Category: Social Justice

Late Night Black and Blue

Published on September 25, 2020July 23, 2021 by TuppenceLeave a comment

I’ve always wanted to be a morning person. There is to that idea an aura of virtue. The morning person catches the purer, cooler hours of the morning to be productive. The morning person goes to bed and finds sleep ready to embrace them. But alas, I am not a morning person, despite trying. Upon coming to grips with this, it has become apparent to me that I’ve never been a morning person. I was very much the child who knew every feature of my headboard and texture of my bedroom wall in the long wakeful lonely nights. Even napping is hard for me, except in the rare occasions where a sudden onset knocks me out for a full sleep cycle and no less.

So it is tonight that I yet again, even after a full day of physical labor, cannot make myself sleep. Which perhaps is good, as I don’t have a blog post finished for tomorrow and I’m feeling guilty about that. So with these unwanted extra hours, I shall do something productive and tell you a serious reflection about another wakeful night a couple of weeks ago. It features a very drunk man, a wrong door, and two cops. Though that sounds like the setup to a joke or anecdote, I’m sorry to say that it was a serious incident, and so here is where I’m going to process it.

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Categories Social Justice

Mea Culpa

Published on June 12, 2020June 13, 2020 by TuppenceLeave a comment

I’m a white person in America. When a white person tries to explain racism, it unfortunately trends to explaining something in such a way that makes that thing seem derived from rational misunderstandings, with the calmness and rationality of the tone implying that such a thing merely exists but is inevitable. That is why the conversation is best to be heard from a black perspective, wherein the explanations can be couched in the hurt, grief, and real stakes that do not allow organic history to look like a justifiable reason for racism.

So in this post, I am not going to explain racism. Rather instead I want to process the word “racist” as an adjective, not a noun, that applies to me.

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Categories Social Justice•Tags confederacy, confession, racism, slavery, social justice

Modest Mystique

Published on October 18, 2019July 15, 2020 by Tuppence1 Comment

“What I looked for in a wife,” as told by a grown man to a group of young teenage girls. There is something rather wince worthy about having older men tell young girls what qualities they should adopt to be attractive in his eyes, but I’m afraid as a young Christian teenage girl, one is rather inundated with such speeches. And while some points about maintaining one’s female attractiveness are rather self-serving for men to preach, I will defend that four out of every five points are usually universal human values. Good work ethic, a habit of self-care, cleanliness, empathy for other people –qualities that are universally good whether applied to a man or woman. And in some sense it’s a practical strategy to try and harness a teenage girl’s excitement for romance to motivate them towards thoughtful self-improvement. Surely there are better ways of doing that than having a grown man teach it to them, but it’s what happens.

There was one man whose version of this lecture I heard many times. I didn’t mind it so much from him, because of his list of ten things, nine were of that general good character type. But then, at the very end, was his last point: that she must be mysterious.

Mysterious? Since when was mystery a virtue?

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Categories Culture, Social Justice•Tags feminism, modesty, mystery, veils

Live Long and Love Meeeeeeeee!

Published on July 21, 2016July 26, 2018 by TuppenceLeave a comment

When I first entered college in 2008, I came fresh-faced from the world of homeschooling. I had no experience with the high school dramatics, the dating scene, or cultural fads. The world that I found was suffering a new trend, one that shook all those things. It seemed that the female population had withdrawn their affections. The men could be seen despondently wandering the halls, playing games without joy, and eating food that did not fill their appetites. They’d murmur their complaints to each other in low voices, until the gathering would dissolve with the disaffected shrug, “Who is Edward Cullen?”