Miscellaneous

Living is Dangerous

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I spent the last two days hearing speech after speech about dangers. Here’s what I learned, everything leads to cancer, anything can kill you, and none of us are healthy.

I’m serious. Everything we use they say at some point it lead to cancer or death. The plastic straws at restaurants are killing the planet. Nevermind the billions of tons of other plastics. We end up eating this, or drinking it in our water, and you guessed it, it can cause cancer or infertility

To this I say BS. I’ve heard about so many things this week that are slowly killing me. It used to freak me out and I wished I could change. But now I am adopting a philosophical perspective.

A blog I follow, BeautyBeyondBones is fond of the quote “To live at all is vulnerable, because life is vulnerability.” I’ve got a news flash for the acturians out there who are figuring out all these statistics: Life is dangerous.

Life is both the most fragile thing we have and the strongest. There’es no real reason any of us should be alive if I go by what I’ve heard this week. We all live surrounded by toxic materials, and eating poorly, event he health food nuts don’t always know everything.l Why aren’t we all dead? Why aren’t we all weak and sick.

A lot of us have health problems, ,myself included at times, but nothing like what we should have if all this stuff was a deadly as they say.

The truth is, life is more than biology. That sounds sentimental, but it;s not. Ask a doctor who’s been in practice a long time, they will probably tell you that some patients do better than others for unknown reasons. Sometimes something int he person is just tenacious.

Case in point, my Grandpa has cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, and about a hundred other serious health issues. There’s no reason he should be alive or mobile, they the man can still walk, albeit it with great difficulty. he’s close to dying, but he’s been close to it as long as I can remember. We pray for him, I think that’s all he’s living off of.

Anyone of those things can kill you, yet all of them have not yet killed him. His doctors are mind blown.

There’s no science to explain this. Sometimes life or death appears to be a foreordained thing, or a matter of willpower.

Maybe young people now are suffering more health issues because they are more depressed. Considering the teen suicide rate, have they lost their will to live?

I used to think everyone felt good all the time and only I felt sick or head-achy. Now after college term no#1, I realize that I m probably the exception. Other people deal with pain and feeling bad way more often and more intensely than I do. They just don’t complain because they consider it normal.

I got to thinking about this, and how about a hundred or two hundred years ago it seems like people didn’t deal with stress issues. And I realized, they just didn’t call it that. When I read the Anne of Green Gables series, headaches that are clearly caused by stress are spoken of as a fairly normal occurrence, frequent in some people. And other neurosis are mentioned, with humor.

In fact I think Montgomery was onto something we have missed when she treated these headaches as unimportant. To people with the right attitude, they are. People suffered then and weren’t able to drug it away as effectively as we are now, but My theory is that because they accepted it as part of life, they suffered less in a way.

Physical pain, it’s part of the human condition. It just used to be that no one was surprised by it. No one expected to escape it. Toothaches, they were normal. Headaches were common. Stomach aches were a matter of course.

Cancer, if it existed, it was just one way to die. A painful way, but there were worse.

And as for our toxic environment, I actually don’t believe we are worse off than before by much. People didn’t eat so well back then either, and they used toxic things without even knowing it, at least we take precautions.

No, ladies and gents, if we are more unhealthy now, I am beginning to think it is because of our attitude. If we have less will to live, then we will have less of a life.

I hate feeling bad, but I am not crippled by it unless I choose to be. And I find that even when I’m hurting, life is still enjoyable if I choose to focus on other things. I hope my problem will be resolved, and goodness knows,I’m not telling you to just accept suffering if you can improve your life and get rid of it.

But I am encouraging you not to sweat it over every little thing. Yes, this stuff can kill you, but you’re gonna die anyway. A short life is not a wasted one.

If you’re living in fear, trying to get as healthy in body as possible, but neglecting other things that are more important, then your health is nothing to you. And I know many people concerned with health who are sick all the time.

The skeptic may not like this theory, but sometimes I think God will cut off someone’s ability to achieve what they are obsessed with, because it’s not that important.

