Tuesday April 6 at 6:30 p.m.

The Institute of Interfaith Dialog

4444 N. Classen Blvd.

Oklahoma City, OK 73118

A panel discussion by the women leaders of the three Abrahamic Faiths:  The three distinguished panelists are:

Rabbi Abby Jacobson, Rabbi, Emanuel Synagogue

Dr. Barbara Boyd, Outreach Director, OU Religious Studies

Sheryl Siddiqui, Director from community relations for the Islamic Society of Tulsa

The panel will be moderated by Dr. Jill Irvine from OU Women’s and Gender Studies.  The event is not exclusive to women.  Men are encouraged and welcome to attend.  Some of the areas of discussion include: 1) How has feminism impacted the discourse of women’s participation in society?  2) How might women of the various Abrahamic traditions work together today to address women’s issues worldwide?  3) How does each religious tradition respond to issues of women’s reproductive health such as the use of contraceptives and abortion?  4) And much more….

For more information: okosman@interfaithdialog.org; 405.702.0222.  This event is free of charge and open to the public.

The United States of America is the land of great opportunity, in which people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and give their children better than they had.  This idealistic vision is the American Dream. In addition to improving chances for children, the Dream also typically includes home ownership, having a chance to get rich and achieving a secure retirement. The Dream finds its roots in our Declaration of Independence which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  As humans, life has been given to us.  Liberty is established through the social contract.  The Pursuit of Happiness — that is the promise of the American Dream.

The term was made popular by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America.  According to Adams, the term was “that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.”

However, the idea of the American Dream is neither simple nor universal.   Americans oddly tend to hold contradictory views of ways to achieve success.  We simultaneously think that people should get out of the system what they put into it (an idea called meritocracy), and that people should be able to pass wealth generationally, thus effectively nullifying a meritocratic system.  The tensions between these widely held views are what makes the Dream complex.

The American Dream is the great American story.  It is given power at least partially by what Max Weber called the Protestant Ethic, which taught that hard work and prosperity are signs of the achievers’ place in heaven and of God’s favor towards them.  The Protestant Ethic contributed to America’s financial success.  We worked hard, saved and spent frugally.  Protestantism also affected how we view work.  Martin Luther taught that all work, not just ordained ministry, was a sacred thing.  In a sermon, Luther preached that, “every occupation has its own honor before God, as well as its own requirements and duties.”  This dedication to work from the 16^th century is evident to us in the 21^st through the nation of workaholics.  Once Americans decided work was a positive, we took it to the extreme.  Because of this Protestant framework, Americans came to view work as an opportunity, not merely a necessity.

Stories of the American Dream are ubiquitous in the American Experience.  Indeed, they portray some of our greatest figures such as Abraham Lincoln who was famously born in a log cabin and rose, due to his intellect and work ethic, to become one of the nation’s most visionary presidents.  In the present day, two O’s tell the story of the Dream: Oprah and Obama.  Oprah was famously raised in poverty in Mississippi before she became the queen of day time talk and just about everything else.  President Obama continuously touted his credentials as an American Dream president, the son of a Kenyan and a Kansan during his historic 2008 presidential campaign.  Using his unusual past to his advantage, he continuously said on the trail, “In no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

The Dream mentality is so all-encompassing that it can be found almost anywhere.  Some of our great American art personifies the Dream.  Citizen Kane and The Godfather II, two of our greatest films portray rags to riches stories.  Recently, the Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) showed some of the heart-breaking realities of chasing success.  In one moving scene, Smith and his son find themselves homeless and spend the night in the public restroom of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station.  Another scene from this film epitomizes the Dream mentality.  Smith’s character teaches his son that the Dream is a possibility for those who work for it.

You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.

Will Smith’s character endures barrier after barrier to achieving success but it is this belief in the Dream that propels him forward.  This spirit of opportunity and drive is necessary in working toward the Dream.  Without it, the goal seems unachievable.

However, that same drive can turn against those who devote their lives to it.  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s acclaimed work, The Great Gatsby is also about the American Dream and the potential pitfalls of too much success.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Excess is not a concept included in the Dream. Rather, the Dream is to have enough to be comfortable and give your children a little better than you had.  Enormous wealth is a bastardization of the Dream, an unintended consequence of unbridled ambition.

Dream stories serve to inform us of possibility.  Last year we heard an American Dream story recounted over and over, that of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  An e-mail from President Obama to his supporters recounts the now familiar story.

