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Deadpool and Man of Steel.

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Who’s excited about Infinity Wars?

I am not as enthused as I was, Marvel is burning me out. I am a DC person at heart.

With that in mind this week I checked yet another Marvel movie, and another DC movie off my “yet to see” list.

Deadpool and Man of Steel.

They could not be more different stories. One refusing to take anything seriously, the other taking itself perhaps a bit too seriously. No one in Man of Steel developed a sense of humor till the last few minutes of the film. Which proves how desperately the franchise needed the Flash. You go Barry, save the DCU.

Comic relief doesn’t have to be as plentiful as in Marvel, but it is a staple of superhero movies and for a good reason The franchise cannot be taken too seriously, or it falls apart, people nitpick. With the advent of the Dark Knight, and Iron Man, fans have gone to a whole new level of criticizing or worshiping their heroes, but the disappearance of real humor is a telltale sign that we may be forgetting these are just stories.

I know I know, this coming from the person who wrote about relationship goals based on superheros.

Well that’s the point, only a fictional relationship could possible be evaluated without the humanity of he two people getting in the way. They might have flaws, but it will never bug you as much if the person isn’t real, and you can look past it. Learning to do that with your real spouse/significant other is a lot harder, but it’s important.

With that said, did I then love Deadpool?

Heck no. I kept an open mind, I’d heard it was awesome. And though the R-rated material was not enjoyable to me, it wasn’t what killed it.

Fans, you may not want to read the following:

Deadpool was lazy. The writing was lazy. Cussing can be used creatively to emphasize someone’s personality, or the kind of stress they are under, but Deadpool substituted cussing fr a  personality.

I know nothing about what this guy likes or dislikes beyond a few superficial facts But all Marvel characters (except Spiderman and Antman and Thor) suffer from that syndrome, so it wouldn’t ruin him, I suppose.

I also love Ryan Reynolds, for the record, and there were a few moments when his natural comedic gifting came out, but only a few.

Deadpool is vulgar, gross, sick, but not without some good qualities as a person. He really loves his girl, for whatever reason, I guess they are two of a kind. He really tries to do what’s best for her.

The movie was turning into Beastly for a while. Then we go back to R-rated violence and humor.

But Deadpool is still a weak character. Though he makes fun of Marvel tropes, he relies on them for us to even like him. Otherwise, why would we? Remove the Fourth wall breaking, and naughty mouth that makes us all feel like big boys for watching, and you are left with the most average or even sub-par superhuman I’ve ever seen. (Maybe Titan from Megamind has him beat.) I mean, what does he even do that makes him likable? He saves his girlfriend, but if I want to watch gun-slinging violent damsel in distress movie, there’s a few dozen westerns that would beat this out, especially for dialogue.

No, I’m sorry, saving the girl can’t justify everything.

Most of our superheroes are getting high kill rates, and Deadpool embracing that is not helping anything. It’s not a good thing.

Let me tackle Man of Steel now.

I admit I liked this movie okay. It was better than Deadpool. It is chronically serious. All DC movies have been except for Suicide Squad. It’s their style, love it or hate it. I don’t love it exactly, I need to laugh every now and then Superman, but I do appreciate DC trying to put some real morality in it. And that they do not treat moral decisions as something to joke about.

Because right and wrong is not a joke, and cannot be settled on a joke.

I won’t be saying anything new if I say that Superman seeking religious advice is unique, and humble. Superman has always been a humble and they kept that in the movie. They also kept Lois Lane’s conscience, which was nice. I miss her sarcasm but Amy Addams has never been the type of actress to sell that character, so I guess it can’t be helped. She still did a good job of nailing Lois’es reckless, meddling side.

Pa Kent was the worst part though. Ugh. Talk about the anti Uncle Ben. And Pa Kent used to be more likable.

Krypton was never something I cared to see more of, in the comics I got tired of gong back to it. It was too idealized. Too perfect.

The movie touched on the arrogance of such a world, but the thing about planned parenthood, was unnecessary and felt too much like the Matrix. (Yet another lesson about messing with DNA, geneticists, I hope you’re listening.)