The Bible says the word of God and the fear of God is strength to your bones and health to your body. I feel better when I’ve read the word.

Call is psychological if you like, but the point stands. Health and life is something more than a biological equation.

You should be as healthy as you can, but avoiding health risks is impossible. I can tell you that right now. If you don’t have the industrialized ones in the Western World, you’ll have the lack of sanitation ones in the Third World. The Asian countries may eat healthier, but they have more pollution.

It doesn’t matter. Dot he best you can without being crazy, and leave it at that. Live well, and living long will either follow, or will cease to be so important. because it’s not.

Those are my thoughts for now, until next time–Natasha.

The Legends and the Myths.

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Oh my gosh I feel like it’s been weeks since I posted, sorry, I have big college projects swirling around. BU tI am going to take some time to attend to this today!

Can you tell it’s my first time dealing with finals?

Anyway, I have plenty I could write about. The trick will be picking one thing. I’ve been researching superheroes of all things to write a paper on it.

Professors have come a long way; I imagine if 20 or 30 years ago I suggested superheroes as the subject of a research paper, my professor would have given me a look and said “That’s not a real subject.”

But now, it totally works. And with the Infinity War Craze of the past two weeks, and the subsequent Deadpool 2 craze, what more proof do you need that superheroes are relevant?

I haven’t seen either by the way, but look for a review of the first one sometime in the near future.

Though I think I will still prefer the cinematic inferior Justice League to all this glamour of the Avengers. At heart, I still prefer even a partially good DCU flick, to a saturated MCU one.

Enough about that, the point is, superheroes are difinitely in. And those of us who are not in the swim about them maybe should undertake to know at least a little about what fans are crazy about.

Chances are you know someone who is nuts about superheroes. Likely you know someone who is too nuts about them. IF you’re like me, you don’t buy all the merchandise or see every film in theaters, bu you keep up with the comic books world at least enough to know the context of most of the stories.

I read the original Spiderman comics, which hold up even today, and the Silver Age Superman ones, 50s-60s, and of course the 70s Mr. Miracle. I have yet to find a Wonder Woman comic, but I would love to check that out sometime.

Funny story, I remember getting a Wonder Woman comic from the Library back before I could even read. Actually I think my mom got it just because I was looking at the picture. And I started at the words and really wished I knew what they were saying. But all I got twas the vague idea that she was a kid growing up with her mom.

And I can’t believe I didn’t remember that when I read “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, since he had the same experience with Superman.

I’ve always wanted to find that comic, which I now realize had to be the original one, and read it knowing the words. SO in a strange way, comics have been a part of my reading experience almost from the beginning, and Wonder Woman has intrigued my also.

And my mom was not a superhero person, and still is not except by proxy, since she has to listen to us go on and on about it. My mom is smart, she has learned over the years to take at least a mild interest in everything we get obsessed with so that she preserves her sanity.

Superheroes will always be considered somewhat ridiculous, even by the people who love them. Not because they are ridiculous as a characters, but because the idea of one is just odd to us. A caped costumed character is funny. The whole underwear on the outside thing. By the way, did you know that they looked more like that because men used to wear suspenders that kept their pants up higher? When supers were created, that look would have been more normal and wearing nothing over that are would have been indecent. It’s not about underwear at all.

And yes Wonder Woman wore a swimsuit, but even then there were worse ones.

Still, it’s funny to dress in a flag. The pint is, they aren’t meant to be taken seriously.

That’s why we love them. You don’t have to believe they are real in order to get real ideas and emotions from them.

As I have pointed out to others, superheroes are for those who dream. They are a modern mythology. And I would have to acknowledge this even if I hated them, because there is no getting away from it. They are ubiquitous.

I think I love superheroes more than I care to admit on this blog, but I don’t love them just for their flashy fighting and quippy dialogue, though I enjoy that.

