[This post was written in January. I'll explain more about why I didn't post it initially at the end. Bear with me through a few untimely references, if you would.]
Hmm.
I don't know how many people who read here read a lot of blogs outside the knitblog world, but from time to time there are these little flashes in the pan about men and women and blogging and power. There was one a while ago, about "where are all the women bloggers," and I sort of skimmed the debate from the sidelines but it was all about political blogs and I figured they had a point, but that I didn't really want to play because it was all so cranky and would take even more time than knitblogging, which is saying something.
But in trying to follow up on Scott Eric Kaufman's chain letter blog meme experiment, I stumbled upon a similar complaint about women and academic blogging. While I usually let these sorts of debates lie, for some reason this one kind of sparked my interest, I guess because I'm trying to figure out how blogging fits into my life at the current moment, and the value or importance of this enterprise is an important question for me right now.
So thinking about this, once again it strikes me: sure there are social networks that replicate power structures in the offline world and sure there are powerful male bloggers connecting to other powerful male bloggers, and sure that's a problem for women trying to establish those kinds of blogs, but the thing is that many women aren't trying to establish those kinds of blogs. Instead, many of us are blogging about other things. And maybe, just maybe, the point is that we don't care about their stinkin' blogosphere. Maybe the absence (really underrepresentation) of women in that sort of blog is not because we can't crash through some glass ceiling but because we're building our own house with different building materials (dudes, ceilings work better with wood and drywall, just saying). And it sort of makes me wonder--should we care? And if not, do we need to point out to the guys that maybe the problem isn't with our relative absence in the realms they consider important, but instead with their very definition of importance.
Or maybe that would just be rude. (There's also the distinct possibility that they're right, though, or maybe that's just me being a girl.) But more on that later.
So, if you didn't have time to read that very long Inside Higher Ed article, I'll summarize. The point is that Bitch, PhD was the only female blogger featured on the MLA panel with Scott (at which he did not appear to mention anything related to the chain letter meme, unless my sloppy skimming of his blog has missed something, which is altogether possible). And that the "online parlor," (defined in detail in the article, but you'll have to go read it if you want that much detail, sorry folks) in which, arguably, things of substance are discussed, is once again dominated by men. So yeah, in blogs that are political, and/or strictly academic, male discourse seems to be the norm. That translates, apparently, to certain readers, as serious discourse. And therefore, women are not participating.
But wait. There is a boatload of knitting blogs. I would guess that more than 95% of knitting blogs are authored by women. Broadening the diminutively-named "mommyblogging" to parenting blogs, and again, there is an alarming and well-documented proliferation of same, we're still probably upwards of 9 out of 10 authored by women. I know next to nothing of these blog solar systems, but I suspect that hollywood blogs and fashion/what was she wearing blogs are equally dependent on the nimble fingers of female authors. So it's not like we're not online. And it's not like we're not blogging.
We're just blogging about different stuff.
So?
Knitting, parenting, fashion, stars. Sounds like fluff to me. Literally in the case of us fiber bloggers. I think it might be fluff. And if it is, are we wasting our time, shirking our responsibilities, and squandering our power? Or are we building an alternative construction of the "parlor," one to which we can bring our whole selves, as mothers, as artists, as students, as well as being political partisans and teachers and thinkers? Are we responding to this new open media by creating a world in which we move with fluidity from positions of authority to positions of questioning and unknowing to reflective moments and, importantly, humor? I'd say, yes, we are, but I'm not entirely sure that doing that is getting us anywhere.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we as bloggers, are concerned with social change. I'll allow as how that's an arguable statement, and how it's pretty clear that your average muggle stumbling upon your average knitblogger (or for that matter, mommyblogger) post, would not perceive that this is the case. But I actually think it is. Most of us weave our political and social agendas into our blogging. Some of us raise staggering amounts of money for worthy causes, exhorting us to think about the nature of consumerism and the extremes of wealth and poverty in our world and our responsibility as members of the wealthy side of that imbalance. Many others encourage us to address issues of poverty through charity knitting. Some of us provide a window into the private lives of people under the scrutiny (and criticism) of our society (for example, gay parents, or parents of multiples via fertility treatment, or, you know, both). Perhaps we're telling the truth about our lives. Has the world split open yet?
I guess my question is, is that enough? We're a privileged bunch here in blogland, generally highly educated, by definition facile with the written word, possessing of disposible income, and, if we're honest with ourselves, time to have hobbies and write about them. Should we be doing something more profound with these gifts, or would that mean accepting a paradigm that disadvantages us and shortchanges who we are? Once again, Stephanie's fundraiser has proven the force of us. Mommybloggers united are likely to have equal potential for power, and have a more obvious agenda for change (family-friendly government policy in the areas of child poverty, health care, and parental leave come to mind). I wonder if we should be doing something more with this power.
And all that said, I don't really want to. And I have Daily Kos and Atrios and TPM on my bloglines and I rarely read them because a) depressing, b) not really funny, c) being a news/politics junkie makes me cranky.
...And this is where I stopped. It's the point at which I was supposed to insert a pithy and thoughtful summation, where I was meant to come to a conclusion, and bring the reader to a resolution of the issue. The easy thing would have been to have returned to all the reasons knitblogging is powerful, and they do exist. They're right up there in the paragraphs above; I'm sure there are others. But I'm not sure I believe it. And despite that, I am NOT going to start blogging about Serious Stuff(tm) because, you know, I write serious crap all day at work and don't really have a desire to do it recreationally. But maybe that's where I should leave it. Maybe the power of this medium is that it is inherently interactive, and maybe if I just put this out there, six months too late but better (hopefully) than never, maybe I'll learn something. And maybe that's what I was waiting for all along.
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