The Cutprice Guignol

Alright, my loves, I’ve got a nice wee coffee, I’m sitting in the chair I got for peanuts from a charity shop that I’ve finally finished doing up, and I feel like I’d enjoy a pleasant little informal chat on this here old blog of mine about personal growth.

I think I’ve made it quite clear on this blog that I’ve not always been a feminist. In fact, I would outrightly say that I was a bit of a misogynist douchebag for a long time; I’m genuinely thankful for the feminist movement, for the friends and community I’ve found in it, but I’d be lying if I said that I’d always felt the way I do now. Or that I expect to keep feeling that way for the rest of my life.

This blog of mine has been around for nearly ten years now, and it’s parsed out a lot of really personal parts of my life – my mental health, my sexuality, my vagina, my partner, my horrible little cats. This blog was where I figured myself out, for better, for worse. I actually really enjoy looking back on stuff that I wrote here nearly a decade ago, looking at the way my writing, my views, myself have changed. And, while I was for sure coming out the other side of the worst of my woman-hating phase when I started writing here, there’s still stuff that reflects, to put it lightly, an attitude that I don’t hold anymore. Not just about women, but about a lot of things – LGBTQ rights, TV shows, alcohol, all of it.

I’ve been considering lately removing some of those old articles that don’t put me in the best light, but honestly, I want to leave them there (even if I have gone back to edit some language that I don’t think was sensitive or appropriate). Not only is this a little internet archive of my life and development from seventeen years old to nearly twenty-seven years old (don’t make me think about how much time has passed, that’s illegal), but I think it’s a good reminder to me of how far I had to come to get to the point that I’m at now – the development, personally, politically, all of it, that it took to land me where I am now.

I think it’s tempting, sometimes, to ask for this kind of ideological purity from people when it comes to certain ideas, and I know I’ve been guilty of being too blunt when it comes to the standards I expect from those around me. I need that reminder, sometimes, often, even, that I’ve not always been where I am now – that the version of me who existed ten, five, one year ago held ideas and beliefs that the version of me now does not, and that I needed to go through those ideas to get where I am at this moment.

Putting your mistakes and your previous viewpoints on the internet might not be a particularly smart idea. But for me, that record of how much I’ve changed is a reminder that it takes time to get to where you’re going – if you ever actually get there at all. I have been, and still very much remain, in progress.