I sometimes wonder why God made me female

It’s been a while since I’ve thought about this topic. When I was a kid I thought about it because I loved sports and was left out because I was a girl and because I hated to feel weak and helpless, and so I wanted to be a boy. Today I’m wondering because I’ve turned from a tom-boy kid to an analytical woman. Contradictory thoughts held simultaneously and illogical arguments or a refusal to analyze one’s argument or opinions frustrates me. I can be with a man that I absolutely adore and am attracted to, but could not possibly be in a relationship with, because he’s illogical and does not analyze his thoughts until they are consistent. He might have passion and fervor about God, but it’s not focused and directed. And I don’t want to be the lens that focuses him! This puts me in the place of Socrates, incorporating the dialectic method into my discussions until I feel like I’m thoroughly wearing the pants in the relationship. And I think we all know what happened to Socrates in the end. At this point, I get frustrated, because I might really LIKE this boy, or that boy, but I see a spiral of life where I am the one in the relationship with the most consistency of thought and therefore would end up leading, or at least nagging. Neither of these options is palatable to me. Then I consider, “Would this be different in a relationship with any other guy I know?” and realize that I’m backed into a corner. The ones who might be more logical are cold and somewhat emotionless and/or could not ever make me feel loved (which is very important; I am, after all, a woman.) and the ones who could make me feel loved, I would lead (or try to drag) in an attempt to bring them into correct, logical, and consistent thinking because I’d be trying to make them the kind of men that I could follow. I am not right about everything, and I need a man who is logical and so can point out my inconsistency of thought, rather than one who is holding contradictory notions himself and so cannot give a good and coherent argument for WHY I must change. The problem with logical men is: they tend to lack fervor and passion (and emotion). I have not yet found a man who is logical (about theology and doctrine), passionate (about God), and committed to righteous living because he loves God and wants to serve and honor Him and deny himself, who can both understand and love me and can lead me to be closer to God through challenging me to more purity and through intellectually instigating me to more right doctrine through his use of logic and consistency of thought (and insight into God’s word). Can there be no man who could be both a mind-mate and a soul-mate? (and play-mate) I’m not even getting into personality characteristics like similar interests like art, travel, theatre, literature, science, philosophy, music, dance, etc. Why did God make me someone who cannot easily follow because of the way He made me? Why couldn’t he have made me a man? Men are SUPPOSED to lead their mates. What would a man look like who could both lead me and love me?

But the real problem is: If I ever find this paragon of a man, why would he ever be interested in me?

Good Quotes

I highly recommend Orson Scott Card's political essays. Go to his webpage (in my links) and click on World Watch (in his links). I believe he is a Democrat, or at least a Liberal, but what he has to say is canny and interesting. Here are some quotes from his most recent essay:


"The courts have given the news media carte blanche, in the name of the First Amendment -- but the media are no better than government at exercising unchecked power" - Orson Scott Card (Democrat)

"That's the established church of the West these days -- liberty without responsibility, filth praised as "edgy" and virtue despised as "bourgeouis." " - Orson Scott Card

"And as the Iranians and North Koreans have learned, it's very very hard to get rid of a dictatorship with a puritan ideology. Sometimes you're lucky and a big country comes along and liberates you. But sometimes there's no country big enough to do it, and you just have to hunker down and pretend to think correct thoughts and live some kind of life below the radar.

You know, the way believing Christians do right now at American universities." - Orson Scott Card.

Freudian Slip

My boss called me 'Amanda' today. When my co-worker looked at him like he was nuts and said that he couldn't even figure out why our boss was calling me that our boss replied, embarressed, that he knew. Apparently Amanda is his son's sometime-girlfriend. Then he joked, "So, about my son..."

So now, as a joke, they have both been calling me Amanda all day.

It's a good thing his son is in a foreign country. Otherwise, i'd have to be really embarressed.

Revenge of the Sith

This is of course the review I would have written were I more clever and less lazy. Writers more than anyone are able to tell you whether the way the movie is written is good or bad. And Orson Scott Card is one of the best of our generation. Or my parent's generation. It depends on how you look at it.

The Marks of the Spirit-Filled Christian

What are the marks of a person filled with the Spirit of God today? There can be no doubt that the chief evidence is moral, not miraculous, and lies in the Spirit's fruit not the Spirit's gifts.

