Did you miss me? I missed you, and I missed writing. Consider my hiatus from this blog officially over. I had a rough year and had a major life overhaul. I don’t want to really go into details about everything here because it isn’t that interesting, and there is no need to re-hash old stressors.
For those that don’t already know, I am back in school officially, and I’m happy to report I am doing really well. My grades are higher than ever, and I’m doing a great job at keeping myself organized and on top of my workload.
Anyway, I’m going to jump right into some changes I’m making, as well as a bit of self-flagellation concerning some of my old posts.
Housekeeping
Over the course of the past ten months or so, I’ve had some time on my hands, and I’ve become increasingly more educated about the type of feminism I want to practice. I’ve attempted to look closely at my own privilege and discovered all the different ways that it shapes a lot of my ideas and prejudices, and now I seek to be as intersectional as possible when it comes to my feminism and how I view social power structures.
This blog has not been all about feminism in the past, and I am not going to change that, but I have used, and plan to continue to use, feminism as a lens that I look through when discussing different topics. So, for all my readers who are not familiar with social justice and the terminology that you might see me use more in my writing, here is a little crash course.
Bear with me, this will make a lot of sense when I’m done, and if I get anything wrong, please feel free to correct me!
Intersectionality
I’m not going to go into the different ideologies of feminism, but I do want to talk about intersectionality. Intersectional feminism deals with issues by looking at how all the different systems of privilege and oppression, not just sexism, affect those issues.
Sexism does not exist in its own bubble; it goes hand-in-hand with racism, homophobia, cissexism/transphobia, ableism, and classism, just to name a few big ones. For those not familiar with it, cissexism refers to the assumption that all men and women were born male and female, respectively, and that cisgender people (people whose gender identity matches the sex that was assigned to them at birth) are superior to trans* people. So, when I think about sexism, it is important that I don’t exclusively look at the way it affects me as a white ciswoman but at the ways that it manifests and is amplified for women of color or trans-women.
I’m not going to go into a lot more detail here, but I just wanted to make my readers aware that in my future writing, I am trying to be more conscious of these issues, especially since gender identity and biological sex do often come into play when talking about sex and dating.
This blog is not aimed at people with a degree in Gender Studies, so if I mention something that you don’t know or don’t understand, please let me know, and I will do my best to clarify, and if I can’t, I will even google it for you!
Upcoming Content
I know I’ve promised this before, but this time, I am really going to make an effort to update content regularly. I am looking to do more sex advice columns, which are highly dependent on incoming questions (hint, you know what to do), as well as include intermittent posts about anything I deem relevant, such as sex how-tos or any current events that spark my interest.
I do have a habit of procrastinating, even with doing things I love, so if I stray, don’t be afraid to keep me honest by contacting me and sternly telling me to get my act together. That being said, I would like to apologize for a few issues I’ve found with some of my older posts.
Apologies
In a post about a convention I went to and cosplayed (sorta) during, I discussed my “g*psy” costume. I would like to issue a two-fold apology, first, for even dressing up as a member of Romani culture, which was incredibly racist and appropriative and will definitely never happen again, and second, for using the slur “g*psy,” which, at the time, I was unaware was a derogatory term for Romani people.
It is never okay to wear costumes based on other people’s culture or ethnicity. It is disrespectful and makes a mockery of the culture, and I am very sorry.
In this post, which was my first attempt at discussing sex, I did so in a very hetero-normative and cissexist way. Granted, it was aimed primarily at heterosexual men, a lot of what I wrote operated under the assumptions of men having penises and women having vaginas, which is not always the case.
I realize this kind of casual cissexism fails to be inclusive to many people who might have otherwise found that post to be entertaining and educational. I apologize and will do my best not to fall back on those types of assumptions.
A lot of my influences have changed, and I hope my writing will evolve to better reflect the type of person I want to become. I’m still learning, so if I screw up, please let me know so I can correct my behavior. I want this to be a fairly safe and inclusive space. With that being said, I’d like to thank you for reading this because I know it is not the usual light-hearted and funny writing you are used to seeing here. I have a sex advice question I am currently working on, and I hope it will be up sometime this evening or early tomorrow morning.
