Tag Archives: blogging

The things we won’t blog

Y’all know that I write about almost anything: my period, my sexuality, my genitals, my craziness, my racism and cissexism, my self-injury, even unwanted sensations with breastfeeding. I wrote about being bipolar, bisexual, and fat in my college application essays. (I won a scholarship in part because of an essay about my breasts.) I am a big, big believer in openness and forthrightness and disclosure and exposure and wearing our hearts on our sleeves and honestly answering “how are you?” (mostly).

But.

There’s a post half-written in my queue that will probably never see the light of a monitor because certain members of my family (hi Dad!) read this blog.

And I know I’m not the only one with such restrictions, either self-imposed or externally-motivated. So I thought I’d ask:

What don’t you blog about? And why? (Or because of whom?) Is it for protection, secrecy, court order? Fear of embarrassment, fear of reprisals, fear of what people will think? Do think some topics just aren’t appropriate for public discussion? What are you NOT saying that is clamouring to come out of you?

Obviously, I am not expecting that if you won’t blog it you’ll feel comfortable just spouting it here. You may allude, of course, to one or all parts of the question, or confirm only the existence of such things and nothing more. OR, I invite you to answer anonymously. You may use your own email and a new name, or create a free email just for this — or just put in a pseudoemail. For this, I won’t care. I will go spelunking in the depths of spam-filter hell for you, rescue your flagged anonymous comments, if you so choose to share.

What don’t you, won’t you blog about?¹

NOTE: It has come to my attention that if you have a Gravatar associated with your email address, it will still show up even with a different, anonymous name. These comments will go to pending, awaiting my approval: I will not publish them with the image, for your privacy. I can alter the email to remove the image, but this may affect your ability to receive email updates on the comment thread. Feel welcome to use an anonymous or fake email instead.

FURTHER NOTE (7 Feb 2010): Because of the overwhelming response to this, I have issued an invitation for anyone who wishes to submit an anonymous post, to be published as part of the Naked Pictures of Faceless People project. Because all our stories deserve to be told.

Non-bloggers are entirely welcome to join in as well. Why don’t you blog? What would you not feel comfortable writing about? ↩

39 Comments | Posted on 5 February 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Life, the Universe, and Everything | Tags: blogging, boundaries, Meta

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I need to read to write: a good ol’ fashioned link post

After several months of completely ignoring its existence, I’m trying to clean up my Google Reader: trim it down, shift it over, and make it reflect the blogs that I actually want to read, but don’t catch in my Twitter stream due to missed timing (or the author — gasp! — not tweeting). I am doing this because I’m coming to realize what should be obvious: that I need to read to write. And while I get easily overwhelmed by an unread New Post list twelve miles long, I also get overwhelmed by the echoes in the solitude of my own head, the standards I construct for myself to live up to.

In the course of this, I am discovering new-to-me-blogs, and new-to-me-posts on blogs I already knew I liked. I’m all kinds of inspired, but since I’m also all kinds of tired (we’re hosting the first virus of the year here in casa de Boychick-Raising), I’ll just offer you some completely-not-comprehensive highlights of what I found (some of these are from weeks or months ago, but I’ve never known a blogger who minded a new link to an old post):

Negotiations And Love Songs ~ by Jay at Two Women Blogging

Courtney mentioned one other point from the book: women have to truly let go of the notion that they are inherently more fit to parent, that they can simply do it better, by virtue of being women. Yes. This. Parents don’t need to be interchangeable – you don’t need to play the same games or have the same approach to soothing the baby. You don’t even need to agree about how to dress the kids. You do have to be able to both take care of the baby’s (and child’s and teenager’s) basic needs, and you need to trust your partner to do so, or the whole 50/50 thing won’t work.

Scripts by my father at Dad Who Writes (I shared this one on Facebook a while back, but it’s worth revisiting)

Dudelet is wailing, terrified by the outburst. It comes from nowhere, is speaking me, is utterly possessing me. I pick him up and carrying him, howling, to his room. I place him on the floor sobbing incoherently and storm back to the kitchen. By now its over and I’m in tears myself.

