Bad Influence...

Sometimes I wonder what my parents were thinking when they raised me.

I'm pretty positive my siblings always wonder what they were thinking.

I've talked about it before. They raised me to question things. To never just take a straight answer. To keep asking questions until I got an answer I was satisfied with. And I will be honest I am always more satisfied with "I don't know" than I am "Because that's the way it is." I don't know is a perfectly valid response. Because that's the way it is is a cop out and means you have never thought about it.

So I question things. And I have talked about the fact that the first two big things I questioned were their religious beliefs and then their politics. And I didn't stay with their choices. The answers didn't make sense to me.

I was raised in a time and in a conservative dynamic where men and women were treated differently, they still are, that hasn't changed, I just left. Men are the teachers, the leaders, the head of the household. Women follow. It was technically what my parents preached but I never really saw it in action. Yes, I knew, theoretically that Dad was the head of the household and if he had ever come down on the opposite side of Mom in an argument he would have won. But as far as I know the only time he told my mother no was when she wanted to name me Sarah. So, yeah, theoretically I got it. But practically? Six years old sitting at the dinner table, "Dad may be the head of the family but Mom is the neck that turns the head."

Listening to an interview the other day from a woman who wrote a book about leaving the Purity movement in Evangelical churches. She talked about a story from her first experience with the Evangelical movement, it was a summer camp. One of the girls was pulled aside and chastised for answering too many questions in bible study.  She was asked how the boys must feel with her always jumping in ahead of them with the right answer. How it must make them feel less than. And honestly who was going to want to spend time with such a know it all?

This wasn't an unusual message when I was growing up.

How will the boys feel about that?

Let them go first.

Let them answer.

Be impressed with how smart they are. How fast. How strong.

Dim your light a little because they can't stand the glare.

I chafed against that, as you can all imagine. But I still tried. It was expected. I laughed at dumb jokes even when I knew they got the punchline wrong. I waited to raise my hand in class to give someone else a chance to go first. I pretended to not know or understand how to do something so a boy could teach me. It was all part of the way the world worked. Until I realized that it really didn't work for me like that.

It made me miserable.

If I'm smarter than you are and that bothers you then learn more. Or deal with it. There are three people in my little alphabet family and I am pretty sure I'm third. It's not because of my gender. It's because I like smart people so I married one, then bred with him and made a REALLY smart person. Brent, by the way, would argue with me and put me above him. Marry someone who thinks you are the best.

But anyway...I can deal with not being the smartest person in the room. But I cannot and will not act like I'm not smart so you feel better about yourself. And I absolutely won't put up with you treating me like I'm not as smart as you are because I don't have a penis.

And if you are friends with me I am going to encourage you to ask questions. To find answers that satisfy you. To understand why people are asking you to do things. Or be a certain way. Or think a certain way. I want you to question your world. Even if the first thing you question is my lack of religious beliefs and my politics. Even if you come to different conclusions than I did. I want you to question things until you are satisfied.

I'm a bad influence that way.