Rita Feikema

School vouchers! (This may make me unelectable forever)

2011-06-21T08:00:00.001-05:00

E.D. Kain's thoughts on the discussion about pushing for more preschool:

On the other hand, there is already a pretty solid system of private preschools and it would be enormously expensive to try to crowd these out with new public preschools. Since the infrastructure already exists, it makes more sense to give low-income families preschool vouchers to attend private preschools. It would be cheaper and it would result in less segregation by income.

Two issues to respond to here:

1. I heard the Planet Money podcast The Case for Preschool (which is excellent, like most things Planet Money does.) And if pushing to get more poor kids in better preschool programs has good long-term outcomes, then I think Kain's got a good plan for a way to do that. I'm not convinced government needs to be involved with schools at all, so letting the private market do most of the heavy lifting is preferable to a big government system of preschools (which would probably end up a disaster anyway.)

2. I am not convinced we should push preschool. I understand that for kids who aren't getting life skills at home, preschool can be a place to get those. But other research shows that too much school too soon is harmful to long-term outcomes. So universal preschool is not one of my political goals - particularly since I have no intention of sending my own children (someday?) to preschool and would resent having to explain to the government why not.

Why a strict consumer model of health care can never work

2011-06-20T16:30:00.001-05:00

Matthew Ygelsias:

I think discussions of health care economics pay far too little attention to the question of pre-modern health care. People have been earning a living as medical professionals for a long time. And yet everybody knows that the invention of actually useful medical treatments is pretty recent development. Surely this tells us something about the nature of the health care consumer’s ability to find and purchase cost effective treatments.

This is something that Mark LeMoine pointed out to me when I was interning with him at Spectrum Health - most health care is something that no one ever wants to buy. And when you're in a position where you do want to buy some health care (that is, you have a health problem that needs attention) you often don't have the time or resources to compare doctors/facilities, or make an informed choice about what is quality? and how much will it cost?

So, even though I often unfavorably compare the health care sector to other service sectors, health care is not analogous. It offers a service that people don't want to buy, don't want to research, and often can't find accurate or helpful information on.

ophelia...

2011-05-08T16:05:00.000-05:00

From Alice in Motherland:

I was having one of my angsty/poetic episodes that typically lasts me anywhere from three minutes to three years and frequently provokes me to open a volume of Norton' English Literature, wax melancholic, and revel in the company of dead sad chicks like Sylvia Plath and Hamlet's Ophelia (you know, Hamlet's bipolar girlfriend who falls/jumps from a tree branch and, due to the voluminousness of her inordinately poofy gown, drowns) while re-imagining for them wildly different outcomes. My Ophelia would float, breathe, put on a DVF shirtdress, and use the Force to kick Claudius' ass while tending to Laertes' and Gertrude's medical emergencies. En pointe.

Heck. Yes. I recently saw Hamlet for the first time at Calvin, and really didn't get Ophelia. Shakespeare sometimes writes really disappointing female characters. (Um, Desdemona? yech.) This is the DVF dress my Ophelia would wear:

Diane von Furstenburg

Classic. Non-fussy. Getting things done.

Also, I keep English lit anthologies on my bookshelf for just such purposes...

If I were going to a royal wedding...

2011-04-29T21:12:00.000-05:00

... this is what I would wear:

Hat:

Philip Treacy

Dress:

Carolina Herrera

Jacket:

Carolina Herrera

And red shoes. (Of course.)

not a child bride

2011-04-11T13:10:00.001-05:00

At What Would Phoebe Do:

The unfortunate fact of female sexuality in our society is that too-young is very quickly followed by too-old - to conceive, or even to attract many men in the first place. 'You're not allowed to date, young lady' (from conservatives) or 'You're too young to settle down' (from liberals) segues almost instantaneously into 'What, no boyfriend?' The elusive window-of-opportunity - not the Pill, not the tendency of 20-somethings in crappy relationships to end those relationships - is the problem.

Solutions? Since the biological clock is unlikely to budge, it's clear we have to look, at least in part, at the younger end of the spectrum. As it stands, all long-term romantic commitments begun prior to age 30 are viewed as having rushed into things. Without reverting to a system where women are stigmatized for not having settled down by 21, we could shift to one in which 23-year-old couples wouldn't be treated like experimenting middle-schoolers. I wouldn't suggest encouraging those who wouldn't do so otherwise to marry or similar at 20. I would suggest removing the stigma that says that to be well-educated and impressive and so on, you have to find 'that special someone' at 29-and-a-half, marry at 31, and reproduce before (horrors!) 35. I'd instead encourage the happy couples 18-25 that exist anyway not to end their relationships simply because 'there's so much more to experience.'

via Andrew Sullivan

Phoebe thankfully acknowledges that these views - about when it is ok to marry - are representative of only a certain subset of Western culture. But she's right in saying that powerful voices in media/policy/culture often belong to this subset, so these beliefs influence a lot of people.

I completely agree that too-young is followed quickly by too-old, and that trying to fit a relationship into these narrow parameters is harmful to individuals and inhibits a stable society (creating doubt where it doesn't need to be and withholding support from relationships that could be stable and committed if they just had a little encouragement.)

It is particularly strange for people like me, who grow up and go to college in an environment where it is common to marry in your early twenties, and then live and work in an environment where it is common to marry in your late twenties, early thirties, or never. I've been called a "child bride" and overheard acquaintances saying "she's married and she's just a baby!"

jonathanstoner.com

I'll admit, before I agreed to marry Mr. V I wondered, "Is this a good choice? Is there more to experience?" And the thing is, yes, there is always more to experience. But in marrying - or in any big, definitive life choice - you close the doors on experiences #1-50 and open the doors on experiences #51-100. And I decided, after much consideration, that I was more interested in experiences #51-100.

So it's strange that acquaintances feel comfortable questioning my judgement, right in front of me, because I married at 22 instead of whatever age is considered the "correct" age. But, it's also impolite and inconsiderate when acquaintances from other backgrounds ask, "Anybody special? Well aren't you ever going to get married? Your clock is ticking!" and imply that if you aren't married you aren't an adult. We need a different metric of adulthood besides marriage - they are not interchangeable.

Phoebe's article was in response to a piece about declining fertility in the U.S. which is why she mentions that "the biological clock is unlikely to budge." And that is a frustration for another day....

on freedom of the press

2011-04-06T21:38:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from Jacob Sullum at Reason: Is Julian Assange a Journalist?

"Because WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange has published confidential Pentagon and State Department documents on his group’s website, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says, he is properly viewed as “a high-tech terrorist.” Vice President Joseph Biden agrees.

But assuming that President Barack Obama is not ready to drop a bomb on Assange, punishing him for disseminating military records and diplomatic cables will require specifying what crime he committed under U.S. law. That won’t be easy, unless the Justice Department is prepared to criminalize something journalists do every day: divulge information that the government wants to keep secret.

The government has never used the Espionage Act to prosecute a journalist, which is what Assange claims to be.

His critics disagree... There is a circular quality to this argument: Assange is not a journalist because he’s a criminal, and he’s a criminal because he’s not a journalist. But for constitutional purposes, it does not matter whether Marc Thiessen, Attorney General Eric Holder, or anyone else considers Assange a journalist.

“Freedom of the press” does not mean the freedom of those individuals who are lucky enough to be officially recognized as members of the fourth estate. It means the freedom to use technologies of mass communication, which today include the Internet. This freedom does not amount to much if the government can deny it to someone by questioning his journalistic credentials.

Mr. V and I were just talking about this - that aside from whatever specific policy disagreements we have with the Obama administration, one of the biggest disappointments has been their stance on Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning, from whom Assange allegedly received the leaks. I know WikiLeaks has died down in the news now, but as far as I know Manning is still being detained without so much as a hearing. And as someone who uses the internet to say stuff, it frightens me to hear Biden tossing around words like "terrorist" on Meet the Press.

This is the kind of doctor I would love to be

2011-03-26T13:52:00.000-05:00

Jay Parkinson + MD + MPH = a doctor in NYC (What happens to doctors who think outside the box?):
Patients would visit my website
See my Google calendar
Choose a time and input their symptoms
My iphone would alert me
I would make a house call
They’d pay me via paypal
We’d follow up by email, IM, videochat, or in person"

Brilliant. And he quit his practice because 1. he got so much push back from "the establishment" and 2. there wasn't existing software to support his model, and he wanted to develop it.

Sweet. I totally agree with his argument that he's using is MD developing software - it is totally true that most medical software SUCKS - I saw this at the AMA constantly. They were trying to encourage adoption of more electronic medical records, electronic funds transfers, etc. but heck, I wouldn't use most of the platforms we were pushing.

If I decide to become a doctor I hope Dr. Parkinson has some rockin' software for me :-)

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Mad Men season five delayed

2011-03-22T18:05:00.000-05:00

Mad Men season five delayed: "
There's currently no deal in place for the show, which probably means we won't get to see the next season until late 2011 or early 2012 (instead of this summer).

People involved in the talks suggested this week that one or both deals may be imminent, but that may not be enough to ensure a summer start. Todd Gold, the editor in chief of XfinityTV.com, Comcast's television news site, said it was becoming clear that the show was 'right on the cusp of going one way or the other.'
'By now, the writing staff should be humming along, maybe about a month or more into work for a summer premiere,' he said. 'Unless Weiner is secretly manufacturing outlines in preparation of some crazy all-night writing sessions with his staff, it might be time for fans to grow concerned.'"

I am concerned!
via kottke.org

Nuclear Update

2011-03-15T08:21:00.005-05:00

Sources I've been looking at:

(Note - I don't know enough about this to judge what is a really good source and what might be less reliable, so I'm reading from as many sources as I can to put together clear information. Use your best judgment when reading these.)

Update from the "International Disaster Response Network"
Explanation of what has happened in Japan and what it means, from NewScientist
Slightly more clear and slightly older explanation at The Register
Compilation of resources, charts, advice, out of Tokyo at Mutantfrog Travelogue
What is a nuclear reactor meltdown? Answered at Christian Science Monitor

Concept of a Banana Equivalent Dose (who knew?) - Wikipedia.

This graphic was posted here - again, I don't have any good way of evaluating if it's accurate at all (for one thing, I don't speak Japanese so I can't evaluate the translations), but I double-checked some of the numbers and examples and it seems to be fairly correct. A good ballpark, at least.

UPDATE:
NYT has an article on the fire.
Reason, as usual, has a calm, pro-market take.

Don't abandon nuclear energy

2011-03-14T16:24:00.000-05:00

William Saletan at Slate:

Less than a year ago, a drilling rig exploded off the coast of the United States, killing 11 workers and pouring 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. No natural disaster caused this tragedy. It was entirely man-made. President Obama halted deep-water drilling but lifted the moratorium less than six months later.... Contrast this with the panic over Japan's reactors. For 40 years, they've quietly done their work. Three days ago, they were hit almost simultaneously by Japan's worst earthquake and one of its worst tsunamis. Not one reactor container has failed. The only employee who has died at a Japanese nuclear facility since the quake was killed by a crane. Despite this, voices are rising in Europe and the United States to abandon nuclear power. Industry analysts predict that the Japan scare, like Chernobyl, will freeze plant construction.That's how we deal with tragedies in the oil business. Accidents happen. People die. Pollution spreads. We don't abandon oil. We study what went wrong, try to fix it, and move on.

Saletan goes on to explain that everything that could possibly go wrong with the nuclear plants in Japan did go wrong, and there is STILL no nuclear disaster. He also gives statistics for how many people are killed each year from coal pollution and oil and gas production, and the numbers, while vague, are by all accounts much, much larger than the number of people killed from nuclear energy problems - ever.

I'm a fan of nuclear energy. It's a cleaner, safter alternative to coal and oil that provides 24/7 power, something that can't be guaranteed by current renewable energy sources.

Nuclear energy is scary because most people don't know much about it. I didn't really understand how nuclear energy was controlled before doing some research in relation to Japan's crisis. Now that I have a better understanding of how it works, I'm even more in favor of building MANY more nuclear power plants in the U.S. The prospect of broken plants and radioactive fallout is frightening, and if Congress wants to temporarily pause nuclear power plant construction while we learn from Japan's problems, fine. But let's finish those plants soon, and build new ones too.

All energy sources have risks - I've written before on why wind energy is not that great either. But nuclear energy's benefits outweigh the risks - don't let the media fear-mongering ("OMG NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE IN JAPAN...... will not happen, sources say") influence accurate weighing of the facts.

Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients

2011-03-12T14:00:00.001-06:00

From the New Yorker - Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients: "Besides looking at assault patterns, he began studying patterns in the way patients flowed into and out of Camden’s hospitals. “I’d just sit there and play with the data for hours,” he says, and the more he played the more he found. For instance, he ran the data on the locations where ambulances picked up patients with fall injuries, and discovered that a single building in central Camden sent more people to the hospital with serious falls—fifty-seven elderly in two years—than any other in the city, resulting in almost three million dollars in health-care bills. “It was just this amazing window into the health-care delivery system,” he says. Read more."

This is an incredibly interesting article... I think it is a good example of how we need BOTH more technology and more human connection. Brenner and the other doctors could only find information like this through extensive electronic records, but they only fix the problems through more one-on-one contact.

There does not need to be tension between embracing more and more technological innovation and "personalizing" medicine. More technology can mean higher or lower costs, depending on how it's deployed, and it can mean better or worse care, again depending on how it's used. And in addition to providing better care, more personal care doesn't have to mean higher costs - it can also keep costs lower in the long run.

Progress is about creatively answering "yes" to an either/or question.

