Top 20 Posts of 2025

Laptop computer. Image source.

Hi readers! Here's the post with the roundup of my top blog posts from 2025. 

In 2025 I published more blog posts than I have in any other year. About half of them were my "blogaround" link roundups- and when I was checking the page views I was actually really surprised to see a bunch of the top posts by page views were blogaround posts. Apparently a lot of people are reading them? Thank you to those of you who are reading and sharing the links~ always appreciate that.

In this list, I'm not including the blogaround posts because they are just links, not me saying anything insightful. But like, real talk, I do spend a lot of time on rounding up links. So I'm glad people are reading them.

Anyway, here are the top 8 posts by page views:

1. Motivated By Inerrancy Or Sexism? "So that's when it hit me- these commentary writers really don't care about women, do they? This is just blatant sexism."

2. This 93% Stat About Dads is Totally Made-Up "You would have to find a bunch of families (how do you define family, exactly? Do the parents have to be married? Are we only looking at families with minor children?) where all members are non-Christians, and then track them (for how long? Barr says 10 or 20 years, that seems about right). You would then check if any of the individuals in these families converted to Christianity (what does that mean, exactly- who defines what "convert to Christianity" means? Do they have to be active in a church for it to count?)."

3. "Pure": A Book About the Aftermath of Purity Culture "Like Muriel, I also was genuinely confused about how teenagers get pregnant. Just could not make heads or tails of anything- how my experience of sex was in a different universe from the way everybody else talked about sex."

4. Video Game Museum of CADPA (Shanghai, China) The photos I took at the video game museum.

5. God and the Overton Window "Our opinions, our understandings of our own identities, they are all anchored on the range of possibilities that our own culture views as possible. But God shouldn't be limited in that way, right? God is outside of all that? But what does that even mean, to be outside of society and culture- could They even have an identity that makes sense to us? Could They even tell us anything about morality, that we could understand? Could we even know Them at all?"

6. "Text, Image, & Otherness in Children's Bibles" (I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH) "But if you read a children's bible, it cleans all that up. In the universe of children's bibles, the bible is a nice story about God's love, and how we should live our lives as good people. ... This is not what the bible is, and I hate it."

7. "I Want a Popsicle" (a bilingual book for Asian children, about feelings) "The author's website says, 'We are on a mission to provide bilingual resources for Asian American families to explore and understand emotions.'"

8. ICE and Hell "The apologetics nerds know that we have signed on to worship a God who ordered a man to be executed for gathering wood on the Sabbath. We know."

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And here are the top 12 posts that I like but didn't have the most page views:

1. The Bible and "Purity" "Well, first of all, the bible does NOT teach that it is a sin for men to have sex outside of marriage, in the general case."

2. The Bible and Polygamy "Buckle up, I have receipts. We're going to look at polygamy in the bible, and we're going to see that it's NOT consistently portrayed as a bad thing."

3. "Elemental": a movie about immigration, culture, and giving up the life your parents built for you "I was very impressed with how this movie portrayed the sense of being out of place, of standing out in a foreign environment, of being constantly inconvenienced by societal structures which everyone else feels are normal."

4. On Living Far Away From One's Family For Financial Reasons "And, yeah, I believe it's a bad idea to marry someone if you don't want to. But I also think it's a bad idea to live in China as an illegal immigrant, but I can't judge because obviously I don't know what her situation was in the Philippines, and why she decided to come to China, and how long she initially planned to stay, and if her life is better in China than it would have been in the Philippines, and if she is earning money for the purpose of supporting family in the Philippines, etc."

5. Believing in the God You Want "I was never impressed with the ontological argument, but isn't this kind of the same thing?"

6. The Power Dynamics of the "Personal Relationship With God" "I need some space away from God, to think my own thoughts and feel my own feelings. Let me be wrong, let me figure things out on my own, let me change and grow. I don't want to talk to Them."

7. "Maybe God Is Like That Too" (kids' book review) This is THE BEST Christian book for kids that I've read.

8. "The Case For Open Borders" (book review) "To treat someone as a completely different type of person- as an illegal immigrant with no rights- just because of some imaginary line- it's immoral. It's just straight-up immoral."

9. "Portfolios of the Poor" (book review) "The book emphasized how extremely important it is that options such as microloans from formal providers are available to poor people. This is something that helps them a lot. But it doesn't look like the glamorous stories that charities tell, about how everyone is going to be an entrepreneur and escape from poverty."

10. "Genesis for Normal People": Separating "what the writer meant" from "what is true" and "what it means for us" "It has made me realize how much those assumptions- that the bible is true and meaningful to our lives now- distort our understanding of the bible, causing us to read things into the story which totally aren't there, and to ignore what the writers were actually saying."

11. Why do we only talk about transvaginal ultrasounds when we talk about abortion? "I mean, forgive me if I find this sudden concern for people who can't tolerate transvaginal ultrasounds a bit fake."

12. What Would Abraham Do? (a bible fanfic) A little bible fanfic where Sarah notices that Abraham and Isaac have gone to the mountain to make a sacrifice, but didn't take a goat, and she wonders, terrified, if that means Abraham intends to sacrifice Isaac, and if he's the kind of person who would really go through with it.

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Also, did you know I have a Patreon? Thank you so much to the people who support me on Patreon~

My plans for the blog in 2026 are, basically just keep writing about everything, like I always do. I have so many ideas for blog posts in my drafts. In the near future, you can look forward to posts about R. L. Stollar's book "The Kingdom of Children," which I am reading now and enjoying.

Thanks for reading!

Top 18 Posts of 2024

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Hi all, it's a new year, so it's time to do a roundup of my top blog posts from last year.

First we have the posts with the most pageviews:

1. "Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?): "Slavery is a 'neutral example' which can prove to Christian patriarchists that hey, you guys don't literally follow everything in the bible either, so you can't just say 'well the bible says' and automatically dismiss our arguments for women's equality. And, if any of those patriarchists want to bring the criticism 'well if we allow women and men to be equal, it's a slippery slope to accepting homosexuality, and oh wouldn't that be terrible if Christians accepted homosexuality'- that's why the book also addresses 'the homosexual issue', and if to say 'don't worry, good evangelicals, equal rights for women DOESN'T mean we have to accept homosexuality.' It gives the egalitarian arguments in the book a lot more credibility, from an evangelical perspective, if the author also shows why those same arguments do NOT support gay rights."

