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New Poems by Conway: "Leap Frog" and "Proof of Perfection"
2009-09-22 02:03:00
My prison pen pal "Conway" has been experimenting with the prose-poem format while continuing to develop his gift for lyric poetry. I've been writing to him about my struggles with religious concepts of sacrifice and submission as I see them being misused in the church. I see those discussions reflected in his latest offerings, below.Leap Frog Imagine, what His hand and throat beganthrough all of the silences we chopped outin front of our father's shining eyes.I've no need to sing it anymoreor finish the melted words melody.We can all see & smell around the burning nights nettle,as fluttering moths fill this scene's backdoor screenstendering an irresistible invitation to attackin search of a crack in the curtains' narrow track.While chance packs another perishable skulltight enough to subsist, in the spiritualshimmering lushness, of dawn's faithful light.  The tears diminish in the theft of a wilting heartbent willows seeking flesh, have wroughtevery salt-sprinkled dro...
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I'm in an Open Relationship with Jesus
2009-09-20 23:07:00
Someone close to me was telling me this morning about her struggle to accept her rabbi's teaching that she should love God more than anything or anyone. "I can't help it," she said, "I love my daughter more!"In the past I might have given a neat response, paraphrasing Tim Keller, to the effect that idolizing any created thing puts unbearable pressure on yourself (because you can lose it through failure or mischance) and on the one idolized (who feels compelled to be impossibly perfect). C.S. Lewis illustrates this distortion in The Great Divorce, his fantasy of damned souls on a field trip to heaven, through the character of an old woman who mourned her dead son so obsessively that she neglected the surviving members of her family. Lewis suggests that over time, the object of her passion became her own identity as a mourner, rather than the real person she had lost. To love someone properly, on the other hand, is to recognize that you are not the author of the universe, which soon...
More About: Jesus , Relationship , Bible , Open

Friday Random Song: Jason Bravo, "You Raise Me Up"
2009-09-18 21:12:00
Buffalo, NY-based singer/songwriter Jason Bravo 's performances of original pop songs and classic covers can be enjoyed on his YouTube channel, BraveHealerMusic . His debut album "Between Head and Heart" is available from CDBaby. In this concert clip from summer 2009, he's performing Josh Groban's hit song "You Raise Me Up", with my best buddy Greg Bravo on the awesome guitar solos. When I am down, and oh my soul, so weary. When troubles come, and my heart burdened be. Then I am still and wait here in the silence. Until You come and sit awhile with me. You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be. You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be. There is no life -- no life without its hunger. Each restless heart beats so imperfectly. But when you ...
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Wednesday Random Song: "Brighten the Corner Where You Are"
2009-09-16 23:41:00
Ina Duley Ogdon was a Midwestern wife and mother and Sunday School teacher during the early 20th century. Ogdon had ambitions of becoming a preacher but family responsibilities intervened. Her poem "Brighten the Corner Where You Are" was written in 1912 while she was caring for her sick father. Set to music by Charles H. Gabriel, the tune became a nationwide hit after evangelist Billy Sunday made it a staple of his revival meetings. I first heard it this week on Enlighten 34, the Southern gospel station on XM Radio, in a lively rendition by The Statesmen which I wasn't able to find on YouTube. (It's featured on this album.) Instead, enjoy this old-school version by the Criterion Quartet: This interesting 10-minute video tells the story of Ina's life and the inspiration for the song, as well as its subsequent cultural reception. 1. Do not wait until some deed of greatness you may do, Do not wait to shed your light afar; To the many duties ever near you now b...