And then there is Judge Sotomayor’s incredible personal story. She grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx — her parents coming to New York from Puerto Rico during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she lost her father, and her mother worked six days a week just to put food on the table. It takes a certain resilience and determination to rise up out of such circumstances, focus, work hard and achieve the American dream.

In Judge Sotomayor, our nation will have a Justice who will never forget her humble beginnings, will always apply the rule of law, and will be a protector of the Constitution that made her American dream and the dreams of millions of others possible. As she said so clearly yesterday, Judge Sotomayor’s decisions on the bench “have been made not to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interest of impartial justice.”

This story shows who can achieve the American Dream: anyone.  According to the Dream, we all have the opportunity to achieve it.  Our own hard work and moral fiber will help us along the way.  As Americans, this story is our story and permeates every aspect of our society.  We are constantly told that we can achieve it.

But, is that true?  For some, pursuit of a Dream turns into the American Nightmare, faced with the inability to break into a closed system no matter how hard they work.  The ideology of the American Dream has been used to justify the inequalities of our society, as if those who have not been able to get ahead do not deserve it and have not worked hard enough.  This is where the tension between meritocracy and inheritance becomes important.  For the argument that those who get ahead deserve success to be logically sound, everyone would have to originate in the exact same place.  But, we don’t.  Those with privilege start out light years closer to the finish line.  The next installment of this series will examine the barriers and impediments to achieving the American Dream.

By Zev Trachtenberg
Xenia Fellow, 2009-2010
Assoc. Prof., Philosophy, OU

Something Lessa Keller-Kenton mentioned in her post was particularly thought-provoking for me: her conversation with the elderly man from West Texas.  Here was someone very different from herself, yet she was able to share with him a moment of mutual recognition of their common humanity.

I think Lessa is exactly right that that recognition lies at the core of dialogue.  It is, in a sense, the logical precondition (pardon me, I’m a philosophy professor) of the kind of communication between people this enterprise is all about.  I can take in what you say not necessarily because I can imagine having your experience myself — sometimes our differences make that impossible.  More fundamentally, though, I can grasp that what you offer comes out of your experience, which happened to you — just as my experience happened to me.  I can, that is, get that you are as much the subject of your experience as I am of mine.  That’s why Lessa’s point really rings true to me: It’s on the basis of their acknowledgment of their common humanity that dialogue partners can truly understand what each other says.

The wonderful thing about the dialogue process, cultivated so thoughtfully in The Xenia Institute, is that it actually establishes its own precondition. People entering into dialogue might well lack what they most require to succeed: that deeply felt acknowledgment of each other’s humanity.  But there’s a wonderful opportunity for a virtuous circle here.  Our efforts to understand each other can have the effect of enhancing the possibility of our understanding each other, as our encounter encourages us each to see the other as a person, like oneself.

And this leads me to something I’ve been thinking about a lot, lately — ironically, it’s the profound danger in the opportunities for “dialogue” apparently offered by the Internet.  And I certainly see the irony in making this point as a comment to a blog post!  But I’ll bet you’ve seen what I have in mind — scroll down the comments attached to blogs on important issues, and you typically confront the polar opposite of dialogue.  It is very hard to imagine healthy adults saying these things to each other in person.

This is a commonplace, but it seems increasingly true: By facilitating communication between strangers, disconnected from mutual human presence, the Web seems to foster the depersonalization, if not the outright demonization, of the people with whom one is communicating.  Nothing in the situation of a comment thread imposes any demand that anyone acknowledge that anyone else deserves the basic respect we almost automatically accord to people in our physical surroundings.  This is not simply an impediment to genuine dialogue on the Web, at least the free-wheeling Web of unmoderated, public boards.  What is even more disturbing is the idea that the norms that are being fostered on the Web might be spilling over, becoming a kind of standard for the way to express disagreement in public discussions.

In another part of her post Lessa makes some really great suggestions about how public events that are meant to promote dialogue can be structured to make them better occasions for dialogue.  I wonder what she — or other people in the Xenia world — might think would be good ways to structure Web-based discussion opportunities to foster the spirit of dialogue.  Having discussions moderated is one solution — but it has some disadvantages too.  What might be other ways to cultivate actual dialogue on the web, that wouldn’t compromise (or compromise as little as possible) its openness and freedom?

(Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images) Content © 2010 Getty Images All rights reserved.