2. The Great Sex Rescue: Marital Rape: "This section was hard to read, because a lot of the anecdotes in it are horrifying. It's about husbands who rape their wives, and claim that it's right for them to do so, because of the bible or whatever. It's about Christian marriage books that teach that all men are like that, and don't mention that marital rape is A REAL THING- so the women in these situations don't even know that what's happening to them is rape and it's wrong."

3. What do we do with Christians who are never going to accept queer people?: "You need to throw queer people under the bus, in order to be seen as a good evangelical. That's just a fact. That's just an undeniable fact. This is how it works."

4. The "Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic" Argument for Queer Acceptance: "Basically, the idea that Jesus' message was about inclusion, especially among groups which were marginalized and rejected by society, and therefore in our culture that means acceptance of queer people."

5. The Great Sex Rescue: Be Normal!: "I very much disagree with this. Why does it matter what 'the vast majority of people' think? You're in a monogamous marriage- 'the vast majority of people' are not involved in your sex life at all; it's just the two of you."

6. The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus: "God and Moses freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, and then turned around and said 'so anyway, if you want to sell your daughter as a slave, here's how.' Doesn't the story of the Exodus hit different, once you realize that?"

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And then these other posts which are my favorites too:

7. Womanist Midrash: I love this book so much. I've written a whole series of posts on it, actually. Links can be found at the end of this linked post.

8. Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I: "You can understand how, if someone treats you like that, and then they're like 'I LOVE GOD SO MUCH, I SIMPLY MUST DANCE,' you might hate them."

9. A Comprehensive Pro-Choice Ethic: "I always hear politicians saying 'women can make their own choices about their bodies.' This is nothing more than a euphemism for 'abortion is legal' (or, possibly, 'abortion is legal and accessible'). I don't like that. I want to live in a world where 'women can make their own choices about their bodies' means exactly that. Certainly that includes abortion access, but it includes so much more than that."

10. What Does God Do When You Pray For An Anonymized Patient By Bed Number?: "Does God handle it differently depending on which way you anonymize the study? What if there are multiple patients with the same initials- would it be like, the researchers assign Prayer Volunteer 1 to pray for patient C. D., and there is another patient C. D. in the control group not getting prayed for (different person but same initials) and God uses Their omniscient knowledge of the researchers' methods to figure out which is which and make sure the prayers get allocated correctly? Or would the researchers need to add an additional indicator to pass along to the prayer volunteer, to pass along to God, to make sure God knew who they were talking about?"

11. Raising Mixed Race (a book for parents of mixed-race Asian kids): "I guess my son does have thoughts about race. But doesn't have the language to communicate them with me."

12. Christian Nationalism / Faith Without Works Is Dead: "Making a big deal about how it's so important to be a Christian, without talking about what it actually means to be a Christian, what Christians are supposed to do, what it means to follow Jesus. You ever notice how Christian Nationalists talk a lot about Christianity and not about Jesus?"

13. I Had Pre-Eclampsia: The story of how my little daughter was born.

14. "Expecting Better": Asking the Right Questions About Pregnancy: "These are the questions that we absolutely should be asking! But instead, these 'rules' are presented to pregnant people like they are ironclad rules, like if you eat precut fruit, it's BAD for your baby, OH NO!!! I've seen the amount of stress and anxiety this puts on pregnant people- because, it's seen as, yeah it's tough to give these things up during pregnancy, but it's for YOUR BABY, and you'd DO ANYTHING for YOUR BABY, right?"

15. Here's How We Do Our Budget: "I found that the most important thing I need from a budgeting system is it needs to be cumulative- ie, we allocate money to a certain category this month, and then if we don't use it, that money continues to exist in that category and simply rolls over to the next month. This way, there's no need to wonder about 'well sometimes we spend more and sometimes we spend less, so... I guess that's fine overall?'"

16. "The Red Tent" (this bible fanfic is great): "The main thing that this book does is to portray a whole realistic world which contains ideas and practices that we know were common in bible times, but may be hard for us to imagine because they are so different from our modern world."

17. Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories: "Why would God do the work to ensure that 2 of every kind of dinosaur got on the ark, and then just let them die out anyway right after? If God is so invested in marsupials living in Australia, willing to do all these tiny little miracles to guide them on their journey and make sure they survive, then it must also be true that dinosaurs went extinct because God just really really wanted them to go extinct. What? What was the point of bringing them on the ark then? Is God just really bad at planning?"

18. A Bit Suspicious That "Heavenly Tourism" Confirms Everything We Already Believe: "Really? Someone goes to heaven and comes back, and all we get is more confidence that we were already right about everything? We don't, like, learn anything new? Really?"

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So what's coming up in 2025 on "Tell me why the world is weird"? Well *glances at drafts folder* there are gonna be a lot of posts about the bible. So if you are saying to yourself "I wonder what Perfect Number thinks about the bible," then this is the blog for you. (I also write about plenty of other things too, lol.)

Also I should mention I have a patreon~

Thanks for reading! As always, let me know what kind of topics you like to read about~

Top 18 Posts From 2023

A cat looking at a laptop computer. Image source.

Hi readers! It's time for the yearly roundup post! Here are my top blog posts from 2023:

Top 5 posts by page views:

1. This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read: "Like, everyone gather around and marvel at how, apparently, women's orgasms are not on anyone's radar at all, over at The Gospel Coalition, even when they are talking about a man being 'generous' during sex. Like, my god, how do you miss that?"

2. For Rizpah (or, a post about human sacrifice in the bible): "So when I read this story in the bible, I always thought that since David was a 'good guy,' that meant Rizpah was a 'bad guy.'"

