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March 17, 2005
Color Me Puzzled
Kevin takes another dive into the why-women-don't-blog waters and surfaces with some theory-backing mermaids from the op-ed pages. He also catches this from Dahlia Lithwick:
And so a clutch of women are left on the pink margins of the page, to wring our hands and, well, discuss among ourselves. The subtext will thus remain that anyone choosing to speak out on this is somehow hysterical or overemotional; that this is not a "serious" problem since serious people (i.e., men) aren't addressing it. All of which practically guarantees that nothing will be done about defining, measuring, or redressing the issue in the long term. Claims that no man wants to step on the landmine of political correctness, gender stereotyping, and identity politics should not justify bowing out of the conversation. Maureen Dowd, Deborah Tannen, and Anne Applebaum are smart, serious people. They have taken the time to initiate a conversation. They deserve serious responses from men and women alike.
It's striking, however, that the blogs are just the opposite. You never see women bringing up the dearth of female bloggers (to be clear, it's not that there aren't many, it's that there aren't as many), it's mostly men who publicly scratch their heads, glance into their comments, and find they're being hung in effigy. That's a bit odd, because even the studies cited in defense of women's numbers, like this one from Meryl Yourish, admit to a 14% differential, and that's not restricting the pool to political bloggers.
Now, assuming we're talking about top op-ed pages (and since this conversation is being held in the Washington Post, the LA Times, the NY Times, and Slate, we are) and top blogs, which we often are (though nothing I've seen shows the disparity easing much as we travel down the list), there's not a major difference in the number of female bloggers/writers occupying the slots, it's about 10-20% in each of the venues. So why is the conversation being entirely driven by women in one medium and men in the other? It makes no sense.
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I haven't received the memo yet from the WymBorg Collective, so I can't speak for all women bloggers or women in journalism. Just myself.
In my case, I write about things that interest me. The topic, as it is framed here and elsewhere, isn't as much of interest to me as a myriad of others. Don't get me wrong, I'm interested in rhetoric, how it's defined and practiced, etc. But, the meta-blogging, meta-journalism thing is growing a bit stale. And the general public has little interest in it whatsoever.
Hope that makes sense.
P.S. Better prepare to duck over "mermaids" as used above.
Posted by: Roxanne | Mar 17, 2005 12:42:09 PM
Huh -- why? It just fit with the imagery. And don't mermaids help wounded seamen which, on this issue, Kevin pretty much is?
Posted by: Ezra | Mar 17, 2005 12:44:42 PM
Oh, now you're just trying to be funny.
Posted by: Roxanne | Mar 17, 2005 1:02:43 PM
When I participate in Kos, say, I get the feeling of women all around me, speaking up and out. But when I read editorial pages, I am really struck by how lonely the female writers appear on the page. Maybe it's the conversation that makes the difference. Maybe we don't feel as left out in blogword, because in a new way we aren't, because we can speak up anywhere, any time. We're not dependent on somebody hiring us or choosing us. If we want to talk, we can talk. So there's no reason to bitch about feeling left out if we don't, in fact, feel left out. On the other hand, and maybe this is true for others?, it seems to have taken me ages to locate a bunch of women-run blogs that I check every day, but at least they're finally on my "favorites" list: Mouse Words, Majikthise, Shakespeare's Sister, Body & Soul.
Posted by: Kansas | Mar 17, 2005 1:07:23 PM
True Ezra, but your usage of the M-word might come off sounding condescending. (Though I know you didn't mean it to be) My feeling is that the word and concept refers back to the contstant whore/madonna/supernatural power terminology under which women rightly are tired of being defined, even today.
Or maybe it's just that "female bloggers" don't sit around and refer to helpful men as Atlas, Heracles, or some other mythologically flattering designation, and might prefer similar treatment, unless irony is implied.
On that note, I'm shocked that people are still having this discussion. There are tons and tons of great "female bloggers". The reason there are two different conversational threads is that, on the one hand, women are tired of being, yes, ignored, and on the other hand, male bloggers are doing the ignoring.
I'm not suggesting such ignorance is neccesarily meant with malice, (Or that you're doing it). However, the fact is that guys are taught to ignore women unless they're sexually available, or if they are able (begin allegory) to perform some interesting trick, like when a monkey wears human clothes.