I love them because in nowhere else  in our modern world do I find so many characters held up to a real standard for good. And they challenge us to meet that standard. I love the heart behind many of them, the honest look at hardship that many of the creators had to take in writing them out. Mostly, I love myths.

And I’m a dreamer. Without fail, people who dream that I know, they like superheroes.

People who do not dream don’t, or are at best ambiguous.

I’m not kidding, I know people as old as my dad who like superheroes, but they are dreamers; and I know people who think they’re stupid, they aren’t dreamers. And those who are ambiguous also don’t dream.

IS it possible to be a dreamer without liking supers? I am sure it is. But  I do not think it works the other way. What use are superheroes with their outlandish exploits if you do not wish to accomplish things that seem outlandish to you?

Fairy tales will always be mocked by those who do not secretly wish they were true…even those who do. But as Anne of Green Gables has said, the world needs fairies, it cannot do without them.

All that means is not that we need fairies as a fantastical creature to tell stories about, but that we need fantasy. Which fairies famously represent.

We need superheroes in the same way. Whether you are a dreamer or not, you need dreamers. The ones who keep this world afloat.

They are the legends and the myths today, and they keep us linked to older myths and stories. We need that, we need to keep our imaginations alive. And if that looks like a comic spread with some speech bubbles, so be it. I’ll take that over pure realism, that stuff can be soul killing.

Until next time–Natasha.

 

 

Well behaved women Seldom make history.

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Laura Ulrich used the above sentence in her history of unknown puritan women. You may have seen the slightly altered “Well behaved women rarely make history” on anything from a car to a mug to a t-shirt to a book. I read it in a book by a Christian Female Preacher. The Sweet Potato Queens put it into their theme song.

I admit it’s a brilliant quote.

But I  wasn’t surprised to read in Ulrich’s account of the slogan’s impact that it had caused a lot of women to justify the most wild and uncouth behavior.

Bad girls have more fun they say. Kind of like nice guys finish last.

Well I submit to you that nice guys only finish last with women who don’t like nice.

I wouldn’t be one of those. Though I admit I can’t stand tame.

And that’s the thing, I don’t think the term wild is a bad word. I hear it used as if it were bad. Wild is used as synonymous with out of control, crazy, rebellious, and bad behaved.

But in my book, wild just means something is in its natural state. Untamed by man. But it does not mean something is at odds with man.

Wild things can be a gift. The only way to survive in the wilderness is knowing how to live off wild stuff. A wild animal tends to have instincts that a domestic one doesn’t. There is something raw and yet vulnerable about wildness that touches us.

But what about being well behaved? I don’t think being ill behaved is the way to make history, not the kind of history I want to be remembered for. The attitude about this seems to be that as a long as a woman is making history, she is doing something noble and brave, no matter what kind of history she is making. In that way a sex icon is as important as Marie Curie.

I don’t think so. Every one has heard of Helen of Troy, everyone has heard of Joan of Arc. Which do we know more about? Which do we want to be like?

I love famous women, if they are good, and I love empowered women. I just never understood empowered to mean “Do whatever darn thing you want to get attention; talk trash about men; and abandon motherhood.” Come on ladies, is that really what it means? I bet you don’t agree with that idea either.

I think few women really think that’s how to be a real woman. Just as I hope few men think that shooting each other and getting girls knocked up is how to be a real man.

Now just for context, you guys should know I am not the kind of woman who sits back and shuts up by nature. I have been strongly hinted at that I should do this. And I can’t say, after what I’ve been reading about it, that I don’t wonder if I might have been treated differently had I been a man.

It’s hard to picture the same people telling a guy who was as enthusiastic as me to tone it down a notch. When does that ever happen?

I mean, it does happen to my dad, who’s like me in that way. So I guess it does happen to men.

I will say this, I think part of the problem is women who make themselves heard can have a very snooty attitude about it. Like we should listen to them just because they are a woman and outspoken. Funnily enough, don’t you immediately feel more interested in a woman if you hear that she’s outspoken and opinionated.

