Nov. 11, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:40:13
4245 The Brave Confessions of an Ex-Feminist! - Freedomain Radio Call In
"Hello Stefan, I’m almost 21 years old, and I love your show. I have a very very complicated past and I have a large amount of trouble processing the guilt, shame, anger, and resentment left over from that past. The issues span from my parents, friends, relationships, and self image. I was involved in feminism and leftism from a very early age, that I feel contributed to the danger I found myself in at age 18, heavy drinking, promiscuity, sexual assault, abuse, eating disorders, etc. After having a huge shift in thinking that was beaten down by my loved ones, and turning heavily to philosophy, conservativism, and responsibility, it brought up some massive questions for me. I think it may be very important to speak to you, in order to process this. How do I move forward on my own, and manage to find a healthy arrangement for myself, when I’m haunted by the shame and anger of who I was, and what I was?"▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneux
Hope you're doing well. I'm here with Nora and Nora wrote in to ask me this or to say this.
She said, Hello, Stefan. I'm almost 21 years old and I love your show.
I have a very, very complicated past and I have a large amount of trouble processing the guilt, shame, anger and resentment left over from that past.
The issues span from my parents, friends, relationships and self-image.
I was involved in feminism and leftism from a very early age.
That I feel contributed to the danger I found myself in at age 18.
Heavy drinking, promiscuity, sexual assault, abuse, eating disorders, etc.
After having a huge shift in thinking that was beaten down by my loved ones and turning heavily to philosophy, conservatism and responsibility, it brought up some massive questions for me.
I think it may be very important to speak to you in order to process this.
How do I move forward? On my own and manage to find a healthy arrangement for myself when I'm haunted by the shame and anger of who I was, of what I was.
Well, that's an amazingly honest and forthright letter, Nora, and you're certainly not alone in this, and I really, really appreciate talking about this subject.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you just fine. Okay, perfect.
Sorry. So let's start with...
Where you came from.
So, I mean, I have this sort of vague theory that a lack of bond as a child leaves one susceptible to ideology, which then cements a lot of the trauma that occurred in early childhood, and philosophy is a good way to rescue that.
Boy, I wish I could be concise like that in here.
Regular shows. But what happened for you in your early childhood that you think may have led some susceptibility to this kind of leftism, feminism, and so on?
Well, my parents are both, I mean, they've always been left-wing.
From the minute I met them, you know, and my dad calls himself a socialist, and my mother is a staunch feminist, and I was raised Unitarian Universalist, and they were very hippy-dippy.
We own, like, an acre of land.
My dad's really about, like, kind of doing his own thing.
And I always took that as anti-establishment and kind of thought, I thought growing up, oh, he's this, like, right-winger for some reason.
I don't know why. But he's pretty close to a communist, I'd say.
And I think, you know, I just kind of was ingrained in that a lot growing up.
How did that manifest?
Was it sort of dinner table conversations?
Was it comments on the news?
I mean, how did that kind of coalesce around your mind?
I mean, my parents took me and my little brother to see Obama speak when he came to my town before he was elected.
And I think I was about maybe nine, ten years old.
So it was just, I'm just, I'm just feeling the grim, cold fingers of mortality on my neck, realizing just how long ago that was.
But all right, but it must have shown up.
I mean, sorry, I shouldn't say it must have.
Did it show up before then in any way?
I think probably, I don't really remember it being, we weren't taken to rallies or anything.
Like, I don't think it was a political thing, really.
It was just kind of a state of mind.
Like, Everyone's, just kind of hippy-dippy stuff, like everyone's the same, you know, everyone's equal in their own, everyone's good in their own way kind of mentality, and just kind of early acceptance of multiculturalism and stuff was just kind of ingrained, and I don't know where it came from.
I think it was just who they were.
How did they view Trump?
Oh, it's that...
See, everyone's good in their own way, except that Trump guy!
No, it's bad. I'm not talking to my mom right now.
It's bad. I lost all my friends.
My best friend left me.
Me accepting Trump in any way has been maybe one of the worst things that's ever happened to me.
I'm so sorry. And I don't say that lightly.
It's been traumatic almost.
Well, not almost. It is traumatic.
I mean, we're social beings.
We're tribal beings.
We're social animals. And ostracism, as I've mentioned on the show before, ostracism activates the same part of the brain as physical torture.
I mean, we are very averse to ostracism, which is why it's such a powerful...
And the funny thing is, you know, I got flack for many years for talking about people want you thrown in jail for your political opinions.
In other words, if they're serious status, well, that's pretty important.
And maybe you shouldn't hang out with people who want you thrown in jail for wanting to be free.
And everyone went crazy about this on me, and now the left is doing it like crazy, and it's radio silence.
Nobody really talks about it, but they're taking this stuff very seriously, right?
Well, that was kind of one of the scariest things for me was like...
I've been pretty much, I would say, on my own for a year, year and a half.
I've been kind of isolated and, you know, like on and off with my best friend.
I've had the same best friend since I moved here like 10 years ago, 11 years ago.
And I mean, I've known her for forever and that kind of started to dwindle.
And I had already lost a lot of friends when the election rolled around.
But when I started talking to my family, my mom is an immigrant from England.
She moved here when she was like 15.
And when I started talking to her about Tommy Robinson and the stuff that was going on in Europe, she just kind of looked at me in the face and was like, well, he's a horrible racist.
He should be in jail. And I was like, oh, no.
And I just kind of felt everything slip away from me because I was like, oh, I can't count on these people.
Like, if that happened to me, I can't count on these people to have...
Any of the values that would keep me safe.
And that scared the shit out of me.
Sorry, can I swear? No, it's fine. The least problem is you're swearing.
Even England, they're not sending their best.
Well, my mom too.
And the sad thing is you kind of can count on them in a negative way.
Because when you can't count on someone, it's like sometimes they're on time, sometimes they're late, sometimes they'll pay you back money right away, sometimes you've got to hound them.
But there's a grim kind of consistency to this stuff, right, Nora, where it's like you can count on them to spit out these pre-programmed responses almost no matter what the stimuli.
Oh, my mom is like an actual replica of an NPC meme.
Like, it's really scary sometimes.
Yeah. Oftentimes honestly to speak to her because I don't I don't she has a lot of communication issues with me in the first place and it's It's Tantamount to torture to speak to her at some points in my life now, but it with the political stuff It's it's only intensified it and I feel like there's not really a way to get out of that.
It's Horrifyingly it's like being gaslit a little bit I would say a lot I would say When you say communications issues with your mom, what do you mean as a whole?
Well, with sort of the gaslighting thing, it ties into that.
I feel like when I... Like the other day, for example, I went over to have a conversation with her and I was talking about how I don't feel like I can communicate with her adequately.
It's a conversation I've been trying to have with her For months at this point, especially because I've been listening to your show, and I think that the way to move forward in my life is to really, like, talk to her a lot and try to figure out what's going on.
So I've been trying to have that conversation, and in the middle of the conversation, I was mentioning what was going on with my best friend, and I was getting really emotional, and I was saying, like, I feel very isolated.
I feel like I can't count on these people.
And she turned to me and was just like, well, she said that you have a...
Trump hat in your room.
What's that about? When I'm speaking like from a very emotional place and I was just I came to this conclusion like it's like that is the one thing where she thinks I'm crazy.
I think she thinks that all of this is happening to me because I'm crazy and it's that was it's like it's like she's talking to someone who's done a ton of LSD or something.
She just doesn't resonate with anything I've said.
Does that make sense? It does, but it seems to me that you may be understating the case, because when you say it doesn't resonate with her, doesn't she actively oppose?
I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what I'm getting from is that there is this sort of active opposition.
It doesn't resonate. You know, if you tell me a story and it doesn't resonate, I'd say, well, tell me more, or, you know, I don't quite get the importance of the story to you, but I really want to understand why it's important to you.
So it doesn't resonate doesn't mean rejection.
It just means more to explore.
But there's more of a, is it a cold-eyed rejection or like it's absolutely impermissible for you to have a Trump hat?
Is it something like that?
Oh, it's absolutely impermissible.
I bought it on a trip with my ex-boyfriend.
I just kind of bought it in D.C. We were having fun and I was just kind of joking around.
And I don't know, I think it's funny, but she just, she keeps bringing it up like when I'm trying to have conversations with her.
And I think it's her way of going, like, let's assess what's wrong with you.
Because she's told me that she thinks that there's something wrong with me, and she's hinted that it's, you know, well, you went through this massive shift so fast, and you've had phases before, and so this is a phase.
And she kind of acts as if, like, I had a snap one day, and all of a sudden I was a Nazi.
Well, of course, we would all hope in our children that Nazism was just a phase.
Well, yeah. I mean, she went to my little brother's room and asked him if he was a Nazi and started kind of interrogating him about it.
No, you mean what?
I'm sorry to interrupt, and I don't mean to laugh, but...
No, you're fine. Do you mean she actually went into your brother's room and asked if he was a Nazi?
Yeah, he came to me one day and was like, so mom came into my room and asked me if I was a Nazi and warned me about the radicalization of young white boys to not...
I was like, shut up.
It's so... Oh, so radicalization of Muslims in England is not at all true, but somehow there's this giant Nazi Nazgul that's snatching up young white boys and turned them into Nazis.
Yeah, she really thinks that that's like something to watch out.
