Ronald Stan’s life was starting to burn down around him, so when the big century-old barn full of pigs caught fire, he saw a chance to escape.
He’d been cheating on his wife — regularly — and in his mind his marriage was about to fall apart.
Amid the roar of the flames and squeal of the pigs, the 32-year-old father of two had a thought: Better to just leave. Sure, I have some debt but she’ll get the life insurance money.
what
It was 1977 when Stan bolted into the forest to begin a new life. Now, 37 years, three more wives and another child later, Stan’s world would turn to ash again. The Ontario Provincial Police discovered he was living in Oklahoma as Jeff Walton, a 69-year-old plumber with a wife and 35-year-old son. His family there had no knowledge of the barn fire, his disappearance, and the Canadian wife, toddler and newborn child left behind…
Gail Stan, Rose Ann Walton, Holly Kelley and Debra Proctor. These are the women who Walton married. He cheated on all of them, with the exception of Proctor, he’s careful to note.
what
Thirty-seven years after running away from his first wife Gail, Ronald Stan says he still loves her. He is revealing his story to the Toronto Star because he hopes she reads it.
what
“I stayed in the French Quarter a little while then I realized in all actuality I had to do something to get me legal,” said Walton. “So I thought well the first thing I do is I gotta find me a local girl with a little bit of money. Didn’t have to have a lot, just a little. And I did.”
By 1978, he married Rose Ann, who took his last name and kept it to this day.
what
He introduced himself to her as Jeff Walton, a freshly concocted identity. Jeff, because his infant son in Canada is named Jeff, and Walton, because of the TV show The Waltons.
what
He says he found a name in the obituaries and obtained the associated social security number…Rose Ann had a steady income from a job in waste management. Almost immediately he began cheating on her, she says, with people she knew.
what
In the meantime, Jeff Walton Sr. began reaching back into the world of Ronald Stan. Over the years he would keep tabs on his family through a few select friends in Canada who knew the full story. Once in awhile he’d even reach out.
“I wanted to (keep in touch) so bad, and I did call a couple times just to hear their voices,” he said, laughing. They’d say hello, and he’d hang up without speaking. “That’s silly. But no, I didn’t think it was right for me to talk to them, so I didn’t.”
what
Walton met his match with his third wife, Holly Kelley, a New Orleans woman who appeared in Playboy’s October 1981 issue and claims to have psychic abilities.
what
Kelley is now working in Hawaii, running a business with her identical twin sister, Bobbi, and providing 30-minute psychic readings over Skype or the telephone for $75 U.S. When reached by the Star, she inquired whether or not she would be paid for an interview. The Star does not pay interview subjects.
what
He took a job with a company in the Virgin Islands where they gave him a computer — still a novelty in 1998 — and set to work right away.
“I thought wow, what kind of trouble can I get in with this? And I did. I would look up those dating sites and that’s how I found Debra,” said Walton.
what
“It’s been almost 40 years that I’ve lived this lie. And actually I’ve been a real good boy, except for the philandering. I paid my taxes, I did everything right,” said Walton.
what
He starts from the beginning, when he took a job at Fanshawe College teaching plumbing.
“Wow — I’ve never seen so many women in my life. That’s where the trouble started. So, I cheated on my wife. With more than one woman. A lot. Everyone I could,” said Stan.
what
His explanation is that the fire started from a bale of wet hay.
This man has an appointment with a fire.
Tags: and some who die deserve life, can you give it to them, canada, fire, misandry
Related Posts
I Dedicate This Novel to the Man Who Convinced Me to Stop Writing Silly Genre Fiction and Crank out a Thinly Veiled Memoir
Gleeful Mobs Of Women Murdering Men In Western Art History
The Leather Golf Hat Guy
A Question I’ll Never Give A Straight Answer To
Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall
Femslash Friday: The Other Woman
You escaped the fire once. You won’t escape a second time.
“Oh, I still love the wife I abandoned, even though she and my children undoubtedly think I’m dead and have moved on. I am a selfish prickface who think this is all about me and am so unconcerned with her feelings that I want to spring this on her through a newspaper”
Gail, if you ARE reading this, sue the shit out of him, then set him on fire.
He’s so terrible, even a bale of WET HAY was able to spontaneously combust to try and take him out of this world.
