Controversy.

Ladylikeness is weak?

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I was just scrolling though a comment section for MLP and I found someone trolling people about feminism.

A little context: The episode is called “A Dog and Pony Show.”

It ends with Twilight saying that just because someone is ladylike, it doesn’t make them weak.

And there weren’t too many people harping on about it. In fact, I didn’t see any feminist comments, but I did see someone who was clearly trying to get some kind of reaction by calling it feminist and saying “Face it, ladies are weak.”

What’s funny? No girls were taking the bait, but one other guy watching did.

Now, I really think this is not most men. I somehow doubt this particular dude even hates women, he probably just doesn’t like feminism.

But I can’t help but think, feminists overreact all the time to pretty innocuous stuff, but I guess it can go both ways.

It makes me think of a Girl Meets World episode Girl Meets STEM, which a guy who reviewed it said had a feminist message. He wasn’t against the message, but I had watched it and concluded the episode was actually warning girls not to swallow the man-hating pill.

As a woman, I really can’t call it anything else. If I talked about men the way many of these feminists and their shows do, I’d conclude I hated them.

And let’s talk about this.

A lot of women become feminists because they had poor father figures who did not respect them, some come out of abusive households.

It’s just as likely to produce weak women, but I’d also argue that not all feminists are particularly strong.

I have to think of what my Mom said of one woman (it wasn’t a feminist by the way, just some girl on a survival TV show talking about having a hard life) who said her experiences made her strong, but then after two days of the challenge was KO-ed.

My mom made the observation that just because you survived something it doesn’t make you strong.

I’ve talked about why I’m not a feminist before. I believe in equal rights, same as any smart person, I would hope. But its’ for the same reason I don’t like Black History month, I don’t see the point of flaunting it.

Black history should be taught along with other history, as it makes sense in the curriculum, not set aside for it’s own month. If we gave every ethnicity its own month, we’d have a hopelessly disjointed curriculum, and unless we do that, we’re still being biased. Better to dot hem all together as it chronologically makes sense, then we can give everyone attention.

And I don’t seem the point of flaunting womanhood either. It’s not like it’s something you could control being.

I think the real reason for many women who really hate men and demand special treatment is that their father did give them the kind of treatment they should have received. Girls want to be treasured (so do boys) and loved, when they aren’t, they can become depressed or angry, or both usually.

I remember, I was angry. At age 11 or so, I got called out on it. No one tried to find out why I was angry.

Looking back, my problem, among other things, was that my dad did not pour into my life… he was hardly in it at all personally, though he lived at my house and my parents have a decent relationship. But my dad, the older I got, paid less and less attention to me. Unless I was in trouble. I think you know the story.

And I never did the things teenage girls usually get in trouble for. You’d be surprised how little it took to get me sent on a guilt trip as a young teen.

Even to this day that has not changed. But I changed. I’m not living in anger anymore.

And in full honesty, I have had my times of being tempted to put men into a box. I also know men have the same temptation with women. A lot of them have had moms who didn’t do so well with them, girlfriends who didn’t, and so on.

I suspect that they are just quieter about it. Now that the culture is more in favor of women.

I really don’t think it make one gender worse or better that we’re both tempted to stereotype each other, it just make sense. Once bitten, twice shy. You have one bad experience with a man, it’s easier to make all men the face of your problem. And vice versa.

The best thing to do is not to play into it. Don’t be what they think you are. Nevermind if they interpret all your actions into their image of you, if you know you are doing it, then that’s what matters.

Justice, I’ve learned, can come slowly, but it comes.

As for the question of ladylikeness being weak, I really think it’s obviously not true. The examples are getting rarer now that girls are encourage to act like bros, a thing that suits some women, and puts others at a huge disadvantage.

From my experience, ladylikeness is power. I’m the type of girl who gets doors opened for her, has boys pick up things for her, and offer to carry things (that happens more as a general rule with the guy though.) I credit the guys for choosing to be chivalrous.

I am also the kind of girl who puts effort into her appearance to show I respect myself.

See, the beautifying thing women do, it’s not all about attracting men (though it has been minimized to that.) I think the movie I’ve seen do this best is Miss Congeniality, where Vic asks Grace if she respects herself when she doesn’t want to put any effort into her looks because the contest is rigged.

It’s not that much of a conundrum, really. Men will wear work clothes to work, dress clothes to the office, sports clothes to a sports event. They don’t even care as much as us usually, but it’s a simple matter of showing respect and support.

I think women dress up for the same reason. We embrace beauty as a way to show we appreciate it, and that we want to spread it around. We put care into our appearance to show we respect ourselves, and if we respect ourselves, we are likely to respect others.

There’s a reason decent men usually feel a healthy respect for a woman who dresses with care. It’s always worked for me. Though, I think they can also tell is you’re doing it because you’re insecure. I think anyone can usually tell that.

Ladylikeness is about respect, really. It’s about not opening yourself up to scorn by being unladylike, not because it’s okay to scorn a girl who acts more tomboyish, but because it is also okay to have style that is distinctly feminine.

One more thing: Ladies, for goodness sake, do not freak out if a guy says you look good! I know a lot of you don’t, but if you do, remember, even if he is being a jerk, you don’t have to let it get to you, and chances are he might just be complimenting you.

