Vegetarianism

Many people have written to ask me to talk about my vegetarianism when I was younger and why I went back to being a carnivore. Well--here is the story. When I was younger, I thought it wrong to hurt another living thing. I had compassion for flies, ants and anything else that moved. At twelve, I bought myself the book, Diet for a Small Planet. I figured if I was going to be a vegetarian, I might as well be a good one. I made salads, ate fruits and vegetables and tried to eat meals that were comprised of complete proteins.

My parents never balked at this change in my diet and just bought whatever grocery items I needed as long as I prepared most of my own foods. I never asked anyone to share my personal decision nor did I think that eating meat was sacrilegious. At twelve, I had reached the Piagetian stage of formal operations and was able to reason that other people did not all think like me and made their own decisions--which had nothing to do with me. At this time, I lost all idealistic perceptions of others, mainly adults. I had a crush on a male teacher at that time but it evaporated as I realized that he was no different than me, a mere mortal, who was human just like me. I never had a hero after that as I had learned a long time before, that no one could rescue me from pain and anguish but myself.

I had a tremendous amount of free-floating hostility within me as well as downright aggression--I thought being a pacifist (which included being a vegetarian) could control my inner feelings of rage. But it only sublimated those feelings for a while. I sat quietly while peers at school made fun of me. But I learned the truth about what worked when one of my siblings brought down a boy who taunted me about my wild kinky hair on the school bus with threats of violence. My pacifism did not work. It only served to make me angrier. As the years went by, I learned to explore my anger and aggressive feelings and to allow them to come to the surface and not to be afraid of them. By the time I was 24 and walking through the isles of Key Foods in Manhattan looking at rows of tuna fish, I realized that I no longer needed to hang onto my role as a vegetarian to prove that I was a "good" person. I was a decent person all ready. I will never forget the day I tried a can of tuna--it was magnificent.

I still decided for health purposes that I would not eat red meat as I had high cholesterol even in my 20's but I also had anemia. Then at 37, when I had a heart attack, I decided I had had enough of trying so hard to be healthy. It obviously did not work for me. I had run myself into the ground, exercised, given up meat and did everything I could to be healthy and it all backfired. I went to Mortons in Nashville and ate filet mignon and have not stopped since. I still try to eat healthy and have very little meat but it is just because I have to watch cholesterol, not for any psychological reasons.

I now look skeptically at people who preach vegetarianism to others as a type of religion--they are often the same ones who tout peace and brotherhood while trying to mask their feelings of aggression. My husband once said that he did not worry about violence from peace activists but frankly, I would rather hang out with a crowd of hard core gun addicts. I find them more capable of understanding and controlling their own aggression. People who preach peace in the face of appalling violence deny their aggression and target it at others who are not deserving of it or who are trying to protect them. I cannot justify that.

Here is an example of what I mean about using food as a method of virtue and pacifism. Notice that the bloated Americans are eating "fat turkeys" while the innocent peace activists are eating salmon, lentils and rice. With this holier-than-thou attitude, should they be eating salmon at all? Thanks to Professor Althouse for pointing out this article.

Can Women be Predators?

I was talking to a friend the other day about all the female teachers in the news who have been having sex with teenage boys. Her response was that these women must have low self-esteem, feel bad about their marriage or have some other reason for engaging in this behavior. When I asked her if she would give the same leeway to men who fondle teen girls (note, I did not even go as far as saying having sex with them), she shuddered at the mere thought of that and said, "No, they're men, that's what they do."

I was surprised because this female friend prides herself on not stereotyping others. I asked her if she thought that only men were predators, to which she replied, "well, I guess a woman could be a predator but I never thought about it." She stopped herself and said, "you know, I just assumed that was the way things were, but that can't be right." I think the idea of all men as potential predators is so ingrained in our society that we do not stop to think that the idea might be not only preposterous, but that it supposes that women are not predators.

In an incredibly insightful book entitled, When She Was Bad: How and Why Women Get Away With Murder, Patricia Pearson explains that we often mistake women for angels. We always want to see women as victims, rather than perpretrators of crime--that thought is too scary, I think, because we want to believe that the last person who would hurt us is a mother.

