Instead of going for the expected, which I may do tomorrow or something when it’s UNexpected (hah-HA!), I thought I would address something that my sister and I were discussing Friday night at Panera before going to see Star Trek with some futuristic space nerds.

I’ve been trying like nobody’s business to find the link to the actual radio program she heard so that I can post it here and you can hear for yourselves, but apparently the idea of making your broadcasts available online for people who didn’t happen to catch it is unheard of on the internet today. Regardless. Apparently last week on WKRQ, there was a program on which a couple of staff at two local Cincinnati domestic violence shelters appeared. They discussed the problem of violence and of course offered themselves as avenues to escape an abusive relationship. But then they said something that I felt a little uncomfortable with. Namely, there is nothing that increases your risk of domestic violence besides gender.

Of course, there are many stastics that point to the fact that domestic violence is primarily directed against heterosexual women by predominantly heterosexual men, and in that regard, I agree that being female would make it more likely that you might experience violence at the hands of an intimate than if you were male. But the only thing?

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So this topic comes up because of a conversation I had with some friends of a Swiss a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure why I bring it up now except that I’ve talked with my brother and sister about this a few times and it seems pertinent to life if not to current circumstances.

There’s a certain idea that seems to be going around that you can’t disagree with what someone’s doing without judging them. Case in point: I was talking with the aforementioned people that I met up with in Clifton, and somehow the topic of stripping came up. Don’t look at me, I didn’t bring it up. Anyway, there was another girl present and the two of us began talking about how we felt bad for women who felt like they had to take their clothes off for money. A guy jumped in at that point and gallantly stated that we shouldn’t judge strippers because that was their choice and who were we to act like we were better than them? I pointed out that I didn’t say, nor did I think, I was better than anyone. I further said that I thought strippers were as fine of a population as anyone else but the fact that they felt that taking their clothes off and selling the view was an innocuous profession was something I didn’t agree with. We argued about whether or not stripping was done out of sexual liberation or necessity and whether saying that strippers should be supported and that there might have been issues of self esteem or trauma that led them into the occupation might be offensive. He felt that it was.

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I will make this admission: I . . . read feminist blogs.

No, no, it’s true. I mean it. And though some people may argue that it’s impossible to be a Christian and a feminist, let me tell you, I’ve found a way to manage it. The secret is that you must take one of them a la carte, which is what I’ve done with the latter. I suppose I would have to say I fit in best with the motives of a first wave feminist, even though that movement seems to have died out sometime around the time the Suffragettes ripped the vote out the clutches of the patriarchy with their bare teeth (a feat that, when I think of it, still instantly jellies my knees). But forget first waves and second waves and any other allusions to the sea.

The reason I am interested in so called “feminism” (though some of you may think that I misuse the term to characterize myself by it (and depending on who says it, I might even take it as a compliment )), is because I think that there issues that face women that, if not brought to the forefront and altered, will be issues for a long time to come. I believe in bringing those issues to light. I believe in a dialogue. I believe in equal pay for equal work, being aware of issues that face disenfranchised people, taking steps to assist victims of rape, incest, and domestic violence, ending the slave trade known as sex work, and changing the current socialization process that is injurious to both men and women.

As any feminist worth her weight will notice, those are only a cordoned off portion of the agenda laid out by most feminist groups. But there you have it. These colors don’t run but they’re more of the pastel pink variety.

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So the truth of the matter is that I should be in bed. Because I’m supposed to be at work tomorrow at nine a.m. and lately I’ve been staying up till seven in the morning and sleeping in all day. I’m on like . . . China time or something. But instead of doing that (and I WILL do it, okay? . . . yeah, in a dang minute so keep your pants on!), I logged on to LinkedIn, a networking site I have to admit I don’t really get yet. And there, believe it or not, as I’m browsing through Possible Connections in the Classmates section at Kent State University, I come across the profile of my first boyfriend.

JOLT.

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