Not actually a case for meat eating

2011-03-12T08:00:00.006-06:00

From kottke.org - The case for meat eating: "
From the Guardian, a review of a book called Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie. In it, Fairlie argues that meat production isn't actually that inefficient when done properly and veganism as an ethical response leaves something to be desired.

But these idiocies, Fairlie shows, are not arguments against all meat eating, but arguments against the current farming model. He demonstrates that we've been using the wrong comparison to judge the efficiency of meat production. Instead of citing a simple conversion rate of feed into meat, we should be comparing the amount of land required to grow meat with the land needed to grow plant products of the same nutritional value to humans. The results are radically different.
If pigs are fed on residues and waste, and cattle on straw, stovers and grass from fallows and rangelands -- food for which humans don't compete -- meat becomes a very efficient means of food production. Even though it is tilted by the profligate use of grain in rich countries, the global average conversion ratio of useful plant food to useful meat is not the 5:1 or 10:1 cited by almost everyone, but less than 2:1. If we stopped feeding edible grain to animals, we could still produce around half the current global meat supply with no loss to human nutrition: in fact it's a significant net gain."

None of the educated veg*ns (meaning educated about vegetarianism, not just educated in general) claim not to eat meat because it's inefficient; almost all claim that the system of meat production, the way it's done now, in North America, by many producers, is immoral. And it is.

It's completely true that a cow is extremely efficient at turning non-farmable grassland into protein, and chickens are great at turning insects into eggs. It's just that very few chickens and cows are actually fed by letting them run around eating grass and insects, and what they are fed is gross, and what they produce is gross, and it's all morally despicable to begin with.

So. If we dismantled the subsidized/corporatized agricultural system, started feeding people off of ground that can grow people food (without extensive irrigation etc., but using GMOs) and starting feeding animals off of ground that can grow animal food, and let food prices return to an sustainable levels (yes, this means most people in most of the world will be paying more for food than they do currently, especially meat)... then you know what? I'd eat meat again. (In small amounts)

But I don't see that happening any time soon, do you? And until then, meat is not "benign," it's disgusting. kk?

*footnote: again, most veg*ns have a whole host of reasons, one of them being distaste for current meat-producing systems.

Like gladiators

2011-03-11T17:15:00.001-06:00

"When former NFL player Dave Duerson shot and killed himself the other day, he aimed for his chest and not his head because he wanted his brain to be in one piece and therefore available for study for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which may have led to Duerson's suicide in the first place.
Players who began their careers knowing the likely costs to their knees and shoulders are only now learning about the cognitive risks, too. After years of denying or discrediting evidence of football's impact on the brain -- from C.T.E. in deceased players to an increasing number of retirees found to have dementia or other memory-related disease -- the N.F.L. has spent the last year addressing the issue, mostly through changes in concussion management and playing rules.
Duerson sent text messages to his family before he shot himself specifically requesting that his brain be examined for damage, two people aware of the messages said. Another person close to Duerson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Duerson had commented to him in recent months that he might have C.T.E., an incurable disease linked to depression, impaired impulse control and cognitive decline."

Football is dangerous and stupid. People who support football support brain damage. In 500 years we will be appalled that people played such stupid, dangerous "games."

-via kottke.org

Andrew Sullivan is wrong

2011-03-11T17:09:00.001-06:00

New Rules: "
If your name is Koch, it's pronounced cock. And if your name is Boehner, it's pronounced boner. They can always change their names if they want. Until then ... I'm calling it like it is.
"

Nope. Do not agree with this. Naming is a central feminist tenet - the right to be called by the name you pick and not called by other names is SO IMPORTANT. Words mean things.

I have a right to be called by my last name even though I'm married, and I have a right not to be called "sweetheart" or "hon" by supervisors and sales people.

This is a dignity and a sign of basic personal respect that one should extend even to your ideological opponents - pronounce Boehner's name as he prefers it. Pronounce Obama's name as he prefers it. Pronounce everyone's name as they prefer it, even if you have to ask again, even if you think it's weird, even if you have to practice saying it to get right.

Oh for Pete's sake. This again?

2010-10-05T22:48:00.000-05:00

In January I wrote a post called "Regarding the recent Facebook meme" wherein women posted just the color of their bra as a way to "raise awareness" for breast cancer. Apparently we're at it again by posting where we like to put our purses... so I'm going to repeat what I wrote 10 months ago.

Friends, cardiovascular disease kills 454,613 American women a year. Breast cancer kills 41,116 (National Heart, Lung, and Blood In stitute). Non-melanoma skin cancer is more common among women than breast cancer (Centers for Disease Control).

Surprised? Stop eating red meat, stop tanning, stop sexualizing a disease, and try some actual awareness next time.

I really fail to understand how being coy in a Facebook status is anything except pointless titillation. And how does being "aware" help people (not just women) with cancer?

I am a little squirrel...

2010-09-28T10:17:00.000-05:00

squirreling food away for the winter.

Yesterday:

6 pints of black beans,

5 baked potatoes with fixings,

4 quarts of vegetable broth,

3 cups of pizza sauce,

2 pounds of pasta with pesto,

1 carnival squash

... (and a partridge in a pear tree?)

Today: Couscous and... more squash, I think. Deborah Madison is my hero.

I need a bigger freezer. And more mason jars. Isn't "squirrel" a fun word?

Beans and Rice

2010-09-24T20:17:00.000-05:00

Much of my work lately has focused on food - food security, food in community, and women's relationships to and through food. Lots of excellent ideas like, "Food is alchemy and our souls crave the magic of the transformation" and "People who cook have the awesome power of transforming matter into nurture," and "good food inspires good thoughts."

In the spirit of the last idea... Mr. V and I try to eat good food... lately comprised mainly of beans and rice and avocado in some form (we go in cuisine streaks). This is what we ate tonight and it is inspiring lots of good thoughts so I thought I'd share:

In a sauce pan heat a good swirl of olive oil (1+ tablespoons).

Add cumin, red pepper flakes, garlic (minced or dried), oregano, cayenne to taste, and a bay leaf or two. Also some chopped onion or peppers if you have them. Cook briefly.

Add several tablespoons of water, 2-3+ tablespoons of white wine, a teaspoon or so of white vinegar, a teaspoon of brown sugar, maple syrup, or favored sweetener. Stir and simmer briefly.

Add two to three or so cups of black beans (I cook mine from dried so I also add a little salt and a 1/4 - 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid; if you use canned beans I would omit the salt and mostly drain the beans, I think.)

Simmer for 10 minutes or so. Taste; adjust seasonings. A little paprika sometimes helps. Agrind of black pepper, a squeeze of lime juice.

Serve over rice (we've been using jasmine.)

Yoga, worship, and great strength

2010-08-06T07:00:00.081-05:00

When I had difficulty finding a church home in Chicago, I looked more and more to my yoga practice as a space for focused communion with God. Slowly I began to bring my Bible on the mat - using specific phrases or concepts from my Bible reading as the intention for my practice.

This week I was reading the story from II Kings in which Elisha prays for his servant, "Open his eyes so he may see" that the surrounding hillsides were covered with chariots of fire, protecting them from the invading Syrian army. Andrew Murray wrote that as a Christian, I have the power of the Holy Spirit inside me as well as the forces of heaven around me, so that my prayer should be like Elisha's: "make me aware of great strength."

I was doing two difficult yoga classes back-to-back that day to make up for days missed when travelling, and I had a great deal more difficult work to do that afternoon. So I set my intention: awareness of great strength.

And I flew through two yoga classes. I was breathing, doing every chaturanga, every balancing pose, every eagle crunch. And then I flew through my work, focused, powerful. And then I came home and walked a couple miles with Mr. V. I felt awesome. And the rest of this week I have felt productive, positive, and filled with great strength.

Elisha already saw the strength of God surrounding him; he was praying that his servant could see too. So that's my intention for yoga today - that you too will have an awareness of great strength. (...namaste.)

Does nine weeks count as "old?"

2010-08-05T07:00:00.001-05:00

Scene: Average weeknight. Mr. V and Rita watching The West Wing together, folding laundry.

RITA: The dryer must have eaten one of your socks - this one is missing its mate.
MR. V.: Oh no! Those are my running socks - it's the only pair I like.
RITA: No, you don't like these - they give you blisters, remember?
MR. V.: Oh, you're right; I forgot.

They continue watching TV.

MR. V.: So when do you think we get to become that cute old married couple?
RITA: ... I think we just did.

Why talk about "these things" in public?

2010-08-04T16:51:00.000-05:00

For a blog that was supposed to be very "serious" and professional, Let Me See has certainly taken a turn for the TMI. Why?

For a number of reasons, but the main one is that I believe in authenticity when talking about important things, and I believe women's health is important. Do you remember when you learned (a long time ago hopefully) that Control+c worked as well as Edit > Copy, and how much easier that made things? It was a tiny thing, but a revelation. A DivaCup or an IUD is a tiny thing, but it might be a revelation.

Another reason is that people of my generation have a hard time distinguishing between public and private. Our whole lives are easily accessible on the web. I assume that anything I write - on "closed" sites like Facebook or open ones like Twitter - is basically available to anyone, forever. I think most people in my age cohort understand this (or they should), and evidence from around the web shows that employers and others in authority are beginning to understand this as well.

A sense of occasion is not completely lost - employers and family can attest that I have never brought up DivaCups in a staff meeting or at Thanksgiving dinner, nor have I discussed my work or confidential personal matters online. But in something as informal and relational as a blog, I see no reason to hide information about something another woman may find helpful.

When you grow up without comprehensive sex ed or reliable information about women's health, you're on your own in figuring these things out. I've navigated (& navigating) many of those waters, and come out in a position of relative privilege where I can talk knowledgeably about aspects of women's health without too many repercussions.

In managing my own health and relationships, the things that have mattered the most were the personal narratives of my mentors: teachers I respected who shared about their choices and challenges regarding marriage, sex, and family; the histories and experiences my mom and aunts shared with me; and the stories of my girlfriends, some of whom have wisdom from their unique experience, and some of whom are simply willing to be transparent about the experiences we share.

Facts are important, but textbooks and impersonal classes are often ineffective and forgettable. I don't remember one single word of my high school "health" class; only that I hated it and its emphasis on dating, which I had no interest in at the time. In contrast, I remember almost word-for-word the occasional glimpses two of my favorite teachers gave into their marriages and reproductive choices, and their encouragement and warnings about things both significant and mundane.

They certainly were not obligated to tell parts of their stories. The distant acquaintance from whom I first heard about the DivaCup was not obligated to tell me about it; the anonymous blogger who wrote about her experience with the IUD had no responsibility to tell the world. In many cases, these are things that are not talked about. I would never expect another person to share with me her personal habits and choices, but I am so, so grateful to the people who have. So these posts are pay-it-forward, get-the-word-out kind of things.

Along with "Minnesota nice" comes a certain expectation of decorum. "This isn't something you'd talk about with your boss/grandma/whoever" is a response I've often received when caught in the act of overshare. Well, yeah, it is actually, and I probably have - again, not in inappropriate circumstances, but when I become friends with supervisors, coworkers, and family members I've definitely been known to bring up all of the things I like to evangelize about: Jesus, DivaCups, IUDs, and most of all, Borax.

Evangelism 2

2010-07-30T16:46:00.001-05:00

The second in a series of

***

public service announcements

***

aka overshares.

A photo I took on my phone of my copper IUD before it was placed.

3. Intrauterine devices

Intrauterine devices are one of the most common contraceptive methods worldwide and one of the least common in the U.S. This is a statistic I am out to change, because IUDs are a tremendously effective, easy, and inexpensive form of reversible birth control. Too many women in the U.S. just hop on the Pill without considering or being given an opportunity to consider other options.

I'm a research fiend. I love to research. I over-research everything. After I got engaged to be married, I started researching every conceivable (ha) method of birth control, from "let God open and close your womb" to fertility awareness to barrier methods to hormones.

I would love to fill this post with links to all the studies and research and facts, but choosing a contraceptive method is a very important decision that each person should research for herself. So I just want to share about why I love my IUD, in the hope that other women might consider it too.

1. Easy

When I forget to take a simple over-the-counter allergy medication, I could crawl out of my skin. I know that I will be miserable during high pollen seasons if I don't take it every day, and yet I forget - probably 50% of the time. If I had to take the Pill at the same time every day, I can guarantee I would occasionally forget, and it would completely stress me out trying to remember. In contrast, once an IUD is safely in, you can leave it there for ten years. I check the strings occasionally just to make sure they're staying the same length, but there's really nothing to remember, ever. It's completely stress-free.

2. Effective

Mr. V and I are not in a season for children right now. IUDs are the next best thing to permanent sterilization or complete abstinence in terms of efficacy - and that's a statistic that doesn't rely on "with perfect use" like barrier and hormonal methods do.

3. Inexpensive

Full disclosure: I was still on my parents' insurance when I got my IUD, and they paid the associated medical bills. Altogether, it came to about $1,000, but insurance covered a large portion of that. Still, it can be a large amount of money to get together all at once. Compared to month after month of hormonal birth control, however, the cost over 10 years is minimal. And it's nice to know that I don't have any recurring costs or prescriptions to fill.

4. Environmentally-friendly

Both to my body and the wider world. A copper IUD does not introduce artificial hormones into my body, try to "regulate" my cycle, or trick my body into thinking it's pregnant. (The Mirena, another type of IUD, releases a small amount of levonorgestrel, equivalent to a couple low-dose Pills per week.)

I like my menstrual cycle. It's fairly predictable and easy to live with. Why would I want to mess with it? Hormonal contraception can have a lot of nasty side effects. Although many women are not greatly affected by hormonal methods, I saw no reason to find out whether I would fall into the "works great" camp or the "please let me die" camp.

