Tuesday, May 06, 2008
A third cackling: gender in the blogosphere
Ed raises such a great point in the comments of the last post, I want to bring his concern to center stage: "do you all feel that this new medium (blogging) is helping to set new norms of how the genders treat each other? Or is the "man's game" already set up here, too?"
Yes.
The blogosphere is a new medium with new gender relations because it is so radically democratized. I can speak my mind without needing middle(mostly)men: editors and publishers. That allows for lots of poor text (I am first among sinners on that one) but also allows direct access between author and audience. The blogosphere also allowed me to have public voice even when physically incapacitated, sometimes unable to travel and sometimes unable to walk -- problems strewn over a five-year reproductive flurry. When trapped in the house on bedrest or nursing, the blogosphere was my primary link to mental health and community.
My experience with The Generous Orthodoxy Thinktank is my favorite example of being treated well in the blogosphere as a woman. I was invited to join (by Steve Knight, if I remember correctly), and I suspect it was in part because their list of theologians included so few women. I can't imagine they were really longing for an anthropologist, but by trying to be inclusive of women, they expanded their normal boundaries of interest. Perhaps there really are very few graduate-educated Christian women bloggers interested in discussing particular theological topics in a group blog format...but there's a like-minded anthropologist woman over there, so let's include her. That resulted in conversations about culture and theology that benefited both theologians and anthropologists (well, one anthropologist) that wouldn't have happened but for the gender-inclusivity of a group of founders. And they brought me in at the very beginning, allowed me access to posting/editing, and let me play freely. Contributors to that blog include 33 men and 6 women (left sidebar). You could say that's not very good, or you could see that the bar is so low, it doesn't take much to make a woman feel included.
But yes, the blogosphere has elements of the 'men's game.' Some unevidenced assertions:
-readers gravitate to blogs of people who are well-known in the real world, so men with organizational power or followings in the real world have advantage in the blogosphere (this assumes that bloggers want lots of readers, which isn't always the case).
-links, links, links. Many male blogs link almost exclusively to other males. Including 2 women in your list of 45 friends don't make you woman-friendly. Including 3 doesn't, either.
-women separating themselves into groups like the Emergent Women's Group has the advantage of networking women, but the disadvantage of seeming like a women's auxiliary. Same issue for minority support groups on campuses. Ideally such a group would be a space unto itself, but individuals from the group would be integrated into the mainstream of blogging as well.
-men seem to gravitate toward discussions of theology that are abstracted from practice or personal experience. Discussions on male bloggers' theology blogs that include, say, over 30 comments are often dominated by male commenters and are often framed with a Greek mind-body dualism.
-when male theology/bible/religion/church types refer to other interesting things happening in the blogosphere, they are often other conversations or posts written by male theology/bible/religion/church types.
-women bloggers often, though not always, integrate personal experience, story, and vulnerability to a greater degree than male bloggers.
-men use more black in their templates.
What say you?
Ed raises such a great point in the comments of the last post, I want to bring his concern to center stage: "do you all feel that this new medium (blogging) is helping to set new norms of how the genders treat each other? Or is the "man's game" already set up here, too?"
Yes.
The blogosphere is a new medium with new gender relations because it is so radically democratized. I can speak my mind without needing middle(mostly)men: editors and publishers. That allows for lots of poor text (I am first among sinners on that one) but also allows direct access between author and audience. The blogosphere also allowed me to have public voice even when physically incapacitated, sometimes unable to travel and sometimes unable to walk -- problems strewn over a five-year reproductive flurry. When trapped in the house on bedrest or nursing, the blogosphere was my primary link to mental health and community.
My experience with The Generous Orthodoxy Thinktank is my favorite example of being treated well in the blogosphere as a woman. I was invited to join (by Steve Knight, if I remember correctly), and I suspect it was in part because their list of theologians included so few women. I can't imagine they were really longing for an anthropologist, but by trying to be inclusive of women, they expanded their normal boundaries of interest. Perhaps there really are very few graduate-educated Christian women bloggers interested in discussing particular theological topics in a group blog format...but there's a like-minded anthropologist woman over there, so let's include her. That resulted in conversations about culture and theology that benefited both theologians and anthropologists (well, one anthropologist) that wouldn't have happened but for the gender-inclusivity of a group of founders. And they brought me in at the very beginning, allowed me access to posting/editing, and let me play freely. Contributors to that blog include 33 men and 6 women (left sidebar). You could say that's not very good, or you could see that the bar is so low, it doesn't take much to make a woman feel included.
But yes, the blogosphere has elements of the 'men's game.' Some unevidenced assertions:
-readers gravitate to blogs of people who are well-known in the real world, so men with organizational power or followings in the real world have advantage in the blogosphere (this assumes that bloggers want lots of readers, which isn't always the case).
-links, links, links. Many male blogs link almost exclusively to other males. Including 2 women in your list of 45 friends don't make you woman-friendly. Including 3 doesn't, either.
-women separating themselves into groups like the Emergent Women's Group has the advantage of networking women, but the disadvantage of seeming like a women's auxiliary. Same issue for minority support groups on campuses. Ideally such a group would be a space unto itself, but individuals from the group would be integrated into the mainstream of blogging as well.
-men seem to gravitate toward discussions of theology that are abstracted from practice or personal experience. Discussions on male bloggers' theology blogs that include, say, over 30 comments are often dominated by male commenters and are often framed with a Greek mind-body dualism.
-when male theology/bible/religion/church types refer to other interesting things happening in the blogosphere, they are often other conversations or posts written by male theology/bible/religion/church types.
-women bloggers often, though not always, integrate personal experience, story, and vulnerability to a greater degree than male bloggers.
