DO NOT WATCH- The Change Up

Remember when I said we walked out on a movie? well, it was called The Change Up, and if you're a peaceful parent, or support peaceful parenting, but aren't a parent yet, do NOT give this movie your money to see. Hell, if you just believe in not neglecting children, you should NOT give this movie your money. We walked out on it within the first 15 minutes of movie time for many, many horrible parenting decisions being portrayed as okay. It didn't seem to be about an awful father who changed to be better, so I seriously doubt it did anything but get way worse after we left. Anyway, the following is a list of instances of bad parenting I saw in just a few minutes of this movie, along with why its not okay.

Here's a picture of a baby being breastfed so you all remember that good parents still exist

Seperate Sleeping

Even if you don't sleep with your baby in the bed for SIDS concerns or other reasons, you should sleep in the same room, because common sense dictates that, in an emergency, you can get to your baby more quickly. If there is a fire, it can be lifesaving not to have to run across the house to get to your baby, especially if the fire starts between you and the baby. In the event of a kidnapping, it's going to be easy enough to get to your baby before you can if there's an entrance to the house from outside  between the two of you. But this couple was portrayed sleeping in a far away room.

Delayed Crying Response

In the movie, screams come through the baby monitor in the opening scene. No one does anything for a good 10 seconds, then the woman in the couple tells the man it's his turn, they sit there for at least a minute with the guy groaning and upset he has to get up so early. Finally, he leaves his room for the walk to his kids, but once he gets there, he stares at the kid for a few seconds first and says something I don't really remember, but finally picks her up.

Circumcision

During a diaper change meant to be humerous, we get a brief glimpse of his baby boy's penis, which appeared to have the divide you do not see in whole infants. I'm not entirely sure that I saw this, so I won't focus too long on it. But, yeah, circumcsion is harmful and violates basic human consent.

Ignoring Indicators of Mental Difference

In the movie, the man's son was portrayed banging his head off the bars of his crib, rather hard, and ignoring the pain. Although neurotypical children with occasionally relatively gently bounce their heads off of things, head banging with the force and seeming lack of realization of pain depicted here, this indicates a mental difference such as autism, which needs attention to control the negative symptoms for the child. This went unnoticed by the father except for an exasperated comment that "I thought we'd talked about this, buddy". If a child does this, he needs to see a doctor promptly to diagnose these things.

Allowing the Head Banging Itself

I don't know if you've heard, but babies heads are sensitive. Babies get concussions more easily than older people. And head banging in the context shown could've caused serious damage, but the father didn't interfere. Any child hitting his/her/xyr head this hard needs to be stopped immediately and given some other task to focus on before he/she/xe gets a serious brain injury. Also, the pain itself will be bad when the child comes back to be mentally able to focus on it.

Formula Feeding

I've mentioned before some of the many reasons formula is bad for babies, and I'll give brief mention again of the increased incidence of colic, diarhea, ear infections, allergies, upper respiratory infections, and childhood cancer, and of the decreased reporting of a strong parental bond during teenage years, and, only anecdotally, a general sense of unease for the baby. Bottom line, don't formula feed.

Improper Bottle Feeding

Bottle feeding isn't best for baby, but if it's being done (and bottle feeding can be breastmilk feeding, which is acceptable, morally) wrong, it can cause even more problems. The father in this movie was feeding his twins without the proper angle of the bottle. He was holding the bottles at such an angle that the air was meeting the nipple. This is never supposed to be done, as it causes a baby to swallow the air and will give them tummy aches.

Sleep Training

Sleep trianing was not shown, but the father alluded to the idea that he would do it. Sleep training, for those who don't know, is like "cry it out" methods of teaching, which allow the baby to cry without responding. When babies stop crying due to sleep training, their bodies are responding as if they have been abandoned. It wastes energy to cry, and a baby's hormones tell it that something is seriously wrong because someone hasn't responded to it, so, they must conserve energy before they starve to death. This is a horrible way to treat a human, especially a baby. Babies cry when they need something. No more. And you can never, ever spoil a baby.