Furthermore, I don't pee out artificially high levels of hormones into the environment. Levels of synthetic estrogens in sewage, waterways, and small animals have been rising in recent decades. There are many reasons (degrading plastics are a big source), but hormonal contraceptives are certainly a part of it. I'll always defend a woman's right to choose whatever birth control method is best for her, but all else being equal I pick the one without synthetic hormones.

Common objections:

1. The "you put what, where?" objection

The Paraguard IUD is a tiny, copper-plated "T" that sits in the uterus. When it goes in through the cervix, the arms of the T are down so it's a little rod a couple millimeters wide. Then the arms of the T come out in the uterus so it stays in place. Only the strings come out of the uterus - they feel like a bit of fishing line and after a couple days curled around my cervix. Consult a diagram of female reproductive anatomy for clarification.

2. The "it hurts" objection

It does hurt to have it placed - it felt like one or two of the worst menstrual cramps I've had, despite a couple heavy doses of ibuprofen ahead of time. And then it was done. I walked a mile home with Mr. V and made dinner and did homework all night. The next day I had some pretty seriously awful cramps and felt sick enough to stay home from work, and I didn't feel great for half the third day either. But then the cramps went away, the bleeding stopped, and I honestly forgot I had an IUD. I remembered again when I got my next period - periods are heavier and cramps more intense, but the Diva Cup and some yoga breathing handles all symptoms satisfactorily. YMMV. I was expecting more pain that I had. I'd do it again next week.

3. The "I'll become infertile" objection

There was an IUD on the market (called the Dalkon Shield) about forty years ago that was very poorly designed and caused a lot of pelvic issues and infertility. It was taken off the market, and the two IUDs that are currently legal for use in the U.S. have been used for a long time with no issues.

Any form of contraception has risks. My body was designed to have babies (not the only thing it's designed for, but one of the many things). Anything I do to prevent or interrupt the process of having a baby comes with possible consequences, and the risks are not appreciably higher with an IUD.

4. The "murderer" objection

Ok, let's get this out here. Some Christians think that many forms of birth control prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, and that a fertilized egg is a human. My husband and I don't believe that. We believe that life begins at conception, but not human life. I also believe that Christians should try to support, rather than destroy life (hence the vegetarianism, ambivalent pacifism, anti-death-penalty stance, and opposition to abortion for me personally.)

Fortunately, an IUD is no more likely than hormonal birth control to prevent implantation rather than conception. The main way an IUD works is to create an inhospitable environment for sperm, so that they can never get to an egg.

There are serious philosophic and religious issues at stake concerning what you believe about the nature of marriage, the purpose of sex, the role of human decision in childbearing - these are not issues to take lightly. But if you're morally ok with using any kind of contraception, the calculus is the same for using an IUD.

Evangelism 1

2010-07-23T11:00:00.003-05:00

Here is a post some will consider overshare, and I consider

***

a public service announcement.

***

If you are biologically male, you probably have absolutely no reason to read this post, so move along or consider yourself warned.

There are four things I like to evangelize about:

1. Jesus

2. the Diva Cup

3. intrauterine devices

4. boric acid

Of these, I actually do evangelize about numbers 2 through 4. (Heh. I've never identified myself as an evangelical in the religious sense. "Reformed", "confessional", "election", all those words instead.)

You can cover your ears and sing "la la la" all you want, but today we are going to talk about

2. The Diva Cup (and other menstrual cups)

periods are things that happen, ok? no use shoving it under a rug.

A menstrual cup is a small, flexible, silicone cup worn inside the body to catch menstrual flow. You fold it in half to insert, and then it pops open inside to create a seal with the vaginal walls. It can be left in place for up to twelve hours (or longer, if you forget... nothing really bad is going to happen), washed, and reused. The same cup can be used for years. I happen to use the Diva Cup, but there are many different brands available.

I love it SO much because

1. it has a much greater capacity than a tampon so I can forget about it longer

2. it's cheaper in the long run (costs $30 over the life of the cup)

3. it can be emptied and immediately reused so I never worry, "do I have a tampon?"

4. there's no plasticky packaging or waste

5. it doesn't hold moisture so there's no risk of TSS like with tampons

6. it can be worn a day ahead of when you think you'll get your period so there are no surprises

Common concerns include the need to touch your own body to put it in or take it out. Heaven forbid. Other concerns include the idea that menstrual flow is gross - I don't personally feel this way but I could understand the feeling - but emptying a Diva Cup while sitting on the toilet cannot possible be grosser than pulling out a tampon.

A final concern is sanitation, but the vagina is like a self-cleaning oven - I rinse my Diva Cup once a day and boil it for 3 minutes between cycles to sterilize, and I have not had a single yeast infection or other vaginal problem since staring to use a Diva cup several years ago. (I used to get a minor little yeast infection after almost every period - I think the chemicals in tampons and their over-absorption disrupted the native flora).

There is a learning curve, make no mistake - it takes a couple cycles to feel really confident about it. But now - heck, I practically look forward to periods. This livejournal community on all issues surrounding menstrual cups is a gold mine of information and help - they really helped me make the leap to cup-using!

People don't really talk about this in public, particularly people who would like to be taken seriously. I would like to be taken seriously, but it always amazes me how many women have never heard of this option, and I really feel compelled to share. Less thinking about tampons and leaks means more thinking about health care and constitutional law and public relations strategies, ok?

almost two months

2010-07-22T20:29:00.000-05:00

My good friends Ally and Stacy, in possibly my favorite photo yet from teh wedding. (Courtesy of Jonathan Stoner)

Almost two months of what?

1. Being married
2. Job searching
3. Being a college graduate
4. Living in Rogers Park

Things on my mind in the last two months:

1. The Gulf oil spill is dwarfed by the amount of oil being spilled at any given time in the rest of the world. Why is the Gulf spill the only one I hear/care about? What does this say about my news-gathering habits, and provincialism?

2. What is going on with Guantanamo? Can we please be done with this detention and torture business and treat humans as humans?

2b. In the same vein, am I going to have to keep taking my shoes off in airports forever? The Washington Post's Top Secret America is a fascinating investigation into national security agencies that are so big they report to no one - no accountability and no reliable way to tell if cumbersome restrictions on travel and privacy invasions are actually doing anything to promote security.

3. I just got another medical bill for another part of my physical, which happened on March 1. Yes. Almost FIVE MONTHS ago. Another $90. Honestly, health care in this country... I haven't been to the doctor in years, and I think after the paperwork and cost surrounding one perfectly routine physical, I might stay away for a decade or so.

You'd think that after my experiences in health care policy and administration I'd be familiar with the runaround that is medical billing, but I guess I didn't believe it could actually take five months for part 4 of the bill to show up.

The AMA doesn't like it that some people would prefer their chiropractors or optometrists or nurse practitioners serve as their primary care providers, and I can understand the AMA's concerns. But I can tell you that I've seen my chiropractor, dentist, and optometrist much more frequently than any MD and billing is 1) simpler, 2) faster, and 3) cheaper - so while I won't be skipping any teeth cleanings, I might continue to avoid medical clinics if at all possible.

4. I miss Calvin. Does Calvin miss me? I liked college. I was good at college. Why does college have to end?

Okie doke folks. What's on your mind? Those of you who have another semester left, boy am I jealous. Those of you who have meaningful jobs... green with envy. See, as long as I'm still job searching I sit around stewing about airport security, habeas corpus, and missing my chiropractor in Minnesota. Must have something else to think about :-)

Obviously it's time to post now that I have lots of other work to do...

2010-03-30T20:14:00.001-05:00

I'm finding myself in an entirely different bubble - I just can't place myself.

What camp do I belong in?

My favorite vegan and sustainable living blogs are written by conservative Catholics.
Politically, I lean left, except for all my libertarian views.
The emphasis my conservative subculture places on "purity" (whatever that means), marriage, and family is SO misguided and damaging, but I believe monogamy, fidelity, and family are always the better choices.
I believe the drinking age should be lowered and marijuana should be legal, but that drinking and smoking too much are wasteful and wrong.
I am pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, and believe gender and sexuality are malleable.
Contemporary American culture sucks when it comes to attitudes towards women's bodies, conceptions of masculinity, and rape; but I delight in the energy and plurality and pace.
I believe that Jesus was God incarnate, and that the Bible is the Word of a loving, active God.
I love science and evolution, but think evolutionary psychology is a pile of rubbish.
I like dresses and lipstick and not shaving my legs, ever.
I like fashion and design but think it wouldn't hurt most people to be a bit more modest, in their clothing and possessions.
I think Christianity could use more art but one day might snap and shoot out the stained-glass windows in my church with a shotgun. (Oh, also? Pacifist.)
I love(/hate) Twilight and John Calvin in equal measure.

Among my family and professional contacts in Grand Rapids I am too liberal and possibly a heathen; among my beloved feminist blogs and contacts in Chicago I am too conservative and religious. I have been particularly disappointed with my favorite feminist blogs lately - I'm finding less and less of an ideological home there. I've already unsubscribed to several and a few more are on the chopping block. Which is strange because I'm more committed to feminism than ever.

This isn't unique, you know? Everybody (I think) has a diversity of viewpoints. Everyone is complex and sometimes contradictory. It just feels like everywhere I go I disagree. Professionally and academically, I'm succeeding!! Socially and intellectually? Floundering. Like a fish. Which I would like to eat, but do not.

hm... want to tell me again that gender studies is "fluffy"?

2010-02-24T14:37:00.001-06:00

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power." -- Judith Butler.

Desk Gnome Friday, from _Sidewalks in the Kingdom_: on Christianity and New Urbanism

2010-02-12T11:04:00.000-06:00

"The imagining and attempted construction of utopias is an old habit of our kind. Sometimes we attempt it politically in communities, sometimes socially in communes, sometimes religiously in churches. It never comes to anything but grief. Meanwhile that place we actually are is dismissed or demeaned as inadequate for serious living to the glory of God. But utopia is literally “no-place.” We can only live our lives in actual place, not imagined of fantasized or artificially fashioned places…

We are used to having natural places, our mountains and rivers, appreciated as sacred places. And we are used to having secularized and problem-ridden cities targeted as places for critical and sometimes dramatic missions. But…when John, exiled on Patmos, is given a picture of our redeemed state, he does not see Eden restored in some kind of agrarian utopia; nor does he see the American ideal of a single-family detached house surrounded by a huge yard for every inhabitant of the kingdom. What he sees is a city – New Jerusalem descending from heaven onto earth."

-- Foreword by Eugene Peterson

My Metropolitan Seminar is going to be a great class.

I'm a little obsessed with the idea of place... and the anti-urban bias in some Christian circles, and the anti-corporate, anti-business bias in other Christian circles. I've talked at length with Stacy and Mr. V about the ethics and draws of working for non-profit v. for-profit organizations, and I must say, I'm not drawn to the non-profit organization vision the way Stacy is. I think good, important, redemptive work can be done in the context of competitive, efficient, for-profit corporations (and also in ponderous, bureaucratic associations). I've been wrestling with finding my place in a city for four years now (having grown up rurally), and Sidewalks in the Kingdom is helping, pushing me further to live in this urban, sacred place.

Regarding the recent Facebook meme

2010-01-09T00:08:00.001-06:00

having to do with the color of your undergarments and breast cancer "awareness:"

Friends, cardiovascular disease kills 454,613 American women a year. Breast cancer kills 41,116 (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute). Non-melanoma skin cancer is more common among women than breast cancer (Centers for Disease Control).

Surprised? Stop eating red meat, stop tanning, stop sexualizing a disease, and try some actual awareness next time.

On "answering the call of manhood": what is masculinity?

2009-12-08T12:55:00.001-06:00

There is obviously SO MUCH WRONG with this advertisement for Dockers... to the point that I'm not sure this is a brand I'll feel comfortable buying, like, ever. All my favorite feminist blogs have addressed it: Broadsheet has an essay on commercialized masculinity, Sociological Images references Kimmel and oppositional manhood, and Feministing just "headdesk"'s.

Be it known that I totally share their disgust. BUT.

I think this ad is appealing to many people, even women, because it seems... true. Men do need to be responsible for children, care for old people, be grown-ups, and "untie the world from the tracks of complacency." That focus on responsibility, caring, and leadership is what is good about masculinity - that is who men should be.

Of course, this ad is disgusting because

a) there is NOTHING WRONG with non-fat lattes. Seriously people; delicious.

b) and women can be responsible, caring leaders who "untie the world from the tracks of complacency" too.
But women are already being responsible for children, caring for old people, and being grown-ups, by and large; - to be honest, it is often men who need that reminder.

So yeah, forget the Dockers... but do "put down the plastic fork... and answer the call of manhood." Just make it the responsible, caring, leading call of manhood, not the more-common call to thoughtlessness, violence, and arrogance.

Just because...

2009-12-01T16:27:00.001-06:00

This one taken by Jonathan Stoner

(and further edited by our very own Mr. V)

All other photos hereabouts taken by Mr. V.

I love having artist friends.

Happy December. God is faithful.

2009-12-01T02:27:00.004-06:00

[Stop reading now if you don't like recollections, relationships, romance, or religion.]

Walking through the parking lot of Meijer tonight with both lovely roommates. Cold night, stars, and heavy Michigan snow.

So thankful for those women, for their friendship, and for their committed, intentional presence in my life.

So thankful for seasons, for snow, for the purifying cold, and for brightly-lit grocery stores, for money to buy groceries with.

(Reminded of cold nights in Minnesota, of stars brighter and sharper than I've ever seen here.)

