Season 10, Episode Thirteen February 9, 2025

SPEAKER_01 0:02

This is the Listening Tube.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. Tariff Free Since 2022. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, we'll hear about birth control and censorship. Plus, I'll have a chat with a woman who's examined what it means to be a victim.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

But first, not the headlines.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

This is the final episode of season 10 of The Listening Tube. I'm going to take a break for a couple weeks to make some minor tweaks to the program, but there will be a season 11, and I'll bring to you what I hope you continue to find interesting information and commentary, as well as occasional humor. With the whirlwind of change happening in the United States right now under the second Trump administration, you might think it's a bad time to take a break because there's so much to talk about. But if I've learned anything about the Trump administration so far, it's that if you give it a minute, it'll change dramatically. As has been demonstrated by the results of the tariffs imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China last week. The stock market crashed. Liberal talking heads were claiming higher prices were coming and that tariffs were a tax on Americans, and the economy would fall apart. But then nothing happened. Mexico and Canada called Donald Trump on the phone, twice in the case of Canada, and worked out temporary agreements to postpone the tariffs. Mexico agreed to put 10,000 troops on their border with the U.S. and keep human and drug trafficking in check. And Canada agreed to invest a billion dollars in security measures at their shared border. I'm not sure if the billion dollars is American dollars or Canadian dollars, but since the actual amount is $1.3 billion, I'm going to assume it's Canadian dollars. Here's how I imagine it went down. Prime Minister Trudeau realized what the tariffs would cost and said, All right, we'll put up a billion dollars in security measures. Donald Trump says, is that American dollars are Canadian dollars? And Trudeau says Canadian dollars. So Trump says, Well, the American dollar is worth more, so make it 1.3 billion Canadian dollars, and we'll talk. So right now might actually be a good time to sit back and watch the show. America's going through a seismic change right now, and those changes have the support of a majority of the voters. Much of what's happening is enough to cause whiplash, the way Trump proclaims something, then the left overreacts, and then nothing the left predicted actually happens. There's some resistance, though. House Minority Leader Jeffreys recently came under fire for a language he used to inspire an opposition to the new administration, calling for fighting in the courts as well as in the streets. I have some advice for the Democrats and others on the left. Like I am about to do, sit back and watch for a bit. The election is over, the new administration is nearly complete, and the motion toward their plans has momentum. You can try to be obstructionist, but if all you're fighting against is the success of the country, you might as well sit there and be quiet for a moment. What's the worst that can happen? Are you worried that democracy will end if you don't act now? Well, democracy is what got us where we are. Do you think racism will run rampant? Well, racism is already rampant, and most of it comes from the left. But as I've said on this program before, racism is merely dividing ourselves by race. The United States government divides us by race too. We're trained to divide ourselves by race. Prejudice and bigotry are the problem, not racism by definition. If all these nightmare scenarios have substance, let them happen. The country will survive. Trump only has four years in power. The best thing the Democrats can do for the country, no matter how it works out, is for Donald Trump to have his way. Let him succeed or let him fail. If the Democrats don't play the role of obstructionists, they can wash their hands of all the doom and gloom they predict is about to happen if they don't get in the way. The Constitution is still there. There's no way he can get the votes as Congress stands right now to change any of that. The only reason the Democrats have to get in the way of the Trump agenda is because if he's successful, they might have a hard time recovering as a political party. That would be unfortunate, as I believe we need more political parties in the U.S., not fewer.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

This week in 1916, Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control. Emma was a Lithuanian immigrant to the United States and became a well-known anarchist. After working as a midwife and nurse in New York City's Lower East Side, she became an advocate for birth control. A story from the Library of Congress says Emma believed contraception played a large role in a woman's life when it came to freedoms of several types, including social and economic. She was arrested the first time in 1915, but this time she got sent to prison for distributing birth control material, which at the time was considered obscene. It wouldn't be her last time in jail, though. She was arrested again in 1917 for speaking out against the draft. After two years in a Missouri prison, she was deported to Russia. Emma eventually made it back to North America, living in Toronto for a while, but her final resting place is back in America, in a Chicago cemetery near a monument to the Haymarket riots. If you think America had tough censorship laws back then, well you're right. Today, the censorship has reversed course, as during the last administration, you'd get arrested for supporting life. It was this week in 1974 that the Soviet Union's Alexander Solzhenitsyn is exiled from his homeland. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature four years earlier for writing the Gulag Archipelago. So in America, a woman went to jail for distributing literature about birth control, and in Russia, a man is punished for writing about a prison society. But hey, it was this week in 1978 that the People's Republic of China lifted a ban on the literary works of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Aristotle. Buying them is a different story. A perfect example is the Bible, which cannot be sold in Chinese bookstores or online, but only from an approved church or church bookstore. Which is ironic, since China is the world's largest producer of Bibles.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Contact the listening tube by calling 570-601-1101 or email thelistening tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

