By the Strike of a Match, or Her Good Strike of Lightning

“Hey you! Just wanted to let you know that I think you are dangerously retarded. Hope you have a fucked up day!” Derek W wrote pithily to me from the discreet address one smoky afternoon late July past. The dues paid for being the first signatory listed in an open letter penned collaboratively with my colleagues from a number of organizations, urging Arts Commons—a performing arts hub in Calgary, Alberta—to reconsider hosting Jordan Peterson for a “one-of-akind uplifting lecture, where he discusse[d] overcoming life’s biggest obstacles, how to improve oneself, and his new book: .” People phoned me at work to call me fascist. Someone named Dwain Lowe emailed me (from his iPad) to tell me that he thought I was a Nazi. “This has only damaged your brand. I (and many I know) will no longer be supporting your organization.” Bye, Dwain, our brand will miss your years of ardent patronage. I was called a “far-left ideologue,” whatever the fuck that means. “This petition leader Natasha Chaykowski quite the feminist that would be triggered,” along with a link to an article I wrote in 2015 about the limits of feminism, ironically enough. Strangers lamented together on Facebook about the days when people “like me” would fall by the wayside of the persistent biological churning of evolution; the