Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Rape Culture and the Christian Perspective

As a woman who is Catholic and identifies as a feminist, I reach some awkward discords at times, and one of the most glaring is simply that people use different languages.  When Catholics write about things, they write with a Catholic vocabulary and assume their readers share a knowledge base and a world-view that many people simply do not.  For example, I was listening to a speaker on Monday who based a "secular" claim on the fact that "what we do with our bodies means something."  He was going for something as simple as "sex means 'I love you,'" but even that cannot be taken for granted in dialogue.  

The same thing happens from the other perspective.  I find wonderful articles that use language I don't want to share, or terms such as "het/cis," which can be off-putting to a more conservative religious crowd.  I try to bridge the gap at times, but other people are better thinkers and more articulate writers than I am, so I really want to share their thoughts.

Then, every now and then, something like this appears.  It brings together issues like rape culture, feminism, porn, purity, sin, misogyny, and solutions -- but from a Christian perspective.  Take a read and let me know what you think.

2 comments:

  1. "Should your son seek a relationship with a girl with no female friends?"
    It was going fine until this; heteronormativity is part of patriarchy, come on author get your head in the game.

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  2. 1) I do think it is important for people to have friends of both genders; in general, it shows the ability to have a variety of healthy relationships. I don't see that as heternormativity, but a gauge of emotional health.

    2) Jenn -- I didn't mean to imply that het was the opposite of cis -- I have seen the 2 terms linked in that matter ("het/cis) to state that a man in a heterosexual male who identifies as a man.

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