And also oddly enough, I rarely hear a man described that way. Men stating their opinions forcefully seems to be a given.

A woman who really is outspoken will be whether it’s considered normal or not. Take Katherine from “The Taming of the Shrew” as a fictional example. Women like that won’t shut up no matter how much men shake their heads. And that’s not always a positive.

I know women who will give their opinions when applied to, but they prefer to talk about more personal stuff. A woman has political opinions, sure, she probably has strong ones. She doesn’t let her husband speak for her because she’s afraid, she lets him because it’s not what she likes to talk about.

Women don’t like arguing with their friends. (Though they may like arguing with their husband or their mother.) So they don’t talk about hot topics amongst themselves. It gets too heated. It’s that simple.

I know I don’t bring up hot topics when I want to have fun with people because it’s too explosive. And I know men who don’t care if it is, but I don’t know any women like that.

This isn’t a lack of confidence, it’s just women preferring to bond without conflict. Men bond through conflict.

Not that a woman never can enjoy conflict. I enjoy it. Typically more with men then with women. I consider that to be a thing men bring out in women, for a good reason, strength calls out to strength.

In fact, women want to be part of a man’s world because the man is in it. I don’t care if I just ticked someone off. It’s still true.

How many women say they are independent of men even while saying they’ll beat them at their own game.

If you’re trying to beat the men, you’re not exactly independent of them. You have to have someone to beat.

It also backhandedly admits that men have done a lot of amazing things. And I think men have every right to keep dong amazing things. I get a real kick of beating men at stuff. But I don’t grudge them their right to win also.

I think the wild side of men is what stirs up the wild side of women. I see it all the time, women sneak into men’s conferences, women read books about what men should be like just to know what to look for, women like movies that are geared for men. (I liked Braveheart. Most women who saw it did.)

That’s not because women are weak. It’s because women are smart. We know there’s something for us in both worlds. And if men are smart, they’ll pay attention to what women like too. I don’t begrudge a man the enjoyment of a few chick flicks , some of them are meaningful stories.

Some men enjoy more feminine dominated stuff. That’s okay. In the end, it’s not what you do but the way that you do it that shows the differences between people and between genders.

I win like a girl, because I am one.

Until next time–Natasha.

Real Life Stories.

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Permit me to write about something that probably makes me a geek: Story Structure and Cliches.

If you are not into film reviews like I am, or book discussions, you may not feel this subject is important, but I submit to you that it is and it affects your life more than you think.

Let’s jump in:

First of all, a story structure is the type of story you have constructed. Each genre has a few different structures to it. Romances have a comedic structure, or a sappy structure, or even a adventurous structure. It all over laps.

The structure, as you can probably guess, is the blueprint of how the story plays out. Its’s how you use your characters and plot devices, how you narrate the story, and how long it is. A short story has a different structure from a long (in this case 300+ pages) story.

The reason story structure is important to the non-writer or reader is because it will be present in pretty much every area of your life that you hear anecdotes, sermons, lessons, plans, or ideas in.

It can tell you a lot about a person when you know the structure they use to talk about themselves. Are they dramatic? Are they pragmatic? Are the emotional or are they stoic? What does their self;narration tell you about them.

I think, ladies and gentlemen, that the adage that life is a story is the truest way to describe it. The way we measure each other is through the elements of story. The way we talk is shaped by it.

You may have heard the saying that we are each the hero of our own story. I do not think that is true. It is quite possible to be the villain of your own story.

I was just watching a Superman movie, and before it came on some creators of a different Superman story were shown talking about their own personal kryptonite. The last man said “I would say I am probably my own kryptonite.”

That man is honest.

We have other weaknesses, but we are our own worst enemy most of the time.

Ever wonder why the protagonist who constantly makes mistakes and misses the point annoys you so much? They remind you of you.

