Secrets of the Skinny Bitch

I'm 5' 4",  I weigh around 132 pounds on the scale. I can comfortably fit into a pair of size 4 skinny jeans and I ordered my wedding dress in a size 6 (no alteration necessary).  I usually order my race t-shirts in an XS and a few times they have still been too big.  I might not have the figure of a runway model, but I think we can agree that I qualify on some level as skinny.  In fact, I've always been this way.

Lot of presumptions are made about women based on their size, most of them are wrong.  Here's what people don't know about being skinny.

Skinny isn't Healthy.  While I've always been thin, I haven't always been healthy.  I've gone years without doing any real exercise, I've lived off of a fast food diet and I think of mac-n-cheese as a food group.  In high school I had a significant health concern that lead to me having a hard time eating normal food, and yes, I got thinner, but not exactly healthier.

Skinny isn't Bitchy.  I've spent more time being teased than teasing.  In fact, the mean things I've said have been largely out of ignorance and not out of intention.  In a few cases, I've been bullied by someone who was significantly larger than me.  In highschool, my friends thought it acceptable joke about me being anorexic (I was not), but clearly not something to treat casually.  Side note: there is this idea that women with leadership qualities are also bitchy... but that is not what I'm talking about here.

Skinny isn't Perfection.  My life has had a ton of ups and downs.  I've struggled through heartache, not feeling good enough, not accepting myself, worrying if anyone likes me.  It's taken me a long time to know how to make real friends... or find real friends, one of the two.  My first marriage, career and house all failed on some level.

Skinny isn't Dumb.  My hair is blond too by the way... though it's getting darker naturally, and I'm also starting to dye it darker.  Can we just be done with that Skinny Blonde Bimbo stereotype?  Do I really need to explain this one?  Well...  case and point:  I have my bachelors in both Engineering and Math, I scored above the 90th percentile on the GRE, yet every fall I have to work through several of my students surprise as I once again have to prove, that yes, an attractive women is allowed to teach math.

Skinny isn't Anything.  It's not anything I worked for, it's not a moral I've maintained, it's not something I obsessed over by counting calories or punishing myself for eating cheese.  It hasn't fixed my love life, though perhaps at times made it difficult, longer explanation needed.

Skinny is just privilege.  Shopping has been easier, as my size is usually carried at stores, but that is not a cake walk either.   There are still issues with how things fit and not necessarily being model proportions. People assume I'm healthy, that I exercise and eat right, even when I often don't.  Also, I don't know how to lose weight, because I never really have.

My point is that the only thing we can conclude about someone's size is that.  As a skinny person the hurtful assumption are much less hurtful to me as they are to the people who aren't thin.  Getting to a certain size is not a magic life fix, and the only things that might improve are purely a result of poorly we treat larger people, which I don't think should be the case in the first place.  Can we work to make it that way?

An Open Letter to my Christian Friends

Dear Christian Friends,

As many of you know I was once one of you.  I became a Christian when I was 4 years old when it became clear to me that death was a reality that I would like to avoid.  I didn't really understand how I could love Jesus when we had never met, but I did figure out that loving him would keep me from hell and I would do whatever I could to escape that.  Also, my mom and dad loved him, my grandparents loved him and so did most of the other people I knew, so it seemed like a pretty reasonable thing to do.

From a young age, I was active in the church community I grew up in.  We participated in AWANAS and I was a dedicated verse memorizer and I enjoyed the extra curricular that went along with it more than the ones at school.  I had two very good friends at the church and because our parents were all very active in the congregation we often hung out together at the church.  My Dad was a property manager at our church and my sister and I would make up games with the nursery toys while he would work on projects around the church grounds.  When I was little, I would ride the church lawnmower with him and when I was older I was assigned the duty of killing weeds in the church yard all by my lonesome.  The church I grew up in was walking distance from my home and I often would bike there during the summer just to wave by.

When I was old enough I joined the youth group, and my life began to revolve around Christianity even more.  There was simply so much fun stuff to do at church.  IMHO we had the best parties, amazing retreats, I got to sing in the band, and all my friends were there too.  It wasn't just about fun stuff though, I took my faith seriously.  I had an annotated bible. I asked big questions during small group and I sung my heart out during praise time.  I acted on my faith at school by attending the on campus bible study, seeing people at the pole, not swearing and skipping the school dance.      

