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How it feels to be white in America.

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So ready for some controversy? Good.

I am feeling a little discriminated against by…the system!

Nah, too dramatic.

Still, for all I read and hear about what it’s like to be in a minority group, I wonder.

Okay, it’s not like this bothers me every single day of my life or anything…it just occurred to me at school today when I did something mildly nice for an Asian student. I had the thought “What would my actions be construed as by the wrong person?” Any number of things i suppose, but with the blatant hostility I read about sometimes, I had to wonder. Would my help be seen as some psychological need on my part to absolve myself from the charge of prejudice? To show that i don’t see myself as a cut above non white students? Or above foreign ones.

Anyway, what really bugs me is tokenism. Which targets minority groups. It works like this, by stressing how excluded a minority is, and then including one or two members of that minority in your project, you make it seem like you’re on their side.

However, it’s kind of bizarre to make a point out of including someone just for their race or gender. Isn’t that basically the same as saying they are different? That different rules apply?

And if you should choose not to work with those people, you get accused of being bigoted. Though you could have legitimate reasons not too. I don’t choose that myself, but I know business owners who’ve been burned plenty of times by minority group members. Just because you’ve been discriminated against doesn’t make you a good employee.

That’s kind of the problem. Just as someone can’t lack worth because of a their race, neither can they gain worth. Black lives don’t matter more than anyone elses. All lives matter.

Being born one color doesn’t grant superiority, inferiority, amnesty, or guilt.

I think most of us would be surprised how many people got turned into racists simply because they were accused of being so. Maybe our idea of what racism is changed, or maybe our idea of ourselves changes if enough people say bad things about us. White people have been as much a victim of that as anyone else.

How it feels to be white living in America now is something that people don’t talk about very often. Even saying white can be a trigger word. Now, I’m sure, I’d make some eyes roll if I said being white can be hard now. Well sue me. (Not literally.) It can be kind of rough.

I hate  having to ask the question if I do things because I am kind, or because I feel guilty. Now, I don’t really entertain that thought, but the fact that it’s even come to mind is kind of sad.

I remember as a kid I used to be kind of uncomfortable around black people. I didn’t know any personally for years. I guess there weren’t that many where I lived. (There still aren’t come to think of it.) But I never considered them as inferior. Just different. On the outside.

You know, the madness has gotten to the point where my even feeling that way would be twisted by some people into saying that racism is just part of being human and I couldn’t help myself. And white supremacy, blah, blah, blah.

You now the black people I do know now are all more well off than my family is, so much for white middle class pride.

I’d be glad enough to think that when I pass a black person at school they don’t look at me and think “racist” or assume I’m privileged. Or that somehow I have advantages they don’t.

If you took race out of it, just assumed race has nothing to do with success, then the difference between me and them is…not outward.

It’d be a fair guess that most of them weren’t homeschooled, based on what I know of young people, a lot of them don’t like to read, they probably don’t really like school most of them.

That’s what I’ve seen from all students, race isn’t important. Even the Asians who are reputed to be the brainy, honor roll, geniuses complain about classwork. The few white students in my classes actually yap the least in general about the teacher. They tend to be quieter too. I can’t say if that’s race, environment, temperament, or all three.

But, here’s the thing. If I succeed academically and then at a career, it’ll be assumed by a large amount of the population that I was given preference over these other students. “Of course she did well,” they might think, “the system was rigged for her.”

It’s slippery when you can convince everyone that the system is rigged against one group, and secretly rig it against another.

Here’s a little trivia for you. Guess how many groups I can be a part of just because of my race? Guess what scholarship opportunities and clubs I get to join because of it? Guess what kind of discrimination claims I can file if I don’t get selected for something?

If you answered none to all of those, then you’d be right. Can you imagine, even in the midwestern part of this country, someone starting a white pride club?

It’s laughable isn’t it. Now this will be hard for some people to understand but bear with me…If you can’t start a club about how proud you are to be your race because that in itself would be considered racist…that’s a double standard.

“I’m painfully white,” “I’m too white,” “I’m so white, people need shades when I’m at the beach.” What kind of talk is this? And who made it okay for white people to disparage their skin color, but shameful for black people or Latinos to. (Not that they don’t still. Anyone can have this problem, it’s just how its viewed by society.)

I am not saying white people can’t make jokes at our own expense, I just don’t like the underlying shame in the tone of these jokes. We aren’t proud to be this way…we feel unable to change it.

What saddens me is that some very bitter people (not all by a long shot) in minority groups would say this is what we deserve after years of doing it to them. How does it feel?

Well, how does it feel? Guess what, my roots aren’t all in the oppressor. My grandfather’s family was the oppressed. They had to leave Europe. Now, who’s had it worse? I’m sure either side could make an argument.

