I want to — but can’t — hate the person who roped me into this conversation

My email was added to some conversation about whether or not Robert E. Lee was a racist or a patriot, the majority of the claims made therein were beyond ridiculous, but I ignored it because I’m not one to feed trolls who write things like “You sought to destroy the legacy of a truly great man, and you were called on by alpha males, so shut up and crawl back in the sewer you came from.”

But the sentence that followed that was one up with which I could not put, because it was delivered with absolute seriousness: “Don’t mess with bulls, you’ll get the horns.”

To which I responded, because as a child of the ’80s, I couldn’t not:

I have no idea who any of you are, or why I’ve been included in this ridiculous ‘conversation’ — it doesn’t matter what one believes, but what one fights for, and however brilliantly he fought, Robert E. Lee still fought treasonously in defense of slavery, end of story — but I couldn’t let this pass:

Don’t mess with bulls, you’ll get the horns.

Because whatever ‘alpha male’ wrote that failed to understand the fundamental point of that statement, which was that it’s the sort of thing a person who mistakenly believes he’s an alpha male says to a bunch of misfit teenagers in order to put them under his thumb, and his ploy fails spectacularly.

It saddens me that some poor soul watched that film and that was the lesson he took away from it. Because what a sorry excuse for a life that person must live, always thinking he’s the bully because he’s not smart enough to realize just how ineffective his bullying is, strutting around declaring himself to be ‘winning’ before an audience that exists only in his mind.

Feel free to delete my address from future replies, because I’m not sure I can bear much more of this sad masculine charade.

I was merely killing time while the file I still need to transcribe before bed was uploading, but of course, he responded and I’m incapable of not doing likewise, at least not tonight:

I’m your worst nightmare prick. Now get back in the men’s room with the other girls.

You’re nothing of the sort. You’re a sad, insecure man spouting his nonsense on the Internet, unaware that he’s making a spectacle of himself by quoting masculine lines that anyone with half a brain would understand were meant to emasculate the character in context.

It’s a distressing display, as I noted, so I guess you are my worst nightmare — I’d hate end up as pathetic as you clearly are.

I thought that’d be the end of it, but no:

Go tell mommy.

You seem quite fond of talking about other people’s mothers, which makes it abundantly clear that you have issues with your own. Would you like to talk about them? Did you she not applaud your feats of masculinity adequately enough? Because that would cause the kind of insecurity you’re evincing here. Just a warning — you’re veering dangerously close to making an absolute fool of yourself here, what with all this projecting of your issues onto people who don’t have them.

I’m really not wanting to continue this conversation, but unlike you, I’m secure enough in my masculinity to reach out and say that if you need a helping hand, someone to talk this through, I’ll stick around. Because you clearly need some actual masculine figure in your life — looking in the mirror and weeping uncontrollably clearly isn’t working for you.

“This is why,” I said to myself, “it’s best not to engage a former warboarder” — a fact that this rearguarding alpha male didn’t quite grok:

‘My mom is 85 and will kick your little sissy ass…boy.

And the price of molasses on the Mississippi is $0.85 a barrel. You ever going to approach a point, son? Or are you just going to continue talking about your mother. If so, I know for a fact that there are psychiatrists who specialize in that, and they’re likely much more interested in hearing about her than we are. Who knows, your obsession might even be atypical — an attachment of such gravity as to confound modern psychological science. Just think — for the first time in your life, you’d actually be special!

‘Salon Magazine….I am laughing my ass off…

So says the man hiding behind the 2,000 word confidentiality notice. Afraid the rest of the world will learn how lean your mind is? That’s it’s all trimmings and gravy and no actual fucking meat? I know, I know — real men hide beyond long legal disclaimers, which means I must not be a real man. But I’m willing to put my words out there, whereas you’re just desperately trying to deflect attention from the travesty that is your “argument,” which can’t even stand up to the simple fact I stated in the first paragraph of mine.

Just a suggestion — and I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, given your sympathies — but at a certain point, you just have to stop “fighting” with words what you lost on the battlefield centuries ago. It’s not as if you’re ever going to regain the moral high ground, after all.

Surely that finished him off — but no!

Say, aren’t you missing this week’s episode of “I am Cait”?

Say, Mr. Superior Alpha Male Man, aren’t you missing that part where you actually address my argument and defeat it? If all you can do is lamely change the subject and employ giant emoticons like an 8-year-old who hasn’t learned to string sentences together into an argument yet, that doesn’t speak well of your defense of your beloved General, now does it? I mean, you’re not even writing in language, you’ve resorted to emoticons in order to, what? Win the approval of toddlers? Given how illogical your argument is, that’s probably the best you can hope for, so I guess you at least know your target audience — people you can convince have lost their noses with a swipe of your hand.

Anyway, should you ever grow up or half a brain — a quarter, even, would be an improvement — and wish to make the same shitty arguments you’ve offered here and scramble, in vain, to defend them, you have my email address.

You won’t use it, though. I can recognize a chicken-shit taking refuge behind his ignorance when I see one, and you, sir, are a King Chicken-Shit. You won’t admit to anyone but yourself how much it bothers you that you were so easily bested by someone you despise, and will proclaim yourself a rooster twice as vehemently from now on to compensate for your utter fucking failure here, but you understand your own abjection now, as does everyone who’s read this.