While I like this narrative, it’s actually wet hay that combusts, because it decomposes and the heat generated from the decomposition is what causes the fire. Dry hay does not spontaneously combust bcs it’s not decomposing (at least not as fast).
But fuck this guy. Goddamn.
INTERESTING! I grew up with horses and had no idea! Of course we didn’t get our hay wet cause that shit isn’t free, and the horses didn’t like to eat it wet. Now I know that we were also protecting ourselves from random karma fires!
Oh yeah, for sure, wet hay is bad hay and that is not a good thing. Don’t get it wet, and don’t bale it before it’s fully dried, because death and destruction and apparently also fraud and deception and philandering and total horrificness will ensue.
Never let it be said that wet hay keeps you from paying taxes, though.
A few people have pointed out in the comments that it’s more likely he set the fire himself because he just so happened to have sold his car and gotten some ready cash that same day.
Coincidence? Judging by literally EVERYTHING ELSE THIS GUY HAS DONE, I think not.
He is just leaving out the detail that they hay was wet with gasoline.
GOD what a horrible idea. What a horrible person. I don’t know why, after all the rest of it, the idea that he set it himself is surprising to me. Just … UGH
Yay you are such a badass farmer now, I love it
hahaha I have no idea what I’m doing
I sent this to Mallory yesterday with the subject line: MEN.
fuck this GUYYYYYYYYY
not all Canadian pig farmers
Yeah, some of them stick to serial killing.
That wikipedia page gave me some of the worst nightmares of my life.
I can’t help but feel like Gail was well shut of this guy.
the final destination movies are starting to get a little stretched, plot-wise
Now we know why there’s been so many more forest fires in the States in the last couple decades!
The fire is looking for him. The fire will find him.
OMG his smug face in the first picture at the link just magnifies everything by a billion.
he laughs ALL THE TIME bc he has NO SOUL
UGH I was looking at that picture like “how would any woman fall for that?”
He looks like an ugly, creepy Diglett.
omg
Burn him. Save the pigs.
I know I’m not the only one who was really upset about the pigs. He ran away and left all those pigs to die horribly — although considering the rest of the story this is no surprise at all. This guy has sawdust and cigarette butts where his soul should be.
His heart is full of unwashed socks. His soul is full of gunk. He is a nasty, wasty, skunk.
I prefer sawdust. IT BURNS WELL.
And fast.
Poor peegs. 🙁
And I wouldn’t touch him with a 39 1/2 foot pole.
Yeah, that made me really sad 🙁 🙁
Me too, especially consider that he probably set the fire himself. 🙁
Welp, since burning him didn’t work, I guess nuking him from orbit is the only way to be sure.
And, like, your PARENTS thought you were dead, for ages! Like, your wife probably knew you were a shitbag, and everything, but your PARENTS.
He went to his mother’s 80th birthday in 2003. What was that party like?
i’ve started typing a comment and deleted it literally five times
there are no words for this
That’s why I’m sticking with this:
OK, got my Halloween costume sorted. I’m going as Every Man’s Nightmare.
“Thirty-seven years after running away from his first wife Gail, Ronald Stan says he still loves her. He is revealing his story to the Toronto Star because he hopes she reads it.”
Because that’s exactly how it works. “Oh, look, it’s an article about my cheating bastard runaway ex-husband. Oh, he still loves me? Well, gee, I guess I have to forgive him.” UGH MEN.
“Kelley is now working in Hawaii, running a business with her identical twin sister, Bobbi, and providing 30-minute psychic readings over Skype or the telephone for $75 U.S.”
I want a story about them because they sound like a reality television show waiting to happen.
That seems like an excellent way to avoid an interview: “Do I get paid?”
It sounds like the more entertaining sequel to Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, but without the *spoiler alert* biracial cheating-product (cheatus-fetus? I don’t know where I want to go with this) baby that ruins the suburban lady’s life..
Surely even Gandalf would agree this one deserves death.
“Do not be so quick to deal in death and judgement. Even The Wise cannot see all ends. But seriously, fuck this guy.”
So Debra leaves him now, right?
She did! The article says she dumped him pronto, “taking everything”, when she heard the whole story.
I mean, what are the ACTUAL chances he HASN’T cheated on her, too? Not that the crazy lying isn’t a good enough reason to leave, but seriously. “I’ve cheated on everyone…but not YOU, babe!” I don’t think so.
