Tag Archives: introduction

Previously, on Raising My Boychick

Since I never did do a proper introductory post, how about a review instead?

My name is Arwyn, and I am, among other things, a feminist. As it says on the tin,

I’m a walking contradiction: knitting feminist fulltime parent, Wiccan science-minded woowoo massage student, queer-identified male-partnered monogamist, body-loving healthy-eating fat chick, unmedicated sane and stable bipolar. But it feels all-me.

(although more of my free time these days goes to blogging rather than knitting).

I am pro-choice, and anti crying-it-out.

I wear my baby (when he lets me), and so does my partner — who is known around here as The Man, because he is the proverbial straight white male. We have one child, the eponymous Boychick, who is also probably a straight white male. I breastfeed him, and The Man parents in other ways.

The Man is currently unemployed, I am bipolar, and this sometimes makes for an interesting combination.

I am not a SAHM, and I am not amused. But I am sometimes funny.

I write about independence, attachment parenting, and societal misogyny.

I write about menstruation, and genitals, and sex, and sexuality, and the color of my underwear.

I write about patriarchy and kyriarchy and intersectionalism. I write about the racism and transphobia and sexism and disablism I encounter, both around me and in my own thinking.

I write about trying to raise the Boychick free from limiting gender roles, while teaching him to not be a bad man.

I believe we are not bad moms.

I believe the patriarchy wants us to tell each other we are, and that avoiding that trap can change the world.

And if you’re still interested in what I have to say, I believe I’d love to hear from you.

10 Comments | Posted on 9 July 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Life, the Universe, and Everything | Tags: blogging, introduction, Links, Meta, self-indulgent introspection

Like this? Share it:

100th post, and a call to de-lurk

So, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I have this slight streak of perfectionism, combined with a ~~crazy voice~~ mental illness that likes to pick up and run with any slight hesitations or doubts that I might have, thereby leaving me paralyzed and unable to do so much as “any” much less “good enough” because then it wouldn’t be “perfect”.

Plus, we seem to have a virus, possibly of the porcine variety.

So, I say fuck that shit. Perfection is the enemy of good enough, so I’m going to cough and hack and spit in its general direction until it’s soaking the sheets in bed, addled by fever enough that it can’t block me from just putting up a damn post already, even if said post sort of sucks.

When I started this blog, well, I didn’t start it. I had the fabulous idea that Someone Should write a blog about the experience of being a feminist raising a boy child (little knowing that, um, it ain’t exactly a new idea), and came up with a catchy title for it, and went and registered it on Blogger. And did nothing.

Did I mention the perfectionism -> paralysis thing?

It wasn’t until a kick-ass writer friend of mine started her own fab (if under-updated) blog that I mentioned my idea to her, and she triple-dog-dared (ordered, actually) me to start posting to it, at which time I, snowed in (in Portland!) and with nothing better to do, put up an introductory post that set the bar so damn low that even I, tied up by perfectionism’s tendrils of doubt and self-flagellation, could trip over it.

Then I remembered a post I’d written elsewhere and put that up*, because I thought it was worth saving, and then wrote a fair amount of filler crap, and a couple interesting (if somewhat straw-based) posts, and got caught by the bug. I was going to Blog, give it the good college try (is this the right place to mention I’ve tried college no less than four times and have yet to graduate?), publish posts ~~daily~~ ~~every two out of three days~~ ~~every other day~~ frequently(ish).

And here we are.

I’m still just starting. I still swear I’m going to prune down my label list, make my own WordPress theme, buy a domain, and move the blog somewhere prettier and more functional. I still know I have so damn much to learn about my own privilege and prejudices, and needless to say I still have at least 90% left to go in this high-intensity-parenting gig.

But 100 posts? A sizable chunk of which are actually worth reading? That’s pretty cool.

So come celebrate with me. Leave a present: a comment, saying anything, just letting me know you read here, regularly or occasionally. Let me know what you like about the blog, let me know what you want to see in the future, say congrats or good job or keep trying. I know I’m crap at responding to comments, but I read every one, usually about 20 times. So drop a line. It’ll be your good deed for the day.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go down some C and snuggle in bed with perfectionism. We’re both pretty miserable.

*Some of these posts contain language and comparisons I wouldn’t use now, like putting “bad mother” on par with “the n word” (both because, dude, so not in the same league, and because competing oppressions against each other is always a no-win enterprise). Entering the blogosphere, both in reading other blogs and writing out my own thoughts, has been educational and a growing experience in ways I had never anticipated, and that’s a large part of what has kept me going**.

**The rest, of course, being comments from readers, nudge nudge.

23 Comments | Posted on 12 June 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Life, the Universe, and Everything | Tags: bipolar, comment begging, introduction, Mental Health, Meta, self-indulgent introspection, sick

Like this? Share it:

This Is Not an Introduction

Blogs scare me. I grew up writing journal entries for teachers to read, honed my essayist’s pen on college entrance applications, found my voice on mothering forums, so you’d think I’d be a natural. But there’s a pressure with blogs that there isn’t on a discussion board, nor even with college apps: sure, your entire life hinges on how well and what you write — thus the 200 revisions at 2am — but they won’t write back. You’re pretty much guaranteed merely a simple yes or no (or, because I’m special like that, “if there’s room”) and dodge all “man that sucked” or “what the hell do you mean by this?” or “do you even know who Gloria Steinem is?” comments. And if you inspire another person’s rant (“you’ll never believe what I read today!”), you don’t ever hear about it. Which is just fine by me; my ego is not that secure, much as I like to pretend otherwise. And in a discussion forum, one can comment on others‘ stupidities, or crazy fucked-up problems, and pretend to be all wise and knowing and not fucked-up. It’s participating in a conversation, but in equal part with 5 or 50 or 500 other people. Not so a blog.

A blog is one’s own place for airing laundry and pontificating confidently. Sure I sometimes have things to say, but who the hell wants to read it? No one really wants another middle-class-mommy-life sucks blog, and my brilliances don’t come daily (or weekly!), stand-alone, neatly packaged. They strike in the middle of a conversation, or the middle of the night, and to blog about them is to pretend both that other people care enough to read it, and that I don’t care whether they do.

But here I am. Because I may not be a bandwagon-hop-on-er, but five years after every teenager has a cell phone, I give in and get one. I keep having ideas for it, so I might as well. Although, I’ll be fairly shocked if this doesn’t languish in the no-updates desert, or end up over 50% copied discussion posts.

So here’s what the reader should know about me: I am a reluctant, under-confident blogger; I overuse parentheses (and how!); I have a semi-colon key and am not afraid to use it; I swear rather a lot; and I, a queer-identified, male-partnered, fat, mentally-ill white woman, am raising a presumably-straight (though you never know), stick-thin, able-bodied white male, and it’s an odd enough feeling I thought it warranted a blog.