In the years leading up to Shane’s adoption, I used to say, “I want to be a parent, not a mother.” I had hoped that non-reproductive parenting would free me from predetermined expectations about the balance of caregiving labor and the self-negating emotional enmeshment that I didn’t want to replicate from my own childhood. I
July Links Roundup: Mommy T-Rex Read More »
“Not just toys, dolls signify much more than childhood,” writes poet Nicole Cooley in her introduction to The Doll Collection (Terrapin Books, 2016), a rich and complex anthology of doll-themed contemporary poetry edited by Diane Lockward. Dolls are imbued with our powerful, contradictory feelings about gender, race, class, mortality, and innocence. “Symbols of perfection, they
Book Notes: The Doll Collection Read More »
Bathrooms and discrimination have a long history together in America. Restricting bathroom access is a way to limit a minority group’s freedom of movement and their ability to exist in the public sphere. The debate over access can taint the minority group by association with the taboo subject of bodily functions, reinforcing the prejudice that
June Links Roundup: Bathroom Walls Read More »
When visiting a friend in Toronto last month, I had the pleasure of discovering Glad Day Bookshop, the world’s oldest LGBTQ bookstore. One of my purchases was this 1989 essay collection, Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, edited by Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn. There are too few books devoted to reworking
Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: Cross Purposes Read More »
A challenge of social justice work is that people can have shared values but incompatible boundary conditions for the space in which they collaborate. For instance, the need of oppressed people to release anger can clash with the equally valid need of their traumatized comrades to be free from face-to-face aggression. Many groups for healing
May Links Roundup: Safer Spaces Read More »
Happy Easter! No, I’m not late. Episcopalians celebrate the liturgical season of Easter for 50 days. That’s a lot of Cadbury Creme Eggs. No one out-femmes me. The post-resurrection wounds of Jesus have long been precious to me as a symbol of new life after trauma–a kind of healing that doesn’t mean forgetting. One of
April Links Roundup: Noli Me Tangere Read More »
This week I had another lesson with my Tarot teacher, who has also been trained as a Christian spiritual director. We were talking about the ways my community ties have shifted, and sometimes broken, because my writing is up-front about sensitive topics like abuse, queer sexuality, and faith. I’ve been disappointed that even some openly
March Links Roundup: Sex God Read More »
Happy February, readers! It’s a leap year, so we get an “extra” day. For hard-headed moderns, it’s only a bureaucratic quirk of the calendar, a minor annoyance to remember to write February 29 instead of March 1 on our checks. For the magically minded, it could be an opportunity to step out of chronos into kairos, an
February Links Roundup: I Am Whatever I Say I Am Read More »
This blog usually tackles (or is tackled by) serious subjects, so let’s start the year with a little humor. Over at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Sandra Newman’s list of “Woman Facts” satirizes gender roles and those clickbait lists of dubious scientific trivia. For instance: A woman is born with all the exclamation points she will use
January Links Roundup: Disobedient Woman Facts Read More »
Becoming Church, an offshoot of the Church of the Saviour in Washington D.C., is an intentional Christian community devoted to racial and economic justice. Their major project at the moment is Reunion, a ministry that re-integrates formerly incarcerated people into civilian life, as well as doing activism for prison reform. I blogged about my inspiring
A Christmas Message from Becoming Church Read More »