Reminded of all the snowy nights I've walked with Mr. V - back from the theatre, to his apartment or my dorm, stopping under street lamps or just to catch snowflakes on our tongues. Snowy nights downtown or outside of Marie's.

Reminded of each of the different seasons of our relationship winter has always found us in -

...tentative and reserved, but amazed at the companionship and challenge we found in one another in that first December

... geographically distant but becoming genuine for the first time in December of 2007

... experiencing the joy of intellectual and organizational collaboration, as well as the difficulty of learning to support each other through personal and familial hardship last December

... and this year, once again geographically distant but closer than ever, this time looking forward to a permanent partnership.

I took my mother's advice and dated a man through all the seasons before I agreed to marry him. I needed to see, and I'm glad I did: our relationship is different in December than it is in May.

But God is not different. God is faithful. God was in 2006, bringing amazing people into my life who've stuck around, who will stick around. God was in 2007, teaching me more trust, more openness to God's plan (and I've needed that lesson). God was in last December, and God is in this achingly beautiful new December night, blessing me immeasurably more than I could ever ask or imagine.

Friends are faithful. Mr. V is faithful. Our relationships with each other and with our friends are wonderful, living things. But our relationships will be different next December than they are now, and we have lots of winters to go through. Lots of snowstorms; many moments of bright, bitter clarity. And God is at work in that, in all of it. God is faithful. God is good.

Desk Gnome Friday

2009-11-20T13:54:00.001-06:00

My doubt was my desire, to touch the untouchable, to possess the presence of God…I am at core an Old Testament Christian: prone to Job’s questions, David’s psalmic longing, Cain’s wandering, and Solomon’s love of beauty and dominion. My faith has been more predatory than anything else, a hungry prowl in the dark and a practical, unrefined pursuit — like chasing a ten-foot tiger with a carrot peeler — something larger than life that has to be found with the inadequate tools of mundane life.
-- From Jesus Girls

Lists:

2009-11-15T12:59:00.003-06:00

Things I like:

1. Steel-cut oats (eating a bowl right now with brown sugar)

2. Sunny fall in Michigan

3. Harvest Health

4. Mr. V

5. Rock climbing (with chalk!)

6. Yoga

7. The Geneva Conventions

8. Poetry (LOVE my Brit Lit class)

9. Harvest cake (made with BEETS) with Stacy

10. Sitting in the fish bowl discussing life, the universe, and everything (this week: philosophy of God, Tennyson, the state of public education)

Things I do not like:

1. Weddings

2. Guest lists

3. Bills

4. Missing Mr. V

5. Rock climbing (without chalk)

6. Falling asleep in yoga

7. Darkness

8. Mouthy Sunday school students

9. Running out of clean socks

10. Countries that build walls (here's looking at you, Israel... America...!!)

In which I think about food instead of school (briefly)

2009-11-02T18:03:00.006-06:00

Soup I made this weekend:

Rustic Tomato Lentil Soup (sort of from How it All Vegan except modified heavily)

1-2 T. minced garlic
1 large onion, diced
olive oil
Saute until onions are translucent.

6 cups vegetable broth (made this summer from scratch... yum)
28 oz. canned diced tomatoes
1 cup dry lentils
Simmer the heck out of 'em.

To the broth, add the onions/garlic and also:
1 can of pinto beans
1 can of black beans
1/2 package (or so) of frozen cut green beans

Season to taste:
black pepper (generously)
red pepper flakes
cayenne pepper
chili pepper
cumin (sparingly)
coriander

Eat with corn bread
(forget about this being healthy or vegan)
Make the recipe for corn bread from the corn meal container
Make the recipe for yellow cake on the Jiffy yellow cake mix box
Mix them together (this is magic).
Bake in a 9x13 pan greased and - not floured - corn-mealed, about 25 minutes at 375.

Then drink a pot of coffee.

From "Author's Preface" to Jane Eyre

2009-10-30T09:46:00.002-05:00

"I mean the few...in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong:

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion."

Reflections on Naming

2009-10-26T12:03:00.004-05:00

Another post on sort of personal feminist issues - this is where my brain is at right now - no big econ or poli sci classes this semester. I read a great post from Jill at Feministe, called The Name Game. I've excerpted large sections here because I know few of you actually click through :-) but you should:

Apparently 70 percent of Americans believe that a woman should change her name when she marries, and 50 percent believe it should be required by law

My mom, like many women of her generation, took my father’s name — it’s just what everyone did, and it was easier. My best friend, who was raised in a pretty religious home, took her husband’s name when she got married — I don’t know that she really gave a lot of thought to the whole process. It was just what you did. Where I actually felt the shock of the name-change was seeing a list of female names I didn’t recognize on Facebook, then clicking through and realizing, oh, that’s someone I’ve known since the 5th grade. Except not really, because I always knew Jane Jones and now she’s Jane Brown. Or maybe she’s Jane “Jones” Brown with her former name in quotes — because, I dunno, it’s a joke?

What throws me off even more is when I see feminist-minded or liberal women take their husband’s name, and then defend it with “Well it’s my choice” or “My last name was my father’s anyway” or “I don’t care about my name.” I can understand the name-change part, even if I don’t like it — it can almost be more of a hassle to keep your own name than to take your husband’s once you’re married.

What confuses me (and gets under my skin) is the justification... Things like, “Well, it was my father’s name.” Well, sure, but what does that mean? That no woman ever has her own name, unless she was born into a culture where naming is matrilineal? Or, “I like his name better.” Ok, but do men regularly change their names just because their partner as a “better” name? I’ve come across maybe one man in my whole life who has done that — I somehow doubt that it just so happens that 99 percent of people with the “better” name are male. Or, “I want our whole family to have the same name.” Again, understandable, but how come he didn’t change his name?

That said, there are very real reasons why married women may change their names, and I can certainly understand and empathize with making certain compromises and just not having the desire or energy to fight every feminist battle. I don’t think it calls your feminist creds into question if you change your name. But I admittedly do wish that more women would keep their names. I wish more women felt like it was a valid and accessible option.Names and naming matters. It is bigger than just an individual, personal choice. While I certainly respect the rights of people to make their own choices when it comes to their names, and while I can’t fault women who decide that keeping their own name is not a battle they want to fight, let’s not pretend like these choices exist in a vaccum, or like they don’t have a wider impact when it comes to normalizing sexist cultural practices.

And name-changing does help to reinforce cultural assumptions about marriage that make the fight for marriage equality even more difficult — the assumption, for example, that the man is the head of the household and the woman is absorbed into him.

Now start the countdown until a conservative blog describes me as a selfish shrew for wanting to do no more than what men have always done.

I am completely with Jill - I don't think this is a situation in which every choice is equally good, and it's merely a matter of preference (although I probably go a bit further than Jill and think that most situations have better and worse choices...)

Many of my friends have gotten married recently, and the vast majority of the women (all?) have changed their names. I don't want to alienate them, (you know you mean the world to me) but this choice really frustrates me. What's completely absurd is that according to the referenced study, 50% of Americans believe women should HAVE to change their names when they get married - that my friends wouldn't even have the CHOICE to take their husbands' names.

I will respect my friends' choices and address them by the name they have chosen, all the while knowing that when I get married there will be many people who will NOT respect my choice to keep my name, and insist on calling me "Mrs. V." Women who change their names reinforce a patriarchal custom.

My mom has justified her name-change by saying "It's what we do in our culture." Which is true - but just because it's cultural doesn't mean it's good. (!!!) Women who change their names make it more difficult for women who don't. Choices don't exist in a vacuum. My friends' choices have made mine more difficult - and while I don't begrudge them this choice, I think it's something we should acknowledge. You know the tired phrase: the personal is political.

Sex, the allure of the "natural," and what fundamentalist Christianity gets right

2009-09-25T13:09:00.002-05:00

*** INTRODUCTION: This spring I read an incredible book which presented pretty hard evidence for positions I had otherwise taken intuitively. The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris was published in 1992 and focused on refuting pieces of cultural feminism (the idea that women are different - and better than men.) Although some of the research and cultural references are a bit dated at this point, it's inspired lots of thoughts and there are some great excerpts I want to share with you. The next several posts will be a series.

***

*** DISCLAIMER: I know some of you may be uncomfortable with posts dealing with sex. Please don't read on. I'm a gender studies minor, so sex and sexuality are academic topics for me - things that I think and write about a lot. In most cases, I don't speak from experience - give me several more months (after I'm married in May), and I'll have a new perspective on all of this.

***

I’ve recently alluded to my frequent reading of fundamentalist, ultra-conservative Christian blogs. One of the blogs I follow the closest (and actually enjoy reading because of the humanity of the contributors) is Young Ladies’ Christian Fellowship, or yclf.org. While, as you may guess, I’m pretty radically opposed to many of the views put forth on these sites, I have to say that this brand of conservative Christianity really gets some things right. One of these things, in my opinion, is sex.

Outside of a gender studies or feminist context, sex and sexuality is often treated and something that just sort of is: sexuality is natural, it is argued - innate. Sex is treated more or less as a biological function - something that may or may not cause pregnancy, something that may or may not cause pleasure. And if there’s a problem with sex, even in feminist contexts, it’s assumed that it’s a biological or physiological problem that can be solved with a different technique, a different partner, or a medication.

What conservative Christianity understands, I think, is that sexuality is not a just a chemical mixture in your brain, and sex is not just a physical thing. These blogs frequently address the idea that many, many things influence how men and women experience sex, sexuality, and relationships, and that the body, mind, and emotions affect each other. They recognize, contrary to popular perception, that God created humans as sexual beings. (Sexual in the Rob Bell Sex God sense).

Tavris gets this too. She notes that just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean it’s just physical and there are no other influences. She contends that sex is not necessarily completely innate - sexual behavior is not unlearned (227-229). People who don’t know a lot about sex are people who don’t know about sex - it’s not instinct.

What’s more, there’s a lot we don’t know about sex even from a biological perspective. Tavris points out that in the well-known Masters and Johnson research, “they did not conduct the research in order to find out what the normal sexual response cycle was for men and women. They accepted only those volunteers who met their predetermined notions of normalcy” (225). Masters and Johnson believed that men and women “are on equal footing with regard to relational equality” (225), and “revealed their own biases in terms of what they chose to emphasize, what they chose to omit, and what they chose to construe as the problems in relationships” (225).

Tavris would argue, and I’m right with her, that “If the complete sexual response cycle is so natural, it’s hard to explain why the DSM estimates that "approximately 20% of the total population have Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder [i.e. they have very little interest in having sex at all], 30% of the male population have Premature Ejaculation and that approximately 30% of the female population have Inhibited Female Orgasm"” (227).

Folks, if 30% of females and 30% of males all have the same “disorder,” is it really a disorder? Perhaps we are judging by completely the wrong standard!

And then there is this fabulous passage:

"the most significant message about sexuality in the DSM is what the manual doesn't say. "Although the language of the DMS implies that women's sexuality is as important as men's," Tiefer concludes, "Women's actual sexual experiences are absent. There's nothing in the DSM about emotion or communication, about...commitment, about attraction... about respect, about feelings about bodies, about breast cycles or pregnancy or contraception or getting old."

The DSM, following the trail of Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, emphasizes sexual biology and assumes that men and women are "equal." Men and women may be equal in their capacities and future possibilities, but they are not the same. As Tiefer says, "Women, lacking equal opportunity for sexual freedom and social encouragement to experiment, burdened with poorer physical self-image and a weakened bargaining position in their intimate relationships, frequently traumatized by past sexual exploitation, and harassed by insecure reproductive rights and a limited window of sexual attractiveness, come to sexual opportunities disadvantaged compared to men." 231

This is what Christianity understands - that what’s “natural” isn’t always what’s best, and that sexuality is a complicated thing. Sex occurs in the context of relationships - relationships with other people (whatever the nature of those relationships), and in relationship with God.

Of course, I think that fundamentalist, ultra-conservative Christianity gets a lot wrong in its approach to gender roles, marriage, and singleness, and I think it’s even worse with regard to how it tries to get young people not to have sex (perpetuating misinformation and shame). But there are some things that Christianity, especially conservative Christianity, just does better than culture/science at large - and this is one of them.

Making a moral judgment

2009-09-25T10:50:00.003-05:00

Here is what I think:

Being direct and and upfront about one's intentions in relationships is morally better than "seeing what happens" or worse, giving conflicting impressions while you're still trying to figure out if you want to pursue a relationship or not.

(I am speaking of all relationships - acquaintances and friends as well as romantic relationships).

There is also the flip side - responding to people's directness about their intentions with maturity, generosity, and clarity is morally better than responding with fear, disdain, or disappointment in the lack of a "chase" or "game." And if their message is "I don't want to continue this friendship," accepting this honesty as a kindness is morally better than being angry.

This kind of honesty is a good way to let your yes be yes and your no be no, and avoid inadvertently lying through your actions.

Perhaps I think this because I personally have such a hard time reading people's emotions and motivations, and can better understand bare words. It's unusual for me to take a moral stance on something like this, and I'm willing to be persuaded to think differently - but now you know.

Thinking about history

2009-09-03T21:36:00.004-05:00

In an earlier post, I complained that when research is done correctly, it’s acceptable to disagree with the interpretation of the results, withhold judgment until further study, or look for flaws in the procedures, but it’s not acceptable to just say “I don’t agree with it.” Research, done correctly, is something that is, not something to be agreed with.

Many people would say the same thing about history - history is something that happened; it’s factual, whether I like it or not. I’d agree, mainly - but I also argue that it’s acceptable to point out alternate interpretations of historical events, withhold judgment until further facts are available, or look for flaws in procedure. I submit that a HUGE “flaw in procedure” with regard to what we learn of history is that it’s told mainly from patriarchal perspectives - the perspectives of the powerful, and often, the perspectives of the men passed off as the perspective of everyone.

