Remember the opening of the first Hunger Games movie? At the annual reaping ceremony in District 12, Capitol representative Effie Trinket plays a short film for her captive audience. The montage, narrated by President Snow, depicts scenes from Panem’s history…
Deconstruction is not a disease, and trying harder is not the cure
What do a broken heart, a brain, a serpent and a thumbs-up emoji have in common? Any guesses? No? Good. Because these images are not the set up for a bad joke. They’re the artwork for a bad article. In…
‘Please, think of the kittens’ and other scary things I learned from purity culture
“Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten.” Ah yes, the threat of divine felicide, God’s one weapon in the fight against sexual deviancy. Unfamiliar with God’s displeasure at self-pleasure? You must not have grown up evangelical in the ’90s…
How the SBC employs the Sodom Strategy to avoid talking about real sexual abuse
Growing up in the Atlanta suburbs during the 1990s, I roamed about with much greater freedom than 9- and 10-year-olds enjoy today. But each time my mother released my sister and me to gallivant unsupervised around the mall or Six…
Ruffled feathers: Wild Goose Festival is a case study in how hard it is to disentangle from white supremacy — even when you want to
Nestled within the lush bosom of North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest lay the open fields of the Hot Springs Resort and Spa campground. Surrounded by mountains and bordered by the French Broad River, this inconspicuous little spot envelops all who…