Sady Doyle from the fantastic Tiger Beatdown blog gave Hoyden About Town a shout-out in a piece she wrote for In These Times – Blogging Sisterhood: How feminist blogs saved my life. So here’s a shout-out back, to one of my favourite writers!

Feminist blogs saved my life. They gave me a community when I felt alone. They gave me hope, provided me with a free education and raised my expectations for myself. They helped me overcome a writer’s block that had lasted since college. They radically changed my conception of writing.
[…]
Several of the books I read were by people who ran blogs; I started reading them. I read Feministing. I also read Jezebel, Feministe, Shakesville, Womanist Musings, I Blame The Patriarchy, Racialicious, Feminists With Disabilities, Hoyden About Town and (sooner or later) several dozen Tumblrs. Their writing felt vital and rare.

These blogs woke me up politically. I suddenly saw more than just dating problems and wardrobe issues: I saw double standards, beauty standards, sexual policing, gender roles. And I began to understand, too, how small those concerns were, and how my obsessive focus on them was intrinsically tied to my privilege. The blogs transformed me from an anxiously navel-gazing private person into a… well, into an anxiously navel-gazing political person. But a political person!

Blogging has definitely made me a more political person, and reading other people’s blogs is by far the most important way I jiggle my brain cells around political ideas. I’m so chuffed that our blog has been a small part of the political awakening of such an interesting writer (I’m always happy to see a new post from Sady in my RSS reader) and glad to be part of a subculture whose awkward questions of and challenges to the received wisdom about social expectations and hierarchies actually changes the way that some of our readers engage with the world.

Please share your favourite Sady Doyle post (or Twitter explosion) from the last few years in comments. I also have a request: if you’re a regular reader and you’ve got something burning to say about “double standards, beauty standards, sexual policing, gender roles” etc, please do consider submitting it to us as a guest post (via email). Cross-posts from your own blogs are very welcome. We’d love to hear from and encourage more new voices to broaden our horizons and enrich our introspections.

Categories: ethics & philosophy, gender & feminism, media, Meta, social justice

Tags: interblog, the blogosphere, the femmosphere