missypride-blog

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Am I the only one who wants to know why the mayor of Whoville from the Grinch had his tonsils removed twice?

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When you pause the Road to El Dorado at the perfect moment.

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Some monsters are real: my opinion on rape

The only thing about rape that I support is the victim. I don’t care what’s going on; rape is NEVER a good idea. The problem is that we tell girls to not get raped, but we never tell boys to not rape. If we expect students to sit through lectures about why they shouldn’t drink, do drugs, or have sex, then we should make them sit through a lecture on why they shouldn’t rape and how to stop a rapist. I just wished that Brock Turner had sit through that kind of lecture.

Yes, I’m going to talk about that asshole because the whole thing is full of crap. What sickens me the most is that Turner’s own FATHER made sure sure that his son had a shorten sentence and called the rape “20 minutes of actions.” Dude, there was no consent and the girl was unconscious. There is a HUGE difference between sex and rape. If you truly love your son, you would let him take his original punishment and make sure he understands that what he did was wrong. Also, I don’t give a damn about your son’s favorite snacks and sports that you mentioned in your letter. Hitler’s favorite snacks and sports didn’t let him off the hook for starting WWII. Adam Lanza’s favorite snacks don’t mean crap because he murdered several children at Sandy Hook. Also, who gives a shit if he’s a swimmer? I used to be on a swim team and that didn’t make me powerful or anything. Sure, your son has favorite sports and snacks, but so does his victim. But she’s not your child, so why should you care?

I don’t know if you’ve ever opened a bible, Brock, but I want to share what I’ve found. Deuteronomy 22:25-27 says that if a man rapes an engaged virgin, he must be put to death. It also says, “Do nothing to the young woman, because she is not guilty of an offensive deserving death.” The chapter also says that a man who rapes a virgin who isn’t engaged must give her father money and marry her, but this wasn’t always the case in the Bible. The book of Genesis includes a man named Jacob who had twelve sons. What some people don’t know is that Jacob also had a daughter named Dinah. The reason why she isn’t in the Broadway musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, the movie “Joseph: King of Dreams” starring Ben Affleck, or in children’s bibles is because she only has two stories: her birth and her rape. In Genesis 34:1-31, Dinah, a virgin who wasn’t engaged, goes to see some young women and make some new friends and is raped by the son of the prince of the region she was in. The son wanted to have Dinah as his wife and doesn’t show any remorse whatsoever in the chapter. To make a long story short (it’s actually not that long, but I don’t want to share every single detail) Dinah’s brothers were so angry that two of them, Simeon and Levi, killed the rapist, his father, and every male in the area. Brock, you should consider yourself lucky that you didn’t live in that time period, and your victim is even more lucky because she doesn’t have to marry you. 

Since no one has ever bothered to do this, students need to be lectured on why they shouldn’t rape and how to stop an idiot who’s going to rape anyway. And it’s not just boys who need this lesson; a rapist doesn’t have to have a penis and a rape victim doesn’t have to have a vagina. In fact, they all need to learn about domestic abuse because girls are not the only victims. If you’re reading this and you’re a huge fan of YouTube, you’ve probably heard of Matthew Santoro, a popular Canadian YouTuber who makes educational and funny videos. If you’re a fan of him, you probably already know that he used to be abused by his ex-girlfriend Nicole Arbour. He was raised thinking that he had to be strong because he’s a man and was embarrassed by the fact that his own girlfriend abused him, so he didn’t tell anyone. However, he later accidentally publicly posted a video about his abusive relationship that was supposed to be a private video. He later deleted it, but not before being viewed by thousands of supporters, causing him to re-upload the video. 

I wrote that last paragraph to let you all know that nobody should get off the hook for rape or any kind of domestic abuse. I don’t care about your gender, race, political views, wealth, etc. Violence is NEVER the answer, and if you’re going to argue that rape doesn’t count as violence, I suggest that you shut up in order to avoid sounding like an idiot. Saying that rape doesn’t count as violence is like saying that there isn’t a difference between sex and rape.

