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!

About Vulnerability, Boundaries, and Oversharing

Book cover for "Daring Greatly"

I read Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown. It's about the importance of "being vulnerable." This means things like: Sharing your feelings with other people, instead of pretending that you always have everything under control. Trying new things, rather than avoiding this because of fear of failure. Stop being a perfectionist- which is defined as believing that you need to do everything perfectly, because if people see you as less than perfect, you believe it means you are worthless. As leaders, cultivating a culture (at work, school, in a family, etc) where people are not shamed or criticized for making mistakes- this way, it is easier for people to learn from their mistakes and do better.

This is great. Definitely recommend this book if you want to learn more about shame and vulnerability. For myself, though, I felt like I already understood a lot of this. And there was something that was bothering me as I was reading: Does "vulnerability" mean just letting people see your real, raw emotions? Like just letting anyone see that? Is that a good thing? No, I don't think that's a good thing- I believe in boundaries instead.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Why people like your quick bullshit takes better than your high-effort posts (November 29, via) "but the attention of the internet is best modeled as a random swarm of locusts that will occasionally land on your ripe fields based on its inscrutable whims."

Oh yeah this has happened to me. The posts that get the most views aren't the ones I really really care about and spend a lot of time on. Hey if you really want to make my day, you can leave an appreciative comment on any of my very long blog posts about the bible.

2. Apples (December 12) From xkcd.

3. Journal Club: The Quoiromantic Manifesto (December 17) "'Quoiromantic' was especially a response to asexual discourses where romantic orientation is so common that people are expected to have it as a slot in their identity. Quoiromanticism expresses unwillingness to participate in this framework."

4. I usually do a "Christmas music roundup" post in December, but it turns out I just like all the same songs every year. So instead of doing a whole post, I'll just share them one by one here and there.

Emmanuel (Michael W Smith & Amy Grant- w/lyrics)

5. OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide (November 27, via) [content note: suicide]

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. ‘Good will to all’ rejected as ‘political’ and ‘divisive’ (December 9) "'Peace on earth, good will to all' is the same thing Christians have been reciting every year at Christmastime for centuries, but those Christians can’t say it this year without being — correctly — perceived as 'political' and 'anti-Trump' and 'anti-ICE' and 'anti-MAGA,' because 'peace and good will to all' is the opposite of everything that Trump and ICE and MAGA stand for."

Also from the Slacktivist: The end of 20th-century white evangelicalism (December 15) "I remember what it feels like to identify as an evangelical because loving Jesus and loving the Bible was the most important thing to me only to be told, constantly, that this did not matter at all — to constantly have the gatekeepers of evangelicalism reminding me that loving Jesus and loving the Bible wasn’t nearly as important as voting Republican no matter what. And then seeing 'no matter what' ratcheted into something ever more extreme."

This is so real. I'm also one of those evangelicals who followed Jesus right out of the church.

2. Trump Finds Way To Be Bigger Piece Of Sh*t Than Ever, Re: Rob Reiner (December 16) This is really shocking and horrific, what he posted on social media.

3. Her Christmas lights were going up. Then Border Patrol showed up (December 13) "'It looks completely ridiculous,' she said. But she decided to leave it that way 'as a symbol of what happens when ICE and Border Patrol get involved in your world. Things don't go as planned. And a lot of work doesn't get done.'"

4. DOJ releases Epstein files and the first batch is short on new information (December 19) 

5. A radio station in Amsterdam is a lifeline for Sudan. After USAID cuts, it's faltering (December 21) "From Amsterdam, the journalists at Radio Dabanga try to shed some light on the dire situation. They report on where fighting has erupted, on disease outbreaks in refugee camps, and the aftermath of recent atrocities, such as those in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher."

6. Trump's push to end transgender care for young people opposed by pediatricians (December 19) "Goepferd, who is the founder of Children's Minnesota Gender Health Program, says that for the medical community, nothing has changed about the evidence supporting gender-affirming care that could justify the government's actions."

Top 18 Posts of 2024

Photo of a computer. Image source.

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~

Blogaround

1. How (Not) To Do Autism Awareness Month (March 1) "I think most people know at this point that autism exists and a few basic traits, and would go 'Oh yeah, I support autistic people' in April, but months later when someone you work with is 'weird' and communicates more directly and bluntly than others, do you just go with it or do you assume they’re being rude to people and complain to someone?"

