more of your cabalistic, quantum, frigging dumb, limbo mumbo jumbo!”

June 9, 2014, is a Charles Haid day. People are furious about this. For some reason the new Miss USA was asked what to do about the “epidemic” of rape on college campuses. First she replied, “More awareness [of the issue] is very important so that women can learn to protect themselves.” Then she said the following.

A woman saying that women can be encouraged to take self-defense courses so they’ll feel safer is obscene! She’s a traitor to her gender! Don’t believe me? Behold the utter stupidity of your fellow citizens.

What?! Saying women can be encouraged to defend themselves is an example of “victim-blaming rape culture”? I’m glad to see your mental institution allows you a Twitter account, but women learning how to defend themselves would be exactly the opposite of blaming the victim and promoting “rape culture.” We’ll get to that second lie in a minute.

I find your tweet awful and offensive in its inexplicable, apocalypse-strength irrationality. And what the hell’s wrong with your name? “Cait”? I should spell my name phonetically too: “Tahmiss.” Your last name looks like “cremains.” Fitting, since your brain seems to have been cremated.

No, the best way to protect women against assault is to keep them inside packing crates in basements. But nobody’s advocating that, and Nia Sanchez didn’t say that teaching girls self-defense is the best way to protect them against assault. You’re a dolt, Mandy Velez, because you just admitted that assaults are going to happen and that women need a way to protect themselves. What exactly are you angry about? What is the hideous thought-crime that Sanchez committed?

“Not happy”? How old are you, six? And Sanchez said nothing about stopping rape by teaching women self-defense. You’re not happy and you’re hallucinating. Another giant brain said the same thing you did.

Well, Anna Garcia, it’s embarrassing to have to tell you and Kelsey Bemus something so elementary, but you force me to do so. Rapists are pathological. They rape because they’re abnormal. The vast majority of men aren’t rapists. They didn’t have to be taught that rape is wrong. The reason a man rapes is not because he was never taught that rape is wrong. He rapes because he’s a mental and emotional disaster.

Now let’s get to that stupid meme of a “rape culture.” There is no such thing. You know how I know? Because rapes and sexual assaults have declined by almost 60 percent since 1995. All you “rape culture” promoters are twenty years behind the times. We’ve got this problem well in hand, DESPITE YOUR BEST EFFORTS TO THWART US.

Let’s look at who’s raising those rapists. Just 4 percent of children live with only their father. Therefore almost all rapists are raised by women. Obviously women hate women, so they teach their sons to be rapists.

Wasn’t that a completely moronic thing for me to say? I wasn’t serious. But this person is.

I’m glad to see someone finally admit what I always suspected: Opposition to harsh reality is based on the “ickiness” factor. It’s gross!

Well, allow me to get really gross for a few paragraphs.

The great love of my life was “Carmen,” the Cardinal Ghost of Ghosts and Ballyhoo.

We initially had a rocky relationship and broke up multiple times. During the last separation—before the permanent break of 1993—she went back to her Tunisian ex-boyfriend, “Hazim.” He was a tall, powerful man who looked exactly like the young Gabriel Byrne.

In July of 1989, Carmen and I went to a party, even though we were no longer a couple. It was a mistake. Since being around her was just too painful, I told her I had to leave. She came with me. At the subway station we hugged goodbye, and then suddenly we were making out. We went back to my place; as soon as we got there, the phone began ringing. I’d answer and hear nothing but a bizarre whimpering, like a sad chihuahua. While I was in the shower, Carmen answered the phone and discovered that it was Hazim.

The next time the phone rang, I answered it with, “Go fuck yourself, Hazim.”

“Go fuck myself?” he screamed. “Okay, now I kill you! Just wait, you bastard! Now I kill you!”

Carmen lived nearby. Though I asked her to stay, she went home at around 9:00 a.m. I was very worried that Hazim would hurt her. So far everything he’d done was right out of the Manual for the Crazy Muslim Male. She called at 10:30 and said—to my unsurprised revulsion—that while she was at my apartment, Hazim had broken into her apartment by climbing up a drainpipe and jumping onto her balcony.

He’d trashed the place, stolen all the photos she had of him, and disappeared. Since she was pretty tough, she still wasn’t afraid. At 5:30 p.m. my phone rang. Picking up the receiver unleashed an earsplitting, sobbing howl that filled the apartment. It didn’t sound human at first. Then it resolved into Carmen’s voice.

“Don’t go out!” she shrieked. “Don’t leave your apartment! He’s coming after you! He’s going to kill you!”

She was calling from a police kiosk. Hazim had gone to her apartment and asked to be let in so he could apologize. When she opened the door, he attacked her. She’s tiny—five feet three and less than a hundred pounds. He slammed her into the stove and walls, kicked her, punched her in the face, and beat her on the head with the butt of a Bowie knife. Then he strangled her until she gave him my address.

“You’re going to watch me kill him!” he shouted as he dragged her out of the apartment by the throat. She broke away and went to the kiosk, where she called me. She’d given Hazim a fake address, so he went off on a wild goose chase while the cops escorted Carmen home. They sat with her until Hazim was arrested hours later.

I went to Carmen’s place at about midnight. She was the most thoroughly beaten human being I’ve seen in person. Her entire body was bruised—red, purple, blue, green, and yellow patches on almost every inch of skin. One eye was swollen shut, her lips were split, she had a cauliflower ear, she had lumps all over her head from the steel butt of the knife, and she had maroon finger marks around her neck. The assault left her with PTSD for the rest of the time I knew her.

Here’s what someone said about women defending themselves.

No, Bergen. YOU’RE the one who’s sick. You either misheard or are deliberately lying about what Nia Sanchez said, and your worldview is infantile. You want women to remain passive and live completely at the mercy of men like Hazim.

Disgusting. You’re now advocating precisely what you claim to be fighting against.

Watch a diminutive female karate champion nail a much larger, stronger street fighter. Even when he throws her to the floor, she prevents him from doing the deadly “ground and pound” by grabbing his ankles and kicking him so hard in the face that he has to let go. She’s so fast that it’s hard to catch how many times she hits him.

Everyone who thinks it’s wrong for women to defend themselves? Your opinion is entirely without value. Go find a stadium where you can all engage in your deranged circle jerk together, and stop criticizing your betters.