Sarah's writing journal

If I'm honest, the town where I live, Tunbridge Wells, isn't known for being an active feminist centre. It's a by-word - if you don't know it - for the kind of old-fashioned Colonel who has time to write letters to newspapers about anything even slightly new or radical, and a quick google for the catchphrase, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells brings up 39,400 entries! So hurrah - once again - for the internet as I've just discovered feministing, and can get a daily feed of what's happening in New York. There's also a great interview with the founder, Jessica Valenti here, and I just liked her more and more as I read on. This woman is FUNNY. And inspiring. This is what she says about blogging:

Blogging is my activism. I mean, I certainly do “real world” activism as well, but there’s something really satisfying about doing Feministing. I think about it as a blog that has the potential to inform women’s activism. I think that feminism and blogs just make sense together. I mean, the whole feminist mantra of “the personal is political” is played out in a really amazing way through blogging.

Though blogs and women’s organizations really should be collaborating more. I always think back to how when the Bureau of Labor Statistics said they were going to stop reporting on women’s wages (they’ve since reinstated the reporting), Feministing posted on it almost immediately. They tried to bury it with a two sentence little release in this obscure place on their website. Several months later I got an “urgent action alert” about it from a women’s organization. If the immediacy of blogs could be combined with the grassroots organizing power of women’s organizations . . . I think it could be really something.

I've no excuse now. Not even the town where I live. Yours undisgustedly...