As I got to high school I strengthened my faith in various ways.  I lead the campus bible study. As the leader, I advocated for us to have the same 'equal rights' as the GLBT group, including getting a sign in the hall and a place in the yearbook.  I questioned my faith and found solace in various apologetic resources.  I lost someone dear to cancer and was compelled by their story to believe ever more deeply that there was a God.

In college, I was equally involved in a campus ministry, but the questions I felt I had wrestled with in high school still remained and were in some cases were emboldened.  I struggled with the lack of intellectualism expected from anyone in ministry I was involved in.  It seemed that a fancy catch phrase about Jesus mattered more than sound doctrine.  I felt very strongly that the Christian ministry I was involved with was short cutting much of the biblical message I actually believed in.  The attitude seemed to be let's tone this a few parsed out scripture verses instead of an entire history and bible. Leaving my questions largely unaddressed, and sometimes regarded just plain unusual or worse down right insubordinate.  To clarify, I wasn't actually questioning the faith at large at this point but just aspects of how we practiced it or finer points of what we believe.  I struggled a lot in college with 'fitting in' within Christian circles.  I felt like a strange anomaly in this group because I wanted to get a degree that was marketable outside of ministry, which seemed to mean a lot more homework and not enough time for leading a bible study (though I tried).  I found some spiritual solace at the church I attended (separate from the campus ministry group) and spent a good deal of time with my fellow engineering students who were much easier to get along with.

About the time I graduated from college I found faith again in my own terms.  I flirted with catholicism, because I really enjoyed the ritual and reverence.  I joined a church where my questions were honored, or at least not completely laughed off and considered irreverent.  I became vaguely Pentecostal (though I would not have used that term at the time).  I had less homework, and for a time my faith felt very relevant.  I met people who 'believed in Evolution' and God, who could have a cocktail and a Bible and who swore and said Amen who prayed and voted democrat.  At this time, I felt my faith was dynamic and honest.  I wanted nothing more than to stay true to that honesty and remain faithful for the rest of my life.

And I did stay honest.

And that in turn was the problem.

Now let me state that there are bad arguments for being an atheist, and I have heard many of those, but there were three main sticking points that led to me leaving the faith.  The efficacy of prayer (or lack there of), the ubiquity of the messiah stories,  and evidence that existential experiences are not strictly divine.  While a book could be written about any of these, I will just try to address them briefly.  The efficacy of prayer, basically the idea that prayer has any ability to produce predicable outcomes outside of internal mental stress  is not consistently provable by a statistical study, and many studies have been done.  In other words we have no proof that prayer can heal a physical body, which felt pretty weak for a all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God.  When I grew up in Christianity I was taught that the story of Jesus was like no other, because of a virgin birth and sacrificial death, but that story is not that uncommon and messiah stories exist in many cultures and contexts, not to mention being highly prevalent in the middle east during that time period.  Last, they have done neurological studies where they have measured brain activity and found that existential experiences which you might classify as a spiritual high were repeatable based simple priming questions.  All of these topics have wealth of research behind them, and I'd be happy to link anyone to specifics if you would like to know more.

My larger point is to say that I had a strong, but complicated emotional connection to my faith of origin and despite it's messiness I had no desire to leave.  I felt forced by the plain logic in front of me, and I was a somewhat unwilling deconvert.  I attempted to hang on in various ways.  I joined an emergent church, I read Anne Lamott, but it didn't really work.

In the end, I found atheist is the best description I could give myself, though I'm still not a fan of labels in general.

Here's the thing I didn't expect from leaving religion.  I'm happy now.  I expected pain and heartache and suspected I would feel some sense of existential dread, but to be honest leaving Christianity has made me a much more fulfilled person.  I'm finally free to pursue the passions I always loved without guilt or shame, and that has made be very fortunate and fulfilled person.  I do experience a certain amount of privilege because I do have a marketable degree and skill set in the secular world, though that's the very thing I was disparaged while being a Christian.

People have asked if there is anything I miss about my former life.  I'm not sure I can come up with anything.  These days, the positives all appear to come at a great cost, and even if there was something I truly missed, it would require a level of cognitive dissonance I'm not willing to undertake.  Ultimately, leaving Christianity alleviated the pain I had always felt in my brain, and eventually alleviated the pain I didn't know was in my heart.

