2023 Reader Survey Results

A woman sitting with a laptop, with the word "BLOG" on the wall next to her. Image source.

Hi readers! Thank you to everyone who took my 2023 Reader Survey (from this post). I appreciate the feedback about what topics people are interested in, and also a lot of people gave me a lot of nice comments, so thank you!

Here's a summary of the topics that people said they liked:

Range of topics

I'll put this one first because it's meta. Yeah, I like to have a big range of topics. In my head I still think of this as "a Christian blog" more than anything else, but, uh, if you look at the most recent bunch of posts, they are about A LOT OF THINGS. And in the past year or so, I've decided to write about asexuality more, but I don't want it to just be "an ace blog", I want it to be A LOT OF THINGS.

Asexuality

Asexuality was the topic mentioned the most in the survey responses. I have a lot to say about it (and right now I'm doing the series on "The Great Sex Rescue" so you can expect a lot of ace-related opinions about that on the blog). Also, I think it's great that I've been able to connect with other ace bloggers that I found through The Asexual Agenda.

China and/or covid

A lot of people are interested in hearing about life in China. (I used to do more blog posts with photos I took at various interesting places in China- see the "travel" tag- maybe I should do more of that.) And a lot of the survey responses also mentioned my writing about covid in China. Yeah, that's something that I don't really want to write about, but I have to because people in other countries really don't have any idea what's going on here. (That was more true during zero-covid- now things are probably generally the same as in other countries, but in China people wear masks a lot more than in the US, I noticed.)

And I had to blog about the 2022 Shanghai lockdown because that was a historical event, but wowww it was bad living through that. It got to the point where it was the 2nd-worst lockdown China had had (the worst was the first Wuhan lockdown). But then, months after the Shanghai lockdown ended, some other cities had lockdowns which were even worse than Shanghai's. Sometimes I remember little things about what it was like... like when I managed to buy a huge bulk package of toilet paper, so I sold toilet paper to the neighbors for 3 rmb per roll. How did we live that way?

ANYWAY, yeah, I'd like to do more posts about traveling to interesting places in China. And maybe some about Chinese culture.

My Christianity, the bible, and bible fanfic

So, some readers are interested in the Christianity I believe in now (a different thing from the Christianity I used to believe in, which I've written about a lot). This is something I also want to write about more- and I have a few recent-ish posts like "You Weren't There, the Night Jesus Found Me" and Sure Of What We Hope For which are about that. But also, I kind of don't know what to say? Like... I just always feel this awe of God... but if I write that down, I'm going to ask myself "but what's the point of writing this?" You know, like the apostle James said, "So what if you believe God exists? Even demons believe that."

But also, some of the survey responses mentioned my posts about the bible, and yeah I can write about that, I have things to say about that. I am very interested in readings of the bible from a feminist Christian/ queer Christian perspective. (Related post: No One Can Take The Bible From Me)

And my bible fanfics! Some readers love these, and I was very happy to hear that. I am like, obsessed with the idea of bible fanfic. I have 2 fanfics I've been working on. So stay tuned for those.

And also 1 person said they want to read more about parenting as an ex-evangelical. Yes, I plan to write more about that. Because I'm a Christian and I want to introduce Christianity to my child, but wowwww a lot of the stuff I was taught as a child in church is just not healthy at all. 

I've bought a few Christian books for my son, and I plan to post reviews of them to say whether or not I'd recommend them, as an ex-evangelical Christian. Probably in the next 1-2 months I'll have a post about one of the books.

Evangelicalism, purity culture

So when I first started blogging, most of my posts were about evangelicalism and purity culture. But I am glad that I've moved past that, and I don't need to keep talking about it. Like if I saw a blog post right now that was like "I don't want to believe in hell, but... what's the point of being a Christian if there is no hell? Well I have come up with 3 answers to that question," I probably wouldn't read it. It feels like old news. But back in 2012, I needed that. I needed to read posts about that, and I needed to write posts about it.

So now, I only write about those topics when something happens that demands a response (like this: This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read). Or when I see a movie and there's some aspect of it that reminds me of evangelical ideology- like Dr. Strange's Ways Are Higher Than Our Ways. Or, I write about purity culture specifically through the lens of asexuality (lol can you believe most of my best purity culture posts, I wrote before I knew I was ace?), or marriage (like my posts about "The Great Sex Rescue", which is about how purity ideology affects married women). Things that affect my life now.

(And I've been watching "Shiny Happy People", the documentary on the Duggar family, and I do plan to write a post on that.)

Autism

Recently I haven't written about autism as much as I used to. In 2023 I wrote Boundaries With Dentists and I Figured Out What The 1-10 Pain Scale Is Actually About, but you have to scroll back several years to find more of my autism posts besides those. (Okay, and actually, I think there's a connection between my autism and vaginismus, so maybe those posts count too...) For me, it is the hardest thing emotionally to write about (but also I'm glad to hear from readers who found those posts helpful). I do have an idea for at least 1 autism post in the near future.

Okay, so that sums up the main topics that people mentioned. Whenever I do these surveys, I always hope someone will ask for some very niche thing that's within the range of things I write about, like "what is it like to have a bilingual child" or "remember in 2019 you wrote about how American Christians think they're the objective observers of the world, as if they don't have their own culture, can we get more content about that?" Lol, not sure why I'm hoping for that; everyone basically lists big overall topics instead. But hey actually I should totally write a post about having a bilingual child. And the "objectivity" thing I'm still super-interested in, just haven't caught any recent examples of it.

I also asked a just-for-fun question: Where does Ryder get the money to buy all the gear for the Paw Patrol? (Because my son has watched way too much Paw Patrol.) Here are my 3 favorite answers from y'all:

I’ve never seen Paw Patrol but I’m going to go with he found DB Cooper’s lost bank robbery money and kept the stash

Civil asset forfeiture?

I’ve assumed he’s a multimillionaire heir like Batman

All very good ideas!

Also, I'm interested in my readers' religious identities. The results were about half Christian, half atheist/agnostic/none, and then a few people from other religions. I feel like this is pretty cool, and basically is what I was hoping for, because Christianity and atheism have influenced me the most.

And one more thing, I have a patreon. I post photos there occasionally. Very occasionally. Usually photos of some interesting thing I saw in China.

Okay, that sums up the survey! Thank you to everyone who filled it in ^_^