But because I look white and american, no one will ever think just be seeing me “her grandpa got persecuted for his race. Her great grandparents got forced out of their homes by a corrupt government.” Just like African Americans. What is the blooming difference?

That I’m white.

What stings is not that I want payback for it all. I don’t. I don’t even want to talk about it. It’s in the past. Things change. We change with them. And maybe, dare I say, Jews understand this a little better because we are so universally despised. We adapt though we hold on to tradition.

No, what stings is the assumptions. Again, some Africans I know have a less brutal history than my family does, even if you go back a few generations. Not all of them, and probably not most of them if I’m honest. But what will be assumed?

To restate the old adage “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

Why do we keep on focusing on what divides us? I’m not the first to ask, and I won’t be the last. If they don’t care, I won’t either. But I’m not living my life feeling guilty for something I didn’t do.

That’s all for now, until next time–Natasha.

RAGE!

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Okay, I normally stay away from two things when I blog: Politics and outright reprimands.

But I’ve had it!

This is not about Judge Kavnaugh, though that whole mess is partly what got me to thinking about this, but also what I’ve been reading about in my Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric book. It has a whole chapter devoted to how we justify our own bad ways of thinking.

The whole book has a liberal slant, but its not wrong.

But  my problem is not just with politics, but with how we as a culture and as a people are handling conflict. And I mean this is extremely personal, because I find it in myself. I see it in the people around me. Slapped on slogans, broadcasted over talk radio, and good gracious the  news network! For crying out loud, it’s even in our superhero movies and teen dramas.

That thing can be put into one word: Rage.

“Oh, it’s well beyond rage”–William Wallace, Braveheart.

Just take a minute and think about it, what word would you use to describe the way people talk about each other? The way they talk about policies?

What I hear and feel when I see the news is rage.

It’s mindless too. And I’ll admit my own political party is nearly as bad as the Left (clearly we’re not rioting and sending death threats.) I am disgusted by Conservatives who spend all their time blasting the left. While I wholeheartedly believe the left is wrong, and I can’t help but think they act abominably as a whole, even if as individuals I know plenty of decent liberals, but I have never felt the appropriate response was to return in kind.

Pointing fingers is not helpful, maybe we’re right, maybe we’re not, but playing the  blame game will not leave anyone innocent. In fact, it’s stupid for human beings to play this with each other.

It’s like how Adam and Eve pointed fingers in the Garden, both of them did wrong, did it help to blame others? We can argue for hours on who was more guilty, but it won’t change the past.

We can’t change the past.

I’ll tell you one thing, if tomorrow every democrat I knew of had a change of heart and started doing the right thing and standing up for the truth, then it wouldn’t matter to me what the party had done in the past. I don’t freaking care what the Clintons did, or Obama, because it’s in the past. What I care about is the future, if democrats were doing what I honestly thought was best, then I would vote for them.

My identity is not in my political party name, it’s in my morals. Conservatism lines up with what I believe in, that doesn’t mean conservatives always do things I like. I don’t support the party because I like all the people in it, but because I think the bad ones do less damage, and the good ones do more good overall.

Fixing the politics in this country would take a number of miracles, and both the left and the right are holding us back. I’m not ashamed for my party’s ideals, but I’m ashamed of the way we uphold them,

Rage is a virus. It’s contagious. And it’s all about returning in kind. The Left has been awful to the Right, no mistake, but being awful back…this bickering, name calling, mocking, and whining…I consider it beneath us.

Look, I’ll get frustrated with liberals just as much as the next conservative, but I do not hate them. I don’t consider them all to be the worst of humanity. (Some yes, but you’ll find those in every party.) I may get mad at what they do, but I do not want to let myself be consumed by rage every day. It has to be exhausting to do a talk show on politics.

Now, I know there would be protests here. Some would argue that conservatives have to be more aggressive because we own so little of the networks. True enough. I’m not against showing initiative. But, if we’re really as better at politics and morals as we claim, then we shouldn’t have to stoop to yelling and verbal jabs. Or generalizations.

What are we so mad about anyway? That evil exists? That in our mind it’s represented by the opposition? That people can be liars, thieves, abusers, backstabbers, accept bribes, and be unbelievably biased (the ironic thing here is that for some of you I just described my own party.) Did it surprise anyone? Why is that making us angry?

The Bible says not to fret over evildoers, and to not give way to wrath or let anger consume us because it only leads to harm.

I challenge you, whether you’re right or left, to take a long hard look at how your party acts toward the opposition. Ask yourself, is that how I believe people should be treated?

I admit, no. There, I said it.

I especially implore you college students and teens, many of you are liberal, and it’s easy for young people to feel anger over causes (I ought to know, I am one.) But, is this the legacy you want to leave? Rage? Ten years from now, will you be glad of what you did out of rage, or what you did out of mercy?