You’ve been so thoroughly defeated all you’ll be able to do is sputter out some transphobic half-sentence or, even worse, another giant emoji. Because nothing takes adults like me aback more than something created for illiterates with a penchant for bright objects.

Once a warboarder, always a warboarder. Now, back to transcribing, as these weekend articles won’t write themselves…

…or not, I’m dealing with a masochist:

I’ll “address your argument” after you address mine….

I sent these yesterday, honey. Your girlfriend Grabaty couldn’t address them….you wanna try?

I have no idea who that is, and I made two simple arguments: 1) “it doesn’t matter what one believes, but what one fights for, and however brilliantly he fought, Robert E. Lee still fought treasonously in defense of slavery, end of story,” and 2) that you’ve hilariously misread that line from The Breakfast Club because you wouldn’t understand true masculinity if it walked up to you incarnate and said, “Enough with your tyrannic cogs, when the fucking begins, you won’t be one taking refuge.”

Instead, you’re sending giant stickers designed by toddlers for toddlers, and somehow think you have the upper hand.

Honestly, just give up. You’ve embarrassed yourself and your cause gravely enough tonight, it’d be best to just skulk away and hide in some dark corner of the world, unseen and unseeing, for a few weeks. Then you can emerge mistakenly believing everyone’s forgotten the untidy drubbing you took here today and everyone can pretend to just be getting on with their lives.

But they’ll know — and you’ll know they’ll know — and it’ll be a terrible thought that you’ll only be able to fight by, what? Papering over the gaping holes in your ego with childish emojis? One brisk breeze and you’ll be blown into so many smiling yellow stickers floating on the wind, as insubstantial as your arguments.

And because he can’t, and he won’t, and he don’t stop:

Look, I accept your surrender. I was pretty sure you didn’t know who Ike, MacArthur, Patton, Truman, Churchill, and Webb were, anyway. They were very un-diverse.

Publik Skoole and all…..anyway, in the future don’t start anything you don’t want to finish. And, all kidding aside, your mom’s pretty hot….for a gorilla. Is she related to Michelle Obama? Wooky much?

[Imagine a picture of me, then a gorilla, then Michelle Obama, then a Wookie]

You’re an embarrassment to your cause. When people approach you with words, and you reply with pictures, you’re playing the part of the sign-language learning monkey in the film about his unfortunate plight.

You can try and “accept [my] surrender” all you like — but everyone here, as well as many who are not — have witnessed the quality of your argument and found you severely lacking. Hundreds of thousands of people are laughing at you for replying to words with emojis while claiming to be a masculine man. There are paeans being penned to your emasculation all across the internet as we speak so thoroughly have you been demolished.

The only thing preventing you from complete and utter humiliation is the fact that I feel sorry enough for you to have not communicated your name to the outside world. They’re only laughing at what, for you, passes for “thought” — that is, only at the core of what makes you who you are.

You think you’ve won, and you’re welcome to continue to do so if it makes your life bearable. Whatever gets you through the day, right? Because it has to be something other than your brain, as that couldn’t suffice to get you through a door.

This is the song that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends…

Say, wasn’t Huffington Post founded by Arianna Huffington with her husband (at the time) Michael’s mone.

Didn’t he turn gay after being married to her for a few years

I can see why you’d be attracted to such a plac

Salon Magazine!  Seriously????

Continue to flail, everyone sees right through your pathetic charade. You’ve been emasculated, and are having problems dealing with it. It’s understandable, transphobe that you are, that you’re having difficulty transitioning to your new identity. The thing is, it’s perfectly normal and natural, and can, in fact, be quite beautiful.

I recommend doing so, as running around the barnyard like a headless chicken isn’t doing you any favors. The children — the ones who so love the emojis you favor — they’re laughing at you too. Or were, until the spectacle became too depressing, and they wandered away, one by one, to have nightmares about your headless body beating on, dead athwart the current, borne back ceaselessly to the complete and utter humiliation everyone but you can see you’ve suffered here tonight.

Put your friends out of their misery and relent, already. There’s nowhere for you to go but further down, and at this point, even I’m starting to feel sorry for you.

…on and on my friends…

You don’t know anyone on this list, yet you speak for ‘everyone’? You presume much. Transphobe??? Salon – seriously??? Have ever met Arianna? You’re killin’ me….BTW- does you mom pay your internet bill? Is it in the basement? Anyway, gotta go now….big boy worky time, you wouldn’t understand.

Dude, I don’t know about this listserv — I was hijacked into this conversation, I’m not sure how. I’m talking about your total public humiliation, where everyone is laughing at you for using stickers in lieu of arguments. They’re making images of Robert E. Lee on horseback, but replacing his face with the stickers you’re so fond of.

You’re a laughingstock, and if your only response is, “Well, among this tiny community of likeminded idiots, I’m a God-King,” all I can say is you keep telling yourself that. Because you’re a very special snow-flake, and everybody thinks you’re really smart. It’s true, because as the mother you have issues with surely told you right before she tucked you in, you’re such a brave, bright boy, now aren’t you? Aren’t you?

The rest of us, however, are laughing as the urine stain starting at your crouch creeps steadily down your leg before terminating in a puddle beneath the sneakers you thought would mask your insecurity.