I Don’t Want to be Me Anymore
You know, I am really getting annoyed with God.
Each day I hate that He made me the person and man that I am. Each day I have more and more examples of people and girls — especially girls — who seem to be repulsed by me.
Yet, if OTHER people do things that I do, or act the way I do, or say things I do or perform on the field as I do, people, and especially girls, give them plenty of attention. But me… nothing. Cold shoulder. I’m getting fed up with this.
I wish I could just flip a switch and turn off everything about myself that makes me… me. Turn off all my emotions, all my feelings, all my passion. I don’t want to feel ever again.
If I can’t feel, then I won’t care. If I don’t care, then I won’t feel all this pain inside every time I’m rejected or ignored or shunned for being… me.
I don’t want to be me anymore…
Over-Emphasis on the Act of Sex Damages the Non-Sexual Aspects of Relationships
Great comment by Monty in response to this post by “Ace” at AoSHQ on the continued hypersexualization of the tween and teen pop culture: Katy Perry To Her Tweener Girl Customers: Have Sex, It’s So Awesome!!!
For those stigmas to work, one must buy into the judgmental God.
==========Well… God is judgemental. That’s His basic job description, in fact. If you don’t like being judged, then religious faith probably isn’t for you. (And I use “you” in the general, not specific, sense here.)
Shame has a valuable role in advancing civilization. Shame indicates a strong moral component in a society. (“I’m not ashamed of what I am!”, I hear all the time. “That’s the problem,” I respond. “You should be.”)
Sexual mores change all the time. It’s a pendulum, and it tends to swing back towards chastity and fidelity when the social costs of promiscuity become too great to bear. Paternity of children, sexual jealousy, and the institution of marriage all factor into it. If you accept the axiom that the family is the core building block of civilization (as I do); and that the family unit is composed of man, wife, and children (as I do); then it leads you inexorably to the conclusion that any social change that damages that basic building block is necessarily injurious to the cause of civilization as a whole.
Women suffer more than men from sexual promiscuity, fair or not. That’s what’s so socially perverse about promoting “sexual freedom” among young girls: it’s basically telling them to do the worst possible thing for themselves. And it’s not really possible to undo the damage later in life, when you wish you’d done things differently. (Children born from a thoughtless drunken roll in the hay will not magically disappear just because you feel sorry about it.)
I also think that an over-emphasis on the sexual act itself damages the non-sexual aspects of male/female relationships. If the only way that males and females can relate to each other is through coitus, that’s just really sad.
Posted by: Monty at September 27, 2010 02:25 PM
Monty makes a great point about “sexual freedom” being the worst thing possible for young girls (and unmarried girls/women in general, in my opinion). As I commented when I shared this link on my Facebook:
I think ‘Ace’ is a little off on the average age when girls *give away* (not “lose”, no one just “loses” their virginity, they *give it away*) their virginity. I know at least one person who gave theirs away in 8th grade at 14. Their rationale was that they didn’t want to go to HS a virgin. And this was back in 1995. And our society has become extremely more sexualized in the last 15 years. My best guess is that the average age for first-time sex is 6th-7th grade, so around 12-13-14 years old.
This stuff is celebrated and promoted by liberals, because they WANT tweens and teens having sex. Because the more sex they have, the more “unwanted” pregnancies occur and the more women they can push to have abortions. Gotta keep the abortion industry going.
In addition, liberals win even if the tweens and teens decide not to get abortions. The more single young mothers they have, the more people they have on welfare.
And this is why I have repeatedly stated that social conservatism is tied directly to fiscal conservatism and cannot be ignored. The hypersexualization of society is tied in directly to the welfare state, which affects every taxpaying American citizen.
Unfortunately, I don’t think even those people who claim to have a problem with Katy Perry marketing to tweens and teens to have sex will agree that the logical ideal solution is to frown upon *all* promiscuous sex and to promote the ideal of saving sex for marriage. I believe that when our culture and society separated sex from marriage — where it’s primary focus was to be to express love between spouses and procreation — that is where we started to go downhill.
So this is not just a problem among the tween and teen community. This is a problem for people of all age groups. Afterall, you can’t say that it’s okay for someone in their 20s or 30s to have promiscuous sex, but frown upon it for tweens and teens. What’s the difference? There are the same risks of STDs and “unwanted” pregnancies and single motherhood no matter the age group. The problem is that even while people will condemn the message of Katy Perry — and social liberals in general — when it comes to tweens and teens, I bet most aren’t willing to condemn it for the unmarried of all ages.