MDRA vs Team Ortho

The running community sure does have it's sub-cultures.

There are a handful of organizations around the twin cities that put on races, and of course a bunch of groups that do their annual town race or similar one-off type races.

MDRA (Minnesota Distance Runners Association) is not only a race organization but a running community.  They have socials, a quarterly magazine, running training and so on.  I'm a member because it's a a good deal just with the magazine itself, plus if I participate in a couple discounted races it practically pays for itself.  MDRA has been around for over 50 years.

Team Ortho organizes some of the largest races in the state.  I believe Monster DASH has had had close to 20,000 participants in years past.  I believe they are national organization, but have been doing races in this state for about 5 plus years?  I run an organization that benefits from their volunteer program and have paced a few half-marathons with them.

MDRA races are affordable if not free or dirt cheap, sometimes include a free t-shirt, maybe are chip-timed, and usually take place in suburban neighborhoods.  Victory 10k is one of the biggest races they do and has about 500 participants (more if you count the same-day 5k).    

Team Ortho races are expensive, chip-timed, usually include a nice running jacket or a sweatshirt (sometimes additional SWAG).  The half-marathons and one marathon are always paced (sometimes by yours truly ;) ).  You can expect a beer tent, food trucks, pizza and out right party at the end.  All of the Team Ortho races are in downtown Saint Paul or Minneapolis.

When I show up to MDRA races, I can expect to park within a short walk of the start, pick up my bib and basically be ready to go.  The attire of the day is running club singlets, t-shirts quoting Prefontaine and men in their 80s but in nothing a pair of tiny running shorts.  Conversations heard are something between discussion of highschool track days, "who hopes to age-group?", and "how many years have you been doing this race?",  "Will you be participating in next weeks race?" and "do you hope run even more miles later today?"

Team Ortho races are actually two events.  It will be expected that you pre-party (go to the expo to pick up your packet) and then party again (the race)!  Attire is brightly colored designer athletic clothing worn for style and comfort.  Popular T-shirts include jokes about 'the beer at the end', 'how running is torture, but how bout dat ass' and 'your mom'.   Also, don't forget, beaded necklaces, head bands with antenna, face paint and a tutu.  Race chatter includes "Did you hear what kind of beer they are serving at the end?", "who hopes to finish?"  and "What do you plan to 'eat on the run'?"

There are things I hate and love about both these groups, but I think it just makes me laugh to think about how many different kinds of people are runners out there.

EDIT: corrected number of participants in Victory 10 k.

The thing with the Duggars.

People have been in an uproar about the recent scandal involving Josh Duggar.  To catch you up this would be the alleged molestations, Ashley Madison account and I heard something about a prostitute?

Actually, most people have forgot about that since we now have Kim Davis and the social media news engine is as flighty as shit.  

Anyway, let's talk about Josh Duggar.  Actually no, what I want to say is that the Josh Duggar situation is not really about him, but systemic issues within the fundamentalist worldview.  This is something I felt since the first time I saw the reports.  I wasn't shocked or surprised, it made sense to me that this is a likely result of someone living in this repressive culture.  When you are uneducated, given few life options (you must get married, you must have kids), and sexually repressed, it's no wonder.  I honestly think the worst thing someone can take away from this situation thinking is that 'it's just one guy'.  Sure, not all fundamentalist christians are capable of this madness, but the culture is doing nothing to prevent it.  Even, major Christian bloggers such as Matt Walsh are coming to his defense.  To me that's a sign that that very few are waking up to this problem.  Though maybe I should be more concerned that I'm using Matt Walsh as a barometer of Christian culture in the first place.    

However, I'm not the only one recognizing this, even if I'm afraid the message is not gaining popularity.  Here, Libby Anne of Love Joy Feminism curates some of the key writings on this issue, which is a totally worthwhile read.

I wish I could be so optimistic to think that this scandal might have the potential to shake up the leaders in these groups up in a real way, and get them to re-think their practices and policies.  I think for the leaders they will just dig in deeper, keep victim-blaming and neglect the self-reflection that would yield real change.   Though maybe for those who already had a twinge of doubt this will be the push they need to look further, and examine what it is they really believe in, or be bolder and walk away from an oppressive religion.  I guess I can hope in that.