Personally, I don’t care. I know I look good, if you say it you’re just acknowledging the obvious. You don’t gain or lose  a lot of points either way. So long as it’s not said in a creepy tone.

Anyway, that’s my take on it for the time being, until next time–Natasha.

Aftermath–plus special announcement at the end.

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“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”–C. S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man.)

I’ve written about this brilliant little book before, but one thing that interests me that I have not really touched on is what happened in the aftermath of it.

The system in England when Lewis wrote that books was followed pretty quickly by America, it was probably already in place in the rest of Europe at the time, at least the countries at the forefront of our minds.

Nazism, the great evil of the War, was leading to the abolition of most men, but Lewis was concerned that what they were teaching schoolboys (and girls no doubt) was going to lead to the abolition of all men, in feeling if not in biological form.

Wise men saw where it was going, but where has it taken us now?

We live in the Post-Modern era. It is rightly called that, if we mean by modern Modernism, which Lewis and his predecessor G. K. Chesterton were both very much concerned with. Modernism was not about being modern in a fashionable sense, like it’s usually used now, or referring to technology or medicine. Modernism was the principles, or lack thereof, of thorough rationality. Which Chesterton showed in his book Orthodoxy to really be irrational.

It is basically materialism, but with odd ideals on top of it, that really make no sense whatsoever if you take the idea literally that nothing has any value except in our own emotions.

But as Lewis pointed out, the men who taught this didn’t believe it themselves. They were teaching values in spite of themselves. The problem is, even if they were better than what they taught, it had the same effect on their students as if they hadn’t been.

My parents, and perhaps your parents generation were the prime victims of this teaching’s first effects.

You’re probably familiar with how psychology got very popular in the 60s-90s, and it still is now. It was beginning before then, but at least in America, it really took off once we began pushing religion aside and needed explanations for all the phenomenon’s sin and human nature used to explain.

We’ve come full circle almost in the pat few decades, we’ve come back to realizing that psychology explains nothing. Now we are looking to physics and other such things, we’re looking to sexuality, we’re looking to race, we’re looking to everything except what originally worked for people: Religion.

My dad had behavioral issues as a kid, and born when he was, he was medicated, put in Special Ed and diagnosed with mental illness, he tried rehabilitation. Like many people of his generation, and ours, he also tried drugs.

It’s strange that drugs and psychology both took off at around the same time. (People can bicker about dates, but a few years or even a decade on the grand scale of time is pretty much the same time.) Both were around before then, but they got popularized, jsutfied, studied, and theorized about. They came to be seen as normal.

Clearly they aren’t the same thing, but strange that the very thing that told us that our dependence on substance was a problem coming from deeper issues did nothing to stop us from abusing substances.

Have you noticed that to highlight a problem in society is no to weaken it, but exposing it makes it become uglier, more used, more prolific, draws more people in.

Exposing it just to comment on it, that is, real solutions are different.

But Psychology did not fix anything, it diagnosed things. Medication could not fix those problems, in face many meds make the problems they treat worse. My dad went off his, and does better now that he did while on them. (Of course, you should be careful about getting off medication, the process is difficult and should be walked through with a doctor’s help. He didn’t quit all at once.)

Now, we live in the information, option generation. In the aftermath of all that identifying, we’ve become clueless about what to do.

Relationships have been diagnosed, studied, and tested; the result? We have a really hard time maintaining even eye contact.

Are they directly related things?

I think so.

Exposing how bad we are at relationships did not help us fix them. It made the revelation overwhelming.

Before, people knew some folks were bad at relationships, but those who were were seen as responsible for their own actions. Since no one thought it was genetically inevitable, people could try to improve, or could be ignored by the general public if they chose to remain unpleasant. Not knowing how deep our mental problems supposedly went, we thought we could move on.

Having it blown so completely out of proportion crippled us. Because it made us think we were powerless to do anything about it.

Doubting our ability to control ourselves is now common phrasing for young people. “That’s just the way I am.”

But we took it further.

It was too depressing to live in that, so we began to take these things that were exposed so that we could not hide them anymore, and we began to say they were not bad, not shameful, after all. Instead they were cool, enlightened, they were our identity.

It’s okay to be gay, it’s okay to have mental health issues, it’s okay to have a disability, it’s okay to do what makes you happy.

Not all the above examples are on the same level of crazy of course, but they all stem from the same thing, a desire to take a shame and turn it into a pride.

In some cases that may be okay. But we’ve gone way, way too far past that line.

I do not blame young people all that much for being so stupid, not really.

When I read books written in the 60s-80s, I often find them depressing.

The infamous Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus was one of the most insulting things I ever read on the difference between men and women. A lot of authors who commented on it were condescending to both genders.

Like our differences can be summed up in quirks. Try it and it fails you, you’ll never find any one thing that makes men and women different other than our sexual organs, if you look only at what we do and what we enjoy and what we hate and how we think. The difference is harder to pin down then that, anyone who tires just makes fool of themselves.

When the explanation for differences was so stupid and limiting, it’s in line with human nature to throw it out and go to the opposite extreme, that there are no differences. That’s insane, but it’s less boring. Youth do like exciting things.

