I didn’t think I was racist.

ShittyWomen_Racist

There are approximately 1,650 words beyond this point. This blog will take the average adult reader approximately six minutes to read.  

I grew up in a small town in northwest Washington State.

I thought racism was dead, like the history books said. Like my white teachers taught. And as far as I could tell, in my white community—there weren’t any racial issues. In the 2010 census, my town was 91% white, and 0.4% African American—and that was six years after I left the town, and they’ve been (tongue-in-cheek) trending toward a more diverse population for decades.

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When the body precedes the soul

 

shittywomen_bodysoul2

There are 1,328 words beyond this point. This blog will take the average adult reader about 5 minutes to read. 

So long as the body precedes the soul, equality cannot exist.

So long as we see people primarily as the bodies they inhabit, rather than the souls that they are, there will never be equality of any kind.

This specific thought, “So long as the body precedes the soul, equality cannot exist.” came about in my head after spending some time over the last few years thinking about how the porn industry feeds misogyny. Porn reduces the actors of it to their bodies—and nothing more. Porn consumers’ actions say to the actors, “Your personhood—your soul—you—do not matter to me, because you are nothing more than a body.”

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The Opposite of Love

 

ShittyWomen_Indifference(This blog will take the average adult roughly 4 minutes to read.)

“Indifference is the opposite of love.”

The pastor of the church I attend spoke on this some weeks ago. And I’ve been ruminating on it in my head and my heart ever since.

I wax indifferent when the storm tide rises. I can be a very calloused, apathetic person. It’s nothing shy of a defense mechanism. It’s how I’ve learned to deal with the storm surge in my life that has yet to recede.

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