All posts tagged: controversial topics

Age Doesn’t Matter, Maturity Does

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Originally posted on Rosie Culture:
Even when I was immature I think I was more mature than most people my age. When I was younger I dated someone older than me and I thought that I would continue that pattern because guys my age or younger just seemed sooo immature. Your age and your maturity level don’t always correlate. People say girls mature faster than boys, which may be true, but really everyone is different based on their life experiences. Age differences don’t really matter. You can connect to someone 50 years older than you or 20 years younger than you. Dating someone younger or older than you really just depends on the maturity level. Some people are a couple years ahead on their maturity level and some people are a couple years behind. Both are completely fine. If you’re 23 and feel that you’re as mature as a 33 year old – that’s completely fine. And you could easily have a happy relationship with someone ten years older than you. But they would also…

Why I Want to Stop Fearing the “offensive” Topics

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Originally posted on teenmusing:
Hullo, peoples! (Perhaps today should be a British day. It is quite rainy.) Today’s topic is one I’ve been mulling over for quite a while now, and I’d love to know your opinions on it. Everybody fears things. Fear is an emotion that aims to STOP! us. Being frightened can stop us from doing something hurtful to ourselves or others. Fear can hold us back as well. If we’re so afraid of the risk that we can’t see the good that will come out of it, then fear is detrimental. Sometimes there will be negative consequences, and we have to be prepared for those. But you can’t have a fulfilling life while you’re hiding behind the safety rails. There are rational and irrational fears, and fears that fall somewhere in between. I have all of them, but I can’t let the irrational ones control me. I want to be honest on this blog. In real life, I am very much a chameleon; “who I am” changes with my surroundings. Perhaps that’s not…

Oscars 2016, Movie Review: Room

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Originally posted on Ice the Burn:
Here’s what I knew before watching: Brie Larson is getting rave reviews, the young boy Jacob Tremblay gave an adorable acceptance speech at the Critic’s Choice Awards show. I knew the premise of the film and expected an emotional roller coaster. It’s so much more than that! It’s not a simple “let’s decide to escape this life and live happily ever after.” It’s a process as are the consequences that follow. Here’s how I see it and why I want others to as well. Check it out: ? A young mother and her now-five-year-old son have been living in a small shed they call “Room.” Joy, the mother, was imprisoned seven years prior, while her son, Jack, has no idea that there is a world beyond Room. But now that he’s old enough, Joy reveals the truth. Initially in disbelief and outrage towards what she tells him about everything he thought he knew, Jack comes around to help them both escape from their captor, a man they call Old Nick.…

I Hate Texting

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Originally posted on Rosie Culture:
It’s no secret that everyone is glued to their phones. Some people love to bash the way we use technology. They get aggravated over cell phone use at dinner and kids always taking selfies. But really, it’s no different than when we used to plop ourselves down in front of the tv or spend 45 minutes setting up a camera to film something. I love technology, I love social media, I love taking pictures and videos, I find phone calls uncomfortable, but I hate texting. I got my cell phone a little bit later in life than most people. Most of my friends had them by 7th or 8th grade, where as I didn’t get mine until halfway through my freshman year of high school. I was attached to the thing 24/7 (unless I was grounded and it was taken away which happened often). During my first real relationship, we were in contact all day, every day. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed,…

Pornography Is a Social Justice Issue

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Originally posted on Millennial:
Millennial Catholic Megan McCabe, who has written on hookup culture and rape culture at Millennial, has a new article at America. She writes: This process of desensitization and subsequent search for a new thrill is one way that male viewers find themselves aroused by acts of violence and degradation that they previously would have found horrifying. Through “Create in Me a Clean Heart,” the U.S.C.C.B. attempts to address these social concerns. But the statement mentions them only briefly and without much explanation. Despite addressing issues of violence, the overall framing of the document remains focused on lust and chastity. To take pornography seriously as a structure of sin would require moving violence to the fore, allowing it to frame how we ought to understand the ethical challenges posed by pornography. Through further exploration of the negative social effects of pornography, it becomes clear that the primary concern ought not be lustfulness. Rather, use of pornography entails complicity in a social structure that makes violence against women seem normal, even erotic. It…

