... Then I Will Shut Up

A second/final acknowledgement, and I will stop.  For tonight.

This blog is intended to be my pubic, authorial presence online.  I'm aware when it gets tangential, and believe it or not, this is not entirely unplanned.

Of late, between the anger I encountered, stopping me in my tracks recently, and the experiences with my past sexual harasser (his last day is tomorrow; today I was able to say exactly no goodbye, and will never lay eyes on him again), it may be obvious to some why the tangents have become increasingly focused on feminism.

I'm aware this alienates a certain audience, and perhaps someday I'll have an agent, publisher, or even a PR drone to tell me this must not be allowed in my public persona.

Today is not that day.  And I am no more a processed, telegenic Evil Sexbot than I am a published author right now.  When I feel a responsibility to something beyond The Ax and the Vase or my other products and work, it is still my freedom to use my voice.

I don't look forward to ever stifling myself again - though, to be sure, I may prove willing to provide a professional public face sans certain polemic.

But even with this awareness, the woman I am serves the work I have produced and will continue to put out.  (Yeah.  I caught the entendre there.  "Feminism" also doesn't mean I have no sense of humor - so it stands.)

I consider myself an essential storyteller in that I refuse to enslave myself to didactic themes - but the woman I am, and the beliefs I maintain, are the source of the things I write.

As a feminist, my female characters aren't allowed to be feminists.  Still, they aren't stifled.  They are remarkable to me, they teach me how to maneuver without denying the realities they faced.  They seem to love men, though the one central to the work in progress does so with all the complexity and even twisted impulses and motivations we as human beings seem to heap onto the process of loving.

I don't want to alienate anybody.

But damned, right now, if any of you will ever see me stifled again.