It’s possible, assuming complete failure of his tallywacker. Otherwise, no, dude is still finding people to house his wandering peen.
I had an ex who told me years after we broke up that he’d cheated on every girl he’d dated since me, like I was supposed to be flattered.
NOPE! Just makes me want to get back with you even less.
Yesss! Good for her!
He did pay his taxes, so that’s what really counts. /*SARCASM*/
What a twat.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand men who, feeling trapped by marriage and children, run away and then START NEW FAMILIES. It’s like a soldier deserting his army to go fight in some other, different war.
Beautifully put.
I was just talking to a dude who has a good friend who is a serial adulterer–and is also a Christian youth leader. And the dude was like, well, he tries to be good, and I was like
and also, seriously, the literal best thing this man can do is divorce his wife and never marry again.
Yes! I mean, I have a great deal of sympathy for men and women who start families because that’s what you’re “supposed to do” and then realize, “shit, this NOT for me” and bail. But you bail through divorce, not through pig fires and fake deaths. And you certainly don’t get into that shit again until you’re sure it’s for you, and you certainly don’t get into that shit again with a fake name.
“a good friend who is a serial adulterer–and is also a Christian youth leader.”
Not enough nope in this god-forsaken world.
I know like 40,000 of these dudes, and am related to several of them. The worst is the repentant crying when they confess what they’ve been doing/get caught. No, the worst is the blaming of Satan? I don’t know. They’re all the worst.
It reminds me of the Flitcraft Parable, from The Maltese Falcon, where the joke is basically that the guy almost gets an ibeam dropped on his head, then thinks that means he needs to change his life, and runs off and starts exactly the same kind of life he had last time.
I guess it turns out if you were an asshole before you’re struck dumb on the road to Damascus, you’ll probably be an asshole afterwards, too.
Not to mention how hurtful it is to your first set of kids when you have the new ones. “When I said ‘Fuck families!’ what I actually meant was ‘Fuck you, in particular.'”
Not that I know what that feels like, or anything. *sigh*
🙁
Well, a tool that unpleasant needs someone to meet his emotional needs. (and apparently his financial needs too) If he denies her children, that’s a BIG TELL to society that he’s a shithead; can’t have that. Can’t have to interact with people who know how terrible he is.
I can’t help but laugh at his “…….except for the philandering!” explanation. But I paid my taxes! I held doors open for old ladies! I just happen to be a teensy bit of a sociopath!
Also, Except for the Philandering is my new band.
lmao right? It’s very “but how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
Except for the Philandering would also be a great memoir title.
Also, philandering sounds like cheating on your wife twice a year with prostitutes or women you meet at professional development conferences. Not, like, serially concocting new identities to start new families with new women every few years.
That’s how it works, right? You get all these little, like, tokens for paying your taxes, showering regularly, going to the bank, being nice to baristas, picking your kids up from school…and then you put all the tokens in the “OOPSY SEXY” machine and women to screw over come out!
Toonen, who now owns the property, remembers the 70 pigs lost that night
LITERALLY CRYING
FUCK THAT GUY
Those poor pigs.
I eat meat but support the kind and humane slaughter of animals, and letting them burn to death doesn’t even qualify.
Not to mention the loss of the valuable pig herd that his wife could have sold for money in case, you know, it took a while to get him declared dead.
Save the pigs, make men into bacon! Then maybe I would give up my vegetarianism.
Mmmm, man bacon. From free range bastards. It would probably taste awful, but I would order it AND THEN NOT EAT IT. (Another vegetarian here)
We’d give them a vegetarian diet for a few months first. High-grain, high-green, have them run around in the sun every day!
No way. Everyone knows Misandry Bacon is the most delicious.
What if I give you my misandry bacon and I get your croissant made by enslaved misogynist pastry chefs?
Mmmm. It’s the tears that make those croissants so piquant. But I think it’s a fair deal 😀
Crying right along with you. FUCK THAT GUY right in the ear.
There are SO MANY THINGS, but this is sticking out to me for some reason:
Walton, who liked fast cars, bought a Pontiac Fiero and used a body-kit to make it look like a Ferrari.
METAPHOR ALERT!
I first read that as “a Pontiac Fieri” and imagined the automobile equivalent of The World’s Biggest Culinary Shitsack, and then Google image searched it, and I was right.
