Being assertive isn’t as much aggressive as it is being confident and comfortable in your own skin. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, including you.
In your movie example, if the conversation goes:
“What did you think about the movie?”
“It was pretty awful. The characters were shallow, their motivations were unsympathetic, and they ultimately ended up just being stereotypical male caricatures. I just couldn’t find myself caring about any of them.”
“Auuuughhh! Don’t be so judgmental!”
They haven’t really addressed any of the shortcomings you brought up, and instead, attacked your feelings. That really doesn’t make much sense, does it? So that conversation would probably never happen, even though the critique says essentially the same thing as your own example.
If people are uncomfortable with your worldview being colored by your moral/spiritual background to the point that they attack you for it, you’ve got some pretty closeminded friends and family members. If you’ve outgrown relationships, it’s perfectly fine to discard them. If relationships aren’t healthy, it’s perfectly fine to distance yourself from them. If someone isn’t being unkind enough to justify totally cutting them loose, it’s okay to demote them to a lower-tier relationship or limit the situations in which you interact with them… they can become an acquaintance instead of a friend, someone that you play racquetball with but don’t take to the movies, etc.
I went to a Baptist university in undergrad. One year, I got a new roommate in the middle of the semester— she had been an RA in another dorm, but pretty much got driven out of her situation when the Dorm Mother and the other RA’s found out more about her. They knew she was vegetarian, but didn’t realize she was karma vegetarian because she was Hindu. Once they found that out, they were pretty hostile towards her, and made things very rough until she gave up her position and changed dorms. So, yeah… people can be real jerks about things we hold very personal and dear. Of course, they don’t realize they’re being jerks… it can be justified by, “I’m teaching you closeminded, judgmental Catholics to be openminded!” or “This is a dorm full of good Christian girls, so a Hindu RA isn’t going to fly.” Whether or not you choose to hang out with such clueless people is totally up to you, but don’t do it at the cost of your own well-being.
