How Our Bullsh*t Becomes Genetic

Introduction

Apologies in advance for the length of this. I never really know where these blogs are going to end up when I start writing them, and this one went down some fucking rabbit holes. The more I read, researched, and talked to people who actually know what the fuck they’re talking about, the more fired up I got.

In my last blog, Brains Make More Brains, I said your brain’s main evolutionary job is to keep you alive long enough to reproduce. That’s it. Not to make you happy. Not to help you find purpose or peace. Just to keep your genes alive another generation.

But let’s be real for a second:

If that’s the job, we’re fucking terrible at it.

Because while biology keeps screaming “survive and reproduce!”, our systems, politics, and collective ignorance keep screaming “but only for some of you – and only if you play by rules that were never built for you to win.”

And nowhere is that clearer than in how we treat women – the very people who make more little brains.

This blog isn’t about evolutionary biology. It’s about the savage, violent stupidity of a species that relies on women for its survival while systematically destroying their health, dignity, and autonomy.

So buckle up.

Section 2: The Savage Reality – We’re Idiots

We spend billions making sure men’s dicks stay hard and their hairlines stay intact, while the very people who literally create and sustain the entire species—women—get screwed over by medicine, mental health systems, and politics.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Women pay more—and receive less.
  Working women in the U.S. spend 18–20% more out-of-pocket on healthcare annually than men, even when excluding maternity costs. That’s about $266 more per year per person, or $15–20 billion total (Financial Times, 2023; World Economic Forum, 2023).

• Research dollars don’t match disease burden.
  NIH funding favors male-led or male-linked diseases by nearly 2:1, with female-specific conditions consistently underfunded, even when burden is the same (Mirin, 2021).

• Post-menopausal women are hit hardest.
  Women aged 45–64 spend significantly more on chronic illness and menopausal care, but still face wide gaps in screening and treatment quality compared to men (Roberts et al., 2008).

• Everything from heart attacks to autoimmunity gets skewed.
  Clinical trials, drug dosing, and disease guidelines still default to male biology—meaning women often get misdiagnosed, mistreated, or dismissed (Wired, 2023).

So let me be blunt:

We pour money into keeping dudes performing—sexually and socially—while letting half the species hemorrhage in silence and ignorance.

That’s not just negligent. It’s institutionalized stupidity.

Section 3: A Historical Pattern of Male Ignorance

Men haven’t lacked intelligence. They’ve lacked humility. The humility to realize their perspective is just one perspective, not the objective truth of the universe.

It’s like thinking you’ve mapped the entire planet because you drew your neighborhood in chalk on the driveway.

Here’s the brutal historical reality:

• Burning women as witches.
  Between the 15th and 18th centuries, an estimated 50,000–80,000 people were executed for witchcraft in Europe, roughly 80% of whom were women. Many were midwives, healers, or simply outspoken – their crime was existing outside male-defined social norms (Levack, 2016).
  It was like smashing your only compass because it didn’t point where you wanted to go.

• Denying women education.
  For most of Western history, women were systematically excluded from formal schooling. Even when universities were established in Europe (12th–15th centuries), women were outright banned (Schiebinger, 1989).
  Like putting out half the candles in a room, then mocking the people left in the dark for stumbling.

• Excluding women from medicine.
  Women were barred from becoming physicians well into the modern era. In the US, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first female MD only in 1849, facing relentless discrimination (Morantz-Sanchez, 1985).
  It’s like bleeding out in the street while telling the only person with a tourniquet they aren’t qualified to help.

• Controlling women’s bodies through law and doctrine.
  From forced sterilizations targeting poor, disabled, and BIPOC women under eugenics policies (Stern, 2005), to modern abortion bans treating pregnant people as state property, the pattern has always been control disguised as “protection.”
  Like locking someone in a cage and claiming it’s for their own safety from the wilderness you created.

Let’s call it what it is:

This isn’t “oops, we didn’t know better.”
It’s been an active, violent force shaping the world to suit male comfort and power, directly at the expense of women’s bodies, autonomy, and lives.

