Got feedback for my novella, A Marriage Fable, from a reader.
Thanks Jeri! I actually read it and enjoyed it. I just hesitate to review because the husband calls the therapist a muslim I think it was, in a nonflattering way, and never takes it back later in the book. It just didn’t sit right with me.
A Marriage Fable is a fantasy romance of a typical husband nearing his 20th anniversary, and the powerful genie that inspires him to be a better man. The “muslim” Pam is referring to is the genie. The husband is a sexist, narcissistic asshole in the beginning of this fable, and does indeed refer to the genie, who he thinks is a therapist, as a Muslim because he’s mad with his wife for asking him to participate in her session with Dr. Boggs.
This fable is a modern twist on the classic Dicken’s novella, A Christmas Carol. I used Arabic words for the opening of each stave, and honored the legends of Marid Djinns throughout the writing. I, Jeri Cafesin, did not slam Muslims. Andrew Wyman did, the MC in A Marriage Fable. To show, (not tell in exposition) that Andrew was a self-absorbed dick, he indeed used ugly language, as he, like most men these days, was not violent. Words were his weapon, and his complete lack of interest in anything but his career.
Pam deciding not to leave my novella a review is beyond WOKE, it’s brain-dead. She’s so into being politically correct, following the masses, a ‘believer’ she’s being ‘good, respectful, polite,’ she’s stopped actually thinking for herself. She enjoyed my novella, but can’t leave a review because the Woke community, to which she is a card-carrying member, says using the word Muslim derogatorily in all cases is wrong. And she’s bought that crap. She’s so unsure of her own mind, so afraid of her own racism that she has to call out a fable showing an arc of a character to protect her self-image. She must follow the crowd she’s picked — falling off the boat left-wing. Her behavior is equal only to the far right of the Trump coalition, which she likely despises.
I used to be a Democrat. I am not anymore because of people like Pam who can’t think beyond their rabbis, priests, and the will of the crowd they’ve picked so they can look in the mirror and feel good about themselves. Fuck that. TRUTH changes things, not all this PC bullshit.
So, let’s get down to some TRUTH, and face some facts about humanity. WE ARE ALL RACISTS. We are all BORN RACISTS! And until we all wrap our heads around that FACT, we are doomed to stay racists!
At my writing group the other night a guy read 1500 words out of his historical novel about WW2. In his book, he quoted Hitler, and other Nazis using racial slurs. Several group members had “a problem” with this. They found the language offensive and suggested he take out the terms. Instead, he was advised to use the PC version of describing the terms without using the actual slurs. Again, brain dead! Are these people so scared of the TRUTH that they cannot face the FACTS of what the Nazis did/do. Wokes must sugar-coat it to swallow it down? There is nothing sweet about Nazism! It was/is ugly in the extreme, and this writer in my group was showing this. It wasn’t his job to be politically correct as to offend NO ONE EVER. It was meant to offend! Ignoring history, we are doomed to repeat it, and we ARE with Trump and the current Republican party, and the other side, the Woke party.
Fiction writing is a fine art. Should someone have told Edvard Munch he shouldn’t paint The SCREAM because it may give some kids nightmares? It did me! Should books like Ulysses, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple not have been written because they may offend? Of course not. Art is supposed to be controversial, get people feeling first, then thinking about what they feel and why.
My father used to call me Marco after the MC in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street because I’ve been a storyteller since I was a little kid. I’ve read it to my kids to spark their imagination because that is what the story is about, not a ‘Chinaman (original wording) who walks with sticks’ (and by the way, the TRUTH is, Chinese in China still use chopsticks), or a ‘Rajah with Rubies.’ The Woke community has robbed children forward of a method to reach and spark their own imaginations.
New York Times had an article about transgender conversion a couple weeks ago. For once, the left-wing rag, wasn’t. They actually had the balls, in our politically correct version of the world now, to call out therapists who are pushing children, as young as 10 years old, to change their sex. In their extensive research, the article points out that the Woke community is selling kids on medically ‘reconfiguring’ (the PC term) their bodies, a decision that will affect the rest of their lives, and in many cases negatively. Personally, I don’t care if an adult decides to become the opposite sex. It is an adult decision. Blind support of a child wanting to change their sex after seeing some YouTuber trans who is saying how great their life is now, is ugly in the extreme. It doesn’t make you a good therapist to always be ‘supportive.’ It makes you a bad one.
