I Had No Idea...

That there is a Feminist Women's Health Center in Atlanta!

About the organization:

Since 1977, the Feminist Women's Health Center has strived to empower women through service, education, and advocacy. As Atlanta's leading non-profit feminist women's health resource, we have earned an outstanding reputation for providing quality care and community education, while working unceasingly to improve women's health. Our center embraces a holistic approach to health care and wellness, and we believe that education and knowledge are vital components in a women's ability to make health care decisions.

Through our three programs, Cliff Valley Clinic, Division of Reproductive Medicine, and the Community Education & Advocacy Network, the Feminist Women's Health Center offers a wide range of services and education for the community.

Emergency Birth Control is a safe and effective means of preventing pregnancy after unprotected intercourse. Our Trans Health Initiative offers sensitive, friendly and affordable gynecological health care to gender variant and intersex individuals. We offer Assault Survivor Sensitive Care which addresses the specific physical and emotional needs of our clients by offering a unique program for survivors of violence to include domestic or gang violence, sexual assault, abuse, or incest.

Here is information on an open event there on November 19th:

Do Rape Victims Get Justice In Georgia?

Thursday Nov 19th
7-8:30pm

For directions: Call (404) 929-1738

Join us for a panel presentation addressing the problem of untested rape kits and strategies for advocacy. Representatives from the DeKalb Rape Crisis Center and The Georgia Network to End Sexual Assault will discuss the process of testing rape kits in Georgia and the implications for those left untested.

Please RSVP to Claire at outreach@feministcenter.org
or 404-248-5445

Womyn of the Week - All the Hundreds of Thousands of Womyn Raped and Murdered in the Congo

Since 1996, nearly six million people have died as a result of conflict and conflict related causes in the Congo since 1996. Forty-five thousand continue to die each month. Hundreds of thousands of womyn have been raped as weapons of war. You may not know this and if you don't, don't feel too bad, because our media chooses not to report it. Our media thinks the life of one little boy who might have died as a result of a bizarre balloon accident to be much more important than a holocaust in another country. All people matter and all people have equal value, whether our media believes it or not.

Why the Congo? The Congo is what is known as "the heart of Africa," because it has every kind of natural resource that one needs to get rich, only the Congolese are not rich, because whiteness stole their resources with just about every company that works there being involved in illegal activity. Fair trade is a nice idea, but one not practiced in the Congo.

Womyn have been systematically brutally raped and made infertile, in order to kill off a people. That's what the group "Friends of the Congo" informed us is what they mean when they say, "using rape as a weapon of war." THIS MUST STOP!!!

Get a group of rabble-rousing friends together and invite a speaker from Friends of the Congo. Go to the site Congo Week and find an awareness raising event going on this weekend. Recycle your own phone, so that less coltan has to be mined. Write your senators and other lawmakers. Write the president. Even better yet, write letters to these companies and inform them that their products are not worth people's lives!

Let Let Us Promote Joyous Sex, Not Simply Avoiding Rape

Right now I am reading the inspiring book, "The God We Never Knew," by Marcus J. Borg. It's a book that explains some pretty heady Christian theology, but in really simple terms. It posits not that God exists, but that God IS, which is a different thing altogether. Godde is all around us and is even inside us. This is the first of probably several posts inspired from reading his book.

Borg says that for some people, habitually following religious rites can unintentionally open one up to seeing and experiencing the Sacred. He describes several different types of rites followed by Orthodox Jews and by Catholics, although he notes that there are rites that can give the same kind of experience in other religions. One such rite is observing the Sabbath. Here is how Borg explains the Sabbath:

Sabbath is not experienced as a day of inconvenient restrictions but as a day of joy. (117)

But here is were my feminist lens sat back in surprise and my inner Spirit leapt for joy:

Husband and wife are expected to make love on the Sabbath, for they are Adam and Eve, the primal couple naked and unashamed in Eden, the Garden of Delight.

One thing that I find lacking in feminism is that it often only seems to be the domain of angry womyn who when talking about sex, only talk about either the right to choose what she should do with her body, i.e. have an abortion or not, and rape. These are incredibly important topics, but there needs to be a space for womyn who are not content to play the role of "angry liberator."

Liberated people, while they may be angry, are also usually full of joy! I know I am when my heart is open to the Sacred, which is where I want it to be. Womyn, feminists, do need to talk about abortion and rape, but we also need to talk about joyous sex too.

Womyn are by means completely liberated, but I believe that we can only accomplish true liberation from the patriarchy by living as if we already are, which means it is imperative for us to open ourselves to the possibility of experiencing Joy on a daily basis.

I truly believe that the good feelings that sex provides are one of Godde's greatest gifts-not the fact that sex might produce babies, but the ecstatic feelings themselves. I'm a little afraid to admit this, but the times when I feel the closest to Godde are when I masterbate. I've written about this before, and I am going to say it again, we will not stop acts of rape from happening by talking about "stopping violence"-it will only stop when we are solely promoting that womyn should only expect joyous respect in their sexual intimacy.

Elmo - a Poem about Date Rape

Elmo lies flat on his back-
He's tired from all the laughing.

"I wish you wouldn't tickle me
so much
and
so hard..."

"It's not rape if you're laughing,"

replies the voice from above.
*************************************
I wrote this last night, since I could not sleep and sadly, it has to do with an experience that happened during my very first week at college. My date and I were riding back to the dorm in the back of the car together, when the bastard tickled me, causing me to fall down on my back in surprise, and he "fell" too. It was one of the scariest moments of my life-I was laughing, but the situation was anything but funny. "Get off, get off!" I protested and finally, after letting me panic for a minute, he got up like he had not just demonstrated his true wishes for a nightly game of control and punishment. Thankfully, I was able to convince him not to take me to his dorm, but to drop me off at mine. He was very reluctant and I still do not know what it was that made him decide to let me have my way, for he certainly did not do that with any of the other young freshmen that he "dated" that year. When the rumours were flying about a campus rapist targeting freshwomyn later that year, I knew without any doubt that he was the one.

Even if the violated person is laughing, it is still sexual assault or rape-the only time it is not is when that person emphatically says yes! Yes means yes-anything less than clear consent is rape.