Section 4: But Women Aren’t Innocent Saints Either

Humans are humans – capable of cruelty, ignorance, and greed regardless of gender. None of us are immune to that.

But systemically, the civilized world has never valued women equally.

Not valued in the hollow “women are sacred” sense. Truly valued. For their minds, contributions, leadership, innovations, autonomy, and their decisions about their own bodies.

Because putting women on a pedestal while denying them rights is like giving someone a crown but chaining them to the throne. It might look respectful from the outside, but it keeps them exactly where you want them – unable to move freely.

Section 5: The Brutal State of Women’s Health

For all our technological and medical advancements, the reality is this:

When it comes to women’s health, we’re still operating like it’s the Middle Ages – just with fancier vocabulary and a better marketing department.

Here’s what that actually looks like:

• Historically excluded from research.
  Until 1993, women weren’t required participants in NIH clinical trials (NIH Revitalization Act, 1993). Why? Hormonal cycles were deemed “too complicated.” Translation: “Women’s bodies are messy. Let’s just study men and pretend the results apply to everyone.”
  It’s like designing winter coats for Florida and wondering why people are freezing to death in Alaska.

• Most meds dosed for male physiology.
  8 out of 10 drugs withdrawn from the market were pulled due to greater adverse effects in women (U.S. GAO, 2001; Zucker & Prendergast, 2020).
  It’s like calibrating every seatbelt for a six-foot man and blaming women for not being tall enough when they get injured.

• Hormonal cycles change drug effectiveness.
  Painkillers, SSRIs, and other meds work differently depending on menstrual cycle phase (Martin et al., 2013; Sundström-Poromaa & Segebladh, 2012).
  Imagine getting prescribed glasses that only correct your vision half the time, then being told you’re imagining the blur when it comes back.

• Women’s pain is dismissed.
  Women are told their pain is “psychosomatic” while men with identical symptoms get diagnostic workups and treatment (Samulowitz et al., 2018).
  Like telling a smoke alarm it’s overreacting while the kitchen burns down.

Section 6: Gabor Maté Calls Out This Brutality

In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté writes about how birth is treated in hospitals:

“It is difficult to imagine any other situation in modern society where a human being is expected to undergo an intense, life-altering experience surrounded by strangers giving orders, ignoring pleas, and disregarding basic emotional needs.” (Maté & Maté, 2022, p. 132)

Birth is treated like a mechanical inconvenience to be managed, rather than a deeply human, sacred process.

We set up sterile rooms with fluorescent lights, strangers barking orders, and protocols that prioritize efficiency over humanity. Then we wonder why 1 in 3 women describe birth as traumatic (Elmir et al., 2010), why postpartum PTSD exists, and why autoimmune diseases explode in women after childbirth.

And in the ultimate irony, maternal suicide is the leading cause of death for new mothers in their first year postpartum (Lindahl et al., 2005). Think about that. The act of bringing life into this world is so violently unsupported that death becomes the escape hatch.

It’s like forcing someone to run a marathon without water, shoes, or training, then blaming them for collapsing at the finish line. And when they do collapse, we hand them a participation trophy and tell them to smile for the camera.

Because that’s what we do best in this culture:
We sanitize pain into “empowerment,” repackage trauma as “strength,” and call it resilience while ignoring the fact that it was preventable in the first place.

Section 7: The Political Shitstorm

As if the medical system treating women like afterthoughts wasn’t bad enough, we now have entire political movements actively erasing their autonomy.

The Trump administration and its enablers aren’t incompetent buffoons accidentally harming women. They know exactly what the fuck they’re doing.

Restricting abortion access. Rolling back reproductive healthcare protections. Criminalizing miscarriage. Forcing women to give birth in a country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world (CDC, 2020).

But let’s be clear:

This isn’t just about Trump.

It’s about an entire political and ideological machine built on controlling bodies it does not inhabit.

It’s about lawmakers — mostly white men — writing policies about pregnancy who wouldn’t know a cervix from a cervical spine if it smacked them in the face.