Plus, the new and different aspect is attractive to many people.

If you look at any popular attitude held now, you can trace it back to evolving from an attitude the previous couple of generations have. We have mutated it into something different.

We now speak less of the values they valued, and more of vague ideas about self-fulfillment. But it all make sense, that age of reason led to discrediting pleasure and fulfillment as in our own minds, leaving the young people weaponless to defend pleasure on the grounds o fr eason, the natural result we that young people ignored reason, ignored common sense, and ignored restraint.

Now we have this mess.

IF you listen to how we talked now, it’s becomes obvious. People acknowledge that there are reasons to ear healthy, exercise, and focus on happy things; but then make a joke out of doing none of those things. They laughed it off, but behind the humor, there’s a secret guilt, and a secret bewilderment.

Why, if it is so obvious, do we find nothing compelling about reason? And why, if it is so unimportant, do we make a joke out of not following it that hides a note of serious concern.

We are unsettled. We are drifters. The previous generations removed the foundation of our lives, tried to put a weak one in it;s place, but like sand, it crumbled when the floods of real problems struck again. It was never going to hold up.

But, lacking both  a solid foundation, and now even a sandy one, we have none. Hence our myriad of problems that center around confusion, uncertainty, and depression. Our general feeling of purposelessness.

We now do not have the logical skills to explain why we feel this way, only words of mental illness, social anxiety, and being addicted to screens.

We laugh at it because we have no idea what to do about it.

This, I present to you, is the aftermath of the abolition of Man, our humanity is not gone completely, thanks to God and the preservation of some values even so, but it is hanging by a thread because our defenses are so weak.

We are glorifying our weaknesses because we have been robbed of our strength and glory.

That is what happened. And it turns out, abolishing man’s strength and glory is very close to abolishing man himself, it is good for us that God redeems our weaknesses, or we would have no hope.

But we do have hope. That’s what this blog is about after all. That even dry bones can live again.

It is now almost the third or fourth anniversary of when I started it with just that premise. And I still think that  a return to truth is the only way to preserve hope.

So, with that in mind, until next time–Natasha.

Announcement:

I have now published the first two parts of a series I wrote on Kindle!

It is about superheroes, mystical creatures, and mysteries.

There may be over 20 parts in all, at 0.99 an installment (lowest price possible), if you would like to check it out, here’s a link to find it, the series is called “When It Started.”

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=When+it+started+Natasha+Queen&rh=n%3A154606011&ref=nb_sb_noss

The Cruelty of God–2: Polaroid

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I talked about why God has the right to take things, but this does not exactly answer the question of whether it is cruel for Him to do so, only that it is not wrong.

And there are multiple reasons. But for the kind of thing I was talking about, the thing most precious to you, there is an answer that no one likes, but everyone needs to hear.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the way human beings tend to love things. While thinking about it, I started thinking of the song by Imagine Dragons, Polaroid.

If you haven’t heard it, the lyrics go like this:

“I’m a reckless mistake, I’m a cold night’s intake, I’m a one night too long, I’m a come on too strong.

Chorus: All my life I’ve been living in the fast lane, can’t slow down I’m a rolling freight train, one more time gotta start all over, can’t slow down I’m a lone red rover.

I’m a hold my cards close, I’m a wreck what I love most, I’m a first class let down, I’m a shut up, sit down.

I am head case, I am the color of boom, that’s never arriving, yet you are the pay raise, always a touch out of view, and I am the color of boom…

Chorus

I’m a midnight talker, I’m an alley walker, I’m a day late two face, I’m a burn out quick pace. 

I am a head case, I am the color of boom that’s never arriving, yet you are the opera, always in time and in tune, and  I cat he color of boom…

Chorus

I’m gonna get ready, for the rain to pour heavy, let it fall, let it fall, let it fall upon my head…”

What I noticed about this song was that the man compares himself to a bunch of negative things, and what they all have in common is this idea of falling short by going too far. He can’t stop himself. He’s reckless, too cold, he goes one night too long, he comes on too strong.

The whole image of a fast lane, and being a rolling freight train implies he is stuck on high speed. He even says “can’t slow down.” And when he start all over, he does the same thing. Which is why he’s alone.

Holding cars close implies he also goes too far with secrecy and caution. Leading him to wreck what he loves. Making him a let down, and someone people tell to shut up and sit down because he goes too far.

He then says this had made him a head case. The color of boom imagery ties in to how hard he tries, but int he end he just looks like he’s going to come through, and then he never does.

His frustration is that the person he’s singing to is out of his reach because he can’t get it under control.

The last verse suggests being alone and in the dark, and using up your life too fast.

Then, even more interesting, he compares himself to the other person, saying they are always in time and in tune. They have the self control he lacks, and it makes them beautiful.

Then, on a more hopeful note, he turns to rain. Something that he can’t control, but can save his life. The only thing with more than enough to satisfy him.

How does this relate? I’m glad you asked. (I hope you asked.)