Walmart has taken heat from racism critics after a photo surfaced on the web showing two Barbie Dolls side by side, one black doll selling for three dollars and one white doll selling for six dollars.  Advocates, such as Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, have critiqued the decision of Walmart due to the potential psychological effect on children seeing that a white Barbie costs twice that of a black Barbie.  Her comments have received a backlash from others who see Walmart’s actions as either inconsequential or reflective of a societal problem, not a corporate one.

The Powers That Be | Instead of coming to a basic understanding of human behavior and economics simultaneously — which is that white kids are more likely to buy white dolls and black kids are more likely to buy black dolls, and this particular Wal-Mart more than likely has more white shoppers buying the white dolls — this is becoming yet another race issue.

Econ 101 says that when a product isn’t moving, the price goes down until it sells, but some minority leaders might want to think twice before setting a bad precedent by intimidating stores into increasing the price of products targeted to minorities.

Jezebel | Sociological Images co-author Gwen Sharp suggests that maybe black Ballerina Theresas don’t sell well because they just look like re-painted Barbies: “Maybe for both parents and kids, it seems more real and less symbolic of a change to have a doll that actually presents a range of attractive features rather than ‘Oh we’ve changed the skin tone slightly.’” And Mattel says its “So In Style” line — dolls “designed to better resemble black women’s facial features” — has received a “great response.” Still, just as Barbie dolls continue to reflect institutional sexism with their unrealistic representation of the female body (a baby-face-plus-big-boobs representation that’s become especially popular in an age that incongruously demands both extreme youth and sexual availability), so too the relative “values” placed on black dolls reflect the ways black women are often devalued.

Rod Dreher – Beliefnet| Seriously, it’s heartbreaking that any black child would think that the whiteness of a person’s or a doll’s skin makes them more beautiful or worthy. That is a problem we have to work on as a society. But forcing Walmart, or any retailer, to ignore what their customers are telling them in order to preserve a moralistic fiction is not the way to go. Faulting Walmart’s discounting policy here is a good way to convince retailers not to stock any black dolls at all, for fear that they won’t be able to treat those products like any other and discount them if they don’t sell, on pain of being called racially insensitive.

On the Web…

Consuming Pop Culture While Feminist: Disney’s The Little Mermaid | Feministing

The Little Mermaid is, quite simply, a feminist’s worst nightmare. This movie is about, as a very wise friend of mine once put it, a young woman who gives up her voice to get a pair of legs so that she can snare a man. It’s about the triumph of “good” women – young, slender, silent and lovesick – over “bad” women – old, voluptuous, outspoken and sexual. It’s about a young woman forced to choose between her father’s world and her husband’s world, and there is nothing in between. And there’s the unsettling fact that the song “Kiss the Girl” tells us that the “one way to ask” if a woman wants you to kiss her, is to just kiss her.

Surviving Without a Safety Net | Truthdig

Obama has made concessions to the right, which wants to destroy him. The left has written him off. With a good sense of what this country is about, he continues to steer a perilous course between them. His efforts to pass an economic stimulus, health care reform, a modest jobs bill and extensions of unemployment and COBRA benefits have left him weakened. In the end, he may leave the arena bloody and exhausted, but I believe he will succeed. The president is edging forward under a backbreaking load that was heaped upon his shoulders when he entered office. As Irv Feldman told Walter Thomas, the old Tuskegee airman, “Thank you for your service, sir.”

When Bishops Play Politics| Newsweek

They see themselves as crusaders for human rights—protectors of the innocent, the voiceless, and the powerless. After years of enduring the slings and arrows of opposition, these activists are finally in the power seat. They are among the most important voices on a crucial political question: will abortion finally scuttle health-care reform?

They are America’s Roman Catholic bishops.

Three Proven Steps to Advance the World’s Women | NYT Nicholas Kristof

First, I think girls’ education may be the single most cost-effective kind of aid work. It’s cheap, it opens minds, it gives girls new career opportunities and ways to generate cash, it leads them to have fewer children and invest more in those children, and it tends to bring women from the shadows into the formal economy and society. It’s not a panacea, of course. Lebanon and Sri Lanka were leaders in girls’ education, and both ended up torn apart by conflict. In India, the state of Kerala has done a fine job in girls’ education, but its state economy is still a mess and dependent on remittances. But overall, educating girls probably has a greater transformative effect on a country than anything else one can do.

However, my heart rejoices to tell you that I have been hired on with the same campaign to work as the Press Secretary.  I have been on the job for about 10 days now and I am still very excited.  Our primary is June 8th so we have about three months of lead up before the election.  Because of my involvement as a staff person on the campaign, I have to temporarily forgo my reflections on the process.  It wouldn’t be quite right for me to be reflecting from the position as a staff person.  Maybe I will have some reflections after the race has run its course but until then I will be blogging on other topics.  Thanks for reading.