Tavris makes this abundantly clear in this excerpt:

In history, the implicit use of men as the norm pervades much of what schoolchildren learn about American and Western civilization. Was Greece the cradle of democracy? It was no democracy for women and slaves. Was the Renaissance a time of intellectual and artistic rebirth? There was no renaissance for women - "at least," wrote historian Joan Kelly, "not during the Renaissance." Did the Enlightenment expand the "rights of man" in education, politics, and work? Yes, but it narrowed the rights of women, who were denied control of their property and earning and barred from higher education and professional training. 18

In my extended forays into the blogs and websites of very conservative, very fundamentalist Christian groups (in what was initially a desire to hear another side and became a sort of morbid fascination), there is frequent talk of “traditional values” - meaning patriarchal systems based on narrow gender roles, marriage, and conformity. In these discussions, it’s implied and even directly stated that men out working and women kept at home is not only centuries-old model but even the created order (!). Only very rarely have I seen it acknowledged that what conservative American tends to think of as “traditional” - women keeping single-family homes and men working 9-5 jobs somewhere else - is a pretty recent societal invention that was only ever the norm for a small fraction of the world’s population, for a much tinier fraction of human history.

Even my conservative, rural Christian high school mentioned the fact that for most of human history, including most of Biblical history, “home” and “work” weren’t separate entities - people worked in or around their homes (whether houses or tents or igloos) and everyone participated, because everyone had to. It was an economic anomaly that for a couple centuries, a family unit of a certain class could get by on one income procured outside the home. For most economic classes, that sort of division was never possible. Somehow this gets completely ignored when we talk about what’s “traditional.” History is taken out of context or wholly invented when conservatives need a rationale for patriarchy. I take exception to this. I question the motives, I question the methods, and I certainly disagree with the “conventional wisdom” that has resulted.

I interrupt this lack of programming to say -

2009-07-27T16:01:00.002-05:00

HECK YES!

Hugo Schwyzer:

Too often, “autonomy” and “control over the body” are seen as ideals of the secular Enlightenment, in opposition to the so-called spiritual virtue of allowing one’s body to be a vessel for others to fill. Christian women are offered the example of Mary, mother of Jesus, who is traditionally depicted as willingly — even blindly — submitting to God. Mary does submit to God, as all Christians are called to do. But what she doesn’t do is submit to any man. According to Luke, when Gabriel, God’s angel, comes to tell her that she is to carry a child, Mary is already engaged to Joseph. When the young virgin learns she will carry Jesus, the Son of the Most High, she doesn’t say, “Um, let me check with my fiance first to make sure this is okay with him.” She doesn’t ask for Joseph’s permission because she doesn’t need it. Her body is hers, and she offers it freely to God. That’s autonomy in action.
My life is defined by my faith, as Jimmy Carter’s is by his. As his example shows, faith and feminism do not need to exist in uneasy tension; it does not require cognitive dissonance or Jesuitical gymnastics to reconcile principles of individual liberty and women’s body integrity with a devout commitment to the Creator.

Men, feminism, and using my gifts

2009-06-27T23:01:00.001-05:00

*** INTRODUCTION: This spring I read an incredible book which presented pretty hard evidence for positions I had otherwise taken intuitively. The Mismeasure of Woman by Carol Tavris was published in 1992 and focused on refuting pieces of cultural feminism (the idea that women are different - and better than men.) Although some of the research and cultural references are a bit dated at this point, it's inspired lots of thoughts and there are some great excerpts I want to share with you. The next several posts will be a series.

***

Apparently the news that I’m getting married comes as quite the surprise to people who knew me before I started dating Mr. V - my mother has been getting comments at church that everyone was convinced I was a “man-hater.” I think this is the result of a common mischaracterization of feminism - that idea that if I “have a preferential option for women,” as Dr. Sterk puts it, I must therefore hate people who are not women. Not at all the case.

Tavris writes, “The endorsement of what is good about women does not require a rejection of what is good about men” (p. 62). Being a man or being masculine is not a bad thing - it is an equally-as-good thing as being a woman or being another gender.

What I reacted against in high school and still fight against now is the assumption that being a woman means I must fit into certain categories of being - that I must be interested in pursuing romantic relationships with men, that I must struggle with math and science, that I must be destined for specific gendered roles and careers. I didn’t even like the assumption that because I’m a woman, “of course” I’m better at communication, empathy, and children.

I’m also uncomfortable with both positive and negative stereotypes about men. “Men are better at math,” “men are better fixers,” or “men are meant to lead” are every bit as insidious as “men are bad communicators,” “men are only interested in sex,” or “men are bad at details,” (although I’m recently guilty of perpetuating that last stereotype - all of these categories are tempting, so tempting).

And that’s the flip side of my feminism - I’m just as wary of “good” stereotypes about women as I am of negative stereotypes. Tavris agrees: “Are women really kinder, gentler, and more interconnected with people and the environment than men are? It is not easy to stand back from our intuitions or from flattering stereotypes and evaluate them critically” (p. 62). The point is, saying “women are this” and “men are that” is limiting their individual personhood, even if the characterizations are good things.

So. I don’t “hate men”. I do hate the way the brokenness in human culture imposes artificial limits on how people may become the individuals God created them to be. Notice that Romans 12:6-8 doesn’t say “if you are a man and your gift is to lead, do it diligently, and if you are a woman and your gift is to serve, then serve, but if you are a woman and your gift is to lead, you should actually be quiet and let the men lead, and if you are a man and your gift is to show mercy, stop being such a pansy.”

Instead is says “If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” *

[*Note on Bible translations: this is from Today's NIV. The NRSV, fyi, doesn't include gendered pronouns either]

Economics of drug policy

2009-06-27T11:55:00.008-05:00

Many of you know I'm pro-legalization of some drugs, particularly marijuana. Much of this stance is grounded in my sort-of-libertarianism: "no one should be able to legislate the choices I make with my own body." Here Kevin Murphy, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, gives me some very clear economics to back up this position. He and economist Gary Becker pioneered the theory of "rational addiction," meaning that in some ways, people with addictions to cigarettes or other drugs behave rationally, with a view to the future, rather than irrationally like it might seem.

With that in mind, he has this to say about drug policy in an excerpt from an interview with The Region, the publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis:

Murphy: Basically the way drug policy works in the United States at least, is it tries to make drugs more expensive, less attractive, and cause people to consume less. In economic terms, it pushes us back up the demand curve. And rough estimates say we’ve quadrupled the cost of drugs relative to what they would be in a world without this interdiction. If you quadruple the price of something, people are going to buy less of it. But, unfortunately, the way we bring about that quadrupling of price is by increasing the cost of supplying drugs. The amount of money people are spending on drugs is actually higher than it would be if the price were lower, because the demand for drugs is not very elastic.

Region: You’ve shifted the supply curve, and moved up the demand curve.

Murphy: Exactly. So think about a simple world where the elasticity of demand is about a half. You quadruple the price of drugs, and the quantity of drugs is cut in half. So you’ve got four times the price, half the quantity. You’ve doubled expenditures. People are spending twice as much and consuming half as much.

Well, where did that added expenditure go? It goes to the drug dealers. It doesn’t go to the government; it doesn’t stay with the consumers. It goes to drug dealers. And that revenue actually finances the supply of drugs and finances the drug lords who supply drugs to the United States. So what we’ve really done in this case is financed the people who are on the other side of the War on Drugs. So, the War on Drugs, in our view, has been kind of doomed by its basic economics...

But when you put people in prison, you have to consider not only does it cost society in the form of people in prison who could otherwise be gainfully employed, but it also costs us money to put them there. So for every dollar of cost we impose on the drug suppliers, we spend at least a dollar of our own money on top of it to keep them there. If we normalize what we would have spent in a free market on drugs at $100, consumers are now spending $200 on half the quantity of drugs and then spending another $100 on top of that to put all those people in jail. So we’re paying three times as much for half as much output. From an economic point of view, that’s more than a little bit counterproductive.

Region: So, rational addiction but irrational ...

Murphy: Irrational policy, right. So, what’s the answer? If you want to reduce consumption, raise the price. What’s the natural way to raise the price of something? Tax it.

Region: That is, something you want to discourage.

Murphy: Something you want to discourage, exactly. We want to discourage smoking, so we tax cigarettes. If we want to discourage greenhouse gases, we’ll tax carbon emissions. Whatever it is, if you want to discourage it, tax it. The advantage of that is, you get the same reduction in output; the cost of production rather than going up, goes down. It costs less to produce half as much output as it does to produce the full amount of output. And the extra money that would have been wasted is now going to the government in the form of tax revenues, which would allow us to reduce other taxes, or do other things.

People say, wait a minute, we can’t make drugs legal. Don’t drugs cause all these horrible problems? The problem is, most of the things that people point to when they talk about the horrible things generated by drugs are actually the horrible things generated by the War on Drugs. The violence and the corruption we have, and the corruption in foreign governments—that’s because drugs are illegal...

We see that in the recent War on Drugs. We saw that with prohibition in the 1920s. It’s an old phenomenon. You may enact a prohibition, but it doesn’t get rid of demand. People still want the commodity. You’ve just forced production to occur in the black market, and when demand is inelastic—and that’s what’s key—when people are going to still demand it even as you push the price up, the black market is very inefficient, because you’re raising costs and expenditure at the same time.

He also address health care expenditures and research. Fascinating guy; definitely worth the read. I'll keep following him.

Hat tip to the incredible Marginal Revolution.

In which the Snowstorm resumes

2009-06-19T14:20:00.005-05:00

Hi everyone. I'll be returning to a more regular schedule of posts soon - I have several planned.

I've been MIA due to, in order

exams

the LSAT! (I'll get my score sooon!)

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand

I got engaged!

Mr. V and I are very happy and planning a very small, very feminist wedding for next summer. Or rather, we are not-planning it. I have other things to think about, thank you.

ALSO: I've recieved two or three verbal comments that commenting is not working well... is that true? Could you email me?

RE: Health Care Econ class and racism in health care delivery

2009-05-01T09:11:00.003-05:00

I will be the first to point out that science is not infallible. Science reflects the biases of the researchers and of society. Often, you find what you want to find, especially with social research.

BUT.

That doesn't mean that research tells us nothing. I did the reading today, about racism and other prejudices in health care. I examined the research, and it comes from several different sources, with pretty decent methodology. The tables and the charts show us - people of color fare much worse than white people, even after income differences and other variables are accounted for.

Which is why it's absurd to say, "I don't quite agree with all this." (re: the research) It's not something you agree with - it's something that is. You can argue that the research wasn't completed correctly, you can argue that there are different causes for the racial disparities, you can argue that there are different paths to correct the imbalance... but you can't just dismiss the research. Okay? good.

Redding in the Supreme Court Concordance of Not Getting It

2009-04-22T15:11:00.002-05:00

Search Me by Dahlia Lithwick, a legal writer for Slate, summarizes the oral argument for a forthcoming SCOTUS opinion about the 13-year old girl who was strip-searched at her school for being suspected of possessing Advil.

(Redding v. Safford Unified School District)

It's fascinating from the perspective of both 4th Amendment law and lots of feminist principles - for example, how is this action (imbalance of power + forcible removal of clothing) different from sexual assault? Is there a gendered component to how we react to this case? i.e. what difference does it make that the defendant was considered a "good" girl?

It's especially interesting because the justices are remarkably out-of-touch with how it feels to be a middle-schooler - Breyer tries to use his own locker room experience as legal precedent :-) When considered in conjunction with the recent suicides by victims of bullying in middle schools, this case paints an alarming picture for the way we value the experiences of children and adolescents - do they not have rights just because they're young? (You could argue this, I think... but I wouldn't.)

Also, Lithwick is funny. Read it and laugh.

one of the best feelings in the world

2009-04-17T09:47:00.002-05:00

is when you describe the pretty shitty behavior of one of your acquaintances and your friends immediately say, "want us to kick his ass for you?" and they're actually a little bit serious.

I'm sort of morally opposed to retributive violence like this, so I say "no," but having friends who would offer is great.

Also, after some reflection, I have decided that enjoying the fact that my male friends would "kick" a male acquaintance's "ass" on my behalf is in no way incompatible with a feminist commitment. In this case it didn't feel like they were trying to "protect my honor" or something ridiculous like that; instead it felt like my friends were as disgusted as I was by the acquaintance and wanted to do what they could about it. A good feeling. One of the best feelings.

Am I on target here? Thoughts on retributive violence, "ass kicking," and how this fits into a Christian feminist worldview?

(bandwagon) Sexual Assault Awareness Month

2009-04-15T13:09:00.002-05:00

One in six American women have been victims of rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes. One in four college women have been victims of rape or attempted rape since the age of 14. [RAINN]

Between 20 and 40% of college-age women have experience sexual harassment [Stanford].

It's not funny; it's not okay. It is real and it is wrong.

Just yesterday in class, in the course of the conversation, four women alluded to assault, sexual assault, and attempted rape. We are the ones who are okay with talking about it, but there may be many more who don't want to share. This happens at CCC, okay - not just somewhere else. And the perpetrators, in the vast majority of cases, are men that we know.

Until we stop laughing at movies like Observe and Report, until we stop believing that sexual harassment is acceptable or cute, until we stop blaming women for their own assault I'm afraid it's not going to get better.

Sexuality is not property. I am not an un-sticky piece of duct tape, not a broken pearl necklace, not a wilted rose. My value is not connected to my "purity."

