In one of many experiences I have had with this phenomenon, I was out with my friend and a group of people he knows including the heroine of this anecdote. The first point where I could see that this young scold was troublesome and prone to quarreling with her neighbors was when she brought up a contemporaneous debit card hacking thefts from Target and other stores in order to perform a vitriolic diatribe. Being keen to participate in the group discussion, I made the innocuous observation that while the hacker’s actions were wrong and deserving of punishment, the technical mastery he required to accomplish the crime was undoubtedly impressive. That a person engaged in criminal activity could demonstrate impressive skills was too much of an abstraction for her and thus provoked her to reveal her quarrelsome nature in the form of various insults towards me. Fortunately, another member of the group mollified her by explaining that a person may simultaneously have concepts with both positive and negative connotations associated with them without there being a contradiction. The emotional “reasoning” of many females seems to stumble when confronted with this fundamental, yet subtle, truth. However, though the third party adequately explained that being impressed by something doesn’t mean you condone the act, I am not convinced that it was anything more than a mere Pavlovian response to the attitude of multiple peers which doused her temper rather than a true comprehension of the nuance involved.

Later that same evening, we were all sitting around a table and out of blue our heroine pointedly asks me “What were the longest relationships you were in?” Seeing no immediate need for subtlety or outright dishonesty I responded frankly that “2 years was my longest relationship, but to be fair it wasn’t with an American woman.” Dear me, this was not a tactful thing to say to the common American scold as they will in their solipsism invariably interpret any comment or statement to be descriptive of their own person. Though there were signs she was getting ever so huffy, to my discredit I was hopelessly oblivious to the volcano preparing to erupt before me. Responding to her quite earnest desire for clarification, I elaborated on the fact that I find most American women difficult to get along with for anything longer than a fling given that so many are common scolds (though I did not use this terminology at the time). To this her barely contained rage erupted with a rabid desire for acrimonious verbal combat, yet her rage was too great to craft more than a small sum of suitable slurs and so she simply stomped off somewhere to succor her now sore psyche.

Of course this would not prove to be the end of this anecdote. Our resident white knight decides to step up to defend our heroine’s fragile ego since she found herself lacking the skill to patch this bit of cognitive dissonance. Sir lancelot starts by trying to lecture me about what kind of opinions I am allowed to have and what I am allowed to say. Not being a pussy and possessing an acute loathing of white knights, I was quick to assert that he had no authority to lecture me or to define the acceptable range of opinions I was allowed to possess. Our heroine’s knight in shining armor was so prepared to defend her “honor” that he had the audacity to threaten me physically if I couldn’t be otherwise cowed. Though, or perhaps because, I made it clear I was prepared to accept his challenge to fisticuffs, the tense moment eventually passed without coming to blows and the night continued without further incident. To escalate this absurdity to even greater heights, Sir Lancelot did all this despite his Guinevere being foreign born.

Probably all men, or at least all American men, have experienced this sort of situation as a result of the unruly and irrational emotions of the common American scold. The question is, when the institution of patriarchy is restored because of necessity, what can the new order do to reduce the number and severity of the disturbances to the public peace caused by such women and their valiant saviors? I think that English common law, as detailed in the introductory poem and links, sets a fine precedent of how such socially disruptive backbiters can be disabled. When a queen of histrionics and her knights of the unstable are identified, the punishment used to correct the bad behavior should be focused on public shaming and minor physical discomfort. Such chastisement is an appropriate response to the indignities caused by common scolds because the guilty would likely be easily reformed for the public good with only a few treatments. This is especially true of the most egregious version of the common scold currently in existence, which are of course the feminists who acrimoniously agitate for social norms that destabilize and eventually destroy civilisation. A few public dunks on a cucking stool for the most heinous of these harpies would humanely cure them of their hysteria and thoroughly deter any other would-be agitators.