But in the end Superman is a sympathetic character. We feel bad for him. True the guy tends to make the same face most of the time, but I think it’s the script’s fault. Most of his scenes are serious, he kind of has to make that face. And he does lighten up a few times.

The comparison of superman to god is a running theme. but Superman himself knows he’d not a god. To have god-like powers without god-like wisdom is to be only a monster. Like Zod. Unless you humbly submit to the higher call of Good, and then you are a hero.

So as imperfect as Superman is, at least he gets that. he’s learning. DC characters all seem to be learning and rowing. And I am looking forward tow hat they come up with in the future. But Deadpool and the rest of the snappy but empty characters, they might get people laughing, but will they ever get them thinking?

I can’t say, but I don’t see it so far, so here’s to the Flawed but Learning people!

–Natasha.

The appalling comment section.

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I’ve been re-watching Justice League episodes in this past week. But unfortunately I have to use public internet to get these episodes. The comment section under this stuff is unbelievable.

Comment sections don’t represent the best of people anyway, but they do represent a lot of what passes for humor and reasonable assumptions nowadays.

Whenever you watch something you think about the reactions of the people around you.

I enjoy certain shows only when I watch them with my siblings, I don’t enjoy a lot of things if I watch them with my mom, but I do with my dad. When I’m with my peers…usually I’m the one spoiling it for them to be honest. Sorry.

So what happens when the people I’m watching it with are a bunch of you-tubers?

The sex jokes.

Both heterosexual and homosexual jokes are all over superhero material.

Someone actually said, I kid you not, that one male super missed this other one when he supposedly died, so that made both of them slightly gay.

I’m not sure how someone can be slightly gay. I think they meant that any and all positive feelings or expressions of emotion between two male characters has to be gay. Because clearly, no man would ever like another man or care about him, unless he was gay.

Right?

This is the line of thinking that says all those men who had deep relationships in history, they were secretly gay.

I think this logic would then say that our modern soldiers who develop deep friendships over the hardships of being in the military, they are all gay. All of them.

Really?

Last I checked gay didn’t mean a man shows any emotion at all. It means he shows a bizarre amount of sexually associated emotion…oh, that’s right, sexual association can now be anything.

Think about it. If someone on TV just stares at someone for a little longer than usual, it’s sexual. Any compliment becomes flirting. Honest admiration becomes infatuation.

I can’t even admire someone now? I have to have a crush on them to have a legit reason to like them?

Same thing with girls. If a girl has a heart to heart chat with another girl, and (gasp) hugs her or touches her at all, it’s now a lesbian moment.

Some girls are more touchy then others, women tend to touch each other more then men do. Women tend to touch men more them men touch them, in non romantic ways. Heck, women touch ourselves more if you go by nervous habits. Women play with their hair, bite nails, do all sorts of things like that, I see them doing it more then men do.

I hate that when I feel admiration or affection for another girl, I now have to question it. Or no, I don’t have to. I suppose no one is pointing a finger at me and saying “Is that sexual?” but when the whole culture is constantly pointing its finger, doesn’t that affect all of us?

We all feel this pressure to conform to the ideas of the culture.

I have said before I consider homosexuality to be a sin. I have received surprisingly no back lash for that. But what I haven’t said is that I think just about every young person now has asked themselves if they are homosexual.

And the sad thing is, the culture keeps saying that all feelings that might be interpreted as homosexual are the truest feelings. That even if you have had many feelings of attraction toward the opposite sex, the truest you would be the homosexual version.

Leaving aside moral implications for a second, can I ask why we should assume that feelings that lead to humans not reproducing more humans would be considered the most natural? How does nature, what tells us to reproduce, now no longer want us to?

Why, I would ask, do people have reproductive parts only for one gender (most of us) if we are meant to be able to be happy without the other. We can’t continue our race with just women or just men.

Or, if we can, then we should ask ourselves why we were designed for heterosexual life in the first place?

But what about relationships between the same gender. Do they always have to be sexual to be emotional?

