Women and Blogging
by Chris Bowers, Fri Mar 18, 2005 at 07:53:46 AM EST
A discussion about the dearth of women to be found among the prominent pages of political opinion, including prominent political blogs, has been taking place across the Internet in places such as Slate, Political Animal, and the Los Angles Times. This is something that has always bothered me, and so I would like to offer my thoughts as to why there are comparatively so few women within the world of high-trafficked, political blogs.
- Language. Blogs, including the large ones, not only tolerate, but prominently maintain some very real trappings of sexist, boys-only, machismo language. This includes, but is not limited to: regular questioning of the manhood of political opponents / those who disagree with us in explicitly sexist terms; the use of explicitly gender-related abusive language to describe put-downs, including the surprisingly ubiquitous "bitchslap"; the endless use of sports related metaphors, especially football related metaphors, in our writing; the use of explicitly sexist language to describe someone, male or female, who becomes emotional about a given situation. That language of this nature is not only tolerated, but regularly practiced, on many of the major bloggers must of a contributing factor to the relative lack of women among the political blogosphere.
- Hillary Clinton Hatred. I have repeatedly tried to challenge the existing hatred of Hillary Clinton among many in the netroots, to little or no avail. Despite my efforts, and those of Kos, Clinton is still hated among many in the lefty netroots along almost exactly the same, overtly sexist lines regularly found in the bowels of the Republican Noise Machine. To not believe that hatred of the Democratic Party's most prominent standard-bearer does not contribute to the general feeling of hostility toward women among the blogosphere would be an extreme exercise in denial.
- Political Culture. The gender imbalance in traditional avenues of political punditry have been dominated by men, as the recent discussion on the topic shows: In the first nine weeks of this year, women penned 20.5% of the paper's op-ed columns, not including staff editorials, which do not carry bylines. That compared to the New York Times, with 17% women writers on its op-ed pages and the Washington Post with 10%. Anytime that a field or profession is so utterly dominated by one demographic or another, members of that demographic will feel more comfortable attempting to enter that field while those who do not fit into that demographic will not feel as comfortable entering into that field. Because men dominate the field of political punditry, as they also dominate many political fields, men will gravitate toward those fields while women, feeling less welcome, will not.
- Computer Culture. While more women use the Internet than men, those who are the custodians of the Internet have traditionally been male. Techies, programmers, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, computer science departments and science departments are all dominated by men. Thus, much like the way men gravitate toward political fields, they will also gravitate toward computer fields, feeling comfortable and welcome.
Tags: Blogosphere (all tags)
-----------
myDD - skin
-----------
85 Comments