Mother’s Disability Featured in Custody Dispute at The Curvature

And so, it seems to me that the allegation being made against O’Neill is not that she is failing to ensure proper care for Aidan. The allegation appears to be that she is failing to care for Aidan entirely by herself, without any outside assistance.

This is flat out ableism.

Dances with Discrimination: On “Avatar,” Racism, Misogyny, and Disabled Prejudice

There are some who would argue that “Avatar” is simply a film, and should not be viewed in a broader concept. However, that wasn’t Cameron’s intention, and who better to determine the lens through which we view a movie than the movie’s creative lead? Especially since the film’s anti-corporate, anti-environmental destruction message is being helmed by corporate underwriting of companies that aren’t likely to be eco-friendly, either (sponsorship has to come from somewhere). The chances are pretty high that most viewers, so bedazzled by the swirling lights of Cameron’s cinematic skill, will likely not consider all of the social implications supporting such a movie encourages.

My Picks for Best Breastfeeding Blogs at PhD in Parenting (I swear I’m not including this just because she linked to me; it really is a great list of blogs and posts)

This one I’m just excited about the creation of, and hope talking it up will increase the chances I remember to participate (and that others will too): Calling for submissions for the first Carnival of Natural Parenting! at Hobo Mama

Do you have any posts or blogs to recommend, yours or others’? What were your favorite posts from the last year? What blogs do you think deserve more readers?

1 Comment | Posted on 3 January 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Parenting | Tags: ableism, blogging, breastfeeding, Carnival of Natural Parenting, fathering, Links

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Raising My Boychick is now on Facebook

In spite of some very good reasons to boycott Facebook, I have succumbed, and created a business page for Raising My Boychick, to which new posts are automatically added.

If you’re reading this on the blog, you probably don’t care; but! if you become a Fan (and yes, I cringed just typing that — I am the most cynical feedback-addict you will ever meet. Unless you are very unlucky), spreading RMB posts around Facebook all virus-like will now be easier than ever. And then maybe people who don’t read blogs and aren’t on Twitter (who are these people??) will learn the love of the random ranting and rambling and self-indulgent introspection and kyriarchy-blaming that is RMB.

Or not. Go become a fan, and find out along with me.

5 Comments | Posted on 5 December 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Life, the Universe, and Everything | Tags: blogging, Meta, shameless self-promotion

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Are you there, blog? It’s me, Arwyn

I think if I could focus on one thing for just an hour, I could do anything. The number of half-finished posts sitting in my queue is staggering. The number of further ideas I’ve had is uncountable (I lose count anyway, but then, if I could focus for an hour, I probably wouldn’t).

My mood has been a lot more stable than it was, so I’m not sure what’s going on, and why I can’t finish anything. I seem to be stuck in a cycle where I stay up to try to work, and get some done, but then realize I’m not going to finish in anything like a time frame that will get me enough sleep to avoid insanity, and set it aside — repeat the next night, but more tired and even less focused this time, and with more ideas from the new day, so there’s even more to choose from. And so on.

And although my mood has stabilized, I’ve been having a lot more migraines in the past month or so, which make it almost impossible for me to think or form coherent sentences. I’m working on fixing this, again, but like my mood regulation, it’s slow going. (It’s possible I might have spent a bit of time swearing at my neurology recently. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. And yet, my brain is my self’s home, that without which my self would not be my self: how can I hate it?)

I still haven’t found a regular way to get time during the day when I can work uninterrupted, either, although possibilities are on the horizon, and we’re exploring options. I don’t want to get into the details right now, and some plans have fallen through (we tried doing a childcare swap: the parents were willing, but the children were… incompatible. which is to say, mine tried to kill hers. alas.), but we’re still looking and still hopeful and trusting that some way, some solution that honors the Boychick and my sanity and our bank account all will be found.