Constitutional Law class today: to clarify...

2009-04-01T14:01:00.006-05:00

1. After the professor said, "And then we could have laws prohibiting hunting and fishing," I said, "as well we should."

To clarify: I don't believe that it is currently advisable to criminalize slaughterhouses, hunting, or otherwise killing non-human animals. As Dan said, "not yet." Given the current widespread belief in killing and eating non-human animals, making it illegal to do so would be inconsistent with my libertarian belief that one should basically be allowed to do what she wants with her own body.

However, I do hope that someday (soon), our culture will have progressed far enough from a culture of death that our economics will change: there will be no demand for slaughtered animals and slaughterhouses and animal farms will be able to successfully transition to more ethical industries and business models, beating swords into plowshares, as it were. Isaiah 2 says it "shall come to pass in the last days;" then let the kingdom come.

So when I say "should," I mean we should - Christians should not commit violence against animals. The law can't do everything, people!

2. Dear anti-incorporationists:

Let me clarify my scowl for you. It is easy, terribly easy to say that the First Amendment shouldn't be incorporated and that cities should be able to deny free exercise to "those people" when the things you believe, the things you want to say, and the actions you want to take are the beliefs, words, and actions of a powerful majority. When you find yourself at the receiving end of a "those people" slur, when the things you believe and the actions you want to take are not protected by hegemonic culture, then open your mouth about incorporation again. I'd not be surprised if your little tune has changed. Check your privilege at the door.

This is could be incendiary, I know. Let me have it, if you like.

Cal Thomas and being an ethical public speaker, PART I

2009-03-11T18:54:00.004-05:00

CONTENT:

Cal Thomas, conservative syndicated columnist, radio broadcaster, and Fox commentator, began his speech here at CCC with a good deal of self-deprecating humor, as well as unbridled disdain for politicians. He introduced his topic by saying, “I just talk about what I want.”

What he wanted to talk about was whether Christians can bring about righteousness through politics.

After (thankfully) recognizing that there were no “good old days” as far as cultural values are concerned, Thomas proceeded to bemoan the demise of the media, using the example of the Today show to prove that since four hours of the show are targeted at females, news media are obviously going downhill. He pointed out that secular values employ a horizontal, relative moral code, while Christians subscribe to a vertical, absolute moral code, so “it’s absurd to try to enforce a Judo-Christian” legal system.

Instead, Christians should focus on fulfilling the Great Commission. We should evangelize instead of registering voters or working for social change, he argues. He advised that Christians should stand for something instead of being anti-everything, being cheerful and helpful even though negativity raises money. Christians must be clear that politics is about compromise, while God’s kingdom is about truth. He discouraged “putting makeup on the corpse” by working in government – a memorable phrase.

In answer to my question, “what should a Christian’s role in politics be?”, Thomas told a story, recited part of a song, and noted that one’s role as a Christian in politics is secondary, a means, not an end.

Finally, Thomas instructed us to pray for righteousness because God is rebuking America for our sins as a nation. He also wished to inform his audience that he is a “healthy guy who likes good-looking girls”. (Just in case anyone had questions.)

SPEAKING ... STYLE?

While the core content of Thomas’ speech was no more objectionable than anything commonly heard on Fox, his rhetorical style was certainly unethical. In Oral Rhetoric 101 we learn how to be good speakers, and a big part of that is respecting your audience. While Thomas meant his opening jokes to be self-deprecating, by saying “I don’t know what kind of a school this is that they’d have me” he also insulted CCC, since clearly we thought he’d have something good to say.

He pompously defended himself to his (absent) critics, and promptly disappointed his audience by giving a speech bearing no relation to the topic he indicated in his title. He admitted as much, without thinking that perhaps his audience had attended to hear him say what he said he was going to.

Thomas (rightly) assumed that his audience would already be on his side of the religious and political aisle, and so felt free to speak angrily of “pagans,” going so far as to apply Romans 1:9 to them, but not to the people in attendance. He steadfastly avoided answering the questions asked. In one sentence, he would discourage Christians’ involvement in government, and in the next, he claimed God was blessing him for his own involvement in government. Essentially, he was completely disrespectful of his audience’s time, intelligence, background, and interests. While he tried bravely to be an entertaining speaker, he was certainly not an ethical one.

PART II: How Thomas' worldview and CCCs (and mine) don't match up.

Thoughts?

Regardant les nuages: Is God a feminist?

2009-03-05T22:46:00.000-06:00

Regardant les nuages: Is God a feminist?

exactly so. Lindsey's post brings out some ideas I hadn't thought about.

Shameless self-promotion, take 2

2009-03-05T20:07:00.001-06:00

SUSHI:
Theatre in the raw
A collection of short student plays

Thursday and Friday
March 12 and 13
8:00 p.m.
Lab Theater

FREE
no tickets required

(this is why I'm sick and going crazy, folks)

Totally off-topic and personal:

2009-02-25T18:46:00.003-06:00

Last semester, in a fit of stupidity, teenage illogic, and fear, someone close to me was involved in several crimes to which he has confessed, and for which he has been tried and sentenced. I've never really thought about the criminal justice system in Minnesota before, and frankly, been very unsympathetic to anyone "unlucky" or "immoral" enough to get themselves caught up in it.

And while I still hold the criminal justice system in high regard, and have a great deal of respect for the people who make up this institution, I've got to say - this system is messed up.

While Teenage Boy avoided jail time, he has two years of probation - the same sentence as a classmate who was charged with a good deal more than he was. To even get to that point, he had miss several days of school to make court appearances, which sucked up entire days for minutes in front of the judge.

Today, he met with his probation officer, and discovered that they want him to do his 80 service hours in the next three months or so, which is fine, except that the hours must be done in a town 25 miles way between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. He's a senior in high school, and involved in golf and the school play - I mean, he's an integrated, responsible kid. To finish his service hours he may have to miss more school and extracurriculars - how is he supposed to do 80 service hours between 8 and 5 when school goes from 8 to 3? I don't think this is right - his retribution to the community should not take him out of his community and threaten his grades.

Before this experience, I always looked down on "repeat offenders" or people who broke the terms of their probation, but I can easily, easily understand now how hard it is for people to live responsible, productive lives while involved with the court system. The court fees and probation fees and all the other fees and fines have been burdensome, not to mention the days missed from school and work. It's a degrading, extremely expensive downward spiral.

If Teenage Boy leaves the state, he has to get permission from his probation officer ahead of time, and report when, where, how long, with whom, etc. I understand that this is not completely unreasonable, but the nearest large city is over state lines - Teenage Boy's home is just miles from the Iowa and South Dakota borders. His counseling appointments, lessons, shopping, occassionally even extra curriculars - all over state lines. It would not be difficult to mess this one up.

I know that what he did was serious, and since he's very close to me, I don't necessarily have an objective perspective. But I am frustrated and indignant that the criminal justice system is doing less to make Teenage Boy a law-abiding member of society and much more to threaten his high school education, remove him from his social support structures, and drain his college savings. I can see how people get caught in this web and never get out.

I think I have a new cause.

And I covet your thoughts and prayers for Teenage Boy for the next two years.

What's the point of academic feminism?

2009-02-13T08:18:00.003-06:00

Dr. Schwyzer has this to say today:

Of course, teaching feminism is about more than raising up a new generation of Women’s Studies majors. It’s about giving young men and women a different lens through which to see the world. It’s about asking young men and women to consider the possibility that biology is not destiny; that possession of a womb is no obstacle to full and complete participation in every aspect of modern life and that possession of a penis is no barrier to empathy, gentleness, and the capacity to nurture. Young people need to break out of the straitjacket of culturally imposed gender limitations, and they need tools with which to dismantle the ugliest aspects of what more and more feminists are starting to call the kyriarchy. These tools aren’t just for academic use: they are meant for the bedroom and the boardroom, the kitchen and the day care center, the family dinner table and the small rural collective. But those of us who teach and work in feminist-sympathetic communities (like that found on many college campuses), need to remember how many of our students will take what they’ve learned back into their homes and workplaces, spaces that are — to put it mildly — infinitely less “feminist-friendly.” We do well to remember that.

What do you think - what is feminism "about"? Does your feminism change with your location? (I know what I think at any given time is influenced by who I'm with...)

Aaaaaand: for a good post on kyriarchy - Accepting Kyriarchy, not Apologies at My Ecdysis.

What's salvation?

2009-02-04T15:23:00.004-06:00

I was browsing Hugo's site this afternoon and came upon his post on rethinking salvation, something I've thought about considerably at CCC. He writes about his first view and the criticism:

In a nutshell, this is what All Saints might understand salvation to be: the knowledge that God lives in us and we are making His love complete in the world through our actions and above all, through our unconditional agape love for one another.
Kendall called this view "too horizontal", and Camassia suggests — with some accuracy — that this is a theology for folks who see themselves as comfortable and powerful. It is a theology for people who see the problems in their lives as things that can be solved in the here and now.

I've often argued this view (always in tandem with "the life everlasting" kind of salvation), but I've never thought about what it means. Hugo writes later,

In youth group, we can hug away the pain of a break-up; but hugs and affirmations — even when done in the name of Jesus — don’t seem to have the same efficacy in toppling unjust governments, ending genocide, or providing clean water.

How do you think about salvation? What is the point of Christianity? And have you ever considered how your view of salvation might be insufficient for someone else? I never had!

Eh... I need to think about this some more.

About those Super Bowl ads...

2009-02-02T19:34:00.003-06:00

From Wired:

Now, we're guys. We get it. We like a bit of off-color fun once in a while. But these ads were so full of violence, cruelty, and sexism that something needs to be said. With that purpose in mind, here are the worst of the bad ads, by quarter.The 4 Worst Super Bowl Ads by Quarter, Feb 2009

As Kate Harding over at Salon said,

If even guys who explicitly self-identify as guys to lend credibility to their arguments against sexism and violence are turned off, just imagine how we humorless feminists feel!

She goes on to point out:

It's so freakin' routine that women are treated as objects for the sexual pleasure of men, we're actually expected to laugh at the concept of a woman being stripped (and/or taken to an unknown location) against her will, because she's completely under the control of a man who wants a better view of her boobies. Three different times. These things are known as "sexual assault" and "kidnapping" when men do them in the real world, but if they're accomplished on TV by the power of a corn chip or a Web host or a six-pack, they're just high-larious riffs on what a Martian anthropologist would have to note as an apparently common American male fantasy. Of ... sexual assault and kidnapping. With no accountability. Ha! Geddit?
Super Bowl ads: Violence + boobies = laff riot!

Hm. I have nothing more to say, right now. (I didn't see the ads myself so I'm withholding further comment until I have.)

Desk Gnome Monday: Motivation Part 2

2009-02-02T19:18:00.003-06:00

Still need that motivation. Here are two more little phrases to help get you through the first week of class here at CCC!

On time management (and in my case, perfectionism):

"To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time." (lol).

On persistence:

There may come a day when you cannot do this. Today is not that day.

Do you have any good little mantras to share?

Desk Gnome Monday: Motivation Part 1

2009-01-26T22:05:00.003-06:00

Eh. Motivation is something I need right now. I think I need a break from school or ADD medication or behavior modification therapy or something... maybe just more motivational quotes?

Here are two of my favorites that have kept me at it through the long slog of last semester that isn't even over yet:

"Chain that muse to the desk and get the job done." (Barbara Kingsolver)

"Work efficiently. There are many ways to push a boulder without moving it at all."

Excerpt from "Not for a Nation"

2009-01-24T21:13:00.005-06:00

Not for my country right or wrong;
Not for the drum or the bugle; not for the song
Which pipes me away from my home against my will along
with the other children
To where I would not go
And makes me say what I promised never to say, and do the
thing I am through with -
Into the Piper's Hill;
Not for the flag
Of any land because myself was born there
Will I give up my life.
But I will love that land where man (sic) is free,
And that will I defend.
"To they end?" you ask, "To the end?" - Naturally, to the end.

I love Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Thoughts on patriotism?

I finished all of Twilight

2009-01-22T21:14:00.002-06:00

FYI. Last week. All the books, the Edward-perspective book, everything.

sigh. I feel silly but I can't stop thinking about it :-) .

Lots of thoughts. Consider this an open thread if you'd like to share yours.

January Series Reflections and Criticisms, Part 2

2009-01-22T20:52:00.003-06:00

Today I attended UnChristian by David Kinnaman at CCC's The January Series. He's an engaging speaker with lots of interesting data.

A couple good points:

John 17:23 "The world will know you sent me." We are accountable for our image to the rest of the world - even if it's tempting to be defensive and say, "well, people don't like those kind of Christians but we're the good kind," or even worse, say "Christianity is supposed to be an offensive message," perceptions matter, and we're not going to convince many people to join the Jesus Team when it seems like the Judgmental Hypocrite Team.

Sometimes the church is so busy talking about sin that we don't do anything for people who's lives are deeply affected by sin. When Jesus is hanging out with Simon and the "immoral woman" comes to wash his feet, he doesn't tell Simon, "love the sinner, hate the sin" even though this would have been a perfect time to do that. Instead, he tells a parable that makes it clear that the religious insiders are not any better off. We're the religious insiders.

An even better point:

The under-25 generation (that's me!) has a lot of opportunities and strengths.
- we're not afraid of a post-Christian world
- we have a new thinking about spiritual maturity, rejecting superficial Christianity
- we have a new way of engaging in politics and culture
- we can get better at listening to "outsiders," particularly non-American Christians, because frankly, America's Christianity boat has sailed.