People have acknowledge that we dislike the most human characters most strongly. In real life that is also true. People who screw up constantly frustrate us. The one worker on the job who has to be re-shown how to do something again and again, that student who’s a little slow, that junkie who won’t stay clean, you when you look at what you’ve accomplished in your life and think you could have done so much more.

We are vicious on these people as a society, and sadly often as individuals, I do it too.

But are we really just mad at ourselves?

I’m not the first person to suggest that, and I won’t be the last either. I am just throwing it out there.

In a story we root for the capable and the good. I’ve known some commentators to think this is delusional of us. That we don’t want to face up to our humanity in the flawed characters.

But writers understand why the good characters have to be the role model. They are the best of us and we only get better when we have a better person to admire and imitate. The human characters cannot do that for us because they can never be our superiors. In life you cannot look up to the person that is failing constantly. You have to find someone who is succeeding more that you.

Let’s talk about cliches/tropes now:

A cliche or trope is thing that writers use a lot, if it’s a trope it’s just a way to tell the story that is necessary to the style. But a cliche is overused, unoriginal or lazy.

In real life cliches show up everywhere as old poetical slogans, cheesy commercials, lame excuses. Don’t you hate them?

I know I roll my eyes.

But tropes are more interesting. I often, as part of the people group of internet review watchers, here people complain that a solution was used in a movie or book that seemed like magic, or too good to be true. Or even occasionally too bad to be true.

Tropes are fascinating simply because they show up in real life, tropes are what make stories seem real to us.

Here’s a few of them:

  1. The Chosen one.
  2. The magical happy ending
  3. Redeeming Wicked Characters

You’d be surprise how angry people get over the last one.

The chosen one means the hero is selected, one might say called, to be the answer to the stories problem.

It’s something we see in real life a lot. We know some [people are born to do certain things, and could not be happy unless they did them. Artists are born, writers are born, speakers, and those are just the common language ones. There’s thousands more.

We can see how historical figures were meant to shape the world. Gandhi being one of our more popular examples now.

The magical happy ending can be unrealistic, but more often then not it comes because the chosen one set things right. Peace is restored. People begin to thrive again. How often have we seen this in history? And even in our own lives. Maybe our happy endings don’t last,  but the principle remains. You notice any time a story becomes a series the happy ending is temporary. It is meant to resolve one problem, not every problem, and that is how we live it out in our lives.

As for redeeming evil characters, we don’t see this as often. But when we do it’s surprisingly true to how stories portray it. People change because someone is kind to them; because they realize what they’ve become; because they have a revelation of truth. This is how characters change in stories, and it’s true to life.

Why does all this matter to the person who does not care about assessing stories?

Because stories are going to shape how you think about this stuff in real life. IF you don’t believe someone in a story can change, chances are you don’t believe people can change.

It’s funny to me whenever someone acts like how they view fiction and how they view reality are separate. Like it’s not their mind and beliefs in both areas. Give me a break.

I hope this was enlightening or interesting to everyone, 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.

Attempted Pick up at the Bus Stop.

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College and life have a way of intertwining.

I had the most bizarre thing happen to me yesterday, as you know i take the bus to school most days, and so far nothing really strange has happened to me. But yesterday it was finally my turn to get the weirdo-trying- to-pick-up-a-chick experience.

I don’t do face reveals for safety reasons on this blog, so you’ll have to take my word for it that I’m a pretty attractive young woman, but I do not look like the type of person who’s an easy pick up. In fact up till now, I’ve never been asked out or really flirted with (as far as i could tell at the time anyway.)

And I can’t be particularly flattered by this fellow, since he tried the same line on me that I heard him use on a more abrupt girl in the other seat.

I’ve been around homeless people enough times to spot the type. Maybe you know it, they seem lucid and aware of their surroundings, but they aren’t quite all there. I’m sure it’s because a lot of them are on drugs, but there’s still a difference between them and other addicts. Maybe it’s the loss of regular human contact.

This fellow was just a little out of it, so I decided rather then immediately tell him to buzz off, I would do it easily. Anyway it was a public place and there wasn’t much he could do.

