what do YOU think?

This is just a quick note…of frustration! So, I’m at a bit of a crossroads (mentally) as far as this blog is concerned—where do I want to take the content of the blog? How do I want things organized? And so forth…

I think I just jumped into making this blog, hoping to talk exclusively about sex and gender from cultural/social and scientific standpoints (I’ve clearly done more of one than the other), but some of my posts have become muddled with my own personal information. But that’s not altogether a bad thing—I like to share some of my personal stories with you all, as terrifying as that is (for me. Hopefully it’s not terrifying for you at all). So that brings me to where I stand today: I am not happy with the organization/content of my blog as it currently stands. I feel like many posts (perhaps, even this one) are disorganized and incoherent; I feel like the subject matter drifts aimlessly from topic to topic—in essence, this all reads more as a diary filled mostly with ranting than any cohesive body of thought.

And maybe that’s the definition of a blog in a nutshell. My understanding was that a blog was meant to be written more or less on the fly—it’s a rough draft of thoughts put to the page…er, WEBpage, at any rate. Lately, however, a lot of blogs online have become a lot more journalistic in nature, and therefore have been incorporating more and more researched topics, complete with source information. While I like the idea of researching topics and gathering source material—hell, I’ve done it plenty of times here—I also find myself cleaving to my old perception of what a blog actually is. The result has been something between a polished essay and a rough draft of a research paper (with a heavy leaning on the latter).

So, I’m opening this up to you folks reading: what is your opinion? Do you think these posts should be more focussed on the science and cultural aspects of sex and gender, or should I be more personal? Or should I be more political? Should I do heavily researched, polished essays, or do you like the half-assed quasi-researched topics that appear every now and then? Do you think there should be more structure to the posts (ie. Do a series of posts on a given topic, then switch to another series)?

Of course, I have my own ideas of what I’d like to do…maybe revamp a few older posts and work them into actual pieces you’d feel comfortable using as references, yourselves. But, I do like to hear your input as well. So, what do you think?