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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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?

With women making far-reaching gains, there’s a larger question. Are women simply better-suited than men to today’s jobs? The Atlantic raised this issue provocatively in this month’s issue with a cover story by Hanna Rosin bluntly entitled, “The End of Men.”

via Op-Ed Columnist – Don’t Write Off Men Just Yet – NYTimes.com.

I’ve been thinking a lot about men lately. How I like them and love them. How I want to participate in the world with them. And trying to reconcile betrayal, mistreatment and objectification by the very men that I love.

This article is a lovely vision of the mutual benefit that can exist when we embrace our individual strengths, regardless of gender,  and honor others for theirs.

I was in a taxi, driving by, I watched as long as I could. It seems she was OK for the moment, they were on a busy street, but does she know the implications of this? Does she know she needs to get somewhere safe now? Is she able to leave this guy at all? Does she have a resource for hiding safely if she needs it? How will she live with the fear? Does she know she doesn’t deserve that treatment?

I am writing about my abuse, a heavy subject. The same day I saw the attempted assault we had been at a large palace museum that is famous for it’s harem. It has all sort of congealed into a seething anger. I posted about it on Facebook and people’s responses were fearful. I had to post again to explain I am not fearful, I am angry!

I am angry that women are the property of men.* I am angry that “good” women are protected and “bad” women get what they deserve. I am angry that domestic violence is extremely common. I am angry that women are deprived of opportunities and stuck at home. I am angry that men think they have the right to oogle my body just because it is there. I am angry that men think it is cute to ask if they can “have” one of my daughters.

I am also sad at the loss of love and trust between men and women. I like men. My husband is my best friend. I love my fathers, brothers, uncles. There cannot be genuine love and respect when women exist only for men’s domestic and sexual pleasure.

*Note: I live outside the US where these attitudes are common, whatever the official laws say.

At the age of 7, I could recite all 66 books of the Bible in 19 seconds.  My father insisted on this because he was frustrated at waiting as his children flipped back and forth trying to find the verses he was preaching from. Afterwards, if one of us took too long my father would stop in the middle of his preaching, cast a gimlet eye on the offender and demand that,  “Somebody smack that kid!”

via Nate Phelps. **trigger warning**

I resonated so much with Nate Phelps story. The journey he describes of extricating himself from toxic christianity is so familiar to me. I am not as far down the path, I am at the point where I really struggle with what my kids are learning at church and am nervous that they will be attending a christian school this year. Sigh. Thankfully, my husband and I are on the same page regarding fundamentalism and we have open communication about it as a family. This article makes me wonder where is my journey going? What choices do I have to make in these following years and what will be the outcome?