Small Strokes Big Oaks

Bio
I am Laura Sundstrom, a 22-year-old college graduate. I grew up in East Grand Rapids, MI. This is a Christian, conservative community that my parents moved to so that I could have a good education. Growing up, especially during high school, I was used to being the one liberal, feminist among my friends or in a class (but I don’t know if I would have described myself as a feminist when I was that age). In high school, I also saw entitlement and privilege at work among most of my classmates because the neighborhood was one of the richest in the area, even though my family did not fit into that.

I went to college at Beloit College in Beloit, WI, a place completely different than that of my childhood and high school. Here I was able to give a voice and an argument to my opinions. This is where I found feminism and developed myself as a feminist. I majored in Women’s and Gender Studies and one of my proudest projects was one that I completed with two friends about the cultural implications of breasts.

I graduated from Beloit College in May 2009 with a B.A. cum laude. I am currently back living in Grand Rapids, MI and looking for a job. Ultimately I want to end up in nonprofit work focusing of reproductive rights and women’s issues. In my spare time, that which is not spent looking for a job or volunteering at Planned Parenthood, I work on my blog, Adventures of a Young Feminist (http://youngfeministadventures.blogspot.com).

1. Define the online feminist blogging community.
The feminist blogging community exists as a way for feminists to enter into conversation with one another and develop theories and ideas in a supportive atmosphere. One of the most important parts of the feminist blogging community is the conversation that it fosters among feminists as well as with people outside of the feminist blogging community. I see feminist blogging as a form of activism. Activism, in this way, is any attempt to raise awareness about feminist issues and foster some form of change. Feminist bloggers raise awareness about feminist issues in every post that they write.

Even though I see all feminist blogs as a small form of activism, the feminist blogging community is very spread out and, like feminism itself, very wide ranging. Feminist blogs tackle a wide variety of issues through a feminist lens, from race and class, to pop culture and politics. I think that it is beneficial to have all of these voices and opinions, but sometimes there is a lot to read and a lot to tackle, emotionally, mentally, and academically. Not to say that this is necessarily a bad thing, it is just overwhelming sometimes, just like feminism is.

And every feminist bloggers voice deserves to be heard. That is one thing that is so great about the blogosphere; everyone’s voice can be heard. This is especially beneficial for people whose voices are usually silenced by society. As feminists, we should listen to every woman’s voice, even if we disagree with her. Women’s voices deserve to be heard because they are generally silenced by society and it also helps to foster the ever-important coversation.

The feminist blogging community has also allowed me a space where I feel like I fit in. It’s hard to feel that way right now having left my physical proximity to my friends after college and living in a community that overall does not share my values. In the feminist blogging community, I can find people that share my values or are willing to debate my values with me. In addition to blogging, there are so many other technological tools that I use in tandem with my blogging, such as Facebook and Twitter that help to foster this feminist community that I have come to cherish.

2. Tell me about how you became a blogger.
During college, I was used to having daily conversations and debates about feminism and other social justice issues. I grew accustomed to have that sort of community around me; a community that wasn’t afraid to talk about important and controversial issues. After I graduated and was no longer in that kind of environment, I realized how much that kind of community had meant to me and I started to miss it.

I have only been blogging for a little over a month now (I started in mid June 2009). After graduation, I started reading more feminist blogs than I had in college as a way to keep up with my feminist news and keep my analytical skills tuned. In June, I attended to National NOW (National Organization for Women) Conference in Indianapolis, IN. Here I attended a workshop on feminist blogging led by the authors of Viva la Feminista, Appetite for Equal Rights, and Jump Off the Bridge. This workshop, where they talked about the importance of having your voice heard and the community that blogging brings, is where I decided to start my blog.

I came home on a Sunday and that day is when I started my blog. I came to blogging with the idea that I would spread my feminist values and build a community around my blog.

3. Tell me about your blogging experience now.
I am still new to blogging, so I am still learning some of the ropes. I am constantly debating about how many posts I should write in a day or a week, if I don’t have a wide enough range of topics in my posts, etc. I am really pleased with how my blog has developed over the past month. I have people reading my blog who seem to value my opinion and I have had some people comment on my blog that do not share my opinion. I value this aspect of it because I did want to foster conversation with my blog. A big part of that is debating issues and values and you need people who disagree with you to foster this kind of conversation. A lot of what I blog about is the intersection of feminism and pop culture, but I also think that it is important to convey important feminist news to my readers as well. I also write posts about my investments in feminism and what I see as important in “the feminist agenda.”

4. Tell me about a time that you were misread or misunderstood on your blog.
Since I am new to blogging and have a small following, I have not had too many instances where I was misread or misunderstood, or at least not that I know about. I guess this example that I am about to give is an instance of being misunderstood. I recently received an email from a reader attacking me for deleting his comment. This was what I would call a technological misunderstanding, because it was a technological glitch that caused his comment to not come through.

He saw this as a silencing of his voice and as a result attacked my investments in feminism. He accused me of armchair philosophy and not doing anything to further the feminist cause. While supposedly deleting his comment and armchair philosophy might not seem entirely connected, his argument did make sense, even if it wasn’t true.

From that original email that he sent, our conversation about it progressed in a very interesting way. I responded to him by letting him know that I did not delete his comment, that it must have been a technological glitch and that I was not going to legitimize any of his other arguments with a response because I saw it as a personal attack. From there he apologized and explained his reasoning and position on feminism (which I am not going to go into in order to not reveal too many personal details about this individual). The email conversation that resulted from this misunderstanding inspired me to write a post about blogging as a form of activism…so there was some good that came out of it this misunderstanding.

5. Describe your process of writing online.
Right now, blogging is really my only form of writing. I have a constant list of ideas for blog posts going that I look to for inspiration. But usually, I get my ideas from reading other blogs, receiving some feminist news, or from what I watch, what I see in the world, and my investments in feminism. I don’t really have a set structure for my blog posts, I just kind of write until I have nothing else to say. Like the structure, I don’t really have a set length for my posts either. It just depends on how much I have to say about a topic. Posts about my investments in feminism tend to be a little longer, but that is not always the case. I try to write at least one post a day, but sometimes I let this go on the weekend if I am doing something else. I also try to write no more than four posts a day because I don’t want to overwhelm my readers, and I can save some of those ideas for a day when inspiration isn’t coming as easily.

6. Describe your online reading habits.
I have way too many blogs that I follow. I use Google Reader to keep track of all of them and try to at least skim through all of the blog posts that come through there. I am always looking for new feminist blogs to read because I think that each feminist blogger has something important to add to the conversation. I find new blogs mainly through blogs that I already follow. I look at comments on both my blog and the blogs that I follow to see if there are any new blogs that I find interesting. I also look at who the blogs I follow are referencing in their posts – where the blogs that I already follow get their inspiration, because I would probably like that blog as well.

I share interesting posts on feminist blogs that I find with my readers in a weekly post containing links to posts that I have not already discussed in the previous week. I call this post “This Week in Blogs” and include posts that I find interesting or important to the discussion of feminist values. I try to include at least one post from some of my favorite blogs in these posts, so the lists have grown with each week as I find new feminist blogs. Finding and sharing these feminist blogs and posts fosters community and conversation because it encourages an informed and meaningful discussion about feminist issues.

You can follow Laura on Twitter at http://twitter.com/YFemAdventures
For more information on the Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community project, and to see all of the interviews, click here. Have something to add? Comment or e-mail me at smallstroke (at) gmail (dot) com.