And I think it all came down to, I was an extreme SJW, an extreme liberal for, during the time, the problems that I mentioned in my question, the horrific things that I did.
That was when I was like a hardcore feminist, anti-Trump, like, it was horrific.
And I shaved my head, and I shaved my eyebrows, and I was fat, and it was horrific.
Like, the worst, most embarrassing thing in the world.
And then I sort of started to wake up over the course of a few months, and my parents took that as like, oh, she's broken.
She broke into this crazy right-winger thing.
But I started kind of just questioning things, and then it became like, you have...
I may have swung too far to the other side at times, I admit that.
I started listening to a lot of Jared Taylor and it wasn't cute, but I mean, I don't know.
It just... I don't know.
If you have something to say, sorry.
I know it's disorganized.
No, no, it's perfectly fine what you're saying.
So, let me ask you this, because I'm just trying to sort of track this transition, Nora.
So, did your parents know about your drinking, your promiscuity, the sexual assault?
I mean, obviously they could tell that you shaved your head and that you were overweight.
So what were their comments or their thoughts about that?
When I say fat, I wasn't like crazy overweight.
But I weighed like 20 pounds more than now and it was just like vodka.
You know, just like a gross kind of unhealthy situation.
Right. So they knew.
I mean, did they know about the drinking and the promiscuity?
Yes. Yeah, they knew.
And what was their thoughts about that compared to the Trump hat?
I had just turned 18 and I think my parents lost patience with me.
I didn't finish high school in school.
I did it online my last year.
I had some really horrific bullying experiences and dropped out and did it online.
I got really invested in the internet at that time and I made a million different Facebook accounts and was really invested in Transferring my pain into, like, living through sort of constant online stimulus.
And my parents kind of tried to push back against that.
But I think at age 18, they just kind of were sick of pushing back, you know?
And they were going through their own relationship issues.
They ended up getting divorced.
And I think it was just...
They didn't see quite how radical I was before.
You know, just... Even telling my dad that he has white male privilege and kind of stuff, they just sort of saw that as like, oh, she's being ridiculous, which I was.
But then at age 18, I just kind of let loose and started hanging out with some really gross people.
And my parents kind of knew that I was doing it, and they knew that I was drinking.
I ended up on my mom's front lawn at one point, so drunk that I barely remembered it in the morning.
And she encouraged me to come inside and everything and was telling the guy that I was with, like, oh, she should stay home.
But I managed to talk her out of that, apparently.
And I went out anyway.
And it was just kind of that thing where it was like, they knew, but I guess they didn't feel like they could do anything about it.
They had to let me make mistakes.
Yeah. So that I would learn from it, but I feel like...
But you can't have a Trump hat.
Like, you don't need an intervention for rampant promiscuity and budding alcoholism, but boy, you need an intervention for a Trump hat.
Yeah, I feel like it's just kind of...
This is what I'm talking about.
It's like, I feel like at this point, I've lost a bunch of weight and I'm trying to get really organized with my life.
I started going to school and...
And I really got a start.
I still have my issues. I'm not in school anymore.
But I've gained so much ground and I kind of expected for them to be a little more proud of me.
But I feel like some of that gets really pushed under the rug because I'm a conservative now.
And it's just this gross, icky thing that no one wants to talk about, but everyone wants to dig at me for.
But no one wants to- No arguments.
Just, right? Yeah, it's just kind of like my dad would...
My dad does the same thing, but it's easier to get along with him because it's easier to kind of make him piss off.
And I live with my dad, by the way, just for clarification.
But I live with my dad and my stepmom, and at one point, like, he had told one of his military buddies that this woman was staying over for the night because she was in town.
And he told her that I was a Trump supporter, and she came upstairs drunk and started berating me.
For being a Trump supporter and telling me, well, honey, when you get older, you're going to have to pick a side and let's hope it's the right one and that kind of thing.
I mean, she stood in my doorway for like an hour and there's not a whole lot I can do about it because it's my house.
I can't really escape it.
It was just kind of there and it's just that sort of thing.
Over the course of like a year and a half that has just been killing me.
Oh man, that's horrendous.
So if you don't mind, let's do a little time machine back to the origin story.
And how was your, what was your sort of family structure like Nora when you were born, when you were an infant?
Did your mom stay home? Were you breastfed?
Do you know much about your very early intro to planet Earth?
I was an accident.
My parents knew each other for two weeks before my mom got pregnant with me.
And I've learned this throughout the years.
I'm a seeker of information and I'm kind of nosy and I always want to know everything.
So as much as I can figure out, they knew each other for about two weeks.
My dad was house-sitting.
My mom went over there. It was her first time.
She had me. And they had to get married.
And that's kind of how...
That happened. My dad joined the army and then he switched over to the Navy and he's been in the Navy ever since.
And my mom kind of just rode with that and had me and they were married and then four years later they had my brother and my mom stayed home for all of it, by the way.
Right. So you didn't go to daycare or you didn't go to, I guess, maybe not even pre-care.
I mean, I'm not sure when you first started school, but at least for the first couple of years, I'm going to assume your mom's home.
Yeah, and very involved and a very good mom.
Like, don't get me wrong.
I love my mom.
I think that they were good parents.
Like, my ACE score is so insignificant, I'm assuming.
But I think they were really good parents.
Like, don't get me wrong. Okay, so not yelling, name-calling, spanking, that kind of stuff.
I think my parents spanked me a couple of times.
And I think my dad hit me one time, as far as I remember.
But that was the only thing.
It was not a common occurrence.
There was nothing like that.
My mom does tend to insult and sort of...
There was a lot of yelling.
I'm not gonna lie. There was a lot of yelling.
My dad is a yeller. He has some anger issues.
He really erupts all of a sudden, but it's never been that bad.
And then with mom, she's definitely a yeller, but she's also one of those people that runs away and slams the door kind of thing and is like, don't say anything else or you'll be grounded for two weeks and then a month and it's that kind of thing.
And are they that way with each other too?
Ooh, yeah, they've been...
I feel like I just stepped on something and heard a click, but go on.
I made jokes with my little brother growing up, and I was always just like, aren't they just going to get divorced?
Like, isn't this stupid? It's not working.
And they would just kind of scream at each other.
I heard from my dad. I had a big discussion with my dad once the divorce was finalized about, like, what the hell happened and, like, how they met and what the relationship was like.
And he was way open compared to my mom.
But he said that she was a little volatile and had thrown a hair dryer at his head one time when they had just gotten married and stuff.
I think she's as volatile as him, but she doesn't admit it.
And how often would your parents scream at each other when you were growing up?
I mean, it wasn't an everyday thing by any means.
I think it was not...
Common, common. Maybe once a month they'd get in a big, big argument later on in the later years.
I don't remember it a whole lot in the early years when my brother had just been born.
I don't remember a whole lot of it.
It was never like straight in front of our faces or anything.
When me and my brother, like when we moved here after age 10, I remember a lot more arguing and things started to really go downhill with them.
And I think it was just the communication is insane with my mom.
It's crazy. We'll get to that in a sec, but was your father on deployment?
I mean, Navy, right? I mean, it's not like he can work from home.
So was he gone?
Did something change when you were 10 in terms of his proximity to the family?
No, he had been on deployments a lot during my childhood.
He had gone on a big deployment early on when we lived in Florida when I was really, really young, like one or two.
He went on a big deployment and then Once when we lived in Nebraska and once...
Actually, if you could hold off on the geographical identifications, that would be...
Oh, yeah. Sorry. And then like three times when we moved here.
So, I don't know. He's been on like five or six deployments.
Okay. Okay. And did that change?
I mean, did he end up maybe with an office job closer to home at some point?
He worked land duty a couple of times.
I think that's what they call it.
So it was easier and he started going to university in the middle sort of when I was probably eight or nine and that was stressful for him so I can see how that would put a big tension on the relationship because even though it wasn't a deployment he had to be doing like calculus and physics and like really involved in that and mom had to kind of stay home with the kids.
And she's been stay at home then as far as I understand it your whole childhood right?
Yeah, yeah. Now, how long, like out of any sort of given month, how long would your father be away?
Anywhere from three months to a year at one point.
He was gone for a year?
Yeah, he was gone for a year.
That was the most recent deployment.
He's on deployment right now, but it's only for two months.
And when you were younger, were there any stretches like that, like a year?
I think they were more like six months or three months.
Right. And then how long would he be home for?
He would be on land duty after he went on deployment for like a year and a half or something.
Right. Okay. I mean, I'm going from my childhood memory, so I might be off.
So he was home quite a bit as far as that goes, right?
Yeah. And very involved.
And communication with your mom?
I mean, we've brushed past it a couple of times, and this was the case when you were a kid as well.
She was tough to chat with?
Yeah, yeah. I feel like I've kind of been having the same argument with her since I was like six.
And what's that? Why won't you just calm down for a second and let me finish?
Oh, that's the NPC reactive volatility, right?
Yeah, it's just kind of...
She has a couple of phrases that are just like...
Well, she said it today to me when I was trying to talk to her.
You seem to think that you're my equal.
Stop talking to me like we're equals.
And she would say that to me as a kid, and I never got it.
I never understood. I was like, I'm trying to talk to you.
What the hell? But she would also say, like, I don't argue with children.
Or I don't negotiate with children.
And it was just kind of that over and over, and then she would send me off to my room, and I would be trying to explain the situation, and it was just kind of, get out of here before I say something I regret.
