The Nut Kick

Note: As Elon Musk’s transformation of my primary social media platform into a barely functional far-right cesspool continues, I’m planning to migrate some valuable content off, and this seems like a decent enough landing place for now.

This is from a thread published on October 6, 2018, the day a man of no qualities beyond his unwavering commitment to his own supremacy—a man who had been credibly accused of sexual assault—had been elevated to the Supreme Court as part of an openly planned supremacist plot to strip women of their bodily autonomy.

And stripping women of their bodily autonomy is what, a year ago this week, that Court finally did.

Back on October 6, 2018, it occurred to me that for men who had been credibly accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault to be selected to participate in this eventual overturning of equal standing under the law for women would be, to the conservative mind (that is, the supremacist mind) not so much an immaterial detail as a selling point: a valuable demonstration that even the worst of men are so superior to all woman that they should be permitted to sit in judgment over them, and to be the ones to remove their citizenship piece by piece.

I’ve noticed that many guys tend not to understand certain things unless they are explained by other guys, so, while I’m far from the most qualified person to explain this: this is one for the guys about what the Kavanaugh confirmation meant.

___

Hi, guys.

Imagine if one day you got kicked in the nuts, really hard, by someone who had clearly done it on purpose. You doubled over. Felt the pain. Nearly passed out. Nearly puked.

Then you got kicked again.

And again.

Imagine it happened to you when you were 12. Imagine it was an 38 year old woman who did it. Imagine it was your mother’s friend and business partner. Imagine you told your parents and they didn’t believe you. Imagine they never mentioned it again.

You learned to keep quiet about it. You learned to be scared.

Imagine that later, your father explained that women just wanted to kick men in the nuts, so as a boy you had to be careful. Imagine he had very detailed practical advice on this. Imagine you started spending your life planning on avoiding being kicked in the nuts.

Imagine you became aware that women, including much older women—even elderly women—were always looking at your nuts. Women on the street would follow you. They’d tell you what a nice package you have. They’d tell you you’d be hot if you just showed off your nuts a little more. And you noticed that all the posters and advertisements in all the magazines featured men’s crotches, though frequently not their heads. Women’s feet were frequently featured in prominent juxtaposition.

Imagine most of your friends all told you stories about getting kicked in the nuts. They confided in you about it; they never told anybody else. Imagine all the older girls at school would make jokes about kicking you in the nuts. Imagine all the laughter. The jokes are all so funny.

Jokes.

Imagine you went to church and were told, from the seat of authority, that God made girls to want your body, so you should protect them from the temptation of your nuts at all costs. Imagine the minister said it was your responsibility as a maturing boy not to do anything that would make girls think about kicking you in the nuts.

Imagine you found a girlfriend, and you loved each other. One night, you were fooling around and she kicked you as hard as she could in the nuts, and it all came rushing back. Imagine she acted like obviously you wanted to be kicked in the nuts, and mocked you for getting emotional.

Imagine you told the police, and they asked you what you’d been wearing before she kicked you in the nuts. Asked if you’d had a drink. Asked what you might have been doing before. Had you been naked? Kissing?

You had.

You left.

Imagine there were laws that said that if a wife kicked her husband in the nuts it wasn’t assault. Imagine you heard about men with ruptured testicles who had to pay for their own forensic reports. Imagine you saw statistics showing only 1% of kickings resulted in conviction.

Imagine a girl was caught kicking a boy repeatedly in the nuts while he was passed out drunk. Imagine the judge let her off, because she was worried about the damage to the girl’s future prospects. She was a star swimmer with a scholarship.

Imagine this sort of thing happened all the time.

Imagine if one day men all started talking about how almost all of them had, at one point or another, been kicked in the nuts. Imagine if women’s main concern was what false accusations might do to their reputations, and whether this new honesty might ruin the mystery of sex.

Imagine a woman ran for President, and audio came out of her bragging about making it a regular practice to kick men in the nuts without even introducing herself. Imagine she lost no support for this. Imagine that many men accused her of doing this thing she had bragged about doing, but still women were skeptical, and the skepticism of women was treated as more credible in media than the accusations of men.

Imagine she claimed the men accusing her were lying.

Imagine she said they were too ugly to kick.

Imagine there had never been a male president.

Imagine she ran against the first major party male candidate.

Imagine he had experience, and she had none.

Imagine she won anyway.

Imagine the new President supported a Senate candidate known for kicking young boys in the testicles. Imagine she nominated a judge to the Supreme Court. Imagine the judge was accused of kicking a boy in the nuts. Imagine the accuser had to hide from all the death threats as a result.

Imagine the man who had been kicked testified, providing sworn testimony, and then imagine the judge gave a vindictive rant in response. Imagine the man bringing the accusations was derided for providing no evidence. Imagine if it later came out that those charged with looking for evidence had never looked for any evidence. Imagine if the man who brought the accusations had to hide from his former life, because of the daily persistent threats, even many years later, against his safety. Imagine it.

Imagine the President mocked the accuser in font of a crowd, and the crowd laughed and clapped. Imagine the judge was confirmed.

Imagine the deciding vote in the Senate was a man.

Now imagine that being kicked in the nuts might result in you having to create, in your body, a genetic replication of the person who kicked you.

And imagine that the judge intended to make sure you’d have to carry it.

Imagine that her unshakeable belief that you should be forced by law to do this was the *reason* she was chosen.

Can you imagine?

I can't imagine women's rage today, but this exercise, while abstract, helped me get nearer to it than I'd been. Be kind to women, guys. Today and every day.

If you see somebody being cruel to women, or abusive, or violent?

Kick 'em in the …

Well.

You’ll figure it out.

A.R. Moxon is the author of The Revisionaries, which is available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places, and is co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He’s almost totally nuts.