It’s about Supreme Court decisions made by people whose own families will never be affected by the bans they uphold, because wealth has always been the ultimate contraceptive.

It’s about forcing women to carry pregnancies from rape or incest under the guise of “God’s will,” ignoring that if God wanted that pregnancy so badly, he wouldn’t have needed rape to make it happen.

It’s about a country where Black women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women (CDC, 2019), and instead of addressing that genocidal statistic, lawmakers pour energy into bills criminalizing abortion pills sent by mail.

It’s about the savage irony that the same politicians banning abortion are cutting funding for maternal healthcare, childcare, nutrition, and mental health programs that keep mothers and babies alive.

Here’s the metaphor:

It’s like shoving someone off a cliff, then arresting them for breaking their leg on the way down.

And yes, history is repeating itself.

The same justifications used to deny women the vote are now used to deny them bodily autonomy:

“They’re too emotional.”
“They don’t understand the consequences.”
“They’ll regret their choice.”
“It’s for their own good.”

The same paternalistic bullshit repackaged for a new century.

And it’s not just happening in red states. It’s happening in liberal enclaves too, quietly, through systemic neglect, racist medical structures, and insurance policies that treat reproductive health as elective vanity instead of life-saving care.

Here’s the raw truth:

This isn’t about life.
It’s not about babies.
It’s not about moral righteousness.

It’s about power.

Because nothing says “I own you” like controlling whether or not you can create life — and then punishing you for it either way.

Section 8: Enter RFK Jr. – The Copperhead in Camelot Clothing

While everyone argues left vs. right, RFK Jr. slithers through the weeds, selling anti-vaccine bullshit wrapped in a peace-sign holistic wellness brand.

Here’s The Reality:

• Built an empire on anti-vax misinformation.
  His org, Children’s Health Defense, is a top global superspreader of vaccine lies, responsible for a massive share of social media disinformation worldwide (Center for Countering Digital Hate, 2021).

• Targets pregnant women with fear.
  Claims vaccines harm unborn babies despite overwhelming evidence they protect them (Shimabukuro et al., 2021).

• Compares mandates to Nazi war crimes.
  That’s not ignorance. That’s deliberate psychological manipulation weaponizing trauma (ADL, 2022).

Why He’s So Fucking Dangerous

It’s one thing for a random influencer to spew pseudoscience in their mom’s basement. It’s another for someone with the Kennedy name to do it on a global stage while running for President.

Because when RFK Jr. talks, people listen not because of what he knows, but because of who his family was. He wraps his ignorance in the shiny Camelot branding, and people eat it up like it’s gospel.

And this isn’t just some fringe concern:

• Global medical professionals have repeatedly warned that his rhetoric is deadly. The World Health Organization and UNICEF have both cited anti-vaccine disinformation as a top ten threat to global health (WHO, 2019).

• A coalition of over 350 U.S. healthcare organizations and experts signed public letters condemning RFK Jr.’s spread of vaccine disinformation during COVID-19, citing preventable deaths and long-term public health erosion (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2021).

• Leading virologists and epidemiologists warn that anti-vax movements embolden other science-denial movements – climate denial, cancer cure conspiracies, and more – creating a society that distrusts every expert except those selling them supplements and fear (Oreskes & Conway, 2010).

Here’s the metaphor:

It’s like handing a toddler a loaded gun because “he promised he wouldn’t pull the trigger.” RFK Jr. has no business wielding the power he does, but here we are – pretending his reckless idiocy is just “another opinion.”

The Bottom Line

RFK Jr. isn’t just a harmless conspiracy uncle rambling about chemtrails at Thanksgiving.

He’s a well-funded, globally platformed figure spreading disinformation that kills people. Especially vulnerable people – pregnant women, immunocompromised patients, kids whose parents trust his snake oil over evidence-based medicine.

Because at the end of the day, he knows exactly what he’s doing.

And that’s what makes him so fucking dangerous.

Section 9: The Savage Irony – Anti-Vaxxers Are Pro-Toxic Shit

Here’s what blows my mind:

Many of the loudest voices screaming “No vaccines in my body!” are willingly pumping themselves full of unregulated garbage every single day.