My guest this week took a childhood of despair and turned it into a pursuit of truth and healing. Sasha Patterson, author of Victims of Virtues, spent some time with me in the listening tube. I was curious about her viewpoints on being a victim and how her experiences and education helped form her beliefs about related topics as well. What state are you in?

SPEAKER_05 9:11

I'm not. I'm in Ontario, Canada.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Oh, okay. You're in a province then. Yeah. All right. Um please forgive me for assuming you are in a state. Oh no, by all means. Okay. You have a disturbing origin story of abuse that led you to pursue an education in the subject matter of being a victim. When you look back from where you are now, which side of it do you think gives you more insight into the subject? The experience or the education?

SPEAKER_05 9:48

The experience.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

And why is that?

SPEAKER_05 9:53

Because there's a big difference between textbook knowledge and lived experience. And that will follow suit into any and all industries. You learn more on the job doing than you do via the textbook, right? So the lived experience of the trauma and the abuse gives me a far greater insight into the impacts and the the way it worms into different parts of your life than the textbooks ever could.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Now, d did your education in the subject matter either uh confirm or dispel anything that you believed you learned from the experience?

SPEAKER_05 10:41

It enlightened me. It filled in the holes, so to speak. Right? Like you have an idea with your lived experience, but then with the textbook, you're able to fill in what what something is called or the definition of an experience. That type of thing. For example, people talk about um domestic abuse, and that that's just the catch-all term, domestic abuse. But it actually breaks down into several different categories for severity and for it. This is personal, but I learned that I was technically in domestic terrorism, which is at the the top, and it wasn't just domestic abuse experience, it was I lived through domestic terrorism. So it filled in that hole for me, which then allowed me to further understand the subject, how it impacted me, and then how to move forward from there. That part isn't in the book, that'll be in book number two, but it is uh just an example.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Did the education aspect of your experience uh open up old wounds that maybe you had forgotten and wished you had kept kept to yourself?

SPEAKER_05 12:03

No, no, by the time I'm I'm a late bloomer, right? I was because of my trauma and stuff, I was a late bloomer when it came to education, and I had already worked through all of it pretty much. So when I entered into the education field, into uh counseling, I was already mentally prepared. I knew what I was gonna be getting into, and I also had a good solid idea on what the clients, potential clients, would have also been going through.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Okay, now it seems to me it isn't hard to be a victim. The lady who spilled her coffee on herself at McDonald's was declared a victim of negligence. I was once the victim of sexual discrimination because of a government mandate, but I didn't sue anybody. I moved on. How many kinds of victims are there, and what does it take to actually become a victim?

SPEAKER_05 13:10

That's what it takes to become one. Hence your lady who burned herself. It's all in your wording, she burned herself, declared victim state, soon got money. Now I'm not sure of the ins and outs of that particular situation, but if it is in fact she burned herself, then is she really a victim? Self-declared, apparently, right? Versus somebody who is been mugged on the street. They they're not self-declared victim, they were a victim of a crime. You know, they were just going about their business, living life happily, and then something catastrophic was inflicted upon them. So there's different there's definitely different levels. I break it down into three. You have the self-declared victim, victim of circumstance, which would be your situation with the systemic issue, and then victims. The one like the mugging, for instance, that would be just a flat out victim, somebody who was doing nothing, and then said bad issue was brought to them.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

So it is relatively easy to become a victim, probably when you least expect it. Yeah. Now, um I I was having a drink at the at the VFW uh the day the United States and the VFW, by the way, is uh is an organization, veterans of foreign wars. It's basically just a social organization where uh uh men and women go and drink. So, and I happened to be in there on the day that Donald Trump got uh inaugurated as the president of the United States for his second term. The bartender didn't seem very enthused, uh, and it kind of stuck out because there was a lot of enthusiasm elsewhere in the room. And when I mentioned her demeanor, she confessed to me that she's a Democrat. But she keeps it to herself because of all the toxic masculinity among the clientele. Now, I don't know if I should be offended or flattered that she was willing to share that with me. Where does being a man rise to the level of toxic? And how come I'm not toxic?

