Andrea Long Chu hopes to upend the whole gender paradigm.

Chu’s fascinatingly offensive hypothesis is that Femaleness equals Passivity. In a Yin & Yang sort of way. Stripped of any metaphorical disambiguation.

“‘Femaleness’ is the urge to be a vessel for another’s desire.”

To say nothing of menstruating or breastfeeding or any of the 1,000 other things women may experience but men never do. That’s a damned convenient definition of Female for those who aren’t.

“My desire originated outside of me.” Chu is full of charmers like this: The classic idea that inspires Modesty laws all over the world. Women are blamed for men’s lust.

It’s funny how putting yourself out there is a great way to meet people.

Definitely more effective than my old favorite method – Keeping to myself and hoping to be noticed.

Along my journey at Brazen She I have met some really cool people. I want to give back to this great community.

Here are my top 5 favorite woman bloggers who I’ve met during my time here. They are a diverse group of voices each of whom enriches the world using her unique perspective. These ladies are brazenly themselves.

Breeta shares her experience and perspective with infectious enthusiasm. She shares her struggles, her insights and, more than anything else, her favorite songs.

As I was writing my post inspired by Dr. Martha Stout’s fantastic book The Sociopath Next Door, Trevor Noah was in front of cameras explaining why it’s more relevant than ever.

In one of The Daily Show’s Between the Scenes segments, Trevor says he thinks President Trump’s “most powerful tool is that he knows how to wield victimhood.

“He knows how to offer victimhood to people who have the least claim to it. Which is a really, really powerful tool because …. he’s saying the real victims of the #MeToo movement are men.

Last time our Readings took us to some pretty deep places in the Freudian unconscious. This time we’re looking at behavior that is in front of our faces every day.

I’m not the first to write an article inspired by Dr. Martha Stout’s superb book The Sociopath Next Door. It is riveting and filled with educational details. Dr. Stout employs narrative to draw characters who illustrate points from the easily digestible lists the book is populated with.

After drawing her terms, we meet Skip and Doreen. Skip’s last name is probably Skakel. Doreen has ensconced herself as a doctor in a mental hospital with no real credentials. They both use the power of their position to abuse and intimidate people below them.

Jumping right in, today we’re starting with Sigmund Freud. German and born in 1856, he gave us what these days we refer to as therapy, a structured and codified method for understanding the mentally ill instead of locking them up. In doing so, he laid the foundations of the field of Psychology.

A good place to begin is his Psychosexual Stages theory, first published in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905. Also known as the Family Drama, this is his model for how personalities form. This theory gave us a lot of familiar words – Ego, Libido, Penis Envy. Some of the meanings have slipped over time, Libido is the survival impulse which supports the instinct for procreation. Not just your level of sexual desire as we use it these days, but still pretty raunchy. Penis Envy was the reason women were incompetent.