Rachel Held Evans has spent an entire year following the Bible’s strict rules for women. While menstruating she camped out in a tent in her back yard, never touched her husband, and carried around a pillow so as not to sit on chairs outside her home. She grew her hair out all year and was ...
Ex-gay “therapy” has been in many headlines recently, especially after the discovery of Macus Bachmann’s clinics and the more recent news of high suicide rates for gay teens in Michele Bachmann’s district. Now there is new proof that “gay therapy” does not work, and it has come from a surprising source. Pat Robertson’s Regency University ...
I can’t write much this week, because I’ve got a few places to go today. You see, according to a collection of the usual wild-eyed former estate agents, prison guards and manure spreaders all turned evangelical preachers (and all of them Americans, naturally), if you add up all the dates in the Bible, making a ...
God’s wife was erased from the Bible, a British theologian has discovered. Back in the day before Muslims and Christians, God was called Yahweh and he was worshiped along with his wife, Asherah. At least according to Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a lecturer at the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter. “After years ...
Sex sells, and Churches want in on the action. Spicing up sermons is a good way to put butts on seats, especially now when attendance is at an all time low. Personally, my layman’s understanding of the Bible is that St. Paul thought having sex wasn’t a good thing, but “it is better to marry ...
Joumana Haddad may be a poet, but she is better known for her infamous magazine, Jasad. Covering everything to do with the body, topics have ranged from voyeurism and masturbation to polygamy and forced marriage. Needless to say, she is not the most popular woman in the Middle East. Because the material is so taboo, ...
Despite attempts from Alanis Morisette to convince us of the contrary, most people think of God as male. He is often depicted as an elderly man in the sky with a long white beard and twinkling/vengeful eyes (depending on your denomination). The Scottish Episcopal Church has authorized the removal of all references to the divine ...
Dear Madame X, I have just started seeing this girl. She seems great, but she recently told me she...
Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved arrived in my hands via a public library, when I was a broke teenager with...
My attention was drawn this week to an article about the reaction at a Canadian university to proposals to...
Airport security. Bloody nuisance. Also a conspiracy designed to subjugate women. Allow me to elaborate. Despite flying quite a...
The Cannes film festival has kicked off this week with controversy over the lack of films made by women...
Dear Madame X, I seem to be only attracted to men who are macho assholes. I like them at...
When A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962, the term sexualized violence wasn’t in use. The distinction between sexualized...
Skincare. Not so very long ago, a man would have been mocked mercilessly for using just the word, never...
