Part 2: Life on a mystical goat farm in Washington

When I wake up, my ego is usually in the way. I have to push her off of me, reprimand her and tell her to shut the hell up. Here it was already late in the day, and she was nowhere to be found.


“Bleeeeigh” A kid, yes, in the baby goat sense, greets me as I stumble onto the 3 foot wooden porch outside of my little shack. I’m chuckling as I write this because Mikyla calls it, “Our fake house.” One thing that I love about the summer is that one doesn’t need much to serve as shelter. The air and shade suffices. Our 10x10 feels luxurious. The caretaker of the farm, who I will refer to as GG, which stands for Goat Goddess gives me a warm hug and welcomes me. This woman spills over with compassion for all two and four legged creatures that wander this Earth. This nurturing drive has caused her much pain in her past. I think that for most of us who feel the need to nurture this is a truth, as we do not discriminate who we are driven to heal. When we find that the sores still fester even though we’ve been giving it our all, we should draw back and realize that we are not meant to be the one to heal that person or even that the person is not meant to heal. Instead, we defiantly give more. Not out of a sense of pride but more out of a refusal to give up. Even when slaughtered, we pick up our gashed and bloody parts and offer them up if it would help anyone. When it comes to healing and replenishing ourselves, we are ridden with guilt and feel a bit selfish. At least I used to, now I revel in self nurturing, and do not punish myself for being amazingly selfish at times, like now, taking this trip. I know that my selfish journey of discovering my authentic self will replenish and inspire me to greater acts of healing and creating, as well as help me be a better mother. We cannot teach our children how to self actualize if we do not practice self actualization ourselves. Art and travel are two wonderful paths to self discovery.

I walk to the edge of the precipice that this little farm sits on. 100 feet below, a river of topaz syrup forms rapids over red, gray, green, brown and black stone. I’ve never seen water quite this color or consistency, like melted down emeralds, turquoise, and amethyst. These riches are most precious but not coveted, this is for everyone.


In a hundred years I imagine that the cliff will erode to the point where this farm will become part of the gorge. There are some places, a few places, where the combination of all of the elements come together in perfect harmony, creating a very magickal energy and healing space. This is that kind of place. It is no surprise to me that the four couples who live here full time, plus the many travelers that I’ve seen come and go, as well as the 14 dogs(6 of them just being born) that live here, are able to do so with very little conflict. Synergy is created between the people who are able to be more because of the others. Harmony between many living beings is not easy to create! In this space, it’s effortless. But it’s not just the space, but the time. Nothing is forever in this world.

GG offers me some goat milk and I hesitantly accept, remembering the goat milk of my childhood, I was afraid it would be really gamey and taste the way most goats smell, I was very pleasantly surprised and now drink about a quart of this whole food daily. What will I do when I go back to L.A. and drink the pasteurized poison from the grocery store? Eh, why worry about the future when the present is such a gift?
GG comes into the little shack and lays a pile of green buds and a little cupcake paper full of bubble hash. “Reny and Bell told me that you need this.” I felt a rush of gratitude. Reny and Bell know. I remember how well they took care of me when I went on tour with them last year. It's much better to hang onto the goodtimes and let go of the bad.

“Thank you so much!” I was completely out and still nauseous and headachy from all of the coffee, tequila, and 2o something hours of driving (not in that order so much) of the past two days. The day was a blur, I slept, I smoked, I was fed. I played with 10 baby goats that nibbled and nuzzled me. One ate a huge chunk of my hair. Mikyla ran around in ecstasy from the baby goats to the dogs to the baby chics and back to the goats. Always in the background was the constant roar of the topaz river. I went to bed before the sun, and felt more grounded when I woke up the next morning.

“We’re going on the lake today on a speed boat.” Says Bell cheerily over a cup of French pressed coffee. We packed margaritas, sandwiches, lots of bud and hash, beer, hummus, chips, fruit and water into the cooler and loaded it onto a small speed boat. Chelan Lake is the third deepest lake in the world. Like a serpent, the lakes winds for 55 miles. Where it is shallow, one can see clear to the bottom. The water is blue and green, almost like tropical, but cold. A wonder to behold.