More About: Music , Song , Random , Wednesday

Mary Ruefle: "A Minor Personal Matter"
2009-09-15 19:56:00
Halfway between prose-poems and essays, the offbeat musings in Mary Ruefle's The Most of It (Wave Books, 2008) take some mundane incident--picking out a garden bench, for instance, or drinking a glass of water--as the starting point for an increasingly strange chain of associations. The original question becomes lost in the narrator's argument with herself about action versus inaction. As in a Platonic dialogue, the only enlightenment we take away is an awareness of how muddled our concepts are. Or, to use a more modern example, Ruefle is like the toddler in the "Buttons and Mindy" cartoons who perpetually reduces adults to sputtering frustration by responding "Why?" to everything they say. Just when this aimless demolition seems to have gone on too long, Ruefle ends the book with the astonishing piece "A Half-Sketched Head", in which we see that the preceding diversions served the same purpose as Zen koans, to humble the chattering mind and make room for spiritual clarity.Rather ...
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Constantine P. Cavafy: "In Despair"
2009-09-11 23:30:00
Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) is acclaimed for his poems of love and longing. The website Billie Dee's Electronic Poetry Anthology includes several of his poems translated by Rae Dalven. I particularly appreciated this one, depicting the familiar tragedy of religious guilt coming between two lovers. Which of them is pursuing an illusion? Perhaps both; or perhaps the idealized lover of our imagination, whether human or divine, is a more rewarding prize than the love of an ordinary mortal.In Despair He has lost him completely.   And now he is     seekingon the lips of    every new loverthe lips of his beloved   in the embraceof every new lover    he seeks to be deludedthat he is the same lad,   that it it to him he is     yielding.He has lost him completely,    as if he had never     been at all.For he wanted -- so he s...

Speaking Justice Versus Living It
2009-09-11 23:07:00
One of my challenges as an activist, and as a Christian, is finding the proper balance between speaking about my values and living them out. Too much discussion keeps me unhealthily engaged with self-justification against opponents, while too little can be a form of selfish quietism in the face of widespread misinformation about what the Bible says.The Epistle of James has a lot to say about closing the gap between hearing and doing God's word. This recent installment of the Human Rights Campaign's Out in Scripture lectionary e-newsletter includes some fruitful reflections on that text (boldface emphasis mine):Our conversation about this week?s lectionary Bible passages began with James 1:17-27. What is the way of God?s wisdom? The book of James suggests that it is the ?law of liberty? (James 2:12). And that law starts with doing. Doers of the law?s basic justice requirements place themselves in risky outreach settings in which we are inevitably challenged to know who we really...
More About: Living , Justice , Versus , Episcopal

The Theology of Abuse (Part One)
2009-09-10 23:29:00
Hugo, via Facebook, pointed me to today's Washington Post story about a new study on clergy sexual abuse from Baylor University's School of Social Work: One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, a survey released Wednesday says.The study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations, religious traditions and leaders."It certainly is prevalent, and clearly the problem is more than simply a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers," said Diana Garland, dean of Baylor's School of Social Work, who co-authored the study.It found that more than two-thirds of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.... For its study, Baylor used the 2008 General Social Survey, a nationally representative sample of 3,559 respondents, to estimate the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct. Wo...
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Literary Journal Roundup: Gemini Magazine, DIAGRAM, and More
2009-09-10 21:16:00
As my attention span fades along with the light of summer days, I'm appreciating the brevity and variety that a good literary journal can offer. Here are some of the publications I've been enjoying this season:Naugatuck River Review's summer 2009 issue is stuffed with good narrative poetry on themes including fathers and sons, aging, class and race, romance, miscarriages, Mexico, horses, D-Day flashbacks, and what happens when you're in a bar with a woman who sees God. Read the issue from beginning to end because editor Lori Desrosiers has structured it like a narrative, with one theme segueing into the next. If you're in Western Massachusetts this Tuesday night, come to the NRR authors' reading at Spoken Word in Greenfield.Think you know all there is to know about Huck Finn? The Missouri Review's summer 2009 issue includes a provocative essay by Andrew Levy, arguing that Twain's book is not primarily about race but about our culture's myths and fears concerning adolescent ...
