Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Mulan means a lot to me, okay

When I was a little kid, Disney’s Mulan was one of my very favorite movies (between that and my unwavering love for Robin Hood, a lot of my current personality traits should be easy to guess).  And there were a lot of reasons, not least of which are:

a) the gorgeous animation (the avalanche, the smoke, the fire, it’s just so incredible);

b) the music (LET’S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS); and

c) Mulan, come on guys, it’s a girl who cheats her way into the army and becomes a hero even when no one–not even herself–believes in her, you had to know that was going to be my JAM.

But…like…it was also one of my favorite love stories (I also really love Beauty and the Beast, which will get its own rant someday), which I recently discovered is not a standard opinion.  A lot of people spend a lot of time making smart remarks about Shang’s gay crisis.  And…this might have just been me, but the change between Ping/Mulan never struck me as the pertinent part of the relationship.  I figured that, yeah, Shang was 100% Here For That even though Ping was his subordinate and therefore off-limits.  And then I figured that Shang was still 100% Here For That after watching Mulan dismantle a palace and light a warlord on fire, with the added bonus that she wasn’t his subordinate.  So my assessment was that Shang was in love with the person, the earnest but slightly awkward person who almost flunked out of the army and specializes in haphazard plans based on blowing shit up and looks startled whenever people like them.  And since he was in love with the person, his anger was because that person lied to him, not because that person had a different set of bits than he’d originally assumed, and his interest was in the person, not in their face or their clothes.

And that meant a lot to me as a kid for reasons that I wasn’t really sure how to articulate.

Here’s the thing.  I am conventionally fairly attractive, through a combination of good genes and good fortune, and I recognize the inherent advantage that entails.  I’m not a show-stopper or anything, but my features are symmetrical and my skin is usually clear and…well, to be honest, the triple-D cup size means that the rest of that stuff almost doesn’t matter.  My shoulders are too broad to look like a pinup and I’m too short to look leggy and curvaceous and I’m too curvy to be ‘petite’, but I did okay on the physical end of the spectrum.  I could probably understand if someone came up and asked to buy me a drink or something.  I consistently cannot understand when someone shows interest, romantic or otherwise, in me once I’ve opened my mouth.  You know the running joke of ‘well I’m not stopping traffic but at least I have a good personality’?  Yeah, my assessment of myself is the exact opposite.  None of my self-esteem issues related to the way I look, they’re all about the person who lives under my skin.

And Mulan is pretty, she’s lovely, no one questions that, she doesn’t ever seem to question that.  But she always looks surprised when people like her, and she tries so hard to act the way people expect her to act, and she looks ready to take punishment for acting outside the expectations, even when she’s been killing armies and slaying warlords and saving emperors.  I like to think she’s like me: she knows the skin is pretty, but she’s terrified that the person underneath isn’t lovable.  And then she goes to the army and breaks laws and dishonors her family.  And she makes friends who risk their lives for that person, and she gains respect for that person, and Shang falls in love with that person, and it’s all done on that person’s merits, whether you want to call that person Mulan or Ping or whatever, not on the merits of how pretty her face is or how busty she is or how elegant or well-mannered she can act.

And…that meant a lot to me as a scared, damaged kid.  It means a lot to me, now, currently, in my differently scared, differently damaged almost-adult self.  I probably haven’t made a lot of sense here, come to think of it.  If you persevered all the way to the end, I tip my hat to you.

Funny Story (Not Really)

So funny story.  I hear people tell me that I’m excessively paranoid a lot of the time–mostly guys, but the reason I’m making this post is because of a conversation I recently had with a woman who’s been friends with my dad a long time.  I love my dad a lot and he’s mostly pretty on top of his shit (he’s also going to therapy to get more on top of his shit, so PROPS for that, Dad), and this woman (we’ll call her Janie) is nice enough.  She has a daughter who’s just starting high school and a son who’ll be in college next year.  I was talking with her about my college experience and she asked if I went to parties and stuff.  I don’t.  At all.  I told her as much and she asked me why, and I said because I’m busy, because I’m an introvert, because of any of a number of reasons, and I finished the list by admitting that I don’t trust a lot of the guys on my campus.

She asked why.

I hemmed and hawwed and said ‘uh’ a lot, and then I told her that my campus of four hundred people had five sexual assault cases last semester alone.  My freshman year there were at least two people outright expelled for it.

Janie, mother of a teenaged boy about to go into college and a teenaged girl just going into high school and already growing up into a stunner, wrote it off by saying “well, most of them must have been misconceptions; you know, it’s easy to miscommunicate when romance is involved; I’m sure there were a lot of overreactions and morning-after regrets.”  I stared at her for a moment and went “Actually, one of the reports last semester was mine, and I know two of the other people who filed them.  It’s usually pretty obvious when someone’s trying to force the point.”  I gave her a summary of what happened to me (look, it’s a long story, some dude came over to watch a movie with my roommate and me and the day ended with him pinning me to the floor while I jammed my thumb into his throat and my roommate helped pull him off) and she kept at it, talking about how I had probably just given him mixed signals, how people probably didn’t listen when I told them not to touch me because I go from zero to sixty real quick (if I say ‘stop touching me’ and you don’t, my next statement will be ‘stop touching me or I’ll break your finger,’ and I expect people to thereafter stop touching me).