A is a very Adonis like man in his early 20’s, vivid blue eyes and full lips, a sculpted body and windblown hair. Not a bro-ha however. A kind and generous fellow. He works for his uncle renting boats and sea dos and kyaks and so gets to take a boat for free. I see a big intertube and wakeboards attached and I know that this is gonna be phenomenal. As the boat flies through the water, liquid diamonds and emeralds erupt around us. I hold my hand in the spray, dazzled by the sparkling water slapping against my fingers. The air is sweet with the smell of hash. J, who is A’s girlfriend, held a small orange flag up anytime anyone bailed on the wakeboard or intertube. A beautiful, young woman with dark curly hair, mocha skin and big brown eyes, J seems to always be on the verge of tears but smiling at the same time. Her slim and voluptuous body brings a gasp to my lips. But more beautiful than her physical body is the impression that she is one of those who can hold the utmost joy and saddest pain all at the same time. One of the gifts, or maybe better called, responsibilities of the Goddess. Holding that kind of space is the sign of heroism, I knew that although J was young, she had been to Hades and back, and was still climbing.

Mikyla was very scared at first and didn’t even want to board the boat, but once she felt the thrill of going 60 while doing a 360 she was squeeling in delight. Soon it was Bell’s and my turn, and bell sat on my lap in the intertube. When the boat started going, the weight of my ass compared to the lightness of my feet put us in a perpendicular position to the lake, my head grazing the water and ours toes pointing to the sky. My fists held onto the handles of the intertube like vices and I screamed. My screams turned into the hardest belly laugh I’ve had in a long time. They swung us around, not satisfied until we were dumped into the lake. That shit was more fun than any rollercoaster I have ever been on. Too bad Mikyla was too scared to go on. However, I trust that she knows what kind of thrills she’s ready for, and I’m a little relieved that she is not an adrenaline junky.

The sun, the dazzling lake of precious jewels and mystery (Chelan Lake even has it's own legend of a creature much like the Loc Ness Monster), the margaritas and hash, was all so intoxicating that I felt like I was in a dream. We came back to the farm with a dinner of sweet potatoes, bok choi cabbage and wild asparagus that had been freshly gathered with some rice. Eating healthy is so easy when someone else is cooking for you.

The rest of the week went much the same way. Waves of fun, conversation, hash smoking and relaxing was the theme. I milked a goat named Brigita. Not getting much into the bucket but plenty on myself and the poor goat, it was a bit harder than I thought. It’s a process. On Friday I prepared to leave for two days as I was going to see my beautiful, ultra witchy sister at her mom’s house on the Colville Native Reservation. As I drove through the landscape on highway 97, I thought how awesome it would be seeing Emily again and meeting her mom, who is a wonderful artist and her mom's girlfriend, who is a blue haired, Native American.

For a while now, my witchy fantasy has been to do an intense vision quest alone in the wild. Little did I know, that I would achieve this spiritual goal and that the questions I had been imploring of the universe for the past year would get answered in a most spectacular and psychedelic way.

Life on the road Part 1

I grabbed Mikyla and left the shiny streets of Venice, CA at 4 in the morning. Wanting to get to Mount Shasta by early afternoon, I put the cruise control on 80mph and began the 9 hour trip to find myself. Why do I need to travel so far to find myself? Why am I not right here? I don’t know why but desire to go north drives me. Witchy Poo, the psychic, told me I would go on a trip this summer and it would be too expensive but I would go anyway. Back then I thought, no way, I’ll be more responsible this time. I’ll do what I’m supposed to. I’ll do what a mother is supposed to do. I’ll save money, I’ll sling lattes at Starbucks, I’ll put Mikyla in daycare so that I can make my measly 8 bucks an hour. I’ll jog, I’ll quit smoking, I’ll be what I’m supposed to be.

Then I realized that I am only capable of what I am capable of. That is following my passion. Whatever I’m passionate about seems to get done. Why do I keep trying to be “normal”? I’ll never be that person. I need to get away so that I can strip and peel all of those layers, layers of “you should be…” and “why can’t I be…” and “this is what is supposed to be important.” I needed to find what lies beneath, that would be authentic. That would be me. And then I could ask myself what it is that I’m supposed to be.