Oh, God, that is the perfect craptastic vehicle for that shitstain. They got recalled back in the day because they tended to incinerate the motors. The fire soooo want this one!
what
No more men. That is enough men. The end.
Sorry, All Men, this man used up all your chances.
That’s fair. We’re all very, very sorry.
From the story re: his wife Deborah: “In the divorce paperwork she filed August 14, and that he agreed to, she got the two cars, the house, all of their shared assets, and he would take their shared debts.”
GOOD.
I’m sure the fake Ferrari will be a great comfort to her. Jesus what a shitbag this guy is.
I’ve been feeling for a while now with all the rampant misogyny in almost everything I care about that I need a break from men for a bit. Like, even my friends who are really great feminist allies. This article just makes that so much more true. Ugh.
Who wants to build a feminist blanket fort with me!?
YES PLEASE I will supply cakes to eat in it.
I have been planning my Party Nunnery for years now and you are most welcome there.
WHAT
WHAT
In the pantheon of dickbags’ crazy life stories this comes second only to L. Ron Hubbard’s.
I just don’t even know what to do with this guy. He is clearly an asshole, but what amused me the most in the article was this: “Walton, who liked fast cars, bought a Pontiac Fiero and used a body-kit to make it look like a Ferrari.”
Like, what? It’s a Pontiac, chief. It’s never gonna be anything else, no matter what it looks like.
I’m envisioning him buying the kit and tricking it out and taking it to the bars to seduce his next mark and thinking “She’ll NEVER know it’s not really a Ferrari! Women don’t get cars anyway” and all the women in the parking lot looking at it and going “Is that…..a Pontiac with a body kit? God, who could be that desperate?”
I truly, truly hope that is what happened. Sadly I think being able to recount all this for the press is feeding his ego even more.
“…recounting the women whose lives he’s trod upon.”
Oh my GOD.
This reminds me of the Dear Prudie column the other day with the guy who was like “I’ve been a real dirtbag and treated me wife like shit for years and generally made her life a living hell. Now she’s divorcing me and I’m realizing she’s the best thing in my life. How can I make her see I love her?” and Prudie was like uh, you don’t, you divorce her and let her live her own amazing life WITHOUT YOU IN IT.
FIRE.
Was that Thomas Hardy writing from beyond the grave? Dude couldn’t even muster up the energy to climb the STAIRS to go see his wife while she was dying, married his mistress/secretary, totally realized how much he’d loved his wife after all, made his new wife transcribe all the poetry he wrote about his dead wife.
dirtbag
MEANWHILE, IN CANADA
Also: Gail Stan, Rose Ann Walton, Holly Kelley and Debra Proctor. These are the women who Walton married. He cheated on all of them, with the exception of Proctor, he’s careful to note.
OH, WELL OKAY
As long as he didn’t cheat on Debra!
Can’t wait for the GQ write up to turn him into a harmless Johnny Appleseed from the Great White North!
real life Canadian Don Draper!
“they gave him a computer — still a novelty in 1998”
what
Yeah, uh. FALSE.
Is the internet collectively fourteen years old? Is that why we don’t get history, even the kind that *most of the planet was alive for?*
Ehhh, my family didn’t get a computer till like 2003 (which was when my area got highspeed). So in 98 they were probably still a bit of a novelty, but not a rarity.
98 was when my family upgraded from the old Windows 95 to the newer model. I remember distinctly disliking the game selection. Where was snakes???
Maybe adulthood IS dead, burned down with the patriarchy, in a barn, full of pigs.
Thirty-seven years after running away from his first wife Gail, Ronald Stan says he still loves her. He is revealing his story to the Toronto Star because he hopes she reads it.
OH, of course he fucking hopes she reads it. It’s probably just been burning him for 40 years that he’s been so massively, devastatingly clever and he hasn’t been able to rub his massive cleverness in his wife’s face. There is nothing more gratifying to a dick than seeing the pain and destruction his dickishness has caused. Reaction is everything.
You don’t understand! There’s a possibility she’s not spending every waking moment thinking about him anymore! Without constant female attention (even distant, unspoken attention), he’ll shrivel up and die! why won’t you consider his feelings
But, but, but…she married him in the first place! That means he has the right to her undivided attention for the rest of her life! It’s the contract she entered into, and whether he’s “dead” or not has nothing to do with it.
