{"id":5386,"date":"2013-08-15T14:55:43","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T20:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=5386"},"modified":"2025-08-24T11:29:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T16:29:22","slug":"no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/no\/","title":{"rendered":"No."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This popped up in my feed today:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16124 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/20130815_no.jpg\" alt=\"Kurt Vonnegut quote. Text: \u201cBe soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.\u201d\" width=\"658\" height=\"359\"><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->\u201cNo,\u201d I said, immediately and out loud.<\/p>\n<p>I remember by whom, when, where, and why I was earnestly exhorted to \u201cbe soft. Be <em>soft<\/em>. <em>Be<\/em> soft.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His name was Joe, a much-older friend\/teacher. It was a Monday in November and it was dark and raining and I was 18. I was sitting in his car in the parking lot of Merrill Hall at BYU, after he had brought me home from class. I was upset that I couldn\u2019t seem to get what I wanted (a date).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBe <em>soft<\/em>,\u201d he said.&nbsp;But I\u2019d had <em>soft<\/em> beaten out of me long before then and I was pretty sure I\u2019d never be able to become <em>soft<\/em>, so I silently rejected his advice as an impossibility. I didn\u2019t know it then (nor did he), but I was <em>angry<\/em>. There\u2019s just no dealing with anger when you don\u2019t know that\u2019s what it is. And why do people find women\u2019s anger so frightening?<\/p>\n<p>I understood what he was trying to tell me: Attractive women aren\u2019t hard. They certainly aren\u2019t cynical, sarcastic, and wary. They are not angry. If you want a date\u2014a <em>husband<\/em>, you can\u2019t be those things. Men don\u2019t find those things attractive.<\/p>\n<p><em>Be soft<\/em>, he said then.<\/p>\n<p><em>I don\u2019t know how<\/em>, I said.<\/p>\n<p><em>Be soft<\/em>, Vonnegut says today.<\/p>\n<p><em>No<\/em>, I say.<\/p>\n<p>No.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This popped up in my feed today:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[535,317],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5386"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18509,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5386\/revisions\/18509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}