SPEAKER_05 15:46

I got nothing of why you're not toxic. Maybe if you're a calm, joyful demeanor. Maybe.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 15:55

Where does it rise to it? Now that's that's real finicky, right? Because like toxic masculinity obviously does exist, hence domestic abuse, right? That would be a toxic trait. But is it as pervasive as led to believe? I would say absolutely not. Absolutely not. People tend to categorize toxic with assertive, and they are sensitive to somebody who is assertive, who has self-esteem and self-confidence, and will say no. For instance, the word no isn't what they want to hear, and then they will add a negative connotation to it. And in today's climate, toxic tends to be the word people go to, or you have somebody who puts out their criteria, their their desire, right? Like if you have a male and he says confidently that he likes tall blondes, he is often deemed toxic for that. Because, well, if you only like tall blondes, what about these women, or what about those women? And then he will be deemed toxic for having a preference. And my personal issue with that is women are not deemed toxic, but they have no problem announcing their preferences. So it's uh there's a lot of hypocrisy in the term toxic masculinity, uh quite the amount of hypocrisy in it. And where does it start and end? I would say with uh serious aggression, not not assertive and not the word no, but you know, if the man puts his hands on a woman, for instance, aggressively, that that definitely falls into toxic. If he is co using coercion for I don't know what if my language is allowed, can I speak freely?

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Yes, you may.

SPEAKER_05 17:56

If he's using coercion for sexual nature, that would fall into a toxic trait. Like that would be toxic masculinity. But at the same time, in my opinion, it works both ways, and that's where a lot of society is ignoring. Women do the same things that men do, but women are not viewed as toxic for doing it. They will manipulate men and use coercion towards men to get their sexual desires met, but it's not viewed as toxic, which is that hypocrisy piece. So when it comes to toxic masculinity, it is, in my opinion, it's definitely on the further aggressive side, be it sexual aggression, physical aggression, even verbal aggression, right? Like if you're berating somebody with hostile words and a nasty attitude and tone, that would fall into toxic. And that is a different type of abuse, right? Verbal abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse are all kind of tied together. But beyond that, do I I don't think it's nearly as pervasive as people make it out to be.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

So my bartender then may just have been a little bit more sensitive than many other women.

SPEAKER_05 19:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

So and there is such a thing as toxic femininity.

SPEAKER_05 19:20

I would I say so.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

That that's that's an interesting uh spin, uh, I think in the in the in the grand scheme of things. Now I have to wonder, uh, do I have anything against toxic femininity? I I'm not sure I do. But uh I'll look forward to finding out, I suppose.

SPEAKER_05 19:46

It is it would look a little bit different than toxic masculinity, but in some cases no. A lot of women do get physical, right? Like they they do, and they view it as their size is smaller, so it's okay because I can't do the type of damage that he can do to me. But it is still a toxic trait, nonetheless. Or you would have more um emotional aspects to it, like em emotional manipulation versus the outright physical aggression.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Oh, okay. So there there are different tactics.

SPEAKER_05 20:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Nice. Now I know what to look for.

unknown 20:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Now you seem to have uh many conservative values when it comes to responsibility and social expectations. One social expectation that's become blurry to some is the issue of gender identity. Here in America, the our new president uh declared on day one that the federal government will only recognize two genders. And what were they? Mortar and pestle? No, no, that was male and female. You claim that in today's society you may have been subjected to sex change therapy. Why do you say that?

SPEAKER_05 21:13

Well, because it's part of today's society.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

But what what is different in today's society than from when you may have been subjected to that and weren't?

