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sunflowerpIt occurred to me, after the TIWAFFL intro post, that I really hadn't done as much feminist reading as I should, and there were too many ideas floating around that I didn't know enough about if I wanted to post about them intelligently.
In the (still ongoing, probably lifelong) process of rectifying my ignorance, I discovered that I'd been correct; I didn't know (enough about) what I was talking about. Oh, I could talk about my ideas as a feminist, but I wouldn't be able to put them in context of feminism, except in a very general way.
The other effect of poking about was Too Much Stuff. All sorts of thought-provokery, and the thoughts it had provoked, interconnected and overlapping, complex chains of memetic DNA. One of my obstacles in writing has long been that I'm very conscious of connections; fields of study don't exist in neat vacuum-sealed compartments, but run into each other, bite each other's tails, step on each other's heels, and fall into each other's beds in massive polysexual orgies. (Just wait until I get my thought-flow organized enough to talk about how the "scarcity" and "abundance" economic models can be applied to feminist-related issues!)
The thought-flow is becoming more organized, but something has to give as far as writing about it is concerned; I think that "something" is (some of the) structure. I like my "major" posts to be essay-like, albeit conversational and informal, and usually do a first handwritten draft to make sure a post is reasonably on-topic, moves naturally from one idea to the next, and gives at least a nod to the intro-body-conclusion pattern. Those drafts aren't happening; I start, and next thing I know my mind has pursued six different connections in different directions. So I think the thing to do is grab an idea and type, and let the part of my brain that manages structural stuff on the fly (as, for example, spoken conversation) maintain organization as best it can. (It appears to work fairly well so far - evidently, I'm accustomed to using the act of typing as a focal aid.)
In the (still ongoing, probably lifelong) process of rectifying my ignorance, I discovered that I'd been correct; I didn't know (enough about) what I was talking about. Oh, I could talk about my ideas as a feminist, but I wouldn't be able to put them in context of feminism, except in a very general way.
The other effect of poking about was Too Much Stuff. All sorts of thought-provokery, and the thoughts it had provoked, interconnected and overlapping, complex chains of memetic DNA. One of my obstacles in writing has long been that I'm very conscious of connections; fields of study don't exist in neat vacuum-sealed compartments, but run into each other, bite each other's tails, step on each other's heels, and fall into each other's beds in massive polysexual orgies. (Just wait until I get my thought-flow organized enough to talk about how the "scarcity" and "abundance" economic models can be applied to feminist-related issues!)
The thought-flow is becoming more organized, but something has to give as far as writing about it is concerned; I think that "something" is (some of the) structure. I like my "major" posts to be essay-like, albeit conversational and informal, and usually do a first handwritten draft to make sure a post is reasonably on-topic, moves naturally from one idea to the next, and gives at least a nod to the intro-body-conclusion pattern. Those drafts aren't happening; I start, and next thing I know my mind has pursued six different connections in different directions. So I think the thing to do is grab an idea and type, and let the part of my brain that manages structural stuff on the fly (as, for example, spoken conversation) maintain organization as best it can. (It appears to work fairly well so far - evidently, I'm accustomed to using the act of typing as a focal aid.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-20 07:33 pm (UTC)But I'm pretty sure you don't have to understand all of feminism to identify as a feminist. It's such a fractitious field that the word itself barely tells people anything about your beliefs anyway; the term's been used so many ways that when you use it for yourself you can pretty much self-define what it means to you.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-23 03:10 am (UTC)My pet analogy applies here, as well - one doesn't have to understand all the many and diverse Pagan religions to identify as Pagan, but self-defining what being Pagan means for oneself, without doing any research to put it in context, is a recipe for fluffiness. Worse yet, limiting one's "research" to one or two, or even several, books that have an axe to grind about some particular flavor of Paganism.
The axe-grinding is even worse in Feminist Writing (if you say that out loud, you should be able to hear the upper case). A lot of what I'm after is to figure out what axes are being ground, and why.