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Hometown Favorite Lorelei Erisis Crowned Miss Trans Northampton
2009-09-08 21:36:00
Local activist, journalist and Pride emcee Lorelei Erisis won the Miss Trans Northampton 2009 pageant at the Center for the Arts this past weekend. The eight contestants represented, to my eyes, an interesting variety of ways for someone born biologically male to perform femininity. Those with a more petite build, like second runner-up Lily Rin, convincingly resembled young glamorous women, with high voices to match. Meanwhile, Lorelei and first runner-up Leslie-Anne Rios were tall and striking figures with deeper, rougher voices and a commanding stage presence. Their self-presentation occupied some third space between the conventions of male and female appearance. Leslie-Anne, for instance, looked sassy in an evening gown and sang a heartfelt song of her own composition about finding peace within--female?--but flexed her biceps with a wink at the end--male? Lorelei's talent-show entry was a performance piece about her transition, starting out in a man's suit and ending up in a br...
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"Swallow" Poetry Chapbook by Jendi Reiter Now Available from Amsterdam Pres
2009-09-02 23:14:00
My poetry chapbook Swallow won the 2008 Flip Kelly Poetry Prize from Amsterdam Press and is now available for purchase online. Thanks are due to my awesome editor, Cindy Kelly; poet Ellen LaFleche, who helped me organize the collection and suggested the title; and my prison pen pal "Conway" who drew the amazing cover art. "Jendi Reiter's poems are arrows that plunge dead center into the hearts of feminism, religion, death, the interior of mental health and psychotherapy. Her humor and satire here are as sharply honed as are her indignation. All are delivered in highly imaginative and metaphoric imagery. This is an intelligent and powerful read that will leave issues bleeding in the minds of readers for a while before they heal." ?Ellaraine Lockie, award-winning poet, nonfiction author, educator "There's plenty of poetry I wouldn't give a fig for, but I'd give strawberries for the poems in Jendi Reiter's SWALLOW. When I started in Poetry in 1962, I felt poems were only p...
More About: Site News , Poems

Stay Tuned for Miss Trans Northampton Pageant, Sept. 5
2009-08-31 21:00:00
The first-ever Miss Trans Northampton Pageant is scheduled for next Saturday, Sept . 5, at the Northampton Center for the Arts. This is one of only a few such events nationwide. Eight Massachusetts transwomen will compete in the categories of glamour, poise, evening gown and talent. "Transgender" is a broad term that includes transsexuals, transvestites, and those who choose not to identify as either male or female.The Springfield Republican newspaper ran a story on the event yesterday. Pageant organizer Christa L. Hilfers' gender odyssey is interesting in itself: Hilfers, 33, moved to Massachusetts three years ago from South Dakota. Born a biological male, Hilfers was raised by her mother as a girl. She went into foster care at age 9, but was allowed to continue living as a female. "I didn't try to live as a boy until I was 18," she said. Hilfers had a child with a woman, but the relationship failed, and she has not seen her daughter, now 15, for years. "After that I realized I...
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Christian Community in Fiction
2009-08-31 01:10:00
Nathan Hobby, an Anabaptist Christian and fiction writer in Western Australia, posted some worthwhile reflections earlier this summer concerning what it means to write novels for the kingdom of God. In this essay, Nathan unpacks N.T. Wright's directive to write "a novel which grips people with the structure of Christian thought, and with Christian motivation set deep into the heart and structure of the narrative, so that people would read that and resonate with it and realize that that story can be my story." Nathan observes that a lot of popular fiction with the "Christian" label is unfortunately cheesy and simplistic. Brian McLaren's books, such as A New Kind of Christian, use a fictional narrative to put across some sophisticated ideas in an emotionally accessible way, but are not well-crafted as novels. The same might be said of The Shack, an unlikely bestseller about the Trinity, which I admit I enjoyed despite its clunky plot.In the modern naturalistic novel, it's a challen...
