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Show 372: The Lolita Effect w/ Meenakshi Gigi Durham

Audio here!

This week, Sunsara Taylor will speak with Meenakshi Gigi Durham who is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. Durham researches media and the politics of the body, with emphasis on gender, sexuality, race and youth cultures. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies.

Durham’s 2008 book, “The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It,” provides strategies for empowering girls to make healthy decisions about their sexuality. Her research has received significant coverage in news outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, The Times of London, Frontline, People, “Dr. Phil,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Salon.com, in addition to being reviewed in scholarly journals.

Durham is writing a new book, tentatively titled “Technosex,” about how bodies/sexualities are translated into the virtual environment through practices like sexting.

Sunsara also will speak to two as yet unnamed guests on the rise of violent pornography and child pornography in America.

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Show 344: The Morality of Abortion…

The Morality of Abortion and the Immorality of Those Who Would Force Women to Bear Children Against Their Will.

Audio here!

For the 38th anniversary of Roe V. Wade, join Sunsara Taylor for a special hour of Equal Time for Free Thought celebrating the right to abortion, celebrating the doctors and health care providers who risk their lives every day to provide women access to this essential right, and to examine the state of abortion rights today.

The hour will begin with Dr. Leroy Carhart, one of the few doctors left who provides second trimester abortions.  After the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in 2009, Dr. Carhart stepped out even further – and became targeted by the anti-choice fascists as “enemy # 1” – by declaring that he will continue to serve the women who need abortions in his area.  Further, he has expanded his practice to Baltimore and is working to train more doctors in later term abortion services.

Then, the show will feature a three way conversation between:

Merle Hoffman, the President and Founder of Choices Women’s Medical Center and the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of On the Issues Magazine.  She has been on the front lines providing abortions since 1971 and an outspoken activist and women’s rights advocate.

Debra Sweet, the National Director of World Can’t Wait.  She was central to organizing clinic defense against Operation Rescue across the country throughout the 90’s and continues to expose and mobilize against the attacks on women’s right to abortion and the providers who serve them.

Carole Joffe, author of “Dispatches From the Abortion Wars: The Cost of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us,” as well as, “Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe V. Wade.”

Together, we will look back to the days before abortion was legal, examine the changing moral discourse surrounding abortion, confront the full scope of the danger now posed to women who so desperately need this right, and celebrate – and draw inspiration from – those who have committed themselves to fighting to protect and expand abortion access.