  

a math person

The title of this blog comes from my experience when asked a typical 'get to know you' question.  I'm a math educator, and here is a conversation I've had many times.

Them:  What do you do for a living?
Me:  I'm a Math Instructor
Them:  Oh, I'm not a math person.

Okay, so there are variants, at some point I usually have to explain that I teach at a college, but it's really not college level.  I usually end with the reassurance that "they are not alone", and "I hear that a lot", which in turn is not all that reassuring for me.  It's not like I'm shocked to know that people struggle with mathematics as a subject, but what I find uncanny is how people are so quick to assign in to their personhood.  I've had sore subjects to, I rarely find myself saying "I'm not blank person"  (My first blog post "I'm not a writer" is meant with a hint of irony).    The tone of this remark is often one of "Hey, hey now don't get too serious"... Like at the very mention of what I do for a living I might start quizzing them on their multiplication facts or say "... and what do you know? I've got an Algebra test right here!", which leaves me feeling like I need to say "hey, but don't worry, I'm not like that, it's all good".

Anyway, what better title than "a math person".

It's also ambiguous in my opinion and I have no idea what I'm doing with this blog right now.

There is probably no God

...and I think that’s okay with me! 

I grew up in a Christian household.  It had it’s imperfections and I could go on those, but it was hardly a rough upbringing.  I lived fairly white, fairly rich in a fairly nice suburban area.  I was a super awkward kid (and am still a somewhat awkward adult - but no one cares now.) and that was no fun at times, but I had people I could call friends and birthday parties and good memories and all that. So 1) I’m super Lucky and 2)I think a reasonable person would put me in the non-damaged camp.  

I grew up loving my Christianity! I did AWANAs (Timothy Award recipient I might add), I lead AWANAs, I did VBS, I lead VBS, I went to youth group, I went to retreats, I went to church camp, I lead the Bible Study at my public school.  I went to ‘See you at the pole’ every year!  I did these things because I enjoyed them; I’m sure my parents were inclined to encourage this behavior, but I do not remember feeling coerced.  These experiences, these people, they were my world, and they meant the world to me too.  (Bonus points to those who caught all my references) 

Most of the time Christianity was uber awesome and we were getting along! There were however challenges.  Evolution was a tricky work around, and some other things did not quite add up either.  So as the title of this blog would suggest, I’m no longer a Christian.  Four years ago, I wrote about this process in great detail on a blog I use to write on.  I debated about linking it here, as it’s long, contains some spelling and grammar mistakes and doesn’t ‘perfectly’ reflect my feelings now.  That said, it was cathartic for me to write and I often go back and re-read it to reflect on how I felt, and feel now.  I had only recently left at the time I wrote this down and I can tell I was still having a harder time with certain aspects.  Also fair warning, I’m not sure how much sense it would make to someone who didn’t experience similar things, but I tried... 

http://rubyleigh.blogspot.com/2010/04/my-faith-or-lack-thereof-part-1.html

http://rubyleigh.blogspot.com/2010/06/my-faith-or-lack-thereof-part-2.html

http://rubyleigh.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-faith-or-lack-thereof-part-3.html

http://rubyleigh.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-faith-or-lack-there-of-part-4.html

These four posts serve as the long answer the question “Why did you leave?”  A question that really has no short answer.  There are some points I would like to highlight though:  

1) I sought to maintain not lose my faith (and lost it anyway).  

When I began to have doubts about or be presented with conflicting information about my faith... it was painful.  I didn’t want to leave the world I knew and loved and I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.  I don’t know that I’m proud of this now, but in the beginning phases of doubt I only looked at Christian sources (Lee Strobel, Mere Christianity, etc...) and my goal wasn’t really research but solace and confirmation.  Nothing really added up for me but they made some heady arguments that seemed vaguely valid to me.   This is how I felt as someone who really wanted to believe.  It was dissatisfying, but for years I let it go.  Reasoning, or should I say “reasoning” that it was more about having faith anyway.  When I finally had the will to truly examine those sources critically, and see things as they were I still attempted to maintain some sort of Christian title for a while.  Maybe I was a ‘Christian Universalist’ or ‘Christian Agnostic’ or a ‘Deist’ and now I would read the Jefferson bible instead.  My point is that if I could have figured out a way to maintain my faith and my critical reasoning at the same time I would have, it was NOT my goal to leave and then later I make up the facts fit to my liking; It was so very the opposite  

2) Fundamentalism FUCKS with you.  

