Why I Can No Longer Support Brenda Marie Davies

Why I Can No Longer Support Brenda Marie Davies

The crimes of white supremacy have not gone unrecorded. They are etched into the bodies of brown and black people the world over. Our scars, past and present, physical and emotional, bear witness to the violence white men and women insisted they were not inflicting. White society marked the bodies of women of color as a receptacle for its sins so that it may claim innocence for itself, and, as the chosen symbol of the innocent perfection of whiteness, the white damsel with her tears of distress functions as both denial of and absolution for this violence.

Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars, p. 101

(Trigger warning: racism, colorism, fatphobia, ableism, child abuse, sexual abuse, and suicide.) 90-minute read.

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Book Review: The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr

Book Review: The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr

For the past few years, I have been inching closer to Progressive Christianity. Before you ask, I’m not going to become a Christian. However, since exiting my Angry Atheist phase, I’ve felt confident and curious enough to explore who Progressive Christians are and what they believe.

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Book Review: Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts

Book Review: Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts

When you think of reproductive rights, what comes to mind? I’d bet you thought of the right to a safe and legal abortion. At least I hope you did, because that’s a central part of reproductive liberty. Before I read Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, I perceived reproductive freedom as the ability to get safe and effective birth control, age-appropriate sex education, and reproductive healthcare, which includes abortion. However, for over a hundred years, poor Black women have viewed reproductive justice as much more than just abortion rights.

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Activists with signs that read "When equality is under attack, atheists show up."

How Atheists Can Fight for Social Justice

How many times have you heard an atheist say, “My nonbelief doesn’t hinder my values but rather it makes me fight even harder against injustice”? This is one of the things I love most about atheism. Most atheists know that since they only get this one life, they ought to use it for good.

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Book Review: The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler

Book Review: The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler

No matter what I say about this book, it won’t be enough. It would be a lot quicker for me to just tell you to read it for yourself, but in this review I will try my best to explain why.

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Why the March for Life is Not Pro-Life

Why the March for Life is Not Pro-Life

This has been a big week in the world of women’s rights. Not only is January 22nd the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade but the 20th was the annual March for Life. Unfortunately neither of these days give pro-choice advocates much to celebrate. It’s great that women have been protected by Roe for 49 years, but it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing that 50-year anniversary. And the March for Life is cringey at best and a spine-chillingly ominous march of bigots at worst.

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The Abortion Essay of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

The Abortion Essay of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

On April 22nd, 1990, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan published an article for Parade Magazine called “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers.” The essay lives on today as the chapter “Abortion: Is It Possible to Be Both ‘Pro-Life’ and ‘Pro-Choice’?” from Sagan’s last book Billions and Billions. You can read the essay here or listen to it here. I have yet to read the entire book, but I was intrigued by this chance to get Sagan’s and Druyan’s take on abortion, which is a topic I’m becoming increasingly passionate about.

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Is It Good to Have Friends We Disagree With?

Is It Good to Have Friends We Disagree With?

Being friends with people of different beliefs and opinions than us is usually seen as wholesome. I used to think this way when I viewed the world as a dichotomy of Christians and atheists. In a way, I had to see it like this because I was an atheist who knew, and therefore was friends with, almost only Christians. No Christian friends would have meant no friends.

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36 Crucial Quotes from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist

36 Crucial Quotes from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist

If you have read Ibram X. Kendi’s bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, then you know that it is an absolute must-read. Kendi clearly explains why and how racism is sustained—and how it affects every group of people in dozens of intersecting ways—and he uses these facts to demonstrate how to dismantle it. While I definitely recommend that you read the entire book, here are some of my favorite quotes.

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Book Review: How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Book Review: How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

At long last, this week I completed the final book of my first “15-book reading challenge“. Ibram X. Kendi’s 2019 bestseller How to Be an Antiracist seemed like a great end to the series, as it is one of the most popular books in the antiracist movement right now.

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