“Dilbert” Creator Scott Adams Compares Women Asking for Equal Pay to Children Demanding Candy

For being uncorked this blog is barely dripping! Slow drops like molasses, or crystalized honey.

Here is something I was reading today:

‘Dilbert’ Creator Scott Adams Compares Women Asking for Equal Pay to Children Demanding Candy

This view of the world does us all a disservice, not only because it describes men and women as such grotesque caricatures, but because it insists that the dimmest, most limiting version of men, and women, and the world is both who we are, and worse, all we can ever be.

I was thinking today about how the homeschooling movement encouraged me to “take my loneliness to the Lord” and how individualistic and isolationist that perspective is. In my case it also led to passivity. My current world view says: if you are lonely GO BE A Friend! Do something about it! Magic won’t fix it and apathy does the whole world a disservice.

Booklist

Two years ago I began asking if feminist was a label for me. The answer has been a gradual dawning, awakening more questions. What is feminism? What does it mean to call yourself a feminist? Why is it so controversial? It surprised me to learn that it is controversial even in “the world”. I thought that all non-ATIA mainstreamers were feminist. Why would women, who so apparently live its values, not want to be called a feminist?

To answer these questions I have sought out and gradually begun reading books influenced by feminism. Here is a list of the books I have read over the last two years (the ones I remember anyway )

Virginia Woolf,  A Room of One’s Own

Margaret Atwood,  A Handmaids Tale

Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Every Woman

Hmm, I see that I leaned heavily toward fiction,

Barbara Kingsolver:
The Bean Trees
Pigs in Heaven
Animal Dreams
Prodigal Summer
I have not gotten my hands on a copy of The Poisonwood Bible, yet

Sue Monk Kidd:
The Mermaid Chair
The Secret Life of Bees

Katheryn Stockett, The Help

Rebecca Well, The Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood

Lois Lowry, The Giver

Not exactly feminist or female centric but I also read:

Jeffery Eugenides, Middlesex: A Novel

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

I just realized that this burst in fiction reading was the direct result of shedding taboos I had about reading sexually themed or explicit content. It was about the time I made the bold move, or so it felt, to read “A Room of Ones Own” (I mean even the title sounds wrong, kids don’t need their own rooms, it just leads to hidden sin. One more good reason to have a bazillion kids and proof it really is “God’s Way”!) that I realized that at 30 something years of age I had only read (don’t laugh!) junior fiction. As I looked around our library I found old friend after old friend in the junior fiction section and none in the main fiction area. None. Well, maybe some fundy approved classics. Jane Austen anyone?

This year I would like to indulge in some scholarly feminist works as well as more fiction, starting with Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf”. I had never heard of it until I read this post at The Crunk Feminist Collective which I found via Women In Theology which I found via Julie Clawson at onehandclapping (I warned you about the bunny trails, right?) and chose to check it out.

Do you have any must read feminist classics to recommend to me? I have gift money to spend.

Same Road, Different Place

This is Soffia Soul, changing with the wending of the road of life. Using journey here seems cliché, no it IS cliché, but waiting until a more brilliant word picture springs to mind will take too long . My journey or whatever, has me no longer around homeschoolers. I will be writing less about the homeschooling movement and my past in interest of looking forward and building on what has begun in my soul.

Since I began this blog we have moved to another country even further from home where we plan to stay until my husband finishes school. Life has been very very full and very very good. I feel alive and strong, each day a challenge to rise to and bedtime both early and refreshing. However, intellectual pursuits such as reading and writing have been on the back burner. I love reading and writing but you have to sit or at least be still to do it!

This year in blogging I would like to track my journey to educate myself on the ins and out of feminism with a goal of growing personally and applying it contextually in another culture. What is feminism? What does it me to me? How does it apply in this culture?

It is going to be a good year!

’70s wives ask themselves – New York News

’70s wives ask themselves, “When was the last time I expressed pleasure in our sex life?” and so much more – New York News – Runnin’ Scared.

The funny thing is I used to work for the Bethany Fellowship bookstore! I enjoyed this articles snarky humor while thinking: I’ve come a long way, baby. Sadly I would have loved to read this book, for wives on being a good wife back in the day, which was not so long ago really.

Americas healthiest pleasures: 10 vices that are good for you – CNN.com

Turns out, many of lifes greatest indulgences bring big health benefits — helping you stay slim, fight off the blues, and kick disease to the curb.

via Americas healthiest pleasures: 10 vices that are good for you – CNN.com.

Growing up I was taught that denying myself and giving beyond comfort was godly and that anything less was shameful and lazy.

We were not permited to be tired or hungry or needy. Fasting, pain, exaustion were fuel for the spirit and the building of character.

It is true that struggle can strengthen the soul but not having your basic needs met just leads to burnout. Ask me how I know

I now believe that tending to the needs of my body/mind/soul and modeling it for my children is the best “character training” I  could give them.

A Beautiful Thought

I had a beautiful thought the other day. What if this large, mostly conservative city had as many women’s centers like this: A Long Walk Home as they do “erotik shopes”?

Here is more about the Girl/Friends art therapy program.

It Wasn’t

Brief housekeeping here: I promise not every post will be about abuse This one is though, you’ve been warned ;-P

Last night I awoke to the sound of screaming. I thought it was in my house. I thought it was one of my kids. I jumped out of bed and realized that it was coming from next door. I looked out the window and 10 yards away in the neighboring apartment was a woman leaning out the window. A man was pulling her arm, she was squealing and fighting to get away, a 3rd story window the only escape.

Rewind a little, my imagination is very vivid so before I jump to too many conclusions I am going to frame this in the most positive light I can.

It could have all started as a playful game and a beer or two. Uninhibited and unaware of the noise they were making at 4am on the kitchen porch, she could have been grandstanding, (it is a cultural thing here) when she thew herself toward the window. His strong arming her in could have been about protecting her from a fall. The glass bottle that broke could have fallen unintentionally. The scuffling, muffled cries and thumps could have been the woman burying her head in her lovers chest and letting off some emotional steam.

It really could have happened that way. But it didn’t, did it?