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Show 565: Feminist, Atheist Comedienne, Kate Smurthwaite

Feminist, Atheist Comedienne, Kate Smurthwaite

Kate Smurthwaite is a left-wing feminist & atheist stand-up comedian and political activist. She preforms all over the UK, and around the world at major clubs including The Comedy Store, Soho Comedy Club, and The Stand, and she also writes for publications from Cosmopolitan to both The Guardian and The Independent and is the Vice Chair and Media Spokesperson for campaign group Abortion Rights UK.

Kate is often a http://www.viagrabelgiquefr.com/ guest on news and debate shows and is well known for her forthright opinions and campaigning work. Appearances include the BBC’s flagship political debate show Question Time as well as BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, and BBC Radio 4 The Moral Maze. In 2012 Radio 4’s Four Thought series included a 15-minute program written and performed entirely by Kate about sexist humour and sexism in comedy.

Audio can be found here!

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Show 550: ‘Women Beyond Belief’ w/ Karen Garst

What are the ties today between feminism and atheism? Why do women, who are often the victims of patriarchal religious “morality”, fail to leave religious indoctrination more than men? How can one better understand why they believe, and how they might de-convert from the magical thinking religious belief demands? And what kind of stories have women who have left the “faith”, told?

This week, new guest host Jessica Schab interviews author and former Christian, Karen Garst on her debut book, Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion — a collection of stories from 22 women who have left religion in their past.

Audio can be found here!

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Show 407: The End of Men and The Rise of Women

The End of Men and The Rise of Women

Audio here!

Everything that begins must end.  Last month on ETFF, author Tim Wise warned us of the looming demographic shift which will soon make White Americans the minority in the United States.  This month, journalist Hanna Rosin tells us the end is near for another group: men.

In The End of Men and The Rise of Women, Rosin lays out how a shift in dynamics on several fronts have allowed – or in some cases forced – men out of their traditional roles and responsibilities, including moving from roles associated with brawn. Women, on the other hand, are “on the rise” according to Rosin – making measurable gains in various areas and undergoing their own shape shifting: adopting characteristics typically found in “male territory.” This movement is not contained to the United States; Rosin presents evidence that traditional gender roles around the world are blurring and bending.

Rosin writes that though she began the book “thinking that we were heading into a woman’s world” that “would reflect some set of ‘womanly values,’ ” she found that assumption to be a “story we tell ourselves to make the current massive upheavals in gender roles seem tamer and more predictable.”

In this interview, she elaborates on the changes in the middle class, economy, education, relationships, and even violence and how we must continue to adapt as we move into this new world.

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Show 389: Merle Hoffman – Abortion & Women’s Reproductive Rights

Merle Hoffman – Abortion & Women’s Reproductive Rights

Audio here!

This Saturday on ETFF, Sunsara Taylor will be speaking with Merle Hoffman about her new memoir, “The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom.”

In 1971 – two years before the Roe V. Wade decision which legalized abortion nationally – Merle Hoffman founded Choices, and abortion clinic in NY. As a medical provider, she pioneered Patient Power, encouraging women to participate in their own health care decisions. Whether addressing the murder of abortion providers like Dr. George Tiller, or challenging women to understand and explore their own power over their bodies and the language used to wield such power, Merle Hoffman has been on the front lines of the feminist movement – a fierce warrior in the battle for choice.

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Show 314: Dispatches from the Abortion Wars

Dispatches from the Abortion Wars w/ Carole Joffe

Audio here!

Sunsara Taylor will talk with Carole Joffe about the parallels between today’s stigma and restricted access to abortion with the period before it was made legal and explore some of the most chilling recent assaults on women’s access to abortion, from the assassination of Dr. George Tiller to the criminalization of miscarriages in Utah to the recent passage of health care to the billboards campaign in Atlanta to (dishonestly) portray abortion as genocide of Black children.

Carole Joffe is a professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco.  She is the author of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Cost of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us.  She is also the author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade.  She has closely followed the abortion wars from before abortion was legal through the passage of Roe V. Wade in 1973 to the rise of anti-abortion fanaticism and then the escalation of terror and assassination of abortion doctors down to today with the passage of parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods, threats to providers, medical lies which doctors are mandated by law to tell their patients, fake clinics, and numerous other assaults on abortion access.

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Show 301: Sunsara Taylor chats with Robert Jensen!

Sunsara Taylor chats with Robert Jensen!

Audio here!

Robert Jensen is that rare form of “Christian Atheist” who, once having been a secularist pure, now finds himself embracing a radical leftist form of “Christianity” which he talks about in his new book, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice.  Jensen is also an advocate of Feminism, and has written harshly on the Porn Industry in the United States.  He also may be known for his critical essay – No Thanks to Thanksgiving – where he suggests that a moral people would abandon this holiday built upon myth and the blood of hundreds and thousands of Native Americans.

Robert is a professor in the School of Journalism and director of the Senior Fellows Honors Program of the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.  He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity; The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege; Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity; and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.

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Show 230b: Dr. Susan Wicklund – “Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away”

“Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away, Pt. II”

Audio here!

As the 35th anniversary of Roe V. Wade approaches, it is appropriate to take stock at the degree to which the rise of Christian fundamentalism in American politics and culture has brought with it an unprecedented assault on the most fundamental rights of women.

This week Sunsara interviews Dr. Susan Wicklund, whose new book, This Common Secret, details the horrific experiences of women whom underwent illegal abortions which has motivated her to become an abortion provider, her many years of care for women, and the threats and dangers she has had to confront to do her liberating work.

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Show 230a: Cristina Page – “Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away”

“Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away.”

Part 1 of a two-week special hosted by Sunsara Taylor!

Audio here!

As the 35th anniversary of Roe V. Wade approaches, it is appropriate to take stock at the degree to which the rise of Christian fundamentalism in American politics and culture has brought with it an unprecedented assault on the most fundamental rights of women.

Access to abortion is out of reach for many poor and rural women, abortion providers are still under constant physical – and increasingly, legal – threat, and the Supreme Court – with their decision to uphold the so-called “Partial Birth Abortion Ban” – has begun the process of criminalizing abortion. A growing number of pharmacists are refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, the life-endangering “abstinence-only” programs are being pushed onto our school children by Democrats and Republicans alike, and “Purity Balls” where young girls pledge their virginity (and receive a ring) to their fathers until they get married, are spreading like wildfire across the country.
Continue reading “Show 230a: Cristina Page – “Women’s Reproduction, Christian Fascism, and Women’s Emancipation: The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Want to Take it Away””