But wait, there’s more!  I cannot help but write a few words about the difference between being staff and being a volunteer, in the most general sense.

First, the boundaries are much harder to define.  When I was working as a volunteer, I only worked the time I had and if it did not work with my schedule, that meant that I could not be there.  Now I schedule things around the campaign and there are campaign events almost every night.  Therefore, making plans for anything personal is very difficult.

Second, spending time with the same group of people day in and day out is exhausting.  I see my fellow staff and core volunteers more than I see my housemates and I spend about twice as many hours in the day with them as I do sleeping.  I know that by the end of the campaign, I will be on their last nerve and they will be on mine.  But, spending all that time together also results in strong bonds.  We’re there to encourage one another.  Example: Yesterday three of my coworkers went to Panda Express, the Chinese restaurant literally around the corner from the office.  “Do you want anything?” one of them asked.  Jokingly I said, “yeah, I’ll take your fortune cookie.”  When they arrived back thirty minutes later I received three fortune cookies, one from each of them.  Indeed, we go to Panda Express so often I’ve started collecting the fortunes and taping them to my laptop screen.  The two fortunes added today say, “BEAUTIFUL THINGS AWAIT YOU” and “NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO FINISH OLD TASKS.”  I have more to add.  I know that these will be long month and looking up at encouraging words (even fortune cookie wisdom) delivered from friendly hands will keep me trudging on.

Third, I am perpetually exhausted.  Any political race is daunting and ours is no different.  The sheer amount of work to be done seems almost unachievable in such a short period of time.  I also had the wisdom to start work and move across town on the same day, which led to me shoving books and knick knacks into boxes while fielding calls from my candidate and my campaign manager.  Then all my possessions spent several days in boxes while I worked 15 hour days to try and get my bearings.  I pushed myself on Saturday (first day off) to unpack and organize everything.  Sunday morning I woke up with a cold.  Such is life, at least for the next three months, and hopefully beyond.

That is all for my campaign reflections.  I look forward to filling you in after the race has been run (and won).

Woman symbol Content © 2010 Jupiter Images All rights reserved.

March is dedicated as Women’s History Month, starting off with International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010. In honor of that occasion, below are some of the recent stories focusing on the status of women in Oklahoma…

Oklahoma House of Representatives | OKLAHOMA CITY (March 2, 2010) — Legislation creating a pilot program that seeks to establish reentry and diversion programs to allow nonviolent offender mothers to receive community-based services in lieu of incarceration unanimously passed the House today.

House Bill 2998, by Rep. Kris Steele, would encourage re-entry and diversion programs as opposed to jail time for nonviolent female offenders in allow them to receive rehabilitative services while maintaining contact with their children.

Oklahoma incarcerates more women than any other state in the nation. Its incarceration rate for women is 131 per 100,000 residents, almost twice the national average of 69 per 100,000.

Most women prison inmates, 68 percent, are in prison for nonviolent offenses.

“This bill will give women convicted of nonviolent crimes access to community-based rehabilitative services that have proven effective,” said Steele, R-Shawnee. “As policy-makers, we can be both tough and smart on crime. The average prison stay for nonviolent women is less than a year, but the impact on their children is lifelong and devastating. In-home rehabilitative services will keep these families together and allow Oklahoma women to receive the help they desperately need.”

The bill passed the House with a vote of 92-0 and will next be considered by the Senate.

Henry G. Bennett Memorial Library | The month of March is Women’s History Month. Between the years of 1907 and 2008 only 77 women have been elected to the Oklahoma Legislature. As of February 2009, 46 of these remarkable women have shared their stories as part of the Women of the Oklahoma Legislature Oral History Project.

Since 2006, Associate Professor/Oral History Librarian Tanya Finchum of Oklahoma State University embarked on a project to capture and record information about women who have served or are currently serving in the Oklahoma Legislature. Within the Oklahoma State University Library website, a website was launched in February 2009. The website is a culmination of her work and includes transcripts, audio excerpts, and memorabilia collected as a result of interview efforts. The web address is http://www.library.okstate.edu/oralhistory/wotol/.

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence | Domestic Violence in Oklahoma:

Oklahoma Law enforcement agencies answer an average of 15, 000 domestic violence calls each year….

Oklahoma currently ranks 10th nationally for the number of women murdered by males. Among cases where the relationship between the victim and offender was known, 91% of perpetrators were known by the victim.

