Categotry Archives: relaunching

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Welcome to the New Digs!

Categories: relaunching

Howdy, ducks! Welcome to the relaunch of The Second Awakening! I hope you enjoy the place.

I’ve wanted the blog to look something like this for a while, and it became clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to do that with Blogger. Also, I wanted to move to WordPress. And finally, I wanted my own domain name! And now here we all are.

The main image, by the way, is from Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, one of my favorite paintings and, I think, somewhat appropriate for the subject of the blog.

So settle in! I am told that there are goodies like threaded comments and the like. And who knows what else? I’m figuring this out as I go along too!

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We’ve Moved!

Categories: literary allusions kate chopin: superstar, relaunching

Welcome, ducks, to the blog relaunch! For those of you who followed this blog while it was (briefly) Cherchez La Chatte, what do you think of the new digs?

I decided to change the title of the blog because, while I adore French puns, the old name didn’t really speak much about the subject of this blog. (Feminism and transness, and where they intersect, ducks.)

I spent the weekend wracking my brain for a new title–for a while, I thought about finding something that punned on “Cat on a hot tin roof” (since my nickname is Cat), but ultimately decided I liked neither that play nor Tennessee Williams in general enough to go with that name. (Plus, using a Tennessee Williams play for a blog about feminism? Um, no.)

That’s when I got to thinking about The Awakening, Kate Chopin’s 1899 proto-feminist novel. And while it’s not everything I want–I mean, Edna ends up killing herself after her attempts to break society’s constraints–it still captures something important for me.

Like Edna, I had a middle-of-life revelation about who I am and what I want; and if my feminist conversion in the days before my transition was my first awakening, then this is my Second–my transformation from gender ally to gender guerrilla.

I’ve woken up again.

Eager, this time, for the fight.