I am currently reading "The Last Indian Wars" by Matt....our very own!

Also just started working on The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (AGAIN - gotta do it at least once a year or so!)....my favorite story is "Fanshawe"....everyone knows "The Scarlet Letter" and that's a good one, but give me "Fanshawe" pretty please.

Two books at once is about all I can do right now....although I will be adding a third once RAR arrives....but it can take me a while as time is so limited with family and my business.

I've gotten so many reading projects going that I pretty much ignore Newsweek anymore. I skim through it looking for good stuff to put in a collage, and that's about it. I'd rather get my news from The Daily Show anyway. :)

I have to tell you as a former sorority member that Pledged is pretty inaccurate and received much criticism from national sorority boards and organizations. The author has had accusations that the book was practically fiction. I would assume some of it might be true but with any organization that is that big something that happens at one sorority house is not representative of all... and steps would immediately be taken to remedy the problem if national's became aware.

I'm reading my school book. :( and Eckhart Tolle's 'A New Earth'. I also love David Sedaris books when I want to laugh! Seriously, he makes me laugh out loud.

Well, of course sororities bashed it. That doesn't surprise me! I've also had confirmation from sorority girls that it was dead-on accurate, so it appears to depend on the sorority rather than the book itself being flawed.

It sure does depend on the sorority, but with 3.9 million women at 655 different colleges and universities you can understand how the masses would be upset by being stereotyped by one person's experience.

My library did not have the sorority book or "Slut! Growing up Female with a bad reputation." I still want to read those - I'm going to check some other libraries!

I am really impressed with "Slut!" so far; it's a much more important book than it has been recognized to be.

As for the sorority thing and besidesthat's concerns, of course she is right. I no more want to be unfairly judged by the stereotypes of being a male than she would by the stereotypes of being in a sorority. It would be unfair to hold anyone--of any group or culture--to that image, while striving to be taken seriously as a male doing rape trauma therapy. I had my illusions and stereotypes about sororities shattered by someone who also had her images of manhood changed by my influence, so it would dishonor that chance I was given to overcome that male stereotype and yet still cling to stereotypes of my own about others. So bottom line: I take the book as a fascinating and frightening read, as it applies to SOME experiences, but not as "the truth" about any group or type of woman generally. I'm fair and bright enough to make that distinction, and wouldn't dream of swallowing a generic image of ANY group of people.

Just an aside: why is it that so many therapists are liberal? I don't mean that as a blow against liberalism, I'm just curious. You had mentioned it once Matt, and I seem to find it to be true, and I was just curious, as an inquiring mind should be....right? I don't want to start a political debate, I am strictly curious about the link between being able to BE a therapist and how it ties to liberal thinking.

This probably shouldn't have been a question posed here. I am sorry, if you would like to respond, feel fre to message me. I feel silly having posted it here, ooops! I also feel very underread! I'm reading RAR, and little else. So, I have a bookshelf full of books, I'm going to pick one and just start.

It's for several reasons, and I've thought about it too. I should reiterate though, that when I am asked whether I am a liberal or a conservative, my response is "name the issue."

First, we see the effects of conservative budget priorities on service programs. That's just a fact. For example, Bush has cut VAWA repeatedly, and we see the DIRECT effect of this on women's shelters, rape crisis programs, etc. The parade to privatize health care amounts to more and more profit for insurance companies (who donate millions to candidates in return), with less and less actual care for patients; do you remember the battle you had to face just to get into treatment? Well, guess what! That's a DIRECT result of "free market health-care-for-profit." So economically, conservative budgeting has not favored the mental health consumer whatsoever; you've nearly been its victim yourself, mockingbird. The other side of this issue is that local communities and faiths should provide these services, not government, but let's be serious about some of this: churches cannot do PTSD work. Neighborhoods cannot provide domestic violence shelters. In fact, charitable giving and services have DECLINED each of the last eight years, depite the rhetoric. The role of the volunteer and the faith-based provider is inestimable, but not comprehensive; we NEED these services, and it's abundantly clear that the "free market" simply will not provide them. We HAVE to have government make the difficult choice to fund women's shelters, treatment services, and community mental health care. We love our tax cuts and our two-trillion-dollar wars, but then when a hurt woman is in need she wonders why she and her children cannot find services anymore. My politics aren't in a headline; they are a woman sitting in front of me, crying, because she has been battered.

