We don't have a violence problem in this country; we have a liberal Karen problem.

The influence of smug, virtue-signaling liberal Karens on the world is less than great. Let's discuss the legacy of toxic feminism.

This piece is dedicated to the liberal Karens (and their Ken lapdogs) celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk on Bluesky. R.I.P., amigo. I got you.

Late yesterday afternoon, the news arrived that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated in Provo, Utah, while speaking at a Utah Valley University event. My initial thoughts were of sadness for Kirk and his family, followed by a sense of despair over our collective loss of a skilled, polite, passionate advocate of public discourse and free speech at a time when we really need all of that.

But it didn’t take very long for these musings to be interrupted with disgust for the portrayal of the assassination by the usual suspects in the mainstream media. From the AP.

“Kirk personified the pugnacious, populist conservatism that has taken over the Republican Party in the age of Trump… The event at UVU had been met with divided opinions on campus. An online petition calling for university administrators to bar Kirk from appearing received nearly 1,000 signatures. The university issued a statement last week citing First Amendment rights and affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry, and constructive dialogue.”

The AP isn’t even trying to hide its bias anymore.

Pugnacious? Look, Kirk and I agreed on very little. The world is a complicated place, and I doubt that every problem in it may be solved simply by a liberal application of conservative values (if you will pardon the pun). But Kirk, though occasionally supercilious, was generally polite and engaging. He was a nice person in a profession that could use many more. The only thing really pugnacious about Kirk was the manner in which he allowed his opponents to pummel themselves. Debate opponents tuning themselves up is what made Kirk famous. That’s not pugnacious. I think that AP spelled opportunistic wrong.

A thousand alleged signatures on an online petition at a university with over 46,000 students amounts to division? This may, indeed, be expressed as a ratio, but it works out to a bit over 2%. So, according to the AP, 2% of the student population at UVU represents a wave of sentiment that amounts to division? The only thing worse than their bias is their math, which somewhat resembles the woefully ignorant display of number sense by Mekita Rivas, Brian Williams, and Mara Gay a few years ago.

It goes on. Today, several hours after most media outlets reported it, the ammunition left behind in the shooting was found to be engraved with transgender and antifascist ideology. The AP evidently doesn’t consider this newsworthy.

The vehicle the Feds have identified as of interest.

As of this writing, we still don’t know the identity or motive of Kirk’s assassin. The usual suspects on the left blame guns; the usual suspects on the right blame the rhetoric from the left. I think that they are both wrong.

Me? I blame progressive Karens. I’m talking about smug, virtue-signaling liberal professional women, still pissed off about being spanked at birth by a male doctor, responsible for dipshitifying every institution essential for order and progress just to put thumbs in the eyes of men.

You, on Bluesky, slagging CK. That’s you, sista.

Before you cry out, “I knew that guy was a misogynist!” and lurch forward to pound the Substack unsubscribe button with a hammer; let me ‘splain myself. It will just take a few minutes, and this way, you may at least make an informed decision about what size hammer to use. Q & A format. Let’s go.

Do women have a legitimate beef with the way they’ve been treated by men in this country? Without a doubt. Has this situation improved alongside the country's progress? I think so. Do women deserve the same equal opportunities as men? Absolutely. Does that mean that women are equal to men? No, it does not. There is no natural law of which I am aware that says anyone is equal to anyone else. Does that mean you support discrimination based on sex? Nope, I’m for anyone who can do a job getting the job and getting paid the same as everyone else who does the job with the same experience. It’s as simple as that. It appears that you are a closeted glass ceiling bigot. Not at all; in fact, I’d rather you took a hammer to that glass ceiling than the unsubscribe button.

I like women. I wish that I could figure out a way to stay married to them, but that, I have been told many times, is my problem. That’s almost undoubtedly true, alas and alack. Nonetheless, it’s apparent to me that women and men differ in significant ways, both physiologically and psychologically. I believe that you pretend otherwise at your peril.

Do I think women can succeed as well as men as scientists, scholars, writers, musicians, athletes, politicians, businesspeople, public leaders and in many other capacities? I sure do; I’ve known and worked with far too many brilliant, capable women for me or any other rational person to think otherwise. In most ways, women and men are generally interchangeable. But not in all ways. Is a WNBA team going to beat the Lakers any time soon? Now you’re just being plumb silly.

In a widely viewed recent video, two men are seen attacking a female police constable at an airport in Manchester, UK, while she was attempting to arrest them for assaulting someone else. It did not go well for her. She tearfully confessed to being terrified after receiving a punch to the face that put her on the floor with a broken nose.

“I was terrified to be honest. I was absolutely terrified. I had never experienced that level of violence towards me in my life. Nobody came to assist," she said.

Now I understand that according to the liberal feminists’ playbook, a 5’3” woman, who might weigh 10 stone soaking wet, is supposed to be the equal of not one but two perps who are larger, stronger and faster because women can do any job that a man can do—often better. And anyone who thinks that male cops would deal with getting their ass kicked without tears, terror, or broken noses is suffering from a surfeit of toxic masculinity.