And the best point:

Our parents often want us to have the strength of conviction that Daniel did - faith enough to be thrown to the lions. BUT Daniel learned the Babylonian language, he was educated, likely in Babylonian literature and science, he took a Babylonian name, and he worked in the court of a corrupt king. If we want to have the faith and influence of Daniel, we need to have Daniel's cultural cache as well. This isn't something I've heard before, and I really, really like it. The children's song, "Dare to be a Daniel" means a bit more - going to CCC and engaging in difficult topics and getting a great education is daring to be a Daniel too.

There was just one point I was uncomfortable with in this overall great lecture - Mr. Kinnaman was very outspoken in that "The Bible is clear that homosexuality is a sin." I totally do not agree with this and do not think that the Bible says what he thinks it says, and I struggled for a moment with whether I should register my displeasure with this affront to a vulnerable population with a boo (disrespectful to the speaker), if I should get up and leave (I wanted to hear the rest of the speech), or if I should shut up and accept that genuinely committed Christians have different views on this topic (what I did).

January Series Reflections and Criticisms, Part 1

2009-01-22T20:04:00.005-06:00

Here at CCC (le Conservative Christian College) we have Interim, which means I am currently not doing dreary homework and instead learning for the fun of it. I mean, I always learn for the fun of it, but sometimes it's more fun than other times. The January Series, a free lecture series over lunch, is fun.

Two weeks ago I went to Faith and Doubt by John Ortberg. I was excited for the lecture and the auditorium was packed, so I think everyone else was too. I was disappointed. What he had to say was good, mostly, but there were some recurring dark moments that sort of ruined it for me. First, the good:

"Our society thinks about blind faith and honest doubt, but there's also honest faith and blind doubt."
No decision is completely doubt-free. If we waited for no doubt, we could never do anything. Essentially, everyone lives by faith - the righteous live by faith and so does everyone else. But, (this is my addition) we have a different faith and should, then, also have a different life.
So, if two people think they believe the same things, but act differently, do they really have the same faith?
- this was an interesting question but he didn't really answer it. Bummer.
- the best indicator of your true beliefs is your actions, becasue your actions always flow from the way you believe the world works - what you believe is true.
The question is not, "what's the minimum amount you have to believe to get into heaven?" That's not Biblical. Jesus is interested in changing your core convictions so that you see the way the world works the way Jesus does. People looked at Jesus' life and teachings and they matched. People want the joy, purpose, boldness, serenity, and generosity that Jesus had. That's the draw.

So far so good - but pretty bland, basic fair. I mean, it seemed like a sermon. A good sermon, certainly, but not like, a lecture, you know?

But interspersed in all that basic goodness was so much unchecked misogyny. All of his little jokes and examples (and they were legion) were either disparaging and disrespectful to men as a group, perpetuating the stereotypes of men as lazy, insensitive, incapable, commitment-phobic sex fiends and/or put women on an impossible pedestal. People often get this idea that feminists are man-haters, but let me point out that it is just as unfair to negatively characterize men as a gender as it is to do that to women, and upsets me almost as much.

Furthermore, putting women as a gender on a pedestal is not recognizing their humanity either - women look far away, up there, self-righteous, then.

AND THEN: in an effort to illustrate the importance of trust and commitment, Rev. Ortberg used an example from Stepford Wives. After describing these "wives" who are "content to stay at home, doing your laundry, making your meals, only concerned with your interests and providing for all your needs, receptive to all your desires," he said, "would you want a wife like that?" And someone in the audience yelled, "YES!" The auditorium filled with somewhat uncomfortable laughter, and instead of disagreeing, Rev. Ortberg laughed along.

That's not funny, that's misogyny.

In his defense, Rev. Ortberg was clearly looking for a "no" answer, to illustrate that people want independent, thinking partners. And in his defense, I don't think he's an intentionally misogynistic guy - he seems pretty decent, overall, and his wife is also a pastor, which puts him at the liberal end of many church communities. I definitely didn't expect this from him.

BUT - this is huge - look who Rev. Ortberg was addressing in that whole example. "You," he says, "your interests;" "would you want a wife like that?" he asks. The only people he is speaking to are the male people. He didn't use an example that would resonate with his whole audience, he didn't even say, "would you want a spouse like that?" This example clearly reveals that Rev. Ortberg only considers men to be real people, when you get right down to it. All his other slights and characterizations hinted at it, but here it is.

I think Rev. Ortberg is a good example of how in a society that systematically devalues women and basically everyone except heterosexual white men, even people who don't intend to be cruel are. File this one under PHMT (Patriarchy Hurts Men Too), I guess.

His gender-deprecating jokes (even though it was [mostly] his own gender) are a privilege of power. He was in a position in which he had the power to name, the authority granted by a respected name and a microphone. And instead of recognizing that the female half of his audience had just been de-humanized, objectified, and insulted, he laughed along.

Desk Gnome Monday

2009-01-20T09:40:00.004-06:00

I like finding interesting sentences as I read and learn and I like sharing these little pieces with others. Mr. V knows this well, and at one point he wondered how I found so many pieces of poetry and prose, and we decided that I must have little gnomes working for me at my desk.

Posting goes better if I have a reason, so: Desk Gnome Monday. Yes, I'm aware that it's Tuesday but better late than never.

Yesterday's desk gnome quote from Dr. S, about how we've thought about men and women traditionally:

"Men's world is the world and women's world is men."

Sadly, so succinct. Note: this is a criticism of the tendency :-)

Factoid Tuesday

2009-01-20T09:20:00.002-06:00

Health care costs are the number one reason for personal bankruptcy in the United States.

Wow. Something's gotta change...

Shameless self promotion

2009-01-09T18:30:00.003-06:00

Student Productions and Dialogue present

24-Hour Theatre
"Prologue, Epilogue, Monologue, and Dialogue"

Saturday
Lab Theatre
8:00 p.m.
FREE

...Time is running out!

(I'm teh president of this gig... producer... head sanity-keeper... etc.)

I wish I could love Caitlin Flanagan

2009-01-05T13:23:00.003-06:00

Because this article about Twilight in the The Atlantic is genius. Alas, I do not love her and her talking out of both sides of her mouth. Nonetheless, I wish I could have written this, only without quite so much love for Twilight. I didn't think it was that great, okay? I'm beginning to see I really am much less of a romantic than (apparently) most other American women. Yuck.

More on Twilight

2009-01-05T11:04:00.006-06:00

I promise, I'll be done soon.

Two interesting conversations yesterday about Twilight that helped me see the whole picture, and probably why it is so popular.

From kitchen convo with Dr.S:

1. Twilight shows the reality of adolescent female sexuality - romance like that feels sexually intense, overwhelming, and sometimes confusing. Few books for adolescents acknowledge that teenage women are sexual, too - for Bella to be something of a sexual aggressor but also not actually have sex is probably a pretty common real-life occurrence, and I think it's interesting and admirable that Ms. Meyer portrays adolescent female (and male) sexuality so powerfully.

2. Also interesting (and as Dr.S pointed out, the crucial aspect of fun-to-read romances): Bella isn't particularly special. She attracts Edward and all the other boys without being conventionally attractive or very socially adept. Whatever negative standards Ms. Meyer sets for love elsewhere in her writing, I do think that's it's important that teenage women learn that they don't have to be perfect/gorgeous/etc. to be loved.

While I still don't like that Bella basically attracts Edward because her blood smells good to him and he gets to save her from her own ineptitude, Bella is an intelligent character who is well-read and excels in science. This is good. And as much as I would like Bella to be a stronger, less co-dependent character, I think it's accurate that the things that initially make people attractive to one another are often hard to pinpoint and pretty superficial. Heck, the first time I was attracted to Mr. V it was because he was in a spotlight wearing tight pants and a red cape! lol.

From kitchen convo with The Bestie:

1. I need to point out that I enjoyed reading Twilight. It was difficult for me to get past some of the characterizations, and I'm glad that I've learned to notice the things that I do, but I don't think that Christians or feminists need to totally dismiss media that doesn't entirely line up with our hopes for the world. That's what we learn here at CCC with regard to Christianity, and I'm applying the same principles to feminism.

The Bestie was talking about Sleeping Beauty and how it should really be named after the Prince, because the Beauty has basically no agency. She said that it bothered her that the Queen and the Beauty don't really get to do, or even say, anything, but that she still loved the music and listening to the Beauty's voice. When we recognize what is not as it should be in the media we consume, I think we can still enjoy the parts that are good.

Also... these conversations, and the majority of my most important, transformative, status-quo-challenging, consciousness-raising conversations with Mr. V, neo-feminist roommate, Virginia, and others occur in kitchens. Hey all you fundamentalists/traditionalists - still think the kitchen is a good place for women to be? :-P That was rhetorical. Don't answer that.

Yet another Twilight critique

2009-01-03T10:44:00.007-06:00

After Jonathan wrote a critique of Twilight, I decided I should actually read the book that's caused such a sensation before reading critiques of it, so I did.

In his excellent article (I'll see if I can get a link), he writes that,

"When looking at the narrative through the feminist lens this anti-Buffy love story is undeniably sexist, because it turns the clock back a century and reaffirms the prescribed gender roles of the girl as a defenseless damsel and the boy as a “Superman” who must rescue her."

He goes on to examine the dynamics of Edward and Bella's relationship and finds their infatuation unrealistic and potentially dangerous as a model for Twilight's target audience. I wholeheartedly agree.

After the first several pages, I had decided that Ms. Meyer is not an exceptional writer, but I kept reading because the story was intriguing.

After the first several chapters, I was nearly ill with the way Ms. Meyer had written the characters - I would have expected this if it was an old novel, perhaps pre-Nancy Drew, but as a current sensation I thought the sickening gender roles were culturally unintelligible. (Although they must not be --> "current sensation").

Still, I kept reading. 1) the story is mildly interesting, even though the first 3/4 of the book is exposition, rather than, oh, you know, plot. 2) I wanted to be able to understand Jonathan's essay. 3) my neo-feminist roommate loves Twilight, so I thought I must be missing something.

By the end, it's clear that Jonathan's critique is spot-on. Girls need to be wary of relationships that separate them from their friends and family, they don't need to think that's the ideal! Bella's statement that for several months at school they were inseparable is revolting.

With the exception of Edward, Ms. Meyer writes all the characters unsympathetically - all the women fit stereotypes of being harebrained, unreliable, irrational, and overly emotional (see Bella's mom, Jessica, even Rosalie [ETA: with Alice as a notable exception, as neo-feminist roommate, Ms. Husky, and Dr.S have pointed out to me] ), and all the men fit the stereotypes of being sort of bumbling doofuses, or not worth Bella's time, somehow (see Charlie, who can't cook ETA: and is otherwise totally oblivious; Mike and Tyler, who can't take a hint; even the Blacks, to whom Bella is very rude on several occasions). [ETA: I know, I know - this changes in the next book].

At first, I could see where many of my girlfriends are coming from when they say that Edward Cullen has ruined them for human men - he's very attractive, in that Fiztwilliam Darcy sort of way. But after a few chapters of his heroic, all-knowing rescues and Bella's complete ineptitude, I was sick of the way she became absolutely obsessed with him, and how being with him separated her from everything else.

Jonathan mentioned the Adam/Eve and Buffy/Angel parallels, but I also see a distinct parallel to Pride and Prejudice - Darcy/Edward's initial rudeness and avoidance, the eventual realization of Darcy/Edward's incredible skill and desirability, the halting, tortured romance. The critical, critical difference is that in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is smart, feisty, devoted to her friends and family first of all, and in every way Darcy's equal. As Jonathan noted,

"while Buffy can hold her own when it comes to fighting vampires by night and surviving high school by day, the most that can be said for Bella is that she is a good cook."

Such a useful skill when your boyfriend doesn't eat.

That's why Jane Austen is still on bookshelves everywhere two centuries later, while Ms. Meyer will be an unknown name in two decades.

I'm the sort of person who takes the bus

2008-12-30T00:21:00.004-06:00

Such a good post on what it really means when you say to yourself, "I'm not the sort of person who..." It's important to be able to separate your identity from your lifestyle. The author writes that when you say, "I'm not the sort of person who..." what you really mean is that you're so rich that you don't have to do things you would prefer not to do, and that furthermore you're making a judgment about "the sort of people" who do have to do that thing.

For example, by saying "I'm not the sort of person who takes the bus" you're not only saying that you're so rich that you can come and go wherever you want as you please, but you're making some kind of judgment about the identity of people who do take the bus.

This struck home with me, because even though I take the bus, I resisted thinking of myself as the "sort of person who takes the bus." Well, I take the bus. I guess that means I'm the sort of person who takes the bus. But does that really have anything to do with the sort of person I am?

The comments at the end - about how it's also important to be able to identify the sort of person you are provide another facet to the story.

Wisebread is just a really useful site!

Are Mid-Career Female Attorneys in Crisis?

2008-12-29T17:59:00.001-06:00

The comments make this article.

Minnesota Home

2008-12-29T15:26:00.004-06:00

No one is home today so I'm lonely but it's good. I like people around much more than I thought, but I'm filling the solitude with walking, yoga, dog-petting, and being highly reflective while on an OTC drug cocktail for my head cold.

And it's good to be in this place. Geographical place has always been interesting to me - my travel journals from our vacations when I was younger are filled with detailed descriptions of the landscape and the "feel" of the place we were in, and my read-again-favorite books and authors often write specifically about a geographical place - Guns, Germs, and Steel, and all of James Schaap and Frederick Manfred's books. I think there's something about being a farmer's daughter that makes the pull of "home" so strong - I know that most people feel more connected or at ease at home, but I think for many people, "home" is more of an idea and less of a place. For a farm family, home is a place. It is this township, this road, this quarter, this dirt.