Yes, that, all caps.  Like I have made clear, I liked being a Christian, and the version of fundamentalism I was raised with was honestly probably one of the least extreme.  I consider it fundamentalist for this reasons: We believed there was a real hell and the people who didn’t believe our version of Christianity were probably going there.  We were also, pro-life (anti-abortion), anti-gay, anti-alcohol and anti-sex before marriage.  All of which I could go on about, but will save for now.   

In Christianity, we were taught “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).  When I was a Christian, I thought my passions, my desires, my dreams were unwieldy, untrustworthy and undeserved.  Everything was secondary to God’s desires for me and my only goal should be to submit to him.  Then, if I did that, I could finally find peace and maybe God would deem it appropriate for me to have a few of my foolish wants.  When I spell this out as it was, it basically sounds a little ludicrous and incredibly clear why it’s a damaging personal world view, but I didn’t see it that way at the time.  I believed this.  I loved Christianity, but in retrospect it didn’t really love me back.  Also, I was getting these ideas from the Bible.  I’m not even cherry picking here, the message that we are broken beyond repair and have an eternal debt to pay to the Lord is sort of an essential Christian teaching (John 3:16).  The view that I wasn’t worthy of God’s love (his existence not withstanding), even if he still gave me it anyway basically just made me feel unworthy period.  I thought I deserved to feel this way because of my ‘sin nature’ so I didn’t question it.  I only see this as troubling now as I look back.  I also see this view of one’s self harming a lot of other Christians and I worry about the mental health of some of my friends who maintain their faith.  

3) I’m a better person since I left.  

I don’t know that I would go quite so far to say leaving Christianity = life improvement, but I am a more honest, happier, confident and thoughtful person than when I was a Christian.  Part of this might be the timing in my life (People tend to grow up a lot in their 20s regardless), but I don’t think that’s the whole story either.     This is what I can say though.  When I was a Christian, I was insecure, unhappy at work, struggled in most of my relationships, and rarely exercised.  Since I’ve been a non-Christian I’ve found fulfilling work, a life partner and a love of running! (or ‘most of the time’ on the last thing).  Yes, some of this is probably coincidental... but I think a lot of it has to do with letting go of what I talked about in the above paragraph.   

This post is already too long, so I’ll end with this.  I’ve said a lot about Christianity to the point where I’m almost sick of typing that word out.  It was the easiest way for me to describe my background, it’s what I use to call myself, and I didn’t feel like picking another word.  I understand that people might be ruffled by this and want to describe my experience ‘just this one kind’ of christianity and so if that’s you, you have my permission to do so.  There are over 1300 denominations in America and I explored many of them but you are allowed to have your own kind (because at 1300 ... who’s counting?).  Related to this, 90% of the people I’ve met who are Christians are kind people (the other 10% were kind of douchey, but I’ll talk about that later), and many were very intelligent too.  This goes for the fundamentalist kind as well.  I end with this because I often hear that I ran into the wrong kind of Christians and that’s why I left, when the reality is I ran into a lot of awesome Christians, but still had to leave.  

I'm not a writer

I am however, a smartass, and when the time came to determine if we would take ‘HP’ (High Performance) classes in Junior High.... I was doing it!  Okay, so I only wanted to do Math and Science.  For Math, there was a multiple-choice math question test to get in, which I had no trouble with.  For Science, English and Social Studies, there was an essay test for all 3, which I failed.  This was not a fluke, because I re-took this test again in 9th grade... and also failed.  

Luckily for me, my teachers were not idiots and within the first week of 7th grade it was obvious that I did not belong in regular science.  I think I scored 105% on test where the average for the class was 60%... at any rate, I was granted access to HP Science, tests scores not withstanding.  (The re-take in 9th grade was to try to move out of regular Social Studies.)  You might like to say that I’m just a bad test taker and therefore that’s why I did poorly twice on said writing exams, but I can assure it’s the writing that’s the issue.  I know this because I was an excellent test taker on almost every other subject, often fairing better than expected or deserved.  

In college I majored in Engineering, and then later Math as well, which makes me sounds smart, but I’m pretty sure I was avoiding writing.   

So I thought I’d start a blog anyway.