I closed down this blog for a while due to some changes/upheavals/distractions/other important stuff going on in my life. Throughout this time I’ve been without regular Internet access and such a break proved to be as refreshing and re-invigorating as I hoped it would be. You see, I was getting tired of the same old arguments, the pettiness, the rigidity and factionalism that permeate the feminist blogosphere, whilst also finding it hard to keep up with the number of new posts and lengthy comment threads on the topics I was/am keen to engage with.
Such a break has clarified for me that I want to engage with more, do more, be more than the feminist blogosphere seems to allow. Returning my attentions to the blogosphere has roused in me feelings similar to the ones I have on going back to the parental home. There’s that comforting familiarity, but also a stifling staidness to it all, a feeling of needing to say more, of wanting to break out and be more, than that which is allowed.
For whilst I’m still a feminist, I’ve come to a point where I want to write about things that are not so specially tied to ‘feminism’ per se. Maintaining this ‘Feminist’ blog doesn’t appeal to me much anymore, because my interests, inspiration, attentions, and priorities encompass more right now. Feminism still permeates my life, my identity, it’s still a guiding passion, a bedrock of ideals and politics to live by, something that bolsters me. But there’s more going on for me now… I want to talk about other things, other politics, express other sides to myself, delve into the other parts of me, things that I feel can’t be expressed whilst remaining cooped up in the blogosphere box labelled ‘radical feminism’.
My thoughts have turned onto other things lately… stuff that I want to write about & express… but not necessarily here, as ‘LonerGrrrl’. Undoubtedly, feminism is still a part of all this other stuff, for the personal is political, and your feminism cannot be separated off from the other facets of your life & doesn’t stop influencing your thoughts on and responses to other things. But I also don’t want to feel compelled to write about feminism with a capital F all the time…
I also feel like this blog got a bit too theoretical and self-conscious… it started to feel like a burdensome volume of feminist theory, and writing it started to feel a strain, as I felt the need to analyse and account for everything… whereas right now, I want to cut loose from that, I want to be a bit bolder, whilst no less thoughtful, in expressing myself. A part of me wants to return to the personal & everyday, and not always to books and big ideas. Although I still like books and big ideas. But I don’t like theory and writing and talking that is devoid of warmth, emotion, integrity, reality… and yet I also don’t think invoking the personal, the everyday is antithetical to complication and contradiction. I want to mix things up a bit more, not be so tied down.
I’ll no longer update this blog with long feminist analyses, although I’ll leave it open to post other stuff from time to time. I also want to leave it up so what I have written can still be read by others… I think I’ve written some good stuff here, and I want that to be available for others to read.
Instead, I’m thinking of putting together a zine of longer essays/articles/rants/whatever, because there’s a few topics I want to write about, and doing this in a printed form seems to afford me more time to do a better job of it, and the potential lengthy nature of these articles seems better suited to paper than screen.
There’s also other things I want to do, new directions I want to take, in terms of my feminism & otherwise, which I feel will be best served if my energies aren’t so wholly absorbed in the blogosphere as I feel they have been previously.
So, see you around…
Recent Comments