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Upcoming GLBT Conferences: Send Me Your Reports
2009-08-28 17:03:00
Three conferences of interest to GLBT Christians and straight allies are coming up this autumn. My heteronormative family responsibilities are likely to keep me from attending any of them. So I'm counting on you, dear readers, to send me your reports from the field. Write up your impressions and I'll consider them for publication on this blog, or send me a link to your own blog post about any of these events. Why Homosexuality? Religion, Globalization, and the Anglican Schism Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CTOctober 17, 2009This interdisciplinary conference is sponsored by the LGBT Studies Department at Yale. "Rather than restaging the arguments for and against the ordination of openly gay clergy, this day-long conference analyzes the threatened schism in the Anglican Communion in order to examine wide-ranging and interrelated issues of religion, secularism, globalization, nationalism, and modernity. How and why, we ask, has homosexuality come to serve as a flash point for so m...
More About: Site News , Conferences , Send , Episcopal , Upcoming

Gender Binary Versus Gender Spectrum: Implications for Gay Rights
2009-08-26 15:26:00
The "T" in GLBT causes anxiety for some gays and lesbians, or so I've heard. It's not only that a minority seeking mainstream acceptance may feel tempted to push some of its more flamboyant members out of the spotlight. Trans-people demonstrate the fluidity of gender, which potentially threatens one common argument for gay civil rights. Conservative Christians tout the dubious successes of "ex-gay therapy" to alter sexual orientation. Since change is possible, they contend, there really is no such category as homosexuals, and therefore they should not be a protected class under the law. Understandably, gay activists point to scientific research and personal testimonies suggesting that same-sex attraction is biologically based, innate and mostly unalterable. From what I've read about the ex-gay movement, it seems that the evidence is not on their side. Most participants merely learn to avoid acting on their undiminished desire for the same sex, and to conform to current stereotype...
More About: Rights , Gender , Gay Rights , Versus , Spectrum

William Childress: "How the Earth Was Made"
2009-08-22 22:59:00
William Childress is a Pulitzer-nominated author and photojournalist who is regarded as one of the foremost poets of the Korean War. His books include Burning the Years and Lobo. "Chilly" is a Winning Writers subscriber and an endlessly entertaining correspondent. He emailed me one of his latest poems, which I liked so much that I got permission to reprint it here. Though I don't share the narrator's atheistic conclusion, I can relate to the feeling that God's creation is so much grander and more mysterious than some of our stunted human concepts of the divine. Sometimes, religious ideas (like any ideas) can be a distraction from appreciating what's right in front of us. How the Earth Was Made I was a youngster when I walked a trail Through autumn woods a nonexistent god took credit for. I never thought it odd that to a child, the world was magical, and yellow was the color of enchantment. It wasn?t simply that a golden hue should bejewel and complement the blue eternal arc th...
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Usury: The Invisible Sin
2009-08-21 23:52:00
American Christians have a lot of buying power. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if we went off the financial "grid" and refused to bank with companies that had abusive lending policies for their mortgage borrowers and credit-card customers. As I read the Bible, financial oppression is a front-and-center issue. And yet, in this supposedly Christian nation, consumer advocates have been trying in vain for years to pass regulations against overdraft fees that are several thousand times greater than the debt that triggered them. Both political parties bear some blame for deregulating the industry, but I believe it's time for socially conservative Christians to rethink their automatic support for the GOP, given the party's complete inattention to economic justice issues. Apparently, when you have a debit card from most major banks, it doesn't actually deny you funds when you run out of money in your account. Instead, the bank "lends" you money without your knowledge or consent,...