What Imagine Dragons has hit upon with this song is the same thing in “Till We Have Faces” and “Hinds Feet on High Places.” When we love, we go too far, and not far enough at the same time. By not being able to stop and be satisfied, we ruin our chances. (Notice in the song, letting the rain fall on his head is the one time he stops moving.) God does not have that problem.

We cling to everything we can get our hands on. We have that one thing we stake all on, and if it is not God, he is, as that commentator scornfully said, a jealous God.

And only someone who scorned God could not see why He should be.

We destroy ourselves and each other in our mad quest for satisfaction. Or, in some cases, our absolute refusal to be satisfied by anything but dissatisfaction. (Apathy, pessimism, cynicism.) We hold our sins–and our virtues–so tightly, we become slaves to them.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death.” (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25.)

God is more than right to call us on this, but He does more than that. He will wrench the thing from our grasp.

If it’s a person, or if it’s our career, or if it is a thing, it usually doesn’t matter. It may not b e a death, it could just be a separation. It could be hospitalization for it. That’s not really the point.

We worship these things, when we should only worship God.

Frankly, it is our desire to have our cake, at all costs, that kills us.

You are addicted to TV, it breaks, you replace it.

My dad used to be addicted to a video game, it would break our computer. The computer would freeze up playing the game, but not doing other things. To us, the hint was clear, but he would just buy a new computer. Not that we could afford it.

I’m happy to say he has quit, but for years it was a problem.

God seems cruel to do this to us. But if he let us live in that, we would put ourselves into our own hell. We want to be left alone to ruin our lives, they are ours right? But God will not leave us alone.

People can hate Him for that, but for my part, I decided a long time ago that I love Him for it, I did not like how life under my idol felt.

When God takes something; sometimes, even often, He later gives it back, now redeemed; purified from our addiction, we can enjoy it for the good it actually was.

But in the end, it is more important to have God himself. And I will not apologize for saying so. The worst time of my life has been when I felt I did not have Him.

Until next time–Natasha.

The Cruelty of God.

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I’ve had this phrase stuck in my head since last night. It sounds blasphemous, but I promise, I have not fallen off the deep end.

This thought has come to me from a few different directions. One thing that started it was a rather nasty string of comments under a Christian Movie review of Left Behind (the terrible 2014 one.)

Commentater: Good question! The Christian God is fond of punishing the sons for the sins of the father, so maybe the baby would just be born in a shit world?

I mean, the Catholic idea of “original sin” is Adam’s sin, which needs to be washed away with baptism. Other Christian denominations think Jesus’s blood solved the whole original sin deal with the crucifixion alone. But 40 years of wandering in the desert was because of the golden calf worship; that’s a definite example of kids paying for their parents’s misstep. (To, ahem, say nothing of the genocides committed by Israelites when God was like “These people don’t believe in me. Feel free to kill them all.”) Even the Christian God brags about it when he’s all “I’m a jealous God, and I will mess up your kids if you cross me.” So yeah, I guess from a Christian perspective I can see that it would be like ‘Let that atheist bitch have her godless kid during the apocalypse; serves them right for not believing!” It certainly fits with the mythology.

