Feminism Friday: Purity Culture

One phenomenon that has swept the U.S., particularly conservative Protestants, is Purity Culture.

Love, Joy, Feminism has a great collection of articles on the subject, the practices, and the problems with it.

I think one of the most damning commentaries on Purity Culture comes from Elizabeth Smart. The counter-example, then, is the story of the $20 bill. Crinkling it up in a ball, dropping it in the dirt, stepping on it - whatever you do to the $20 bill, it is still worth $20. It doesn't lose its value.

Realities of Pregnancy: Infertility

One of the subjects I thought I might get to on this blog last fall, had to do with my own journey to parenthood.

Some of my experiences have been shared on Twitter, under several different hashtags: #RealitiesOfPregnancy, #ShoutYourAbortion, #7MonthsAwesome, to name a few.  I've been slower to write about them here, for several reasons: 1) they're politically charged, 2) they're very personal. But I think it IS important to share, because they are relevant to laws both on the books and under consideration today.

My journey to parenthood was not straightforward. So today, I'm going to begin writing about my Infertility.

Looking forward: Professional Development reprise

One of the first things that I did when I got my layoff notification in 2014, was I took the GRE again.

The Graduate Record Examination is one of the tests that may be required for admission to graduate school. It's not the only admissions test, there are others like the LSAT for law school, but it's the one most commonly used for science, engineering, and humanities degrees.

In fact, I had taken the GRE once before, in 2003, as part of admission to my M.A. program. In that case, I was allowed to take classes on a provisional admission, while I completed the requirements.  When I returned to Purdue for distance learning, I successfully argued that I already had one graduate degree, so the GRE could be waived... but I had seen indications that for doctoral programs, I would need to take it again.