I am not even sure physical touch is the dividing line here. I’ve talked about before how physical touch is simply a need humans have, whenever we care about someone. whether they are old, young, man, or woman.

The idea that you cannot even miss someone’s company without is being a sign of romantic love…I…I can’t even…so if my grandpa dies and I miss him…

I won’t even finish that thought. You get the point.

And by the by, being uninterested in romantic relationships with the opposite sex does not make you homosexual. You could simply not desire sex period. Which isn’t unnatural by the way. Most people do, but if someone has not inclination to live a married life, then they have no reason to have sexual desires. (Most people still do, but for some the emotional desire for marriage preludes physical desire.)

Sex is about function as well as pleasure, most pleasures have a purpose. Food tastes good because you need to eat it. You can’t separate those two.  You can enjoy tastes even when you aren’t hungry, but if you were never hungry, you would never learn to like food. Simple.

I question sex that has no useful function beyond pleasure, and I mean overall. In any other context, such as rape, child molestation, or porn, that kind of sexual pleasure is admitted to be wrong…by some cultures.

We have chosen to justify homosexuality. Not because it makes sense, but because we wanted to. There’s no logic behind it. Studies won’t back it up.

The irrationality of homosexuality is what makes it so easy to agree with for everyone under a certain age. Even Christians, who’s beliefs should directly contradict it. But if something has no logic beyond “They love each other” then how can it be refuted?

Easily, but it would require too much thinking. The media isn’t going to ask the tough questions, the rest of us are too scared…

Why are we scared anyway? So what if people say we’re bigoted? I guess it’s true.

I am predisposed to think homosexuality is unnatural and wrong… but the question I put to you is, why shouldn’t I be?

What exactly has it done for our society? It is pushing our science forward? (finding ways to change people’s gender is not moving forward, it’s not discovering new things.) Is it making us kinder?

It is making it easier to be gay, getting praised for your sexual orientation, heck, who wouldn’t want free praise.

And it is free. It doesn’t matter how bullied they are still, no one should get kudos for sexual orientation. Anymore than they should for their skin color. It has nothing to do with excellence. Or nobility. Or even creativity often enough.

People have been bullied for needing glasses, that doesn’t make wearing glasses brave.

Why homosexuality is now smiled upon and read into everything, I really don’t know. Honestly I think there’s a lot of broken people out there who turn to it because it’s easier than pushing through the pain of heterosexual relationships. Goodness knows it’s harder to be with the opposite sex. We don’t understand each other.

But if it’s harder, it’s also more rewarding to figure it  out. Marriage is an accomplishment. I don’t believe gay marriage is anything more than sexualized friendship. The reason being, it often doesn’t last and it’s still easier to get along with the same sex.

Do I think my writing this will change anything?

Yes. It changes me. Maybe I need to be reminded of what I believe.

And I don’t care if someone hates me for it. At least I know what I believe is real when it’s against what everyone says.

Believer and Pain.

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You may have heard that song by Imagine Dragons, “Believer.”

I am not a huge fan of Imagine Dragons, but I still want to give them a shout out for having the band name I would want to have if I was in it. I freaking love the name Imagine Dragons.

But their music is a little to heavy metal/pop for me.

However, I’ve heard this song, who hasn’t of a certain age? And since I actually watch lyric videos to find out what a song is about, I watched one for it and found out the song is about something a bit unusual.

It’s become typical to have, pardon the word, bad-ass songs. (I really want a clean equivalent of that word to use.) The “in your face” song.

I like some of them. And this song is technically in that category, but it has a profound twist. The song is about pain. The pain, as the words say, making you a believer.

People love this song. In the past the idea of pain being what made you a believer would have seemed problematic to me. I’m a huge believer in beauty being an inspiration, love being motivation, and peace being what gets you through.

Yet, in the past few months, my most constant companion has been PAIN.

What does a dreamer like me do when pain seems to be taking over their life. For weeks I didn’t want to write or even read, or think about all the stuff I wanted to do with my life, because how could I do it? I felt crippled by something that was mostly in my head.

Now this song didn’t bring me any great revelation. But it has made some people decide to keep going, and I read one person decided not to kill themselves after hearing it.