- John R. W. Stott

Marks of the Spirit-Filled Christian

What are the marks of a person filled with the Spirit of God today? There can be no doubt that the chief evidence is moral not miraculous, and lies in the Spirit's fruit not the Spirit's gifts. - John R. W. Stott

I love my job

There comes a day when you realize that you love your job. First, your fantastic boss, who is usually pretty dignified, goofs around and makes you laugh so hard that you almost fall on the floor because it’s so funny and so unexpected, and then your irreverent co-worker cracks you up. After a morning of working, you wander over to a beautiful, historical Capitol building where people shove free, catered food at you and then you take a plate and meander out to the lawn in front of said Capitol building and sit on the grass in the sun with your co-workers, eating sumptuous food and listening to an orchestra on the lawn play a Star Wars medley among other charming pieces.

I love my job.

Mum's the Word and Graduation at the 'Dale

There comes to be a point where one realizes “There is nothing left to say!” I readily admit that this does not often happen to me, so it’s quite mind-numbing when it actually occurs. The lack of subject material is not because nothing is going on, au contraire, much is happening; however, when everyone one might wish to talk about or subtly (blatantly) poke fun of on one’s blog KNOWS about one’s blog one’s choices come to be severely limited. I am talking hypothetically, of course. Too bad for all of you that all the interesting bits of my life have to be left out. Now all you have to do is sit and wonder “Am I one of the people that she would be talking about if I didn’t know where her blog was?” This sort of pondering is wonderfully aggravating to the ponderer. Keep it up – tormenting is such fun and invigorating work! And don’t worry – I probably would have left out your name.

Graduation at Hillsdale this year was quite up to snuff. Many illustrious alumni returned for the ceremony (i.e. me) and Kenneth Starr ended up being one of the best speakers at a Hillsdale function yet. He did not ramble and his choice of speech was actually on-topic. The dreaded long-winded speech where everyone starts to stare up into the rafters of the Sports Complex thinking about how the people in the bleachers across the room can probably stare up your skirt, and contemplating “How long can I keep up this relatively good posture on hard, backless seats?”, whilst combing the crowd for all the (2 or 3) guys you thought were just fantastic while you were at college to see if they’re in attendance (not that I would do such a thing!) did not happen. This instead happened during the handing out of diplomas. Although there was quite the exciting moment when some graduate picked up Dr. Arnn. It was pretty funny.

Only one more year and then there will be no one left at Hillsdale that I know. Kind of scary. I'm getting old. Does that mean I have to act mature?

What I Learned From Dilbert Today

I should date anything that has a pulse, bad judgement, and no restraining orders against me.

Maybe this will jump-start my love life...no wait, wasn't this ALREADY my policy? Well, minus the restraining orders:-) Stalking is still a viable form of spending time with another person. Just because they don't know you're there doesn't mean it's not a date! :-D

The Impact of Alternative Family Forms on the Economy

I recently attended a talk on family forms from an economist's viewpoint. It was interesting, and I thought I would jot down a few of the things discussed here on my blog for people to read and think about. I don't necessarily support or oppose the views - but it is interesting information to think about. My impressions etc are in brackets [].