That's another one. Oh, that's what your mom would say.
Yeah. Yeah. Just kind of those three things over and over, and I never kind of could navigate it.
Wait, sorry, three things.
So one was, before I say something I regret, one was I don't negotiate with children.
Yeah. And the other was, don't imagine you're my equal.
Yeah, like we're not equal.
That seems kind of hierarchical, Nora.
It doesn't seem very good lefty.
Yeah, it's not really fair at all.
Not very egalitarian.
I remember Googling legal policies in my teens and kind of going, why are you yelling at my brother?
He didn't do anything wrong for A, B, and C. Trying to get in the legal system with it.
Not take her to court, but try to show her, no, C, you can't prove somebody did that by this and that.
Trying to form a rational argument.
And she just blasts past it with this emotion, and I don't know how to break through that.
I've never understood it.
You and democracy, both.
And have you ever had an experience, I assume it would jump to mind, but have you ever had an experience where you did have a sort of productive, relaxing, positive chat with your mom?
I mean, there have been a couple of times, I'm sure.
I don't remember a time when it was It's easy to get along with my mom, except for when she had just...
When the divorce had been finalized, she had this drinking issue for a while during the time of the divorce, but after that she switched to weed, and I did too.
And she was one of my favorite people when she was smoking weed.
And even my best friend came over and was like, who is this?
Like, she's totally different.
She's being nice. She's being cordial.
She's being calm. And it was so weird.
It was like the first time I felt like I could get along with her and it was when she was smoking weed.
It was very strange. How old were you at this point?
That was like two years ago.
That was like right after I stopped drinking, I would say.
And how old were you when your parents decided to divorce?
I know it takes a while. I think 17.
My dad was on deployment at the time.
So I think I was like 17, about to turn 18, and my dad's little face was on Skype, and we were in the dining room with my mom and my dad on a screen, and they just told us.
Do you know what the precipitating...
I mean, I know you're a scud seeker of info.
Do you know what the precipitating incident was?
Because, I mean, they held onto it for close to two decades, right?
They didn't have the same goals at all.
My dad wants to have this, you know, acre of land and have a little farm and we have chickens here and my mom wants to live on her own.
She has a boyfriend who she doesn't let come over whenever he wants.
They've been dating for like over two years.
She doesn't even let him like have a key, take my brother to school, anything.
She wants to live on her own and have like a white couch and very specific things.
Like she's very in control of her own destiny and he wants this like Sort of rural in the city kind of situation.
And it just couldn't work.
In their opinion, it could not work.
So the communist wants a plot of private land and the egalitarian won't negotiate with her kids and doesn't grant any random access to her boyfriend.
All right. Okay. Yeah, I get it.
It's confusing to me, too.
The ideal and the actions, not always tracking relatively close together.
Okay, so what happened with the bullying?
And how old were you when that started, and what happened?
It was when I moved here.
I moved... I won't tell you the location, but the demographic difference was massive.
I moved from the Midwest sort of area to the East Coast, and...
I started going to a school that was majority black when I went to a school originally that was like one black kid one Asian kid both of whom were my friends but you know the numbers were few and I came here and the culture shock was immense and in fifth grade like one of the first memories that I have of living here was sobbing and going I miss all my friends and then I went to school and somebody made up a rumor At the lunch table that I had said I hate black people and I lost all my friends and the teacher had to like separate me from everyone in the line because this rumor had been started and everyone was trying to fight me and I was like a very anxious little blonde child just kind of like unaware of anything going on and I didn't know what the hell was happening and it was deeply scary for me.
Oh, that's the nasty kind of little troll that's going to grow up to be in the mainstream media and call everyone they disagree with a racist and a Nazi.
Because that saying, you know, saying that you don't like black people when you're a black person as a friend is, you know, particularly in the majority black school, that's painting a hell of a target on your forehead, right?
Well, that's how I noticed it was that I went to go sit with my friends and they were all like, get out of here.
What are you doing? You're not allowed to sit with us.
And I was like, what happened? And they told me Well, someone said that you said I hate all black people.
I mean, there was no way that I could argue that.
I argued it, and everyone was just kind of like, well, yeah, you would say that kind of thing.
And I was just like, oh, God.
The social vipers are like judge, jury, and executioner as far as that goes, right?
Yeah. And then I had a group of two friends, and they both kind of paired off and left me and started rumors about me.
And that was my fifth grade.
And... I went to middle school, and it was a- Wait, wait, wait.
Did you go home and did you talk to your parents about this?
I'll be honest, I don't remember a lot from fifth grade.
I feel like a lot of my school years I kind of blocked out, as funny as it sounds, but a lot of details are fuzzy for me.
But I remember- That would be pretty memorable, right?
I mean, if this- I mean, this is not just a vicious rumor.
That's a dangerous rumor. I mean, like, you can get assaulted for that, and I'm sure that that was...
When you thought about people wanting to fight you, I'm sure that doesn't mean just verbally.
So that's a dangerous situation, for sure.
And do you know if you had any impulse to talk to your parents or anything like that?
I think I probably talked to my parents about it, and they probably just kind of were like...
I don't think they really thought anything serious about it, to be honest.
I don't really know. They never really...
I don't think they ever really got it.
But to be honest, I remember seeing the ISS in-school suspension officer.
She had these two black families at the school.
The families had, like, six kids.
They were, like, cousins and something.
I don't know. They were, like, two families of, like, students that were related.
And they were all black.
And she would bring them ice cream every day and, like, loudly announce, like...
These are my babies.
These are my students.
And it was always weird to me.
I was always like, there's so much favoritism in this town.
I don't understand. It's really weird.
And I just kind of continued to see that trend.
And I felt like my parents were blind to it, too.
And it was really uncomfortable and confusing.
Right. And it's funny and tragic to me, Nora, that the leftists who claim to be so concerned with oppression and exploitation and bullying and so on, they always try and talk about it in these really abstract terms.
You know, the capitalist class, the ruling class, the white privilege, the whatever, whatever, right?
Yeah. But then if their own daughter is being bullied, Doesn't show up on the radar at all.
Like, here's some bullying you can actually do something about.
Nope. I'd rather talk about abstract class mechanics than one's relationship to the means of production.
I'm not saying they did nothing.
Like, believe me, I don't think that they would ever do nothing.
I don't think that they want the worst for me or anything.
I just think that they didn't take it as seriously as maybe I registered it.
But I've always been very sensitive.
So I can understand why they were probably like...
No, no, you're in a majority black school and somebody's spreading a rumor that you hate all blacks.
Yeah. That's not snowflake behavior to be concerned, right?
Well, it only continued to high school.
It was the same thing in high school.
Would the rumor continue to high school?
Not the same people, but the same kind of trend of just racial issues.
I feel like I... Which is now what my parents used to say is why I'm conservative.
They're like, well, you had a bad experience with black people growing up, and therefore you've swung over to this conservative side because of your anecdotal experience or something.
Their perspective is that you had a bad experience with black people?
Yeah, I think they think...
Like one? I think they think that it was like a single incident, but I mean, it was...
I've never been able to navigate very well in this town because of that because I feel like it was always difficult for me to deal with the noise level which sounds really horribly stereotypical and I'm sorry but the sheer noise level at some of these schools is immense and as a socially anxious girl from like age seven I do not deal well with that.
It makes the room just get real small.
It's like a noise claustrophobia, I think.
Yeah, it's very uncomfortable and it's very hard to focus on school.
And I was also facing a lot of depression in my teen years after middle school.
And I especially noticed it at that point where I was just like, I just want other people to sit down and study at the same time as me.
And can we just get the noise level down and, like, calm down?
And there was, like, a race riot at my school at one point.
It was just a real bad environment.
All the security guards were black and they were pretty mean to me.
And I just...
I didn't have good experiences, like, one on top of another.
And then I felt like everyone was just kind of blaming me for their bad behavior.
Because I didn't like it.
Wait, what do you mean? Like, the...
Can I talk about high school a little bit?
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I enrolled in a dental assisting program.
And the class was majority black, and I really enjoyed what I was doing.
Like, I really enjoyed it.
And I was good at it. I was real good at it.
And it was really fun, and I got to put on scrubs and hang out with the girls, is what I thought.
But it just turned really ugly, where I felt like everything I said...
It was just kind of mimicked back to me by the black girls that were hanging out with me in like a condescending kind of way.
And they would like see me in the hallway and be like, aw, she dressed up!
Look at her! She looks so cute!
And they'd all like crowd around me and kind of infantilize me.
And I always felt really uncomfortable with it.
And then they started to kind of not get the rise out of me that they wanted, I think.
And it just became a real ugly girl-on-girl bullying thing.
And I tried to talk about it a little bit with my parents and I wasn't a super crazy feminist yet or anything.
So I don't think I was apologizing for having white guilt yet.
But I sort of was like, why do these girls get to do this stuff?
And then I go to the principal or the counselor and I get made fun of for going to the counselor.
And the girls were just kind of like not laying off.
They were doubling down because I went to the counselor.
And the counselor did nothing.
And the teacher kind of did nothing.
And they were never really given any disciplinary action.
One of the girls threatened me.
Nothing was done about that.
And my parents were always just kind of...
I feel like they didn't think it was a big deal again.
But it was the same emotional thing that I'd had go on in elementary school, where I was like, God, move me to Maine.