It wasn't always like this, of course - I'm re-reading the Little House books and am reminded of how transient and isolated farming life was for the pioneers who settled (invaded?) the prairie - Laura Ingalls moved back and forth between Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Florida, South Dakota, and Missouri. Even in my grandparent's time, farmers often moved around, following land prices or community migration. Both sides of my families started in Iowa but ended up on several different farms in Minnesota and South Dakota before settling on what we now would call "the homeplace." But farming for most of history has entailed more rootedness than other lifestyles - the development of agriculture made the hunter-gatherers stop wandering around, put down roots (literally, in the case of their crops), and build civilizations.

The funny thing is, I've never even helped on the farm that much. By the time I was born, there wasn't a lot of manual labor left to do on the farm like there used to be, so I didn't grow up gathering eggs or doing chores everyday like my parents did. But I did grow up here, in this place, surrounded by farmland, where every industry and conversation is connected, somehow, to agriculture. So I think I absorbed the rootedness by osmosis, even while I was traveling across the country with my family or hanging out in the decidedly non-rural Mayo Clinic.

There used to be a framed cross-stich hanging in my house that said something like, "The most precious gifts we can give our children are roots and wings." The roots are deep, for me, but the wings are strong... and it hurts when I fly too far, for too long, like I did this summer. It would be easier to stay here if I didn't have ambitious wings, and easier to fly high if I could just pull up my roots. But I can't stay here and I can't pull up my roots. So.

Factoid Tuesday ... er, Wednesday

2008-12-24T21:02:00.002-06:00

I missed it yesterday.

Factoid: This is a delicious pie. A family favorite, from my Grandma Feikema.

Raisin Custard Pie

3 eggs beaten
1/4 c. butter
1 c. white sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. raisins, boiled for 5 minutes in 2/3 c. water and left to cool for 10 minutes

Bake 40 minutes at 350.

A snap to make too - easier than raisin cream pie since it doesn't need a meringue.

The joy isn't mutual...

2008-12-24T16:22:00.004-06:00

I've been brooding over Newsweek's December 15 cover story, Our Mutual Joy by Lisa Miller, for several days. When I first saw the cover, with the words, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," I was hopeful that Newsweek could reach their large, diverse audience with a compelling case for calling off the dogs on gay marriage.

This is a very controversial magazine issue in my family circles and even at CCC, so I read the article with great interest, expecting that Ms. Miller would be writing from a religious (even Christian) perspective, given the cover title. But I knew that I had hoped for too much after reading the first sentence: "Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does." Problems with this one sentence:

1. It pits "us" (as in, "let us try") against "the religious conservatives," immediately implying that "we" are the sensible, rational people and "the religious conservatives" are a homogeneous mass.
2. It implies that trying to take other people's viewpoints seriously for more than a minute is a nearly impossible task.

Ms. Miller has not set the tone for an engaging article that will speak to a diverse set of readers, explaining to her secular audience that many religious people support gay marriage and entreating her religious audience to think about gay marriage from a more loving perspective. Instead, she sets a tone typical of much secular writing about religious people - dismissive and argumentative. It was hard to read what comes after in an empathetic way.

I agree with Ms. Miller's point - that "the practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity, indifference" are Biblical virtues that a lot of Christians, myself and my community included, need to work on especially with respect to people who are different in some way from our norm. But the way she approached the subject displayed none of the inclusiveness or even tact that religion writers like Jeff Sharlet or Ms. Miller's colleague Jon Meacham regularly display.

Reading websites by "religious conservatives" often reveals that they - or we - feel marginalized and misunderstood by the rest of society, bringing resentment and anger that "we're not a Christian country anymore." (We never were a Christian country, but that's beside the point.) Articles like Ms. Miller's do nothing to help bring religious conservatives into the conversation about what sort of things we want the government to be involved with. In fact, I get the feeling in my circles that the entire magazine issue was written off entirely, adding fuel to the fire of their disdain for mainstream media.

Ms. Miller continually uses phrases like "obvious responses," or "if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bidings by God," and especially, "these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text" (about Leviticus).

What she doesn't seem to understand is that for those crazy "religious conservatives" she's talking about, the Bible is handed down by God, albeit indirectly, none of the Bible is a "throwaway line," and her responses aren't obvious, they're ignorant about how a large section of religious America views the Bible and the world.

Her points are good, but as the religion editor, Ms. Miller displays a surprising lack of respect for religion. I agree with her, but I hate this article. Newsweek needs better religion writing if it wants to be taken seriously.

Christmas Sonnet

2008-12-24T14:40:00.001-06:00

A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring confusion, old age, and symptoms of the flu
While taking out the garbage and keeping the walk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here — and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithful, hopeful, into the dark
And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.

(Garrison Keillor, from APHC December 2006)

Favorite. Ever.

Factoid Tuesday

2008-12-16T21:00:00.003-06:00

Factoid:

When you spend a long time at your desk writing or typing, the small muscles that control these fine motor skills can get tense and sore, even if you don't feel the soreness like you would a large muscle group. The tension builds around your shoulders and spreads to your shoulder blades.

Source: the lovely massage therapist who came to CCC yesterday.

This is why there are so many posts

2008-12-15T19:57:00.001-06:00

School is not going well, so I'm trying something else.

Penelope Trunk insists a blog is essential for almost-grads. If Penelope says blog, I will blog.

Future Posts

2008-12-15T19:25:00.003-06:00

So I don't forget.

1. Cultural relevance v. cultural assimilation - when discernment excludes nothing
2. How you know you are ready to graduate (even if you don't want to)
3. Why blogs are good sources. (Hint: it's the comments).

Maybe after I finish the primogeniture/Ibsen paper.

I appreciate feminist men!

2008-12-15T18:55:00.008-06:00

(particularly Christian ones).

The issue that has occupied most of my thought-time this semester is how to change systems that are particularly difficult for women to navigate. (e.g. careers that demand really long hours, social institutions like marriage, etc.) While I don't want to minimize women's own ability to change their worlds to suit them, I think that change in systems can happen much more quickly when men advocate for women, too. That's why I've been so happy to meet so many men in my classes and circles of acquaintances who cheerfully identify themselves as feminists.

Businesses are not going to stop assuming their top employees have spouses at home to manage their home lives until men say, "Hey, I want to be an active dad, a partner in my marriage, and a leader in my church - not a 60, 80, or 100 hour-a-week working stiff." Marriage is not going to be an equitable institution until men give up some unearned, unquestioned privilege and choose to be partners.

It makes me so hopeful to see professors, supervisors, and peers who have made these kinds of decisions in their own lives. As a gender studies minor, I often read and study only about the problems, the oppression, the prejudice - it's more rare that I see positive, progressive examples of what it means to live out alternate ideals of masculinity.

So: thanks to my English and sociology professors at CCC, thanks to the incredible men in my political science and philosophy classes this semester, and thanks to Mr. V, the man I'm thrilled to partner with in our relationship (and the parents who provided relationships for us to model!). I admire your Kingdom-building.

Don't Believe Everything You Think ...

2008-12-15T17:28:00.006-06:00

... and other things I learned this semester.

1. Don't believe everything you think. I just saw this on Chaplain Andy's door, and it's a great little reminder. When I'm challenged to think about everything, like I am at CCC, it's helpful to distinguish between the ideas I consider and think about carefully, and even (in some cases) argue for, and what I actually believe. Belief is less transient.

I may spend several weeks researching and writing a paper, argue forcefully and passionately for my thesis, and then, after re-reading my thoughts, decide I don't actually agree. That's part of why I don't necessarily think it's helpful to (for example) look at Michelle Obama's college thesis for insights into someone's character - there are already papers I've written that I would hate to have come out in a campagin or review.

2. Be nice. Be nice even when you don't feel like it. Be nice even when you've been nice all day long and absolutely do not feel nice anymore. Be nice to people who have been awful to you. Nice is one of the words my elementary and secondary school teachers told me never to use, because it's general to the point of being meaningless. However, I haven't used the word nice for so long that it's a good word for me now.

Nice = courteous, pleasant, decent. I have burned bridges I didn't mean to burn because I was too angry, tired, or exasperated to be nice. I am going to learn to be nicer, because expressing my anger and exasperation in a courteous, decent way will leave me with less to apologize for when I find out I was wrong. And when I'm right, being nice about it will help people like me more! Being nice has all kinds of payoffs, not the least of which is making people want to help me. Being nice = EPIC WIN!

3. I am learning to work in groups. CCC should be proud. I am realizing the shortcomings of my own skills and becoming more adept at making the most of other people's skills. Community is a good thing. Thinking with other brains makes my brain think harder. I no longer dread group work, group projects, etc. (although I'd still rather create my own group than be assigned to one).

4. Various other pieces of information:
a) I am a time-optimist. That is, I think that things take less time than they actually take. Knowing this is the first step to changing it. Some day I will not be perpetually late.
b) Sweden had 30 children under the age of one in non-family childcare in 2005. Incredible!
c) Hendyadis. "God created them male and female" means "male and female and everything in between including everybody and everything God is soverign and created people," not specifically male and female. I extrapolated this from Coop's explanation of "heaven and earth" and I think it explains a lot.
d) The "input" part of my personality means I collect information and have a hard time quitting research and starting writing. Again, knowing this is the first step to being able to "Chain that muse to the desk and get the job done" (Thanks, Barabara Kingsolver).

Feminism and Christianity

2008-12-15T17:02:00.005-06:00

A recent post on one of the feminist blogs I read frequently asked for responses from readers about how they balance their feminism and their faith. After I had posted, I read another response that pointed out "balance" is not a good term, because it implies that feminism and Christianity are competing interests, when for many people, they're essentially the same thing. I think that's true for me - I see my feminist views as an extension of my faith. Feminism provides a framework for how to live in ways that show my belief that 1. God loves humans, 2. God created humans to live in community, and 3. Jesus came that we may have life - and have it to the full! (John 10:10).

In my gender studies minor here at CCC (Conservative Christian College, not Cyoot Crash Cart), the people I live and study with share basically the same views, so it's often a surprise to me when I interact with other people who identify themselves as Christians but seem very oppositional to feminism. I tend to forget that much of American Christianity views feminism as a threat, and uses "feminist!" as an insult. I've had to bite my tongue a lot this semester when working with people who are my superiors but with whom I do not agree on a number of issues.

What frustrates me the most is people's reluctance to use the term "feminist." The people who use "feminist!" as an insult often hold fairly progressive views themselves - in fact, all the people who criticize feminism have also been the most encouraging of me to go to grad school, think analytically, pursue an interesting career, be active in my church, be a leader, and set my own rules in relationships. They clearly don't think that my sex or gender should disqualify me from any of those things, so to me, they are feminists.

It all comes back to the definition of feminism. Better minds than mine have thought about how to define feminism - I won't delve into that here. But my mandate as a Christian to bring shalom means shalom for everybody - if it's not shalom for everybody, it's not shalom.

Welcome.

2008-10-28T17:43:00.000-05:00

Bienvenidos.

Rita Feikema

School vouchers! (This may make me unelectable forever)

Why a strict consumer model of health care can never work

ophelia...

If I were going to a royal wedding...

not a child bride

on freedom of the press

This is the kind of doctor I would love to be

Mad Men season five delayed

Nuclear Update

Don't abandon nuclear energy

Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients

Not actually a case for meat eating

Like gladiators

Andrew Sullivan is wrong

Oh for Pete's sake. This again?

I am a little squirrel...

Beans and Rice

Yoga, worship, and great strength

Does nine weeks count as "old?"

Why talk about "these things" in *public*?

Evangelism 2

Evangelism 1

almost two months

Obviously it's time to post now that I have lots of other work to do...

hm... want to tell me again that gender studies is "fluffy"?

Desk Gnome Friday, from _Sidewalks in the Kingdom_: on Christianity and New Urbanism

Regarding the recent Facebook meme

On "answering the call of manhood": what is masculinity?

Just because...

Happy December. God is faithful.

Desk Gnome Friday

Lists:

In which I think about food instead of school (briefly)

From "Author's Preface" to Jane Eyre

Reflections on Naming

Sex, the allure of the "natural," and what fundamentalist Christianity gets right

Making a moral judgment

Thinking about history

I interrupt this lack of programming to say -

Men, feminism, and using my gifts

Economics of drug policy

In which the Snowstorm resumes

RE: Health Care Econ class and racism in health care delivery

Redding in the Supreme Court Concordance of Not Getting It

one of the best feelings in the world

(bandwagon) Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Constitutional Law class today: to clarify...

Cal Thomas and being an ethical public speaker, PART I

Regardant les nuages: Is God a feminist?

Shameless self-promotion, take 2

Totally off-topic and personal:

What's the point of academic feminism?

What's salvation?

About those Super Bowl ads...

Desk Gnome Monday: Motivation Part 2

Desk Gnome Monday: Motivation Part 1

Excerpt from "Not for a Nation"

I finished all of Twilight

January Series Reflections and Criticisms, Part 2

January Series Reflections and Criticisms, Part 1

Desk Gnome Monday

Factoid Tuesday

Shameless self promotion

I wish I could love Caitlin Flanagan

More on Twilight

Yet another Twilight critique

I'm the sort of person who takes the bus

Are Mid-Career Female Attorneys in Crisis?

Minnesota Home

Factoid Tuesday ... er, Wednesday

The joy isn't mutual...

Christmas Sonnet

Factoid Tuesday

This is why there are so many posts

Future Posts

I appreciate feminist men!

Don't Believe Everything You Think ...

Feminism and Christianity

Welcome.

Why talk about "these things" in public?