According to a study conducted by the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of  Battered Women, nearly 3/4 of women incarcerated in Oklahoman state prisons reported being physically abused at some point in their lifetime.

Nearly 20 percent of Oklahoma high school students have reported being hit, slapped, or physically hurt by their boyfriend or girlfriend; this is compared to the 9 percent of all students nation wide.

The rate of dating violence for Oklahoma ninth graders is more than three times the national average, at the rate of 26 percent for Oklahoma freshmen, compared to 8 percent nationwide.

New OK | Budget problems have caused cutbacks statewide in services to women who are victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, officials say.

“It hurts my heart,” said Marcia Smith, executive director of the state Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “Demand for help is up, but budget problems are forcing some services to go away.”

About 29 state-supported programs offer help to domestic violence and sexual assault victims, Smith said. All of them have experienced a 10 percent cut in funds for the past two months, on top of 5 percent funding cuts every month since July.

“It’s too much for them to absorb,” Smith said.

Huffington Post | Anti-choice legislators in Oklahoma are experts on at least two things: waste and distraction. After repeatedly introducing laws – and having them overturned by the courts for being unconsitutional – that do nothing more than force government intrusion into the professional lives of physicians and the personal lives of women seeking reproductive health care, they continue to waste taxpayer time and money by ignoring constitutional rules.

Yesterday, a bill that may be unconstitutional sailed through the OK House and is on its way to the Senate. It would force physicians performing abortions to narrate an ultrasound description to the pregnant woman on whom the ultrasound is being performed. This was one week after an Oklahoma district court ruled unconstitutional a 2009 law that created a public web site where doctors would be forced to publish personal information on women who have had abortions (including their names and the reason for their abortions). And now the Oklahoma Supreme Court confirmed the ruling of a lower court that mandatory viewing of ultrasounds is unconstitutional putting to rest a 2008 law that would have forced women to view the ultrasound of their pregnancy prior to receiving an abortion…

Astoundingly, the bill passed the OK House without a question or a discussion, despite this history of wasting taxpayer time and money by passing unconstitutional laws and then having them overturned.

Best of the web…

Senators: Lift Ban on Gays Donating Blood  |  365 Gay News

The senators said that while hospitals and emergency rooms are in urgent need of blood products, “healthy blood donors are turned away every day due to an antiquated policy and our blood supply is not necessarily any safer for it.”

Brian Moulton, chief legislative counsel for the Human Rights Campaign,the nation’s largest gay rights group, said they are hopeful that the policy, last reviewed in 2006, will change under President Barack Obama, “who is interested in looking at all the policies that have a discriminatory effect.” The goal, he said, is “to have policies in place that are based on the science” rather than “any discriminatory idea about our community.”

One in three killed by US drone strikes is a civilian  |  The Raw Story

The US military has used drones to attack suspected terrorists in Pakistan since at least 2004. Proponents of the small, unmanned planes say they are capable of “surgical strikes” that reduce civilian casualties and effectively combat terrorism.

Is that true? Well, not really, according to a new report from the New America Foundation, a non-profit research institute.

The percentage of civilians killed by drones in Pakistan is at about 32 percent, or one out of three, the report states, and the strikes themselves have little effect in deterring terrorist activities in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. Researchers do not believe any of the reported strikes targeted Osama bin Laden.

Ford’s First EV Isn’t Sexy, But It’s Smart  |  Wired

Ford’s first mass-market electric vehicle isn’t a sexy sports car. It isn’t a sleek sedan. And it isn’t cool compact. It’s a van. A delivery van, to be exact, designed specifically for fleet use. It isn’t the sexiest way to break into the electric arena, but it’s a smart move for Ford and a logical place for EVs.

Ford rolled into San Francisco with one of the Transit Connect Electric vans that goes on sale at the end of the year. It isn’t much to look at — a big box on wheels with a definite European flair — but it offers 80 miles of range and charges in as little as six hours. Ford is offering it only its big fleet customers for now but opens the order book next year for anyone who wants one.

By Vicki J. Schaeffer
Xenia fellow

“People talking without speaking; people hearing without listening.” These classic song lyrics from Simon and Garfunkel echoed through my brain as I watched the four-part video series on “What is Dialogue?” Wait a minute … shouldn’t an institute that promotes dialogue encourage listening and hearing, as well as speaking and talking?! Of course they should, and The Xenia Institute does just that! And these videos are proof of that. They encourage us to think about a definition of dialogue that will insure a transformation as we go out and talk with each other.