Plop me to school in Maine.
Maybe I'll get along with people.
It's very difficult. Yeah, you're not feeling the multicultural love too much, right?
No, and I hope that doesn't sound horrible, because it's not an aggressive thing.
Some of my best friends in elementary school before all of this happened were black kids who wanted to study with me and hang out and play on the playground.
But... After a certain amount of time, I realized that there weren't a whole lot of those people that wanted to be my friends.
And I was just, it was too different.
It was really different. Right, right.
And when did the social justice stuff start to come into your mindset, Nora, and what was the avenue that it came in through?
That was in high school when I was really like on Facebook a lot.
On the internet a lot. I started reading everyday feminism and printing out little logos and putting them all over my room and slowly just started to kind of sink into the Tumblr element of it and go, well, women don't need their hair to be pretty.
I'll shave my head and sex work is real work and I'll start doing that.
I'm sorry, I just feel the urge to pause on that one.
Yeah. There were a lot of girls that were kind of like...
I don't want to say encouraging me.
It was my choice. I did this to myself.
It was my choice. In high school, I guess I had just turned 18 and I had been talking to some girls and they were like, well, sex work is the same as real work.
You can just sell photos.
It'll be fine. You can make money.
You know, it's a legitimate way to make money.
Talking about stripping and stuff.
And I guess that in my mind, I was like, well, yeah, that's empowerment.
That feels good because you're doing whatever you want.
I've already got... Hang on, doesn't that sort of fly in the face of it's not good for women to be objectified for sexual purposes?
I'm not saying I had any, like, thinking going on.
Okay, I'm just wondering if any of this collided or not, but all right.
No, no, no. I wasn't thinking straight.
I was in a deep, deep depression and I was not, I didn't have good social skills.
And so I was isolated in a different way.
I was isolated onto the internet, I feel like.
And so these were my friends, basically.
You know, like these were what I thought were my friends and they were telling me, that's a good way to make money.
That's a good thing you can do.
You're 18. It's legal.
And I saw it as like, well, I don't want to go out and get a real job, so this seems like a good idea.
And I started doing that a little bit.
And it was only just a little bit, but my parents caught me, and I don't know how, and I'll never know how, but they caught me and they were like, you need to stop doing that, that's disgusting, as they should have.
And I stopped doing it for a while, and I was still doing crazy stuff.
I gave myself prison tattoos all over my hands and my legs, which I now deeply regret.
I've not heard of that one.
What's the reasoning behind that?
I think I just thought it was cool at the time.
I was like, oh, I'll just give myself some tattoos.
I think I went crazy.
Well, it's... It probably shaved down a little bit of time preference in terms of long-term consequences to immediate decisions.
Yeah, I think that whole period of my life was very like, if I want something right now, I'm going to do it.
I probably won't live past 25, was kind of my outlook on life.
And that does not seem very empowering.
And I'm just trying to sort of understand this, you want to feel empowered, but at the same time, you're Doing sex work and getting tattoos and all things that can have repercussions and challenges down the road.
I mean, is the goal not also to be empowered in the future or is it just random hedonism in the here and now?
I don't think I had a perception of the future.
Because I think I was just so unhappy with myself and so...
I had such little confidence that I kind of had a what the hell Outlook on everything where I was like, well, this feels good and this is fun, so why not?
Because it was an escape from my depression, I feel like.
And was the depression mostly coming from difficulties at school and I guess your parents' relationship was deteriorating?
Was there anything else that was going on that you think was contributing to it or might have been?
I think I've had really poor self-image a lot.
I had a really bad teen years.
I thought I was transgender at one point.
I had a lot of different therapy visits, a lot of checking my hormones to see if my brain chemistry was in balance and everything.
I took Prozac a little bit when I was 14.
It had been kind of reoccurring.
Depression for a little while and then it would get better and then it would come back But it just kind of it was always like a deep breakdown Where I I was in a huge rut a huge mess And what did that feel like how did you experience the depression?
It was just isolation.
It's consistently felt like I'm just alone in the world and Yeah, I mean, that's kind of abstract.
What did it feel like physically?
Where did it locate, and was it energy, or how did it happen physically?
It's always been sort of energy.
I feel like I slept a lot, or I didn't sleep at all.
Similar to now, where I stay up really late, but it would affect my sleeping, it would affect my mood, it would affect how I get along with people, my irritability.
It's always affected relationships, but friendships especially because I found myself distancing from a lot of people when it really would hit hard.
And then when I would come out of it, those people weren't there anymore.
And it was just kind of like I had pushed everyone away with it.
Does that make sense? You had pushed everyone.
Oh, so you would act in such a way that it would be very tough to remain friends with you?
Yeah, I think I was just really negative at that point.
Right. Well, I mean, you had experienced a significant number of betrayals.
Yeah. And it's hard to trust, or it's hard to maintain that kind of connection when you've had a lot of betrayals, right?
Yeah, and I feel that way now, again, with the election and with my politics changing, the betrayals just, like, intensified.
And when did the Depression really start in your timeline?
Probably when I was like 14.
And did your parents consider that any kind of emergency or did they reevaluate their parenting or your environment or anything like that?
Not parenting. I think they just kind of, they wanted me to be more confident.
And my mom had had a lot of depression and she kind of was like, her thing has always been, I think you really need some meds.
Let's get you on some meds and then you'll feel better.
And I did take the meds and it did work.
It did pull me out.
I took Prozac when I was in that first little bit when it first hit.
I took Prozac for a little while and it did help but it kind of numbed me out.
And so I went off of that and I was good for a little while.
But I feel like it just kind of has been recurring ever since.
But my suspicion is that it's kind of the...
Me not having any friends does not help the depression.
I don't think that it's like a brain chemistry thing.
I think it's environment at this point, but I find it hard to get out of that.
Right. So for your parents, it was maybe you had inherited it from your mom and therefore medication was appropriate or maybe it was some X factor and medication was appropriate, but they didn't look and say, well, if you're depressed, let's look at Your environment, let's look at our parenting, let's look at whatever we can change prior to going on medication.
That didn't particularly occur.
Did they send you to experts and the experts put you on the meds?
Yeah, but I mean we talked about it a lot.
They were really understanding about it, but I think that they did just kind of want to intervene quickly with medication.
My brother's never had any of the same issues, so I don't think it's...
I don't know if it's genetic, but I think that it was just kind of like They saw it as like, I'm breaking down, and they just gotta fix me.
But your brother wasn't a pretty blonde girl at a largely black school, right?
No. Where some of the sexual competition can lead to these kinds of escalations.
Yeah. No, he's always kind of gotten along with everyone, even though he's conservative too.
Oh, isn't that interesting?
And when did that happen for him? Much younger than me, actually.
I think he was like... 12 or 13 when he started looking into libertarianism.
He's kind of who saved me, to be honest.
Oh yeah, so he was sort of one of the gateways out of this lefty stuff?
I'll tell you, my little brother's kind of the only person that I get along with at this point in my biological family.
Because of that, he's really good with critical thinking and he started listening to you a long time ago and had Suggested it to me.
He tried to kind of debate me when I was in my feminist mindset and proved me wrong a lot.
And I think that that started to challenge me a lot and shake me out of it.
And do you know where he started with the libertarianism?
The internet. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, okay. I mean, why he was even curious?
Did he ever feel that same leftist gravity well that you did?
I guess at that age, it's hard to tell, right?
I think it was hard to tell.
He just kind of, he played a lot of video games and I think it was just kind of, he went to video games and I went to depression and that was kind of what it was.
And like, he had a group of friends and he gets along well with my cousins and they would talk about things and I didn't really have anyone to talk about it with so I would just kind of delve into Tumblr and go, well you'll solve my problems because nothing's my fault.
Right. And what was the Tumblr experience?
I don't know much about that website.
It's just kind of...
It's like Twitter is now, where it's just a bunch of leftist opinions screaming into your face, and you pick one and go with it.
Right. Right.
So, how did...
Was it social drinking?
Like you want to go to a party, you feel anxious.
Was it self-medicating that way?
Where did the drinking come into your life?
I started...
I had a really bad experience that when I just turned 18, I started hanging out at a coffee shop that's local.
And I had a couple of friends, like two friends.
And he introduced me to this guy and his wife who were like 29 and 26.
And I started hanging out with them, just me and them.
And I would go over to their house and we would drink and they would drive me around.
It was horrifically unsafe.
Wait, they would drink and then drive you around?
Yeah, he would drink and drive me around.
I hate them already.
Just keep me up to date.
Oh, I hate them. You know that, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I hate them too.
And I hung out with these people and one night I got too drunk.
And when I woke up in the morning, I was in different clothes and I was in bed and I was really freaked out by the whole situation.
I went home and I was like, no, I don't want to hang out with you guys anymore.
This is too much. And the guy had been flirting with me a lot and it had been really creeping me out.
And so I didn't hang out with them for a while.
And then I got like a note on my front door from this guy with a plastic skull.
Um... And he was like, you're a fake friend on the note in like crayon.
And basically this guy like tried to stalk me on social media for like a long time, like a couple of years.
And I had to consistently keep blocking him.
But that was my first interaction with like actually like drinking up, drinking in the morning, like putting alcohol in my coffee.
That was my first interaction with alcohol, really.
It was serious. Well, one of the things that I think kept me from any kind of pursuit of that case was like, gotta get up, gotta go to work.
