ranty mcranterson

During the course of my day I usually have some downtime. Yes I could be doing something but really it’s nice to have a little break now and then. So when I have downtime I read some mainstream blogs some of them I’ve linked to on this blog, some I have not. A lot of the blogs are feminst in nature because I do work at a feminist organization, and frequently they’ll have posts that are relevant to my job. One of the problems I have with these sites is that there doesn’t seem to be any tolerance for Christianity. I will grant you that most of the people who write in to the bloggers, or the groups they’re talking about are much more conservative than I am and are also much more evangelical that I am. I’m much more of a lead your life as an example of Christianity instead of a beat you over the head with my belief system type person. As a very liberal person I have a hard time feeling like my religion is respected. It’s almost as if because I believe in Jesus and God I’ve been duped into something and I’ll come around later. I really get sick of this patronizing attitude and it definitely turns me off to some of the more progressive sites. One of the websites I usually read is feministing dot com. It’s just a bunch of ‘feminist’ stories and some really are feminist issues, some are just people complaining about things and making anything that involves women a feminist issue (which I suppose you could argue, but I feel like that’s gratuitous). So the founder of this website wrote a book called ‘full frontal feminism’ it’s supposed to make feminism hip/cool/appealing for the younger kids who think ‘feminism’ is not a good thing. So we got this book at the center and I started reading it and it’s so hard to read. Now, I know that I tend to curse like a sailor, but this book puts me to shame. I understand where the anger comes from. It sucks that women have faced injustices and that they continue to do so. It sucks that I make less than a man would (still) it sucks that I have to pay for birth control but Viagra is a covered prescription it sucks that women are blamed for rape. Sometimes it sucks. I had started this book in the hopes of being able to recommend it to the high school kids that I work with, or even the young college kids that I’m going to be working with. And I just can’t do it. Which brings me to the reason I felt the need to vent. Apparently the author did a reading from the book and it was on tv. So a bunch of people saw it and emailed her to comment on the appearance. Some people were upset about the use of cuss words and felt that it was uncalled for, others were saying anti feminist things, others were worried about her soul. Blah blah blah. The usual crap. So she posts these comments on her site and ridicules everyone who wrote them to her. And then the people who read the site commented on that post and again ridiculed the people who wrote them. This is frustrating on so many levels. I am a feminist and a Christian. And I don’t feel like I need to pick between the two. I am also pretty darn liberal and a Christian and I don’t feel like I need to pick between those two either. And yet in the liberal sphere there’s pressure to not be a Christian and in some parts(not my church but others) there is significant pressure to be conservative. So I guess I wrote this because I’m disappointed. Disappointed that there’s not a book that I can give to my sister to show her feminism is cool, that people can’t respect each other and each others opinions, that I have to defend my Christianity/feminism/liberalism all the time.

I’ll step down from the soapbox.