I’m not letting conservative young people off the hook, how cruel can we be to the others? What kinds of things do we call them on social media.

If there’s one thing I do agree with liberals on, it’s that human rights include not being disrespected and then having it justified because of prejudice. But that goes for them too. If you believe racism is wrong, stop labeling everyone who disagrees with you a racist…because that’s still being bigoted. Does that make you better than us?

Conservatives, stop accusing liberals of destroying the country. We’re all doing it. It’s not just them. And it’s not really the wisest way to change their minds either.

Lastly, everyone for your own sanity and relationship’s sake, please, for the love of all things holy, let go of your rage. It’s blinding us all to the truth. Blame is a waste of time. It doesn’t matter. At the very least, Christians should be comforted by the thought that God will judge in the end who is to blame. He won’t play favorites.

Until next time–Natasha.

Respecting other beliefs.

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Respect: esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability.

In the past few decades we as a people have become very concerned with the proper respect for other people’s beliefs. I hear young Christians now (I mean age wise, not how long they’ve believed) applaud themselves for having atheist friends whom they talk about their beliefs with calmly, and their atheist friends know where they stand, but they don’t try to convince them that their point of view is wrong.

This seems like a good thing, right? But isn’t there kind of a bad side effect. If you never tell anyone they are wrong, then what would prompt them to ever question their beliefs. If all we’re ever told is to go with what we feel is right, then we’ll never question our feelings themselves.

Let me differentiate between the feelings of conscience and the feelings of preference. Conscience is an entirely different feeling, when we feel like we “should” do something, it’s not at all like when we feel we “want” to do something.

A lot of morality now is based on what we want to do being what feels right. Right=pleasurable and comfortable.

And this has crept into the Christian culture. I would call it quasi-Christian culture, because what our perception tells us and what the Bible actually says are often very different. And the Bible is true Christianity, our twisting of it is not.

That being said What does the Bible say about respecting other people’s beliefs?

You won’t find that phrase or idea anywhere in the Bible except as regards to the differences between Christians and what they feel is edifying to God and their bodies.

In fact the Bible might have some strong words for anyone who sees someone living in sin and does not warn them about it.

Sure, people don’t want to hear it. And chances are most of them already know it’s wrong. So I am not advocating just preaching to everyone that they should stop sinning.

But sin is not really the point. Christ is the point. I wonder how exactly Christians can respect other people’s beliefs.

“If you don’t accept Jesus Christ as Lord and repent for your sinful ways, you will go to hell…And I totally respect that.”

Yeah, I respect that you’re going to willingly choose to burn forever without God and get mad at me for warning you about it…

And if you’re not a Christian and this is getting up in your grill, then remember, I am not saying this to your face, I am only saying point blank what Christians claim to believe. And how little it would make sense for us to respect anyone else’s beliefs.

It’s like trying to respect the belief that the moon is made of cheese, nobody would respect that belief. Anyone who tried to eat moon rocks would be laughed at. No one is going to defend their right to be honored for that belief.

Now, you can’t arrest someone for believe that, or demand that they change their mind. Just like you can’t as a Christian force anyone to change their mind. Though there are regrettable instances in our history when we have tried that.

No one should be arrested for their religion…of what they do because of it, yes.

Your belief trumps the law, but you still have to suffer the consequences of breaking the law. Jesus never said any different. And I doubt very much the sincerity of any religious leader that did.

If I ever get persecuted for what I believe so be it. But that won’t change a thing about whether I’m right or not.

No matter how much our media promotes being gay, that will never change whether being gay is morally right or morally wrong. All the applause and approval of the world will never change that, because the world can’t tell you what’s right and what’s wrong.

I think Christians are uncertain about how to witness to people now that they have to respect their beliefs. But the truth is, you don’t. In fact, if you do, you might want to check your heart. (And reread the definition of respect at the top of this post.) Because if the words “well if that’s what they feel is right” have come out of your mouth, that’s a reason for concern.

If I am making a major life choice, I better be darn well sure it’s more than feeling guiding me.

I had better make it clear that I am not advocating disrespecting people.

Uh uh. We respect people. Not beliefs. People’s own right to act on what they believe. But we do not have to respect those beliefs themselves.

And some of us leaders really need to hear this. It’s okay to oppose people who want to propagate their beliefs if you don’t agree with them. You are not keeping the person out. You are keeping their beliefs out.

What’s not okay is to make it anything more than personal preference. To make laws against certain beliefs and make rules. You can be as exclusive as you want, or your school can, or your business, or whatever, but you can’t make that a rule for everyone else. That’s where we run into problems.

We can’t make that call for the rest of the world. But we don’t have to approve what they do. If we approve what God detests, how are we any better than the world?

In fact, we need to hate sin. Not feel tolerant of it.