I didn't think I could stomach the rest of the movie without wanting to kill someone, and neither did halley, so we left, but I'm sure there were more bad things throughout the movie. So, please, peaceful parents of this world, boycott this movie.

The Consequences of Sex

Everyone hears all the bullshit in health class about self esteem, blah blah blah, if you have sex, you will get pregnant and die. But I don't think anyone's ever really considered what my sex drive did on friday as a consequence.
I went with halley to the movies, and long story short, we leave within ten minutes, but that's its own post, and after that, we sat outside at a dairy queen nearby, talking and having fun in general, and then making out. Well, once xe'd made out with me, all I wanted was sex, and I wanted it so bad, I would have it on the levvy, so I begged xyr to please come over and do something on the other side.

There was a problem, though. The way the hill curves, combined with the angle of the light behind it made the other side of the levvy look eerily dark, and we weren't sure how it did it. But halley's tendency to be curious and investigate scientifically lead to the discovery that it was all mathmatic, and the best thing was, once we got over there, even if someone was on top of the hill, looking down, they would have no way of seeing us or what we were doing. So, we went a little down the hill, and from that angle, we could see clearly how nothing was eerie. For a few minutes.

Then, in the middle of something, xe looked up and thought there might've been a human figure by this building that helps keep the town from flooding on the other end of the hill. We shook it off, but then heard voices, but no one was around. My mind was falling prey to the terrified and idea that this was fucking dangerous and maybe there was something supernatural going on, because that's how it happens in the movies. Yeah, not one of my prouder moments as an atheist. But, anyway, we ceased what we were doing and looked around to attempt to locate the voices, and I was sure I'd heard a child's voice. While looking around, with knowledge of the surrounding area, we saw a shadowwy, essentially blockish figure near the building that didn't belong. We kept our eyes on it for a while and I wanted to run for the light, but halley said that we should stay where we are, so if there was anything around, it couldn't see us.

Then, the blockish figure lit up and two people drove away on it, it having been a four wheeler. I was flooded with relief first, but then the strange voices returned and we also saw a weird shadow in the other direction. We decided we needed to crawl in the direction of the building and loop around it, because that way we'd never be walking towards the top of a hill, exactly. So, we crawled through soaking wet grass and mud, and swarms of mosquitos, geting cut and bitten, and halley's wrist got broken (which xe set and fixed and is better now.)

And those, kids; sheer terror, mosquito bites, grass stains, and mud, are the negative consequences of your sex drive.

My Dad and Me

This. This is what I feel like, every time I talk to my dad.

I don't know how I feel about my dad. Sometimes, I want to kill him, because he bothers me so much. We don't get along. I'm a liberal, he's a conservative. He's republican, I'm democrat. He's some weird brand of religious, I'm a strong atheist. He likes physical labor, I don't. He likes sports, I like video games. So how the fuck do we stomach living in the same house? Well, sometimes we don't, but when we do, it's got a hell of a lot to do with laughter.


You see, we get along by never, ever talking about anything remotely political. As soon as we do, we end up fighting the night away. All we can do is laugh together, and try not to take ourselves too seriously. It doesn't always work, and I wind up wanting to kill him sometimes, but then we quit talking about that and just tell jokes. And somehow, it all sort of works out. What am I trying to say here? I guess just that it doesn't matter who you are, you're going to run into people who believe stupid things, and, after trying logic to convince them, are going to have to give up and live with it.

Little Pink Book 2

Dad

My daughter is hard to look through. I don't love her; God knows I wouldn't after what she did, but her face, her face loos like that of the daughter I used to have. Do I know I'm right in doing this? Yeah. Do I understand that my baby is gone? Yes. Do I want her back, the way she was before? of course. Is it hard to remember that she's not my little girl anymore? Hell yes. My dad, he'd have beaten me senseless if I'd done what she has. He bounced my head off counters for lesser things, but I wouldn't have hurt my little girl like that. I guess maybe my dad did it right... Look how I turned out, and look how she did. But it's too late for her now. I look at her and wonder how she could do this too me when I've been so good to her. I worked so hard, I never hurt her, and when she tole me how awful she was, I hit the wall instead. She's lucky, I guess, maybe unlucky, living her life in a quest for "acceptance". A good beating is what she needs, but at 18, away at college, it's a lot of effort and a lot of legal trouble to assault a college student. Not to mention a "hate crime". As opposed to those crimes motivated by love. 