I mean, it's tough to do work if you've got booze and your coffee at the beginning, right?
Unless you're Jim Morrison, I suppose.
Yeah, no, I think it was just kind of my parents were like, well, she's just doing her thing right now and just kind of needed to let me get it out, I guess.
But... I'm trying to get to the good parent part that you were talking about earlier, Nora.
I'm really trying.
Really trying to get there, but I'm having a tough time, to be frank with you.
And I think that's why I wanted to talk to you because I feel like I see everything from my perspective, but I want to know what is actually going on.
Because I feel like crazy.
Because I talk about this stuff like it's normal, right?
Like this is my life story.
But that sounds crazy coming out of my mouth, and I know it.
So I've been wondering for a while where they were at this point.
Well, not just at this point.
Well, yeah. But especially at that point.
Why wasn't I being dragged home?
Right. Like, I wouldn't want my children to go out and do what...
I will do anything possible to keep my children from having the teenage years that I had.
Oh, yeah. I mean, if your kid's getting...
Heavily involved with a married couple, one of whom is like 10 years older, it's like, what are you doing?
What are they doing?
That sounds absolutely insane, but it was like it was a normal friendship, I guess.
And my parents would say that things are weird and that like, you know, that's not good, but it was just kind of like, well, we can't make your choices for you, kind of thing.
And where's that non-intervention when you get a Trump hat?
Well, yeah. Now, you know, when it comes to the Trump hat, by God, they're going to take a stand, right?
I'd love to step back now.
That would really mean something.
Right. So, yeah, there's this hands-off non-intervention stuff when the only thing that shows up is upset at you having a Trump hat and, you know, there weren't long lectures about necessarily you with the drinking and the promiscuity.
But there are long lectures on imaginary Nazi spaceships stealing your brother.
Like, I mean, there's no perspective here of any kind.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, Nora.
I'm going to assume that they consume a lot of mainstream media.
Yeah, yeah. So that has become their matrix.
That has become their artificial reality.
By God, I hope they watch the movie Hoaxed that's coming out next month.
But anyway. And it continues.
Like, there was another incident, if you want to hear it.
That was where the... Sexual assault, if you can call it that, came in.
Well, assuming that it didn't happen with the married couple, right?
No, it didn't. Not that I remember.
I don't know what happened that night.
That's why I said assuming.
And the guy might have stalked you for fear that you might remember something and go to the cops.
He might have, for all I know.
I don't know. But after that, I continued drinking.
I told them, I don't want to hang out with you anymore.
And I started hanging out at a different coffee shop and I met this guy and he was a band manager like he would book shows for places and I started hanging out with him.
He was 32 years old and I was 18 and I would go over to his house and stay the night and I basically considered him my boyfriend even though we never officially dated and I would stay over to his house and my parents were kind of weird about it obviously But I don't feel like a whole lot happened.
Wait, what do you mean a whole lot happened?
I don't think that they tried to interfere very much.
I mean, he wasn't a Trump hat. So, you know, mild disapproval and some passing comments, but no actual strenuous intervention.
Yeah, he was throwing benefit concerts for anti-Trump causes and stuff that I was a part of.
Oh, so he was an ideological ally.
So, sure, take my door. Yeah, and he came to dinner at my house and everything.
But... I would hang out with him.
He would buy me vodka.
I was 18. He was 32.
He would buy me big bottles of vodka.
I went on tour with him and his friends.
They bought me booze. I ended up like falling in the street drunk and like hurting my knees in Richmond or yeah in a big city at one point and I like had a realization after that sort of but not enough to leave.
That I was doing something really stupid.
But it was just you know me hanging out with basically like a flock of older guys and a couple of older women all in their 30s and just shit-faced all the time and I had told him several times like we weren't officially dating but I had told him several times that I had never had sex before and that I wasn't really interested in having sex with him and I wasn't ready for that and I don't remember Exactly the events of the night,
but I remember I was super drunk and he had been sober for like several months and Basically we I guess had sex and I remember snippets of it But I called my mom in the morning and I was like, I don't know what happened I mean me and him had sex and it I was really really freaked out like crying and trying to get plan B and And just freaking out.
I made him buy me Plan B. Oh, you mean that's the morning after?
Yeah. And I was really, really freaked out.
And I did not want that.
And I couldn't remember most of the night.
I couldn't remember if he'd used a condom.
I didn't know. I was like, what the hell happened?
And that was a real bad...
And I don't know if that's sexual assault.
My mom told me, don't...
Talk about it a whole bunch because you don't want to ruin this guy's life.
Oh, she was very concerned about his future.
I guess so. And I guess I felt kind of guilty.
I had told a few people.
I'm not going to lie. I told a few people because it had happened and then it kind of...
I didn't know what to do about it.
I didn't know what it was.
And I didn't know how to feel about it.
And I felt really stupid and embarrassed.
And so I just kind of...
I told a couple of people...
And I told his roommate about it.
And everyone was just kind of like, shut up, shut up, shut up.
Not literally, but just kind of didn't want to hear about it.
Wasn't really that interested.
A girl my age said she was going to work with him, and I tried to discourage her from that, and she worked with him anyway.
But yeah, I talked to my mom about it, and she was like, unless you want to ruin this guy's life, don't do anything about it.
Boy, she must have been really upset at all the women making allegations against Kavanaugh then.
Oh yeah, super upset. And that's always confused me.
I've never really known what went on with that.
But it was just kind of like, I didn't have any evidence of it.
So I kind of was like, well, I'm not going to really push to press charges about me.
Because I couldn't remember if I even egged him on or not.
I knew I was super drunk, but I didn't know if I had egged him on or asked him for it or what had gone on.
I couldn't remember. So it was just kind of like, I was like, what's the point?
And after that with my mom, I was just kind of...
I've just kind of carried it along.
Recently, one of my old friends messaged me and said that a bunch of other girls had come forward and said that he did the same thing and I felt like a bitch.
Oh, because you could have prevented that to some degree if you had gone...
Yeah, to some degree.
I'm not beating on myself for it, but I wish I had said more because he's been working with people.
Right. I also wonder if he was an ideological ally of your mom, if part of that was like, don't mess up his life because he's helping the anti-Trump movement or something.
I don't think she was that ingrained in it, to be honest.
She didn't know him very well.
Neither of my parents did. But I don't know.
I think I kind of convinced them that he was a good guy or whatever.
And then the same kind of thing repeated with another 32-year-old guy.
He Was super horrific and abusive and gross and was like really horrible to me verbally and hit me a few times and took advantage of me when I was drunk again.
So that happened again and then it was just kind of after that I had to quit drinking for a medical procedure and I didn't go back because I realized that I had been in this crazy Crazy environment, and I kind of stepped away from it for a while.
Right. And your whole social circle, I assume, if you stop drinking, you find out how much people like you for you versus just being around for drinking, right?
Yeah. And after that, I had kind of found a couple of YouTube channels that were more conservative a couple of months after that, and started getting really interested in that.
They weren't telling me what I wanted to hear anymore, but it was definitely more helpful and was encouraging me to think about what had happened to me a lot more and evaluate things.
And that's when everyone started to kind of trickle away after everything.
They were just kind of like, oh, and she's starting to say the wrong things.
And slowly my social group just went to one.
Right. Yeah, because your ego could handle being challenged, but their egos, I assume by choice, could not, right?
Yeah. Right.
And I have an obsessive personality.
I questioned if I had high-functioning autism as a kid because I get very interested in something and I can't get my mind off of it.
And that's been politics for the last couple of years.
Why would you assume that that's obsessive or autistic?
I don't know. I think my parents always kind of told me that I was really obsessed with something and that I would get really obsessed with something for a while and then drop it.
And I get that. Like, I have done that.
All children and all youths do that.
That's kind of what I've always thought.
Yeah, I mean, I learned guitar and wrote some songs and, you know, I was going to be Bob Dylan and then I'm like, ah, forget it.
You know? I mean, it's natural and inevitable that you're going to try on a whole bunch of different things, hobbies, personalities, styles, until you find something that fits.
And the fact that you have intense focus and want to get to the root of things, I don't know, it's just an odd thing to label that I mean, detail-oriented and focused, you know, I mean, if the guy who's designing your car is obsessive about the safety features, why would you use a pejorative?
You know, that's a good thing. I mean, the obsession got you out of that hole, right?
Well, that's kind of what I've been trying to say to them.
It's like, if I'm obsessed with politics, there's a whole job market out there for me.
I just have to figure out my way to get to it.
But there's a bunch of people out there that want me to talk about politics all day, you know?
And... Or write or do something, and that's definitely...
I feel like it's a marketable skill.
It just needs to be channeled a little bit, but I feel like they see it as a really negative thing.
Well, okay, so I need to...
I'm sure you've thought of this, Nora, but just for the audience, I need to break it to you that your parents most likely...
I'm going to go out on a limb here.
Of course, tell me any time I go astray and don't let anything I say substitute for your personal experience, but your parents are terrified...
Of what's going to happen to their social circle if you go out public as a conservative.
Yeah, probably. Right?
Because you're going to be out there. You're going to be blogging.
You're going to be talking about it. If you're successful, you'll get lots of views and people will know your face and your name and your history and your parents, right?
Which is kind of what I'd like for my future, which is unfortunate because I feel like they dumb my confidence down to this little nub when I want to do that kind of thing.