Purple clouds dripped rain as Mikyla and I walked up the path to see Castle Craggs rock at Mount Shasta. Suddenly, the rocks came into view and I sucked in a deep breath. The cinematography from Lord of the rings had nothing on this. I felt the first layer slide off of me into the wet soil.

I made dinner and drank a bottle of now, 3 buck chuck, I slipped on mud and slid on my butt the whole way down a small gorge, Mikyla squealed and laughed and so did I. Another layer came off. I folded down the back seats of the car and Mikyla, Yahoo and I slept inside, listening to the rain hit the foggy windows. I thought about the writers whose blogs I frequent. Hobo Stripper, Davka, and Carrot Quinn. They are travelers and seekers too. Of course, they are much more hardcore and brave than I am. My traveling is maybe a bit tamer and more domesticated, with my mom’s car and my savings account at my service. Even though I have my daughter with me, I feel proud that this is really the first time I am road tripping alone. Mikyla is grown not only of my flesh but of my soul as well and so being, she is part of me. She is the purest parts of me manifested into the outside world and put in my charge. I owe it to myself to teach her what is important to me.

The next day was an even longer drive. My destination was Chelan, WA, but I was meeting Sidestreet Reny in Yakima and then following them the rest of the way. An hour after leaving Mt. Shasta, I realized that I had forgotten a very important piece of luggage with all of my prescription medications for asthma and whatnot back at the camp site. I was already in Dorris, Oregon, before I reluctantly turned around and went back to retrieve it. Damn, over two hours was wasted on that.

I arrived in Yakima at 9 pm. The owners of the bar let me bring Mikyla in, they said it was okay until 11. We got to see the show and the music filled me up. Goddess, I miss their shows!

At about 2 am, we began our 3 hour treck to a little goat farm that lies on the edge of a gorge in Chelan, WA. The sun was already rising by the time we got there and I felt like I was seeing angels sitting on the car. I was very tired. I fell into a soft bed in a 10x10 shack. This would be our home for 2 weeks. Listening to the distant roaring of rapids and the morning crowing of roosters, my eyes closed. In my dreams, speckaled baby goats licked a thick coating of rasberry jam off of my neck and face.

road trip

My mom gave me her car. Which means I can sell my old car. Granted, it's a bit banged up and I don't expect to get more than $700 for it. But in the wee hours of this dewy morning, I have an epiphany.

I'm staring at the sidewalk, the dingy light of the street lamp tints the concrete the same color as a nicotine stain. "I'm going to drive north," I say out loud to myself. I look around because my voice doesn't seem to come from within me but more through me. Immediately my heart beats twice as fast and desire washes through my arms, down to my hands. There's that feeling, the one that fills me with a burning energy when I want to do something so badly. The passion that gives me the power to manifest, as if I just shot up some witch steroids. "As soon as I get seven hundred dollars together, my daughter and I are going on a road trip to Washington state." I'm smiling.

songs from WEEDS

I Went Through the Language Rabbit Hole and Came Out a Feminist

A classmate in my guitar class at Santa Monica Community College handed me the book. She told me that she thought it was the perfect book for me. I looked down at the little book in my hand. It was yellow, with a pink daisy on the cover. The title read, Cunt. A Statement of Independence. The author is Ingia Muscio, not anyone that I had ever heard of.

“Cunt?” I looked up at her curiously, “Really? This made you think of me?”

“You’re gonna love it.” She smiled into my eyes and walked out of the classroom. I looked back down at the book and wondered if she was hitting on me.

I flipped the book open to a page towards the beginning. It said, “Cunt is related to words from India, China, Ireland, Rome and Egypt. Such words were either titles of respect for women, priestesses and witches, or derivatives of the names of various goddesses.”(17). My immediate response was not of offense, but of awakening curiosity. I had always been interested in words since I found out that the root of the word, Lucifer, which is the name of the Christian devil, really meant, “bringer of light.” How could the name of the Lord of darkness mean bringer of light? Now I looked at this book and the same spark of curiosity ignited in my brain. How did empowering words for women evolve into the single most degrading word one can call a woman today? How did a word that denoted a degree of such respect as to be derived from the names of Goddesses, come to be profane? Why did a word that referred to a woman’s body part become the worst insult ever, anyway? Little did I know that this pink and yellow paper rectangle in my hand would awaken me to gender oppression, and incite me to empower myself and other women, something that I am so passionate about today, that I have become a women ’s studies major in college. I did not realize before reading this book that language carries with it so much power. I did not know how language has the power to shape culture. I did not know that dominant groups in society use language to oppress others. However, my most important realization was that I cared a lot about how language affects me, my daughter, and other women.