SPEAKER_05 21:26

When I was a child, so we're we're going back in time in the 90s. I was a tomboy. I was sexually molested, that's part of what's in the book, and I became a tomboy in my personal case as a defense mechanism to make myself less attractive. This worked, and it did work for many years for me, yeah. But that's all it was. It was simply a defense mechanism that I had developed to protect myself. I was a tomboy in the And that term was fully accepted. I was welcome to play basketball. I was welcome to play soccer. I was welcome to hang out with the guys. Nobody had an issue with me. Nobody had an issue. It wasn't talked about. It wasn't, you know, oh well, I think you might be a boy. That conversation didn't exist in the 90s, realistically. I wore guys' shorts. There uh they were called board shorts. Like the skateboard shorts. Right? I I did it all, but I was always a girl. I always knew I was a girl. I would have liked to have been a boy. Because at that point, had I been a boy, that would have been the ultimate for my defense mechanism, and I would not have been attractive to the person who was abusing me. So this is obviously a personal case. This isn't gonna fall into the suit for everybody who's on this gender journey or whatever it is that they like to call it. But the point still stands. I would have today been pulled into this gender journey because of the way I dressed, because of the way I presented myself, and because of my desire to be the opposite gender. Now, had that happened, had I grown up today, my future trajectory would have been thrown off because now that I'm old, I'm a mother and I'm a wife. And those are the two most important things in my entire life that I would not trade for absolutely anything. And had you asked me when I was 11, I would have told you up and down, that's never gonna happen. No way, Jose, would have been my answer. But the reality of life and the way it works, that is the answer now that I'm an adult, and now that I've outgrown and realized my defense mechanisms that I created for myself. And had I gone through that journey and taken the the hormone blockers or the sex the cross-sex medication or had the surgery, I never would have been a mother because that all renders you infertile. If I was never a mother, I would never I I couldn't imagine that. Like ever is being a mom. Having those, my I have two boys, having my boys, like my entire life trajectory would have been altered based on a defense mechanism that I created for myself as a child.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

So how did society change in the way that would have led you down that other path in in today's world?

SPEAKER_05 24:50

I would have been pushed into it without realizing because when you're young, you're vulnerable. And when you're creating defense mechanisms, you're extra vulnerable. So you end up following the crowd because, oh, well, they they they're offering me answers. This is a solution, but it's not. It's a whole host of new problems. And then when you look and you take a further step back and you're looking at it, how does a woman feel? You can speculate as a man, you can guess, but you could not possibly ascertain what a woman actually feels like. You've you've always been a man, no more than I could possibly ascertain what it actually feels like to be a guy. So this is all based on assumptions, emotions, and feelings. All of those change. None of those are concrete. It is all fluctuating and is going to change. That's what feelings do. So we are allowing children to make lifelong commitments and altering the entire trajectory of their life based on emotions, on an assumption that they truly have no idea what it actually feels like. They just think they do. It's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

It is a problem, and I and I I can somewhat relate to uh your position on the subject because I and I've talked about this on my program a number of times. When I was a little boy, I had a little sister. She's since passed away. But when we were kids, because I was older and I was a boy, she assumed that when she grew up, she would become a boy. And she would even say things like, Well, when I get to be a boy, you know, and in and I can't help but wonder that in today's society, someone may have pushed her in that direction, and and she may have become a boy, even though, like you, she grew up to be a wonderful woman and mother and wife and and uh and had a great life. Now I've spoken about the subject of transgenderism on this program before. I don't believe there's such a thing as a trans kid. But you can do whatever you want with your body once you turn 18. I don't care. But that doesn't mean other people have to accept what you've done either. And I think that's part of the problem that we run into. People don't people make these decisions and then they expect everybody else to just ride along right with it, and and a lot of people just don't feel the same way.

SPEAKER_05 27:44

No, they don't, and that then brings in the um the censorship piece. Right? Censorship doesn't just include what you can't say, it also includes forced language. And when you're dealing with people who are, well, this is what I'm doing now, you have to call me XYZ, but I don't. By technicality, I do because I'm in Canada. You don't.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Wait, what, wait, wait, what's the difference now?

SPEAKER_05 28:18

Uh, we don't have freedom of speech. We have what's called freedom of expression within reasonable bounds, I believe is the wording. But they passed um a bill, I believe it was bill C4. It may have been bill C16. I could be getting the two confused, any which way we're legally obligated to affirm whatever gender it is somebody claims themselves to be.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Oh, well, that's very interesting. And what is the penalty for not affirming?

