As I wrote over at my old address, Brute Reason is now part of The Orbit, a collective of progressive secular bloggers (many of whom you may recognize from their old homes at FtB, Skepchick, Patheos Atheist, and independent blogs).

So, hi!

If you want to learn more about The Orbit, I suggest checking out our About Us page or our Kickstarter (please support it, by the way!). And if you’re here primarily because you follow my writing, do check out our front page and meet some of the other writers here, because they’re awesome.

And if you’re not here because you follow my writing, well, hopefully you do now! To introduce myself: I’m Miri, a writer and therapist based in Ohio and originally from Russia/Israel. (Plot twist: I’ve never been to Russia. My parents left it shortly before I was born. So I was raised Russian/Jewish/Israeli/American.) I write about social justice, psychology, sexuality, and sometimes other stuff too. My particular interests within that are mental health, queer stuff, polyamory, interpersonal skills (i.e. setting and respecting boundaries), and related topics. Here are some of my favorite pieces that I’ve written within the past year:

• Antonin Scalia and the Ethics of “Celebrating Death”
• In Defense of Finn/Poe
• Why You Should Care About Violence Against Sex Workers
• Not the Ethics We Need, But the Ethics We Deserve
• Sexual Identity Labels Are Maps, Not Territory
• Queer Women Who Have Only Dated Men Are Queer
• Emotional Labor: What It Is and How To Do It
• Pride, Drag, and Competing Access Needs
• Should We Publicly Shame Cheaters?
• Do Children Matter?
• When Someone Sets Boundaries With You and You Feel Like Crap
• Setting Boundaries With Your Therapist
• A List of Ways I Have Used Trigger Warnings
• How We Justify Shaming, Harassment, and Abuse
• Reaching Out for Support When You Have a Mental Illness
• Some Advice on Supporting Friends with Depression
• No, You Don’t Need Rules For Polyamory

Besides progressive/secular issues, I’ve got a ton of passions and hobbies that don’t make it onto the blog much, but I’m hoping that this new home will help me feel a bit more free to explore those in writing. I recently moved back to Ohio from New York City in what turned out to be the most surprisingly amazing that that’s ever happened to me (if you read my writing back when I was obsessed with New York, you’re probably like whaaaaat), and that’s allowed me to recenter a bunch of hobbies I’d let slide and get into some new ones too. Currently I spend large chunks of time on performing burlesque, biking, otherwise working out, playing in a community band, cooking (especially making my own ice cream), participating in local meetups and other events, reading (I try to find a balance between reading SF/F novels/comics and non-fiction about topics I’m interested in), and watching Star Wars over and over as many times as I can. It’s a busy life.

Since my day job is not particularly lucrative, I rely on my income from writing to help pay the bills. To that end, please consider supporting me on Patreon. You can give as little as $1 per post, and it makes a huge difference to me.

How to follow this blog

Besides Patreon, there are a few ways you can keep up with me and my writing. You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. You can follow this blog’s RSS feed, and you can also subscribe to it via email by clicking on the sidebar button at the top left and scrolling down till you see the email subscription box.

How to comment on this blog

Well, you just type your comment and hit submit, right?

Not quite. I have a comment policy:

Comments that do not contribute to what I view as a productive, interesting conversation will be deleted. Commenters who are abusive or who consistently make nonproductive, non-interesting comments will be banned. This space belongs to me, and I don’t owe anyone a platform.

I’ve given this a lot of thought over the years and ended up realizing that I don’t owe anyone anything except kindness. Kind isn’t the same as nice, and if you are unkind to me, I don’t have to sit and listen to it. Especially not in my own space.

Be kind, listen to others, and take responsibility for yourself, and you’ll probably have a pretty good time not only on this blog but in life generally.

I hope you stick around and check out some of our other blogs! I’m so excited to see where this goes.