There is also a particular audience that I am tracking: my asexual readership.
When I first found the asexual blogosphere, frankly I felt it was in shambles. It now shows signs of picking up (a regular blogging carnival has just been announced), but it still pales in comparison to the lively skeptical blogosphere or the massive atheist blogosphere. I'm a small fry in the skeptical blogosphere, but in an environment full of dead, dying, and newbie asexual blogs, I'm suddenly notable.
Long story short, I now have a lot of incoming visitors from asexual sites. I can see this from the site statistics, but site statistics don't give me a good idea of who sticks around and who doesn't. Thus the survey.
Survey Summary
With my small sample size, uncertainties are around 10-25%. Therefore, I think it is misleading to give specific numbers, so I will summarize in words.
About half came for asexual/queer topics, half came for physics, half came for atheism/religion, and half came for skepticism/critical thinking. That means that on average people came for not one but two topics. That either means I lose the readers that only like one topic, or it means that people have more diverse interests than I give them credit for. In any case, the tentative conclusion based on terrible statistics is that asexuals do not yet dominate the readership.
The only topic that gets skipped a lot is puzzles. I could have guessed this before, and it will not affect my blogging.
The homosecular acetheist
It occurs to me that some asexuals might feel uncomfortable with a blog that associates them with atheism? If that's the way anyone feels all I have to say is, "Tough luck!" It probably also makes some physics enthusiasts and even some skeptics uncomfortable. I write what I like and I don't expect everyone to agree.
In fact, I'm sort of evilly rubbing my hands together at the thought of introducing skepticism to a bunch of asexuals and introducing advanced queerness to a bunch of atheists. Mwahaha, I have finally found a way to do more than preach to the choir! Which is what people accuse you of doing when they're not busy accusing you of proselytizing.
As for asexuals who feel uncomfortable being associated with LGBTQ, this discomfort is fully intentional. I am unabashedly opposed to asexual separatists (in a friendly way of course).
Unrelated(?) blog updates
I designed another sidebar graphic to link to the LGBTA category of my blog.
I also wrote an Asexuality 101 page, linked on the side bar.
I am currently debating whether to keep the rainbow flag and asexual flag, which now seem slightly redundant. I may also decide to make the extended link list more prominent. Any thoughts?
8 comments:
Completely agree with you on how you should definately cover both asexual and skepticist material. Tbh, I've learned most from blogs which cover two things, one in which I am the converted they're preaching to, and the other in which I know nothing. (I also spent much of last month meticulously combing all of Greta Christina's blog, so this could just be me).
Also, I agree with you about your views on 'asexual seperatism'. I'll deal with it fairly when it comes up in conversation, but I'm not going to pretend that it's something I don't disbelive in (woah, triple negatives), and I'm going to keep talking about asexuality in LGBTQ because the language we use is powerful, and that's the language I choose, for good reason.
I keep looking around at the asexual blogosphere and trying to think of ways to make it perk up. I do agree that it's doing better than it was, but. Not well enough for my tastes.
Anyway, I like blogs with multiple topics and part of the reason I particularly like yours is keeping an ear on the ground on skepticism. I missed out on the survey, but I'm here for that as much for the asexuality, even if I am a crap commenter most of the time.
Also, are there any asexual separatist blogs at all? Seriously, now that I think of it I can't think of any--except possibly Shawn Landis, and even he's been doing comparisons of asexuality to queer topics lately. It's not that they don't exist, but it seems to me that they're almost unknown in what passes for the blogosphere. One of the things I worry about in the asexual blogosphere is homogeneity in the types of people doing blogs, but I must confess that the absence of that particular viewpoint doesn't bother me very much.
SlightlyMetaphysical,
I think that may be true for me too (about learning most from blogs that cover multiple things). I don't know why I'm always feeling like my blog's focus is too broad. Most of my favorite blogs also have broad focus, and that's what makes them great!
I'm glad you like Greta Christina.
Sciatrix,
Glad to be A once said something vaguely separatist... maybe?
I feel that in the current landscape, asexual separatism is usually an apathetic stance. It's accepting the status quo. Such people don't become bloggers. They stick around on AVEN instead. These are the same kind of people as the atheists who say, "Atheist movement? What atheist movement? What need is there for that?"
On a related note, I've recently been reading about transsexual separatism. Transsexual separatism is very much alive, because it does not come from apathy. Instead it stems from passionate homophobia and transphobia. I'm glad we don't have that. I'm glad that asexual separatists are nearly always 100% queer-friendly.
I just like it cause I get my dose of asexuality and atheism (two of my favorite A's) in the same place.
But on the subject of asexual separatism - if I understood it correctly, it means not wanting to be associated with the queer movement? I don't know if I've seen much of any queer association in other asexual spaces anyway, which should happen more. Can I be an anti-separatist?
Maddox,
Asexual separatism is most common on AVEN, and can be found in any thread about LGBT. Common responses include, "We don't belong with the LGBT because they are just as sexual as the straight community," and, "We don't face the same problems as LGBT," and, "I don't feel included in LGBT groups."
Among those points, I feel the most valid one is about how people have negative experiences in queer groups. However, I see this as a problem to be fixed.
Did your asexual/LGBT blogosphere pick up the article on "Serotonin and sexual preference: Is it really that simple?" by SciCurious at http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=serotonin-and-sexual-preference-is-2011-03-28
Anonymous,
That's interesting, though it's not really the sort of thing which would make the rounds in the asexual blogosphere (the LGBT blogosphere I don't pay attention to).
I've done several blogs. In fact, when I got started, I was part of the Ex-Mormon blogosphere called "Outer Blogness."
However, I was required to deal with only Asexual topics for my work on Examiner. It's not that they don't have LGBT coverage. They just have plenty of other people doing it.
When frustrations with Examiner caused me to start my own blog, the LGBT Issues section was added while I was setting up Joomla.
While I know all Asexuals are not comfortable with the association, it was the LGBT groups who first reached out to us and realized we were out there. The LGBT groups became our first allies. I've also had a chance to read several reports on Bisexuality. The issues are the same. I'm also hosting, at the request of a third party, a Transgender support chat room on the Asexualnews.com servers. (It does not share the same domain, and the person operating the chat room wants to keep it by invitation only.)
If I recall, my original position has changed somewhat from what it was when I started on Examiner.com. My style has also changed. Now if my ability to edit stuff I write would improve greatly.
By the way, although I still write most of the content for Asexual News, I'm not the only person who works on the site. I've never wanted one viewpoint to dominate. I don't know if I'm being too picky about what I want though.
Post a Comment