Blogaround

1. How do you live in one of the world's busiest cities, but you cannot see? (August 11) It's about Yin Tianbao and Yin Tianyou, blind twins living in Shanghai. One interesting thing I want to point out- the article mentioned "tactile paving" (and you can see it in the video too). Every sidewalk in China (okay probably not "every", but seems that way in my experience) has this- it's a path of tiles about 1 foot wide, with long bumps/grooves you can feel with your feet, and the intention is for blind people to be able to follow this path. It helps them figure out where the sidewalk turns and things like that. 

But I have seen this badly designed A LOT. Like, the path runs right into a tree or something. And the article mentions that the tactile paving is often not useful for them because the sidewalks are blocked with bicycles and things like that.

But anyway, I think the tactile paving, if it's done well, is a great example of a small thing that society can do that can help disabled people a lot. I remember being so curious about it when I first came to China and I had no idea why all the sidewalks were like that.

You can see the tactile paving on the ground in this photo in a subway station. At the base of the stairs, the pattern of the tactile paving is different.

2. Single women's reproductive rights remain frozen in regulations (August 11) So in China, unmarried women don't legally have the right to freeze their eggs. Like, WTF?????? And there are various other things in China that bizarrely require a marriage license as part of the process to get them. NOT COOL.

(Being pro-choice should be about a lot more than just abortion. Being pro-choice means unmarried women should have the same rights to freeze their eggs as married women do.)

3. Christians, Stop Using ‘Pharisee’ as an Insult. (August 11) "Our modern associations of Pharisees with hypocrisy owes far more to millennia of anti-Jewish rhetoric than it does to Jesus."

4. ‘It’s hard to hear them celebrating’—church musicians after Roe’s demise (August 6) "Is anyone else having a really hard time justifying working at a church right now? I work at one part time as a choir director for some additional income and it was really hard to sit there today and hear them celebrating my rights being taken away with the most recent Supreme Court ruling."

5. A Texas church illegally performed ‘Hamilton’ to spread anti-gay bigotry (August 6) Wow this is WILD. A church put on a whole production of "Hamilton"- like, wow, they must have put a lot of work into this- but with some parts slightly edited so it's about Hamilton finding Jesus or whatever. And then when the internet found out about it and people were mad, they made up some confusing lies about how oh we cancelled it, oh no actually we didn't, oh actually we have permission from the Hamilton team to put this show on, etc etc etc.

But I believe that the headline of this article- which says the church did it "to spread anti-gay bigotry" really misrepresents the situation. It seems that the only anti-gay part of it was, after the show was over, a pastor came on stage to talk to the audience and said "maybe you're struggling with homosexuality" along with a list of other things that one might be "struggling with." As far as I can tell, that was the only anti-gay part of it. And that's certainly bad, don't get me wrong, it's bad to view being gay as a problem that one struggles with- but that's just a completely normal thing that you always hear in evangelical churches. It's like, you barely even notice it, because it's so normal in that churchy culture. This church did NOT put on the Hamilton play "to spread anti-gay bigotry." They certainly are anti-gay bigots, and you see that in this pastor's words after the show, but it's because that's just who they are all the time, not because they specifically intended that that's what their performance would be *about*.

So yeah, feels very weird to me that the article focuses on that one little part, when there's so much other wrongness that this church is also doing.

6. How I Pray {Part One} (August 10) "In my view, when we pray, we are joining our energy with this flow." I don't personally believe this, but I'm sharing it here because it's nice to see different ways that Christians conceptualize prayer. I wasn't familiar with this idea before.

7. Take the Earth as your lover: Exploring ecosexuality (August 8) [content note: this is about a sexual kink] Yeah so, this is not for me, my eyebrows climbed higher and higher as I read it (as I told myself "your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay"). But I'm sharing it here because it actually gives very concrete examples of what it means by "ecosexuality." I feel like I have seen articles about things sort of like this and they are all very vague, talking about having "feeling sexy" or whatever, and I have no idea what that means. But this one, this actually says what it means. It's not for me, but I am glad to say I can at least understand what they're talking about.