2. "Complete" Manhood and The Desirability of Becoming Human in Bicentennial Man (1999) (March 7) "I cannot stress this enough. They had the opportunity, right here, to fashion 'Can Andrew open a bank account?' into a central plot point about the legal recognition of his personhood, and the movie just... breezes past it. Andrew gets a bank account and nobody tries to stop him and it's fine."

3. Tom Hanks Mad He Didn't Learn About The Tulsa Massacre In School, And He's Right (March 8) "And it made me mad. It made me mad that somebody had somehow made an editorial process of what was appropriate for us to learn about our own American history."

4. Farewell, OnlySky (March 7, via) Sad to hear that atheist blogging site OnlySky is shutting down.

5. Why is New York Times campaign coverage so bad? Because that’s what the publisher wants. (March 7) "Yes, but sometimes it is obvious what’s right. Defending democracy would age just fine, I assure you."

6. Therapist Reacts to WALL-E (January 10) "I understand that on paper, that sounds ridiculous and kind of stupid. And yet, I kid you not, I think this is one of the most beautiful love stories I've ever seen on film." 29-minute video from Cinema Therapy.

7. This tweet:

Jesus teaching only in parabolas pic.twitter.com/b8Yty5VTVx

— Scott Barber (@thescottbarber) March 13, 2024

8. And this song, if you're into Phil Joel/ Newsboys songs from the year 2000 (I know I am!)

9. At least you quickly know to not bother reading the rest (March 13) Oh ChatGPT.

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~

Blogaround

1. Workplaces Without Borders And Sexual Harassment (August 8, via) "You might say 'well, if Harvey Weinstein asks out of nowhere whether your breasts are real, when you aren’t working on a Miramax film, he’s boorish and misogynist and a creep, but he’s not engaged in workplace sexual harassment—there’s no employment relationship between you and him.' But in a very real way that’s wrong, because even if Weinstein isn’t your employer right now, he might well have been your employer last year and be about to be your employer next year. Because the workplace is borderless, Weinstein’s behavior still creates a hostile work environment."

2. Phistomefel's Sequel (August 11) 1-hour-55-minute video. Normally Simon solves sudokus, but in this video it's a weird variation called "chequered arromino." "I think the big game in town here is to know whether yellow is orange or blue, and whether purple is orange or blue."

Wow, this one is also very good: Is There ANYTHING Cleverer On YouTube? (July 30) 1-hour-26-minute sudoku solve video.

3. Google will start deleting inactive accounts in December under new security policy (August 10) I find this very concerning, because they don't say how it will affect blogspot blogs. (Blogspot is a google product. My blog is hosted by google.) So, doesn't affect me because they're only going to delete stuff after 2 years of inactivity, but will people's blogspot blogs be deleted just because the blogger hasn't logged in to their blog or used their google account for a long time? The policy says that accounts with youtube channels won't be deleted, but what about blogs?

Also, another very concerning thing is what if you have a gmail account that you never log into because you've set it up to forward the emails to a different account? So you still use it, you still read the emails from it, but you don't log in. Would google see that as "inactivity"? (This answer on reddit says yes...) 

Google posted their policy here, Inactive Google Account Policy, and here About Inactive Account Manager. And also you can see what the recent activity was on your account here: My Google Activity.

4. Ooooh look at this, there's a new book called Color Taste Texture: Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who's Ever Cringed at Food. A cookbook for autistic people! (And anyone else who has food aversions.) I am very interested in this.

5. US, China agree to double weekly flights between countries (August 12) Yessssss. "The 24 weekly flights are still a fraction of the more than 150 round-trip flights allowed by each side before restrictions were imposed in early 2020 due to the COVID-pandemic." Also, a complicating factor is that US airlines aren't flying over Russia now.

6. 'Blind Side' subject Oher alleges Tuohys made millions off lie (August 14) "Oher eventually hired a lawyer who helped him uncover the details surrounding the movie deal and his legal connection to the people he believed were his adoptive parents. His lawyer unearthed the conservatorship document in February, and Oher came to the painful realization that the Tuohys had not adopted him."

7. Christlike or Pornlike? A Christian Woman’s Role in Marriage (2021) [content note: abuse] This is what happens when everyone takes it for granted that a husband is simply not capable of being a decent human being if his wife's not regularly having sex with him. He is mistreating her in so many ways, and everyone (husband, pastor, church culture) tells her that the first step to fix the relationship is she needs to have sex with him whenever he demands it, otherwise nothing will change.

8. We can't stop thinking about Barbie's deliciously cutting Matchbox Twenty moment (August 1) "First, it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being made to listen to a man sing, unsolicited, when he clearly thinks he’s being so dreamy right now."