I must confess that as I watched these for the first time, knowing that I had been asked to write about them, I found myself doing one of the many things that can cause dialogue to breakdown. As I heard the words, I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about my reactions to what was being said and forming the words that should have become the opening sentences of this article. Once the “Sounds of Silence” started playing in my head (I’m a musician … that happens often!) I realized that I was missing the point. As soon as I became quiet and truly listened, the thoughts being expressed by the speakers came to life. The opening sentences became much clearer at that point.

At the risk of sounding like a political pundit on a cable news show, allow me to give you some sound bites to think about as you watch the videos. (I promise I will not tell you what to think, as the cable shows do; and we will just have to wait and see if the opposing side presents their views!)

Dialogue requires us to “suspend our own point of view.” Does this mean we have to totally ignore our own beliefs? Of course not! (I only said I wouldn’t tell you what to think; I never said I wouldn’t offer my opinion!) In order to make dialogue successful, we must be willing and able to approach it with an open mind. Once that happens, it is easier for the transformation to happen.

Dialogue often fails because we tend to “focus on the things that set us apart.”  Instead of seeing our similarities, we are too quick to point out our differences. All one has to do is look at political or religious conversations today to see this happening. Living in the “Age of Jabber,” we are constantly surrounded by “shouting heads.” With all of this noise going on, is it any wonder that we cannot be in dialogue with one another?

As I continue to explore my own dialogue journey, I have become increasingly aware of how similar dialogue and music are. As an organist, I must not only play the notes that on the page, but I must also be aware of the silent places. Being able to “play” the rests allows the full chords of the pipe organ to fill the space of the cathedral, without blending one into another to create noise. Likewise, in true dialogue, I must learn to be silent and let another’s words fill the space. Once that has been allowed to happen, the chance that harmony will eventually occur is increased.  As you watch and listen to these videos, allow the whispered sounds of silence and words to lead you into a place of transforming dialogue.

Peace to all on your journey …

When It Hits Home: ideas through dialogue

Additionally, three podcasts were produced leading up to the event.  One podcast was a conversation with the filmmakers of One in Three, another was a conversation with an OU law professor and former domestic violence prosecutor, and the final one was made up of highlights from the first Xenia/WGS joint event on domestic violence, held in April 2009.

Gabe and Leguiera podcast

Connie Smothermon podcast

Don’t Look Away podcast

Click here for a gallery of photos from the event:

When It Hits Home photo gallery

Below are the ideas and topics in no particular order:

• A series of school assemblies with speakers and videos, maybe in conjunction with a direct service agency or a group that specializes in violence prevention.

• Training a team of youth who could make presentations at other schools on the topic of intimate partner violence and rape, in particular engaging students in role playing and engaging young men.

• Public service announcements through the local media: newspapers, radio, and the public library.

• Start in preschool/kindergarten by educating children in what it means to be authentic with one another, especially concerning gender relations.

• Training teachers to recognize the signs of abuse, neglect, and relationship issues.

• Parents beginning conversations with their children concerning appropriate and inappropriate forms of touching etc.

• People need to understand how to say “no” and how to hear “no.”

• Educating the general public on how to be a “viable and effective third party” when they are faced with a potential domestic violence situation. (Getting hotline numbers and resources into the hands of the general public.)

Feb. 21, 2010 - Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - A sign reading ''DO NOT ENTER'' rises near the olympic rings at the Sliding Arena in Whistler at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games on 21 February 2010 in Whistler, Canada. Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand. Content © 2010 ZumaPress All rights reserved.

Now that the glamor of the 2010 Olympics is over it is interesting to observe the various social questions left in its wake. Some issues which were shelved to make room for international harmony and sportsmanship include gender identity, sexism, racism, homelessness, indigenous rights, etc. Here are some such stories which have been largely overlooked in the rush to count medals and support national pride…

Global Comment |Taraneh Ghajar Jerven’s recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, “2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony: What about Vancouver’s homeless?” highlights the injustices perpetrated in the run-up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.(1) Jerven discusses the expensive development costs associated with the 2010 Olympic Games, where the original budget of $660 million was revised to over $5 billion.(2)

The astronomical increase in costs for the Vancouver Olympics is especially egregious when considering that the city’s homeless population has doubled since 2003 – the same year that the city secured its Olympic bid. This rise in homelessness leaves one wondering: how can an international event that claims to celebrate peace, unity and global harmony so callously ignore the needs of the most vulnerable populations? What kind of priorities is the international community embracing in such an outright rejection of the human right to housing?

