Introducing "Dear Peachy," my new advice column
An advice column for our Current Hellscape
Dearest Readers:
Ever since “Peachy Keenan” was immaculately conceived and delivered unto Twitter like Venus upon her half shell, my followers have suggested I write an advice column. Okay, fine: begged.
An advice column, you say? I used to love advice columns. I read Dear Abby and Ann Landers (Abby’s estranged sister) when I was little. I loved Loveline, which started out as a late-night radio show on KROQ in L.A. hosted by Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew. Listening to Loveline surreptitiously when you were supposed to be studying for your biology test was an L.A. childhood rite of passage.
Loveline taught me the name of every STD under the sun—it was educational, okay?
These days, I don’t read many relevant advice columns. At least, none that offer any advice to people like me. Most advice columns in the New York Times or the pages of the local urban hellhole’s paper involve advice on how to cheat on your spouse, the ethics of sharing communal anal beads during the group orgy, and how to justify never speaking to your parents again after finding out they watch Fox News. Dan Savage’s “Savage Love” column on sex is wildly popular among gender-fluid gimps looking for advice on the delicate politics of the BDSM dungeons in which they are imprisoned.
People who need this sort of advice actually need in-patient life coaching no advice column can provide.
These post-modern advice columns seem designed to help people take full advantage of any depravity that strikes their fancy. But what about advice that can help people avoid and even survive dystopian minefields?
Here are a few of my favorites from the New York Times “Ethicist” advice column, a hilarious window onto the blinkered world of traumatized Times-reading tattletale liberals who occassionally make contact with regular people. It could be called “Advice from the Longhouse”:
I did enjoy Red Scare’s recent Loveline podcast, where they answered caller questions. I co-sign their exhortation to women to avoid indulging in cringe threesome and moresome fantasies IRL—excellent advice, ladies.
So to those who asked me to start an advice column, here is my long-awaited answer: I accept the challenge, starting immediately.
After all, there is no time to lose! Help is on the way, America!
Obligatory FAQ
Aren’t there other advice columns on the Internet? Probably, but I have done exactly zero research on the competition and don’t plan to do any.
Will yours be like those other ones? Probably not, mostly because there is only one of me. But I will strive to make this one worthy of your time.
What if any rules will inform your advice? None, other than any advice I dare to dish out should be: 1) useful and 2) entertaining.
What makes you qualified to give out advice? Everyone else has gone insane. It’s all up to me now, apparently.
Will you be using ChatGPT to help you answer questions? ChatGPT can’t handle my truth.
I need some advice! How do I send you my request? Please submit all requests for advice in this Google form.
Thank you! Now on to the advice:
Dear Peachy,
There is a boy in my daughter’s class who has started using a girl’s name and girl pronouns and wearing girl clothes. At home, we teach our children the truth, which is that there are only two genders, boys can’t turn into girls, and girls can’t turn into boys. But I don’t want her to get in trouble or get kicked out. And I really don’t feel like becoming the most hated parent at our public elementary school. What should I tell her to do?
—Hates that she has to deal with this, Sherman Oaks, CA
Dear Sherman,
Sigh. You are not the first parent I know who has run into this rusty buzz saw at their local school. Beware: it’s a trap! It’s like a revolutionary loyalty test fanatics use to root out those who are nonbelievers. My first advice is to run, not walk, out of your school. It’s just not good for young kids to be in a classroom along with children who are being emotionally manipulated by adults (parents and the complicit teachers)—and things will only get worse as the poor little boy gets older. Pool parties with a boy in a bikini, awkward sleepovers you can’t get out of, and so on.
If you absolutely cannot pull your kid, my advice is to do what I teach my children: try to be unfailingly polite and respectful to everyone you encounter outside the home. In other words, literally, “love your neighbor.” Even when you don’t like their lifestyle. It costs you nothing, after all, and it is good practice to use good manners whenever you can. And, based on recent events, it’s apparent that some portion of transgender activists are encouraging each other to use real, physical violence on those they disagree with.
You should therefore teach your children to avoid potential conflict with deranged people whenever possible, as long as 1) the stakes are low, and 2) there is no compelling self-defense reason to engage. Your daughter “affirming” the little boy by calling him a “she” at school is fairly low stakes—and it’s totally inappropriate to force your child to take on this battle alone at school. There is absolutely no reason to make your daughter the target of violent school bullies.
I would tell my own daughter to address the little boy with his new name and she/her pronouns, as uncomfortable as that is for anyone whose brain has not yet melted down into zogsludge.
Bonus: If you can somehow dog whistle to the boy’s mother that you’re not on board with Karen Von Munchausen’s little science experiment on her own kid, maybe your daughter won’t get any invites to his next makeover birthday party.
Either way, this will all get real old, real fast, so please reach out again when you are ready for some homeschooling advice.
—PK
Dear Peachy,
I am a 27-year old single man and I am tired of dating. I’d love to find someone to marry, but the girls I meet, mostly on apps, are, how can I put this gently, not quite marriage material. I’m fit, healthy, employed, and reasonably handsome. I don’t want to be a celibate incel—help!