Second, working with people who are hurting breaks down whatever walls of casual moral debate we might have once had. That doesn't mean we lose our values; it means we find them transcending political or slogan-based ideologies. I can come into this work having all sorts of beliefs about gays and lesbians for example, but once I sit with a gay man who is in tears because of how he has been treated by his church, his employer, his family...well, it irreversibly changes YOU to hear it. You start to set aside blanket position statements about types and groups of people, and see their stories and their lives. It's very hard to keep an unwavering talk-radio-based position on any group once you have immersed yourself emotionally in that group. I can listen to Rush Limbaugh's $900-million rant about the poor, the homosexual, the minority, but he's never crossed the line outside of his neighborhood to see--really SEE--the people behind the rhetoric. You begin to notice that you love the people who are scapegoated in election years, and that what you are finding in these people does not match what you have been told are their failings. When John McCain's campaign advisor jokes that a raped woman should treat her rape like the inevitable weather "and just relax and enjoy it," your rage is barely polite. When Bush appoints a woman to head VAWA services who OPPOSES the Violence Against Women Act and believes most rape reports are false, you are disturbed.

Third, you begin to see that the conventional beliefs about privilege, poverty and government services simply are not true. You discover that the poor are not lazy; nor are the wealthy more moral and "blessed." You also discover that government services are not bloated burdens; in fact, they tend to be MORE economical and MORE result-productive than private-pay services! Medicaid, for example, is simply awesome. I saw patients whose insurance granted three days of therapy--seriously!--while Medicaid would cover three WEEKS. And get this: the Medicaid service COST LESS! Was it bloated bureaucracy? No; on the contrary, the paperwork was much easier, there was much less waste, much less fraud, it was streamlined and simple, and patients got the care they needed. That converted me to a belief in single-payer universal health care right there (well, that and being from a Canadian family). The numbers of people who slipped into poverty during the past eight years has increased by millions (each year!), with one in five children living in poverty in America; meanwhile, the wealthy have prospered immensely. When you are a therapist and you see a family struggling, and you love that family, your sense of injustice at "moral values" slogans percolates. When one in five children live in a food-insecure home, but my state's own Senator (Tom Coburn) blocks the "Hungre-Free Communities Act" from even coming to a vote, you see something very, very wrong. Cue the obligatory speeches about "children are our greatest resources," fly a flag, and hope nobody notices. Veto SCHIP health care for kids while sticking an "I vote by the book [Bible]" sticker on a car, and hope the cognitive dissonance never sets in.

It didn't help that Reagan, who is venerated by conservatives, called social workers "the parasites of America" and said that we "haven't the religion to fill a thimble." I'm a social worker, and an ordained minister.

I'm also a strong feminist, and so are most therapists (as a result of seeing the epidemic violence against women, which is the number ONE cause of injury to women in America). Yet we have Limbaugh mocking feminism as an outlet for "unattractive women," and conservative ministers blasting feminism as anti-male, hateful, and sexually deviant. I am a feminist BECAUSE of my religion, though, not in spite of it. Women's economic standing has slipped, not advanced, in the past eight years, and the number one source of new homeless are women and children fleeing domestic violence (*refer back to the cuts against shelters for women and children feeling domestic violence; connect those dots...) I can't agree with the fundamentalist position that males are the natural (or ordained) head, and that women ought to be submissive and defer to us, or that domestic abuse is caused by women's failure to submit to their husband's divine superiority (seriously: http://ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=10675 ). The fact that I see my wife as my equal is, sadly, labeled a "liberal" position, when it ought to be perfectly common.

That's just a start. I carefully avoid politics here because it is a divisive issue, and nobody's trauma is soothed by debate, but I never shy away from something that is directly asked. None of this means I devalue, disparage, or negatively judge those who conservatively disagree. One cannot attend church in Oklahoma, of course, without finding one's self loving people who nonetheless disagree with just about everything I just described.

Thank you for the response, and obviously you have given this great thought and consideration. I do not shy away from others' opinions, and I welcome information from your perspective. That's why I asked. My therapist and I don't discuss topics like this for obvious reasons.

You are right, I was very close to being a victim of the current insurance situation, but, having been a nurse for 30+ years, I watched DRGs in 1983 drag our healthcare system to it's knees. There was no vote, and had there been, there was only the information fed to us through ABC, NBC, and CBS....no options for information in the truest sense, just opinions passed off as information. DRGs (Diagnosis Related Groups) was the beginning of a system that became very profitable for the insurance companies, the so-called not-for-profit hospitals, and few else.

There was great waste in the times prior to that, but, the physicians were blamed for 'charging too much', no one told the public they were regulated in their charges.

But, also having been front line on the socialized services that Canada has to "offer", why is it so many Cnadians coem tot he US to have simple medical services? They call them SnowBirds. They are the senior citizens of Canada who will explain that, for some, the services are free and available, but, can my friend with cancer coursing through her body get the MRI she needs in a 'timely' manner?

