The importance of girls
My friend Jennifer Goodson alerted me to this site. I think it’s a powerful illustration of the interdependence of all people and why 600 million girls matter.
The doctor is busy
This story from the New York Times discusses how dermatologists are increasingly more interested in their Botox clients than patients with real skin diseases. With a world health crisis and many here at home with no health insurance, it’s decadent for physicians to devote themselves to people’s vanity instead of real suffering. But I guess in a day of glitzy media, old and unattractive is its own form of suffering.
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?
A job an American won’t take
Check out this story about the abuse of a domestic servant. This a why we need to know who is in the country. We can’t protect people we don’t know are here. Women, I suspect, are more hidden than the day laborers standing on the street corner.
Industrial reproduction
Another story in the New York Times about surrogate mothers. This time it’s poor Indian women earning their living by renting their wombs to affluent westerners. The industrialization of human reproduction dehumanizes everyone involved. Talk of rights, choice, and economic necessity are code words that the affluent use to exploit the weakest members of the human race, poor women and children. The view of women in many third world regions allows them to be thought of as little more than a communally owned natural resource. The dignity of all people remains in peril. Yes, it’s dismaying and depressing to think that we live in this kind of world.
Movie catch up
I don’t keep up with movies as they are released. I haven’t seen the inside of a theater in many months so I’m relegated to waiting for the DVD. Here are two recent movies that I think are worth seeing.
The Devil Came on Horseback, a documentary about the Darfur genocide. This was very good in helping me understand the politics of a problem that sadly seems to have played it self out only in the media.
The Nannie Diaries, I admit this is not great cinema, but it remains social commentary nevertheless. Light, but touching, entertainment that questions the social climbing values that Americans hold. Plenty of gender and class issues to feed a conversation.
Once, Excellent little sleeper film where contemporary people actually behave honorably. Good music too!
Happy New Year! More to come in 2008.
Don’t have a cow; give a cow
I have been thinking about how to best comment on the wild spending spree our society goes into at this time of year. I could point out the cultural belief that we can shop our way to happiness, the loss of meaning in the Christmas season, or how a green consumer is an oxymoron. In some way all these observations sound too familiar. Today, I got my Heifer International shopping catalog. Instead of selling me something to impress a friend, it challenges me to give a cow to a woman, a child, or a displaced man. It’s a simple idea. Provide people in underdeveloped parts of the world the chance to make a living and feed their families through a gift of livestock. What really brought it over the top for me was this:
“In most of the developing world, it is women who have the primary responsibility for feeding their families. The task of harvesting and preparing food, finding water, cooking and even tending to family farms are primarily the obligations of women…in fact, it is estimated that in Africa, women are responsible for 80-90 percent of the total food production. Yet women own just one percent of the world’s land.”
Additionally, I’m a believer in localism. That’s the idea that what works best is what is closest to the people. For us living off big-box stores, livestock is the furtherest thing from our minds. To many people in the world a cow, a sheep, or even a hive of bees can mean the difference between starvation or abundance. Think about giving the gift of God’s abundance. It’s a great way to support micro-enterprise and acknowledge God’s greatest gift.
Concerts, candles, and chants
Here is a concert for another hot cause and questioned by rocker Roger Daltry. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of all the tokenism we’ve taken to. Every cause, every tragic event, is marked with a candle light vigil, a celebrity concert, or a colored ribbon. Sometimes the symbol contradicts the cause, like this global warming celebrity concert. Raising consciousness has become another media event and a form of contemporary entertainment. Not to mention another corporate way to sell us more products. Please don’t ask me to place a meaningless bumper sticker on my car, or observe an empty moment of silence. Tell me something real I can do. Save the money, natural resources, and time by not having the big event. The problem is not that there are not any worthy causes, but rather that we have confused symbols with real action. Seldom have vigils, chants, and mass togetherness solved the world’s problems. Most social change has occurred because people slugged it out over decades in lonely work. I think of William Wilberforce, Susan B. Anthony, and Dorothy Day. Yes, it’s better to light a candle and than curse the darkness, but the candle better be made out of something other than wax because it will soon go out.
The May-June 2007 issue of Utne Reader has several articles that examine the meaning and effectiveness of slogans, placards, and marches. It’s asking some provocative questions worth pondering. Let’s not be deluded by tokenism that make us feel like we are doing something and be distracted from doing the small (or so they seem) concrete actions that are closer to our everyday lives.
Signs of a dishonorable society
Another story of an honor killing is in the news. Seventeen year old Du’a Khalil Aswad was stoned to death by male relatives and tribal leaders for a romantic relationship with a boy of the wrong religion.
“An Amnesty International spokesman in London said they receive frequent reports of honour crimes from Iraq – particularly in the predominantly Kurdish north.
Most victims are women and girls who are considered by male relatives to have shamed their families by immoral behaviour. “
Women’s bodies carry and absorb the moral dysfunctions of a society. Women serve as tokens and symbols for the community instead of human beings with dignity. We in the develop countries are kidding ourselves if we think we are safe. We are an anomaly in women’s history. This story is more in line with the reality of history. Our freedom and privilege is fragile, and we continue to suffer from our own versions of “honor” sacrifices made in the name of beauty and sexual freedom. Sometimes with stories like this, I think where are the old-fashioned feminist when you need them?
More about this killing caught on videotape — a horror! I refuse to watch it. Read the story it’s enough.
Millions of girls and women missing
This weekend I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Diane Langberg’s call to the Christian church to recover its tradition of rescuing the exploited. Dr. Langberg is an expert in gender violence. She spoke about the massive global genocide that is being waged against female flesh through sexual slavery and exploitation. Dr. Langberg estimated the numbers to be sixty to one hundred million girls and women who are missing from the planet, snuffed out by exploiters. Women are traded, bartered, bought, and sold into unimaginable horror. If you don’t know about this major international business you need to. To find out more, you can sign up for a listserve by contacting Dignity@listserv.uri.edu. This is provided by Dr. Donna Hughes at the University of Rhode Island. Or you can go here and here.