Thank you everyone for your responses...I really needed them, especially tonight. I had also talked to a friend about this and she assured me that the world isn't always as extreme as it seems on the Internet and in the eyes of certain people I'm around, but then, I had a certain conversation with my aunt this evening. It was fine until she started talking about men and their "warrior spirit", how being cocky and even arrogant is just fine, and how women should just sit down and be women. Um, SHE'S a woman. I don't see how that could even come out of her mouth. It made me feel so terribl about myself I just cried for a few minutes. I've said it and I'll say it again, EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT. I'm so tired of this narrow minded bullcrap she spouts I could just explode, but apparently she's from the older generation so she's got everything figured out. That's how she herself is anyway, I know not every older person is like that, though if I put everyone in the same narrow boxes like she does I guess I'd think differently, wouldn't I? It just...statements like that mess me up so much, because I get angry at women who are like are, who'll just perpetuate that stereotype, and mad at men because I assume they walk around thinking they're better than me. My aunt acts like men have every right to be the way they are, but she never says anything in my defense when I talk about the wrong things that some men say about women, saying "that's just the way they are." It really makes me feel hopeless and so low sometimes, like I should just shut up and go to the kitchen, so comments like yours, Onwards, really lift me up. Thank you. It's good to know that there's at least some hope...and deep down, I do know that not everyone's like that. But like I said, I've hardly been in the real world at all. It's a scary place, and I guess I always pay the most attention to the negative because that always seems to be the most prevalent and what we always get. I guess I can only hope for the best, and that one day we'll wise up and learn to see people for who they are individually, and that we're all just human beings trying to survive. We shouldn't have to put on airs and put others down to be accepted, because life is so much more beautiful without that. I've seen it myself, I just wish others could.