Ethos

So.

My first several blog posts contain some stuff about feminism, and more specifically, they contain some not-quite-but-almost-generalizations about womens' experiences, and offer a lot of blanket advice to "men" about how to not be perceived as sexist. 

Here is what I learned from sharing my blog posts with some people I care about, and who I know care about me: while statistically speaking, not-quite-generalizations about bias may be more true than not, I've learned that statistics tend not to matter when I'm trying to empathize with a person, or share a personal story, or get someone to understand what I'm feeling. Particularly if the person I'm interacting with is not (or doesn't consider her/himself) included in the statistic. 

I also realized that I make a lot of proclamations, and giving advice to an audience who didn't really ask for it feels wrong for me. I'm very anti-guru. Plus, I know that I personally can be given a piece of good advice a dozen times and still never really "get" it until I am at a point in my life when I'm ready to learn. 

I've decided to set a sort of standard - an ethos - for this blog, going forward. 

I want to try to be as clear as possible that anything I write about is based on my own, personal experience. I can only tell my own stories, and my readers can only relate my stories to their own, personal stories. 

I want to stop making proclamations that dictate how I want people to behave. Instead, I want to encourage people to recognize that choices about how we interact with other people do exist, and that they get to "choose how [they] construct meaning from experience". 

I want to communicate that everyone's personal experience - and the emotional conclusions they draw from them - are valid. The logical conclusions may not be right, but the feelings they feel can never be wrong.

In other words - more empathy, more productive conclusions, less offense and anger. That doesn't mean I won't express being offended or angry - it just means I won't approach my blog from a jumping off point of offense or anger. I want a positive thing to reflect who I am!