SPEAKER_05 28:54

I could not honestly quote the penalty. I know it is law, though, federal law.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Public shame more than anything else, probably.

SPEAKER_05 29:06

Possibly.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Could be. Now, uh I I did want to ask you about uh censorship and its role in transgenderism. So obviously, we're working with two different sets of laws here, whereas, but now I understand yours better.

SPEAKER_05 29:24

That's why I've had my book published in America.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

But it's not even it's not even entirely correct. Uh there are certain school districts in America where teachers are are bound to recognize whatever gender the student claims to be. Those rules and regulations are meeting more resistance now than perhaps they were uh earlier on. So it's it's not just what we're not allowed to say, but it's also what you must say.

SPEAKER_05 29:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Okay. And so, and you had your book published in the United States for that specific reason?

SPEAKER_05 30:04

The specific reason was actually a bill called Bill C63, which has since because of the pro-ro our government went pro rogue, which means they like shut down for the time being, and that caused this bill to stop. But within the bill C63, there was a whole host of rules regarding uh censorship and some pretty steep penalties for like life in prison was one of them. House arrest based on if the tribunal thought you may say something offensive. But you didn't say it, they just had to think you might, and then you would be you could be under house arrest for a year. A whole host. I read the bill from start to finish, and I was like absolutely flabbergasted. But because of that, I chose to have the book published in the USA so I could cover my behind, if you will. But yeah, it it does have a lot to do with what you are forced to say and what you can't say, right? Forced language is just as oppressive as the opposite, and it is really unacceptable because where do your rights end and mine begin? And who's deciding this line? Why do I have to accommodate you, but you don't have to accommodate me, right? Like this is where it gets real finicky, and it would be a lot easier if we could all just agree to disagree. It's very simple, you know. If I don't agree with your choices, you just don't have to be around me.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

You don't have to agree with mine, neither.

SPEAKER_05 31:51

Exactly. Like there's there has to be a self-responsibility and a self-accountability piece that comes into this. And if we keep enabling the victim mentality, then there is none on one side, and the other side is holding way more than their fair share of the weight.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

And then the ones who claim to be the victims are actually the ones doing the victimizing.

SPEAKER_05 32:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Do you think that with the resignation of uh Prime Minister Trudeau and uh a replacement, although it will be another liberal leader who replaces him, do you do you see any changes uh coming down the down the road as far as the Canadian law is concerned?

SPEAKER_05 32:38

So technically, Trudeau has not resigned. His speech was I intend to resign, which with him and he, if you follow anything that he does, he really likes to play between the lines. So I don't even know if he is going to follow through yet. We'll start there. But do I see any difference with any other liberal potential leader, like all of the ones that are currently in the leadership race? No, not at all. They're all part of the same group and they've all supported each other. And it's ridiculous, really. We have, for instance, Christia Freeland, who is one of the uh running up for the leadership race. She was the deputy prime minister and the finance minister. So she was right under Trudeau. Deputy Prime Minister is um equivalent to like your vice president. But she did every all of it with him. Like they were, you know, two peas in a pod, and then all of a sudden they separate, and we are supposed to believe she's going to present something different. She agreed with all of his policies, she helped enact them all. Same with Mark Carney. Though he is unelected, he doesn't, he's not part of our government, he has been an advisor. So again, he has gone through all of the policies, supported them, and encouraged them. And Mark Kearney, from my understanding, is Christia Freeland's child's godfather. So, like we have quite the entangled mess right now, but every single liberal is into the same exact policies mindset as the other. They all supported it and pushed it along and further down. Same with the NDP, that's another party. That's uh Jagmeet Singh. He's the reason why the liberals have control. Because had he not supported and had he kept the NDP from supporting the Trudeau Liberals, they would have fallen years ago. Because they don't have a majority, like our our electorate system is very different than America.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

I'm familiar, yes. But a parliamentary system, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:50

Yes, we have um six parties, six separate parties, but had the NDP not been supporting Trudeau, none of it would have gone through. They would have collapsed, and then we would have had an election, and chances are the conservatives would have won. And as it stands, according to all polls, the conservatives are looking like they're going to win a supermajority.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Well, it just happened here in the United States, so it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. And I'm glad that we could be here for you when you needed somewhere safe to publish your book. Now, um, you put your education to work and wrote this book. It's called Victims of Virtues about your experiences and your reaction to them. I won't ask what inspired you to write it because I think we already touched on uh some of it. But what other wisdom can we learn from reading your book?