So we do anything we can to document that women are victims, rather than predators. When we look at crime rates, we see tables that cite the percentage of incarcerated women who were abused as children. There is typically not such a table for men---even though more boys are physically abused in childhood than girls. We try to justify why a girl would grow up to be a woman who harms others but we have no such excuse for men. Pearson says that this is because we clearly seek a preemptive cause for female transgressions that preserves an emphasis on victimization. "It is not the effect of abuse on future criminality that truly concerns us. It is the desire to avoid seeing women as willful aggressors."

Just take a look at any TV show on Lifetime or We--women are always victims and rarely aggressors. They fight only in self-defense and never out of the normal human emotions of greed, lust, or anger. Oxygen Network started to get progressive for a while with Snapped, a show about women who kill for the reasons just listed, but they quickly surcombed to the feminist dogma that women only harm others because they are forced to by men. (Notice the language of the cultural facists involved in the link to this freebattered women's site where they describe Snapped as a "misogynist, homophobic" show).

As long as we believe that women do not possess the full range of human emotions, we will continue to see them as victims of circumstance. The real tragedy in this is that the real victims of these predator women (who are often children) will never see justice served and the rest of us who are female will live with stereotypes that have not moved us beyond the 19th century.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and enjoys the holiday. I am going to eat some lovely lamb and turkey and revel in no longer being a vegetarian--I would not eat meat from the time I was twelve until about six years ago--don't know what I was thinking. Happy Holiday!

UPDATE: Here's a picture of me with a politically correct turkey! It's an ice-cream cake from Baskin-Robbins.

About Me

If you would like some more information about me--here are my answers to frequently asked questions:

What do you actually do?

I am a disenchanted psychologist who has spent much of my time listening to liberal blather and decided to write a blog about my views on a number of topics. My actual job consists of a private practice where I do forensic and mental evaluations for courts, attorneys and other agencies.

I thought you were a psychologist--I came to your blog to get free therapy. What gives?

I do not provide free therapy or therapy of any type on this blog. I am a blogger and am writing about topics that interest me. I provide commentary on popular culture and society. If you need therapy--seek a therapist. You would not expect a surgeon to provide free surgery via the web, would you?

I thought you would be a sweet psychologist who was out the save the world from the oppression of a capitalist society. Do you have no compassion for the poverty stricken, the disabled, victims etc.?

I am the epitome of capitalism--it is the only system that holds human nature accountable for its failings. I despise socialism and victimhood. From a young age, I believed that the rights of the individual and freedom were the most important principles a nation could stand for. Compassion is not telling people what to do and giving handouts--it is teaching people to stand up and care for themselves as best they can.

Why do you allow commenters to post anonymously on your blog? I find this annoying and cowardly.

My blog is set up as a forum for my views and anyone else who wants to comment on them. As long as the comments are fairly respectable, I feel that commenters should post anyway they wish. Some people do not want their identity known and I respect that. I just use the time that they wrote in to identify them.

Aren't you the Instawife? and if so, I am a feminist and really do not think a woman should be referred to in this way.

Yes, I am the Instawife. I do not care what my husband calls me--only that he calls me something. (It started as a way to protect my privacy, until we realized that I'm easy to find on Google anyway. Now it's just a nickname.) If you have a problem with the term Instawife--go start your own blog to discuss it with other busybodies such as yourself who have nothing better to do than to decide what is right for everyone.

Ten Years in Jail for That?

It seems that women are feeling the sting of the strict sexual offender policies. This seems like an awfully long sentence for not actually doing anything. It used to be only men got this kind of treatment -- now women can be treated unfairly, too. Wouldn't it be better if we were fairer to everybody?

Update: So if you are a teacher and have sex in person with a student--you won't get any jail time. Note to women--if you plan to have sex with teenage boys--do so in person and not over the phone. The former gets you off the hook (especially if you are attractive) and the latter could land you in jail for up to ten years.

Thanks to a reader who pointed out yet another case of a female teacher having sex with a 16-year old. I wonder if these are the abusers Oprah had in mind when she advocated for a one strike law for sexual offenders?

Pajamas Media Returns

Pajamas Media gets its name back! I never cared much for the Open Source Media name and as for "Pajamas" not sounding "grown up enough"--I don't know--seems to me that when bloggers in their pajamas can get out information faster and outwit the so-called grown-up MSM, who is the real adult here?