Damn whiny liberals.

Little Pink Book 1

Prologue

Sometimes, I miss you already. Sometimes, daddy, I cry for you. I cry because you're not going to love me, because you look right through me, because I'll never hear you speak to me again, because the look on your face in the pictures when I was born said I was the greatest thing- and now it's gone, because it was that easy for you to drop your only daughter. Because I've loved you my entire life, and I don't know how not to. And, Dad, sometimes, I can't wait to be completely rid of you, you racist, sexist, and most importantly homophobic douchebag. Sometimes, I'm just pissed off. I'm 18 and I can understand that things that are wrong actually hurt people. And you can't figure that out in 38 years? 

Fuck you.

Little Pink Book Intro

Okay, so a little while back while stuff was still pretty damn bad with my parents and all of that, I started writing in a little pink notebook. I wrote how I felt and I tried to place myself in the shoes of my mom, my dad, and my brother. I don't know how well it worked, but I made short, easy little entries pretty often. It was set somewhere a little more than a year in the future, and it really helped me humanize my parents when it seemed they were nothing more than obstacles to my happiness.

 I thought it'd make a nice little series of blog posts, so, I asked My halley about it, and xe said it could be a good idea. (I'm always very indecisive, so I wasn't sure how readable it would be. So, Anyway, now and again, I'll do an entry titled "Little Pink Book" and then a number, with the same graphic pictured above, and that'll be another piece of the book that is my take on how everyone feels.

An Amazing Moment

Tuesday, we took Joey to the aquarium. He's been talking a lot about sharks lately, and was very excited when told the possibility of seeing a real, live shark existed. And he loved it, he had fun, and it was awesome. At this particular aquarium, they have a tank full of gentle pajama sharks that they let you pet. Joey loved this and so did I, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I'm here to talk about a little boy who reached his whole arm in the water. A person I'm guessing is his dad was holding him up, and he couldn't have been more than two. He had blonde hair and blue eyes, and was tiny. I smiled at him, and as I watched a shark go by, he touched it. Then, this amazing look of unadulterated joy came across his face. It was the kind of  look that doesn't happen much. I don't know that child. I don't know what he will grow up to be. I don't know whether he will believe in a god, whether he will fall in love, get married, have babies and treat them right. I don't know whether he will be president. I don't know what his parents believe, how they treat him, if they circumcised him. But in essence, through that moment, I know this child. I participated in a moment in his life that everyone ought to have a few more of, and it was beautiful.

Things like this moment make me aware of just how wonderful the world really is, and, when it seems so awful, I can just think of this little boy, all his dreams seeming fulfilled because he got to pet a shark.

A Small Victory

The high school I went to, as I've mentioned before, shrugged off Church/State violations like they weren't a problem. Every veteran's day assembly had prayer involved, and I had to attend graduation for 6 years to play pomp & circumstance with the band; every year this started with a prayer. No one cared enough to report it and I kept quiet. During the earlier years, because I was totally apathetic to religion, and a little later, because I didn't think I had the resources to fight it, especially when it seemed 99% of the school wanted the prayer, and the other 1% seemed apathetic.

But, during senior year, sick of hearing a prayer at every assembly our school had, at national honor society inductions, I had halley record the prayer on her phone. You could barely make it out, but it gave me the momentum I needed to contact the Freedom From Religion Foundation They were incredibly helpful. I filled in their church/state violation form, and was contacted the next day. I gave them a little more information; nothing I didn't know. They wanted to know if a student gave the prayer and if I could give them stronger evidence it was pre-planned. This evidence wasn't necessary, but they said it could help. I let them know it was rehearsed the previous day in front of the principal and sent them a copy of the pamphlet that listed "opening prayer", along with the recording. They didn't actually wind up using the recording  (or needing it) because it was so fuzzy.