Violations of the human right to housing are not specific to the 2010 Vancouver Games, and are unfortunately indicative of a growing trend in these types of mega-sporting events. One key example is the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where violations of the human right to housing displaced approximately 1.5 million residents. This trend can be followed to other host cities, such as Seoul, where 720,000 people were displaced to make way for the 1988 Olympic Games. Additionally here in the United States, in the run-up to the 1996 Atlanta Games, 30,000 people were displaced and 2,000 units of public housing were destroyed.(3)

Womanist Musings | In an interview with Salon, three time world medal champion Elvis Stojko, made clear that the greatest danger to figure skating is the feminization of male skaters.

It basically started about one year ago, when Skate Canada said that they weren’t getting enough young boys enrolling in skating. People tiptoe around the topic, and I was like, “You know, I’m just going to say it: Effeminate men’s skating is not my style of skating. In men’s skating I like to see power and strength.”

Effeminate men’s skating is the issue with male figure skating. WOW…Of course Elvis believes that it is only right for people to get upset if they are called gay.

“Some guys get into the sport because it’s difficult — the spins, the speed — and they like to showcase that within the music. When you’re not appreciated for that, it takes its toll. And then when people call them effeminate, they get pissed. People call them gay, and some people don’t like to be called that.”

If you want to open up figure skating to another audience, you need to create something that’s going to allow everyone to watch. If you have a male masculine person watching it, they need something to relate to. Other guys relate to Johnny Weir’s thing. You need to have guys doing jumps, so a person who also watches NASCAR can identify with it and say, “Hey that’s awesome — how many rotations is that?” or “How fast did he spin?” instead of, “How pretty was that guy?”

Being called gay can only be a bad thing if you have a problem with homosexuality to begin with. Why should it be considered threatening to anyone’s masculinity? He makes it sound as though gay men are destroying the sport by not being suitably butch. Don’t even bother to get upset about his commentary because gay people need to just accept their second class status, according to Elvis.

Global Comment | Native leaders like Fontaine have been very vocal about the opportunities that the Olympics offers First Nations citizens. However, there are many within the aboriginal community that raise the concern that the Olympics amount to further exploitation of Native peoples.

“The Four Host Nations is a corporate body made up primarily of government-funded Indian Act band council chiefs, not hereditary chieftainships,” says Seislom, a Lil’wat Elder. “An overwhelming number of Indigenous people in these territories and in the interior are opposed to the Olympics because of the long-term impact including destruction of the land, commodification of Native art and culture, and the creation of long-term poverty once the few token jobs are gone.”

According to the Olympic resistance network, during the Olympic Torch relay, protesters in over thirty cities, towns, and Indigenous communities successfully disrupted the Torch Relay, forcing delays and route cancellations, with at least thirteen arrests. Much of the Canadian coverage regarding the protests does not seek to discuss why the protesters are attempting to disrupt the games. The protesters are seen as rabble rousers who are destroying our chance to showcase Canadian wonders.

Even as the torch was carried along the Highway of Tears (a stretch of highway 12 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, B.C., where numerous women who are largely Indigenous have gone missing) many Canadians are unaware of their government’s failure to bring a halt to the violence. It is unimaginable that disappearances of White women would have been met with such apathy.

Leader-Post |The IOC held a symposium in Miami in January to “attempt to identify the most up-to-date medical/biological science with regard to the gender issue that may be of relevance to sport and that will help sports bodies to deal with potential cases.”

“Gender issue” can mean just about anything, which is why the IOC uses the phrase. Scientists at the Florida International University met with the IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in conjunction with the 2nd World Conference on Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders. The IOC is most worried about a condition referred to as “Disorders of Sexual Development.”

In the eyes of the IOC, and obviously those in the medical world who dream up names for conditions that place people outside conventional sexuality, not being biologically absolutely a man or absolutely a woman is seen as a disorder. IOC officials say their concern is about fairness, as women who have one of the DSDs (once called intersexed, which makes more sense) may have a biological advantage over women who don’t have DSD characteristics.

This is indeed a murky area as all athletes at the Olympic level have genetic advantages of different kinds. All Olympic athletes train very hard, and are committed to their dream, whatever that may be, but to make a national team certain “gifts” have to be in place biologically. Endurance athletes will go nowhere without very high “MaxVO2s” and anaerobic thresholds. You can increase both through training to some extent, but if you are not born with the genetic information that allows your body to deliver great amounts of oxygen per kilogram of weight and then allows your body to “work” for long periods of time at a level that is not far below your maximum heartrate, you aren’t going to the Olympics in the endurance events. The only sprinters who make it to the 100-metre final have a different profile, but they too need to be genetically gifted as do gymnasts, as do tennis players, and so on.