After I read this book I began to look up words in the dictionary to find their roots. Most dictionaries don’t have the word, cunt, but they do have the word vagina. In Cunt, Muscio writes that the root comes from words that mean priestess. When I looked up vagina, I was astonished to find that the latin root meant, sheath to a sword. I had to laugh but then I began to feel angry. Who decided that a woman’s body was created to be an ejaculatory capsule for a man’s sword? How could the men who have been in charge of shaping language for centuries ignore the simple fact that new generations of the human race are delivered solely through that specific space in a woman? A sheath cannot bring new life into the world. A sheath carries no mystery, no cycle, no power, and no respect. A sheath can only hold a sword. How offensive that the word that denotes respect for women becomes profanity, while the denigrating title becomes the accepted term. I was beginning to want to run out of the house and shout, “I love my cunt!”, or high five women in the street and tell them what beautiful cunts they are. I thought about how language affects me. How I’m reluctant to tell people that I’m a single mother, how I felt incomplete and like a failure for not making my marriage work. How the word, woman, denoted a specific role and destiny for me, and that destiny had to do with finding and making happy a man in my life.

Later I read an article from the book, Rape, Sex, Violence, History, and discovered how dangerous this definition of vagina was to women. In the late 1800’s, it was believed that a woman could not be raped. This was due to the, “vibrating sheath” (24). myth. Some crusty, old man had decided that women could vibrate their vagina in such a way as to render it impossible to penetrate. It was considered impossible to insert a sword into a sheath if it was moving around, and this was translated into the belief that if a woman claimed to be sexually assaulted she was lying, because if she really did not want it, she could have simply vibrated her sheath.

I realized then that this one word illustrates the general ideology that women exist only to please men. I began to see in my daily observations of human interaction how both men and women contribute to the perpetuation of this ideal. The language that I had been using in my daily life needed to be examined. All words became subject to my growing suspicion that our language was indeed androcentric, or centered around men, and that this served to oppress women throughout history and in modern day. Why is history, history, anyway? Could this be why the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation in this country are stories about men and their conquests? Was there a herstory? Are the stories and accomplishments of women rendered inconsequential and invisible?

Why are men just men, or male, antonymous and independent? We are women or female, words whose roots mean “of men” or “from men”. I haven’t seen any men birthing any babies, so how are women from men? The race of people on this Earth is currently referred to as mankind or human. There is no word that illustrates the contribution that women have made in this world. None at all. I began to reexamine words used to insult men and found out that they were actually insults against women. The word bastard or son of a bitch are both words to describe a man who is a bad person, or a mean person, yet they are both insults against that man’s mother. This implies that the mother is the reason behind the man’s personality flaws. I wondered if insults like this reflect the general idea that being a single mother is bad, which may be why my cousins are always trying to reassure me that I’ll find another guy. It never occurs to them that maybe another guy is not something I want.

In the American Heritage dictionary, I looked up the word, mensus, another word centered around men, used to describe a biological process that is purely female. The definition said that the mensus is debris that is ejected out of a woman’s vagina. This reminds me of the attitude that boys would take towards a woman’s cycle, a very immature attitude. I remembered my first menstrual cycle; I was 13, on a class trip in New York City. I remember locking myself in the bathroom, reading the directions off of a tampon box, terrified that the curious and snickering boys in my class would find out my terrible secret. In a society where people didn’t define this process as a bloody mess of trash leaking out of my body, maybe my experience, and the experience of many other girls, could have been much better. Yet again, I had found another example of how language had intimately and profoundly affected my own life.

