Speak Your Mind–Even If Your Voice Shakes

I find myself not knowing quite where to begin, as I don’t imagine everything here will be taken super well. But that’s kind of the problem and the point of the post.

We’ll start with some backstory: Some five years ago, my dad turned me on to the existence of Skepchick, and Teen Skepchick in particular since TS was looking for new bloggers and he figured that might be my jam. I wrote my first ever semi-professional piece, it was published on Teen Skepchick as a guest post, and a couple weeks later I was on the writing team. So began my involvement in the atheist community.

Being a writer on a sister site to something as major as Skepchick was a fantastic opportunity, and it set me on a course to developing an incredibly supportive network of friends and acquaintances made up of my peers. I’m still friends with a handful of my fellow TS bloggers today–actually I do a podcast with one of them.

I met more people at conventions, started writing for Queereka and then FTB (Freethought Blogs), sat on panels and even gave a talk, accruing new friends all the while. Until I found myself in the middle of an amazing, interconnected group of skeptics, atheists, feminists, and progressive thinkers. I’ve known many of these people for years, and have always appreciated how fortunate I am to be among people who accept me (including many of my fellow bloggers here at The Orbit).

As it happens, I also joined the Skepchick network riiiiight around the time Rebecca Watson uttered the phrase, “Guys, don’t do that,” and what had initially appeared to be a unified movement started to thoroughly implode. Continue reading “Speak Your Mind–Even If Your Voice Shakes”

Speak Your Mind–Even If Your Voice Shakes
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Oh Hi, There!

Well, hello there, FTB! This is an introductory post!

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I’m Lux Pickel, and I started my actual activism within the atheist community by blogging on Teen Skepchick–one of the Skepchick sister sites. Later on, they added me to Queereka, the LGBT-oriented Skepchick site. This past October I stepped down from those positions due to my depression, which has been like a black hole eating away at my life. 😀

Basically, my life lately has been going to work, coming home to play video games and watch stuff with my lovely husband. I peruse Twitter, which is how I befriended Zinnia and her partner Heather. I’m attempting to get organized and launch into recovery mode to kick depression’s ass! I’ll let you know how that goes. Most often, posts about that stuff will be at my oddly monikered blog: Metaphorical Penis.

Stuff that I’ve written about elsewhere–which will probably show up here as well–include feminism, intersectional social justice, church/state separation, mental illness, media representations of various groups, religious influence on society and government, and patriarchy. Oh, and nerdy stuff. There will probably be random nerdy stuff. Doctor Who, Bo Burnham, Tim Minchin, World of Warcraft, language, ancient polytheistic religions… It’ll get interesting.

More random stuff about me: I’m in a recently-opened poly marriage with a gorgeous, loving guy. We have two cats who are fuzzy and good cuddlers. I’m genderqueer and pansexual and probably a 5 on a 1-10 scale of kinkiness. I like making jewelry from sheet metals like copper, silver, nickel-silver, and niobium if I could get my hands on any.

So yeah, that’s the main stuff. If you’d like to get to know me better, you can find me on all the sites. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube… umm… There are probably others, but you get the idea.

I look forward to getting to know you lovely people! Leave some comments to share the love. <3

Oh Hi, There!