Teen Went Willingly

Kara Borden, the 14 year old teen whose parents were shot by David Ludwig, apparently went with him willingly and was not kidnapped. I wonder what more we will find out about this young lady in the coming weeks.

Update: Here is another story from the Herald Sun with the headline, Real-Life `Natural Born Killer' Tells. Is it my imagination or has every killer kid in America been said to be influenced by this movie? As I have said in the past, blaming Oliver Stone, the Internet and Satanism is not going to bring about a solution to the problem of kids and violence. People want to believe that violent teens just "snap" and become killers after watching a violent movie but the truth is, there is a long history of weird and sometimes secretive behavior, that many in the kid's milieu know nothing about or don't want to hear. If you had access to the kid's thinking pattern prior to their murder sprees, it would all make sense. But this would require actually listening and monitoring a teen's behavior, something many do not want to do.

It does not help that we have infused kids with a lack of guilt--trying our best to raise their self-esteem to the point where the normal social sanctions against murder no longer apply to some kids. According to a study by a George Mason University professor, guilt has been found to possibly predict later behavior. Kids who were more prone to feeling guilt were less likely to try drugs and alcohol, less likely to become criminals, less likely to commit suicide and more likely to practice safe sex.

School Rebellion

I have noticed a big trend in schools now is to cut the programs that will hurt children and their parents the most to make a political point. My middle school just cut the Talented and Gifted program (TAG) due to "lack of funds" which I find rather ironic--given that Tennessee started a lottery last year with the promise that some of the proceeds were to be given to the schools--don't know where the money went but apparently not to the TAG program. I suspect if Tennessee implemented an income tax--we would see the same results--more money supposedly raised for education, yet somehow the programs it was meant to implement never would appear and some important ones would continue to disappear.

Recently, more and more physical education classes are being cut by schools who say they cannot keep up with all of the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Just ask any teacher involved with the NCLB act and watch his or her reaction--it's often amusing as most teachers hate the politics behind the Act as much as the Act itself. The protest is also a way to avoid accountability according to some:

"It's been my experience that schools quick to seize on the requirements of NCLB are using the changes as an excuse for why they can't do these things," said Hayes Mizell, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the National Staff Development Council, an organization dedicated to the professional development of educators. "They're really trying to avoid accountability," he said. Mizell believes schools need to use imagination when faced with reforms.

In a recent book entitled, Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why It isn't So, author Jay Greene exposes eighteen widely held myths about education. He states that it is a myth that accountability systems impose large financial burdens on schools. In addition, states that have adopted acountability testing have students that achieve a higher lever of basic skills than in other states. Now, if we could just have schools be accountable for making sure our kids get phys ed.

Another Example of Cultural Fascism

Would a Republican Leader get away with saying this? via Dr. Sanity.

And yet another example of cultural fascism--this time from a professor at a community college who responded to a student's announcement that a soldier would be speaking about the accomplishments in Iraq at the college:

Young America’s Foundation exposed Warren Community College’s radical Professor John Daly, who in an email to student Rebecca Beach, vowed to intimidate those students who host conservative speakers and called for American soldiers in Iraq to murder their superiors.

Instead of admonishing the professor’s intemperate attack on a student’s right of free expression, Warren Community College President William Austin said Prof. John Daly has “first amendment rights” to harass Rebecca. Furthermore, the President is trying to bully Rebecca into silence. He said Rebecca, not Prof. John Daly, is ruining the college’s name by going on talk radio and television exposing Daly’s mean spirited email.

Now, turn the tables and imagine that a left-leaning Democratic group of students was able to get Michael Moore or some socialist leader like Fidel Castro to speak at this so called establishment of higher education--not only would the faculty probably not object, they would be kissing this would-be speaker's ass.

So if you believe that the political correctness police do not punish right-leaning citizens for their views--think again.

New Modeling Gig

Hmm--maybe I have a new career as a t-shirt model. Ok--so I am a case study over at a website run by a physician from the Cleveland Clinic but I will take what I can get.

This medical blog is actually quite interesting--check out this article on the strip search at McDonalds where staff actually strip-searched employees after a criminal caller posing as a police officer told them to. A Google search by investigators turned up the fact that this was not an isolated incident--it had been done before. Isn't this amazing? If someone called me and told me to do something like this, I would tell them to drop dead.