Small Strokes Big Oaks

Kate Rohdenburg

Bio
Name: Kate Rohdenburg
Age: 24
Location: NH
Occupation: Youth Violence Prevention Education and Community Outreach Coordinator (serious!)
Education: BA in Media Communications
Blog: http://www.theconsequencesofanakedfoot.blogspot.com/

1. Define the online feminist blogging community.
A common comment I get is that feminism is an academic term that unless people have taken classes (usually in college) they feel uncomfortable taking on because they don’t really know what it’s about. When I was first starting to claim the term for myself, I remember a friend challenging me and saying “what kind of feminist? Liberal? Radical? Lesbian? Womanist?… I remember feeling really unprepared to respond and really shaken about my newfound association.

I think that the presence of feminism and feminists online, particularly in the blogging world, can decrease these feelings of exclusion. People now have much broader opportunities to familiarize, personalize, and research about feminism, and can find similar sentiments, regardless of whatever types of feminism makes sense to them.

As I’ve progressed in my own definition, blogs have been helpful. I started with Feministing and Jezebel, found I Blame the Patriarchy, then Stop Porn Culture. As different things within feminism have become more important at certain times, I’ve been able to reach out to communities – Planned Parenthood, Sistersong, PreventConnect, and beyond to learn more. I think they’re all important – when I was starting out, the stories in Bitch and Feministing and Jezebel made sense to me, they were easy to relate to and fairly obvious in how sexism exists, but doesn’t hold these ladies back from being hip. I Blame the Patriarchy and Stop Porn Culture (and the late, great Angry Brown Beaver) went deeper with me – that these concessions we make in order to be hip are still harmful. It brought me back to the original sense of revolution in not just commenting on pop-culture, but looking at our own complacency in the pop-culture.

I think the idea of selling/marketing is interesting. I like to think of myself as sharing, but more power to people who can make money being feminist!

2. Tell me about how you came to be a blogger.
College was a huge growth period for me as ideas began to formulate and solidify around my sense of feminism. Unfortunately the feminist collective on campus didn’t feel like what I was looking for in my own exploration. I began blogging because my friends were only so interested in hearing and seeing the things that were blowing my mind. And I wanted to document the journey for myself, and anyone else who might be going along the same way. I wanted to write about all the things that were exciting to me.

3. Tell me about your blogging experience now.
I don’t think of myself as a writer – as a blogger, I think more of myself as a conduit for ideas. I find things that resonate with me, and want to pass them along for discussion. I am a facilitator by nature and may have some comments (and at times, rants), but I really thrive on the dialogue and continue to blog as a way to have those conversations with myself, with the articles or elements that I post, and with commenter or readers.

4. Tell me about a time you were misread or misunderstood on your blog.
My father LOVES to misinterpret things that I post. Mostly as instigation. I try to breathe deeply and let other people respond (some of my best comment threads are when people are fired up by my father). That’s been both activating and really inspiring. They help me to think more clearly.

5. Describe your process of writing online.
I try to save things of interest to delve more deeply into at a later time. These tend to sit around until they’re irrelevant. More successfully I have time and something to say that is quick and succinct and is posted to solicit thought whether readers share those thoughts in comments, or later in their private life.

6. Describe your online reading habits.
I overwhelm myself. I tend to read something and it’s linked to someone else that’s awesome and I feel myself inspired ALL THE TIME and want to keep track and remember and follow. I tried to add them all on all my networks, but when you’ve a reader that’s consistently over 1000 you’re never going to have the time to read them all and it was just adding to my sense that there was too much for me to keep up. I’m trying to be better in my process of organizing, triaging, and using the networks/blogs for my own purposes and my own self fulfillment, not because I feel responsible to do a post a day or read 1000 other posts. I have to remind myself that there’s learning to happen offline as well.

I like the idea of trusting others to highlight need-to-read things and I’m experimenting with letting some things go in order to improve the quality of what I can do.

You can follow Kate on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dancinggrapes
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.