If Canada has it right, how will the US find the proper people to oversee this fiasco in the US? The pool of people we have to choose from is questionable at best.

I was providing nursing care when insurance still paid, and you did not need anyting but a physician's order to obtain, and have paid for the services you NEEDED. DRGs and the subsequent politicizing of healthcare has crushed the system that paid for the births of most of the politicians in office today. It 'worked' then, but somehow, we needed to fix it before it got broke.....broke in more than one sense.

No doubt our healthcare is in crisis. Pockets are lined with the monies saved by not providing the care. During a certain administration in the not-so-distant past, rules were enacted that cost millions to impose, provided NO additional benefits to the insured, saw to it that millions remained uninsured, and programs were 'suggested' without federal funding to cover the costs, this was relegated to the individual state. DUH! I live in on of the states with the highest number of aging populace in the nation. It is not because we kept them healthy and now we need to take care of them. Nope, not even close.

I, like you consider the topic when I deem myself republican, or liberal, or democratic in my thinking. I'd love to take the programs suggested by the democrats, pay for them with the funds earned by corporations that do little to nothing to stimulate anything positive except for themselves...but, would I then be a socialist? I believe in social reform, but I'm not sure on how to get it fairly. I believe in welfare reform, in the sense that we must care for our poor and underpriviledged. I believe in governmental reform. I believe 'pork belly' spending should be abolished, out-lawed! The moneies saved in that alone would fund programs desperately needed to add the Faith Based initiatives that SHOULD work, but won't because churches are filled with humans.

I agree with much of what you have to say here, and I am anxious about the future of insurance in America. I just don't know who has it right. I know what used to be, and I watched it work. I am not blind to the holes in that system that cost billions, but, this system isn't working either. I am not a socialist. But I am a woman who would spend her last dime to help another in need.

I did ask Matt, and you answered carefully and honestly. I am a Christian, and I believe in God's word, but, I have seen people harmed at the hands (or mouths) of so-called Christians who have their own agendas....churches are filled with humans. At least mine is.

I do not wish to be divisive, I wish to be informed. I have looked closely at the politics of my past, and I prayerfully approach the politics of my future. Thank you for sharing your answers to my inquiry. In healthcare, in mental health, how can we not be informed? How can we not see the devastation of a flawed system? It, for me, is not about who got us here, it's about how do we get out?

P.S. I did read a really good book by Ann Coulter called "How to Talk to a Liberal, (if you must). Okay, I mean this as a joke, but, it was a good read. Smile Matt, you know you want to....this is me poking you in the ribs...:)

I have re-read your response to my inquiry, and I have several points that jump out at me. One is the wording you use to describe your inability to turn away from the pain, devoid of the person...'irreversibly changes you to hear it'. I understand that, THAT makes sense to me. I applaud that!

The second thing that virtually slapped me in the face was the comment about the John McCain advisor's comments about a raped woman who should 'relax and enjoy it". I cannot think right now. I have no words. I am so angry about this I cannot define the depth of that anger with words, they fail me. I wish I had a voice. I wish I had a forum, a soapbox, an audience...this is physically sickening to me and I don't know how to react positively. To what audience was he speaking? Who in the hell was listening!?

I don't see this as political views, I see this as issues of humanity.

I also understand your point, very clearly, that the church cannot treat or take on the role of treating PTSD. There are churches here locally that provide counseling without charge, but, they can only take on so many in need, and PTSD with dissociative features isn't something they can deal with.

I simply feel more secure, more protected, in care I pay for. I know, radical thought, no room for those who cannot pay in that statement, but, I am speaking to my fears only.

I fear a system that is so free there is no recourse to it. Does than make any sense at all? Does it make sense that not every therapist is cut from the same cloth as you? I mean that in a kind way, like, you care. You know you care. You know what you personally sacrifice to this calling, and I believe for you it is a calling! But it is not so for everyone, to some, sadly, it is just a job.

Thanks for hearing me. Sorry for the hissy fit!

Matt, I really appreciate your honesty here! I have always considered myself a feminist despite all the negativity towards that term. And I think everyone can enjoy reading your thoughts on these subjects despite their political views.

(I hope I didn't seem hostile about the whole sorority thing... doesn't even matter. Could be a good read; I just choose not to support it b/c it also outed some of our / and others' secret rituals which I deem to be VERY disrespectful... but I didn't mean to say "you're wrong, I'm right" or anything.... hope we understand each other. =) )

"Hush" by Nicole Braddock Bromley:Moving from silence to healing after childhood sexual abuse.

Haven't started it yet