And I can say it’s because the song is true.

The words “My life, my love, my God, they came from pain.” I don’ think it means pain makes any of those things, but it’s a honest realization that without pain we’ll never know if those things are real.

To be honest with you guys, I haven’t seen a flat out miracle in a long time. I haven’t seen the things that make people think Christians are doing LSD. ( we aren’t.) I haven’t seen a miraculous healing in a long time. And I’ve never seen happen to me.

Like I said, I’m a dreamer. I believe in all those things. Call me crazy. There are things in this world that cannot be explained away.

yet I still have no personal evidence.

And what do you do with that when you’re suffering for months for seemingly no reason.

I admit freely I got pretty mad at God over it. I gave him a piece of my mind. But in the end I always come back to Him. I guess you could say I’m addicted.

It’s rough too when people get tired of hearing you complain about what you’re going through. And the only response I got from God was “trust Me.”

You Christians who read this, you ever wonder why you trust God? What He’s done to make you so confident?

I have.

Yet, I began to notice there was a miracle taking place in my life. I was being plagued by fears about how I was feeling, and anxiety. Then gradually that changed. I started to be less afraid. I have a low pain tolerance, and do not handle it well, but now I was pushing on through it. Moving on with my life. Drawing closer to God.

And oddly enough, I came to see that pain can be a gift. It’s not one anyone wants to keep. (I would hope.) I wouldn’t take it. But if it comes, and you accept that, then it is a gift.

Pain jolts you out of your stupor that the distractions of this world can put you into.

I know Christians who ware waiting for the next revival, the next breakthrough, the next movement of God. I think they don’t realize that they are waiting for pain.

Because pain is a part of creating life in this world. from childbirth to starting a business or becoming a professional athlete, it’s going to hurt.

Pain sucks, and no mistake. I don’t enjoy it. But I know it’s necessary. I still wish it wasn’t when I’m feeling it, but looking back I don’t want to change it.

Pain can indeed make you a believer, because you don’t know where you believe till you’ve been through the fire, the rain, and all that.

Sometimes the miracle is not being saved from suffering, but in seeing yourself changed by it.

So, good for Imagine Dragons. They hit something profound.

Until next time–Natasha.

Are Millennials nice?

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Let’s talk about millenials again.

This blog is directed partially ot them anyway, and I think we get a bad rap. Not that I don’t have my furstrations with people in my general age range. (Which is getting close to 20, yikes!)

I’ve always observed the people around me to be fairly nice most of the time. So when I started school, I wondered if my sheltered christian bubble would burst.

But so far it hasn’t. I’ve been blessed to be in classes with nice teachers and seemingly nice students. n fact I almost think it’s a God thing.

I know not all people are nice. I would not be shocked to run into some not nice ones. yet I usually don’t. Everywhere I go, on the bus, in school, to the store, people show little considerations of each other. They maybe don’t bend over backwards to help, but they will be decent. Move out of the way for someone in a wheelchair, help someone else understand their homework, be willing to cheer people on even if they are the competition, and scoot over so you can fit on a crowded bus. All real examples.

In one of my classes a fellow who people either jokingly or seriously said was racist because he is wary of black guys since getting mugged by one covered for the black student who couldn’t make it to class. They seem to be on good terms.

Now I know the whole racist thing is not always a serious remark, but that’ kind of my point. Instead of being oversensitive about it, they ignored it.

I don’t know how any of these people I’ve mentioned are int heir personal lives. Sometimes it’s easier to be polite to strangers..always it’s easier. I get that.

But since it’s complained about a lot that folks just aren’t nice or considerate anymore, and millennials are especially selfish and spoiled, I have to wonder, are we wrong about this?

We should at least consider it. I know this can be more of a Western thing, and all my viewers who hail from the Eastern countries may know a very different story about their young people, but I think in Europe at least this problem is the same. Why?

My guess is that Millennials and down are still lacking a moral compass, but good manners is something just about every parent tries to enforce at some point, and it can be our only nod to some general standard of behavior. Our only way to feel like good people.