Oddly, well, maybe not, the same Woke crowd is calling out Trader Joe’s for using Trader José on their Mexican label beer as racial appropriation. I don’t understand why changing sex later in life isn’t sexual appropriation. A man changed to a woman at 18 or later didn’t have to grow up with the slings and arrows I faced as a girl or a woman in the workforce. They have no idea what it means to be constantly hit on from the moment you get tits, groped, assaulted, get pregnant, paid less, and a girl better be pretty, and thin, or she’s lonely. And I was. The damage sexism did to me will be with me for the rest of my life, regardless of the sex I later become.
And THEY is more than ONE. Unless a human is two people in one, like Siamese twins, what does someone calling themselves THEY even mean? Using ‘THEY’ as your ‘personal pronoun’ WON’T STOP SEXISM! This will — the TRUTH is a good place to start.
Politically correct doesn’t help humanity become kinder or more equitable. Activist groups like LGBTQ have powerful lobbyists who help change discriminatory laws. The Gay Liberation Movement (GLM) in the 1980s got Congress to invest in AIDS research. Black Lives Matter (BLM) forces us to investigate systemic racism in our police forces across the US. These organized groups send representatives to DC who actually fight for legal change. If you really want to be politically correct, actually do something to help make us a more just society, join one of these organizations, and help end discrimination.
It’s hip, slick, and trending Woke these days to say “I’m Pro-Palestine.” In fact, my own daughter said this to me the other day.
Hmm, I thought I taught you better than jumping on the Woke train, I told her. Do you even know what it means to be pro-Palestine? All her friends are. All her friends are Chinese and Indian students at UCSD. Literally. She is White and has no White friends. Many of these friends are on visas and have no voting rights in this country. And they too have no clue what they are talking about when they claim to be pro-Palestine. My daughter’s friends are feeling disenfranchised. They’ve been the target of racism here and are justifiably angry. But instead of dealing with that TRUTH, they’ve lobbed onto a crowd — the PC community — that lets them express their internalized anger by getting behind causes they have no clue about.
Do you know that Hamas, the government of Gaza, launched an unprovoked attack on Israel from Gaza, killed over 1,200 people, and kidnapped 253 in October of last year?
And did you know Hamas was raping 12–48 yr old girls and women they kidnapped, then posting it online to terrorize victim’s loved ones?
I haven’t heard that. All I heard was Israel was bombing civilians in Palestine and killing mostly women and children.
Do you know that the government the Palestinians voted in are using their women and children as cover for their terrorist shit, and that is why they were getting killed in Israeli bombings?
No. But it doesn’t make it right that Israel is killing kids.
No. It doesn’t. I didn’t say Israel is right. There is no right here, baby. Both sides are wrong. I’m not pro-Israel. They know that Hamas is sacrificing their own children, yet instead of targeted strikes against Hamas, they are wielding an iron fist. Badly. Ugly. For sure. 100%. My beautiful daughter, I told her, siding with one side or the other is divisive in the extreme. It perpetuates the problems there, and creates more here, between us. Call out bad behavior, like Israel knowingly killing civilians regardless of their reasons. Or Palestine voting in a fanatical religious government with an agenda to kill all Israelis. Neither is right. Call out bad behavior. Do not get on the PC train because your friends are and you wanta fit in. Do the research before taking a stand. Blind faith means turning off your brain. And that is never OK.
I get writing this essay is going to piss off a lot of people. While I understand and support the underlying tenor of being PC is to stop discrimination in all forms, the Woke community has no clue how divisive and ugly they are when they call out everyone who isn’t on their train. They perpetuate racism, sexism, and flat-out stupidity so they can look in the mirror and lie to themselves they are righteous people.
Let’s all get off the PC train and focus on how to tackle our differences by getting honest with our own feelings — our fears of THE OTHER, of looking stupid, of not fitting in, of being alone and lonely. Let’s start sharing how often we fail, in our careers and our relationships, instead of perpetuating the happy-ending lie. I’m so sick of almost every businessperson I talk to saying they’re doing “just great!” and then their biz failing the next year.
Want to end discrimination? Then let’s start sharing how it feels to BE HUMAN since we all FEEL THE SAME THINGS.
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