In this highly gendered world one person’s genetic gift is another person’s disorder. Where is the line in the sand for what an athlete brings to the startline courtesy of Mother Nature? The IOC does not recommend to Kenyan long-distance runners or Norwegian cross-country skiers that they get an operation to reduce their super-high MaxVO2s because they have an unfair advantage, but this is what they tell intersexed or DSD athletes to do about their sexuality.

Mother Jones | There are two reasons why Alissa Johnson, a 22-year-old Park City, Utah, native, knows she should be in Vancouver today. First, to support her brother Anders, who is ski jumping for the US Olympic team. And second, to strap on her 8-foot-long skis and compete herself. She’s one of the US’s top five female ski jumpers. If there were a women’s team, she’d be on it.

But there isn’t. So, because ski jumping is the last remaining sport of the Olympics that bars women from competing, Johnson is going as a sister and a friend. And that’s it.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) says the women’s exclusion isn’t discrimination. President Jacques Rogge has insisted that the decision “was made strictly on a technical basis, and absolutely not on gender grounds.” But female would-be Olympic competitors say they don’t understand what that “technical basis” is. Their abilities? They point to American Lindsey Van, who holds the world record for the single longest jump by anyone, male or female. (Ironically, she broke the record flying from a jump built at Whistler for the Vancouver Olympics). Their numbers? When the IOC voted in 2006 not to add women’s ski jumping, 83 competitors from 14 nations jumped at the top level, less universality than required to add a new event. But in the same year, women’s skier cross claimed just 30 skiers from 11 nations. The committee added it. (There are also too few male ski jumpers to qualify, but as one of the original 16 Winter Olympic events, their event isn’t subjected to the same rules.)

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Iraq Holds Early Voting Amid Blasts  |  Aljazeera English

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Baghdad, said the vote is seen as a pivotal moment in Iraq as the US prepares to withdraw large numbers of troops by 2011.

“This is a very significant vote; it is the closest to a truly representative process since the US-led invasion [in 2003],” he said.

More than 6,000 candidates will be competing for 325 seats in the election.

Travel around the country has been restricted and the authorities have cancelled all leave for security services.

The election winners will oversee the withdrawal of US forces from the country and help determine whether Iraq will be able to move past the deep Sunni-Shia divisions that almost destroyed it.

Five years ago, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs boycotted the legislative election,allowing Shia and Kurdish parties to take control of parliament, but Sunnis are now expected to take part in large numbers.

Lesbians in South Africa Being Raped to ‘Cure’ Them of Sexual Orientation  |  Alternet

The group ActionAid released a report about the shocking rise in homophobic attacks and murders in South Africa, especially Johannesburg and Cape Town where lesbian women are being raped as a “corrective” punishment for being gay.

They report:

Rape is fast becoming the most widespread hate crime targeted against gay women in townships across South Africa. One lesbian and gay support group says it is dealing with 10 new cases of lesbian women being targeted for ‘corrective’ rape every week in Cape Town alone.

‘Terrifying’ Saudi Novel Wins Arabic Booker  |  CNN

Saudi novelist Abdo Khal, who won the Arabic Booker prize for his novel depicting the ravaging effects of unlimited wealth, says he writes about the “double standards in our life.”

Khal won the prestigious $60,000 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel, “Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles.”

The book, whose title is a Koranic reference to hell, chronicles the seductive powers of an ultra-wealthy palace, telling “the agonising story of those who have become enslaved by it, drawn by its promise of glamour,” said the organizers of the prize.

Iran Document: Women Activists Write Mousavi & Karroubi  |  Enduring America

A letter from Iran’s women activists to Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, written last week, published by Rah-e-Sabz, and passed on by Mission Free Iran:

As you know, during the 10th presidential campaign, you made promises about the obvious rights of Iranian women, which, during the course of the past 30 years have been totally ignored. Although these promises comprise only a small part of Iranian women’s just demands, during the post-election events, even those little promises disappeared from your announcements and interviews regarding your intention to pursue peoples’ rightful demands. This has happened while women and girls of this land have had a distinguished role in the green movement in pursuing the plundered rights of the Iranian people, have been in the front line of the green movement equal to men, and even have paid and are paying a higher price.