As a child, I often heard the rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” In actuality, I learned, and continue to still learn, how words actually contain the power to shape society and our own personal lives. Words can even be used as weapons, covertly used by dominant groups in society to divide and label people for their own benefit. Other groups are stigmatized and marginalized because of this, and women are not the only victims. Racism, sexism, classism, heterosexual privilege, ableism, and ageism are the dark and bloody waters of which many of the words we wield so casually today were born from. It was not until I picked up that little yellow book with the pink daisy on it that I was awakened to this, and to myself. Today I am a gender and women’s studies major, with a passion for deconstructing these notions and reshaping language to represent and empower everyone. I carry that little book with me, and one day I am going to hand it to another woman, smile into her eyes, and say, “You know, I saw you and I think this book would be perfect for you…”

summer lovin'

Today I wake up feeling inspired about my path for this summer cycle. My semester ends May 14 and I’m ready to stop putting all of my energy into my brain and begin to give to my body and my spirit. I found out that I can fulfill my GAIN requirement (32 hours per week of “gain approved activity” and staying home with your child over summer break is not one of the options) by volunteering! That means that I can get paid child-care to do volunteer work. Now when in my life am I going to be in a position to do that if not now? Even if I did get a mind numbing job slinging lattes for assholes, I would be making not much more than I get in public aid and my “welfare clock” would still be ticking. Besides, working in the non-profit sector would allow me to network and learn from the people who know how to run non-profits! Imagine if I could write a grant proposal to get the funds to buy some property and build a straw-bale, sustainable and healing in a holistic way type of assisted living facility for people who have low-socioeconomic status! I might even be able to use the experience to credit one of my independent studies that I have to do next semester. I’m thinking of volunteering at the LGTBQ center in WeHo and the Hollywood chapter of NOW. Hmmm. I wonder if service learning weekends at the perma-culture ranch in Santa Barbara would count. I’ve already made my “volunteer resume.”
The other thing that I want to do is be in my body. In the middle of the school semester, I really lose that and I let myself live in my brain while my body eats donughts. Well, now that I have terrible allergic reactions to bread, I won’t be eating donughts, or pizza, or cheeseburgers. I want to eat delicious foods that look beautiful and nurture my body while giving me pleasure. I see myself sipping the milk out of a coconut while eating raviolis made out of thinly sliced radish and filled with macadamia butter. I want to switch my coping mechanism of smoking Parliments to breathing. Yes, just breathing. Yoga, walking on the beach, hiking, kravmaga, swimming, and biking are going to take up hours of my day. I’m going to talk to my body, be in my body, celebrate my body, give love to my body, and get the exercise I need to feel healthy and balanced. Not to mention have the opportunity to connect to nature on a daily basis. One of the wonderful things about California is that one gets the opportunity to turn their back on the city and experience the nurturing land and ocean just by doing a 180.

Which brings me to nurturing my spirit. My spiritual practice has been pretty much null lately, except I do still bless myself in the shower and pray to the parking Goddess every day. This summer, I want to care for a little herb garden on my front porch, I want to play my guitar in the sun and learn all of the songs that make me feel really light when I sing them. I want to buy a “writing hat”(maybe one like old country blues musicians wear?) and go to unusual places where I can drink coffee and type all of my memories and stories and character makeups into my little, black computer, or read all of my favorite authors. In fact, I want to spend just as much time writing and reading for pleasure as I do being in my body. But I never want to write at home, I always want to go somewhere and write. Anyplace would do, a coffee shop, a dive bar, under a tree, in front of a museum. It will be an adventure.
Even further I want to ritualize everything. Especially the mundane. How do I make doing laundry magickal? Could I fold extra love and protection into my kid’s clothes? On the full moons I want to hike in the mountains; on the new moons I want to create astral temples and vision boards. I want to pretend that I’m on vacation all of the time, and go see all of the things in L.A. that tourists see and I take for granted. I have never taken my picture in front of Grommes Chinese with those cement hand and foot prints of old time Hollywood stars. I think it’s time.

The New Wave of Feminism is Leaving Campuses and Infiltrating the Web

In the past few decades, feminism has spread across many of the Universities around the country. Many colleges now have a Women’s Studies department, and one can find classes on feminist theory, history and methods. Even academic research has changed due to feminism. Feminism has affected every aspect of our academic lives, including the language we use, as well as how we gain social knowledge. Today, a new wave of feminism is building, and it is off of the campus and in the internet in the form of blogging. This expansion of feminist knowledge out of academia is crucial to the movement in this day and age where information technology is booming. Blogs not only serve feminist research practice by providing immense qualitative data from many marginalized walks of life, but also changes the language of feminism from that of academia to a language that is accessible to many other people who are not scholars or go to college.