Brock Turner deserves more than three months in prison in order to actually think about what he did, but I hardly doubt that he will actually learn his lesson and apologize after fourteen years in prison. If Brock’s father ever reads this, he should know that he shouldn’t even bother trying to save his son’s future because a shorten sentence doesn’t save him from being known as a rapist for the rest of his life; that fate had been sealed ever since he raped that girl behind the dumpster. 

Some dogs are put down if they attack a person, but this Chihuahua is lucky.

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If you’ve met one, then you’ve only met one.

When my parents first told me about this condition that I have, I originally planned to never tell anyone about this. The original three options I had for myself were to never tell anyone, wait to tell everyone until I was on my deathbed, or wait until I win an Oscar or some other major acting award I will probably never win. My parents didn’t tell me this secret until I was seventeen, and it was bad enough that I was still in the teenage-angsty “Oh God, I hate life. Just kill me now” stage and failing two classes. 

Now, what is this “condition” that I wasn’t informed about until my childhood was just about to end? 

Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, which is a form of autism. I am mildly autistic and it took me nearly eighteen years to know that.

To be fair, my case was more mild compared to the more severe cases of autism that I was more aware of, making it a bit hard to detect. I honestly didn’t know that autism could be mild and only knew about the stereotypical autistic image. Some of my friends who know my little secret were surprised and said that I didn’t look and sound autistic. 

You know the saying “If you’ve met one, you’ve met them all”? Well, it turns out that if you’ve met one person with autism, then you’ve only met one person with autism.

I’m currently a twenty-one-year-old college student who’s studying theatre. There was a professor in the theatre department who used to teach a class in which students would write and perform a one-person show. He and his wife retired a year ago, so the class was retired as well. However, the theatre department wanted the one-person shows to continue, so it was continued as a special program instead of a class. Those who wanted to write and perform a one-person show signed up while those who’ve taken the class signed up to be the mentors for the first-timers. 

When I first signed up, I didn’t originally have the idea that would eventually become my one-person show. When I finally met up with my mentor (and one of my closest friends) a few weeks later to discuss what I should do for my show and when we should meet for rehearsals, I finally told him about my mild autism after knowing him for a year. Surprisingly, he was calm and totally fine with it. He admitted that he suspected that I had some sort of disability, but he dropped it because he “didn’t want to make any assumptions”. Knowing that I was in safe hands, I let him help create a special way to “come out of the autism closet”. Yes, it turns out that “coming out of the closet” that doesn’t just refer to gay people. I mean, there are closets for rape survivors and people with eating disorders and whatever to come out of, so why couldn’t I come out of the autism closet?

Now, why would I write a show about a disability that I originally didn’t want anyone to know I have? To be honest, I’ve had so much emotions bottled up for years and I’ve been full of fear and denial ever since I was told about my mild autism. It’s never a good idea to bottle up your emotions, and doing this show was a great way to slowly empty my emotions rather than wait for the bottle to overflow and burst. I wrote and performed this show hoping that I would understand autism better than I did before and finally love myself. 

Wanna hear something ironic?

My parents kept my mild autism a secret because they didn’t want me to be called “retarded” or “stupid”. However, my classmates from second grade to senior year of high school have called me “retarded” without knowing that I had mild autism. They didn’t call any of the special needs kids “retarded” or “stupid”, though. I’m glad that they never knew because they would’ve only been my “friends” because they were supposed to be nice to the special needs kids. 

When I finally performed my one-woman show back in April, I received praise from my friends and classmates. The only thing about my relationships with them that has changed is that they know that I have mild autism. Besides that, my relationship with them now is the same it was before I performed the show. I’ve been friends with some of these students for about a year and half, and I didn’t need to tell them about a diagnosis to make them like me. They told me that my script was well-written, and some told me that my show was the best of the bunch that had been performed that weekend. I remember a few people asking me if I’ve ever considered being a playwright, which is why I’m now working on some new plays. And yes, I plan to write at least one about autism.

I’ve definitely written enough, so I will stop for now. If you have any questions about what it was like growing up with mild autism or anything related to that, feel free to ask. 

Ask away!