And all I could think was “My god, you’re raising a daughter, I’m so scared for her right now.”

I’ve become aware of late that I’m a statistical outlier, whether it’s from poor luck or because I attract a certain kind of trouble or because I act a certain way.  Most girls don’t have five (six depending on how you reckon it) assaults committed against them by their eighteenth birthday.  I hope to God that Janie’s daughter is as lucky as Janie evidently has been, that she’ll never know how terrifying it is to know that the person holding your down is twice your size, or that if you scream for help no one will believe you (fun fact, no one except my parents believed me four times out of five).  I hope that she never asks herself “do I grab my roommate’s switchblade and go outside and check on that freshman sitting outside in the dark, or do I go get an RD because that’s a very tall young man.”  I hope she lives a safe enough life that she never finds herself sitting there in the aftermath of violence, whether it’s just an unwelcome hand groping her thigh or something much worse, and wonders to herself who the hell will believe me.

But most of all, I hope that, in the event she’s ever in the position I’ve been in, or worse, her mother doesn’t fucking tell her she’s overreacting and making shit up.

JESUS SHIT, WOMAN.

bopeep:

*has never been in a fight in my life* listen. i will beat ur ass

Me: *has never lost a fight in my life* Listen, I will beat your ass.

Them: *sees that I am five-nothing, curvy, and female* 

Them: Yeah, right.  

Them: *continues touching me*

Them: *freaks out when I almost break their wrist*

Me: Listen, I told you I would beat your ass.

(via a-idontevenknow-thing)

theduchess666 asked: How does a Christian hate the race their messiah came from lol

treesoutofchimneys:

comradebutterfly:

jizzfrosti:

badger-actual:

guns-n-beauty:

badger-actual:

artwench:

proudblackconservative:

butterflyinblack:

Jesus was Syrian, not a Jew.

And I said fire…to the site…Watch it burn because… Nothing is right….

In what universe was Jesus a Syrian? Good grief…

….Jesus was a Rabbi, how was he NOT Jewish?

He was “the king of the Jews”….wtf

People are idiots.

dude was born IN BETHLEHEM 

I was born on a ship in the sea, doesn’t make me a fish!

Well fish aren’t usually born on ships….

HOLY HELL I AM THE CRY.  HELLO KIND PEOPLE WHO HAVE PROTESTED THE IDIOCY ABOVE, PLEASE ALLOW ME TO DO A LITTLE RANT.

Okay.  Hi.  I am a Christian (please hold your tomatoes until the end of the post).  My father is a minister (of the Congregationalist denomination if that means anything to you).  My mother was raised Catholic (and she was pretty shitty at it to be honest, possibly because she is fabulously bisexual).  I chose my religion myself at the age of seven, making an informed decision to convert from Judaism to Chrisitanity, and my family has always held tolerance and understanding of other religions as a capital priority (like, you wanna talk Hinduism or Taoism or Islam, hit me up, I know some stuff and I always like learning more stuff).  But more pertinently, all three of us are extremely well educated in the Christian religion.

SO.  ABOUT JESUS.

Point one: Syrian?  The fuck?  First of all, that has nothing to do with whether or not he was Jewish, technically Syrians were permitted to marry into Hebrew families even though it wasn’t frequent, just by sheer virtue of it being a big fucking planet even now that we have cars and trains and planes.  Gotta bring in new blood, after all, or the inbreeding would have been scary shit.  Scarier than it usually was in small, poorly traveled villages.  ANYWAY.  Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, who was a descendant of the tree of Jesse (that’s King David’s father for anyone not up on their Biblical begats) as per Isaiah 11:1.  That’s a very Hebrew bloodline on both sides, as Mary’s cousin was Elizabeth, a woman married to a powerful rabbi, Zachariah—they didn’t make Jews with less-than-stellar Hebraic bloodlines rabbis.  And your spouse’s bloodline was considered as a part of yours.  BUT THAT PART ASIDE.  Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth.  Where is Nazareth, you ask?  Well, currently, it’s the largest city in Northen Israel, but two thousand years ago it was sort of a backwater (‘Nathaniel said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”’ John 1:46); think of it, basically, as the Jersey of 30-ish BC Israel—now imagine getting told that the Messiah was born on the Jersey Shore.  Here is the Wikipedia page for Nazareth.  (Also it’s primarily Muslim, which I did not know but probably would have figured out if it wasn’t fuck-all-thirty in the morning, and is known as the Arab capital of Israel, which is pretty interesting).  But Jesus wasn’t really born there, so….  True, he was born in Bethlehem, as anyone with any religious familiarity (or working ears around Christmas time) should be aware.  Where is Bethlehem, the City of David (that’s still King David)?  Well, actually, it’s in Palistine at the moment.  But the thing about two thousand years is that it’s a long time for borders to move around and also, hey, when you’re under the thumb of the Roman Empire (what up, Herod, killed any sons lately?), little things like country borders get blurry.  The thing is that it was considered an Israelite city at the time of Jesus’ birth (remember, folks, the Israelites were a wandering people long before they put their name on a country).  Here is the Wikipedia page for Bethlehem.  Okay?  Can we at least agree that neither of these things were in Syria?