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Straight Ally of the Day: Ted Olson
2009-08-20 17:22:00
The libertarian wing of the GOP, which briefly wooed me into that party as the defenders of free speech during the politically correct 1990s, has seemed to be all but dead in the era of Bush-style statism for the rich. But conservative powerhouse Theodore Olson , one of the Right's most respected constitutional lawyers, remembers that his movement once stood for something more than bailouts for dimwitted financiers. An unlikely but very welcome ally, Olson is the lead counsel in the federal lawsuit to overturn Prop 8 on equal protection grounds, now pending in District Court in San Francisco. This New York Times profile describes his road to defending GLBT civil rights, and the flack he's taking from his Republican compadres: ...Mr. Olson had become active in the Republican Party as a college and law student in California in the 1960s, long before the rise of the religious right and its focus on social issues. He gravitated toward a particularly Western brand of conservatism that ...
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Viagra Ice Cream versus Gay Wine
2009-08-19 20:01:00
Consumer-trends newsletter Springwise illuminates the far corners of the retail imagination, with weekly updates on new business schemes from the socially conscious to the absurdly decadent. In the latter category, this week, we have Sex Pistol Ice Cream , a British dessert shop's latest plan to pitch this girlie comfort food to the male "members" of the species. The limited-edition flavor is "touted to have the same charge as a dose of Viagra ": Mixed into the frozen treat are ginkgo biloba, arginine and guarana?all guaranteed to increase blood flow and energy level. Before serving, The Sex Pistol is doused in La Fee Absinthe. And since presentation is key, the absinthe is administered from a drip bag into a pink water gun and fired at a heated sugar cube, which drops into the ice cream. The Sex Pistol is deemed so potent that sales are limited to one per customer, although at GBP 11.99 customers might prefer to split one with a special friend. If you'd rather heat up than cool do...
More About: Wine , Versus

Saturday Not-So-Random Song: Joan Baez, "Virgin Mary"
2009-08-15 21:14:00
Today, Aug. 15, is the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary . Catholic tradition holds that the mother of Jesus ascended bodily into heaven at the end of her life, without dying (like Elijah in the Old Testament). While this isn't an official Episcopalian doctrine, we still celebrate today as the Virgin Mary's feast day in the saints' calendar. Here, James Kiefer at The Daily Office explains the significance of the Virgin Birth: Besides Jesus himself, only two humans are mentioned by name in the Creeds. One is Pontius Pilate, Roman procurator of Judea from 26 to 36 AD. That Jesus was crucified by order of Pontius Pilate pins down the date of his death within a few years, and certifies that we are not talking, like the worshippers of Tammuz or Adonis, about a personification or symbol of the annual death and resurrection of the crops. His death is an event in history, something that really happened. The other name is that of Mary. The Creeds say that Christ was "born of the v...
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Stacey Waite: "XY" and "Finding My Voice"
2008-06-10 13:31:00
Continuing this week's Trans Pride theme, below are two poems from Stacey Waite's chapbook love poem to androgyny, winner of the 2006 Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest. Thanks to M. Scott Douglass at MSR for permission to reprint. Stacey has just won another prestigious award, the Tupelo Press Snowbound Series, for her forthcoming chapbook the lake has no saint. Put it on your Amazon wishlist today. XYThe doctor, who speaks slowly, after spendingquite a few moments to himself in his gray office,says there is a strong possibility I am "chromosomallymismatched," which cannot be determined nowunless I pay for the test, because according tomy coverage, the test is not necessary dueto the fact that I am "out of the danger zone."The danger zone is puberty, when, he says,"women like me" are at risk for developinggenital abnormalities. I look back at myself at 13,staring at my body. And I think it might haveall made sense to me somehow, if my clitoris grewlike a wild flower and hung its pe...
More About: Voice , Book Reviews

New England Transgender Pride March: Photos and Reflections
2008-06-08 17:13:00
The first-ever New England Transgender Pride March  took place this weekend in Northampton, and I was there with my "Episcopal Church Welcomes You" rainbow tank top and a digital camera to capture the pageantry. I was hoping to blend into the MassEquality contingent, but they were scattered around other groups this time, so I just milled around looking like I knew what I was doing, and took lots of pictures. Next thing I knew, someone had handed me a bunch of purple and white balloons, and I was marching behind the lead banner, shouting "Trans Pride Now".  Without either of my moms this time, I felt anxious that I didn't have the right to be there. Straight allies are important, but on the other hand, was I co-opting someone else's oppressed subculture? (I had a Native American Studies professor in college who was apoplectic about this.) The fact is, when you're genuinely weird, and view all human social categories as potential idols to be decons...
