Action Barriers Part 2: Guilt

Action Barriers Part 1: Defensiveness
Guilt should maybe have come first in this series, since the emotional core of guilt is the driving force for the defensiveness, but it also has variations that are equally destructive in ways that I think are tougher to understand.
Liberal guilt is a cliché for a reason, but people tend to [...]

Action Barriers Part 1: Defensiveness

I have a series of thoughts on, basically, giving a crap, speaking out, and some common reactions to that. The reactions can basically be summed up into guilt, defensiveness and blame. They all tend to be interconnected, but I’m going to take them one at a time—they’re all long, but frankly, I’m okay with that.
To [...]

Protest, invisibility and the racism of Canadian tolerance

A friend and I were talking about the ongoing transition from the sign-and-picket model of protest to the use of the internet and blogs in various aspects of activism. One point that came out was that one of the advantages of the internet is that you don’t depend exclusively on the major news organizations in [...]

On being a Christian feminist, Part 2: Hierarchy and idolatry

Given that I’ve already established that I think that feminism is a Christian calling, many of my struggles with the church as an institution and with its cultural presuppositions should be immediately apparent. That post was coming from the perspective of how sexist misunderstandings and misrepresentations have been used against women in marriage and relationship [...]

Random Hamilton fact: Canada’s first birth control clinic

Relatively recently, I came to the realization that Hamilton has become my home. By choice rather than necessity–this place has not only grown on me, I will actually admit to liking it now. In that spirit, a few days ago as I was walking by the old (now unused) train station on Ferguson, I was [...]

Joy

I love the word joy. I love finally having enough experience of it to recognize how different, and how much more powerful, it is than simple ‘happiness’.
From slacktivist just throwing some thoughts around last week:
Quoting CS Lewis:
“an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.”
And expanding
Not quite a glimpse of the [...]

Masculine feminism: Don McPherson

Despite the conflict I feel around over-crediting male feminists (as I discussed over in my post over at the Hathor feminism site), I must admit that I loved this story on Don McPherson posted at Feminist Allies.
This is a guy who has spent his entire life completely enmeshed in the world of professional sports, probably [...]

How to be a “Helpmeet”

The word “helpmeet” is tossed around in nearly every conversation regarding biblical definitions of gender roles. Christians who buy into the standard interpretation insist that this word ordains female subservience, and atheists and agnostics who object to oppressive right-wing Christian structures exploit its awkward unfamiliarity for improved mockery (it doesn’t come up so much in [...]

I’m certainly not Wondering

No, apparently I can feel more specifically pissed of at what they’ve done to Wonder Woman, even as I thought all those depths had been plumbed via Amazons Attack. Wonder Woman is saying this, people:
…The attack on Patriarch’s world, the war, and all the ensuing death and destruction. A twisted show of maternal love…I must [...]

On patriotism and community

Jay and I got into rather a long discussion about the nature of patriotism on my post Your Flag Decal, which is dovetailing into some other thoughts I’ve been wanting to get out. I should first acknowledge that I was being overly dismissive of patriotism as a whole, and one thing I was decidedly missing [...]