Take Back the Brain Cells

This Ongoing Moral Inversion is Terrifying

Last Thursday, I was walking home from the gym (a place I do not frequent enough) and I heard the sounds of voices shouting slogans in unison. I also noticed police cars blocking an intersection. Oh great, I thought, more idiot fans of Hamas shouting nonsense. As I got closer I noticed it was a “Take Back the Night” rally and I felt relieved…for about three seconds. For among the crowd of women - and a few fellas, probably ingratiating themselves in order to get dates - were keffiyeh-clad clowns spouting foolishness about decolonizing their bodies. What on earth does that mean? It’s unfortunate, because Take Back the Night events were common when I was at university and represented something positive.

(I think “Slut” Marches have a positive intention, too, though I hate the word. I understand the reason it is used. No woman deserves to be assaulted or judged due to her clothing or what people perceive to be her private life. But I just hate that word and I think it is dreadful when men use it, when women use it about other women - sadly, this happens a lot, in true mean girl fashion - and when women use it about themselves. I do not see it as “empowering.”)

So what was up with those keffiyehs? And why did I not notice any marchers holding placards about Hamas using rape as a war crime on October 7th, or about Boko Haram using it against Christian women, or about the female hostages going through goodness knows what in the Hamas tunnels? That these horrors have taken place and are ongoing is something we know. There has also been witness and first-hand testimony about men who were sexually assaulted by Hamas. Why not march for them? Three guesses and the first two don’t count. Apparently, on the night of the march, about 100 people attended an earlier event, highlighting the names and faces of Israeli victims of Hamas brutality. The Toronto Rape Crisis Centre showed its hand for those too dense to already have noticed it, referring to them as “disrupters” and dismissing them.

So we know all too well what was up with those keffiyehs and with the lack of concern for Israeli victims of sexual assault. In fact, while Toronto’s Rape Crisis Centre (TRCC), the organizer of the event, has stopped short of having a “free Palestine” section on its website - likely out of fear of losing public funding - the group has yet to acknowledge the rape of Israeli women on October 7th or the plight of the hostages. TRCC has also issued the usual drivel in the form of statements about “challenging settler colonialism.” This Mean Girls Gone Jihadi shtick should not shock us. It is part of the same hate-filled contempt for tragedy that I have seen from my church and that we have seen from so many institutions in the last eleven months. Oh, the irony - those that have spent decades whinging about safe spaces and micro-aggressions, excluding an entire group from those same safe spaces, and cozying up to decidedly unsafe sorts, not to mention failing to recognize or condemn macro-aggression. Take back your brain cells!

I blame Frantz Fanon. Ok, there is blame to go around and examples everywhere. I have been watching the fourth - and sadly, final - season of My Brilliant Friend and similar ethical bankruptcy among the Italian chattering classes plays a prominent part in the story. By the way, if you are not watching My Brilliant Friend, you are missing one of the best shows on television and easily the most underrated and underpublicized. I get that people don’t like subtitles, but remember that Italians also use subtitles when watching this show, due to the prominence of Neapolitan dialect. If they can deal with it, you can, too.

In the first episode of the new season, the main character - Lenu - has just blown up her family in order to run away with Nino, a sanctimonious and sophomoric university professor and posturer. Lenu is smitten with this creep and his alleged intellect. Aldo Moro has been kidnapped by the Red Brigades - he will eventually be executed - and Nino is speaking on a panel about the situation. What does he do? He blames the victim. He calibrates. He mitigates. He denies that he is doing as much. Sound familiar? But this was 1978 and things were not fully insane, yet. The crowd and his fellow panelists call him out and heckle him. He leaves, full of himself and smug and Lenu remains blissfully, moronically entrenched. The ability of women to rationalize and go blind (and deaf and dumb) when in love is laid out in all its horror, as is the madness of political extremes.

Italy’s anni di piombo - literally, years of lead - was a favourite topic of my professors when I studied there. I understand why, as it must have been frightening for those who lived through it. But when teaching us about it, many would downplay the violence of the Red Brigades and focus on that perpetrated by right-wing groups. Both should be taught and both should be deplored. This would seem to go without saying, but consider the reactions to the absolute genius Israeli move of blowing up Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies. It is hard to imagine a better way to target terrorists while limiting civilian deaths. And the audacity, the creativity of it - in a way, the simplicity of it - makes me think of the Trojan horse. (I do not delight in violence, but…how awesome was this!?) It is true that at least one civilian, a child at that, died as a result, but the blame there lies on those who have Hezbollah pagers. Yet according to the UN Secretary-General, this could “escalate” things in the Middle East. Er, I think the escalation ship sailed some time ago, Antonio. Like, with the attacks of eleven months ago and the rockets fired pretty much non-stop on Israel since.

[The Attack That Launched 1,000 Memes. Screenshot from X.]

Will this moral topsy-turvy ever get set right? Yes, if we have more people like Dr. Arnold Aberman, Professor Emeritus and past Dean of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Aberman has made the decision to return his honorary Doctor of Laws to the university, saying that, “the participation of many faculty members in the [University of Toronto anti-Israel] encampment in defiance of university policy coupled with the lack of consequences has been, in my view, shameful.” Amazing moral clarity. I wish there were millions of him.