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Trans Pride Tomorrow and Other News
2008-06-06 17:33:00
The first-ever New England Trans gender Pride March and Rally will be held tomorrow at 11 AM in our very own Northampton, Mass. From the TransPrideMarch website: The event is organized by members of the trans and gender variant community, and their allies, with the intent of taking a visible and positive stand for transgender rights. The March and Rally is dedicated to diverse representation among organizers and participants. We seek to educate and build awareness of the movement against gender-based discrimination.Come join MassEquality in gathering petition signatures urging our state legislators to support HB 1722, an amendment to the Massachusetts anti-discrimination laws that would add protections for gender identity and expression.In other news:*Kittredge Cherry's groundbreaking book Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ and More was one of five Lambda Literary Awards nominees in the LGBT Arts and Culture category. See a video of her reading from the book and telling some of...
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My Story "Dinosaurs Divorce" Published on The Writing Site
2008-06-04 18:02:00
My story "Dinosaurs Divorce ", an excerpt from one of my novels-in-progress, won an honorable mention in the 2007 Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction from The Writing Site, an online resource for fiction writers, and is now posted on their website. (For reasons that are not evident in this early chapter, this post is not actually a departure from our "Pride Month" theme...) Here's the opener: We were gypsies, we were grifters, we were untenured faculty. After I was born, my mother left her beloved Manhattan and we embarked on the wandering life of an adjunct poetry professor, which as you might expect is about as lucrative as it was in Chaucer's day, adjusted for inflation. "And where are you from, Prudence?" Mrs. Litwin or Barone or Vasquez would chirp as I stood up before yet another elementary-school class, and I'd proudly recite, "New York and Cleveland and Durham and Lackawanna and..." I must have sounded like a train conductor.I probably didn't appreciate how little mo...
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Carl Phillips: "The Point of the Lambs"
2008-06-03 18:53:00
Carl Phillips is a professor of English and African and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His poetry has received numerous honors including the Kingsley Tufts Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. The poem below is reprinted by permission from his collection Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems, 1986-2006.The Point of the LambsThe good lambsin the yellow barn--the resthoused in blue. By"the rest," meaning those who--the guide explained--inevitablyarrive suffering. Forsome do, he added.Soft.Serious. This--likea new lesson. As tosome among us, it was,it seemed. The usualstammer of heart the naivetend to, in the face of what finallyis only the world. Whatmust it be, to passthus--clean, stripped--through a life? Whatreluctance the mindshows on recognizingthat what it approachesis, at last, the answerto the very question it knowsnow, buttoo late,oh better to never to have neverput forward. What Imean is we movedc...
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Janet Aalfs: "Facing the Wall"
2008-06-02 19:11:00
Janet Aalfs is a former Poet Laureate of Northampton and the director of Valley Women's Martial Arts. Her poetry collection Reach was published by Perugia Press in 1999. The poem below is reprinted with permission from her chapbook Full Open (Orogeny Press, 1996). Facing the Wall 1. Someone found a hearton market street not humanthere's really no causefor alarm though a naked heartwarm on the sidewalk on halloweenis upsetting but not as bad as ifit were the organ of a valuable lifewe don't meanone of the seventeen women foundstrewn along desert highwaysyou can't question whores their storiesaren't reliable their lives aren't stablethe reason we haven't found a suspectyet is that we can'tget a straight answer out of anyoneand no one really knowsa slut she'll go with whatever manwill take her you can't trust womenlike that to die when they're supposed towith their clothes on at a legal addresswe think we've discovered the eighteenth2. I want to know whythe fbi is so good at...