But it's like the confidence gets shot down from the only people that I really have contact with right now.
They don't want to happen to them what they're doing and your friends have done to you.
Yeah. They've raised this incredibly high stakes game and they don't want to lose according to the rules that they have created, right?
Yeah. So they will most likely not only not be supportive of what you want to do with your future but oppose it with every fiber of their being.
Yeah, and I think that's why my future is so confused for me right now.
Well, it's not really. I don't know what to shoot from.
No, it's not really. It's not easy, but it's not confusing.
Because if you want to achieve something and those around you don't want you to achieve it, you either give up your dream or you give up those around you.
I mean, I don't know how to make it more clear than that, and I wish it was easier, I wish it were nicer, I wish it were simpler, and I sure as hell wish that your family and friends were more supportive.
But if you want to achieve something and people around you are either indifferent to it or opposed to it consciously or subconsciously, you either give up your dream and stay the nothing that they want you to be, or you have to give up the people around you, at least temporarily, in order to achieve your goal, right?
Well, that's kind of what I want to start...
I quit school recently because I want to start working and I really, I need to get the motivation and the drive up there because I think that things would be better if I moved out and made my own path.
I just, I need to get there.
It's just, I have such a hard time branching out and meeting people and it hasn't really gotten better since like middle school.
No, but hang on. I'm sorry, I don't mean, so you say that you have a hard time branching out and meeting people, right?
Yeah. Who are you going to meet in your current social circle, in your family circle, in your current environment?
Who are you going to meet? No one.
I mean, for someone, if you say you have socially awkward, how are you doing in this conversation?
I guess okay. You're doing great.
Doing wonderfully. Thank you.
Honest, forthright, great stories, great insights.
I mean, I would not...
Well, I feel like you're not going to give me...
A bullshit answer, you know?
I feel like... Well, we're having a conversation.
I'm not defensive about what you're saying.
I'm not trying to impose anything upon you.
I'm curious about your experience.
So this is what it's like to have a normal conversation, right?
I mean, you're doing very well.
Thank you. Perfect, I would say.
It's just, like, people in my area...
I've been... Like, when I was in class, my parents really thought that me being in class would open up a lot of social avenues for me.
And... Wait, which class? My first semester I took philosophy.
I took psychology.
It was just general studies.
Why am I blanking?
I had so much fun.
Damn it. I don't remember.
Oh, religions. World religions and one other, which I cannot remember now.
But I had a great time in my philosophy class and I was really open, but I didn't accrue any friends from it.
And I was having trouble like going up to people and talking to them because I was kind of scared of what happened to me before happening again where I would make a friend and then they would find out about my politics which are a big part of my life and they would just kind of leave.
Was there any conservative groups or anything like that at the university?
No, it was a really small community college around here and so there isn't a A whole lot going on as far as that, and this town is not very conservative either.
It's a real... The campus itself was really...
Demographically, it was not going to be conservative, but it just...
There were not a whole lot of people.
And I looked up a conservative group for the local regular college, and I looked up their Facebook page.
It was like seven people. Right.
Yeah, it's like trying to find an objectivist group in college when I was there.
Yeah, it's just, I mean, it's very difficult, you know?
Right. So, I mean, the concern that you have about social ostracism for political beliefs is not irrational.
It's not paranoid. It's perfectly sensible.
I mean, if you fall into the lion's den, you're not suddenly weirdly nervous of big cats, you know?
Yeah. You don't call the psychiatrist and say, I'm having an anxiety attack.
It's like, no, you're having a lion proximity attack.
Yeah. Yeah, that's what it feels like.
Right. So, I mean, that's a very real fear.
That's a very real caution.
And we have been so hollowed out by ideology that our capacity to relate across political divides has almost completely evaporated.
Yeah. I mean, I'm fully cognizant of my past arguments called the against me argument.
And that actually is designed to shock people into recognizing the reality of politics and to get them to turn away from the state.
That's not designed to alienate or split people from each other.
But we've been so hollowed out that people...
The NPC programming or the Terminate and Stay Resident program is...
Different political opinions for me equals evil.
Exactly. And you can't fight that.
Leftism has simply become an eschatological religion, right?
With this Manichean view of good and evil fighting to the death.
And I mean, they're trying to sow all of this division so that they can either take over or provoke the civil war that they hope will provoke the chaos that allows them to take over.
But it's very serious stuff, as you know, and...
You have a very important story to tell and a very essential perspective to bring because there are lots of people who are like you for four years back, three years back, five years back who are as lost and decaying into nihilism and empty sexual display and you know horrifying and exploitive relationships who are desperately in need of someone who says I found my way out of this dungeon I found my way out of this prison Here are the breadcrumbs that you can follow.
And so the R versus K stuff that I've talked about in this show before, the Gene Wars presentations, there are people around you who have a particular perspective that may go down as deep as genetics.
I mean, genetics are significantly responsible for our political perspectives.
And they desperately don't want you to be out there with a voice.
They desperately don't want you to be out there.
Talking about what you're talking about.
And they don't want your brother to be out there talking about what you're talking about.
And how can you possibly win?
I mean, this is the thing that I would just be obviously as honest as I can be.
Nora, you can't win against your parents.
They have too much authority.
They have too much history. I can't.
You can't. I don't think anyone.
You can't fundamentally win against your parents.
And so if you want to achieve something that your parents are opposed to, you have to give up your dream or you have to give up your parents.
And I'm not talking about, you know, like you want to be a painter and they think you should be an accountant.
I'm not talking about something like that, right?
That can be negotiated.
But when you have a foundational moral disagreement or the path that you want for your future is in direct opposition to everything that they stand for.
Should you take the risks of being an artist or should you get something more stable?
I mean, that's a negotiation.
That's something you can talk about.
And I think that if you say, well, I don't want to be an accountant.
I want to try being an artist.
Most parents would be like, well, I disagree, but maybe have a plan B. But if you're going to go be an artist, give it your all and let's sit down and see if we can find a way to help you be a better artist or a more effective artist.
But if you want to do something...
That is foundational, that is moral, that is worldview-based, that is metaphysical, and your parents are opposed to you.
I've never seen anyone, this is not an argument, this is simply empirical, but I think there's good reasons behind it, but I've never seen anyone, and I've been doing this a long time, and I was doing it long before I did a show on the internet, but I've never seen anyone who can achieve their goals In direct opposition to their parents' wishes.
Now, there are times when parents have a lot of resistance, and then what happens is you show them that you can do it.
Like, don't go to LA and be an actor.
You go to LA, you be an actor, you start showing up on TV and so on, and then they come around, right?
Okay, well, you were right or whatever, right?
The Jennifer Hudson, Simon Cowell thing, right?
But this is not like that.
This isn't that they're afraid you might fail.
This is they're afraid you might succeed.
And that's a very, very different situation to be in.
So the idea that you're stuck while living with your dad and while having your confidence opposed and eroded by your mom, you know, it's really important to know when you can win a fight and when you can't.
That's foundational to any kind of victory in the world.
And if in this situation, and I believe that it's true, we can't fight our parents.
They have 20 years of Massive authority over us.
And we can't win in opposition to them.
Now, we can slither to one side.
You know what I mean? Like, you can go under the wall, but you can't walk through the wall.
Yeah. And...
Well, I... Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry. I recently tried to kind of have a shallow relationship with my mom where, like, I would go over and watch a TV show with her and have tea and...
You know I'd laugh at her shows like her kind of liberal comedy specials and throw in a couple of like things are especially hard for women kind of sentences and I thought that that would help if I was just kind of fake about it because she would still be my mom and I could just kind of skate through and she would forget about it and you know it didn't work that way obviously.
And what happened that got in the way of that?
I noticed that all of the depression that I was feeling come back was really spiking when I was with my mom.
And it was simultaneously the moments that she was like, we need to get you on some meds.
And then, have you ever seen the film Drop Dead Fred?
Yeah, I have.
That's Phoebe Cates and some British comedian, right?
Yes. Yeah, yeah. You know, she has an imaginary friend and he's, you know, ruining her life.
And then her mom, her controlling mom, gives her these green pills.
And I went to the doctor and I got these pills.
They were gonna put me on Cymbalta or something.
And I just looked at the pill and I was like, you know what?
I've sat here alone in a messy room for like six years and I'm wondering why I'm depressed.
And mom's like, take these pills, take these pills.
I don't think it's going to help when I don't have a good relationship with a lot of people in my life and I don't have friends and I'm in a mess and I don't do anything to take care of myself.
I don't think that this pill is going to make everything go away.
I think it's just going to...
No, but it makes you go away, which may be the unconscious motivation of your mom.
It sedates me.
I put down the pills and I haven't taken them.
I cleaned my room.
I labeled everything, organized it.
And I'm coming to the conclusion that it's my mom.
I really want to get married.
I want to have a husband. I want to have three babies.
And if I marry a right-winger, which I don't see how it would work if I married a left-winger.
So if I marry a right-winger, is she going to be rude to him?
Is she going to be rude to my kids?
Is she going to come over and try to teach my kids about feminism?
It's that kind of thing. It could be even darker than that.
Yeah. I mean, she could, quote, innocently reveal certain things about your past out of context that might disrupt or destroy your relationship, your budding relationship.
