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Greta Christina

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Greta Christina
Christina speaking at the University of Missouri in March 2014
Born1961 (age 62–63)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Alma materReed College
OccupationWriter
Websitehttps://the-orbit.net/greta/

Greta Christina (born 1961) is an American atheist, blogger, speaker, and author.

Early life

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Christina was born in Chicago in 1961. She graduated from Reed College in 1983.[1] She legally changed her name in her twenties, dropping her family name and taking her middle name as her last name.[2]

Career

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Christina has written for AlterNet, Free Inquiry, and The Humanist. She started writing her own "Greta Christina's blog" in 2005; it was later incorporated in to the Freethought Blogs network.[3] In 2016 she co-founded The Orbit, which she described as "the first atheist media site founded explicitly to work on all forms of social justice".[4] In 2009, Hemant Mehta at The Friendly Atheist ranked Christina's blog in the Top Ten most popular atheist blogs.[5] She also created the "Atheist Meme of the Day" on Facebook.

She has been writing professionally since 1989, and has been a full-time freelance writer and speaker since 2012.[6] Her writing about atheism has appeared in print in Skeptical Inquirer and the anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong, as well as in her own books Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why (2014) and Why Are You Atheists So Angry?: 99 Things that Piss Off the Godless (2012).[7][8][9][10]

Speaking to Chris Mooney for a Point of Inquiry podcast in 2012, she stated that "there isn't one emotion" affecting atheists "but anger is one of the emotions that many of us have ...[it] drives others to participate in the movement". She said that there are many goals for the atheist movement – more separation of church and state, ending "bigotry against atheism", and for some, persuading people "out of religion", and that it is a "valid goal" to work towards a world without religion.[11]

As a speaker, she is a member of the Speakers Bureau for the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry.[7] She was a speaker on the Diversity in Skepticism panel at The Amaz!ng Meeting in July, 2011, the Reason Rally in 2012,[12] and the 50th annual convention of American Atheists in 2013.[13]

Rebecca Hensler founded the social media and internet support group 'Grief Beyond Belief' for grieving people who do not believe in God or an afterlife in 2011;[14][15][16] she was encouraged to found it by Christina.[15]

In 2013 Christina was named the International Team Honored Hero of the Foundation Beyond Belief (FBB).[3] The Foundation's teams raise money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.[17] She is a past member of the Foundation Beyond Belief's Board of Directors.[18]

She received the 2013 LGBT Humanist Pride Award from the American Humanist Association.[19][20]

Also in 2013, a photo of Christina with her wife Ingrid and a piece about the photo by Christina was featured in the book A Better Life, by Christopher Johnson, which is a book with photos of 100 atheists and pieces by them about how their atheism has enabled them to have, in their view, a better life.[21]

In 2015, Christina received the first Secular Student Alliance Ambassador Award, which was the 2015 Secular Student Alliance Ambassador Award.[22][23] Christina is an Advisory Board member of the SSA and a donor at the Lifetime Membership level.[23]

Outside of her atheist work, she is the editor of Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients and of the Best Erotic Comic anthology series, and has written the erotic novella Bending and the erotic fiction collection Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More.[8][24][25][26] Her writing has also appeared in three volumes of Best American Erotica.[25] She has also written about cats for Catster, and has written for the magazine Femme Feminism.[27][28][29]

In San Francisco, Christina has worked at the underground book publisher Last Gasp and the Lusty Lady peep show,[6][30] and has performed in pornography.[31] She has also co-organized and co-hosted the Godless Perverts Story Hour and the Godless Perverts Social Club.[32][33][34]

Personal life

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Christina's parents divorced when she was 12.[35] She began living in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1984.[1]

Christina has written that she is a sex-positive, pro-choice feminist[36][37][38] and that she supports same-sex marriage and group marriage.[39] She is openly bisexual/pansexual[40][41] as well as polyamorous, and has written about participating in BDSM.[42][43] She wrote in 2010 that she and her wife Ingrid had been "happily married" for "six and a half years (or five years, or two and a half years, depending on which of our three weddings in the shifting 'same- sex marriage' winds you're talking about)".[44]

