Is biology destiny?
See this video at Salon.com about sex difference research. The question yet to be answered is how does learned behavior change our brain?
It’s about time!
I haven’t been blogging lately because frankly the media noise has been so loud that it’s hard to figure out what’s important and what’s just noise. Well, I think this is important. After years in office this is the strongest statement by US Secretary of State Rice regarding violence against women worldwide. Here is another article about how rape is used as a weapon of war. Maybe with only few months left Rice feels like she can afford to speak up in a significant way.
Lost in a chemical fog
Here is a New York Times article about how some people are growing up on prescribed mood altering drugs. This is creating a whole generation of people who don’t know who they are without them. The article doesn’t seem to understand the pervasiveness of this beyond those who “really need it.” Modern society has convinced us that we have a right to feel upbeat all the time. What gets lost is the understanding that emotional struggle is part of being a human being. We have no sense that emotions are value judgments that can serve us well, and maybe even save our lives. Grief lasting more than a few days is considered excessive. This of course doesn’t negate the fact that there are people who suffer from severe long term mental disorders. We and the medical establishment seem not to be able to tell the difference between the blues, which may be good for us, and destructive mental disorders.
Would this happen to your son?
I have what I call the gender test for news. Whenever I hear news that spotlights a girl or woman I ask, would this story be the same or even exist if the person in the spotlight was male? This week my local newspaper ran a story about a run away 12 year old girl who danced nude at a “gentleman’s club.” The story is bad enough, but the newspaper has the audacity to grace the girl with the title of “stripper.” If this doesn’t demonstrate the hostile environment that girls and women live under, I don’t know what does. Tragically, this is no big deal to many and mild in the face of the exploitation of girls and women that plagues the world. P.S. The gentlemen got to keep their license and club remains open for business.
Multiplying bread
I’m in shock over the price of food. This week I paid over $7 for a gallon of organic milk. The increase in food prices is a global crisis, which I am afraid will outlast the mortgage crisis. See this article about a recent UN report. High food prices aren’t due to our inability to produce enough food. It’s because good land is being turned from growing wheat, barley, and hay to corn for the production of innocent sounding biofuel. We are burning our land in our cars! Global markets are addicted to fuel and the price is more hunger.This strikes me as a problem of food justice, and I consider it immoral to use good productive land for fuel.
When I was a child, my parents would pray before they went to the grocery store so God would stretch their food dollar to last all week. I was never hungry. Yet, I was left with an awareness when I go to the grocery store that not everybody can afford that $12 roast. Higher food prices mean that for the first time many of us will take the bread multiplication miracles of Jesus seriously. Where might we see the need for such a miracle and what is our part in it?
Children, at what price?
See this excellent column by Nancy Gibbs at Time magazine about the moral cost of reproductive technologies.
Women’s solidarity
For much of American history women’s solidarity, the way women identified with each other, was grounded in the fact that all women were either mothers or potential mothers. This solidarity drove women’s political and social involvement outside the home. After the reproduction revolution of the twentieth century, women’s solidarity has become significantly eroded. Now, motherhood is strictly an option and potential motherhood is receding in the minds of many western women. The result is that feminism has lost its political traction. What is left of liberal feminism? Check out this article by Utne Reader entitled “Shelf Life: Feminism 2.0″ which surveys the blogosphere for the conversations that are taking place. Twenty first century feminism has become a form of tribalism where every issue is equally valid, and therefore no longer politically or philosophically compelling. Check out the blogs and let me know what you find.
Bikini or hijab
The Turkish Parliament has lifted the ban on the headscarf on university campuses, but this has not resolved the issue for them or for us. See the buzz on Broadsheet. The hijab raises the question of where does social freedom end and oppression begin? The contrast between Western and devoted Muslim women could not be more stark. It’s become more common in American cities to see women wearing the hijab. Sometimes it’s more than a scarf. It can include long dresses, sleeves, and a rather plain appearance. My American feminist inspired sensibilities cringe a little by the sight of a woman feeling compelled by either religion, or culture to take on the hijab. While many of these women will assure me that this is a free choice, I find it difficult to believe.
On the other hand, recently I was at an upscale mall when a department store decided that parading bikini clad young women offering the latest in designer fragrances would be a good marketing move. I was offended. What makes retailers think that a middle aged woman would be inspired to spend money by the sight of bikini clad young bodies? If I had talked to the models they would assure me that they too had made a choice in how their bodies would be seen. In a liberal society, freedom of expression and religion demand that I accept both the hijab and the bikini as a legitimate choice.
What is going on? In both cases the female body carries a great deal of social meaning. We don’t have an equivalent issue regarding male bodies. Men feel neither compelled to cover, or display their bodies in public. Both cultural situations see female sexuality as potentially disruptive. One culture chooses to bring that disruption under control, whether it’s the woman’s, or the community’s choice, is debatable. The other chooses to tell women that they can control the meaning of their bodies for their own benefit. Neither tell the whole story that no individual can escape the larger social meanings in which they live. The question remains. What constitutes freedom when women’s bodies are continually viewed as disruptive? Regardless of whether we attribute the situation to the society, or the individual, the answer will fall short short if one is not willing to consider a more elemental spiritual source.
What money still doesn’t buy
Here is an article from the New York Times about how money doesn’t equal an abundance of friends. Whether it’s in the central city, or the suburbs, rich or poor, America is suffering from relational fragmentation. These are the times when the need isn’t for more information about God, or even a better church to attend on Sunday morning, but an incarnational,”God with us” theology. What does that look like for us in the 21st century city?
What is marriage for anyway?
Here is an article on marriage from the Atlantic that I think is rather frank regarding something I have noticed. Many bright, articulate women wanting marriage find themselves waiting year after year for the “right” guy, and not realizing how they might be contributing to their own situation. The ideal of marriage has become so romanticized and worked up by Hollywood that we have forgotten what marriage is for. It seems that every woman wants to marry up (why is that?), and when you are pretty impressive yourself it’s rather disconcerting that maybe the ordinary guy in the next cubicle, or the quite nice guy at church might just be what this author calls “good enough.” I disagree that men who are “good enough” are really just that. Maybe the guy who seems to promise all the thrill of a Hollywood romance is really a candle in the wind put out by the first life storm that comes through. This is the point when women need to ask themselves, what is marriage for anyway? How about life long stable, some would call boring, companionship? Most of life is ordinary and mundane so what a good woman needs is a stable “good enough” man. Maybe she can learn to be a “good enough” woman and not make herself into a pretzel trying to please. That may lead to “good enough” parents who aren’t running around trying to raise the next Bill Gates. So now my next question is, why are these articles always about women?