I’m not talking about every person with concerns about vaccines. There are legitimate questions, medical contraindications, and historical reasons people distrust the medical system. If that’s you – I hear you.

What I’m calling out is the far ends of the spectrum: the people whose entire identity is built on rejecting anything “mainstream” while consuming products with minimal safety data, no dose standardization, and virtually no manufacturing oversight.

Want proof?

• Supplements.
  The anti-vaccine community often overlaps with the $35 billion supplement and “natural health” industry (NIH, 2021). Supplements frequently contain contaminants, undisclosed pharmaceuticals, or inconsistent dosages causing liver failure, kidney damage, or death (Geller et al., 2015).
  It’s like refusing to drink tap water because “it’s full of chemicals” while licking lead paint chips off the wall.

• Essential oils and detox teas.
  Marketed as “natural immune boosters,” these products have sent thousands to ERs with liver toxicity, allergic reactions, or overdoses (NCCIH, 2021). Nearly 23,000 ER visits happen annually in the US from supplement-related adverse effects (Geller et al., 2015).

• Unproven treatments like ivermectin or colloidal silver.
  People are slamming horse dewormer and drinking metal particles that can turn their skin permanently blue while rejecting vaccines with decades of rigorous safety data (FDA, 2020; NIH, 2019).

Here’s what I’m actually saying:

They’re not rejecting everything that goes into their body. They’re rejecting what challenges their worldview of distrust.

They’ll swallow, rub, inject, or inhale anything if it fits their group’s narrative – no matter how dangerous or untested – while claiming vaccines are “poison.”

And here’s the savage irony:

• They are willingly ingesting things far more toxic than vaccines.

• Their decisions aren’t about health. They’re about identity, power, and belonging.

• They become victims of the very fear-based industries that profit off their distrust.

While I’m not going to deliberate here about vaccines – there’s plenty of research out there if you’re brave enough to read it – what’s clear is this:

The supplement and alternative health industries profit off the exact paranoia they fuel. They scream “big pharma is poisoning you!” while selling you untested shit that poisons you faster, unregulated, and with zero consumer protection.

Here’s The Metaphor

It’s like refusing to drink clean, filtered water because “you don’t trust it,” while chugging from a puddle behind a gas station because a guy with a mullet on Facebook told you it’s “natural spring water – the government just doesn’t want you to know.”

Section 10: Why This Matters to Me Personally

I think about all of this — the ignorance, the dismissal, the violence baked into the systems we pretend are “civilized” — and I think about my kids.

My son. My daughter.

It’s easier, in some ways, to prepare my son for this world. One guy to another. We share the same armor, the same privileges, the same invisible passcodes handed out just for being born with the equipment we have. Doesn’t mean I’m off the hook. I’m still fucking it up, still questioning the bullshit I was fed about what it means to “be a man.” I’m trying to teach him that strength isn’t measured by who you can dominate, but by who you choose to stand up for when it costs you something.

But my daughter… that one hits differently.

Because while I’m teaching my son how to carry his armor with humility, I know she’s going to need twice the armor just to get to the starting line he’s already standing on. She’s only three. She still thinks life is like a fairytale where if you’re kind enough and brave enough, it’ll all work out in the end. She thinks adults keep their promises. That kindness always comes back around.

Someday she’s going to read these words. She’s going to read my savage rants and sarcasm about how the world treats women — and people in general — and I wonder how it’ll land for her.

Will she roll her eyes and think, “Dad was dramatic as hell.”
Will she feel proud that her father used his voice to say what needed saying?
Will she think I didn’t do enough?

Probably all of that. And she’d be right.

Because the truth is, both of my kids are the reason I need to understand perspectives beyond my own. My daughter forces me to see the invisible shit I was never taught to see. My son forces me to question the armor I wear so I don’t teach him to carry the same poison tucked between the plates.