Boy, these people sound embittered.
I hope it’s okay to quote them anoyomously, since comments are basically anyoumous. I ahve no idea who these people are.
And I don’t want to attack them personally. They simply sum up an idea I’ve seen before; and I have asked myself, if God is good, then why okay such things?
Even in Christian’s personal relationship with God, he can do things that seem terribly cruel. Just read Job.
The cruelty of God has been summed up by one lady who said “If this is how you treat your friends, I can see why you have so few.”
And in nowhere have I seen it better handled (outside of the Bible) than in that underrated book Hinds Feet on High Places. (I mean, maybe it’s not underrated, it might be too specific to be widely popular.)
In that story, Much Afraid is asked to sacrifice the human love in her heart, a love that it rooted in every fiber of her being, and it hurts terribly to do this.
Another good book for the subject is “The Great Divorce.”Though C. S. Lewis is not one to humor delusion. He shows quite clearly why the things we cling t are bad for us.
But the cruelty of God is simply this:He demands of us what is most precious, and were are most invested in, the very thing we built our life on, staked our hopes and dreams one, and would die for, HE demands us to Give UP…or, if we won’t, often He takes it from us.
Job said “The Lord gave me what I have, the Lord has taken it away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
I’ll need to split this post int two parts to properly cover my point, so in this one, I will focus on the charge against God and how it might be answered, and the next one, I will lay out why I think God might have a few things to say of us in return that could shift our perspective.
But like all humans, I have a limited view of things, and there is likely more to it than I can say.
So, first of all, the Charge that it is cruel for God to take children or parents away. As made by the commentators above, and millions of other people through time.
Why is it not made by Job? he was not wicked or rebellious against God, God pronounced Him righteous in fact. Satan is the one who accused him, God let Satan take away even his children.
Job says “God gave me what I have, God has taken it away.”
God’s response at the end of Job is much the same. “I made all this, can you make these things? Then why do you question my right to do as I wish with them?”
God in his humility sometimes deigns to explain things to us, but we demand explanations when we should instead just be thankful for them. Why should God have to explain Himself to us?
The simple fact is, God owns everything…so how can he take it?
It is our problem that we stupidly imagine we own anything in this world that he has not let us have.
I don’t expect this to comfort a bereaved person. Only someone with faith already developed can find comfort in this knowledge. But it still stands. For comfort, we must focus on God’s kindness and patience.
And it is there. Few deities allow themselves to be questioned. Most pagans would not dare to do so of their smaller gods. It is because we first do not believe in God, and second, know that he will not strike us for questioning him, that we take advantage of that freedom.
The charge that it is cruel to kill children for their parents sins is somewhat more serious. That has to do with justice, not ownership.
Not many people like the idea that parent’s own their children in the West. Though at the time the Bible was written, it would not have been questioned. Until you were married, you belonged to your parent. Marriage was the great liberator. Boy, how perceptions have changed.
 God later promises that will no longer be the case, but the reason it ever was it a little more complicated.
It has been scientifically proven that some sins or tenancies to sin get passes down to the 4th generations, which is how far God says he will punish. According to the Bible, the unfortunate outcome of Adam sinning was that sinning became genetic. Our bodies carry the mark of it, as well as our souls.
I do things I’ve seen my parents do, you do too, if you have kids, they copy you.
Frankly, God could punish children just as easily for what they do was for what their parents do. God does not punish innocent people, but if you are already guilty, then family guilt will be added to personal guilt, and in the end, which it is does not matter nearly as much as we pretend it does.
God does not say he will kill the children for their parents sin, by the way. Frankly, no one even in our present time would think it strange if the child of a known criminal or tyrant tried to make amends for what their parent did, we would think it stranger if they didn’t care. And in some cases, the law might even hold them to that.
There were times when children dies for their parents sin. Well, there was two times that come to mind. Only in one case was the child innocent that we know of. And that was David and Bathsheba’s first child.
David does not blame God, he accepts that he will see his son in heaven. It is not, strictly speaking, the child that was punished. David lost the joy of raising him, (he was an affectionate father, we know–maybe too much so,) but the child was not worse off. If anything, going straight to heaven is a reward.
I suppose again, the problem here is if you have no faith, that is cold comfort.
There isn’t much I can say about that. Any defense of God, is first, unnecessary, and second, only sensible if you believe in Him.
Paul said you have to believe that God is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. That he is good, in other words.
That’s all I can cover now, but in part two I’ll break this down more–until next post, Natasha.

Broadening horizons.

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Any other person who’s experienced this is going to recognize this situation almost immediately.

I present to you an ordinary day in my college life going to the language lab to work on French, nice people work there, friendly.

I need to watch a movie, so the person at the desk gets me the catalog. I look through and note one of the movies was one I saw mentioned in y course material, but then I also noted aloud “Oh, but it’s rated R.” At which point I got the look, you know the one, the slightly incredulous/amused look. “You’re in college, I think you could watch an R-rated movie,” she says. To which I replied that I did not really like R-rated content. Indifferently, she said “Well I think you need to broaden your horizons, girl, because it’s really good.” I read the description and it sounded all right. I have certain themes I’ll sit through an R-rated movie for, and at least with R, you know to expect certain scenes and avoid them, unlike PG-13 which can sneak them in when you weren’t looking.Oh, but Natasha, it’s not real.

Yes, they aren’t actually pretending for the camera, they totally aren’t actually touching and kissing, they aren’t actually nude, that’s all CGI now!

(IT’s not CGI, by the way, in case you were wondering if I’m serious. I know not everyone who reads this lives in America, and perhaps the standards are different other places, but here it’s quite ridiculous.

Needless to say, this lady irritated me, but for lack of any real knowledge of French films beyond the terrible one I watched in class (and I was embarrassed by that) I decided to give it a try.

And it eared the R-rating, rather unnecessarily, I thought. It had little to do with the plot. But whatever, I tried to not look whenever I knew what was coming.

The lady also said I seemed kind of judgy as I was looking through the catalog and commenting that one film was probably more depressing in French. (It was Dead Poet’s Society, which is sad already, so it was a joke because French films are known for their sad endings.)

Judgy?

Let me clarify, to me judgy means not simply knowing your own tastes (as I do) but declaring other people’s to be inherently bad because they do not meet your standards, and your standards are based on a sense of self importance, not simple conviction that something is bad to consume.

No one would call it judgy if I chose not to eat McDonald’s but no one would think it was okay for me to say eating there is some kind of crime.

However, man people would be more concerned if I smoked, and not nearly as many would call it judgy to decry it, since it is proven to be harmful.

By the way, have you heard that nobody actually smokes? It’s the cigarette who smokes, the person is the sucker. (Not an original joke on my part.)

Anyway, the point here is that this lady was being kind of judgy of me for commenting on these movies. But my annoyance only increased when I brought the film back and she asked how it was. I admitted I liked it (as in, it was not torture, I don’t think I’d watch it again, it was weird.) She said smugly (though not meanly) “I knew you would. See, you just need to broaden your horizons.” I replied quietly that my standards are based on experience, which I tried to explain before, but she only returned that I should “live life.”

On my way back to my car I though over this and got more annoyed. Broaden my horizons! Spoken with all the confidence of someone who knows nothing about me and what I watch.

