Dear Community Bloggers: Stop Apologizing

It takes a lot of courage to willingly put yourself out there as a blogger. Feministing.com has recently allowed a whole slew of us to take a step into the blogosphere, but a strange cadence has emerged.

zenfeministe writes :

…I apologize for any difficultly in following or the sheer length of the post.

From bandersnatch :

…. if I missed something, my apologies for the double posting.

Via mcnibbleton :

Sorry for the rant…

Notice a trend?

And these examples are by no means the only ones, merely the most recent. This is not an attack on the aforementioned posters, because their posts were wonderful, but rather a commentary on the community forum as a whole. Community posters, the things you write on the community blog are pertinent, well crafted, insightful, and DESERVE to be there. Those with dissenting opinions, and women in particular, have been taught to apologize for their presence and general tendency to speak their minds. Please fight this! It is something I personally try to unlearn each and every day, and even our wonderful full-time feministing bloggers struggle with the over-apologizing-syndrome, as Courtney has recently noted .

So this is a call to make your posts bold, kick-ass, and, most importantly, unapologetic .