Blog 9

Taking this course and reading some of the material presented in this class makes me realize how different my generation must be from the ones before. I say this because most of the girls I have grown up around are not at all like the ones I read about in these chapters. My friends and I are all very opinionated and strong headed. My mom never taught me to be quiet or walk behind my man she always told me and my sisters that we have minds of our own and that we should use them to become whatever we wanted to be. That if we had something to say it was our right to say it regardless of weather it would offend the person we were saying it too. Yeah I was taught to respect my elders and incorporate values and morals into my actions and thoughts but not just for some man. I’ve never had a problem speaking my mind to anyone, and especially a man. Some people may have considered my family verbally abusive to each other because we were always encouraged to tell each other what we really thought at that point. It was like the motto in our house was “sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you.” We never were exposed to physical abuse for saying what ever it was we felt we needed to say. Now that I’m older I realize that most people were not raised like me and don’t know how to accept words as just words and feel that saying things out of madness is uncalled for and disrespectful but that’s how I was raised so I have a problem resisting the temptation to say what’s on my mind. I have to say though that I’m thankful that I was not raised to always be proper and polite, or to allow myself to be someone’s doormat. I think in the long run it’s kept me from experiencing some really bad situations that the “nice polite girl next door” has to endure in her lifetime.

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