-men use more black in their templates.
What say you?
8 Comments:
You wrote:
"-men seem to gravitate toward discussions of theology that are abstracted from practice or personal experience..."
and
"-women bloggers often, though not always, integrate personal experience, story, and vulnerability.."
I've noticed that when men write theology and doctrine and relate it to personal experience they are "practicing" their faith. However, when women do this, they are too much "into personal experience." For me, this is a clear example of men confusing their gender privilege with what God wants and denying women the same privilege. After all, we all have to filter our experience through lenses; some are just more sanctioned than others.
Good posts about gender and blogging!
By
soulfaith, at 10:04 AM
Wow. You went with that.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't blog much, don't blog in the open, don't often post comments. I find it harder sometimes to have a conversation over the blog - and I wonder if that's gendered in any way. Yes, it's Web 2.0!, but for the reasons you point out Jenell, the game is with us. And it should be noted again that the game affects men too. Why do I deepen my voice and swagger when I'm at the hardware store? Because I'm a guy, and that's the game. I don't know what swaggering looks like online. Maybe it's the color black on a template. Maybe it's short sentences. Hmmph.
@ Soulforce: "I've noticed that when men write theology and doctrine and relate it to personal experience they are "practicing" their faith." When I was a kid, there was this *bleep* of a preacher who used football metaphors a lot. Mom and a female friend would complain to Dad and female friend's husband. Dad and other guy couldn't see why that would bother anyone.
Now this preacher was Mr. Patriarchy Extraordinare -- there was so much you could say about him: he degraded women, he told jokes about women, he refused professional advice from women. Women did not speak in front of the church, etc. He disallowed Women's Missionary Union (we were Baptist) because ... well I don't know what the pretext was. Guy had a problem with strong women.
My point is that my mom and her friend (both professional women) would only, were obliged to? -- at least in my hearing -- use the football metaphors in the guy's sermons as a means of analysis of the whole gendered problem. The men saw their criticism as irrelevant, trifling (an awful word, really).
Power sets the terms of debate really. And the person who said somewhere that if you have power you have to give it away is on to something.
So, Soulfaith, I say right on.
By
Ed, at 10:39 AM
Hi Ed! What a great story about the football metaphors. Now, I happen to like football, and would probably get much from the metaphors, but I know what you mean about leaving many women by the wayside during sermon points. :-)
By
soulfaith, at 10:47 AM
"do you all feel that this new medium (blogging) is helping to set new norms of how the genders treat each other? Or is the "man's game" already set up here, too?"
I'm not sure. I think there are new norms emerging that level the playing field. There are many women bloggers who attract both men and women in mutual dialogue.
I also think of Scot McKnight. Scot hosts a very well read blog by both men and women in very respectful, generative conversation. He often invites women to guest post.
http://www.jesuscreed.org/
So, to answer your question, while I don't have quantitative research to say a definitive "yes" it seems new norms are beginning.
By
Rose, at 11:07 AM
Good observations.
The link thing is very true. People gravitate to popular blogs and then read who is linked from there. If the male circles just link to themselves, there is no chance for a woman's voice to get heard.
As coordinator for the Emerging Women group, I have to say I really understand the tension of being seen as a separate group. But besides the networking (and being a place for the links to women's voices), I've discovered that some women will not join in the male-dominated conversation because as women that is something they have been taught never to do. They want to discover about the emerging church, but can't break in among the men. Amidst women they have a safer place to do so. But it is meant to be a stepping stone of encouragement, education, and empowerment into the conversation at a whole.
To your list I have to wonder if assumed gender roles play into the blogging issue. Men I've found just have more time to blog - whether part of their work day as teachers and pastors, or as "me time" at the end of the day. Women often can't seem take the luxury of such time as their responsibilities generally take up more time.
By
Julie, at 12:54 PM
So I did some haphazard googling on "gender" and "blogging" and found some research.
Scholar & Feminist Online (Barnard College) has a whole issue devoted to this question. There's lot of good reading here.
Also see "Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs" available here. The conclusion of this article states:
---quote---
Are weblogs inherently “democratizing,” in the sense of giving voice to diverse populations of users? The empirical findings reported for gender and age at the beginning of this essay suggest that they are. Yet public commentators on weblogs, including many bloggers themselves, collude in reproducing gender and age-based hierarchy in the blogosphere, demonstrating once again that even an open access technology—and high hopes for its use—cannot guarantee socially equitable outcomes in a society that continues to embrace hierarchical values.
---end quote---
Have at it.
By
Ed, at 2:02 PM
thanks so much for engaging this important topic...
-links, links, links. Many male blogs link almost exclusively to other males. Including 2 women in your list of 45 friends don't make you woman-friendly. Including 3 doesn't, either.
an honest question: what makes something women friendly? recently i attended a national event and out of the 18 speakers that were featured only one was female (one other canceled at the last minute and was replaced by a african american male). i confronted one of the organizers and asked him what was up with this. i asked him if it was a theological issue and he said no; if not, why? his answer was rather lame (in my judgment) and had something to do with not being able to connect with the right female voices at the right time. i strongly suggested he and the organizers be more pro-active about this for future events. he asked me a question: how many female presenters should be female? he said he was opposed to doing some sort of affirmative action kind of thing just for the sake of balance.
how can events and learning experiences become more women friendly?
stay connected...
By
thinking out loud, at 3:00 PM
Ok, I just want to let you know, you've been added to my Google Reader! And to let you know, that I happen to have a lot of black in my blog template. ;)
But in all seriousness. I love that I've found a few women in the Christian relm that speak on things I've only been able to truly discuss in my "uber-liberal" undergrad schooling.
By
Leya, at 3:49 PM
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