3. January 2023 Carnival of Aces Roundup: "The Advice You Wish You'd Had": Very cool hosting the Carnival of Aces!

4. Vaginismus Is Not A Problem, In And Of Itself: "She has to go to a doctor and the doctor will tell her what she needs to do to make her body good enough for a man. She has to spend her time on yoga, because her body isn't good enough for a man. She has to endure the pain of trying to push dilators in, trying to force herself to relax, hoping she can make herself good enough for a man."

5. Blog series on "The Great Sex Rescue": One of the main things on my blog this year is my series reviewing the book "The Great Sex Rescue." I have a lot to say about it! It does a very good job of pointing out how illogical and harmful purity ideology and complementarianism are, but it falls short because it doesn't acknowledge queerness- and in particular, there are many parts of the book where its advice does not work for asexuals.

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And my other favorite 13 posts:

6. "Sodom and Gomorrah" is a story about living in a "bad neighborhood": "It's a story about stereotypes. God buys into the stereotypes too- killing the entire city just because a small and powerful group of men is terrorizing the streets. God kills them and their victims. God sees no difference."

7. That happened to me too: "If it's really true that this is a more common problem for aces, then we can imagine an alternate universe where this information is more widely known, and I could have known that I was at risk for having painful pap smears/ pelvic exams, and I could have protected myself better."

8. On believing that "prayer works": "So, it's very possible that if a white woman is missing, lots of people will see the news coverage and pray for her, but a woman of color in the exact same situation will receive little news coverage and won't have a ton of strangers praying for her. Does that mean that God will help the white woman more? Doesn't something seem wrong about this? God's actions are constrained by human society's prejudices?"

9. No One Can Take The Bible From Me: "To actually spend time caring about the victims of the bible... wow, that's something new and powerful."

10. Boundaries With Dentists: "Yeah... being required to perform your discomfort in a way that will read as 'real' to other people. This is hard to explain, but I'm autistic and I think other autistic people know what I'm talking about."

11. Separating Vaginismus From Asexuality: "And I wondered, was I not 'really' asexual, and it was 'actually' 'just' vaginismus? Now that I don't have vaginismus any more, am I not asexual any more?"

12. On Marriage as an Immigrant in China: "A divorce can be ugly and painful in ways that wouldn't happen in a divorce between 2 citizens. At the same time, the practical reality of being from 2 completely different cultures will frequently require the 2 spouses to trust and depend on each other in ways that citizen couples don't have to."

13. "Boys Can't Stop": "I couldn't comprehend this idea of 'he didn't want to pressure me'- because in purity culture, they said that boys are always pressuring girls, that's what you should expect from boys, they are all like that."

14. "To Glorify God": "This blog would be different from all my previous writing on Christianity. This blog would be about saying what I needed to say. Asking the questions I needed to ask. Even if I wasn't sure if God was okay with me asking."

15. How to Pretend to Welcome Trans People: "I can't believe I have to point this out, but that is THE OPPOSITE of welcoming trans people. Like if I had to make a list of 'how NOT to welcome trans people' those are the exact things I would put on it."

16. I used to be a young-earth creationist: "Anyway, as I read more and more of Answers in Genesis's articles, I really struggled with it, because young-earth creationism just sounds so laughably ridiculous. But finally it came down to this: I knew that as a Christian, I have to believe the bible is true. And if you open the bible to Genesis 1, it's right there in black-and-white: On the first day God made light. On the second day, on the third day, etc. That's what it says, and I believe the bible, right?"

17. Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches: "That's where I learned that we can just reject the whole thing. We don't have to tie ourselves in knots trying to explain how we believe wives have to submit to their husbands, but not like, in a sexist way."

18. The Logistics of a Revival: "They had to make a decision- and it's a human decision, it's not something that happens automatically because 'God.'" (I had several posts on the Asbury Revival- here's one of them.)

So there you have it! And yes, I have tons of draft posts, and tons of ideas. Looking forward to another year of blogging~

Twitter killed Tweetdeck. Also, I'm on Pillowfort now.

Logo for the site Pillowfort- it's fancy text that says "Pillowfort." Image source.

So, I'm still on twitter (@pnumber628), but I keep asking myself, why am I still on twitter? It's just Elon Musk starting drama now, one bizarre policy change after another (charging money for blue checks, not allowing people to view tweets if they're not logged in, changing the name to X, claiming he will remove the "block" feature, etc). I keep telling myself, I will probably quit using twitter soon, and that will be an improvement in my life.

Well. On August 17, I published a new post, and went over to Tweetdeck to schedule several tweets to promote it throughout the night (which is daytime in the US where most of my readers are), and... I can't access Tweetdeck. Instead I get a message that says I should pay for some upgraded version of twitter. What? So, a bit of googling finds this: Twitter finally figured out how to kill TweetDeck, by putting it behind a paywall.

And, all right, well that gave me the push I needed to get serious about quitting twitter. Like one of the main things I was using it for was promoting my blog... I would schedule around 4 tweets, every single day, with links to my new blog post from that day, or an old post from the archives. Now I can't, so like, what's even the point of using twitter?

Now you may say "well you can at least tweet a link manually every time you publish a new post, even if you can't schedule several of them to post throughout the day" but I don't even feel like doing that any more. So I haven't been tweeting about my new blog posts at all.

So then I made an account on Pillowfort. What is Pillowfort? It's a social media site that I've seen some ace bloggers talking about. It seems to be smaller than other social media sites, and people like it because it's generally a positive environment and not full of people arguing with each other. A lot of ace people there, a lot of queer people, a lot of artists sharing their art, a lot of people interested in various fandoms- that's my overall impression of what people are using Pillowfort for.

"Oh," you may say, "so Pillowfort allows you to schedule your posts, that's why you're using it as an alternative to twitter." Well no it doesn't. But I don't feel that I need to schedule several posts to promote each blog post I make, because on Pillowfort you're not constantly bombarded with new stuff- like, I don't feel like my posts will get lost in the noise. So I just put 1 post on Pillowfort for each new blog post I publish here.

