Religion is a Mental Illness

And finally, New Rule: if you're out protesting for a couple of hours wearing this...

... you have to go all the way and spend an afternoon running errands wearing one of these.

You can't side with the people who ruthlessly oppress women without at least getting a taste of what you're supporting.

Well, now that summer is here and the Hamas-backing college protesters have dispersed back to their summer internships at Goldman Sachs, I thought it might be a good time to say this: I actually admire your youthful idealism, and our world would be poorer without it. Much like your parents who just wasted 300 grand on that ignorance factory you call a college.

Not that I think it's your fault, being this poorly educated and morally confused. That takes a village. Shitty schools, overindulgent parents, social media, that priest who rubbed lotion on you.

But three cheers to you for at least having the impulse to seek a cause in something bigger than yourself. It's just that the one you picked, you missed the boat by a fucking mile.

But here's the good news. You want a cause? Cuz I totally got one for you. Apartheid. Yeah, apartheid, the thing you've been shouting about with Israel for months. Never mind that Israeli Arabs are actually full citizens. You learned that word from a 2 Chainz song and discovered that protesting South Africa's apartheid in the 80s was a righteous cause, and so it was. To this day, when celebrities are asked, who is the person they most admire, one name is always the safest choice.

So, naturally, when you heard that Israel was an apartheid state it gave you such a boner you literally pitched a tent.

You knew how wrong it was when tens of millions of South Africans had been treated like second class citizens just because of their race.

But here's the thing. Today, right now, hundreds of millions of women are treated worse than second class citizens. When you mandate that one category of human beings don't even have the right to show their face, that's apartheid. And it goes on in a lot of countries.

For the last couple years, women in Iran have been saying, "take this hijab and shove it." Because in 2022, a young woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested for wearing her mandatory hijab incorrectly and then died in police custody. And now security forces have killed over 500 people protesting her death and this obvious human rights violation. How about defunding those police?

Amnesty International says that, "Iranian authorities are waging a war on women that subjects them to constant surveillance beatings sexual violence and detention." What P. Diddy calls a hotel stay.

In Iran, MeToo isn't a movement, it's what a woman says when another woman says, my life sucks.

Yasmine Muhammad is a human rights activist who got married off to a Muslim man with fundamentalist views about women not exactly uncommon in the Muslim world. He forced her to wear the niqab all the time, including once beating her because she took her hijab off at home, because the apartment had a window through which people might see in. And this was in Vancouver.

Here's what Yasmine said about veiling.

"It just suppresses your humanity entirely. It's like a portable sensory deprivation chamber and you are no longer connected to humanity. You can't see properly. You can't hear properly. You can't speak properly. People can't see you. You can only see them. Just little things. Passing people on the street and just making eye contact and smiling, that's gone. You're no longer part of this world, and so you very quickly just shrivel up into nothing under there."

And that's my answer when someone says "Islamophobe."

Really, feminists? Come on, there's got to be a happy medium between a husband making his wife wear this, and a husband making his wife wear this.

I know 1619 was bad, but this is happening right now, right under your nose rings. And it's not just the clothes. 15 countries in the Middle East, including Gaza, have laws that require women to obey their husbands. Laws. Not just Harrison Butker's opinion.

And those societies also have guardianship laws, which means a woman needs permission from her husband to work, to travel, to leave the house, to go to school, to get medical attention. Nothing?

Honor killings, where women are murdered by their own fathers and-or brothers happen so frequently they can't even have an accurate account of how many.

In 59 countries, there are no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, and many have no laws against domestic violence or spousal rape. 20 countries have marry-your-rapist laws. Multiple societies have laws about what jobs women can and can't do. Make a Barbie movie about that. 30 countries practice female genital mutilation, and 650 million women alive today were married as children.

Kids, if you really want to change the world and not just tie up Monday morning traffic, this is the apartheid that desperately needs your attention. Gender apartheid. This is what should be the social justice issue of your time. How about, from the river to the sea, every woman shall be free?

But in reality, it's not an issue at all. For one reason: the people who are doing it aren't white. I hate to have to be the one to break it to you kids, but non-white people can do bad things too. Now, white on black racism certainly has been of one of history's most horrific scourges. But also, it's true that in today's world being non-white means you can get away with murder.

So good on you kids for following your instinct to protest social injustice. Just remember, when it comes to finding a cause, pulling your head out of your ass is an important rite of passage.