Christina's mother died of cancer at the age of 45, when Christina was 17.[45] In 2012, Christina was diagnosed with endometrial cancer.[46] She had a surgical hysterectomy and oophorectomy to treat it.[3][47][48] Christina writes that she has struggled with depression off and on throughout most of her adult life, and considers herself chronically depressed and expects to take antidepressants for the rest of her life.[49][50]

Books

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  • Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless. Pitchstone Publishing. 2012. ISBN 978-0-9852815-2-6.
  • Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why. Pitchstone Publishing. 2014. ISBN 978-1-939578-19-8.
  • Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More. Pitchstone Publishing. 2015. ISBN 978-1-63431-007-9.
  • Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God. Pitchstone Publishing. 2015. ISBN 978-1-939578-18-1.
  • The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life. Pitchstone Publishing. 2016. ISBN 978-1-63431-068-0.

References

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  1. ^ a b Christina, Greta (n.d.). "Personal". gretachristina.com. Archived from the original on October 29, 2019.
  2. ^ "Greta Christina's Blog: The Messed-Up Teachings of Jesus". Gretachristina.typepad.com. June 30, 2008. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  3. ^ a b c Christina, Greta (March 12, 2013). "Foundation Beyond Belief Raises Record Funds to Fight Cancer – And They're Doing It Again!". The Orbit.
  4. ^ Christina, Greta (April 19, 2016). "The Orbit: Why Social Justice Atheism Needs Many Homes". TheHumanist.com. Retrieved June 19, 2019.
  5. ^ "The 30 Most Popular Atheist Blogs". The Friendly Atheist. February 9, 2009. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
  6. ^ a b Christina, Greta (May 3, 2012). "Quitting the Day Job".
  7. ^ a b "Greta Christina | Secular Student Alliance: Atheists, Humanists, Agnostics & Others". Secularstudents.org. December 20, 2009. Archived from the original on October 3, 2014.
  8. ^ a b Bright, Susie, ed. (2005). Susie Bright Presents: Three Kinds of Asking for It: Erotic Novellas by Eric Albert, Greta Christina, and Jill Soloway. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-4550-0.[page needed]
  9. ^ Christina, Greta (March 7, 2014). ""Coming Out Atheist" Ordering Info » Greta Christina's Blog". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved June 29, 2014.
  10. ^ Christina, Greta (April 16, 2014). ""Coming Out Atheist" Is Out! » Greta Christina's Blog". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved June 29, 2014.
  11. ^ "Greta Christina – Why Are You Atheists So Angry?". Point of Inquiry (podcast). May 14, 2012. Archived from the original on August 3, 2017.[time needed]
  12. ^ Program. "The Amaz!ng Meeting | Program". Amazingmeeting.com. Archived from the original on August 29, 2011.
  13. ^ Lawrence, Calvin. "Who's Speaking to the Atheists at 50th Annual Convention?". ABC News. Retrieved March 29, 2013.
  14. ^ Christina, Greta (June 18, 2015). "8 atheist leaders actually worth listening to". Salon.com. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
  15. ^ a b "Grief without God is a challenge for nonbelievers". USA Today. February 17, 2012. Archived from the original on February 26, 2019. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
  16. ^ Christina, Greta (June 25, 2013). "7 groups atheists can turn to in times of need". Salon.com. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
  17. ^ Brayton, Ed (March 13, 2013). "Foundation Beyond Belief Raises Record Funds » Dispatches from the Culture Wars". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
  18. ^ Christina, Greta (June 18, 2015). "8 atheist leaders actually worth listening to". Salon.com. Retrieved September 7, 2015.
  19. ^ "Nonbelievers Tell Supreme Court: Declare DOMA and Prop 8 Unconstitutional" (Press release). American Humanist Association. March 26, 2013. Retrieved June 4, 2013.
  20. ^ "My 2013 LGBT Humanist of the Year Acceptance Speech". Free Thought Blogs. June 23, 2013. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