It's not really an alternative to twitter- it doesn't do all the exact same things twitter does. But that's fine for me. I don't need it to do all the exact same things twitter does. I just want to be on a social media site that feels like it's actually worth using, not a site that makes me feel like "I'm gonna quit this soon, and that will make my life better."

If you're on Pillowfort, go ahead and follow me! Here's my page: https://www.pillowfort.social/perfectnumber628 . And for some posts about how to use Pillowfort, see this list of links (uh currently I don't have permission to view this link? maybe the user will change their privacy settings so we can see it? it was a really useful post with a bunch of links about using pillowfort), the Pillowfort101 community (where new users can ask questions), and Advice for new users. It's kind of different from what most people expect from social media sites- it doesn't have an "algorithm" (I mean, it does, "sort by timestamp" is an algorithm), it just shows you a feed of the users and communities you chose to follow, rather than bombarding you with whatever it guesses you will be interested in. So when you first get started, there's not really anything to see on your home feed. My advice is, go and follow a bunch of people and a bunch of communities, indiscriminately, and then later you can unfollow them if you don't like them. Whenever you see anything or anyone you feel like you might like, follow them. You can always unfollow later.

But the reason I'm still on twitter is... back in the day, I had a really really good community of ex-evangelical Christians/ ex-evangelical atheists/ feminist Christians/ progressive Christians/ queer Christians on twitter. I used to say "twitter is my church." This was way long ago, like 2014 maybe? Twitter started going downhill for me in 2016, when it became a lot of doomscrolling, lots of posts about all the bad things that are happening and why they're going to get worse. And there was more of that when the pandemic came in 2020. And just over time, it seems like a lot of the people I used to follow have drifted away. A lot of the bloggers I followed back then aren't blogging any more. I still see a few tweets every day that are worth reading- like jokes about growing up evangelical, or proclaiming that Christianity is about setting the captives free rather than whatever Republicans are claiming that Christianity is about... and that's why I still use twitter... but it's not like it was before, and I feel like maybe it's not worth it for me.

So, my real question is, where my queer Christians at?

Like where are the online spaces where people are talking about what Christianity can be when it's actually about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God, rather than about following all the rules that some old straight white guys made up? Where everyone knows that the image of God is trans, because God contains all the genders, just like Genesis 1 says: They made the day and night and everything in between, They made the land and sea and everything in between, They made male and female and everything in between. I want to talk about Black Lives Matter and how Jesus was a victim of lynching, and Christ is crucified again every time an innocent black person is killed in the street by police. And what actual repentance for the sin of racism would look like- real repentance, rather than just pretending it doesn't matter any more. I want to be in a Christian environment where it's taken for granted that women have full equality with men- I don't want to waste my time on people who think "women can't be pastors" is a valid opinion to hold. I want to read the bible in new ways, feminist ways, trauma-informed ways, queer ways. To see the bible not as something that has 1 correct meaning that we have to work very hard to figure out, but as something that can be meaningful to different people in so many different ways, and that's beautiful.

And so on- I could go on forever about the Christianity I believe in.

Years and years ago, when I first started blogging, I did have an online Christian community like that. But now not really. There are still a bunch of very good blogs that I follow, but I don't feel like there's a space where we can all talk about our ongoing process of figuring these things out. Some blogs are so huge, I don't even try to wade into the comments section because my comments will get lost in there among all the others. Twitter used to be that space for me, but it's gone wayyyy downhill and now I don't have a space like that.

So, still looking for my queer Christian church.

But anyway, the point is, I'm on Pillowfort now! I'm really happy with it so far. Like I said, I like having a social media site that feels like it's actually worth using, not like "I'm going to quit this soon and that will make my life better." If you're on Pillowfort, go ahead and follow me!

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 ^_^

11 Years

A dog using a laptop computer. Image source.

So every year I make a post to announce my blogiversary and do a reader survey. Here's the one for this year. ^_^ I started this blog in 2012; now it's 11 years later and I'm still here.

I have A LOT of things I want to blog about still. A lot of draft posts, like, you have no idea. You can look forward to my whole series about "The Great Sex Rescue." I have read the first few chapters and wow I have a lot to say about it.

Anyway, here's the reader survey for this year. It is useful for me to know what topics people want to read about:

2023 Reader Survey

(survey will be open until June 19, 2023)

Also I have a Patreon:

Perfect Number's Patreon

And of course, thank you to all my readers! If you leave comments, if you share links to my blog, or if you just lurk, that's great, and I appreciate it.

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Update: 2023 Reader Survey Results

My Blog is Blocked on Facebook

Image has a thumbs-up "like" symbol, and the text "Smash that like button." Image source.

Over the past year or so, I've gotten some messages from readers telling me that Facebook doesn't let them share links from my blog. (Thank you for telling me about this problem, readers!) I don't really know why this is, but seems like a lot of blogs are blocked on Facebook.

Anyway, here are 2 things you can do about it:

1. Send feedback to Facebook to tell them to unblock it

On this site, you can check if a link is blocked, and you can send Facebook a message to unblock it: Sharing Debugger. 

Go ahead and paste https://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/ in there. The message I get is "We can't review this website because the content doesn't meet our Community Standards. If you think this is a mistake, please let us know." Click the "let us know" and you can tell them it shouldn't be blocked.

Honestly I'm not optimistic this will really work, though, because I've tried it several times and it's still blocked. But hey, we can try.

2. Use archive.org to create a link that Facebook will accept

If you want to share my blog on Facebook, first of all thank you!!! Bloggers love it when people share their stuff.

You can go to the Wayback Machine and paste a URL into the "Save Page Now" box, and it will create a link which is a snapshot of what that webpage currently looks like. As far as I know, Facebook will allow you to share this link.

From a blogger's perspective, archive links are not as good because they don't give the blogger any data on pageviews or where the hits are coming from. (You're not actually sharing my blog, you're sharing a link to an archived snapshot of my blog. I will just have to hope that anyone who's interested is then able to find their way onto the actual blog...) But since Facebook is blocking it, this is the best solution I have.

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Once again, thank you to all my readers who read/lurk/share/comment. ^_^ I love getting encouraging comments from readers, but also, if you just lurk and never say anything, that's great too.