I did not know I needed this gif. How wrong you were, me from 10 seconds ago.
“I wanted to (keep in touch) so bad, and I did call a couple times just to hear their voices,” he said, laughing.
He said, laughing. WHAT.
Look at that, a human shitstain.
I feel like the word “philandering” is weirdly euphemistic. I mean, I know it means cheating, but it just sounds too dignified. Perhaps because it sounds like philanthropy and philately? He was a philandering cad sounds much nicer to me than he was a cheating arsehole. In short, I propose we only use the word philandering to refer to characters in Victorian novels, and cheating lying arseholes like this can be called cheating lying arseholes.
(I am here employing the Australian spelling of ‘ass’ because I like it.)
To me it has this connotation of like, impish fun? Like the word “cad.” “Boys will be boys,” sort of thing, kind of “oh well, he’s very attractive and no one woman can contain him” maybe?
#BanMen2K14
A hashtag for our times.
Ahh so my grandfather apparently did this! Well, not 4 times, but he was married with kids before he met my grandma, so he faked his own death by pushing his car off a bridge and then he and my grandma moved to Israel, took new names and had my mom (and two more children after that). My siblings and I were unaware of this charming story until my sister was applying for a job with the State Department and had to undergo an extremely thorough background check. The government looked into our family and was like HMM THERE’S SOMETHING FISHY HERE and my mom was all, “Oh haha, I never told you this crazy family story!”
OH HAHA.
WHAT
Write this for the Toast, please.
I would, but I don’t know any more of the story than what I put in my comment, unfortunately. I’ve considered asking my grandma about it (my grandfather passed away some time ago), but I’m afraid it might be a sore subject…
…through a few select friends in Canada who knew the full story.
Who are these friends? How did they remain friends? Did they just think it was hilarious that ol’ Ronald faked his death in a pig fire? And…they actually kept in touch?
I do not understand.
Male Friends.
#notallfriends
Because sociopaths are charming. My husband’s group of friends keep welcoming back a friend who is genuinely a horrible person who doesn’t seem to understand/care other people exist for more than his convenience & also have feelings of their own. It’s like his friends are all hoping for some great redemption arc. When all they get are lies. And lost money.
One thing that is really standing out is how his second wife took his name, and it turns out that it was not his name, but something off TV, and she has been living with that name for like the last 40 years. That is really… fucking horrifying.
AND THIS IS WHY YOU ALWAYS LEAVE A NOTE.*
*That says: not taking your new, new husband, no way no how.
I personally know of TWO men who did this! Not with the elaborate pig fire and fake deathing mind you, but still TWO men who started another family (wife and kids) unbeknownst to the first family! And then proceeded to live out a life with each. Switching from family to family for years. WTF, men?
Also this confirms my theory that men with two first names are inherently shady.
HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK, logistically? A man can only go on so many business trips. And what about major familial holidays like Thanksgiving and shit where you are expected to be with [both] your famil[ies]?
I don’t even know! One family was a couple of generations ago – like great-grandparents – and it seems somehow a man* could disappear for longer stretches of time back then. But the other was our parents’ generation! And the families lived in the same general area! I have to imagine there was some sort of forced complicity on the part of one of the wives. #men.
*Obviously a woman could not disappear for any length of time. Especially when her husband was out with his other family.
I went to summer camp with a girl whose father turned out to have a secret second family! I think in this case the second family had some limited knowledge of the first, but the first knew nothing about the second. There are still plenty of traveling salesman jobs in the world… I don’t know about holidays though!
I’ve heard similar stories and I always wonder about that! Maybe if the guy pretended to be in the military or something?
NEVER TRUST A MAN WITH TWO FIRST NAMES.
I have lived by this for many years and it has never steered me wrong.
just the first 4 words work as well
My home town is mentioned in the full narrative in the Star article. Apparently, he was seeing a girl from my hometown. The night before the fire, the girl’s mom contacted his mom and told everything. And that was the night before the fire. And now all I want to know was, who was the girl? And wondering if anyone in my family would know. Am such a small town rubbernecker sometimes.