After a lot of flattery, and some strangely deep life advice, he came to the point rather subtly by saying he’d like to visit me.

That was when I tactfully told him that I don’t get picked up by guys I just met.–Not adding “Besides, you’re homeless, probably a smoker (I could smell cigarettes), and a little loopy.”

I guess he’s not in it for the long haul because he rather disappointedly got up and bid farewell pretty abruptly. SO much for liking girls for their mind.

I could have freaked out over this, but I figured I was pretty safe since he didn’t get on the bus with me, so I just thought it was funny. Every woman goes through this at one point, at least if you use public transportation and are fairly easy to look at. (Even if you aren’t I’m not sure it makes a difference with some predators.)

But what made the whole thing wierder was I heard someone at my school talking about what sounded like a similar incident, and I wondered if she was at the bus stop too.

Then to top it off, in my English/ junior critical thinking class we got on the subject of men and women, and how women dress, and how women don’t feel safe on campus. And also how men have tried to keep women down for centuries.

And I rolled my eyes.

I get that sexism is and was a huge problem even in America, but from where I stand, it is just stupid for an American, or even Western European woman to complain about it.

Maybe we have a few difficulties (a fact I would put up for debate still) but we have nothing to complain about. We have no reason to rail against men in general just because some of them are jerks.

I get that women have been burned a lot, unfortunately, I also think that woman burn each other plenty of the time. And behind every overbearing man there was a woman who at some point refused to stand up to him, don’t tell me any man is born a bully and a sexist anymore than any girl is, they have to learn it. And Women, mothers especially, have some responsibility for that.

Some of the men I know who seem to have a prejudice against females had unstable mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, or other women who scarred them.

I don’t say that any rapist or abuser gets a pass just because he had a bad mother, but I do say he could have been taught differently at some point, though often fathers are more to blame then mothers for that.

Blaming men alone for how women have been treated is kind of stupid, every time there is an oppressor, it is because the oppressed let it happen. Yes, there can be force involved, but force can never contain intellect or heart forever, unless they allow it to.

Which is great, because it means women have some say in how they are treated. Imagine that!

Using my bus stop experience, I could either say that men are predators, and if I were a man it would never have happened.

Well maybe it wouldn’t have happened with that guy in particular, but nowadays men aren’t really any safer then women when it comes to these sorts of things. I can blame men for this, maybe with some justification, they are a big part of the problem.

Or I can be real.

For this one guy who was a weirdo, I’ve had many men treat me with respect, even if without interest. I have had the pleasure of knowing some guys actually like talking to me for my personality, and not my appearance, and I also know that they still appreciate my appearance. Which is fine by me. Am I going to pretend I don’t like a nice looking man? No. That would be stupid.

I don’t need a man to give me permission to play on their field, because I never think about it. If I want to do something, and it’s fitting, and I’m able, then I’m going to do it, I don’t care what they think. And they don’t seem interested in judging me for it. I’ve fought boys before in good fun, I never heard that “but you’re a girl line.” And if I did, I’d probably crush them.

As I say to my sister, I can like sparkles and swords at the same time, I’ll put sparkles on my sword if I want. (not really, it would be impractical, but if I wanted to I would) I’ll wear a tiara with my armor, and I’ll watch superhero movies and chick flicks if I want to.

Not because I have something to prove; but because that’s me. I like being a girl, I don’t think it limits what I have to like or dislike. From make-up to machetes, I can have an interest.

I like boys too, not just from a romantic perspective, but as people. I get something from their company I never get from girls, I never will.

Excuse me if I’m not afraid of men. I’m not naive, I know some of them are bad. So what? Some women are bad too, and I’ve probably had more negative experiences with them then with men.

This is the kind of thinking that scares my dad, because he worries about me. But it’s a waste of time. you cannot guarantee someone a life free from uncomfortable or even dangerous situations, all you can do is prepare them for it.

And I feel fairly well prepared.

Until nest time–Natasha.