More About: Book Reviews , Janet , The wall

Melanie Braverman: "Tell" and "Fantasia"
2008-06-02 18:52:00
Since 1997, independent poetry publisher Perugia Press has been supporting women at the beginning of their publishing career. Based here in Northampton, this proudly lesbian-owned press publishes one book a year through their poetry manuscript contest for a first or second book by a woman. Their books are handsomely designed and well-promoted. Below, reprinted with permission, are two poems from Melanie Braverman's collection Red, which won their 2002 contest. Read more of her work here. Later this week, I'll be reprinting a poem by another Perugia author, Janet Aalfs, from her chapbook Full Open (Orogeny Press, 1996).TellLet's talkabout sex, let's talk about whatyou like to do, or havedone to you, or do toyourself while someone elseis watching, sayyou like it in cars, while you'redriving, maybe, his hands or hermouth between your legs, or ina basement, quiet exceptfor the sound of yourbreathing, which isgettingfaster, youcan'thelp it, you likethe way the air fits your skin li...
More About: Fantasia

Pride Month at Reiter's Block
2008-06-01 22:21:00
June is Gay-Lesbian-Bi-Transgender Pride Month . Why do I care? Perhaps some of you have been wondering why a straight, married woman has such a queer blog. There are several reasons why this issue has become my particular passion.On a personal level, I was parented by two women, and experienced firsthand how homophobia among our relatives and neighbors cut us off from an essential support network. When you can't even admit that you are a family, you can't ask your teachers or friends for help with family problems, which then are compounded by shame and isolation. Growing up with two very different women also taught me that there were diverse ways of being female. You could wear eyeshadow and long flowing blouses, read Victorian children's stories, pretend to be a flamenco dancer, and swear like a longshoreman. You could wear motorcycle jackets, pump your biceps, and cook gourmet French meals. So naturally, at the age of six, I decided I wanted to be a pirate king. I still do. The...
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Videos from Spring Open House at Writers in Progress
2008-05-23 17:11:00
Last week I read from my novel-in-progress with several very talented women who were fellow alumnae of Dori Ostermiller's Writers in Progress workshops in Florence, MA. My husband taped the performances on his new "Flip" camera, which are linked below for your viewing pleasure. Each segment is about 10-15 minutes, except for the intro, which is shorter.Introduction by Writers in Progress workshop leader Dori Ostermiller: Sharron Vaillette reads from her memoir about faith healers and her mother's cancer: Dusty Miller recounts a budding attraction between two young feminists, one of whom has a terrible secret: Jendi Reiter reads her prizewinning story "Julian's Yearbook", a tale of erotic awakening at a homophobic high school: Kate Kahn reads a poignant short story about a young woman in a 1950s trailer park who hopes for a better life: Kyra Anderson relates the comic mishaps of a family trip to Mexico with her young son, who has Asperger's Syndrome: Stephanie Faucher reads from ...
More About: Videos , Site News , House , Fiction , Open

Don't Take Your Breasts to Church
2008-05-18 12:21:00
Clothing signifies who we think we are and where we belong in the social order, so it's no wonder that religious communities have long been preoccupied with dress codes. While I do believe there is such a thing as dressing appropriately for an occasion, I struggle with how that issue becomes entangled with policing women's sexuality.To put it bluntly, women's clothes are sexually coded in a way that men's are not. Outside of beaches and nightclubs, men rarely wear anything provocative or revealing when they want to dress up. Men can wear a straightforward, professional suit to any special occasion, without worrying that they are sending the signal that they no longer think of themselves as young and desirable. By contrast, women's formal wear is all about sexual display. High heels, short skirts, makeup, low cleavage, rich fabrics, and form-fitting clothing are meant to show that a woman is toned, young, sexually confident and worth looking at...
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