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Edit: Well I published this post, and I went to schedule it to tweet on tweetdeck, like I always do with my new blog posts, and now I have to add another link:

9. Twitter finally figured out how to kill TweetDeck, by putting it behind a paywall (August 17) Ah, well, I guess it's just a matter of time till I'd end up leaving twitter, it's just one thing after another. We'll see.

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.

---

Update: 2023 Reader Survey Results

Blogaround

1. Spam bloggers get (April 27) "Some of the e-mails try to sound personal, but it’s really obvious that they are bot operations."

2. BMW Hits a Rocky Road, Apologizes for Ice Cream ‘Discrimination’ (April 21) I posted a link related to this in a previous blogaround, but I just found out that Sixth Tone also wrote about it, and Sixth Tone is definitely a better source for Chinese news.

I have one criticism of this article, though- it keeps using the word "foreigners" when what it actually means is "white people." And honestly this happens all the damn time in China and it annoys me SO MUCH. Chinese people never call me a white person (白人), they call me a foreigner (外国人) ALL THE TIME. Because I'm white! Like if that's the reason- and it affects every interaction I have with Chinese people- why can't we just say it? But anyway, nothing I can do about that, so I try not to get mad about it.

Chinese internet users are mad because BMW gave ice cream to "foreigners" right after they told Chinese people that there was no ice cream available- do you think that would have happened if these "foreigners" were, say, Indian? Korean? African American? Chinese American? (Actually, ethnic Chinese aren't generally seen as "foreigners", regardless of their actual citizenship...) If a non-white "foreigner" had showed up, would they have gotten the ice cream? I would say it's much less likely. No, this is about whiteness, so let's call it whiteness. (For more on that, see: Well I have to blog about this "don't touch foreigners" nonsense because I'm white in China.)

Another article also from Sixth Tone: A Female Comedian Gets Praised and Slut-Shamed for STI Set (April 14) About how difficult it is to get the HPV vaccine in China.

A third article from Sixth Tone: Illegal Gym Construction Leaves 240 Families Homeless in Harbin (May 4) "More than 240 families living in a 31-story building in China’s northeastern city of Harbin were evacuated Sunday after a tenant demolished most of the load-bearing walls on the third floor."

3. Cryptocurrencies II: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (April 24) "The throughline in all three companies I've talked about tonight is them confidently presenting a veneer of expertise, even as beneath the surface, they were a complete shit show."

4. Gusteau’s BIG Secret Revealed | Ratatouille Pixar Film Theory (April 27) "When you're watching 'Ratatouille', has it ever bothered you that, if not for the unbelievable discovery that Remy can control Linguini with his hair, then the plot could never happen?"

5. The Light Bulb Sudoku (2021) 42-minute sudoku solve video. This is really cool- similar logic to a sudoku with A LOT of thermos and thinking about how many degrees of freedom each one has.

6. Texas Senate passes bill requiring public school classrooms to display Ten Commandments (April 22) Ugh, tell me you've never read the bible without telling me you've never read the bible. This is such a bad idea. It's like, some politicians want to pressure people into being more Christian or something, so they try to brainstorm things that seem like good symbols of being Christian, and hey the 10 Commandments sounds like it would fit that description. It's not about actually caring what the 10 Commandments are and following them... I would warn these politicians to pay particular attention to the 3rd commandment (depending on how you number them), "you shall not misuse the name of the Lord." Yeah, using God as an excuse to make laws restricting other people's rights- that's what "misusing the name of the Lord" means.

May 2023 Carnival of Aces Call for Submissions: Changing Labels

Label makers. Image source.

Hi everyone, I am hosting the Carnival of Aces this month. 

A Carnival of Aces is a monthly blogging carnival centered on the asexual spectrum (asexuals, gray-As, demisexuals, etc.).  Anyone can participate, but responses should deal with asexuality or the asexual spectrum, and they should relate to the month’s theme (which is announced each month by the host).  Responses should postdate the call for submissions.  Alternate forms of media besides blogs are also welcome as long as they deal with the prompt.  If you’re not sure whether your piece is okay, submit it anyway and we’ll figure it out.

For this month, the topic is "Changing Labels." 

It's about what identity labels we use to describe ourselves. Queer labels, ace-related labels, gender identity labels, or other labels. The reasons why people choose certain labels and then maybe later change them.