And whatever our bad boy/girl songs say, we like to feel like good people.

Frequently at my college the young men hold the door open for both girls and each other. (No favoritism right.) In an age where chivalry is disappearing maybe some of it is coming back in. maybe they just feel they should.

I hold the door open for both guys and girls too. I say it’s whoever gets there at the right time. It would be weird to stand there and wait for someone else to do it. I’m not that committed to making the point.

Maybe I’m lucky, or maybe good places attract people like me who are seeking good environments. Not because I can’t handle worse, but because who purposely puts themselves into a negative environment unless it’s to fix it? Not many people.

I have wondered if occasionally it is my influence that causes this, but I have o proof of that. It’s a nice thought, but it might give one person too much credit.

Still, have we been misrepresented?

Millennials and down are spoiled, it’s true. And our biggest flaw is not an unwillingness to work, or to work hard, but to work consistently. We are a microwave generation. I don’t think that’s our fault exactly, but it is something we need to challenge ourselves to rise above.

It’s not, I believe after observing us more, that we don’t care about people. I think we actually care about more people in a small way than many generations before us. On thing we can’t ignore is that tragedy is happening all the time, and we aren’t all desensitized to it.

But all this caring in a small way has left us unable to handle caring in a large way. We don’t know how to act when an opportuintiy to change someone else’s life comes along. I doubt we recognize that opportunity when we see it.

We can be nice to almost everyone, but truly honest with no one. We can get out of the way for others, but not put ourselves in harm’s way for them.

Why is this?

Because we aren’t made to believe we can or should do those things. We are raised to avoid danger, trouble, confrontation, and discomfort. Conflict is the worst enemy now, not evil. Many young people believe certain evils are fine just so long as you don’t fight over them.

That’s pathetic, but it’s not the young person’s fault. They’ve been taught that fighting is wrong. It’s not.

The way to save this generation is to let them grow up. We keep coddling them. They can handle more. I believe it. They just need to be pushed out of the nest. yes, they will fail at first because they aren’t prepared, but I think we have plenty of stories about people adapting to their circumstances to back up the idea that Millennials will learn.

If they don’t, that’s on them. But we should not let them get away with not trying.

We don’t need to write books for or about young people and their problems, we need to tell them to write the books. They need to make the movies. They need to create the jobs. We need to get out of their way.

Yes, I know that what they’ve been taught is not good. But I see no end to it until they have had time to try and fail and realize there’s more to success in life than they know. When that happens they’ll need us to help them figure out how to fix it. but no do it for them.

That’s my thought on it, until next time–Natasha.

Upgrading kids.

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“College is a waste of Time and Money.” is the ironically titled essay I had to read for last week’s classes. I was almost convinced to drop out of the college.

That was a joke obviously. But let’s be serious, is this opinion valid?

The Essayist thinks that if you’re only going out of a sense of obligation, or because you think it’s just what you do after high school, then it is a waste for you.

I do question, as a born and bred homeschooler, how effective institutional education is.

One of the points the essayist brought up is that college is like an extended adolescence for many kids. They aren’t ready to face the world, so they go to school, school is familiar.

That’s so sad, especially when I think how kids used to be raring to get done with school and enter the world at large to make a place in it.

As this essayist or one of the others I read observed, the world just doesn’t seem to have a place for these college kids. They go to college in the hopes that they will find a place afterward. When they are more useful.

I can’t say I blame them. How many kids know how to work?

I don’t blame the kids, by the way, most of them would have been happy to learn a skill if we just stressed it’s relevance, they don’t want to waste their time learning stuff they’ll never use.

When I briefly worked retail they taught me organization, but that was about it. I just needed to be fast and efficient. Which I wasn’t.

We were talking in class about how businesses see workers as liabilities now, not assets. With a few exceptions. So if you screw up, you’re out.

Which explained to me why I got fired. It didn’t matter to them whether I was honest or more dependable, I was just too slow. (Speed takes practice to build up.) Instead of being an asset they could train, I was just a liability.

After all, machines do it better and you don’t have to teach them.

