Category Archives: feminism

Fame Day: Liberation Theology (Can the Church be a Force for Social Justice?)

I grew up as an Evangelical Christian. There are many wonderful people I love who strongly associate with that title, but at this point in my life I no longer consider myself one. As I’ve struggled with certain tenants of the Evangelical movement over the last few years I’ve also struggled with the urge to write off Christianity entirely.

As I’ve gotten older and moved away from my previous home and (wonderful) community, I’ve started to realize that the “brand” of Christianity I was raised with is certainly not the only one out there. I also discovered that the emphasized conversion message that I was brought up in is actually a relatively new aspect of Christianity. While this method had a real heyday in the 80-90’s (think altar calls), here in North America things seem to be evolving yet again.

While I’d love to share more about what I’ve been learning regarding the evolution of Christianity sometime soon, for this post I want to focus on a branch of theology that I didn’t even realize existed until pretty recently: Liberation Theology. Continue reading

Storing Characters: If Not The Fridge, Then Where?

Not all appliances are created equal, and that certainly rings true for longtime readers of comic books. While some of us have discovered the phrase simply by taking part in the discourse that surrounds superhero titles, there are those among us who can remember reading Green Lantern #54, which featured the titular character discovering that his girlfriend had been murdered and stuffed in the aforementioned kitchen mainstay.

Since then [and thanks to Gail Simone] nofridging“fridge” has become both a noun and a verb, and occurs to a character when, according to TV Tropes, “[they are] targeted by an antagonist who has them killed off, abused, raped, incapacitated, de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of affecting another character, motivating them to take action.” It shouldn’t surprise you at all to learn that most characters who have been fridged are, you guessed it, women, and for the benefit of men to boot.

This particular topic made its way back onto my radar after an internet-response-to-comic-book-happenings debacle that I don’t want to get into [Brett White goes into what took place as well as the resulting backlash quite well, if you’re interested], where one of the listed grievances against a particular writer was that he had fridged a longstanding female supporting character.

Timothy O’Neil, whose blog has somehow missed making its way unto the links sidebar, tweeted the following with that in mind:

Continue reading

Shame Day: David Finch, Wonder Woman, and Feminism

This isn’t the first time the topic of feminism has cropped up on this blog, and it certainly isn’t going to be the last. While much of what we’ve written about it in the past concerns female characters and how they’re portrayed in the media or the various ways actual real-life women are viewed in today’s culture, the truth is that the biggest hindrance feminists everywhere [myself included] face is a painfully simple one. Far too many people have no idea what feminism is.

If you wanted to explore this further without leaving the blog, Gordon’s post “Why I Do Need Feminism” straight-up nails it. It’s essentially a response to images similar to the one on the right, which feature teenage girls holding up signs which underscore the fundamental misunderstanding they have of what feminism really is. If only there was some sort of go-to website that could provide a fairly clear-cut explanation . . . maybe even one that had the express purpose of defining words . . .

Dictionary.com’s first two definitions are as follows:

  1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
  2. sometimes initial capital letter an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.

finchww That all sounds like something the average non-bigoted person could be down with. The above research literally took me less than ten seconds, which is why I find it unforgivable when people like comic book artist David Finch is quoted as saying, regarding Wonder Woman:

 “We want her to be a strong — I don’t want to say feminist, but a strong character. Beautiful, but strong.”

To provide a little context, David Finch and his wife Meredith Finch are going to be taking over the character’s self-titled book in November, with the latter covering writing duties. I want to focus as much as possible on his words here, and not his actual depictions of the character, an example of which you can see right above. Continue reading

Sell Sex Pt. III: Bill C-36, Human Trafficking, and Sex Work (Was I Wrong?)

In one of my early posts on the blog I shared about a fundraiser I organized with one of my best friends. The two of us had both stumbled across the shocking reality of human trafficking and been horrified. Most of my experience was just through reading about it (primarily in Benjamin Perrin’s book Invisible Chains), whereas she had met human trafficking survivors while attending Salvation Army War College.

We felt frustrated, and helpless, but we wanted to do something, anything to prevent it from happening to more vulnerable individuals.

After discussing it a few times, we decided to create some kind of event where we could raise awareness for human trafficking here in Canada. We even created a petition that advocated for the “Nordic Model” of prostitution law. This model was advocated by Perrin in his book and basically entails attacking the demand side of prostitution rather than the supply, specifically by making the purchase of sex illegal, rather than the sale. In theory, this means that the individuals who are victimized by the sex industry would be protected, while those who are perpetuating human trafficking  or contributing to the prostitution demand would be punished.

So I should be really excited now that Canada is currently debating a bill that would change our current prostitution laws to something much more in line with the Nordic Model, right?

Well, I’m suddenly not so sure.

Bill C-36 was introduced by Justice Minister Peter McKay near the beginning of June. Continue reading

The Real Reason Assassin’s Creed Unity Has No Female Playable Characters

I don’t know a lot about video games nowadays, but I do know one thing: I love the Assassin’s Creed franchise. This may lie entirely in my simple love for stabbing and vaguely historically accurate settings, but I’m down with what they’ve got going on. In fact, I got thoroughly hyped for whatever game developer Ubisoft’s announcement was going to be at this year’s E3 without knowing almost anything about it.

Here’s the trailer they released:


The following tumblr post more or less sums up my reaction [after I finished gawking at the assassinations, of course]:

Continue reading

Shame Day: John Piper

Readers, I try not to abuse Shame Day.

These posts are meant to be condemnations of terrible events, trends, or people- not platforms for us to roust the  things we simply don’t care for. I’ll actively avoid researching certain people or subjects which just generally annoy me- I don’t want to hastily pull together some indignant exposé to justify my dislike of something. And for the longest time, the works and career of American pastor John Piper have been one of those things.

Until now. Continue reading