The more you can hate sin, but not feel an animosity toward people, the closer you are to Christlikeness.

Until next time–Natasha.

Non-stop.

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I can’t believe that 250 years after American was founded, saying it is great is actually controversial even among its own people.

This isn’t about Yankee pride or anything like that. actually my ancestors were confederates. (That’s a joke.)

Anyway, I digress. I doubt my lineage has anything to do with how I feel about America. But as I’ve said before I used to not really like my country. Not because of slavery, or racism, which has been everywhere and only has changed drastically in a few select nations; but because people didn’t seem to care about our ideals anymore. If anything the Liberal Left seems to hate everything we were built on.

Slavery was wrong, yes. Though I might point out, that’s still not universally accepted around the world. It’s only a given here because it became the popular opinion.

The world at large never changes, it just morphs into different shades of the same thing.

But once I began reading up on America’s history I found that America has always been a place that cannot be judged by its government but by its people. It was founded fort hat reason.

If you look through what the founding fathers wrote after the county was started, you’ll find an underlying theme of respect for people. For farmers, for blacksmiths, for the common person.

And believe it or not, many of them were quite progressive for their time. Jefferson argued that Native Americans had rights. He still regarded them as not quite bright, but he thought they could be taught, though how to do that without ruining their culture remained a puzzle to him.

Sure, it’s easy to say now that he was still racist, but in a time when a lot of people regared the natives as trash and savages, he would have been quite controversial.

I also find the attitude of tearing down our founders because they did wrong things to be incredibly hypocritical.

We act surprised and shocked that they were still human beings who made mistakes. And we blame them for their wrong ideas about race and social Justice. Even though we have paved our way to social justice because of what they wrote and what they did.

Do we really think our beliefs now are so inscrutable as to be more correct in every way then theirs were.

In my opinion for every problem of theirs we’ve corrected, we have added one or two more of our own, because we have forgotten what enabled them to succeed at making a better country even with their flaws.

I just finished rereading “Carry on, Mr. Bowditch.” The story of America’s first great navigator who revolutionized navigation in a time when America really need to get its feet wet in the world of sea trade. (Pardon my pun.)

Perhaps some of you have seen or listened to Hamilton. The rap/light opera based on Alexander Hamilton’s life.

If you have heard it, you know his childhood was tough. But as the songs expressed, he was determined to “not throw away his shot.”

Back then, (and in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch I found the same theme) these exceptional founders and the geniuses who came after them, felt it was not unusual to want to make something of their lives. To live well, and add something to the world.

It was the American dream. Not that everything would be easy, but that success and meaning is possible.

If you listen to the last song in Hamilton, you’ll know his wife lived 50 more years after he was killed, and accomplished what women were not supposed to be able to accomplish in her time. Yet I had never heard of her before I listen to that. Afterward I looked it up, apparently it was all true. She started an orphanage, she recorded Hamilton’s life, which is why we know so much. She wanted his story to be told, and int he rap opera, they have fulfilled her wish, hundreds and thousands of people who would never read a book about it are still learning about him.

Both Hamilton and Bowditch had rough lives. And all the founders I read about had the same. People died, they got sick, they were poor. yet all of them save for a sad few, they bounced back.

American ideals were made possible by American grit. The attitude that if life knocks you down, you don’t just lie there, you get back up.

Now, if we lose our wife and almost die of a terrible disease and live through a war, we go to therapy. If our life sucks, so many of use choose to end it. We see no reason to keep living, we throw it away.

And reading their stories, I wonder what made them decide not to commit suicide, this kind pf pain seems unbearable. One terrible thing happened after another. Life was so fragile. Nothing was certain.

but as Hamilton has simply put it “I’m not throwing away my shot” and as the musical said “That man was nonstop.” And that’s the answer.

They were non-stop. If they lost a wife, eventually they remarried. If they lost a child, they still dared to have more. If they lost heir land, ended up flat broke, they got a job and climbed back up the ladder. They dared to go to sea even when every man in their family has died at sea. And their women either helped them int heir work, or let them do it without whining about it.

Non-stop. You never stop to let hardship turn into despair. That was their secret. You keep at it.

It’s like they say about riding a horse, surfing, or any sports you can get hurt in. Once you go down, you get back in the minute you can, or you never will.

Life is like that.

That spirit is the American spirit at its best. And while we aren’t perfect, that has always been the key to our changing and improving ourselves. If we lose that now, we lose our identity.

I don’t think, mind you, that you have to be American to have that kind of grit, my point it simply that our country was built by it and because of it.

Because we had the guts to say we can be responsible for own success and we don’t need a dictator to control our lives.

It seems like now that’s what we want. And make no mistake, we’ll get it if we continue to want it.

But I’m not going down yet. I have a legacy to live up to.

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.