Point two: Jesus.  Was.  Jewish.  Let’s have a brief tour through the New Testament to prove this point, and it will only be the most cursory wander because, as I mentioned above, it’s fuck-all-thirty in the morning and I have class in a few hours.  There’s Luke 2:41-52 (x), more commonly known as the Finding in the Temple.  Quick recap: Mary and Joseph (two Jews) brought li’l twelve-year-old Jesus to Jerusalem (a primarily Jewish city at the time) for the Passover (a major Jewish holiday) and the kid went missing, took them three days to find him because it’s a big fucking city and also because poetic license, turns out he’s been in the Temple (a Jewish temple) lecturing the teachers (Jewish rabbis) about Jewish law.  Jesus is identified many, many times as ‘Teacher’ by both his disciples and by others—in fact, out of 90 times he’s addressed directly, 60 of them are with the title ‘teacher’—and the thing that doesn’t come across in the English is that, in the original Biblical Hebrew (what up, Dad, thanks for those lectures while you were in seminary), that translates to rabbi.  As in.  You know.  A rabbi.  They’re literally meant to be teachers, the word means teacher.  I am not citing sources for all these occasions because there are too fucking many.  The Last Supper (x), which you might be familiar with as the reason Maundy or Holy Thursday if you’re Christian, it’s the one with the whole breaking of the bread and pouring of the wine (the first Communion/Eucharist, this is my body, yadda yadda yadda, you know the shpiel), was a Passover Seder.  It says so here, here, here, and here, if you feel the need for Scriptural support.  AND.  As someone so kindly mentioned above, I would like to point my final supporting argument at Matthew 27:37 (HERE in every translation ever).  ”And above his head they placed his accusation: Here is Jesus, King of the Jews.”  You may be familiar with this as ‘INRI’ in statues and paintings of the Crucifixion.  Summary: Jesus was fucking Jewish.  Jesus fucking Christ, people, no pun intended.

Point three: why do some Christians hate Jews?  I don’t know.  Having been on both sides of that exchange—I was Jewish until my decision to convert and I still carry many of the traditions close to my heart—I can tell you that it sucks from every angle.  I’ve never understood it.  When I was younger, it was largely because I saw the logical progression of ‘Jesus was Jewish, therefore Christians should honor and celebrate their culturally Jewish heritage even if they aren’t Jews themselves.’  I try to celebrate all of the High Holidays in at least some small manner, to remind myself and to keep the memory of the yenta who taught me (sadly now deceased; shalom, Eloise) alive—it’s Purim and I’m going to be subjecting my roommate Adler to some stories and songs and cookies.  But also because of Luke 10:27 (x).  You might be familiar with the last half of it.  The gist is that Jesus tells a man, a teacher in the Temple, to abandon all the meticulous rules of the Torah for the simple rule of “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  To me, it has always seemed that someone who calls themselves a Christian should follow the only rule Jesus ever.  Fucking.  Laid.  Down.  (Looking at you, Westboro Baptist, looking right the fuck at you.)  Jesus never says ‘slay the unbeliever’ or ‘do not lie with someone of the same gender’ or ‘do not have an abortion’ or any of that shit.  

It’s literally “Don’t be a dickhead.”  

That’s all.

(The tomato throwing can now commence.)

New Year’s Makes Me Weird

You know those people who are like “I bet that if I met myself from four/five/six years ago, we’d hate each other, I would probably punch them in the face?”  Those remarks go around a lot near New Year’s, I’m not sure why, maybe it’s some sort of weird desire to better ourselves.

Yeah, I’m not one of those people.

I don’t know, I think that if I met five/six years ago me I would grab her and hug her and tell her that it was going to be okay, and then I would say “Now I’m gonna teach you three very important things.  First, it’s okay to fight, to embrace the fire, but only for a good cause.  Second, you’re a good cause.  Third, this is how to slam a football player into a locker and how to snarl and how to look scary.  You’re tough, you can fight, you can kick ass, it’s allowed.  The world won’t magically become okay on its own, but you can make it.  You can take the cards you were dealt and rip them up and do your own fucking thing because you’re the boss.  If you don’t like your world, you’re allowed to burn it down and rebuild it the way you want.”  And I would have really needed that.

So my resolution, and what I’ve resolved for the last several years, is to be that person.  For anyone I meet who seems like they need it, kids and teenagers and whatever.  So if you’re reading this for some reason, I’m really proud of you for sticking out the year, you’re tough as hell.  You’re a good cause.  You’re worth the fight, and it’s okay to fight.  It’s okay to bare your teeth and kick and scream and make the world be what you want, even if it’s just for a little while.

And when you throw a punch, always keep your wrist straight, never wrap your fingers around your thumb, and remember to use your hips for power.