Collie's Bestiary

I've finished one of my required readings for class: Rita Gross's fascinating Feminism & Religion. I wish I'd read this book years ago. One of the most critical points the book makes, which was a sort of "aHA!" moment for me when I read it, was that a religion which purports to welcome and offer [...]

It's always entertaining to re-read old college papers, especially when you've learned more since then. In the case of Feminism & the Bible: Examining the Christian Myth of Creation, the handful of later realizations or learnings I had were interesting enough to me that I thought I'd relate them here. For example, most people know [...]

Originally posted April 2004 Thanks to George for making this a better review, as he always does. Books of historical fiction are based, in varying amounts, on the reality of the past. However, the lack of good record keeping, coupled with the problem of information conservation, has left us more often with mysteries than fact. [...]

Originally written in the late 1990's for a "Popular Culture" Anthropology class. In her book Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, Janice A. Radway explores the apparent fascination of romantic fiction to many women, and examines the needs this literary genre fulfills for its readers. Our required reading was the Introduction and the [...]

Continuing from yesterday… Kakou Korakos I certainly agree with you that women are often societally trained to be too passive. Myself, I believe the answer is to quit training them to do that, rather than just nudging "nice guys" to be more assertive. I also agree that being the major decision-maker in a relationship is [...]

Continuing from yesterday… Replies Erin (Brace yourself, Erin: I'm going to gush a little. *coughcough* Ahem. ;) ) Thank goodness for folks like you, who don't just think things through before acting — but try their best to pass that on to friends and children! Heh. All gushing aside, I've really enjoyed reading your calmly [...]

Continuing from yesterday… "Whatcha gonna do / When they come for you?" So why exactly does a bad boy seem to "get" more women? Leaving aside the repugnant assumptions inherent in that query (which would be an article in itself), the simple answer seems to be they're self-centered and arrogant enough to simply keep propositioning [...]

I was going to simply reply to the comments I received concerning the Firestarter titled Why Do We Ask Why Women Seem to Prefer Bad Boys to Nice Guys? However, I realized I had no way of notifying these kind individuals that I immensely appreciated their feedback, and had replied to them. Further, I wanted [...]

Read part I and part II of this article So no, I don't think women like assholes better. I think it's more they believe they don't deserve any better, or they're buying into societal myths about who they must be. They don't feel they can even ask the right guy without scaring him off… and [...]

Read parts I and III of this article Our hypothetical young female will probably deeply internalize just how much she sucks. No one could possibly ever like someone who is so worthless as she. She'll be lucky if anyone ever shows any interest in her at all. In fact, she'd probably better latch onto the [...]