I like the part with the psychic moves to Hawaii to open a phone psychic business with her identical twin sister (presumably also psychic?). There’s a short story in there somewhere.
oh man what if you were the NON-psychic identical twin, though
If you’re a member of a set of genetic duplicates and EVERYONE BUT YOU has psychic powers, you’re completely justified in thinking that fate is dicking you around.
Appropriate musical accompaniment to this article: Aaradhna’s “Lorena Bobbitt.”
Ack, this hit me harder than I expected. Not horribly, but … more than I was expecting. I think it was @osutein’s comment above that really put the cherry on it.
My dad’s parents moved from Australia to the UK in 1967 with their four young children (Dad is third) in tow. In 1973, Paternal Grandfather ran off with another woman.
The woman? A pupil from the school where he was headteacher.
This happened while my grandmother, his wife, was in hospital with bowel cancer.
He went back to Australia, dropped the schoolgirl sharpish, but eventually remarried and had four more children. Neither his second wife nor his children from that marriage knew about my dad’s family until he confessed everything to his eldest daughter on his deathbed in 2005. My aunt, dad’s eldest sister, went to the funeral; none of her siblings wanted to. She arranged with her newly discovered half-sister that she’d come a little late and leave bang on the last note so nobody would see she was there.
I found this out in tiny bits and pieces over the years. First I knew that Daddy’s dad had left Grandma a long time ago. Then when he died I learned that he’d had another family in Australia. The bit about the funeral I had from the aforementioned aunt one night after her fifth sherry. The stuff about the school student and it coinciding with Grandma’s cancer I only heard from my mum, this year.
I have never met my paternal grandfather. Every new thing I have learned about him has only made me more glad that this is the case.
This is terrible. I’m sorry for your family that they had to deal with such a garbage person.
Thank you. I rarely think about it (it has never affected me directly – I never met the guy and only learned the full story well after he died) but every so often something turns over that particular rock.
I don’t get on with my grandma very well, partly because she’s unrelentingly pessimistic. I feel a lot more sorry for her since learning the whole story because it goes a long way to explaining why.
The “Flitcraft parable” in The Maltese Falcon is one of the best parts of the book and has haunted me for decades:
http://fallingbeam.org/beam.htm
What was that recent-ish coverage of The Toast that said something about, like, “the site’s tongue-in-cheek (or “jokey” or smth) misandry?” I think we had a discussion at the time about how they didn’t really get it, but I also feel like we could just bookmark this piece right here as a great illustration of why the Toast community as a whole is not, to paraphrase that shit New Yorker review of Patricia Lockwood, “more open to the emotional lives of the men we mock.”
Screw him, what about the pigs? DID HE SAVE THE PIGS?!
And then he has the nerve to want to go BACK. No, dude, you burn your life, fake your death, and traumatize your family, you damn well stay dead. Your wife and children had to mourn you. Your wife has to live with the image of you burning to death, surrounded by screaming pigs. You can’t go backwards on that. You don’t get to re-traumatize the woman you married, and the children you made with her, by telling her that you forced her to live through this (false) trauma, because you couldn’t handle the pressures of being married with kids. For one thing, you went off and did the whole thing again. No, asshole, if you have even the tiniest smidgen of compassion for the people you left behind, you fucking well stay dead, and at least let them have the memory of a husband and father who wasn’t a complete and utter disgrace. Granted, your wife still remembers you as a cheating scumbag, but don’t add “remorseless sociopath” to that equation.
You complete and utter bastard. Good pigs died in your stead, and that’s a terrible injustice.
it is frowning
now it is smiling
ღ(́◉◞౪◟◉‵ღ)
I always carry 3000$ in my pocket when I burn my neighbours herd of pigs.
“He went to stay with his brother, John, in London one weekend in 1995 and they invited his father over. At first, the elder Stan didn’t believe it was his son.
“He comes over and touches me all over I go, ‘Hey Dad, how you doin’?” says Walton, laughing at the memory. “He says, ‘Ah, it is you.’””
How can he laugh at this? Is he a monster?
Magic 8 Ball says yes.
It just feels like he's patting himself on the back for following the letter of the rules, but has missed the spirit of them entirely. Taxes are part of a larger framework based on supporting your fellow humans beings, realising that no man is an island, etc. Paying your taxes while completely failing to treat those around you with basic human decency (their feelings don't matter, right?) seems to be spectacularly missing the point.
as a guy this is kinda awesome.