I don’t want them walking through life thinking the path is paved just for them. Because it isn’t. My job isn’t to bulldoze the road clear or lay rose petals at their feet. My job is to show them that there is a path, but it’s covered in brambles and potholes and broken glass — and it’s theirs to choose how to navigate.

No coddling. No bullshit Disney moral-of-the-story life lessons. Just honesty. Just me, handing them different lenses to see the same fucked-up world, so they can choose which ones to keep, which ones to smash, and which ones to craft themselves from scratch.

I don’t want to be the perfect parent. Fuck that. Perfect parents raise kids who spend their 30s in therapy wondering why they’re terrified to fail. I just want to be real enough that when they’re older, they’ll say,

“Yeah… Dad fucked up a lot. But at least he taught me how to clean up my own messes — and to never stop questioning why the mess was there in the first place.”

That’s it.

Section 11: The Epigenetic Fallout – Why This Actually Matters

Here’s why all of this isn’t just political screaming into the void:

Trauma changes gene expression.

Every time we dismiss women’s pain, autonomy, and humanity…
Every time we spread medical misinformation that leads to preventable death…
Every time we force trauma onto bodies through oppression or neglect…

We’re not just hurting individuals. We’re rewriting our species’ genetic code.

Epigenetics shows trauma changes gene expression, not just in you, but in your kids and grandkids (Yehuda et al., 2016). Maternal stress changes fetal brain and immune development (Barker, 2004).

Here’s what that means in real terms:

The abuse your grandmother endured can shape your cortisol response.
The racism your grandfather faced can alter your immune system reactivity.
The trauma your mother carried while pregnant with you can wire your brain towards threat, vigilance, and illness before you ever take your first breath.

We’re hardwiring suffering into the future, engineering dysfunction into the brains and bodies of the generations we claim to protect.

And yet we keep acting like it’s all separate. Like the social, political, and medical harm we inflict exists in a vacuum. As if it isn’t building a legacy of dysfunction coded directly into the very cells of our children.

Here’s the metaphor:

It’s like carving graffiti into wet cement. You might not see the damage immediately, but it hardens into the foundation that everyone else will have to walk on.

Or worse – it’s like planting poisonous seeds and then blaming the soil when the crops come up toxic.

The brutal truth is this:

We’re not just failing each other in the moment.
We’re ensuring our descendants inherit wounds they never consented to carry.

If that doesn’t wake us the fuck up, I don’t know what will.

Section 12: Final Thoughts

Here’s what it all boils down to:

We are a species obsessed with survival and reproduction, but too fucking arrogant to realize we are actively destroying the very people and systems that keep us alive.

We worship men who promise false security, ignore the wisdom of women who birth and raise us, and silence entire generations with policies rooted in control, not care.

We pass trauma down like family heirlooms, rewriting our genetic code with every ignored scream, every dismissed pain, every policy designed to keep power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

And while I don’t have all the answers, I know this:

We cannot keep pretending ignorance is innocence.

It isn’t.

Ignorance is a choice now.
Ignorance is complicity.
Ignorance is violence dressed up as “I didn’t know any better.”

Look – I don’t care what you believe in. If you choose to fill your veins with Clorox because some half-baked influencer told you it’ll cleanse your aura, by all means, don’t let me stop you. But at least have enough fucking brain cells to question and challenge your beliefs.

Don’t assume facts. Ask yourself the Socratic 3:

1. How do I know this is true?

2. What evidence would prove me wrong?

3. Who benefits from me believing this?

Because ignorance isn’t just a personal failing anymore. It’s a collective weapon we keep turning on ourselves.

So here’s my ask:

• If you’re a man, fucking listen. Women aren’t making this shit up.

• If you’re a woman, I see you. I will never fully understand, but I refuse to stop trying.

• If you’re alive right now, you have work to do. Because we’re all in this together, whether we act like it or not.

Because if our brains evolved to keep us alive long enough to make more little brains, maybe it’s time to start treating the people doing the actual brain-making like they fucking matter.

Otherwise, we’re just monkeys in suits, lighting matches in a dry forest, congratulating ourselves on the pretty glow.

-Matt

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