Some possible topics to write about:

• If you used some label but then changed to a different one- why? Or if you used some label (for example, bi) and then later added another label (for example, bi and asexual), what did that process look like?
• Is there a label you used before, but don't use now? Is it because you believe it doesn't apply to you, or because you feel it's not necessary to have a label for that? (Or some other reason?)
• Perhaps you haven't changed the label you use, but the way you understand it now is different than when you first started using it. (For example, you feel more confident about it than you did initially, you define it differently, you emphasize different aspects of it, etc.) In what ways do you feel differently about it now?
• Do you use different labels in different situations? (This may depend on who you're coming out to, how much time you want to spend explaining yourself, the specific reason why you're coming out to them, etc...)
• How can the ace community support people during their process of figuring out their identity (and possibly changing labels, choosing to ID as ace temporarily, etc)?

The August 2022 carnival had a similar topic- "Labels and Microlabels"- you can read those posts for ideas too.

To submit your post: Leave a comment on this post, or email me at perfectnumber628 at gmail.com. (If I don't reply, send it again, because it might have gone to spam.)

Happy blogging everyone~

"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.

---

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

January 2023 Carnival of Aces Roundup: "The Advice You Wish You'd Had"

A typewriter printing a page that say "Advice to my younger self". Image source.

I'm hosting the January 2023 Carnival of Aces, and the topic I picked was "The Advice You Wish You'd Had." 

There were posts submitted by Sildarmillion and me. If anybody else wrote a post and I missed it, please leave a comment :)

From Sildarmillion:

An Essay That Gave Me A New Perspective "The point is that before reading Saah’s piece, I had subconsciously thought of physical intimacy as an all-or-nothing, that the whole point of it was penetrative sex, and reading her piece opened my mind to other possibilities."

The Advice I Wish I’d Had "If I could go back in time, the advice I’d give myself is to view all of these words (sexual, sensual, aesthetic, romantic, alterous, platonic, attraction, desire, love, lust, chemistry, compatibility, erotic, crush, squish, infatuation, limerence) as tools used to convey personal experiences, and not as robustly defined constructs being used in a consistent manner by everyone using them."

From me, Perfect Number: 

Bucket List (a post about being a sex-favorable asexual) "Okay, so the summary of what 'sex-favorable' means to me is: If I could do it all over again, I would have the perspective that 'I would like to figure out sex, and masturbation, someday. Like, that is one of my overall life goals.'"

---

This topic- about how to do asexuality 101, how to teach sex ed in a way that's inclusive of aces, how to give relationship advice in a way that's inclusive of aces- is super interesting to me. I grew up in purity culture and had a lot of HUGE misconceptions about what sex even is, which made it impossible for me to realize I was asexual. It seems like a lot of aces spend years not even realizing that asexuality is a possibility, not even realizing that you don't "have to" have sex, etc. I definitely plan to blog about this topic more.

January 2023 Carnival of Aces Call for Submissions: "The Advice You Wish You'd Had"

Scene from Frozen II, where Olaf the snowman sings "When I'm Older." "This will all make sense when I am older / Someday I will see that this makes sense / One day when I'm old and wise / I'll look back and realize / That these were all completely normal events." Image source.

Hi everyone, I am hosting the Carnival of Aces this month. 

A Carnival of Aces is a monthly blogging carnival centered on the asexual spectrum (asexuals, gray-As, demisexuals, etc.).  Anyone can participate, but responses should deal with asexuality or the asexual spectrum, and they should relate to the month’s theme (which is announced each month by the host).  Responses should postdate the call for submissions.  Alternate forms of media besides blogs are also welcome as long as they deal with the prompt.  If you’re not sure whether your piece is okay, submit it anyway and we’ll figure it out.

For this month, I've chosen the topic "The Advice You Wish You'd Had."

A lot of people haven't heard of asexuality- or even if they've heard of it, they know very little about what it actually means. This lack of awareness of asexuality often makes it really difficult for aces to even figure out our own identities.

Also, most sex-ed materials aren't inclusive of aces. Sometimes they do mention asexuality, but it's just 1 little mention and then the whole rest of their material is written for allosexuals (ie, people who are not on the asexual spectrum).

So, I think it takes a long time for us to even figure out what we want or don't want, and how to go about handling things like relationships, sex, doctors, etc. Perhaps there are things we wish we had known about sooner, or things that we want to tell young people so that the next generation of aces can figure it out easier.

For example:

• How did you first hear about asexuality? Does your current understanding of asexuality differ from your initial impression the first time you heard of it? Is there a different way of explaining it that would have been more helpful to you?
• What sex-ed advice do you wish you had? How can we make sex-ed resources that are inclusive of aces?
• Is there any relationship advice you heard that you later figured out didn't work for you? What different advice would you give instead?
• Did you see any asexual characters in movies/books/etc which were helpful or not helpful to you? What makes good representation? What should be done better?
• Are there things you would have done differently if you had been more confident in your identity at a younger age?
• Or, alternatively, what's some good advice that you were given, and how did it affect you?

To submit a blog post for the carnival, leave a comment on this post, or email me at perfectnumber628 at gmail . com. Submissions are due January 31, 2023. I will post the roundup of submissions at the beginning of February. :)

UPDATE: Roundup has been posted here. 

October 2022 Carnival of Aces Roundup ("Tell a Story")

Asexual flag. Image source.

Hi everyone! Here's the roundup of submissions for the October 2022 Carnival of Aces, an asexual blog carnival. The topic this month was "Tell a Story."

From sildarmillion:

• Romance is Confusing: She-Hulk "The impression I get from media is that if you feel strong sexual desire for someone, the good outcome is if that is satisfied, but only if you are single. If you are not single, and if you feel this desire for someone other than your partner, then that is a bad outcome. If you are single and suppress this desire, then that’s bad. But if you are not single, then you’re supposed to suppress that desire. In fact, after a breakup, people on TV sometimes say 'Well at least now you can have random hookups.' It’s like the rest of the world thinks its the most natural thing in the world to want lots and lots of random sex, but only if you’re single."
• How Understanding My Asexuality Made Me a Less Self-Righteous Person "Asexuality can be dangerous in conservative societies in which no one talks about sex, and where everyone makes a public display of behaviors and attitudes that are natural to an asexual, and hides the behaviors and attitudes that are unnatural to them."

From Blue Ice-Tea: Growing Up Platoniromantic: That One Time I Had a Boyfriend "I wanted to know him better.  I wanted to spend more time with him.  And dating seemed like the perfect excuse to do that.  After all, isn’t that what people who are dating do?  They go off together and spend time alone, talking, getting to know each other?  All that sounded great to me.  And 'dating' was the only script I had for doing it."

From Sukii: Friendship drama (Or, the one in which I indulge in self-delusion and make the same mistakes over again) "While I was going home I realised that he was totally asking me if he could kiss me in the mouth and that this very probably meant that he actually liked me. Anyway, I didn't really want to accept it, so I sort of pretended that he didn't really like me in that way."

From me (Perfect Number): Sea Monsters on Land, and My Life With Vaginismus "And then suddenly the ultrasound technician is asking me why her ultrasound wand won't go into my vagina, as if I'm supposed to know? How would I know anything about that? I'm a good kid!"

Thank you to everyone who sent in their posts for this carnival! I love this topic~

October 2022 Carnival of Aces Call for Submissions: Tell a Story

An ace of spades card, colored like the asexual flag. Image source.

This month I'm hosting the Carnival of Aces, a blog carnival for topics related to asexuality:

A Carnival of Aces is a monthly blogging carnival centered on the asexual spectrum (asexuals, gray-As, demisexuals, etc.).  Anyone can participate, but responses should deal with asexuality or the asexual spectrum, and they should relate to the month’s theme (which is announced each month by the host).  Responses should postdate the call for submissions.  Alternate forms of media besides blogs are also welcome as long as they deal with the prompt.  If you’re not sure whether your piece is okay, submit it anyway and we’ll figure it out.

For this month, I've chosen the topic "Tell a Story." I feel that it was extremely helpful for me, back when I was figuring out my own asexuality, to be able to read other people's stories and see what parts of them I could relate to. I think it's super-interesting to read about what asexuality actually means in people's lives and how it affects them in practical ways.

So this month, tell a story from your own life about being asexual/ ace spectrum. Here are some ideas:

• How you figured out you are asexual/ ace spectrum
• Coming out (to family/ friends/ partner/ doctor/ therapist/ job/ church/ etc)
• Extremely ace things you did before you even knew you were ace ("I should have realized right then I was ace", that sort of thing)
• Dating/ relationships/ sex
• A fictional character whose experiences are similar to yours
• Or any other personal story from your life, related to being ace

To submit a post, leave a comment on this blog post, with the link to your post. (Or, if that is not working, email me at perfectnumber628 @ gmail.com.) Send in your submissions by October 31, 2022, and I will post the roundup in the first few days of November.

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Update: Roundup of submissions has been posted :)

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!