Furthermore, blogging eradicates most discrimination when it comes to free speech as most people from any economic background can have access to this free form of publishing. And there are no stipulations about race, sex, class, sexuality and other aspects that can bar someone from writing a blog. Absolutely anyone who can read and write and has access to a local library’s internet is able to have a blog. As a forum for debate, a blog can be more critical than a campus debate because there are no speech codes enforced on the argument. Speech codes are campus guidelines for acceptable speech on campus. The reason that these codes can represent a threat to free speech is the simple question of who gets to decide what indeed acceptable speech is. In the blogging forum there are no codes, rules or guidelines that one must adhere to in order to speak. Even if one is extremely offensive, they cannot be silenced in this particular forum. This no holds bar freedom of speech within the blogosphere is what makes blogging so powerful. One can go on the internet and read almost every point of view, from the ultimate religious conservative to the anarchist prostitute.


Before, social scientists placed primary importance on quantitative research, that is, research that is numerical at its base, can cover a large number of people, and be generalized to a certain group. This type of research comes from a sociological scientific ideology called positivism, where information that is considered social fact must be collected from a purely objective, non-biased, value free researcher. However, women have found that fitting knowledge about women into this paradigm only served to subjugate us further. We know now that the view of positivism in the academic, social science arena is not unbiased at all, but comes from the perspective of the dominant group in society who created and presided over the field for so long. Namely, those with sex, race, heterosexual, ability, and class privilege. In Feminist Research Practice, Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Lina Leavy insist that, “…feminist disciplinary goals…aim to avoid hierarchies and unearned privileging of quantitative methodologies” (276). Quantitative research alone does not serve to illuminate the experiences of the marginalized, invisible and oppressed groups. Secondary to quantitative research is what is called qualitative research. This is research that is not about numerical data but focuses more on the experience of the individual in a certain group through involved interviews with that person. Feminists were worried that quantitative research leaves out the whole story and has the ability to misrepresent women and girls in the research findings. We know that research conducted on women and girls can profoundly affect their lives, and the feminist goal in research is not to do research “on women and girls but for them.”(250). To put women, girls, and other marginalized groups in the center, a new way of gaining knowledge is critical. Feminism helped launch the acceptance of a different type of research, one that does not value numbers or generalizations but instead places critical importance on the thoughts, feelings, language and daily experiences that an individual goes through in their life. This is called feminist standpoint research, and is very important to feminist epistemology, or how we gain knowledge about women and other oppressed groups. According to Feminist Research Practice, “Feminists, in contrast, give priority to actors’ own subjective experience and emphasize the emotional aspects of social life grounded in concrete, daily experiences. For them, data must be qualitative in order to reveal these aspects.”(268). Because all forms of sharing experience are valid in this methodology; poetry, art, journaling, music and much more are now all accepted forms of knowledge. Blogging is no exception.


We may be familiar with the old, childhood rhyme, “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” As a feminist, I hold this to be false. Language is very important in shaping social ideology, which in turn shapes social policy, and even our face to face encounters with our associates, friends and family. Rosalie Maggio writes in her essay, Bias-Free Language: Some Guidelines, that, “Language goes hand in hand with social change – both shaping and reflecting it. Sexual harassment was not a term anyone used 20 years ago; today we have laws against it. How could we have the law without the language?” (471). In this quote, Maggio illuminates the importance of bringing the language of feminism to the average person and how this language has had a profound effect on our laws and our lives. To this day, the word feminist is subject to misunderstanding, due to the media backlash against it that started in the 1980’s. Today, that can be repaired if the word feminist is normalized and has widespread recognition. If feminism is really for everybody, as I firmly believe that it is, it needs to be presented in a language that everyone can understand. Because of the wide reach of the internet into the homes and minds of so many, blogging can be the antidote to the feminist backlash that we still suffer from, as well as bring the language of gender equality into the everyday lives of many people.