Yeah. Right, she might talk about, I mean, I've seen this happen where parents will just talk about embarrassing things that their kids have done as a way of lowering their status and consciously or unconsciously Absolutely interfering in any budding relationship that they might have that would oppose immature parental interests.
So it might be even worse than, well, you know, down the road with my kid.
Like, you might not even get there because your mom will be like, oh, yes, well, Nora, X, Y, and Z, oops, did I, you know, well, you know, hey, you know, just being honest, just making conversation and You've got a big mess to clean up that may or may not be cleanable because you want to reveal things about your history in context, in a relationship with enough of an explanation.
And also, of course, you want to reveal dysfunctions that you've had in your past in relation to the environment in which you were raised, right?
Because otherwise, it just all sits on you and so on, right?
And your mom won't want any of that, right?
And so then you have, okay, well, I've got to talk to my boyfriend about my history, and then I've got to have him not talk about that or anything we've had to do with anything when we go see my mom.
And if he's a good guy and he looks at my mom and how she treats me, is he going to want to stick around and watch me be mistreated by my mom or undermined by my mom?
Like, it's really complicated.
And I couldn't have the marriage that I have.
I couldn't have the marriage that I have if I was still...
Embedded in historical relationships because they were opposed to the whole thing.
And it's like, sorry, I have to choose my life.
I have to choose my future. You guys made your choices and you got to live with them.
I got to start making mine.
That's where I'm at. And it's like I've had nightmares of her at my wedding where she's like breaking things.
And I just, in the back of my head, I'm like, oh God, the absolute...
Chaos that my mother brings sometimes.
She's a lovely person, but it's scary to think about it in my future.
She's a lovely person, but what?
And then when I get in a relationship...
Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no.
Oh, sorry. Hitting the brakes here.
Pumping the brakes. She's a lovely person?
But she brings chaos.
She's a lovely person?
No. I'm not trying to tell you you can't think that.
I just, based on everything you've told me, I don't know where that comes from.
No, it's a contradiction. This lion is a vegetarian.
Wait, what? No, I mean, the last couple of relationships I've gotten in...
No, no, this is why you feel crazy.
Why? Because you've got this empirical experience and then this sentimental language.
Yeah. What empirical experience of being raised by this woman leads you to the domino-derived empirical conclusion that she's a lovely person?
Lovely people don't accuse libertarian kids of being Nazis.
Lovely people don't harangue, repeatedly harangue daughters for having a MAGA hat.
Yeah, no, you're right.
And I think I've just...
This split is really costly.
Well, she's always just said, like, every family's dysfunctional.
And I guess that's just kind of my view of it.
It's like, well, I could have a lot worse.
Every family's dysfunctional?
That's her thing, is every family's fucked up.
So what she's saying is that she's never going to try to change or improve.
That's all she's saying. Because it's not changed in like 20 years.
No, and she's saying we are perfectly normal.
It doesn't get better than this.
She's being very honest with you, Nora.
She's being very honest with you.
Nothing is going to change in me.
This is how I'm always going to be.
And anything that goes wrong is kind of your fault because, hey, all families are dysfunctional.
Yeah, and that's how it's felt, honestly.
I could have said the same thing as a father.
And all I would be doing is promising repetition of trauma.
It's been the same thing with my dad's anger, sort of.
It's just those issues just persist for a long, long time.
And it's just like, well, everyone's fucked up.
Right. So when people...
Justifications are promises of repetition.
I've said this on the show before. I'm sure you've heard it.
It's worth saying again. Justifications are promises of repetition.
Yeah. And so if something, you know this as well as I do, if something's not even acknowledged as a problem, it's never going to change.
And so you have to look at your parents and say, this is it.
Nothing's going to change. And in fact, if I pursue my own path of growth, if I pursue my own career, my own desires, my own preferences, if I become a pro-conservative political voice, however big or small, it's only going to get worse.
And they're not going to change, and they're always going to double down.
These are just facts, you know?
I mean, these are just the basic...
And I'm saying this strongly, but I certainly don't mean to say it without sympathy, Nora.
It's a terrible, terrible thing.
Well, I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but my little brother still lives with my mom.
I live with my dad.
So he's over there all the time.
And that makes things...
Difficult for me because I want to see my brother and like he'll come over here But it would be really nice to be able to go over and see my brother and like hang out with him, you know He's like 16 and we get along great.
It's just It's difficult because it's like if I'm not getting along with mom that impacts him and And that's very tough, and I've had these kinds of conversations, not for a long time, but before, and I remain the same as I was in the past, which is, don't you want to show him what's possible as an adult?
Yeah, and I think I've been the little sister for too long that always had to get taken care of, and he had to watch.
I mean, that's the one good thing about all of this, is at least he knows what not to do.
At least I've taught him that, how bad it can get.
But he hasn't seen an example of real independence from family dysfunction as yet, right?
No. That may be the greatest gift you can give him, rather than immediate sit-downs at your mom's place.
You can always call, you can always meet someplace else, right?
But maybe he would be more inspired by an example of genuine independence, rather than Saying, well, you have to put immediate relationships above personal growth.
Yeah. And I don't know that that's a great message to be receiving at his age or any age, really.
And I want to be that good example for him because I know that he's like me and he wants to get out there and have a family and, you know, have something real in the world and have an opinion.
But I don't think that I've been a good example for him and I think...
Well, I know that I have the capability of it.
It's just I think my confidence is just so low because of all of this.
No, no, no. Okay, hang on.
Let's take a swipe at the confidence thing, right?
Yeah. Your confidence is low because you're taking ownership for things that aren't your fault.
Am I? Yeah. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Your childhood is not your fault.
The school that you were put into is not your fault.
The rumors that were spread about you is not your fault.
Racial tensions are not your fault.
The problems that you had in dental assistant schools with the black girls?
Not your fault. These are, you know, deep challenges of multiculturalism and diversity and so on that I've talked about on the show before.
And the fact that Authorities tend to side with whoever they believe is going to be the most aggressive.
And then they, you know, this is why the woman who threatened you didn't get punished.
And, you know, this is why the security guards may have sided within group preference with the blacks.
These things aren't your fault.
It's not your fault that there are terrible government schools.
It's not your fault that your mother behaved in the way that she did.
It's not your fault that your father has temper issues and behaves in the way that he does.
These things aren't your fault.
Now, you can either sit there and say, well, you know, I was really depressed and I did these bad things and I was promiscuous and I drank too much and so on.
But given the environment that you came out of, to a significant degree, these things aren't your fault either.
You were still a child, still underage.
You had guys 14 years older than you plying you with alcohol.
Yeah. I mean, I was 18, so I guess it was legal, but the alcohol wasn't...
The alcohol was not.
Yeah. The alcohol was not and you didn't have people staging an intervention and you were exposed to some seriously toxic elements in society.
You know, this sex workers are real workers and shave your head and it doesn't matter if you're fat.
I mean, this is a horrendous way to scrub sexual market value out of an entire population, right?
Well, it's horrible because I've been reading about the divorce rates versus like sexual partners and I feel like I've ruined myself, almost.
No, no, because those divorce rates, I assume, and I know the numbers very well, but those are unreconstituted promiscuity people.
In other words, they have been promiscuous, they haven't dealt with their history, they haven't learned why, they haven't figured out their childhoods, and they haven't gone to therapy.
And they haven't developed the self-knowledge that allows them to avoid these kinds of problems in the future.
There's a difference between the people who quit smoking and the people who keep smoking.
A certain way to end up with low self-esteem is to take ownership of a traumatic situation wherein you were just trying to survive.
And just trying to find some connection, and just trying to find some tribe in a very toxic culture, in a very toxic school environment, in a dysfunctional family, with no help.
So, of course, I mean, anyone who says, oh, here's how to live, here's a structure, here's a mental container you can pour yourself into, and this leftism happened to be the one that you were exposed to.
Well, everyone seems kind of certain, and the media is talking about it all the time, and it's all in academia.
How the hell are you supposed to, at the age of 15, overturn all of that with the force of your mind and your will?
Yeah. You can't!
I can't. Yeah, I was 15.
I was a socialist too.
What practical choice did I have?
I was never presented any alternatives.
And every alternative that was even imagined was considered to be immoral and evil and you were ostracized.
I mean...
Yeah.
How could you possibly have done anything differently?
Now, when you did get access to new information, you dealt with it in an honorable and immatural manner.
And for that, you should be enormously proud.
But what you do is you look back at the tangled mess of problems that you had, which are the shadow cast by a toxic and dysfunctional culture, and you take ownership for all of that.
And that's hard on your self-esteem, of course.
Because you feel shame.
That's what you said in your letter, right?
You feel shame for what you did in your early...
in your mid-teens and later, right?
Shame, guilt... Anger and resentment, right?
Yeah. But you can let go of all of those if you simply accept that you did the very best you could with all the information you had available to you, and the moment that you got better information, you made better decisions.
Isn't that something to be enormously proud of?
Yeah. Enormously proud of.
Thank you. You didn't sit around and say, well, that stuff's all crap.
I'm just going to sit here in the squalid swamp of leftism and maybe I can cut off a toe in solidarity, you know, whatever it is, right?
Yeah. You committed to dysfunction and then when you found better, healthier ideas, it did not take you long to turn things around.
That's incredible. No, and I think that was what scared everyone was that it was so instantaneous.
I just found within a couple of months I totally switched and I was like, oh no, I think I'm a conservative.
Like, I think my personality is conservative.