"To Glorify God"

Fire. Image source.

I wanna tell a little story about when I started this blog, back in 2012. Specifically, I made a deliberate decision that I was *not* blogging "to glorify God."

Yeah... so... back then, I was very evangelical, and so of course everything I did was supposed to be "to glorify God." What does that mean, exactly? The best I could tell was, it means people see something that I do, and they think, "Wow, God is even more awesome than I thought!" Whatever I do should serve the purpose of showing how amazing God is. Or, to interpret it a bit more loosely, I have to do my best to make sure that everything I do is what God would want me to do.

I used to post a lot of Christian things on Facebook, back then. Writing long Facebook posts where I shared my testimony, having arguments about why I believed it's a sin to "act on" one's feelings of same-sex attraction, whatever random thoughts I had about my obedience to God, etc etc etc. And whenever I wrote some big long thing on Facebook, I very carefully prayed over it. I checked over every single part of my writing, because I really really wanted to make sure that every single sentence was what God wanted me to say. 

If I wasn't sure if some little phrase "glorified God", I deleted it. I remember one Facebook post I wrote, which in an early draft included the phrase "if we can't figure this out, we're screwed" or something like that. During the editing process I stopped there and wondered if it was really okay to use "screwed" like that. Isn't that kind of a bad word? I felt that emotionally, "screwed" conveyed what I was trying to say, and no other word could quite capture the same feeling, but still I wasn't sure if God was really okay with me saying that. And since I wasn't sure, I eventually decided I couldn't in good conscience publish the Facebook post with that phrase in it. Everything I wrote needed to glorify God. Everything needed to be what God would want me to write. I finally changed the word "screwed" to something else, and published that post.

That's what I mean. Whenever I wrote some long post about God, I made sure to think through everything very carefully, to pray about it, until I was sure that it was really what God wanted me to write.

When I started this blog, I asked myself, "Am I blogging to glorify God?" And I decided, no. I remember that it was an actual question I had to think about, and an actual decision I made. This blog would be different from all my previous writing on Christianity. This blog would be about saying what I needed to say. Asking the questions I needed to ask. Even if I wasn't sure if God was okay with me asking.

I decided I wasn't going to get stuck, asking myself "does God really want me to say this?" before I hit "publish" every time. You can't get anywhere, if you do that. The conversation can never even start, if I have to make sure I'm really really confident that it's a conversation that's going to make God look good, before I even say anything.

I decided the purpose of my blog was not "to glorify God."

The 5th post I published was God kills Uzzah (2 Samuel 6). (If you don't know this story from the bible- it's about when God killed Uzzah for touching the ark of the covenant, because it was falling off a cart and Uzzah tried to catch it.) And yes, there are things in that post that I would not have said, if I had wanted to make sure that every single thing I said "glorified God."

I love God and I trust God and I'm gonna call it like I see it: God is being really unreasonable here.
...
People always say "God loves everybody" but I don't know if it's true.  Did God love Uzzah?
...
In conclusion, I don't like it and it's not fair.  But God can do whatever he wants so... whatever.  I guess.  I'm still not okay with this.  Anyone have any insights to add?

I read that and I'm like, damn, shots fired. Look at what little Perfect Number comes up with when she says what she really thinks, rather than limiting herself to what "glorifies God." This is a great start. (Also, it's normal to cringe when you come across something you wrote 10 years ago, right? That happens to everyone, right?)

I believed that there was a way to ask questions and express doubts and still "glorify God." But, it was tricky. I would have to come to a conclusion first, and then based on that, I would decide how to frame the story. For example, one acceptable "doubt" narrative in evangelicalism might be "I had doubts about [whatever] and I thought God was not being fair. But then I realized the bible says this because [some reason] and I was not able to see it because [some sin or weakness that I have]. So now I see that yes, this belief about God is right."

At our bible study groups in college, I felt like I could ask any question at all about the bible and how certain parts of it seemed wrong. But, we couldn't just leave it there- we couldn't conclude the bible study still believing "this seems wrong." We had to come up with some explanation to convince ourselves that it made sense- or at least to convince ourselves that even if we don't understand the reason, obviously God is always right, so we can trust that it does, somehow, make sense.

When I stated this blog, I didn't have a "conclusion." I just had my questions. And without the conclusion, how do I know if me posting these questions is going to make God look bad? 

So I deliberately made that decision, and this blog has never been about glorifying God.

Instead, I blog because I have a "fire in my bones" like the prophet Jeremiah:

But if I say, “I will not mention his word
    or speak anymore in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
    a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
    indeed, I cannot.

I have things to say, and I just need to say them, so here we are. That's what this has always been about, for the past 10 years.

At the beginning I wondered if, in a roundabout way, I would end up "glorifying God." I don't really care about that anymore, though. God doesn't need me to do PR for Them. If They didn't want people to talk about, say, the problem of evil, maybe They shouldn't have made a world that has evil. I just call it like I see it.

So... I used to be very very careful about making sure everything related to Christianity that I posted publicly was approved by God. Spent a lot of time praying, so I would be confident that it was really what God wanted me to say. When I started this blog in 2012, I decided it would NOT be like that. I wouldn't blog "to glorify God"- I would blog because I had things I needed to say, and some of those things didn't have a neat, tidy conclusion about why God/the bible is always right. I blog because I have a "fire in my bones." I still do.

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Related:

They Prayed About It (a post about the #NashvilleStatement) 

Accepting Myself (or, I'm Great, and It Doesn't Matter What God Thinks) 

Katy Perry's God-Given Freedom

Top 14 Posts of 2022

Dog using a laptop. Image source.

Hi readers! It is now 2023, so it's time for the roundup of my top posts for 2022.

Top 6 posts by pageviews:

1. On Gynecologists and Angry Turtles. "And if you can't get 2 fingers in, and also you don't have access to lube, and you're about to go to your first gynecologist appointment and I've made you super-nervous about it, well... sorry I guess? Sorry we live in a world where girls who don't even have access to lube are expected to just let other people stick things in their vagina. Like you don't even own your body, but someone else does."