But when we like our machines more than our people, what motivates us to train kids in hardworking jobs?

The great irony of electronics is that they are sucked up by Millennials and younger, even while they bite them in the rear by making those very age groups less necessary and less of a priority to businesses and organizations.

We don’t know much except for how to organize and drive forklifts and run computers.

I’d rather do a real day’s work so long as it was for something good. Some people have said I’m a hard worker, some people say I’m slow. Some people say this younger generation is lazy and indolent, others say we’re full of energy.

I think it’s a matter of perspective. One thing we aren’t is dependable. It hasn’t sunk in to us that there are things that have to be committed to all the way if they’re going to work out. Unfortunately, even schools tend to coddle students, all those second chances and programs to help them get by with less effort.

I’m all for helping someone who really needs it, but our methods don’t seem to working.

One thing people tell me is that I am stubborn. Or determined, to put it more nicely. They usually say it about how I pursue the things of God. But a positive side effect is that determination spreads to all areas of your life. I was not always a persistent worker, but I’ve changed a lot since becoming a Christian, because now I have a a reason to pursue goals.

I had a reason. So I changed. Sometimes either you upgrade, or you shut down.

And kids don’t have a reason to upgrade, so they shut down.

After all, do they really feel like society needs them? Do most kids feel like their family needs them?

I had a alteration in my perspective after my family moved and I realized that my parents really needed me to be more responsible, and my siblings needed me to be strong and able to help them. I was the bridge between the two.

Because parents tend to shield their kids from responsibility so the kids won’t worry, the kids feel they have nothing to offer. When was the last time you heard a kid talk about being necessary to something. They probably wouldn’t have used that word, but it would have been implied in their tone.

Before the past 50-60 years happened, kids were absolute necessary, even from the age of 6, to their families. They represented difficulties, but once they got older the parents needed them to help with chores, with the business, or with keeping house so the parents could work.

You see prosperity is meant to grow as your family grows. Ideally your business starts small but by the time your kids are old enough to help it’s gotten too big for you to handle. And then from family you get community as you bring in outside workers also.

It used to be that way. But things have inflated too much.

Still, we need our young people. Moms would not be so overwhelmed if they taught their older kids to help more and let them be responsible for stuff. Maybe we can’t let them work jobs (though child labor is only a bad thing when it is excessive, a few hours of it never hurt any kid as long as they were doing something they could handle) but we can let them help us.

There are always going to be mishaps. But adults forget their car keys, leave their phones as home, and lose paper work. Should we judge kids if they knock stuff over or do something wrong because we didn’t explain it to them?

Kids may not like working at first because we’ve taught them they shouldn’t have to do it. But once they get used to the idea, nothing is more rewarding for them then feeling they helped mom or dad do something difficult.

That’s a feeling I think young people shouldn’t be robbed of.

Until next time–Natasha.

How women dress (modesty.)

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I couldn’t get into this in my previous post, but I briefly mentioned a discussion in my English Class about how women dress.

Deep breath.

I’ve grown up going to youth group, so I must have heard this discussion at least a dozen times, usually once or twice every six months is when it comes up.

Every time, there were some girls who got really bent out of shape about it. Even offended. And the same thing happened in class. A few women, particularly the oldest one in our class, were in favor of having certain standards, shall we say; and one girl was getting a bee in her bonnet about being held to different standards than men.

If I want to not wear a shirt, or not wear a bra under my shirt, why shouldn’t I be able to; was her argument, a man doesn’t have to do that.

Um…how can I put this? A man doesn’t have a…reason to wear those things for decency’s sake.

To me the issue is really quite simple. Modesty depends on what you’ve got to work with. And wearing revealing clothes also depends on that, often enough.

I don’t wish to make men or women reading this uncomfortable, if you’re sensitive, and I am one of those folks; but I have to be honest too about this issue.

The real problem women seem to have, at least I’ve never yet heard a man complain that it’s not fair that we ask him to dress respectably, is that they have to deal with men gazing at them lustfully, and men do not have this problem.