—In want of a wife, Austin, TX
Dear Austin,
You are not alone. More than a few men in your predicament have reached out to me about their plight. Apparently something has gone horribly awry in our formation of young women. (I just wrote an entire book about this). Instead of approaching dating as a way to audition actual potential spouses, to many girls, dating is just a weekend hobby that always ends in sex, the way you brush your teeth at night. Men, of course, are taking full advantage. From what I understand, you can meet a longterm love on an app, but it requires extreme caution.
The quickest and easiest route to love matches still involves old-fashioned real-life encounters with people you meet through other people. Travel. Go to events that may attract the type of woman you’re looking for. (Note to self: Set up a speed dating night at the next NatCon.) It’s a two-way street, of course: Are you yourself marriage material? Have you tidied up any questionable personal habits or habitats? Do you abstain from pornography, and venial sins like sloth and anger? Like attracts like, so try to present yourself as what a marriageable girl might be looking for. And in the meantime, yes, I recommend practicing chastity, in all its forms. You are not an incel—you are a volcel. Learn to play hard to get! (That actually used to work for us, until “liberated” women abandoned it.)
—PK
Dear Peachy,
I work at a large, white-collar corporation. I make a good living and need to keep my job to feed my family, because I doubt I would be able to get hired somewhere else (I can’t claim any special oppressed categories). However, I am the last person on my team who has not put their “preferred pronouns” in their work bios. Everyone else has their pronouns prominently displayed underneath their names, even though there are no transgender employees on our team. We have been “strongly encouraged” to add our pronouns to demonstrate our “allyship,” but I just can’t do it. I already have to jump through endless DEI hoops, attend special “workshops” all the time, but I have to draw the line at my own damn pronouns. If you can’t figure out my pronouns, that’s your problem, not mine. When will they fire me for my transgression?
—Pronoun problems, San Jose, CA
Dear Jose,
You have a trapdoor under your desk. Any minute now, an overeager DEI new hire in HR is going to take note of your glaring pronoun omission and punch the button. You will plunge through the office floor and land in a tank filled with piranhas, who will devour you and your SteelCase chair to make room for a better, more worthy, DEI-approved employee who will bring their own pronouns to work.
But stand strong! They still cannot legally “compel” speech. (Right? …. right?) As long as you don’t ever, ever voice any of your problematic opinions at work (or online!), they may decide it’s not worth firing you over your pronoun transgression. I do recommend distracting them from your he/him silence (silence is violence, remember!) by coming up with an exciting way to virtue signal at work. Some ideas:
Start a GoFundMe for the homeless fentanyl addict who compulsively masturbates outside the Starbucks you pass on the way to lunch.
Prominently display the sexual orientation flag for Allosexuals in your office. yes, it has its own flag. What’s an Allosexual, you ask? Allow me to educate you:
Email the team and tell them you’re collecting donations of clothing and canned food for the newly arrived Ukrainian refugees. If you end the email with “slava Ukraine!” trust me, none of them will ever think about your pronouns again.
—PK
Dear Peachy,
I’m in my twenties, about to get married, and my fiancé and I both work remotely. We want to decide on a place to live, buy a house, and have kids. We can theoretically go anywhere that’s within a few hours of an airport, but we prefer places with a lot of natural scenery and winter that are somewhat affordable. But I’m worried about the culture I will be raising my future family in, and the community (or lack of) my kids would have. Do you have any advice?
—Seeking a forever home, Nowhere, USA
Dear Nowhere,
The struggle to find your “community” is real. I spent years looking for “my people” —and failing—in a deep blue part of the country. We struck out at several Catholic elementary and public schools. After that experience, I can confidently say that hell is other people’s children. My eight-year-old learned what intercourse was in explicit detail from one of the little boys in his “Catholic” school. My four year-old was taught in frank language how babies are made and delivered during a playdate, when one of the other moms, a new age doula, decided to enlighten her.
You can have all the screen-time limits you want at home, but once they are out among the world, all bets are off. Finding a neighborhood that’s affordable, safe, aesthetically pleasing, and filled with people just like you is the struggle we all find ourselves in.
Yes, someone should write a relocation guide for dissident families. Until that happens, I can say that some friends reported finding what they’re looking for after leaving CA and moving to places like Texas, Tennessee, and Wyoming. I am still in the slave state of GavinNewsomia, but I did finally manage to ensconce myself in a nice group of likeminded people. It’s not ideal—homelessness, crime, and high prices plague us all—but at least we have school mostly figured out.
If you are comfortable with the idea of a parochial school, you’re going to be way ahead of the game. But you can’t just choose the nearest one; they’re often as bad as public. I always recommend people check out this map of classical schools; it’s the closest thing I have found to a map of “based” communities. Here’s the link: Map of Schools - Institute for Catholic Liberal Education.
Of course, you could always decide to start your own little community in any town town you find that has cute, cheap houses and tree-lined streets. Be a pioneer and entice friends and family to join you on your frontier. We can retake the country, one extremely domestic family at a time!
—PK
Well, that’s it for this week —thanks for reading!
To submit your own request for advice, please fill out this quick and easy form: Dear Peachy Submission Form.
—Peachy
P.S. If you like this advice and want even more of it, you may enjoy my book, available for pre-order now!
Please tell me that's not an actual photo of you. If you write like this AND look like that, the injustice would be too much to bear.
Thank you! You have no idea how much I needed your delicious writing today. Being with well-intentioned, loving, but very “woke” children during my confirmation weekend calls for mental first aid. Loved the Hollywood Dust Bowl photo!!!!