Within two weeks, they sent me back a copy of the email that they'd sent to my superintendent and principal, and in less than another week, they sent me my school's reply. Thankfully, they were cooperative. They agreed not to plan a graduation NHS prayer again. And, on my high school graduation day, a student gave a prayer, in private, in his capacity as a student, without the condonemnent of my high school, or the captive audience of everyone attending the graduation. And halley and I walked away from it. I was thrilled, because my school didn't sponsor prayer.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation does some amazing things, so, everyone who can should support them in general.

About Sexualized Breasts

I am against the sexualization of breasts. They are not sex organs. They are there to feed babies, and they should be used that way. No one should ever make a woman cover up her breasts because they are sexual. But I love the feelings associated with mine, and I like them to be stimulated during sex. And I want to make it abundantly clear that "not innately sexual" and "morally wrong to utilize for sex" are two entirely different things. So everyone knows, you should feel free to use any part of your body during sex if it feels good. This includes your breasts.

So, what I mean by wanting breasts to be desexualized is that I want us to treat them like lips, or hands, or necks. The sight of them should not call to mind sex. Just like lips, they can be used in a sexual way, and you can always feel free to love the sensation, but also like lips, they should be able to be shown to the public without someone freaking out because you're showing your sexual organs to the world. That's one of the goals I feel is very important. I think this way because as long as breasts are presented as sexual organs, it's going to be hard for mothers to feel comfortable feeding their children in public. And the more breastfed children, the better. If we reverse the sexualization of breasts, we can also prevent people from bottlefeeding based on the idea that it'd be like pedophilia.

I guess that's all I mean. Every time you use your breasts in a sexual context, you are NOT promoting the sexualization of breasts. Every time you ask a breastfeeding mother to cover up, you are. Every time you look at a woman's breasts and feel some sexual feeling, you are NOT promoting the sexualization of breasts. Every time you say it's wrong for a woman to go topless in public, you are. Any questions? If so, ask me!

Your Sexual Self Is You

I am naturally shy. Very, very shy, in fact. And last night, I bought a vibrator at walmart. It was hard for me to get over the potential embarrassment. But thinking of what this means about my causes is helpful to me. See, I care a lot about the things I believe in. I am the sort of person who cannot just ignore a principle for practicality unless there are some very, very serious consequences. So, when I wanted to buy a sex toy, all I had to do to stop being nervous was breathe and say to myself "I am a sex-positive feminist. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of. I am a sex-positive feminist" and repeat. Then, I was able to smile at the lady behind the cash register and buy it.

There seems to be this idea in the media that sex isn't a part of a person, that if you have sex, or even enjoy masturbation,  you're somehow not a person with idiosyncracies other than sexual, or else that your sexual self is entirely seperate from the rest of you. It's not. Everyone can just relax about sex because it's a part of you, maybe a smaller part, maybe a bigger one, but no matter what, you don't become not you anymore when you're feeling sexual or when you have sex or whatever. These are all on the level of your other characteristics.

Take me for example, I love some wonderful oral sex, I masturbate in the middle of the night, and sometimes in public bathrooms to calm myself down. I also love to play harvest moon and zelda and like children's songs and phantom of the opera. These are all parts of me. Maybe they're not exceedingly relevant at certain times, but they're all, always a part of me.

I'm having a little trouble trying to figure out exactly what I'm trying to say. I guess what I mean is that you shouldn't feel like sex dehumanizes you. It's not like that. It's just one more part of the beautiful picture that is you.

Religion and Sexuality

This article will also be published on generation atheist so go check it out if you happen to read my blog, but not it.

I've grown up in an area with a church on every corner. This is not much of an exaggeration. There are two churches within ten minutes walking distance from where I'm sitting, and four within 20. I live in a place where church/state violations are brushed of as silly and people roll their eyes when asked to include religions other than christianity, and find it unthinkable to not believe in a god. a vast, vast majority of people around here are christian. My high school had between 400 and 500 people in it, and the number of (out) atheists was at 7, at the highest, while I was there. Most people attended a church every week, at least. 