Well, I don’t know about that. But I think it goes deeper, women also resent the idea that men can tell them to do anything, including how to dress; and then they get iffy even if other women are telling them.

After all shouldn’t girls be able to express themselves however they want?

If I was to be glib, I would say I’d rather not express myself then have me ogle me. And I’ve yet to catch one doing it, thank you very much.

But it’s not that simple is it?

And girls who resent this, do have a point. It’s not fair that women have to worry about it so much. It’s not fair that we have to worry about being raped, or have creepy remarks being made about us, and all sorts of stuff. Statistically, I think women are the victims of more violent cries then men are, though it depends on where you live.

It’s not right that we have to think about all this. My whole bus stop incident was one that I was prepared for, I’d thought about how I would handle it when something like that happened to me. But just the fact hat I knew it would happen and had to be prepared, is pretty sad.

Please men, please be shaking your heads and saying “Wow, that is terrible.”

I hope to God I never get assaulted, but 1 in 3 women are, or is that just the successfully assaulted ones? The attempted assaults could raise the number higher.

And if I’m in a dangerous spot, I hope that I have a good man around to protect me. Because the fact is, few women get assaulted when they have a man around them. In fact, kidnappers and assaulters will purposely target girls who they can tell don’t have a good Dad. Even losers in schools who pick up chicks and use them though they don’t assault them will go for the fatherless.

And I notice it’s the fatherless women who tend to have the most issue with how they dress.

We can talk about rights all day long. We can wish men didn’t lust. We can wish, quite frankly, that women didn’t lust. Don’t tell me any girl over 18 who likes men at all has never ogled one herself. Double standard much?

But the reality is, people lust. People are messed up.

And as I said, I believe there are really good men out there. And good women. I’m truly sorry if it’s never been your experience to meet one. But it’s not too late.

The point is, as I said in my class, do you play with matches in front of an arsonist? Do you drink in front of an alcoholic? Do you do drugs in front of a junkie?

Some people do, they are called being part of the problem. And people who don’t do, but don’t try to help their loved ones who are doing it are called enablers.

Not all men are enslaved to lust, not everyone does drugs. But if you know that someone has a weakness for something and you utterly disregard that by what you talk about, do, or dress like around them, you share the responsibility.

Sorry if I’m insulting your freedom, but explain to me where you get off?

“But Natasha, it’s my body, I can do what I want.”

Honestly, I’ve heard youth leaders try to be delicate and gentle about it, and it goes right over the girls heads. They turn up their teenage noses and stick out their chins and say “I have the right to dress however I want.”

Well, you have the right to jump off a bridge too, but don’t blame us for you broken bones.

But let me back off from laying down the law. I’m risking losing you guys by being too passionate.

I have felt like it was unfair too. I went through that phase.

It’s not all the girls fault. Whether we can blame men for checking us out if we dress that way, I can’t say, but we can blame them for acting on it.

I’d like to end this with another college story.

The other week I went to an event but couldn’t find the building for a good 45 minutes. (New student troubles.) I asked a few different people for help and they couldn’t tell me. But one young man decided to help me find it. He walked me form one end of central campus to the other. At first I was concerned since it was a total stranger, and not that many people were about. But he never was anything but courteous and respectful. a true gentlemen. He stayed with me until we finally found it, then left me outside the room.

I haven’t seen him since, And I doubt I will since we have different class schedules, but he made my evening a lot pleasanter even if I was stressed out. And later I realized he probably escorted me because there was an assault on or by our campus not that long ago. And I was alone.

I think I would have been fine, but that doesn’t change that I appreciated the consideration.

Which is why I say for one fellow who might have been wanting to use me, I’ve had a dozen who wanted to help me.

I think how men view women is shaped a lot by how women view themselves. If you dress like a sex symbol, don’t BS me that you view yourself any differently. If you dress like a princess, you think of yourself as a princess.

You cannot give off mixed signals and expect to be treated with consideration. Most men will not try anything on a girl they can plainly see wouldn’t go for it. Those who will are the reason we need good men around us.

And that is that.

That’s all I’ve got to say about it, until next time–Natasha.