Blogging Feminism

One reason the top of this blog says "opinions of" is to let me escape writing only about feminism. Escape, because it's a tough life to be a warrior for a cause which is among the most ridiculed, belittled and misunderstood. Or so it seems, on certain days, particularly after I've surfed in some really vile places.

Today was one of those days, mostly because of my dog Hank's illness, but also because I innocently skipped over to a website which should have health warnings for women. Why do I never learn how to prepare myself for misogyny? Why do I still feel that women should be accepted into the human race by even those men who have some serious psychological problems with sexuality or the female sex? Maybe Freud could tell me.

A whiny soldier I am. Which explains why I don't write on every single nasty article I come across, or even the majority of them. There are other feminist bloggers who take on topics that need to be addressed, others who know more than I do and who wield the keyboard better than I do. But ultimately I can only take so much of the shit without losing my ability to sleep or my appetite.

All this is a long way of unnecessarily explaining why this blog is neither one thing nor another, although I also believe that feminism is more than just addressing topics of sexual or gender equality. It's a part of a larger outlook on the world, a way of seeing it and the creatures in it from an angle of equality or respect or even humility, of believing that each creature matters in some sense, and not just as a tool for some other creature. And this is an approach which makes life interesting and rich and meaningful, the listening and the learning and the odd connections it allows us to make, the sharing of the universe and its wonders and then finding this same universe inside ourselves, connecting the selves to yet another selves and back again.

If that makes any sense. I'm tired today and grumpy.