 Luckily for me, somehow, my parents don't happen to be very religious. My mom is something of an agnostic, but went with the label "christian" for a long time, because she'd gone to church as a kid, and she didn't utilize her own mind very much until a few years ago, preferring to let my dad decide these things. My dad grew up in an abusive home, and tried to get religion to save him from it around age 15, and since, even though he's not gone to church or read the bible, has been a weird sort of religious that seems to mean he thinks that there's a god who wants you to worship him and believes a few randomized passages in the bible. I'm not really sure why someone with such an insanely cherry-picked religion that seems totally unique to him would feel he could criticize others, but he somehow finds a lack of religion laughable.

Enter- My homosexuality, and screw with all of my family relationships. I didn't come out until about a year after my parents decided they found out. It's all a little difficult to explain, but my dad heard rumors that I was gay, and kissed my girlfriend at school, then, I gave xem a goodbye kiss on xyr forehead one day, and he decided that he knew enough to guess that, yes, I am a lesbian, and I should never be allowed to talk to my girlfriend.

The only reason I could ever get out of him was that god said homosexuality was bad. This utterly insane man had somehow chosen the verse about stoning homosexuals to believe, out of all of them. He called me disgusting, and told me I was going to hell. He told me I wasn't his daughter anymore. And the only reason I could get out of him was religion. My mom just cried and said she loved me, but she wanted me to change so god would love me. I was so confused at the time. How was this random Leviticus verse the one that would send me to hell when none of us kept the sabbath holy, attended church, prayed before dinner, or even learned about the bible? But, religion around here seems to be all about intolerance.

So, my parents' reaction to my homosexuality was because of religion. My friends? Actually, most of them didn't care. That's why they were my friends. But my pool of potential friends pretty much evaporated at school. I lived a dangerous double life that, in hindsight, seems crazy to have attempted, but, I digress, the point is, at school, I was an out, proud, lesbian, and that people knew this made them look at me with disgust. No one wanted me as their teacher-picked partner for assignments, and it was hilarious to point at me and say "that's the lesbian" When halley (my girlfriend) was holding hands and walking with me, asking explicit questions about out (then nonexistent) sex-life was okay. Teachers looked the other way for the most part, because really, we deserved it for defying god this way. It seemed every way I turned, someone hated me for loving xem because their sky dad said so.

This caused a little shame, but luckily, most of the time, I just felt depressed that everyone seemed to hate me without actually thinking about it. But I did feel a little shame. I tended to laugh it off. And I labeled myself a "bad girl" because I wasn't listening to my parents for the first time in my life, and, even though I didn't believe in god, it was still something I was doing that was yicky, according to most people I knew. I thought maybe something was wrong with me, and I was terrified that there was some premise I was missing that made their logic make sense without god involved, and I lived in fear of debates, because what if they proved that it was bad? would I stop loving xem? could I stop loving xem?

But what ultimately saved me was my halley and my friends. They reminded me that loving hurts no one, even if imaginary sky dad says it does. I have one conversation I'd like to share with everyone reading, paraphrased to the best of my memory between me and a friend on facebook chat. We'll call him Jeremy. He's the kind of guy who is always joking about everything, so one night, as I was telling him I watched the spanish channel on cable at four in the morning and it was utterly bizarre, the conversation went little like this

Jeremy: well, there's basically porn on HBO at four a.m.
Me: lol. okay
Jeremy: yeah, so now you can watch all the naked girlies you want, and no one will know.
Me: haha. I'm too much of a sweet innocent little girl for that.
Jeremy: ... yeah, I'm sure you are. lol.
Me: well, it's not like I haven't thought about it. But sometimes, I forget I'm not a good girl anymore. haha. It's like I was for so long, I don't remember that that changed.
Jeremy: Brittany, you are good. You are sweet and kind and you loving a girl doesn't affect this. Anyone who wants to tell you otherwise is just a narrow-minded fuckhead who is jealous that you have someone who loves you.
Me: I think that's the sweetest think anyone's ever said to me. I didn't know you could get that serious.

And it continued. But that reminded me, without this nonsense god stuff, sexual orientation of any sort is okay, and it doesn't affect how good or kind you can be, so no one experiencing this should be ashamed.