Great resource about sex and bodies for teens: TEENWIRE.COM

Are you a teenager with questions about your body or about sex? Do you have a teenage friend or family member who’s got some questions?

Planned Parenthood has a great website for teens to find out a lot about our bodies, sex, and relationships, without having to ask in person and reveal what we don’t know. It’s also a great way to find out basic information so we can have more in-depth conversations with our friends and mentors.

Check it out!

Feminism (or not) in Mathematics

Ain’t it the truth?

Comic from the excellent xkcd.com website.

Great blogs out there…

There are a lot of great feminist blogs out there in internetland. Here are a few of ours and our favorites:

TheFeministReview.com – reviews of pop culture, by a radical Brethren woman

BrethrenPriestessOnline – an eclectic mix of commentary on current events, including a healthy dose of comics

KnowNoise – a seminarian reflects on theology and writes some great poetry while she’s at it

RevGalBlogPals – by and for women seeking Christian vocation

EmergingWomen – women in the Emerging Church

Feel free to add your own recommendations!

Olympic Spirit

by Audrey

On this auspicious day (8/8/08), the Olympics open, and not without some needed protest and fury. China’s blatant disregard for human rights has spawned a train of activist dissent, for everything from animal rights to ending support for the Burmese junta and the genocidal Sudanese government to freeing the provinces of its own country it rules with an iron fist.

I must say that while a few of the events would interest me, the politics surrounding China’s hosting are much more interesting to me, and make it easy for me to ‘boycott’ watching the Games. I still am following the activity running parallel to the sporting events: the subtle and not-so-subtle protest.

• The US track and field team’s choice for running its flag in the opening ceremonies has made me proud: they selected Lopez Lomong, a refugee from Darfur, effectively bringing China’s greedy foreign policy into the spotlight.
• US Swimmer Amanda Beard’s nude protest against wearing fur was not quite so inspiring, I must say. I’m glad she’s getting to use her non-athletic skills in new arenas and all, but is this really at all effective in changing consumer habits? Does not the assumed acceptance of the exploitation of women’s bodies actually feed into the cultural acceptance of other living bodies, such as animals? Have we not all read Carol Adam’s classic, The Sexual Politics of Meat? Elsewhere, Anna Lisa has commented on the disappointment many of us feel that some women have no problem commodifying themselves as sexual objects in order to draw attention to animal rights. Must we really choose between liberation for women and for animals?
• Independent, non-athlete protesters, some of them Christian, have been furthering debate, too. There is too much to speak out about. The FREE TIBET banner some protesters unfurled in Tiananmen Square was especially effective.

Keep it up, brothers and sisters! Let’s live out the true Olympic spirit of international harmony and respect for all humanity.

Prayers for Knoxville

So there was another church shooting.

But this was not just any church. This was a Unitarian Universalist Church. Right, the folks who accept pretty much everybody with love, who feed the hungry, shelter refugees, stand up for free speech, support equal rights for queer folks and women and racial minorities. They were in the middle of a children’s play, for cryin’ out loud. God have mercy.

And this was no ordinary shooter. This was a middle-aged, straight, white, conservative male.  He bought into the hateful homophobic rhetoric that passes as theology in conservative churches these days. He couldn’t stand that some people in some church no one was making him join were tolerant and happy. He wanted to punish people at the church that had made local news for being welcoming to gays and lesbians and for hosting PFLAG meetings.

He attacked the church as a way to lash out against liberal movement “ruining the country.” Killer Jim Adkisson told a police officer that if “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.” This was a bona fide hate crime against liberals. LIBERALS. Our political identity is now clearly a basis for discrimination and oppression.

He was under economic pressure. He was frustrated because he was out of work. And he took it out on those he saw as liberals.

Too bad it’s the conservative oil men and bankers who have ruined the economy. Too bad it’s the filthy rich neo-cons who couldn’t care less if his job gets shipped overseas, if his union is broken, if his country shirks its responsibility to provide decent health care for its citizens. Too bad the people who actually brought about his frustrating situation will likely not notice and certainly not change the way they run the world in any single way that would make life any better for someone like him.

Too bad his murders will only make life harder for the very people who could make his life easier. Bad, bad for us. Very bad for us who already fight an uphill battle to end the death-dealing Empire and supplant it with life-giving Resurrection. Now the very co-beneficiaries of our struggle are coming after us.

Maybe, just maybe, there really are “bitter” people out there who “cling to guns.” Maybe they don’t cling to religion like we thought. Maybe we’re not being “elitist” by point this out, but rather we’re engaging in self-defense. Maybe our political action for economic justice and an end to the causes of such bitterness is self-defense, too.

The only thing he got his politics right on was the guns: if we had power in this country, we liberals would have passed gun-control laws that might have prevented someone like him from murdering people like us. How silly of us.

Take note, my friends. It has always been dangerous to be prophetic, to stand up for justice, to live out the Kin-dom of God no matter what the Powers say and threaten and do. But it’s clearly not getting any easier.

Be brave, friends. Mourn, and be brave. We still have so much work to do.