I am pissed!  To all those republicans, I am deeply sorry for my next remarks if you happen to be a republican who actually knows what they are talking about, but many I meet do not. 

I was arguing about proposition 19 on my facebook when I happened to notice an ad on the side of my page: a youtube video saying "Big Brother Obama 1984" and I am pissed about the number of people who ACTUALLY believe this is communism and everything else we have been force-fed about the red scare.  The soviet union and China are not communist they were simply called communist to give themselves a better name.  What started out as communism (Karl Marx's beliefs) quickly turned when the government realized how easily corruptible communism is.  When the state controls the money and keeps it for themselves it is no longer communism but state capitalism, communist is supposed to give equal wealth to the population, not a controlling powerful government like the Soviet Union or China were.  Socialism is a separate idea in which society as a whole shares the wealth instead of the wealth being distributed to the people but controlled by the state and then there is Obama's dream which is called social democracy, taking the economic system of a capitalist society and mixing it with social benefits like universal health care.  This is what many industrailized nations including the united kingdom have become.  Are we calling the UK communist too? 

And then there is our healthcare, the root of this communism bullshit.  Did you know we are the ONLY industrailized nation without universal health care?  Did you also know we pay the most for healthcare?  Did you also know that people who are uninsured have to wait until emergencies to get well in which they are admitted into the ER and since they cannot pay it, we the tax payers do instead?  Under universal healthcare we'd pay for those same people to get treatment much earlier which when their illness which now admits them into the hopsital for several days could be solved by a much less expensive procedure like a few antibiotics?  How are we brainwashed into thinking such bullshit?  The statistics are there.  In 2006, the total current spending per capita in the US was $6,567, the next highest country was Switzerland at $4,311.  If we spend this much on healthcare and we are the only country one of these countries without universal healthcare, why do we not see how hurtful this actually is? 

To start off my new beginning on Xanga, I would like to explain to you a tiny bit about my career path which applies to the story I am about to tell you.  I am currently in my final semester of my B.A. in Sociology with a Concentration in Human Services.  I am not quite sure why, or how I decided on my career choice except that I have a deep interest in health.  Something changed in high school when I got a few "your fat" (especially from my ex-boyfriend) that made me decide I wanted revenge and to not turn out like my unhealthy parents.  Reality check set in and I, now at 125ish pounds and the body fat percentage of an Olympic athlete, I have become obsessed with health.  I know how to tone your butt, can tell you that drinking cold water burns calories, and that an acne lotion followed by an oil free moisturizer, will rid you of acne.  Here's where my confusion sets in.  I am not sure why, but I have become an expert at sex....well not quite an expert....but I know more than anyone else I know.  I can tell you what forms of hormonal birth control are out there, that you can get pregnant on your period, what conditions cause painful sex, that each hymen is different, the average penis size of an adult male in the United States, and the average vagina length (which will make all boys with four inch penises feel a lot better).  How and why I have decided to become an expert, I have no idea.  But I have become an advocate for it.  Not for sex, but for the right to have it, and the right to know how to protect oneself.  It is the right of every consensual being to have the ability and to decide to have consensual sex if they so desire, and it is their right to know how to protect themselves from pregnancy and STDs.  I don't care how taboo the act is, it is their right and many are not given it.  Thus, I plan to teach sex education.

Here is the story I have to tell you.  Note that I said that it is the right of every consensual being.  But what is consensual? I did an internship last semester in the group home for women with developmental disabilities.  I have friends who have developmental disabilities and several of them are high functioning enough to live on their own.  I expected that people who could not live on their own to obviously be not as high functioning.  I was very wrong.  It amazed me how high functioning these women seemed to be so when I was informed that one woman had a boyfriend and that boyfriend gave her a hickey every time they their was a dance (the organization provides a dance for the group homes every month).  The circumstances surrounding this situation caused my usually pretty quiet self to go into an uproar.  I started asking question after question.  This woman is about my age, she is the highest functioning person in the home and quite possibly the entire organization.  There is a meeting called every time she gets a hickey to talk about it and an injury report has to be written.  Without consent through the organization, this woman is seen to not be fit for consensual sex.  This "sex" is understandable as she may currently not be fit to take care of an accidental child and she may not be fit to make decisions about abortions, adoption, or even birth control.....but neither is a 13-year-old....and they get hickeys.  I was instructed to read a story for my human services class on a woman who had developmental disabilities who accidentally had a child by a sex addict who was probably merely using this woman for sex.  He then molested his own child, and the mother did not have the capability to raise the child on her own.  So, sex is understandable.  But it infuriated me to think that without the permission of someone else, an adult woman could not make the choice to be kissed or get a hickey.  That, to me, is absurd.  I hope that anyone who reads this, will comment and express feedback on their opinion.  What makes a person able to consent?

The entire world revolves around how people perceive each other.  We base our choices on what others would think.  So, everyone walks around trying to develop an image of themselves.  Some will tell everyone how horrible their lives are, wallow themselves into a pit of despair and walk around with a blue funk to grab attention.  Others like to exclaim about all the amazing things they have done to grab the attention of others.  But no one does it for themselves.  We don't walk around doing these things for any other reason than to grab the attention and minds of others, manipulating them (or trying to) in order to get people to think how smart we are or to throw pity at us. 

The people I tend to love the most are the people who are truly depressed (you know this because they act happy until you grow really close to them) or the people who truly are smart (and don't have to tell you they are) or the people who are truly in pain (because it takes three years of being friends with them before you know they have cancer) or the people who are truly amazing runners because the run a race as if they were taking a stroll to the bathroom and it is completely normal. 

I also like those who know and free admit they doing things to turn the perceptions of others.  They realize fully and that they have to do certain things to get people to think differently about them.  Some of them are ok with it and some aren't.  But none the less they know they do and ADMIT to it.  We all know we do it to a degree but no one wants to admit it because then we are naked and everything we worked so hard to lie about has become exposed as a lie (or at least not the entire truth we would like it to be). 

I hope for the most part that I can do things nearly for myself and that what I say and do aren't lies to grab the attention of others, but alas I am guilty of having done so as is everyone.  I am not perfect that's for sure....if such perfection exists.