Another reason to take feminism to the blogosphere is to separate feminist writing from political rhetoric, a form of writing that George Orwell, author of 1984, believes is designed to, “…even think your thoughts for you…” (210). Political writing in the form of propaganda is given very little respect in some corners of the literary community and has been described by Orwell in Politics and the English Language, as, “the enemy of truth and the cause of linguistic degeneration…that endanger free thought and truth…”(204). Even though feminist blogging could indeed be political, feminist writers seek to deviate as far away as possible from stereotyping, biased language, and exclusionary language. The type of language that Orwell describes as, “ugly and inaccurate…[and] makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” (205). If people are swayed to embrace equality and compassion from a blog, it is not because of a savvy political writer’s ability to wield euphemisms, glittering generalities, and gobbleydegook. These are all forms of propaganda that purposely ignites our emotions in order to control our thoughts and come with many logical fallacies. This is not the language of feminism. From a feminist perspective, empowerment has come from refusing to be silent, sharing knowledge with other women, and naming those things that oppresses us as well as uplifts us. Never does it come from manipulating the thoughts and feelings of others.


The argument against blogging is the same as the reason why it’s so powerful. That anyone and everyone can blog and that there are no rules and regulations to control it. Opponents of feminist blogging believe that the information cannot be trustworthy because it does not come from academic sources. I believe that this view is biased towards scholars and de-values people who may not be college graduates. I do not believe that anyone should be disregarded because of their academic status, or lack of it, just like I do not believe that people should be de-valued for their economic status, race or gender.


Some feminists still oppose blogging, believing that women should be out on the streets creating social change, instead of wasting their time writing about whatever they deem interesting at the moment. But even those who oppose blogging have their own blog. One woman, who goes by “Mother Jones,” writes on her blog that, “Today's feminists need to blog less and work more. If women want reproductive choice to remain more than rhetoric, they'd better stop assuming these clinics will be there when they need them… OK. Tell me exactly what today's feminists are doing for the struggle.”


In response to her post, another woman blogger who calls herself Holly, writes, “I am often asked what I am doing for feminism and what I tell them is that I blog. I share my feminist ideals on my blog and encourage educated and informed conversations on a wide range of topics that matter to me, to humans, and to my feminist activism. Many people don’t think that blogging is enough, but if you read the bulk of feminist, womanist, and humanist blogs out there, most of the topics that are brought up for discussion come directly from living life and being a humanist out in the big, sometimes cruel, always controversial world.”


This exchange of ideas between feminists is very important if we are to unify ourselves to create social change. There are numerous debates within the feminist community that take place in various feminist blogs. It is critical that this dialog happen if the movement is to evolve and become successful in diversifying and including all women from all walks of life. Because of the ability to get the point of view of so many different types of women, the feminist movement itself is better at being inclusionary to all of us through blogging. Those voices that have been previously invisible in a movement that was predominantly white and of upper middle class can now be heard. Women of color, lesbians, girls, sex workers, house wives, immigrant mothers, single mothers, transgendered women, disabled women, welfare recipients, and too many others all now have a better chance at getting their stories heard and their troubles addressed. In this day and age, diversifying, not homogenizing our numbers in the feminist movement is key to accomplishing the social change that we so adamantly want in our lives and in the world in general.


Consciousness raising has been a tool of the feminist activist since the first wave. Historically, it is how the feminist movement began. Many times this was done by getting a group of women physically into a room together so that they could talk to each other and share their individual experiences which serve to illuminate the oppressive forces in society. The blogosphere is a virtual room where consciousness raising is taking place on an international level, 24 hours a day.
Feminism has needed a vehicle to take it out of the universities and into the everyday lives of people in order to be successful. Because of technology, blogging is that vehicle. Not only is it bringing the language of gender equality and humanism in general to the masses, but it is also changing the way we gain knowledge about women and girls. Most importantly, the stories, feelings, thoughts and experiences of women and girls from all walks of life and all over the world are accessible to the masses. The voices of the marginalized no longer have to be invisible, and we have the ability now, with blogging, to see the many different perspectives that are presented, not just what mainstream media decides to feed us. For the feminist movement, blogging can be the way to expand, diversify, dialogue and gain insight in order to create social change that benefits women, girls, and other oppressed groups. Feminism has escaped the bars of academia, and we can now share our language with the masses, thanks to the medium of blogging.

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