In the family law world there is a leaning towards a redefinition of marriage. There are 2 terms being thrown about in this discussion that are being highly misused. These terms are equality and freedom. Freedom now means to be completely unencumbered by any personal relationship. No adult should be compelled to be in a relationship he or she does not choose to be in. If we have to get married and stay married we are not free. What equality means now is that equality demands that the government take no stand on any marriage issues - that is be completely neutral and take no position.
These notions ar eincoherent because they are unstable and cannot last. More freedom for adults today means less freedom for children tomorrow. In limited government people do most of the governing themselves through self-control. You cannot have a free society with limited government unless people are moral, otherwise people will use their freedom to bother others. If people are doing everything they can get away with you need a big government wrapped around them to keep them from bothering others. It has been shown that people develop a conscience within a family [This makes sense through psychological terms too: Freud terms the 'Id' which is basically our conscience asthe 'parent in the head'. Without a family with 2 parents it is conceivable in a Freudian framework to see that this development of the Id to maybe be impossible, if not in a normal, 2-parent home. I have to think about this further.]
Children are more likely to have attachments disorders if not in a 2-parent married home. Childrenwith attachment disorders will do whatever they can get away with. They need to be controlled, because they are not controlling themselves. To have civilized society depends on having a good 1st year of life and you need 2 parents to raise a child. Statistically, children in married-couple 2-parent families. This is measurable. Children of unmarried-couple homes have lower birth weight, more emotional problems, have more accidents as a child (no one knows why), do more drugs, drink more alcohol, go to jail more frequently, miss more school, are held back in school more often, and are less likely to attend college. Society then has to step in (and it costs money) when children aren't raised properly. You need more government to monitor the improperly raised childen when they cannot control themselves. (more children from unmarried-couple homes commit crime, so more law enforcement and jails are needed)
One of the biggest predictors of a child's life chances is whether he or she came from a 2-parent married-family. Cutting down on a child's life chances is making them less free. In order to bring equality among the unmarried-parent children and the married-parent children will use larger and larger expenditures from the government to bring the unmarried-parent children to the same level that the married-parent children are at. The end result is that the married will be taxed to pay for the children of the unmarried (Statistically, marrieds do better economically) - The breaking down of the family means more government expenditures (and therefore more government and more taxes)
The most the government EVER intrudes into a person's life is when there is a breakdown in marriage. [Dude - I've seen this working with the Department of Human Services and Friend of the Court. The government gets involved in every tiny detail of a person's life to make sure that the proper child support is getting paid...sometimes you cannot attend certain children's events because of rules governing when you get the kid etc.] To ensure freedom and minimal government are happening we need to strengthen the private agreement between 2 people that is marriage.
Most people in alternative family forms aren't there because they wanted to be on the vanguard of social reform. Usually they are in an alternative family form because they WANTED the long-long married love, but it didn't work out for them for some reason. Therefore putting incentives into law like a waiting perioud for divorce and and counseling or reducing incentives for being a single mother through joint custody being the default may help curb alternative family forms that people don't really want anyway.
Lastly, it's a myth that government CAN be neutral in a family discussion. If it's 'neutral' then you're taking from the married to support the unmarried and so supporting the unmarried or taking freedom from the children of tomorrow to feed the desires of the adults of today.

Global Warming

This is an interesting essay debunking global warming. I tossed the ideas discussed here around in my head a while, wondering if it were correct, and then decided that I really didn't know enough about climate science to know. Plus, it would be waaaaaaaaaaaay too much work to go and find which journals reputable climate scientists publish in to check their data. And then I'd have the trouble of stuggling to remember my college class on Biological Statistics in order to interpret their data correctly. However, I was in luck, just a couple days ago I picked up Michael Crichton's new book State of Fear which I found out as I started to read it is about, interestingly enough, global warming. Or rather, the fact that it seems that the scientific data support the theory that there is no global warming. (Notice I said "support the theory" NOT "prove." Some other time I'll go into my pet peeve: scientific theory and the ignorant people who don't understand it and think that science has anything to do with PROOF. ) *cough* Anyway, this new Crichton has footnotes everywhere with excerpts from climate studies, glacier studies, etc sprinkled throughout his book. It's lovely when someone else has done the research you wish you were more motivated to do. Of course, he'll be getting paid millions for his book to compensate him, but what the hey. Anyway, interestingly enough apparently the glaciers in Antarctica etc are growing thicker. Parts of them are melting (and have been for 6,000 years, not 50 or 100 which is what you would expect if industrial pollution had anything to do with it, although 6,000 might work into the theory in the above article.) , but most of them are thickening. Isn't this interesting? Also, the oceans are not rising and there is MORE sea ice since the 70s, not less. Anyway, read the article and, if you like an interesting read, the book as well.

What should my next topic be? Scientific Theory or how humanity seems to have lost technology?

More Violent Then One Might Expect...

The Lord
You scored 15% Cardinal, 53% Monk, 50% Lady, and 64% Knight!

You are of the intellectual breed and yet you are also very interested in war. You are of the aristocracy and head the cavalry a safe distance from the carnage of the front lines. You believe in defeating your enemy with not only might, but also wit.

You scored high as both the Monk and the Knight. You can try again to get a more precise description of either the Monk or the Knight, or you can be happy that you're an individual.

Link: The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test