Well, today there was another one. Early reports on my local news had a guy dying, running from the flames of the home of his estranged wife, and I felt sick. I was pretty sure I knew what would follow. Yes, the woman was unaccounted for. More sickness: they’d had three kids. And soon we knew for a fact what my gut had already told me: that another weak and cowardly male had taken action. He had shaken his fist at fate. He had made his own destiny.

Well, congratulations, Super Commando. (I can’t stand to type your name. You are less than nobody.) You killed children. You murdered where you had pledged to love. Was there not enough porn-fed masturbation to get you through? Was the comparative dignity of killing yourself too big a leap? You couldn’t find the least fucking trace of imagination or guts? When your ex-wife was dead, when you’d spattered your children’s blood around the home you didn’t deserve, when you’d lit the fire that made ashes of a family, did you then try to run away? I think you did. I wonder where you thought you were going. You are the worst face of maleness – I will not call you a man – and I am disgusted to share your gender.

What can we take away from this? Anger and disgust are galvanizing, but they make a toxic stew. So I add my feeble prayer for one more woman and her children. I remember all the good men in my life, the rule that reproves this chicken-shit exception. And I guess that we all keep shuffling toward equality, but it’s been a rough day for it where I live.