Is it really the same thing for me to be skeptical of movies? I can objectively guess what will be in an R-rated film, and if I don’t want to subject myself to it, that is my choice and preference. It’s not that I have never tried it, it is that I have, and found much lacking.

I’ll just say it now: R-rated movies are by and large the most unimaginative, cheap, lazily written, and immoral films I have risked watching. I’m not about to get deeper into it by checking rated X stuff to see if it’s worse, this is bad enough.

R-rated movies substitute swearing for character development; sex for relationship building and two people finding out about each other, which your average crap teen flick will at least try to do; and violence for stakes.

The hard rating and shocking material allows filmmakers to get away with the worst kind of writing, and no one cares, because if they honestly had standards, they would not be watching.

I still remember keenly my disappointment when I watched Children of a Lesser God, a famous movie in the ASL world, and screenplay…and instead of character development, I got them shacking up for half the film and yelling at each other, but neither of them really knew the other well enough for it to feel like a real relationship.

So, one language research movie being such a disappointment, coupled with how much I disliked the other french film I saw, made me skeptical to just assume it would be good.

It was decent.

But the lady who spoke to me honestly would not have cared even if it wasn’t, to her, the whole point was my narrow mindedness, had I hated it, she would have been undeterred because she would have assumed I was too critical–not that I knew what I did like and got exactly what I expected.

Her whole manner was of the sort that your annoying babysitter took with you back in elementary: the superior, more experienced, worldly-wise person, to the young naive, child with overprotective parents.

Are my parents overprotective? I’ve never thought so, I know non-Christian with more protective parents than me. My parents have never stopped me for watching movies I am old enough to watch, if I so choose, my dad used to let my sister watch movies with him that were way too old for them. Which is how they ended up knowing the plot of several adult movie before me, I was always sensitive to disturbing content, like my mom before me.

In my house that was respected. And my dad also realized that just because he likes that stuff did not make it good for him, he’s revised his standards  a lot over the years.

People in this country tend to have an assumption about my type of person. They think we are just too innocent to know how we sound. I am perhaps lucky to get this instead of what my unfortunate peers often get, bullied for being snobs.

My countenance and good manners tend to get me put into the too angelic category of sheltered. The one where they don’t blame you, but think you need to break out of it and not assume you were taught the right thing (and any notion that you could have come to your own conclusions is thrown out immediately. As you can see, even when I told the lady this, she continued to believe I was simply narrow in what I tried.)

Now, if I was mean…or had a more unreserved temper…I could definitely have made this lady think I was the other kind: the pedantic, self-righteous snob sheltered person. They are still discredited, but they just have a manner that makes people more inclined to get mad at them instead of be tolerantly condescending.

I knew I couldn’t change her mind either way. I could only convince her I was crazy on top of it all.

But the whole episode reminded me that I have been treated like this time and gain by various people my entire life. It happened as early on as age 4-5 by my relatives, and still continues this day from some of them, though they now know me to be more assertive so the  belittling tone has disappeared, my family is not cruel enough to be mean on purpose. But that does not stop other people who meet me from treating me the same.

Since I am usually established as a nice girl early one in my acquaintance with anyone I usually get the benefit of the doubt, they assume I am judgy because I have never tired to experience anything else. Probably because my parents topped me. joke’s on them, I got exposed to more things because of my dad than by any other person I know. He had his reasons.

I don’t consider myself judgy. I had times when I was in the past, but I criticize things now based on what I’ve seen of them. I am extremely good at predicting patterns however, so if my instinct says “this is going to get bad” I generally believe, and I’m rarely wrong.

Come to think of it, the people who have always treated me as sheltered never actually got any proof that I was. Other than I don’t know what a lot of TV shows and movies are. I once got told Twilight was a great series by just some such people. Who were all of two years older than me at most, one was a year younger, but they actually bullied me because I was so sheltered.

The real proof of it was I didn’t catch on till the last day, but that had much more to do with not being used to people being  cruel to me than to not reading those stupid books. As if Twilight prepares anyone for real world experiences, ha!

Other Christians have treated met hat way too, they never seem to see the sad irony of doing so.

As a kid, I was telling y sister, I was really a firecracker. She remembers our spirited (to put it nicely) fights, I remember sassing my parents, and standing up to way older people than me whenever I considered it necessary. Was I always right, no, a lot of the times I wasn’t. The point is, I was hardly the little angel these “broaden your horizons” people would imply.

If I though it was worth it, I could have been exposed to more mature content earlier if I chose to be.

It often surprises people after they have known me a while to learn that I am not afraid to declare my opinion, even if it’s unpopular, and that instead of being cowed by debate, I get more emboldened by it.

The truth is, I can take anything except that condescending belittlement of being treated like too naive to get it.

And y guess is, the people who use it have met enough people like me to know that it is most effective in shutting us down. It is unfair, to be sure, but their fear of us makes them wish to put us off.

It’s funny to me how people either act surprised when I say I can be opinionated, or say “yeah, I could see that.”

You know though, my personality is not really the point. Someone could be a meek and mild person, but just as firm in their convictions, and have good reasons for them; they would still be discredited.