Here’s the problem. Suspension of disbelief works in movies, literature, and progressive policy discussions. It does not work as well in real life. Those who insist that everyone equals everyone else, that standards designed to measure ability are aspirational, and subsequently that a small woman is just as effective as a large man in dealing with angry, violent criminals aren’t animated by reality; they’re animated by ideology.

I just finished watching the fifth season of Fargo. I generally like the TV Fargo. It’s well-written, well-directed and well-acted. There’s a whacky supernatural thread that runs through each season that’s the coup de grâce in putting it over the top. It’s wonderful, offbeat fun. But season five added something new to the Fargo chronicles—a diatribe against masculinity.

In season five of Fargo, all of the principal male characters are funhouse mirror caricatures of masculinity. The “good” men are weak, flawed and inept. The strong men are exploitative, grotesque, murderous, and abusive psychopaths. The women, by contrast, are resourceful heroines or misandrists on unlikely redemptive arcs that involve defeating masculinity.

This bit of pop culture is not a one-off. It’s everywhere. Is it any wonder that young men are retreating into their own private worlds of video games and dark corners of the internet? Is it surprising that AI companionship is gaining ground on real relationships? I won’t have anything to do with women who think that strong men are all toxic either. Don’t ask me how I know that this is a terrible idea.

So yeah, I think that a lot of what ails us has less to do with the evils of toxic masculinity than toxic feminism. We have a liberal Karen problem.

For decades, feminism has posited three leading principles. The first is that women are equal to or better than men in all circumstances. The second is that all strong, assertive men are toxic. The third is that self-actualization is the only important goal for any emancipated woman.

You show me a field in which liberal women dominate (education comes prominently to mind), and I'll show you a field that is anti-male, anti-family, and full of unhappy toxic womyn who blame everyone but themselves for their problems and whose Instagrams are filled with photos of fun times with their Labrador retriever. Men are all potential rapists, exploiters, or misogynists. The only good XYs are weak and compliant.

If I, as a 6’2”, 220 lb. athlete, offer to pick up that 50 lb. bag of dog food for a womyn at the market, I am a male chauvinist. If I teach my son to open doors for his sisters and their friends, I’m inculcating him into male chauvinism as well. Heaven forbid that I encourage a young man to cowboy up and smack a tormenting bully upside the head instead of running off to a counselor and a safe space. That’s toxic masculinity.

That’s all, of course, nonsense that’s been foisted on us by the most dubious research bad dreams are capable of conjuring. It’s exactly how we’ve raised a generation of kids who can’t stand an unpleasant thought and think that free speech is a threat.

In my time in academia, there were two types of scholarship that were above reproach: scholarship by underrepresented groups and scholarship by liberal women. You criticized either at your peril.

I once got in trouble for calling out a poorly run project by a science Karen—a person so uniquely bad at her job that one of her female students (a young woman who I’d encouraged to enter the field) came into my office one day to announce her resignation from the program because “If she’s what women in science are about, I want nothing to do with it.” But when I found obvious flaws in the project, female scientists throughout the university lined up to vilify me. It was an interesting time.

That young woman, by the way, went on to run a successful environmental consulting firm that she started from scratch. She has a wonderful family as well. That’s science Karen antimatter. Good for her.

To see toxic feminism in the context of broader liberalism, let’s consider the damage that the liberal order inflicted on Black families in America by forcing them to trade their homes for housing projects, creating dependency on welfare, and removing welfare benefits if a man lived in the household. How’d that work out for several generations of young Black children, especially young Black men?

Now consider the damage that feminists have inflicted on all families by devaluing men and placing their needs above their responsibility for raising children. You want to know why young people can’t even figure out if they are boys or girls? Let’s see how far out-where-the-buses-don’t-run the divorced mom on her quest for self-actualization happens to be.

Other items in the panoply of less-than-useful ideas enforced by liberal Karens: mask mandates, timeouts, compassionate policing, participation trophies, abolition of bail, coming out transgender as being very brave, social promotion, and bagging on Sydney Sweeney over clothes that don’t come in body-positive sizes.

As an aside. If you are none of these but rather a strong, resourceful, successful, and happy woman around retirement who looks hot for your age and is open to an arrangement with a man of letters, slide into my DMs. Should like small children, llamas, bicycles, cold winters, and guitars. Must be OK if I’m not down with Jesus.

Look—traits such as being abusive, toxic, overbearing, or insensitive are not exclusive to either sex; they are characteristics that can be found in all human beings. Toads come in XX and XY varieties. Life sucks for everyone at one time or another. You want to self-actualize? A good start is to figure out that everyone gets dinged. You get knocked down, you get back up. That’s universal good advice.

Then quit raising your kids to be as entitled as you. Small steps.

Yeah, I know. I feel the opprobrium coming in like a line in the sky. The morning I was born, the doctor told my old man to go fetch a pot of hot water, and I’ve been in it ever since. Charlie Kirk tickled the dragon’s tail his way; this is mine.

Prove me wrong.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on X at @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.