And Peter will say, trying to free his hands, “What? These are sexy, dynamic, interesting women.” And you must grip his hands even tighter and you must say to him,My guys. My dudes. My bros. My writers. I am begging you to help me here. When you have this man in your workshop, you must turn to him.
You must take his clammy hands in yours. You must look deep into his eyes, his man eyes, with your man eyes, and you must say to him, “Peter, I am a man, and you are a man, so let us talk to each other like men. Peter, look at the way you have written about the only four women in this book.”
“ARE THEY, PETER? Why are they interesting? What are their hobbies? What are their private habits? What are their strange dreams? What choices are they making, Peter? They are not making choices. They are not interesting. What they are is sexy, and you have those things confused, and not in the good way where someone’s interestingness makes them become sexy, like Steve Buscemi or Pauline Viardot.Why must women be sexy to be interesting to you?
The women you don’t find sexy are where, Peter? They are invisible? They are all dead?…Why did you write it like this, Peter?”
And maybe Peter will say at last, “I don’t know.” Maybe he will be silent for a long long long time, and then maybe he will say…“I don’t want to know that my mother was a human being with an internal life, because to know that would be to risk a frightening intimacy with her,”
Peter will say, maybe. “Because to know that would be to know that she was only a small, complicated person, no bigger or smaller than I am, and I am so small. To know how alone she was. How alone I am. How alone we all are. That my mother survived with no resources more mysterious than my own.”
Last week, after many fruitful discussions with the gentlemen behind the Salem witch trials, we here at The Atlantic made the decision to hire those men as opinion columnists.
This was done in an effort to strengthen the diversity of thought within our op-ed section. We wanted to introduce some fresh, new, and extremely scary ideas into the mix. Although we were well aware of these individuals’ controversial views on due process and medicine, we simply could not pass up an opportunity to ignore massive red flags under the guise of nonpartisanship…
We refused to dismiss these men simply because they’ve openly stated that a woman who raises her voice has entered into an unlawful covenant with the Devil. Such a thought should not preclude these men from having fruitful careers at The Atlantic.
It turns out these men, in addition to distributing pamphlets stating that “a strong hunch” was enough legal evidence to convict a woman of witchcraft, also expressed similar controversial opinions verbally. These vocal proclamations occurred in the town square. That is where we simply must draw the line…
The perpetrators of the Salem witch trials are gifted writers and have been nothing but professional in all of our interactions. We still believe they are capable thought leaders with something valuable to say, even if that thing is that women are naturally predisposed to witchcraft because they are more susceptible than men to the Devil’s charms…
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright…
![[Source] (Joke)](https://66.media.tumblr.com/af16ccdaa047c24fbcaec06b61fa21f0/tumblr_p6a47pr2qc1tzlx1ho1_1280.png)
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