  21. ^ Christina, Greta (May 9, 2014). "Beautiful and Fragile: My Story for the Atheist Photo Book, "A Better Life" » Greta Christina's Blog". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved June 29, 2014.
  22. ^ "Greta Christina - Mobile Uploads". Facebook. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  23. ^ a b "RELEASE: LGBTQ Activists to Be Honored at Secular Student Conference | Secular Student Alliance". Secularstudents.org. July 1, 2015. Archived from the original on July 14, 2015. Retrieved July 13, 2015.
  24. ^ Christina, Greta (April 12, 2013). ""Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More" Now for Sale on Kindle and Nook! » Greta Christina's Blog". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  25. ^ a b Christina, Greta. "Greta Christina's Blog » Atheism, sex, politics, dreams, and whatever. Thinking out loud since 2005". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  26. ^ Delacoste, Frederique (June 2004). Paying for It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients (9781890159597): Greta Christina: Books. Greenery Press. ISBN 1-890159-59-X.
  27. ^ Christina, Greta (September 13, 2016). "Femme, Adjective or Noun? - Greta Christina's Blog". The-orbit.net. Retrieved September 15, 2016.
  28. ^ "Femme, Adjective or Noun?". Femmefeminism.com. Retrieved September 15, 2016.
  29. ^ "Greta Christina". Catster. n.d. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
  30. ^ Christina, Greta (August 29, 2013). "Sex Work for Introverts: Some Sentimental Thoughts on the Closing of a Peep Show".
  31. ^ "Which Side Are You On? Pro-Porn and Anti-Porn Arguments". Greta Christina's Blog.
  32. ^ "Guest Post: 5 Things That". Miss Maggie Mayhem. June 26, 2013. Archived from the original on June 29, 2013. Retrieved June 30, 2013.
  33. ^ "Godless Perverts Story Hour". Godless Perverts. June 3, 2013. Retrieved June 30, 2013.
  34. ^ "Godless Perverts Social Club". Greta Christina's Blog. June 26, 2013. Retrieved June 30, 2013.
  35. ^ "Greta Christina's Blog: Sexual Optimism and a Changing World". Gretachristina.typepad.com. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
  36. ^ Christina, Greta (July 22, 2013). "On Being a Feminist Writing Dirty Kinky Porn » Greta Christina's Blog". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
  37. ^ "Showtime's "Californication": Well, There's Promiscuous and There's Promiscuous". Greta Christina's Blog.
  38. ^ Christina, Greta (March 13, 2014). "Having a Reasonable Debate About Abortion".
  39. ^ Christina, Greta (July 29, 2008). "Who Marriage is For: A Tale of Two Weddings".
  40. ^ Christina, Greta. "Hi. I'm bisexual. Happy Coming Out Day!". Facebook. Retrieved November 28, 2020.
  41. ^ "Greta Christina - Can people please not comment on my..." Facebook. Retrieved October 12, 2016.
  42. ^ "Greta Christina's Blog: SM". Gretachristina.typepad.com. Retrieved January 3, 2020.
  43. ^ "Greta Christina's Blog: Harder". Gretachristina.typepad.com. Retrieved January 3, 2020.
  44. ^ Christina, Greta (November 29, 2010). "Happily Single, Happily Married". Gretachristina.typepad.com.
  45. ^ "Greta Christina's Blog: The Meaning of Death: Part One of Many". Gretachristina.typepad.com. October 21, 2007. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  46. ^ Christina, Greta (October 18, 2012). "Bad news, good news, and asking for help » Greta Christina's Blog". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  47. ^ Christina, Greta (October 23, 2012). "Surgery tomorrow » Greta Christina's Blog". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  48. ^ Christina, Greta (October 25, 2012). "Surgery done » Greta Christina's Blog". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved January 4, 2013.
  49. ^ Christina, Greta (June 2, 2011). "Are All Religions Equally Crazy?". Freethoughtblogs.com; Greta Christina's Blog. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
  50. ^ Christina, Greta (March 24, 2014). "Mood Disorders Program". Freethoughtblogs.com. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
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