And that’s the problem. All they’re doing is saying “don’t have sex when you’re a tween or teen, because it’s not good to be a tween or teen single mother or get an STD at that age. BUT, go ahead and have all the sex you want once you’re legal, because (apparently) it’s quite alright to be a single mother or contract an STD in your 20s!”
The simple solution is to go back to promoting — promoting, not legislating — the ideal of waiting to have sex until marriage. Unfortunately, not enough people are willing to do that.
Great comment (from the link above):
My 9 year old asked for Katy Perry on her MP3 player. After reading some of the lyrics, I declined and told my daughter that it was trashy and inappropriate. I have found that a display of distaste is much more effective than shock!shock! at some of this garbage.
Posted by: MDH3 at September 27, 2010 03:09 PM
Having raised [almost, I think] a stepson, son and identical twin girls, I can vouch for the importance of a nose wrinkle and “that is so vulgar” response when they try to push your buttons. My house was always filled with the kids and their friends. We had rules- shoes and hats off, greet the parents, and out of the family room every 45″ for fresh air and food.
They NEED us, WANT us to set those limits and boundaries to make them feel safe. Yes, I know my girls stashed unapproved tops or dresses to change into when they left the house a couple of times, but what was important is that they knew it was wrong and I could tell by how bratty they were the next day due to the guilt. They need the limits- gives them something to push against.
Now 28, 22 and almost 21, all of them have told me that they loved the fact that if they were at all uncomfortable about something, they could say “My parents would kill me, and you’d probably be next”. All of their friends understood.
I do happen to agree with Ace, there is a huge attempt to hypersexualize kids at younger and younger ages, but there are repercussions for these campaigns. Anyone remember thongs for 8 year-old girls from Abercrombie and Fitch? That was such a disaster, they had to come up with the Hollister chain to recoup profits.
Posted by: Museisluse at September 27, 2010 04:51 PM
Batman is Positive for Boys. Twilight is Toxic for Girls.
Great comment left in reply to the many Twilight fangirls who had their wittle feewings hoited by this great post about the bad lessons girls could potentially learn from the Twilight series:
“Yeah, like I’m waiting for your follow-up. What Unfortunate Lessons Boys Learn from the Bond, Bourne, Die Hard, Spiderman, Bat Man, X-Men, Transformers etc. series. I guess won’t be holding my breath though. ;)”
The lessons of Batman, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Bourne, Taken, etc. are overall positive for boys and men and Twilight toxic for girls.
From Batman, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Bourne, etc. are the lessons that men must ENDURE: hardship both physical and emotional, while not expressing emotion, and that physical strength must be tempered by CONTROL. That the world can be often ugly and violent, and a man’s response is to respond in kind to REDUCE the violence (by defeating the villains). Much of the stuff in these movies (and source material) is not about the fighting, rather it is the decision to risk death by DECIDING to fight. Instead of walking away. While still operating within acceptable moral limits.
Boys need these stories, they tell them how to act to control their superior physical strength and prevent their emotions (just as strong as women) from running them. When a girl gets angry and hits a boy, no big deal, she’s not very strong. Different story for a guy.
Twilight is not that far off either from all those Rom Cons such as “Awful Truth” or “27 Dresses” or “the Proposal,” fairly toxic messages for girls/women to embrace lust (and a man’s status/power) as markers for romantic decision making. Call them the anti-Jane Austen.
Men like stories that show them how to channel their strength to win admiration of other men and the girl. Women like stories that show them how to nab the bad boy. There’s your difference.
My Philosophy: Do Unto Others…
A Facebook friend posted the following Biblical message tonight:
“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
To which I responded thusly:
Meh. I used to believe that when I was young. Then I experienced life.
And got sh## on every which way for trying to be a nice person… with women, with people in public, at work, etc. So, I decided to trash that philosophy.
Now, it’s “do unto others twice as bad as they do unto me, so they stop doing unto me that which I don’t want them to do”.
‘Killing people with kindness’ hasn’t worked for me. All it does is invite more people to take advantage of me, lie to me and walk all over me. I have had quite enough of that.
Yeah, I guess the world ain’t much of a better place based on my change in philosophy, but I no longer go batchit crazy from people treating me like crap all the time.