Lauren Whalen is a freelance writer and performer living in Chicago. She reviews books for Persephone Magazine, movies for The Film Yap and plays for Chicago Theater Beat. Lauren’s work has appeared on The Huffington Post, the AIDS Foundation of Chicago’s award-winning Inside Story blog, and the ‘Hoods blog for RedEye, a supplement of the Chicago Tribune. Check out more of Lauren’s writing on Facebook and Twitter. *** I’ve been thinking a lot about religion. For many years I tried to avoid the topic. I grew up Catholic, have 13 years of parochial education, and a degree from a Jesuit university. I felt done. But this is a year of my past coming back, through old friends, hometowns, religion, and the reevaluation of everything.…
Living and Parenting as a Liberal Feminist Christian
Posts from the “Feminism” Category
This content was originally posted in the summer of 2012. I got through the first season last summer before things got a little overwhelming. I’ll be returning to the series of posts this summer to see how much farther I can get, but first I’ll re-post the old content. In high school, I was an X-Phile. I started watching the show in 1997, when episodes were airing nightly on FX. I was a good Christian missionary back then, and I had it ingrained into my supple, evangelical brain that “things of the world” were bad, and that the X-Files was probably a thing of the world. My spiritual leaders had taught me that secular music and R-rated movies were a sin, so I definitely…
Tagged: blogging the x-files, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, the 90s, x-files
If things had gone as planned, I would not be in India when this post goes live. Instead, I would be taking care of a newborn baby right now. My due date was April 20. I miscarried at eight weeks, during the first three days of the fall semester. The routine ultrasound on that Tuesday revealed a slow heartbeat, and instead of an 8-week fetus, there was something closer to the size of a 6-week embryo. When my doctor came in to speak with us, she said, “Hope for the best, of course, but prepare for the worst.” Her demeanor was kind. By Tuesday night I began to miscarry. I worked through Wednesday, walking slowly to my classes and introducing syllabi. My supervisor found…
Categories: Feminism
Tagged: miscarriage, personal history, Pregnancy
I’m not a cynic. I’m not a pessimist. I am, however, a skeptic. I am critical, sometimes to a troubling level. I tend to furrow my eyebrows in disbelief a lot. In fact, this is what I often look like: What makes me skeptical and critical and eyebrow-furrow-y? As a liberal, a feminist, and a Christian, the list is long. Oh, boy. Really long. Here are some basics. As a liberal: I am skeptical of any legislation or policy that almost exclusively benefits people who already have a ton of privilege in society. Rich people, White people, Christians, etc. If someone is passing legislation to improve the lives of a group of people, and that group of people already has it really really good,…
Tagged: Christianity, LGBT, patriarchy, politics, poverty, racism, social issues
Dear Governor Pence, This week you signed into law SEA 371, a bill that places several new restrictions on abortion providers. Specifically, the bill requires any facility that prescribes pills that induce chemical abortions to meet the exact same requirements as any facility that performs surgical abortions. Women being prescribed RU-486 must undergo a gynecological examination by the provider who will be prescribing the pills, and if they don’t want to hear the fetal heart beat, they must sign a document written by the state department to prove that they turned down the ultrasound. I’m sure you have heard the reasons for opposing this bill, such as: Requiring a surgical setting for what essentially amounts to a consultation is unnecessary and is only designed…
Tagged: abortion, birth control, Mike Pence, pro-choice, pro-life, SEA 371
I’ve been a part of so many great, challenging conversations over the last few days because of Susan’s article about the race of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. The conversations have led me to ask some questions that I really don’t know how to answer. Do you? If an individual is the victim of White supremacy in one country and then moves to another country where he is perceived as White, what race is he, exactly? Is he the race he grew up being? Or is he the race he is currently perceived as being? What if it’s not a nation where the racial dynamic is White/non-White, but some other racist pairing? Why are many people so quick to believe that trying to understand…
Categories: Feminism
Tagged: Boston Marathon, immigration, Islamophobia, racism, white privilege
It’s been a big week for my little blog. Since January 1 of this year, I have blogged every single weekday about faith, feminism, politics, teaching, writing, and parenting. The factor linking all of this together is the fact that I am a liberal feminist Christian, and I’m trying to sort out the different ways that affects my life: as a parent, a partner, a writer, and a professor. (Darn. I wish writer started with p. That would have made a great alliterative list.) Before January, I had written more than 2000 posts in a ten year span of time. Those have all been unpublished, because I honestly have no idea what I wrote in some of those early posts. In my long history…