SPEAKER_05 35:54

Um, I go into a lot of detail and I do break down the different types of victims, and I point out a lot of the hypocrisy. One major one that I point out is homelessness. Somehow the homeless don't qualify as victims, they just don't. They are continuously pushed out. They build up encampments, they're pushed out, they're cleared, they reach out for help, the hand is normally turned away. When they're in the shelter system, I worked in the shelter system for years. It is an absolute mess for them. For somebody who obviously doesn't have transportation and will struggle to keep uh a phone, they are expected to run all over town every day to receive the help and the the funding or what it is that they're going for, but they don't have the ability. And this is just the way it's set up. And then you have the time limits and shelters, and like for instance, uh the women's shelter, local women's shelter, they have 90 days from entering to have an apartment and move out. 90 days is I can tell you from working there, it's not enough. It's absolutely not enough. But beyond the women's shelter, homeless population, approximately 70% are men. So then it begs the question well, why aren't we helping them? Why aren't homeless viewed as victims the same way somebody who's being misgendered is right in the news, the media, the misgendering, that gets a lot of attention on social media, especially. Like there's whole pages devoted to people being misgendered. But the homeless, who are, in my opinion, those are true victims. They are they're catching it left, right, and center. Every which way they turn, they're getting oppressed one way or another. It's a horrible cycle to get stuck in, but they aren't viewed as victims. The funding to help them get out of it is minimal. The policies being enacted that are causing homeless rights to skyrocket aren't being redacted. They're not redacted, pulled away, sorry. It's like the mass immigration, right? You move in a whole host of people when you don't have enough homes that causes housing inflation. Now you have a whole bunch of people who can't afford their home. They have a job, they're working, they're proper, healthy, functioning citizens, but they can't afford their home because of the policy to bring in millions of new people.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

As we're seeing that a lot here in the United States over the last four years, to be sure.

SPEAKER_05 38:42

Same with Canada. And it's it's those types of things that I break down in the second half of the book, and I point out all of the flaws and the hypocrisy, and I try very gently but sternly to point all of this out because we have a major problem with self-accountability and responsibility in society as a whole. People like to point the blame and people like to claim the victim state, but they don't like to take responsibility. And in turn, they also then don't like to solve the problem. Instead, it's much easier to sit on your couch and go, Oh, yep, that's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

What what are some of the advantages of being a victim? There must be a reason those who aren't claim to be.

SPEAKER_05 39:36

It's attention.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Attention.

SPEAKER_05 39:41

If they claim victim for whatever it is, they get to talk about it. And then they get doted on. They get that attention, that reinforcement, that positive attention that they're looking for, that comfort, that nurture, and it fills the void. Where the void comes from, I'm not entirely sure. I do lay out some theories in the book, but there seems to be a void with people, and they're seeking ways to fill it. They're just not doing it in a proper way. Because always being a victim ends up destroying your life. You can't move forward and you won't have positive growth if nothing is ever your fault and you can't do anything to change it.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

So is there a way to relieve yourself of being in this victim state?

SPEAKER_05 40:31

Yeah, you need to, it's conscious effort, and it is a lot easier said than done. But you need to start taking responsibility and acknowledge the parts that you do have control over. Sure, you might not have control over a whole situation. That's obvious. There's always going to be other people involved. But you do have control over your part. So if the situation isn't going in the way that you want it to, then take that control. Walk away. Guide the decisions in the way that you would like them to go. Use your voice. Speak up. That's a big problem people don't do. They have ideas, but they don't vocalize them. Nobody can use your idea if you're not putting it out there, right? Like most people aren't mind readers. We have some psychics, but not many. So there's there's little things, but it really all falls on the individual. The individual needs to make the conscious choice and start putting in the work, put in the effort. And a lot of it really is accountability and responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Sasha's book is called Victims of Virtues, and you can find it wherever you find the books you read. Many thanks to Sasha Patterson for spending some time in the listening tube. The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2025. I'll be back with season 11 after a short break. I'll look forward to examining our world and hopefully poking some fun at it too. In the meantime, support the program or text me from the homepage. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for the How Ad Infinitum.