I love being a sex blogger and I love the sex blogging community. Eroticon was amazing: meeting other sex bloggers in person was such a great experience and I am really hoping I can get the money together to attend again next year.
When I first started blogging I didn’t know anyone. No one in my real life was even remotely interested in talking about sex and my online presence hadn’t really been established yet, so I set out to find bloggers on Twitter. It didn’t take me that long to find some bloggers – once I found a blogger, I looked at the people they followed and usually there would be more bloggers on that list.
By chance, I heard about last year’s Summer 100 challenge and I decided to join in. The best part of the challenge was finding more bloggers and connecting with them. Not all of them stuck it out for the whole challenge and I have to admit that I didn’t keep up with everyone’s blog, but I was very happy having expanded my blogger network a bit.
The one thing I did notice about the sex blogger’s network – and especially on Twitter – is that the same names keep popping up again. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but when the #SoSS hashtag took off, I was looking forward to finding out about new bloggers who hadn’t hit my radar yet. I didn’t really find that many. And yet; surely the blogging community wasn’t confined to the little group I was part of already? How would I find out about other bloggers?
Memes and other challenges are also a great way of getting to know more sex bloggers. I really enjoyed joining in with the #30DayOrgasmFun challenge, of which Victoria has a great round up. I liked this challenge because it didn’t really involve blogging and hey, masturbating every day is always fun, right? Not that I really did that well, but it was fun to read other people’s experiences with it.
I find it difficult to talk about the “sex blogging community” as a whole, as I am not even sure I know the whole community. Sure, I have my little corner with my familiar people on Twitter, but that is only a limited part of the community. And that part of the sex blogging community is overwhelmingly white. Which is why I really liked that Victoria put as one of the goals of the Summer 100 challenge this year that we should promote marginalised bloggers. I, for one, am really excited to see a lot of sex bloggers of colour and a lot of new-to-me faces among the participants. I want my sex blogging community to be more diverse and more inclusive, so you can count on me promoting those blogs more over the next summer.
As I said at the beginning of my post: I love the sex blogging community. The people I have met have been very lovely to me. When I started out, a lot of sex bloggers were more than willing to help me out. Yet, I can’t help feeling that sometimes the community can be a bit of a clique. A clique where certain people (mostly marginalised people) don’t get as much of a voice. That was most visible in the uproar about how O.School treated their Pleasure Professionals, with Carly from Dildo or DilDon’t rightly pointing out that WoC were most adversely affected by O.School and yet they were featured least in the blog posts and articles that came out around that time. But I also see it in how few marginalised sex bloggers are featured in #SoSs posts (again something Carly brought to my attention).
I am a white, middle class (and yes, middle aged) woman. I have grown up with a certain amount of bias and a certain set of racist beliefs. I am not a racist and my beliefs right now are far from the ones I had growing up, but I admit that there are still ingrained beliefs that I am probably not even aware of that may be racist. I want to expand my own sex blogging community to ensure that it is a diverse, inclusive space. But I also want to be held accountable for anything I say or do that is racist or that is exclusionary.
I am only a small blogger. My voice isn’t strong and my reach isn’t particularly wide. But I will use the Summer 100 Challenge as an opportunity to get to know more marginalised bloggers and to promote their content as much as possible.
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I just couldn’t commit to the amount of writing that was required for this challenge but I did go and have a look at the list of bloggers who are joining in and was utterly delighted to see so many new faces and for many of them to people of colour too.
I have always been very conscious when it comes to prompting others from all different communities but sometimes finding them is a challenge and so this was lovely to discover to many people and I am really looking forward to reading some of the stuff they write for this challenge.
The sex community is really an abstract idea. In many ways there is no community, not in the true sense of that word and yet we all know that we have a circle of people we can ask questions of, talk to, moan too, confide in etc and that makes those people are personal community. As a result it can be easy to slip into cliques something I have always tried very hard not to allow myself to do and why I am always happy and excited to find new folks.
Mollyx
I agree, the “sex blogging community” is really an abstract idea and it’s easy to stay in your little corner with the people you already know. So happy you are checking out the participants; it’s great to get to know new bloggers.
I was a late entry for this Summer-100 challenge but I was so keen for you to add me for many of the reasons you have stated in this post. I want to get to know other sex bloggers – whatever their race or beliefs -I want to read their opinions even if they are not the same as mine – that is the only way we grow – challenge ourselves in what we write and what we read. It’s only been a few days since the challenge began but already I have discovered some fab posts by people I didn’t know before. So that is great – It does seem strange that a few people involved in summer100 do not have their comments switched on? I am a very generous commenter 😉 and like to reply or discuss what has been raised in a post. It is a fab way of chatting with your readers. I understand it is their prerogative to not want any comments but it a little odd to enter a challenge such as this – designed to get you to read new-to-you bloggers content.- and not have your blog open to them – great post Isabelle x
Yes, I love reading blog posts from people who have different life experiences and beliefs than my own. I will highlight the issue of comments to the participants, you are right that commenting is a great way to interact with bloggers.
This is a great article Isabelle (and I’m glad we met and chatted briefly at Eroticon)
I read a twitter thread recently which made me vow the exact same as you – to expand my contacts/network and be more inclusive. I endeavour for my #SoSS to read new authors, but it’s also important to share what I’ve enjoyed not just because they are fresh blood, so my expansion into new bloggers may be gradual, but it’s happening. Really enjoying this meme.
Of course it’s important to share content you like and not just random bloggers, but hopefully you will find a lot of good content from the participants of the Summer 100 challenge.
Dammit I just spent ages writing you a reply and accidentally deleted it!! Anyway, just to say I love this and good luck with Summer 100 looking forwards to reading your posts xx