I am sort of terrified of writing about abortion on this blog. Of course, it’s hardly a topic I can avoid, given the very nature of this blog. I call myself a liberal and a feminist–that should give some pretty big clues to my views on abortion. But I also call myself a Christian, and I’m willing to guess that abortion is one of the biggest areas where people see a contradiction between feminism and Christianity. So how I can I ignore this topic? My fear is partly an interpersonal one. I have engaged in dialogue on Facebook and in real life about abortion plenty of times. I’ve seen conversations on this topic devolve into pathetic piles of rhetoric and anger. I don’t like…
Tagged: abortion, politics, pro-choice, pro-life
When Ruthie’s in the car and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s “Thrift Shop” comes on the radio, I turn it down. “Oh, yeah,” she always says after hearing that initial hook, “that’s the naughty song.” “Thrift Shop” is the naughty song, full of “bad words” and stuff I don’t want Ruthie to repeat. But let’s face it, it’s the catchiest song on the radio right now, and Macklemore is pretty great. At first I thought of the Macklemore/Lewis duo as a guilty pleasure, but then I started seeing references to the sort of things he has to say. I haven’t bought his album The Heist, but I have watched his videos on YouTube and read some of his song lyrics. Yesterday, my friend Neville shared…
Tagged: gay marriage, LGBT, Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, Same Love, Thrift Shop
I saw this on Facebook yesterday and thought I’d respond: 1. If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally,… you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots. The Obama administration has already deported 1.5 million people in his first term. George Bush only deported 2 million in his two terms. So. This statement is incredibly inaccurate. If you think it’s not possible to get “arrested for being in the country illegally,” you must not be listening to the stories that are being told around you. 2. If you have to get your parents permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but…
Categories: Feminism
Chalupa and I have seen this image shared from time to time in our Facebook feeds: Now, on the subject of stupidity, I could discuss the ridiculous nature of this argument, but instead I’ll let someone else do the work and just provide you with some links to read. What I want to talk about is how this is a poor representation of a character who is near and dear to our hearts: The Stranger. If you see this image and think that’s just an old cowboy in a bowling alley, or perhaps just Sam Elliott in a bowling alley, you are wrong. That, my friends, is the Stranger. He narrates one of the best movies of all time, The Big Lebowski. Here. Enjoy…
Categories: Feminism
Tagged: gun control, internet memes, The Big Lebowski, the Stranger
After Ruthie met Tinker Bell at Disney World last week, I decided to introduce her to The Secret of the Wings, which is a 2012 movie about Tinker Bell and the other fairies in Pixie Hollow. Tinkerbell wants to cross a forbidden border into the Winter Woods so that she can explore, and in doing so, meets her sister Periwinkle for the first time. (Fairy siblings are those “born of the same laugh.”) Periwinkle and Tinker Bell’s exploration causes problems, though, when the balance of the seasons is thrown off kilter. They must try to save the pixie dust and figure out a way that they can continue to see each other. This is actually the only Tinker Bell movie I’ve watched, so I…
Tagged: Disney, Mae Whitman, media, movies, Pixie Hollow, Secret of the Wings, Tinker Bell
Some context: Last Friday, my parents and I took my three-year-old daughter Ruthie to the Magic Kingdom in Florida. My husband Chalupa couldn’t come with us. My parents have been divorced for several years, but Mom and I spent the week of Spring Break at Dad’s house, visiting with him and his partner Franco, because who’s to say that a gay Christian musician and his ex-wife can’t still be best friends, and we can’t all spend a pleasant week together in the warmth of Fort Lauderdale? The four of us–me the Feminist Mother, my mom the doting Grandma, my dad with the bad back, and Ruthie the three-year-old–spent one full day at the Happiest Place on Earth, and now it’s time to tell the…
Tagged: Ariel, Cinderella, dad, Disney World, Magic Kingdom, mom, Pinocchio, princesses, Ruthie, Snow White
According to Focus on the Family, feminist Christians make terrible mothers. As quoted in Samantha’s article about a recent Focus interview, women’s minister Nancy Leigh DeMoss says: “Our feminist culture does not value children, and I’m talking about Christian feminists here . . . taking care of children isn’t really that important . . . but God has placed a nurturing heart in a woman. The mindset of women today is that of an ostrich that tramples their children . . . They don’t ask how to glorify God.” That’s not the only inaccurate thing she said. Read the whole commentary for specific insights into how problematic and damaging her beliefs are. I am floored by the idea that somehow a nurturing heart is…
Ruthie is three. She is a healthy toddler. Her brain is perfect–a neurologist confirmed that in 2012 when she was exhibiting some strange growth patterns that needed to be checked out. She is funny and incredibly smart and is absurdly flexible. She is a remarkably fun little kid who loves reading, her dollhouse, donuts from Concannon’s Bakery, her daycare teachers, her grandma’s dog Harley, and apples. I’ve never seen anyone who loves apples as much as this kid does. I want desperately for Ruthie to continue to grow up happy and healthy and loved. And I don’t care–not one bit–whether she gets fat. About a year ago, a mother named Dara-Lynn Weiss wrote in Vogue and later published a book about the process of…
Tagged: fat acceptance, Ruthie, weight