I feel I was done a disservice by other members of the church who treated me this way. Though I deal with the same temptations myself sometimes around kids. My Sunday school calls me out for suing words they are told are rude (though they are not cuss words.) I am trying to respect that, since I know how I felt when I was their age. There are few things worse to a christian kid then when their Sunday school teacher does not uphold the values they are taught.

Anyway, this was a lot more of a rant than I meant it to be, but I think there’s some good points in there, it boils down to respect.

I don’t expect respect from the world for my beliefs, but it is difficult to tolerate the scarecrow they set up in my place that they can then ignore or knock over as they choose, since it is not actually what  I think, and I guess I would like to encourage other people who have had this experience not to assume these people are right.

Being sheltered is a paradox anyway, in some ways we are exposed to far more than the average kid in America…but that is not true for other countries. Someday I might have to compare notes with someone who grew up in Africa and see just how much more they saw than the average public-schooler. I already know stuff that would shock you.

Anyway, until next time–Natasha.

Greatness: A blog essay inspired by Deaf Events.

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Greatness is not in our weaknesses, but in how we overcome them we can become great.

So, I have to go to Deaf Events for my ASL class, as I think I’ve mentioned before.

And while there are a few I enjoy, for the most part, I don’t get much out of Deaf Events.

I’ve noticed this thing with the deaf community, I think it’s best if I express it through some notes I took while actually at an event yesterday at my college:

Some of these stories are interesting, and it’s good to know what these people have experienced, but I still don’t understand why they make their disability their identity.

I think how horrified they would be if Jesus healed one of them right now, horrified, because they don’t think they need to be healed. What a way to spit in the face of the Gd who made the ears, and clearly intends most of us to hear.

It all reminds me too much of how The Incredibles points out that exceptional people are pushed down by the ordinary. The kicker is all of us can be exceptional in different ways, but instead of pursuing excellence, we pursue equality.

The strong are shoved out of the way of the weak, instead of the weak being elevated to the strong’s level. Perhaps they (the people sharing) did learn to join the hearing world, but they do not view it as a more complete picture of life. Blind people know they are missing out on something, and who would argue that?

All my life people have wanted me to put my strength aside, one lady here just said “put your hearing aside.” Why? Will deaf people put their deafness aside? No one would even ask them to.

Whether out of pity or a false sense of equality, it really doesn’t matter, either way they still aren’t our equals. [I meant in terms of ability, not that they are not human beings just like anyone else.] Reminds me of Adam Taurus from RWBY and his “lionized” ideas of faunus. Being at a disadvantage does not automatically make you worthy to rule. We forge our strength in suffering–and in joy–if we never have the second, then the first will warp our strength.

I learned to be stubborn by being afraid and angry, but I learned to use my willpower with joys. Why am I always being told to shut up? Using my strength has been the only way I helped people. And we need the strong to lift up the weak. God makes our weaknesses strength, until He does, they don’t help anyone. True of physical weakness as well as other sorts.

That was a bit raw, I know.

Perhaps I sound a bit like a disgruntled hearing person, mad that my advantages are being exposed.

Well, guilty as charged I guess. I am hearing…like most people…and I do have advantages because of that.

Saying deafness is not a disadvantage is akin to saying you don’t need your right arm. You can live without it, and do almost anything really important, but you do need it. Only a lunatic would cut off their right arm.

Yet people willingly choose to be deaf because the idea somehow got popular that it was something to be proud of. Like it was their choice!

Well thanks to the stupidity of socialism, now it is. I don’t mean you should have to get a hearing aid if you don’t want to, but the whole notion that turning down the opportunity to hear is somehow liberating is…insane.

Sure, you might feel like it is…people feel like a lot of things that aren’t true, but objectively, it’s better to be able to hear. IT’s safer, easier on the people around you, and lets you enjoy a lot of things in life.

Deaf people have begun to take pride in the fact that they miss out on all these things, because it means they get to be a part of their deaf culture, and only them. There’s an attitude that hearing people are somehow intruders into it.

Which is totally backwards. I don’t know of a hearing person who’d look at a deaf person as an intruder into our culture, because our culture is…culture. It’s based around being able to hear.

Some people now have the nerve to resent that…like it’s not okay!

And that just gets under my grill, because why the heck should the rest of us feel ashamed for not being…deaf…

Oh excuse me for being able to use my ears…that I have…because I’m supposed to be able to hear…yeah, I should be so ashamed.

Lest you think I’m going off on deaf people, let me just say, I’ve met some who are not like this. I believe the ones I know would probably not say this to my face, or even realize they think this way. What’s unfortunate about it is they don’t realize the implications of the term “deaf pride.”

I have no problem with deaf people in general. The ones I met who treated me like a person who was honestly trying to understand them, I liked. I found them very easy going, friendly, and open. Great! I like people like that.

Imagine my shock when I discovered via my liberal college’s biased material that there’s a lot of deaf people who not only embrace deafness as some kind of gift just by being what it is, but actually think I, as a hearing person, should have to be at their level.

Here’s the deal: I’ve seen videos openly implying that  I should just freaking learn sign language because deaf people feel so unheard and unseen and shut out by hearing people…the irony? The video had to have been shot at a school that welcomed deaf students if there were that many of them involved.

Also, uh, writing exists.