2. Wow, the Anti-China Bias in Western News Media. "CNN reads like 'this shows that 'zero covid' is BAD, everyone hates it, China should stop.' Sixth Tone reads like 'nobody is questioning the 'zero covid' strategy. But we all agree that Xi'an is doing a terrible job of it.'" I wrote this before the Shanghai lockdown, actually, and I wouldn't write it the same way now. But yes, I am still very much NOT IMPRESSED with how CNN and other western news sources reported on zero-covid. They really did not give a good picture of what's actually going on in China. They seemed to start with idea that the Chinese government is evil and doing everything wrong, and every single news story needed to be tied back to that.

3. Someday Dave Ramsey will have to stand before God and explain why he fired a pregnant woman. "Here, everyone, let's turn in our bibles to Genesis 38 and read the story of Onan. A story that everyone thinks is about making rules about sex, but is actually about cutting vulnerable people off from their source of income."

4. I Guess I Shouldn't Be Surprised How Fast Omicron is Spreading in China. "I could scroll through my WeChat right now and probably find 50 covid-positive people. This thing is EVERYWHERE." This was right after the zero-covid policy ended. (December 2022)

5. 2 Wrong Ways to Write Bible Stories For Kids. "Or, alternatively, the writers of the children's books don't remove the ****ed-up parts, but they don't comment on how ****ed-up they are. They just say 'and then God commanded Joshua to kill all the Canaanites' and then continue with the story like everything's fine. WTF????? You want to teach your kid to not even notice when a story has genocide in it???????"

6. "Come As You Are" is helpful I guess but not for me. "My main experience reading this book was being completely mystified, wondering what exactly the problem is that Nagoski is even trying to solve. Women, uh, want to have sex more? Okay, then have sex more? Oh but they don't want to. Uh, okay, then don't have sex?"

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And 8 more posts I recommend:

7. Well, the biggest thing that happened this year was the Shanghai lockdown. It was BAD. I'm not going to go through all my lockdown posts and pick out some highlights to share here, because I don't have the emotional bandwidth for that, it was so bad, you guys. We were locked down for 2 and a half months (March 16 to May 31). I'll link the post that has the list of all my lockdown posts: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak. It was bad, it was so bad, you guys.

And I wrote a LOT of covid posts in 2022, and got feedback from readers who really appreciated having my perspective on what it's really like in China (thanks!) but also, ughh I wish I didn't have to blog about covid all the time.

8. Mary's Choice. A bible fanfic where the angel Gabriel first appears to another woman, Susanna, to tell her she will give birth to Jesus, but she says no, so the angel goes to Mary instead.

9. "For Pregnant Women and Nursing Mothers". "The idea that Jesus was describing the human consequences of this disaster, and how, practically speaking, those consequences fall on vulnerable members of society moreso than others. I don't know if I had ever heard that before."

10. In Some Alternate Universe, I'm Writing a Post About Masks and "Causing to Stumble". "It was all fake. All that stuff about loving your neighbor. All that stuff about following what the bible says even if it's hard. All the stuff that I took to heart and I thought my Christian role models did too." 

11. "Moon Knight" and Boundaries With God. "After that, I decided I will never have a 'personal relationship with' a god again. I will never worship again."

12. I Would Love to Know If God Intervened to Stop Covid From Spreading in Churches. "Could it be that God intervened at church services to make it less likely for covid to spread there, compared to other in-person events with similar levels of social distancing, mask-wearing, etc? I am SUPER-INTERESTED to hear about any data on that."

13. Sure Of What We Hope For. This is my "I believe in resurrection" post.

14. "The Only Moral Virgin Birth Is My Virgin Birth". "The way I read it is, Mary didn't try to tell Joseph the truth. She didn't give him the chance to believe her or not, because the idea of exposing her whole complicated traumatic personal life to him and then not being believed was just too awful."

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Those are my top posts for 2022. Readers, as always I am interested to hear about what kinds of posts you like and want to see more of. I have a whole ton of stuff in my drafts. So many ideas. Looking forward to another year of blogging~

2022 Reader Survey Wrap-Up

Hello readers! Thanks so much to those of you who took my 2022 Reader Survey. I really loved reading all your responses, especially about what kinds of blog posts you have enjoyed on this blog.

I will try to take your feedback into account when choosing topics for future posts. In particular, several responses said they were interested in reading about my faith now (as an ex-evangelical Christian). I also want to write about that. :)

Other topics that people liked: asexuality, purity culture, responses to evangelical ideology, life in China, covid. Yes, I will definitely keep writing about all these. Honestly I'm tired of writing about covid (blah aren't we all), but I realized that people outside of China don't have much awareness of what China's pandemic control efforts look like, in terms of the practical effects on people's lives. So, ya know, the Lord laid it on my heart to blog about it or whatever. (And the Shanghai lockdown was a major historical event so obviously I had to blog about that. But SO GLAD IT'S OVER!) 

One of the questions on the survey asked for your favorite Toy Story movie, because my son has been watching all 4 of them A LOT (especially during lockdown, when his daycare was closed and my husband and I were working from home full-time). So, I would like to recommend 2 other short Toy Story movies to you: "Toy Story That Time Forgot" and "Toy Story of Terror." These are each about 20 minutes long, produced by Pixar, set sometime between "Toy Story 3" and "Toy Story 4." Here are the trailers:

These are both very good. I found the full movies here on Youtube: Toy Story That Time Forgot and Toy Story of Terror. (Not sure if the full movies will be removed from Youtube though, that's why I also linked the trailers here.)

Anyway, thanks for reading, everyone!

10 Years

A cat wearing a bow tie and glasses, looking at a computer. Image source.

Heyyyy big announcement: This blog is now 10 years old. Can you believe that- I have been writing about why the world is weird (among other things) for 10 years.

My first post was on April 28, 2012, and reading it now, I'm like "it's so cute." 2012-Perfect-Number just wanted to ask "questions about why culture is the way it is." This blog has developed way farther than I imagined; now it's a platform for my opinions about a huge range of things, feminism, Christianity, China, asexuality, being an immigrant, marriage, all kinds of things. And my writing style has changed and developed a lot.

