Haplessly, my ears will tune out for it, especially when it comes to topics about women. It's two months away from November 2012. Politics are in the pan right now, and are slowly sluicing into the fire. It's inevitable, and it has been slowly creeping into the classroom.
Inevitable, also, to hear some of the things people say when discussing politics. Does it matter what side they are on? No. Modern media, there's literally millions of outlets and news sources where people can go to for their types of information, where they can listen and read the same ideas all day long and not even bother to listen to the opposition's position. It's self-brain wash, and people very rarely try to educate themselves beyond the boundaries of their own values. It's natural, maybe, to shut themselves in like that, to not have to hear things they don't want to hear. Because the idea that maybe you're wrong or that someone whose ideas or values differ from your own in such a foreign way, is scary. It' not a brave thing about people, avoiding self-conflict like that, and it certainly doesn't press forward for any self-development or progress. A faith unchallenged is no faith at all.
Which is why I've started to write, once again, about issues that matter to me. I said in my first post about how I was tired of fighting. I'm not: I'm tired of not being able to, when the time comes, to defend myself. My ideas, my values, my morals. The facts and the truth, unimpeded by the media or news forums. What my own personal research has amassed, the things I have taught myself, the things that I believe, wholly and entirely, by my own conscious, not what someone else tells me to think, to believe. And maybe that's a little naive. But I'm trying, and that has to count for something.
Last year, I had published my first opinion, and argument, in The Torch. It was a story on birth control and the parties that were trying to encumber women's access to it. What the hell, you might even remember it.
Oh man, the backlash I'd ended up with. Besides from the juvenile responses of You said the word hell! I got a lot of good responses, a lot of bad. But the most important, I learned, that was I had received any response at all: the people, specifically girls my age, who had taken time to read it, were thinking for themselves. What I had written, to my everlasting amazement, had girls my age considering their own thoughts and beliefs, deconstructing what they had been raised in, what the media had told them, and what life had taught them. And that felt good, you know? If you can't question yourself, then why the hell should you be allowed to question others? There's this quote I really like, and I find it fits nicely in my point.
"You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself."
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Solid quote.
Course, that's not to mention the negative response. Summary for those too lazy to read it: Where in my editorial, I argue for the rights of women for access to birth control, and how it should be no one else's decision; Catron argues that birth control is a infringement on religious freedom. It was published an issue or two after mine, and no one had told me that it was going to print, that the editorial had even existed. Surprise.
And you know what? Good for her, for standing up for what she believes in. I did my piece, she did hers. Of course, that doesn't mean I agree with her, but I respect her for her opinions and for her decision to voice them. The grace of respect, I find, is disintegrating. In a culture that places value in being "politically correct", it's ironic that the only people who our media grants such respect to is those with the power to demand it. This is something that happens all the time. For example, TV Tropes does a wonderful job on this page describing how the media often portrays certain races. This is what we are raised in, stereotypes and other discriminatory 'characteristics' that continue to be perpetuated by the media, and thus, society. It works vice versa.
So I've already taken my first beat down. But I'll live. It's time to get back into the old game. I'm a tough one.
I know that now.
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