Where God Meets Girl

Sitting down to my nightly computering, I thought to myself "Hey, I seem to like feminist blogs a lot. I wonder what other ones are out there right now, saying enlightened, meaningful things that I haven't yet heard?" My old friend google gave me a whole list of feminist blogs, and one of those little beauties is a place called Feministe, one of my favorite blogs so far.

Feministe declares itself one of the oldest feminist blogs, and this one's as much an oldie/goodie as is Doris Day. Feministe features guest bloggers of a wide variety, which makes reading it seem like a wondrous chorus of beautiful angels. Or also like a lot of people blogging. Whichever image works for you.

One of the guest bloggers that caught my eye was Aunt B, especially in her post about her personal search for a more feminist-friendly religion. She takes what may, on the surface, seem a confrontational post about her personal unhappiness with the Christian religion, and turns it into an open and honest discussion of just what about Christianity made her seek a religion elsewhere. She prefaces her whole argument with a parenthetical warning to all those who would assume she's making a personal attack. I particularly love her use of the phrase "woo-woo crap", and so loved the way in which she phrases her preface that I've posted it here for you to enjoy as well.

(I probably don’t need to do this, but let me just say that the following post is going to contain a bunch of woo-woo crap. If that’s not your thing, please don’t make a big issue about how stupid it is or how I’m going to Hell or how we all need to embrace Christianity or secular humanism or whatever. I understand that, if you’re born and raised in certain religious traditions, the kinds of stuff that may come up here can be very shocking and distressing. I also understand that, if you think that spirituality is hokum, the urge to share how stupid and deluded people with religious beliefs are can be overwhelming. I’m still going to ask y’all to treat anyone who will share openly with respect. And I will try to talk gracefully and unselfconsciously about it, myself.)

I think it's not just in her conversational tone that she conveys her very playful, yet simultaneously serious subject matter that make her extremely likeable as a guest blogger. It's this disclaimer before the post that makes me think "Hey, this lady's watching out for her audience." She comes right out of the gate ready to not offend people, but to open an honest conversation about two things that are usually touchy subjects for some people. The questions she poses to her readers at the end of her post tell me that she really does want to engage the reader in a dialogue, rather than preach at them (pun intended, but also apologized for). Her writing is flexible, fallible, and conversational, making her seem all the more honest for it.