Here’s What I Mean When I Say “Pro Black Doesn’t Mean Anti-White”

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Originally posted on Black Millennials:
To be pro-Black does not mean to be anti-white. To be pro-Black means to be anti-white supremacy. I wrote these words in a piece about interracial dating some months ago. The piece argues that being pro-Black means to affirm Black bodies, spirit, and culture while denouncing the evils of white supremacy as unnatural, deadly, and unsustainable. Pro-Blackness is a value system that demands the centering of Black people in a structural world designed by the white ruling corporatist class. Some elements of pro-Blackness posit the belief that white supremacy must be thoroughly destroyed for everlasting Black survival. Upon writing that piece, I’ve seen and heard many — mostly Black folk — similarly express that the pro-Black value system does not ultimately condemn “all” white people, just the omnipotent network of institutions, structures, systems, and constructs derived from white supremacist ideology, and the individual agents that empower them. From social media feeds to think pieces, I’ve seen these expressions manifested in digital space. In the physical realm, I’ve seen nonprofit professionals try to embed the sentiment in grant proposals.…

Four ways to Heal the Social Justice/Pro-life Divide

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Originally posted on Millennial:
Millennial writer  Mike Jordan Laskey has a new article at NCR. He writes: Accept “political homelessness” and live in the tension. John Carr, the former director of the U.S. bishops’ justice and peace department, uses the phrase “politically homeless” to describe where Catholicism’s consistent ethic of life leaves us. We might be “comfortable with neither Republican economic individualism, which measures everything by the market, nor with Democratic cultural individualism, which celebrates personal ‘choice’ above all else,” he wrote in America. “Neither form of libertarianism leaves enough room for the weak and vulnerable or the common good.” Political homelessness is hard! I’d love to feel content with either major party, and contribute to and vote for their candidates without thinking too much about it. I want to buy a t-shirt and go to a rally. I’d like to be a fan of the only presidential candidate to prominently feature a quote on economic injustice from Pope Francis on his website — Bernie Sanders — but the candidate’s perfect 100% rating from NARAL…

Selective Outrage Won’t Get Us Free

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Originally posted on Black Millennials:
Jamar Clark was killed execution-style while handcuffed in Minneapolis. Black activists most notably affiliated with the local Black Lives Matter chapter and the local NAACP shut down highways and occupied the 4th police precinct. National media is starting to pick up on the local unrest, especially after white supremacist terrorists shot five Black Lives Matter protestors. In Chicago, video released shows LaQuan McDonald being shot some sixteen times by a white police officer. His murderer has been charged, and thousands are mobilizing. Traditional media is focusing on the clashes between protesters and police, while social media is aflame. The gruesome video (which I admittedly haven’t watched) lives on the pages of many. Heated debate about the discomfiting consumption of Black death and pain is — once again — underway. Not one to homogenize Black murder and resulting unrest, I can’t help but draw striking parallels to Ferguson and Baltimore. From the expansive number of mass mobilizations and frontline energies, to the tweets of solidarity, frenetic live-streaming, and the viciously heavy-handed responses…

There’s Nothing Christian About Blocking Non-Christian Refugees to the US

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Originally posted on Millennial:
Millennial co-founder Christopher Hale has a new article at Time. He writes: In light of the terrorist attacks on Paris Friday, some, including Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, have called on President Barack Obama to focus on accepting Christian refugees from Syria. But there’s nothing Christian about only prioritizing Christian refugees into the U.S. In fact, such an idea flies in the face of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself was an immigrant child in a strange land. When Mary and Joseph were looking for a place for Mary to give birth to Jesus, Bethlehem’s innkeepers denied the Holy Family a hotel for the night. After Jesus’s birth, Mary and Joseph fled with their refugee child to Egypt to avoid King Herod’s despotic rule. They did this even though their Judaism was a visible minority in the North African land full of indigenous and polytheistic beliefs. If ancient Egypt can make room for refugees of religious minorities, why can’t the U.S. do so today? You can read…