I think I've just been, I had been entrenched in ideology.
And I think the response from my parents and everyone was just sort of like, well, you thought that you were transgender too.
And you thought you were a feminist too.
So it's probably a phase.
And after it didn't go away for like close to a year and a half, I think everyone's just kind of started to shift to the you're hateful NPC response.
But I took it as like, I don't know, maybe it is a phase.
Maybe I'm not self-aware. No, it's not.
This has saved you. Yeah, it really honestly is.
And the people are attacking as evil that which has saved you.
But that's a very, very important thing.
To let sink in to your very soul, Nora, that the people are scorning as evil that which has saved you.
If you had continued down this path, you could have been truly, brutally assaulted.
You could have been, you know, raped in a way that is far beyond what you remember.
You could have been impregnated.
You could have been killed. You could have been, you could have gotten into drugs.
I mean, who knows, right?
That's what horrifies me, is that it would have been so easy for me to become a single mother out of that.
Yes. Yes, it would be.
And everyone was just kind of letting me.
And that freaks me out.
I'm so... They're invested.
Yeah. The only logical answer is that they're invested in your destruction.
And I hate to be that blunt about it, but if you're doing incredibly self-destructive things and people aren't moving heaven and earth and throwing themselves in front of you to prevent you, if they do that, it doesn't mean you'll stop.
But at least they will have acquitted themselves honorably in the situation.
And if they are making mild complaints or mildly negative things but not moving heaven and earth to stop you in a self-destructive path, it means that they would rather that occur to you than whatever the alternative is.
And that is a terrifying and chilling thing to see in your environment.
Yeah, I think.
Thank you.
So your self-esteem, if you focus on the dysfunction that you are not responsible for, what were you supposed to invent all of rational philosophy when completely imbibed and sunk into an anti-rational culture?
Come on. Are you supposed to be Aristotle and Socrates and Plato and John Locke and Ayn Rand?
Are you supposed to be all of these people at the age of 15 in a desperately toxic culture?
You can't expect that of yourself.
It's not possible.
We're not supposed to talk about Ayn Rand in my household.
Of course, of course, of course.
Seems kind of anti-Semitic to me, but hey.
But no, you have to forgive yourself because the standard by which you would hold yourself accountable for what happened in your mid-teens can't be rationally sustained at all.
Yeah, no, you're right.
The moment that somebody threw you down a lifeline, you climbed out of that.
As fast as you humanly could and haven't gone back, right?
And I tried to bring people with me.
Sure. I've been trying to bring people with me ever since.
I think that's all I ever want to do at this point is just try to help people who were in my situation.
And you probably can't do that in your personal environment, but you sure as hell can do that in a larger media environment.
And I think that's what I have to do.
I mean, I'm very self-conscious, but I feel like I need to just kind of suck it up and start something because...
I don't want to see people make the decisions that I made or be led to make the decisions that I made.
It's so scary to me.
That's one of the reasons why I was very eager for the conversation, Nora, because the story of you is the story of youth in the West at the moment.
If I could stand in front of girls and tell them it's like that.
These breadcrumbs are being laid to hell itself.
I mean, where you were was a kind of hell itself.
It's my own personal hell, definitely.
Well, no, it's a hell for anyone.
And anyone who's sane and has the capacity for something better would look back at that and say, well, this is a nightmare.
This is hell.
This is a living kind of hell.
And so many people are being drawn down that path.
I see it a lot, yeah.
Yeah. And where you were and where you got to is incredibly impressive.
I mean, it's funny because You're like a 15-year-old who outrun a cheetah, right?
And you're saying, you know, I feel ashamed that I didn't run faster.
Thank you. Now, there is anger and resentment in you about your history, and you can either direct it at its proper objects, which would be your culture, your environment, your teachers, your school, your security guards, your parents, whoever, the people on Tumblr.
You can get angry at all the people who should have known better and probably claim to know better, who didn't act in a better way.
Or you can get angry at yourself.
The anger is going to be there. Injustices were done.
Wrong things were done. And you can either say, well, I did them entirely of my own volition and free will.
I just started getting overweight and getting abused and drinking and sleeping.
Just from my, you know, out of nowhere.
Just, you know, in a vacuum, in a void.
I was perfectly well raised and I just, for no reason whatsoever, decided to do these bad things.
Or you can say, in my mid-teens, I am largely a shadow cast by my history and my environment.
And I'm going to get angry at my history and my environment because that's where the real problems are.
That's where the real danger is.
And so to get angry at your environment is a way of relieving the burden of anger against yourself.
Because if you can't blame your environment and those around you who led you down this path and who encouraged you down this path, then the only other person to get angry at is you, and that's unfair.
I think you've had enough of that.
I think you've earned...
A metal, not a chain, right?
Thank you. Yeah, I've definitely been better about it recently because I deep cleaned my entire upstairs and my room and my bathroom and everything.
I'm sorry, I just like the way that sounds.
When you learn philosophy, you're deep cleaning your entire upstairs.
It just sounds like what's in between your skulls.
I was listening to you and deep cleaning and like...
Getting rid of things that I had when I was 13 and stuff and just decluttering and decluttering my brain at the same time.
And I feel like I'm getting to the point where I can actually start to help other people who were in my situation and do what I've always wanted to do and have that independence.
And I think it's just been those years that have been like, no, everyone's going to find out that you were disgusting and that all of that happened.
Ah, you see, now that's where the you were disgusting stuff.
Yeah. Is not good.
Yeah. You know, there's foods that everyone thinks is gross, right?
And it could be some foreign food.
It could be some Chinese dish if you're from Europe or whatever, right?
But there's foods that everyone thinks. And people are like, oh, you ate that?
Like I remember once being taken by one of my early bosses in the software field to dinner.
He took all the coders to dinner.
And we went to some Chinese restaurant and it was like sea slug.
Oh. And snake soup and, you know, I mean, it's a little gross.
You know, and I'm sure that the Western food is gross to some of the Chinese people and so on, but it was pretty far afield.
It's like dim sum. It's like, I just can't kind of get my taste buds around it.
Yeah. And so there's all kinds of food that people out there are like, I can't believe, right?
But if you're starving to death, you got to eat something.
Yeah. You know, if it's me and a cat on a desert island, sorry, Jim and Meow, but you gotta go.
And you're, oh my god, you ate a cat!
It's like, yeah, but I didn't just grab a kitty and chow down on it for fun.
I was starving to death.
I had, like, until would you say, oh man, you're disgusting, you ate a cat!
It's like, the alternative was what?
That's fair, yeah.
So I would be really, really careful about this language with yourself because we are to some degree branded and stamped by the language that we use about ourselves.
Well, I saw my mother have a lot of self-esteem issues and I think that I modeled from that a little bit.
No. A lot.
No. No.
No, because your mother harmed others.
You harmed yourself. I mean, she harmed herself too, to be fair.
No, no. She harmed others is the important part.
Okay. See, Socrates said it is better to suffer wrong than do wrong.
And you harmed yourself and you were exploited by bad people because you didn't have a bond and you didn't have self-esteem and you didn't have better information and you didn't have an example of anything better.
And you had people egging you on.
And so you harmed yourself And that's why you're able to change.
That's why you're able to self-assess, to reassess and to grow.
Whereas your mother harmed a child, two children, in fact, and continues to do so.
So when you say, well, I saw my mother's self-esteem issues and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's like, no, they're fundamentally different because you've not harmed others.
You harmed yourself. Your mother has harmed not just others, but children who are helpless and dependent upon her.
She failed in her duty to protect her children.
Well, you in particular, as far as your brother goes, we don't know, but she failed to protect you and she did great harm to you and continues to do great harm to you by sneering and scorning at the mindset that has actually saved your life.
Yeah. And so do not, do not conflate yourself and your issues with your mother because you're on different sides of the moral spectrum.
Yeah, you're right. Don't say, well, you know, my mother and she had these self-esteem issues and I have those self-esteem issues.
No, that's not reasonable because you have not harmed children for years.
No. And you would be open to a conversation with your mother in a way that she's not open to with you.
And if your mother came across a belief system that saved her life, you would not scorn it and attack it and undermine it and criticize it relentlessly.
No. Of course not.
A good human being.
I've tried to have like the little conversations about stuff with feminism, but it just kind of came to these weird dead ends like talking about men's rights.
She looked me in the face and was like, I don't really care about the rights of men.
I'm sorry. And I just kind of went, oh, okay, this is not someone I can speak with on a decent level, you know?
And I don't think that that's going to translate well to emotional issues with our family.
Right. So she's saying very clearly she doesn't care about the rights of her son, your brother.
Yeah, she was totally open.
I mean, she was honest with me, and I should have been listening.
All we have to do is listen.
People are very, very clear.
Listen, I'm going to have to stop here.
I actually have another call tonight.
I need to get some food. Yeah. But was it a helpful conversation?
Absolutely. All right.
Well, listen, I hugely appreciate it.
It was a great, great conversation for me, and I'm I'm immensely impressed and in deep admiration of what it is that you've been able to do with your life.
I think you should be extraordinarily proud.
And I mean, you weren't put in a wheelchair, but you sure as hell got out of it.
And that is something to be enormously admired.
And I respect everything that you've done with regards to this.
And you should take a bow every morning for that.
Thank you so much, Stefan.
You have a wonderful night.
Keep in touch. Let me know how it goes, all right?