Back in 2012, did I think I'd be in China 10 years later? Actually yes, I was all into radical Christian missions and thought it was no big deal to give up my whole connection to my own culture, and I wanted to live in China "forever." (Not the case anymore.) Did I think I'd be writing this 10-year anniversary post while stuck in a lockdown due to a global pandemic/ the Chinese government's response to a global pandemic? ... no.

I have many more things planned for this blog ^_^ Won't go into specifics yet, because who knows what my actual posting timeline will be. (Though I can tell you in the near future, we'll have more posts about the Shanghai lockdown... so there's that.)

Anywayyyyy I like doing reader surveys once a year- it's really great to get feedback and comments from readers. Here's the link for the 2022 reader survey:

2022 Reader Survey

(survey will be open until June 30, 2022)

And I have a Patreon! Thank you so much to those of you who support me on Patreon. It really means a lot to me. If you like my blog, consider becoming a patron. ^_^

Perfect Number's Patreon

And again, thank you tell all my readers, especially those of you who leave nice comments or reply to my tweets. I'm really glad that blogging has allowed me to meet people and have these kinds of conversations.

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Follow-up post: 2022 Reader Survey Wrap-Up

Top 13 Posts of 2021

A white woman using a laptop. I was going to say "you readers can imagine this is how I look when I'm blogging," but then I was like, NO WAY would I have white furniture like that at the table where I eat. (Especially with a toddler.) Then my husband said, "When you are blogging, you don't look that relaxed." Image source.

Heyyyy it is March (happy Pi Day!), so obviously time for the roundup of my most popular blog posts from 2021, right?

Here are the top 5 with the most page views:

1. Thank you, Libby Anne. In 2021, Libby Anne (the blogger from "Love, Joy, Feminism") announced she would be retiring from blogging. She was one of my favorite bloggers, so I posted a roundup of her best posts.

2. How Pregnancy and Childbirth Changed My Asexuality (or, actually, A Post About Vaginismus). This is my big vaginismus post- everything I've said about my asexuality since then has linked back to this. (Probably the most important post on my blog in 2021.)

3. Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible. "There is a lot of good stuff in the bible. There are a lot of very good and beautiful truths about God. There are a lot of stories that are great for kids to read. BUT. Most of the bible is not that. So yes, I want to show my child the good parts, but I don't want to misrepresent the bible and have him think that the bible is all about exciting stories, and teaching morality and godliness, and learning good things about God. No, the bible is very much about foreskins, and genocide, and God sending war and disasters as punishment, and laws that had zero understanding of human rights."

4. My Little Niche in the Asexual Community. "This is the little niche I am in, in the asexual community- I choose to be in a 'normative' relationship structure- married, monogamous, opposite-gender partner, expected to have sex. I am interested in how to navigate that as an asexual, and I want to reach out to people (especially women) who are in the same situation. "

5. What If I Dated In High School. About the bizarre and wrong ideas I had about dating when I was in high school, and my current wonderings about the extent to which it's even possible for a teenager to not have bizarrely wrong ideas about dating.

And a few other posts I loved, even though they weren't in the top 5 for page views: 

1. I Don't Know Anyone in China Who Has Had Covid. Yep, this is still true.

2. Strange Fire and 3. Everyone Else's Nadab and Abihu Fanfics. Y'all, I am TIRED of Christians all making up their own fanfics about how Nadab and Abihu were definitely bad people, bad enough that they deserved to be killed in a fire sent by God. Just because the bible says they deserved it, you believed that? Geez. So I wrote my own fanfic. 

4. Sinopharm vaccine, 1st dose. I got the Chinese covid-19 vaccine.

5. US Immigration and the Definition of Marriage. Working on my husband's green card application. "I found it surprising, to be honest, because I always assumed that if you have a marriage license, then you're married, and that's that- but no, for the US immigration system, that's not enough."

6. Love Wins (an Ezra fanfic) and 7. This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now. Let it be known that the biblical prophet Ezra was a jerk. I wrote a love story about a couple who stayed together despite all the biblical laws that tried to keep them apart. (And I realized that I am in exactly the kind of inter-racial, inter-national, inter-religious marriage that Ezra would have wanted to break up.)

8. I'm Still Asexual. Yep, I'm still asexual. A LOT of things have changed, but I am still asexual.

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Also, CAN YOU BELIEVE I started this blog in 2012? It's been 10 years. And I have not run out of opinions to blog about.

Thank you to all my readers, you are great! Please go ahead and leave a comment about what kinds of posts you like and want to see more of. <3

And I have a Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/perfectnumber Thank you to everyone who supports me on Patreon. You are great!

I'm Still Here :)

A map of China, with the city of Shanghai labelled. Image source.

Back when I first started blogging, one of the first rules I heard was "don't write an 'I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a long time' post." For one thing, nobody cares about your blog as much as you do, so even though you feel like it's been such a long time since you posted and that means you're not doing a good enough job, most of your readers probably haven't even noticed. They have their own lives to worry about. And the "sorry I haven't posted lately" blog post introduces that negativity but doesn't actually add any content that your readers want to read. Also, future readers looking through your old posts are not checking the dates, so they won't even notice the big gap, unless, of course, your "I'm sorry I haven't posted" post draws attention to it.

So, this is not that, I guess.

I have a lot going on- a full-time job and also a toddler. I also have a ton of partially-written stuff in my drafts; I am totally going to turn them into blog posts some day. So please keep coming back and reading my blog! I have a lot to say! ... Just very little time to actually sit down with my laptop and the VPN on so I can write it down.

A few other updates:

My mother-in-law went back to her hometown OH THANK GOD FINALLY. I haven't really blogged that much about that whole situation, but it was bad. It was bad. She lived with us for 2 years. She acts like she's Square Root's mom [fact-check: I am Square Root's mom], and I do everything wrong and therefore I don't have the right to make decisions about how to raise my own child. (Which she actually explicitly said to me one time.) Getting her to leave was a whole process, my god you guys, you have no idea. You have no idea how bad it was. Maybe I'll blog about part of it someday. Anyway, she's gone, WOO YEAH PARTY, so now Hendrix and I actually get to be in charge of our own lives and taking care of our child.