Finally, apologies for the utter PC wankery, but I put "Female Bloggers" in quotes because it reminds me of other ridiculous words or phrases, like actress or waitress, designed to make the accomplishments of women somehow distinct from and inferior to the accomplishments of men.
Posted by: Ross A Lincoln | Mar 17, 2005 1:08:46 PM
That should have been "blogworld," of course.
Posted by: Kansas | Mar 17, 2005 1:10:03 PM
Huh -- well, no offense meant. It was really just chosen because I had already started the sentence with diving imagery.
Posted by: Ezra | Mar 17, 2005 1:28:12 PM
I agree with Roxanne that the meta discussions are tiresome, but there are people who delight in them and so they go on and on and on.
What it means to be a woman, what roles or behaviors are appropriate or possible for women, and what men and women think about these things have been in a state of rapid, revolutionary change over the last fifty years or so. This isn't recent history, it's current events. Even more, it is still the early days of the revolution.
Blogging is brand new.
When things are this new and this dynamic, one should hesitate to draw conclusions and make grand pronouncements. But the keyboard is right there and the temptation is, apparently, overpowering.
Posted by: James E. Powell | Mar 17, 2005 1:29:10 PM
So why is the conversation being entirely driven by women in one medium and men in the other? It makes no sense.
The theory put forward by Ms. Lithwick seems compelling - any sensible male with a visible perch in the MSM will be keen to avoid the issue, since he can reasonably expect to get the Larry Summers treatment if he says anything more controversial than "Ain't men, especially middle aged white men, awful?".
Even in blogworld, males who are perfectly sympathetic to the female position will get criticized for the use of words like, hmm, "mermaids".
As to the notion that men drive the "where are the women" debate in blogworld, do they? Kevin's post last month was in response to the Estrich/Kinsley storm; certainly, some of the quarterly dust-ups have been initiated by women.
E.g., here is the "Where are the women" from Sept 2002.
Posted by: TM | Mar 17, 2005 1:59:01 PM
Who brings up "Where are the women?" differs because the answer differs. In the case of blogs, the answer is, "Here, you idiot!" In the case of op-eds, the answer is "I don't know."
Female bloggers are getting their opinions out, whatever size their audiences. Why would they need to talk about finding compatriots when they know where they are? They can link to each other, comment on posts, and while the increased traffic brought by a link from one of the big boys (term used advisedly) is nice, it's not necessary to being a perfectly competent blogger.
For women writing op-eds and columns, the situation is very different. Instead of talking to each other and finding new voices through comments and trackbacks, their ranks only grow when an editor publishes an op-ed or hires a columnist. The only way to change the situation is to talk about it and hope someone with the power to act will hear and make a difference.
Basically, if getting a link to a particular post from a big-boy blog was the only way a female blogger could get that post seen by anyone, the female bloggers would ask where the women are the way female op-ed writers do. Since that kind of gatekeeping doesn't exist for blogs, women just keep writing instead.
Posted by: Jade | Mar 17, 2005 6:22:38 PM
I think male bloggers ask the question because they're not really interested in the answer - you'll notice many of them start from some sort of "given" that really isn't a given, like "given that fewer women blog than men" or something. If you're that determined to start with a fallacious premise, you're probably not going to care that much about people wanting to open your mind to other possibilities.
The other weird thing about all this is that men, the ones who ask the questions, don't offer any answers that would involve a bit of effort on their part. To my knowledge, not one male blogger has taken up the Pen-Elayne Pledge to add to his blogroll one new female blogger a week during March, Women's History Month (or, as we're calling it and celebrating it every day at my blog, Estrogen Month). Not one. That's what, only 4 or 5 women total? If "A-list" guy bloggers can't take that one simple step towards levelling the playing field, then no wonder this question keeps being asked without real expectation of an answer.
Posted by: Elayne Riggs | Mar 19, 2005 2:35:23 PM
Aside comment, but in Elizabethan England, mermaid was slang for prostitute. I don't know how long that association lasted or when it died out (then again, the more Shakespeare I watch, the more it seems that *everything* in that timeperiod had some sexual connotation).
I've written about the issue of women bloggers once or twice, but for the most part, I don't *think* of myself as a woman blogger. I happen to be a woman, I happen to be a blogger, but it's often other people who put me into that box.
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