Myth: “If I’m a good Christian, then nothing bad will happen to me.”

Genesis 50:20

This isn’t what I asked for, thank you. I want my old life back.

The one where my parents were the perfect couple. Where I was the only one among my friends whose parents were still together. And seemingly still in love.

The one where I was voted most likely to succeed and everyone, right or wrong, envied my life because it seemed so perfect. And I believed it was.

I want to go back to the times when I knew You were involved in my life. The ones where I prayed and You answered. I talked to You, and You listened. The times when I knew You were alive. Loving. And on my side.

I want the life where all I had to do was show up for class, and I got good grades. Name a job opening, and I landed it squarely. Speak my needs, and my husband moved heaven and earth to meet them.

Spider Surprises & Spiritual Attacks

The other day I called my mom to see if she wanted to join me for lunch. She agreed to pick me up and then we surprised my two sisters, my grandmother, my nieces and my nephew who were already enjoying lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant.  It was really nice to see everyone together! Sometime during the conversation my mom shouted out, “Did she tell you what happened yesterday?” Her tone made it sound like an interesting story.

My oldest sister’s eyes lit up as she begins to divulge a horrifying story. She was cleaning the drapes in her bedroom when a black thing fell from the top of the curtain, passing behind her shoulder; dust was also flying around, so she didn’t think twice about it.

Call It the New Junk Mail

You'd think that a guy who tosses footballs for a living would know how to make a pass. But when Brett Favre allegedly texted a shot of his Johnson to an unsuspecting Jets employee, he exposed himself as yet another grown man who's as clueless in the world of technology as in the world of seduction. Sloane Crosley explains what a woman actually wants from a man when it comes to her sext life

BY SLOANE CROSLEY

                 Penis. Penis! PENIS!

That's how the game is played, right? Whoever can shout it the loudest without caving to embarrassment wins. Oh, but who needs a larynx when you have a cell phone? More to the point, when you have Brett Favre's cell phone. To Favre's credit, it's not as if the man invented naughty-picture messaging two years ago when he reportedly sent then 24-year-old Playboy model and Jets game-day hostess Jenn Sterger shots of his junk. He may have been the longest in the tooth to do this, but let us not forget the Cleveland Indians' aptly named Grady Sizemore or the Portland Trail Blazers' Greg Oden and his formidable anatomy, which he clearly rented from Equine 'n' Things. Fame aside, the question is—okay, so there are a lot of questions—but the first one is: How can men be so clueless? What, exactly, do they think is going to happen?

Everyday Sexual Assault

Laura Bates

Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project

Posted: 03/09/2012 00:00

Once, I was walking down the street when a group of men came up behind me. I didn't turn around. There was plenty of room on the pavement for them to pass by. But they didn't. They stopped behind me and one, suddenly, roughly and completely out of the blue, grabbed my jeans-clad bottom from behind and squeezed, pushing his fingers forwards and upwards towards my crotch.

I'd like to say that I screamed; that I put him in his place there and then and articulately delivered a cutting speech that shamed him into apologising. I'd like to say that I said anything at all. But I didn't. I gasped, I froze, and I felt the blood rush to my face in mortification. Then I stood there, silently, as they walked away laughing.

The Everyday Sexism Project was designed to document instances of normalised, everyday sexism experienced by women worldwide to prove the enormous scale of the problem. But since it launched five months ago, we have received hundreds of reports of women being groped, grabbed, manhandled, slapped, tweaked, pinched, stroked and smacked in public, usually by complete strangers. The area of focus is almost always the breasts, the bottom or the thighs - sensitive, sexual, intimate regions of the body. And the tone of the reports usually mirrors my own experience almost exactly in that the victim describes an overwhelming sense of powerlessness, fear, shame and embarrassment: