I wanted to start this post by telling a story. Writing my blog is a hobby of mine and it’s something that I’m proud of. I decided to be brave and share a blog post I wrote on LinkedIn. Within twenty minutes, I had someone comment on the blog post that I shared. They had written “Too Pornish” in the comments. This was someone with who I wasn’t previously connected, so I had no idea who this person was. I immediately felt a flush of embarrassment and deleted the post linking back to my blog. I didn’t think much of it, but then I tried to access my blog through work to gather some pictures for an “About Me” presentation. My work had blocked my website because it was deemed as an adult site. I laughed and it clicked why that person commented “Too Pornish”. It made me think, is my blog name too sexual?

When I told my friend that I was thinking about starting a blog, she helped me come up with the name. The first name I picked was “The Geeky Iceskater” The name didn’t feel right to me, but I wanted to start writing as soon as possible. My friend helped me figure out some other blog name contenders and she came up with Bizarre Brunette. It clicked and I knew immediately that was the blog name I wanted. It’s funny how Bizarre and Brunette on their own aren’t sexual words, yet when they are put together, it becomes “Pornish” as this one man described. It makes me slightly uncomfortable how something that was a hobby of mine has suddenly become sexualized which was never my intention, to begin with.

I mentioned earlier how I liked that Bizarre Brunette was feminine. The reason why this matters is because of the harassment I have faced both in person and online over my hobbies. I have been made to feel unwelcome at comic book stores even though I love reading comics. When I started playing video games, I was told that I was doing it to get attention from men even though gaming helped me destress after a long day. I was harassed online because I chose a Gamertag that was more feminine. I have had people question if I’m truly a fan of something if I wear a pop culture t-shirt. It’s been draining to be made to feel like I don’t belong.

As a side note, I’m a cis, white woman, so the amount of harassment I have faced is substantially less than other women. There’s still some work that needs to happen so that all women can feel welcome in comics, video games, and geek culture in general.

I was mulling this around, but I don’t see myself ever changing my blog name. If I ever do a rebranding, it could potentially happen in the future, but I have no plans right now. I’m going to continue writing about the topics that I’m passionate about because I want women to feel more welcome in these spaces. Unfortunately for the random guy on LinkedIn, Bizarre Brunette will continue to exist even though it might be too Pornish.