I’ve also been making the choice to be more mindful with the Boychick during the day, rather than fight with him while I try to work. (One of the 3/4 finished posts in my queue is on mindfulness: I couldn’t focus — stay in the moment — long enough to finish it tonight. Ha. Ha.) Which makes my parenting better, and my life less stressful, but doesn’t help get content up — which eventually adds stress as well, because this blog, this project, is something I love and that fuels me, and not adding to it makes me quite unhappy.

And then there’s Twitter. As I said there tonight: “I think Twitter has broken my already-limited ability to focus on a single thing to completion. On the other hand, kick ass convos. Dilemma.” Which is almost true, but not quite there, I think. Twitter, and the remarkably interesting and for the most part lovely people I’ve met there, certainly enables distraction, and gives me somewhere to go when my mind says “ack! do something else!”, but I don’t think it actually creates the urge to defocus, and ultimately it’s that urge that does me in. If it weren’t Twitter, it would be something else — before Twitter, it was something else.

All in all, I’m in this weird limbo place, and I’m not sure what to do about it. But in the immortal words of Monty Python: “I ain’t dead yet!” Nor is the blog. We’re just… stewing. Brewing. Percolating, perhaps. I’m not quite sure what’s coming, but that’s ok. I’m pretty sure it’ll be tasty, and I’ll definitely be sharing.

4 Comments | Posted on 6 November 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Life, the Universe, and Everything | Tags: blogging, Mental Health, Meta, migraine, self-indulgent introspection, sleep

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Censorship? No.

This is censorship, when the US government blocks websites relating to Cuba.

This is censorship, when the Chinese government blocks all kinds of websites.

This is censorship, when the Australian government bans a video game.

This? Me deleting a comment that defended bigotry? This not censorship. It’s adhering to the comment policy that was already laid out at the time of original posting. It’s keeping my sandbox clean of shit I’d rather not host, and that might sicken the people playing here.

The comment policy read, in part, thusly:

Within this comment policy, there is room for disagreement and debate, and abundant room for discussion and developing our feminist discourse; there is only a dearth of room for discrimination or the defense thereof.

As Amber Strocel says, “Even the newspaper doesn’t print every letter to the editor. Your sandbox, your rules, your call!”

And, basically, that’s what it comes down to. I am not a government, nor a government agency. I do not have a captive audience here. I am not in a position of power or in possession of a monopoly of a method of communication. My decision to uphold my comment policy is so far from an act of censorship that the very suggestion should be laughable.

But somehow, it isn’t. I’m not laughing. Something is fundamentally wrong with a society that thinks that free speech entitles one to say anything one likes, even when it directly contributes to the oppression of others — or defends the same. You know the line about your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins? Same deal with words: when what you say contributes to a social environment in which my nose might be smashed in (or my friends murdered), I have a problem with that. When your words defend another’s right to spout that hate, I have a problem with that.

Do I believe in government censorship? I think it is extremely problematical. I am entirely in favor of libraries’ defense of the right to read anything. But I’m entirely opposed to yelling “Fire!” in a crowded building (unless, of course, there’s actually a fire). Somewhere in there, there is a line. Can I say where I think government should draw the line? No; fortunately for all, I don’t have to.

My only line to draw is much simpler, because the only penalty for breaking it is the inability to post here: no lives are, hah, on the line. This is my comment policy, updated for clarity; this is where I draw my line. I like to think it’s all pretty self-evident, but obviously, given recent comments, ’tain’t so. Now, I know that the folk most likely to break my standards of behavior are those least likely to read a comment policy, but they can’t say it wasn’t there.

I don’t much care if anyone calls me a dictator, or accuses me of censorship, or says I’m on a power trip, or spouts whatever other falsehoods they like. It’s a sort-of free net. Blogs are free. Go wild.

Just don’t do it here. And for the last time, no, that’s not censorship.