Also, hey remember how in 2019 I wrote the 6 Years Later blog series, about how living in China has changed my perspectives on culture and all that, and about the reasons I moved to China, and about how I'm ready to be done and come back to the US now? And then I went to the US for maternity leave and then came back to Shanghai and then there was a pandemic and I HAVE BEEN ACTUALLY STUCK IN CHINA FOR A YEAR AND A HALF NOW? 

Yeah, so, like now I've been living in China for 8 years. I miss my home and my family, but people don't leave China for vacations nowadays. No, you don't do that, because you run the risk that your return flight gets cancelled, or the airlines change the rules, or the Chinese government changes the rules, and you'll be stuck outside of China for who knows how long. There are people who have been trying to get back into China for over a year. Used to be I can enter and leave the country whenever I want because I have a residence permit, but now that's not enough. You need additional documents. And once you get into China, you have to do the 2-week quarantine. Which, as I've said before, is a real quarantine, a "you do not open the door" quarantine, not a "well, try not to go out, if you can" like they apparently did in the US.

I know people who have entered China or left China. The vast majority were because they were moving, long-term, though I do know one person who just came for a business trip. Which I find odd, doing a whole 2-week hotel quarantine and then a 1-week business trip, but I guess their employer thought it was worth it, so whatever. Anyway, my point is, people don't leave China to jaunt around on a little vacation.

Basically, it's looking like I'm not leaving China until I'm REALLY leaving China and moving to the US long-term.

And on that note, we have started working on the US green card application for my husband. Wish us luck~ 

So, that's what's going on here. Thank you for continuing to read the blog, everyone! ^_^ There will be blog posts coming, though not as fast as I would like.

Thanks everyone~

Top 15 posts from 2020

A computer with the word "BLOG" displayed on the screen. Image source.

Hi readers! Here's a roundup of my most read/ favorite posts from 2020. This year 2 of the big themes on the blog were COVID-19 and the birth of my little son. 

I am in China (have been in China for the entire pandemic), so I experienced all the lockdowns and panicking about a month earlier than most of my readers. Then after 2-3 months we were more or less "back to normal", except we have to wear masks, and can't travel. (It's been a very different story in the US...) 

And I announced the birth of my son! He is amazing and perfect. So I've had a lot to say on the blog about pregnancy and babies and being a mom.

Anyway here are the top 6 posts with the most page views:

1. The Babylon Bee Completely Misunderstands Boundaries. I Am Shocked. (note: not actually shocked) "The Babylon Bee is trash."

2. An Invisible Virus and an Omniscient God "In particular, why aren't Christians in the United States using 'discernment' to make up for the lack of COVID-19 testing? Surely in the US there exist some Christians who are close enough to God that they're that good at 'discernment'... right?"

3. What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice "Now I know how hard pregnancy is, and I understand the importance of 'my body, my choice' in a way I never did before."

4. Bathsheba's Son "Bathsheba spent 9 months nurturing and loving the child that grew inside her body. David spent 9 months covering up a rape and a murder."

5. Dance, Those Who Dance Upon Injustice "Someday we will tell our children about how people danced in the streets after the 2020 election."

6. Welcome Baby Square Root! 

And here are some other good posts I wrote:

1. What I Wish I'd Known About Breastfeeding "Because I now see that there are lots of good reasons [to give formula]. But 'the mom is right here and wants to breastfeed the baby, but her husband's family is telling her 'no, you can't, you don't have enough milk'' is NOT one of them. That's effed-up."

2. I'm SO HAPPY I Won't Be Praying During Childbirth "What if something went wrong, and I thought it was my fault because I didn't pray the right way?"

3. Yes, I Want Justice (A post about white evangelicals and #BlackLivesMatter) "In this ideology, the idea of 'helping the victims' makes no sense- the so-called victims are sinners too and deserve to go to hell just as much as those who hurt them."

4. Breastfeeding: Take and Eat; This is My Body "It's interesting to me that, from a cis man's perspective, language about eating another person's body and shedding blood is about violence and murder and death. Not the case for me. I have a uterus; I use my body to create a new life. I bled for him. I nurse him from my own breasts."

5. An Update on Whether or Not "Marriage is Hard" Now That We Have a Child "Having a newborn child (and my mother-in-law living with us) brought a lot of stress and conflict into our relationship for about 3 months, but that's a completely different thing than saying 'marriage is hard.'"

6. China Bans Foreigners (Like Me) From Entering the Country "This isn't like the travel bans in other countries, affecting tourists and business travelers. This affects long-term residents who uprooted their whole lives a month ago because of the virus, and were prepared to spend 14 days in quarantine in order to come back."

7. When the Teacher Says, "Don't Look at Your Report Card" "I thought there were things about myself that I shouldn't know, but that other people- people more qualified than me- should know. That's bullshit."

8. Homesick "The short version is, I'm ready to be done living in China, right when the US is ... how shall I put this ... not livable."

9. Taking My Kid To Church (Blog Series) "In other words, I don't want to approach this from the negative side, 'warning' him about religion. I want to teach him positive things about morality."

Thanks again to all my readers! I really love writing the blog and I love when people write to me to say they can relate to it and my posts are helpful for them. <3

Also I have a Patreon! A big thank-you to my Patreon supporters- it really does make a big difference. If you enjoy the blog, maybe consider supporting me on Patreon sometime in the next year.

So, what are my plans for the blog in 2021? Well, in general I have been posting way less than I want to, because of my high-maintenance child (okay, I guess all toddlers are high-maintenance) and my mother-in-law who is always here judging me. There are so many things I want to blog about. Lots of draft posts and partial ideas. It will all get posted eventually.

There will be a big post on asexuality sometime in the next few weeks. :) I've got it almost 100% finished, so I feel confident about promising it to you all. Stay tuned.

Anyway, thanks so much, and looking forward to lots more blogging in the future~