Blogging update

July 14, 2013 By Sierra

It’s been several months since I posted anything, and some readers have asked me about my plans. In short, I don’t know. I’ve been blogging (first at No Longer Quivering, then on my own) for four years. I began with a heap of stories about fundamentalism and the act of leaving that I felt needed to be told. In 2009, I still felt like I had invented leaving the Message of the Hour, and was unable to talk to anyone... Read more

The Fistfight Fallacy: rape culture’s ahistorical premise

April 25, 2013 By Sierra

Trigger warning: I’m fighting back against a rape apologist’s claim, and some of this material may be triggering. Inevitably, when you write about patriarchy, you get “schooled” by some asshat who informs you that society itself is founded on the threat of rape. That men are bigger and stronger and have always been able to coerce women into sex, and that fact is the simple biological root of patriarchy that cannot be expunged by a bunch of PC feminist mumbo-jumbo.... Read more

Sexism, Judgment Day and Forgetting as a Survival Skill

April 20, 2013 By Sierra

Sometimes, my mind goes through a litany of abuse that I can’t stop. From my father’s intimidation to the men in trucks who ran me off the road making obscene gestures to the men who followed me through city streets swearing at me for ignoring their sexual advances. From my pastor screaming about uppity women daring to go to work to the mechanics who insist I don’t know what I know about my own car. Most of the time, I... Read more

A Sober Second Look writes about Islamophobia

April 2, 2013 By Sierra

I want to recommend this recent post on A Sober Second Look: A Sober Second Look: On othering and “feeling sick” Posters and commenters in particular in some of these [fundamentalist survivor] blogs (and others like them) sometimes use a sort of short-hand that expresses that certain ideas, practices and institutions are oppressive: a fundamentalist, controlling Christian community is a “fundystan” any oppressive, hyper-controlling church or group is a “taliban” conservative Christian teachings (especially on women’s roles) are a “mental... Read more

Daughter of the Patriarchy, epilogue: What does leaving fundamentalism look like?

April 2, 2013 By Sierra

Occasionally, I get asked whether or not I ever actually left my old fundamentalist church. My story on No Longer Quivering followed my journey up to the first year of college. I’ve wrestled with how to explain what happened in a proper narrative form, because the circumstances that led to my cutting ties completely with the church ranged from financial to emotional to practical to ideological. There’s not a clear, linear story from here on out, just a constellation. But... Read more

Activism fatigue and the work of changing minds

February 28, 2013 By Sierra

I have been teaching as part of my graduate school career for more than a year now. It’s intense work. Some find it invigorating and exciting; I find it grueling. Teaching engages the same part of my brain that writing about the Religious Right does; it forces me to listen carefully to ideas I find distasteful, to be willing to poke around in the nuts and bolts of those ideas until I’ve found the root of the problem, and then... Read more

What my feminism is, and why I’m not okay with “mansplaining”

February 8, 2013 By Sierra

I grew up on anti-feminist propaganda. I heard that they were ball-busting man-haters before I had any idea what that meant, much less thought about identifying as one of them. There’s nothing remotely original about my journey from patriarchal indoctrination (having male friends because I thought girls were “boring”) to ambivalence (“I’m not a feminist, but…”) to acceptance of the history and meaning of the feminist identity. It took me the usual number of years to work my way through... Read more

We are not the enemies of our best selves

February 2, 2013 By Sierra

I’ve spent the past few years very plugged in to social justice media. When I get my news, for good or ill, it’s about the progress or regress of the social issues I care about. The rest of the time, I don’t pay attention. Issues that don’t elicit an intellectual or emotional response in me don’t rise to the surface, because they don’t show up on the blogs I read or the pages of friends with similar interests. This model for... Read more

Prospect.org: Purity Culture is Rape Culture

January 5, 2013 By Sierra

Trigger warning: The linked article contains a graphic description of gang rape. In fact, the warning applies to all of the links in this post. E.J. Graff at The American Prospect writes, in Purity Culture is Rape Culture: Too many people still conceive of rape as a man’s overwhelming urge to enjoy the body of a woman who has provoked him by being attractive and within reach. As is true in many “traditional” cultures, much of India still imagines that the... Read more

Secular fasting: finding spirituality in the process, not the goal

January 4, 2013 By Sierra

*Trigger warning: Personal talk about fasting with a (mostly controlled) eating disorder to follow. Please don’t read if you think this could harm you. I do not recommend fasting as a healthy habit for eating-disordered people as a category. The work I’ve done over the years to know my triggers means I’m assured that fasting itself won’t become an addiction or compulsion for me, but it might have done in years past. If you find something of value in fasting or... Read more