SIVACRACY.NET: The Women in Blogging Reader

As written by Utopian Hell, reposted here because it *so* deserves to be read:

It is time once again to step back and look at that subject we love to hate: Women in Blogging. For those of you keeping score at home, about once every three months someone brings up the question on his blog (I�ve yet to see a woman do this) as to why there aren�t more women blogging about X. The conversation spills on and on into page after page of comments, all of which hash over the same points.

So, as a public service to every progressive male out there that suddenly decides he needs to address the reason why his progressive web site is run by white men, or why he doesn�t link to many women, I�ve put together this reader. In it, you will find all of the arguments used, and all of the excuses painted as to why there aren�t more women bloggers. Please, if you feel the need to rehash this issue yet again, follow the reader and come up with something new.

After reading through countless comment threads and watching how this argument flows, I�ve managed to knock it down to five basic categories of reasons. If you have something that I�ve missed, please feel free to leave it in a comment.

Interest
Women aren�t interested in X.
Women don�t write about X enough on their blogs.
Women don�t create blogs that are single-topic.
Women�s issues aren�t talked about enough in politics.

Interest is often the reason first trotted out, either in the beginning comments, or in the post itself. It is the first and easiest grasped-at reason, but is sadly wrong. If you�re a woman and you read these things long enough, you start to wonder just what women are interested in. Apparently, we�re not interested in politics, economics, academia, video games, programming, engineering or sports. In fact, all it takes for women to �not be interested� in something is for it to be made some sort of guy thing.

Yet, this is solidly untrue. My blogroll, alone, is chock full of women interested in many of the things listed above, and that�s just the tip of the iceberg. There are other blogrolls that contain many, many, MANY more. This is a cop-out, and an underhanded way of saying that women are only interested in fashion, shopping and babies.

This is often then pared down to the assertion that women�s issues aren�t discussed enough in politics, which is actually quite true. Unfortunately, men in politics perpetuate this, and tend to lump things under �women�s issues� that are really everyone�s politics. Feminism is not a bad word, and it isn�t a soft subject, either. Feature discussions about abortion, the wage gap, glass ceilings, old boy�s clubs, classism, sexism, and racism and you�re sure to get more women readers and commenters. What�s more, they�ll stay on for the other things. It�s important to note that these subjects aren�t fluff subjects.

Not if you�re serious about women, that is.

Writing Style
Women don�t stick to one topic.
Women add personal touches to their blogs.

What gets me about this particular argument is that it�s not really a gender-based argument, but more of a blogging-style based argument. This is typically brought up by bloggers who are much more interested in pretending to be journalists than they are interested in actually taking part in the informal act of blogging. To them, any site that delves into any personal stories doesn�t deserve to be counted as a site about their subject.

Somehow, this has come to be a gender thing. More women, apparently, use their blogs as sounding boards not only about politics, but how politics affect their personal lives, and men find this somehow repulsive. I�ve seen men who write about their personal lives just as much as women who write about their personal lives. This is a writing-style issue, and it isn�t a gender issue. If you narrow the qualifications enough, it will be hard to find a diversity of people.

The top two categories allude not-so-gracefully to the next category.

Domestic Concerns
Women don�t have time.
Women write about children and baking too much.
Women are too practical.
Women don�t have many hobbies.

Some supposedly enlightened men like to make the argument that women have less time to do this, and if only they�d have more time away from balancing their career and domestic issues, they�d be able to blog more. They do this in a way that makes it seem as if they�re bucking up their sisters in the blog world by applauding all of the hard work they do, then get befuddled when they get soundly and completely eviscerated by women in the comments section.

Somewhere, somehow this draws on deeper stereotypes that fuel the two categories above this one. Men aren�t interested in cookie recipes, so they don�t link to women�s blogs. Men aren�t interested in reading about Timmy�s cold, so they don�t link to women�s blogs. Men don�t find that women who write about abortion or feminism are writing about politics, so they don�t link to women�s blogs.

For those of you that might be too dumb to realize this, these are all stereotypes of what women are, and they are very hurtful to women. Acknowledging the stereotype does nothing other than perpetuate it, so if you really are interested in helping the world be a bit more of a balanced place, then do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.

Often, this category comes with flavored comments describing how boys were always interested in building model airplanes while girls were interested in playing house. This is fueling a stereotype about gender and it instantly alienates any women who share your interests. If you truly want more women readers/writers, then steer away from this category all together.

Like Attracts Like
Men link to other men, women link to other women.
Most of the �top blogs� are males.
Men don�t have time to look at their blogrolls.

This is one of those little truths that you don�t actually want to every address. Yes, men have a tendency to group with men, and women have a tendency to group with women. HOWEVER, women around the blog world have already noticed this and have carefully started linking to more men so as to lead by example. If you bring this up, you�re pointing a huge neon arrow at yourself as someone who didn�t do that, and you open yourself up to a great deal of criticism by women.

Whether or not this is true, it�s a big, fat excuse. If you want to bring this up, you�d best bring it up in a post that also goes on to describe how you, yourself, have started paying more attention to how many links of each gender you�re putting out there.

Competition/Aggressiveness/Self-Esteem
Women don�t compete like men do.
Women aren�t as aggressive as men are.
Women lack the self-esteem to be criticized.

I can�t tell you how many comments and blog posts I�ve read talking about why it is that men are called on in classrooms more than women. Men are more aggressive, men take more chances. Men aren�t afraid of being criticized. Men aren�t afraid to make assertions, whereas women just ask questions. So on and so forth. Every one of these comments is designed to make men look more �manly�, and women look more wimpy.

The blogging world isn�t really the dog-eat-dog world that people make it out to be, and for the record I�ve never seen a man take gracefully to someone criticizing his work in a blog comment. Avoid this �reason� at all possible costs. It�s nothing more than a group of stereotypes dressed up and trotted out to dance as some real reason.

Ultimately, the �reason� that there aren�t many women blogging is that men don�t want to take the time to look for them, or categorize them out of their field of vision. If you�re a man, and you�ve come to the conclusion that you need to start paying more attention to the women, then start by looking for them. You�ve found one, and through me you can find others. There are whole blogs that are dedicated to women who write blogs.

You�ll notice I haven�t linked to any of them in this post. Go find them. The biggest excuse I�ve heard yet is that serious bloggers don�t have time to go through their blogrolls, get rid of the dead blogs, and try to make an effort to even out the gender ratio. If you have enough time to write complicated essays about why it is that less women blog about your subject, then you have enough time to go and find more of the ones that do.

I�ll end this by saying this � don�t post the question, and don�t post your reason. Don�t do it if you�re a man, and don�t do it if you�re a woman. Just don�t do it. All of the above are reasons why there aren�t more women bloggers, but the biggest reason is because we continue to constantly enforce stereotypes by giving them attention. Don�t stoop to the level of the stereotypes by airing them and giving them a bunch of attention. Instead, find a woman blogger and feature her on your blog today, then start asking the harder question