What was funny is one deaf lady at the event I was at was saying “Deaf people don’t need you, they can write, interpreters just make things easier.” Really, well if you don’t need us, quit whining about not being heard…start speaking.

That’s not meant to be cruel. Many of them can speak, or could, had they chosen to learn. And they can speak through other mediums. It’s silly to expect everyone to learn your language. If they want to talk to you, they will; but if you want to have a voice in their culture, you need to learn their language.

I would not take up residence in another culture without learning it’s language. Which is why deaf people do learn to talk… so why the shaming? I’m not really sure what the problem is.

They swear they are oppressed, but in their country, (I know I have readers not from America, so this won’t apply unless you have a similar set up) you literally can get paid for being disabled…yeah…that’s definitely oppression.

“But hearing people just don’t understand deaf people, Natasha. We need to be more accepting of those who are different.”

Oh please.

Yeah, there are jerks out there who mistreat anyone who’s different. Ten to one, it’s not just deaf people either. Bullies are bullies. But there’s more people learning sign now than ever before, more programs for deaf people than before, and more interpreters joining the field. I’m trying to become one for crying out loud!

But if that meas I need to apologize for being hearing, something I cannot control, then why the heck would I want to be involved in their culture? Feeling welcome works both ways.

Oddly enough, the attitude doesn’t seem to carry over into actual conversation very often. It’s  usually just in how we’re taught. Hearing students are made to feel ashamed for being hearing.

My teacher mocks one student in my class for signing one sign wrong weeks ago…it’s now her name sign…her mistake. A minor one at that. Somehow, I imagine if I nicknamed a deaf person based on a word they mispronounced, I would be labeled a jerk. But of course, if you’re the victim, it’s perfectly okay.

Do not tell me it’s different. It is completely disrespectful to a hearing person to do this, just as much as a deaf person. My classmate has spent 4 classes, (a whole year’s worth of her life) learning your language, how dare you mock her for one mistake repeatedly and make that her name. And my other classmates are participating in it.

The girl doesn’t even realize  she’s being dissed, though she’s clearly slightly uncomfortable with it, she laughs it off. What else cans eh do?

I hate bullying, and I would never condone bullying a deaf person. But I won’t condone bullying hearing people either,

See, this may shock some people (probably not you readers) but I couldn’t care less about your race, gender, social status, or abilities; if someone is mistreating you, I want it to stop, and if you are mistreating  someone else, I don’t care what you’ve been through, that’s still wrong. And I will want you to stop.

People may hurt each other thinking they are dong the right thing, because they have been hurt before, and it’s up to those of us outside the cycle of pain to sort things out. An impartial person, as it were.

I won’t say I’m that currently, I’m kind of mad over this whole thing. And I think I should be mad, if students are getting shamed for what they did not do and cannot help.

I’m tired of hearing over and over again that certain people groups are oppressed, and yet all I’m seeing is them being extolled, given special funding, and their own clubs, based on how they were born or what they like, and not on their character.

Oh wait…isn’t that what they say white people are like?

Yeah I have news for you, it’s hard all around, I’m having a terrible time getting hired, and I fit the stereotype perfectly for what people consider white privilege…aside from actually being rich, or privileged in any way I can see outside supposedly being looked at differently. I’ve never had this proven to me.

I am lucky I admit, but I don’t really think it has much to do with being white. If it does, it’s not something I can change anyway.

Anyway, what does bug me about this is everyone has to be a victim to be taken seriously now. You have to have “survived” abuse or cancer or bullying, you have to come “from a background where…” and grown up being “treated differently” or you have no right to speak. Conversely, if you have, then you can speak even if what you’re saying is nothing new, and nothing profound.

You know, call me crazy, but I happen to think truth is truth. And if someone who’s had a good life speaks it, it’s still truth. No one should have to earn that right by being put through crap.

Suffering can add weight to your words because some things only become clear to us after we suffer, but suffering itself does not make you profound or wise, only how you handle it.

Like I was thinking to myself while jotting down my notes, I became stronger because I had joy as well as suffering. I hear people talk about pain all the time, not many of the talk about the joy that brought them out of it. It’s like they don’t even find that important, or maybe it never happened.

We have a culture telling us to accept out issues as unchanging part so who we are that we can manage, but we can’t shake.

Because the world has tried and failed to fix things, by psychology, medicine, laws, and self-expression, and failing at that, (since only God can heal us) they decide to just give up and live with he problem.)

And that’s why it would be horrifying to many dead people to be healed. Because they know no other life, and they think this is part of who they are.

I can see the world thinking this, but when Christians start to, it scares me.

We are clearly taught that God heals, restores, and his design for us is to be whole, inside and out, maybe some things do not get healed in this life, and that can be come people’s gift. But it is only a gift because God redeems it, it isn’t a gift in of itself.

It might totally change your life to be healed, because the truth is, we get comfortable with out flaws and weaknesses. Both inward and outward. It can be scary not to be that way.

But God would warn us  not to put our identity in anything that is not of Him. It will always lead to us limiting Him, and then ourselves.

I apologize for the length of this, the title was partly  a warning, I wanted to complete my thoughts–until next time, Natasha.