Help! Help! I'm Being Repressed!

Fight the powers that be!

Woot!

/sarcasm /channeling Public Enemy

Some choice quotes on the repression of women in the blogosphere:

{...} But, one aspect of blogging Lauter finds disheartening is its coverage in mainstream media as an adult male political phenomenon.

“We are seeing more focus in mass media on blogs that are created by men. When in fact, the statistics show that more women are blogging than men,” Lauter said. {...}

Lauter said she believes the disparity in media coverage is a reflection of our society’s values. “I think that gets at another kind of inequity in terms of value. Valuing some of these blogs that are more political, more business-oriented, and privileging them over other kinds of blogs that may not be as edgy. A privileging of socially constructed ‘male issues’ over ‘women’s issues,’” said Lauter.

And male bloggers are helping to reinforce that privilege. Clancy Ratliff, a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota who is researching blogs, found that the most popular male bloggers rarely include women bloggers on their blogroll—a list of weblinks to other blogs the author visits and references frequently.

Ratcliff’s pilot study found that on the top 10 blogs defined by Technorati, a search engine that tracks more than 7 million blogs, just 16 percent of blogrolls provide links to female bloggers. Men are linking with men.

Some of the reasons for the male bias may harken back to more traditional forms of communication, Ratcliff said.

“I think it is kind of a self-perpetuating mechanism where male bloggers see all the op-ed pieces by men about foreign policy and blog about that,” said Ratliff. She said she feels the lack of women in the newsroom contributes to this disparity both in the real world and online, and helps to marginalize the issues women are blogging about. “A lot of times women’s issues like reproductive rights are not as often treated as serious political issues like the war in Iraq,” Ratliff said. {...}

{empahsis mine}

Please. For the last time. There is no lack of diversity in the blogosphere. I am sick to effin' death of reading this crap already. Let's air some things out:

• There are women in the blogosphere. We write. About any number of things. As do the men. It's all about the content, baby, and not really about who's writing it. Now that's gender equality!
• The fact that we have vaginas and tits does not mean Vodkapundit and Insty and the rest of the big dogs are repressing us. All it means is that we haven't taken over. Yet. And all we'd have to do is schedule the Great American Flash-O-Rama and we'd win. Hands down. Now there's some feminism for ya!
• Susan Estrich needs to be bitchslapped for starting this whole brouhaha off. And I'm just the bitch to do it.
• If you treat me like an effin' victim one more time, Farrah Fawcett ala The Burning Bed will have nothin' on my wrath.
• Have I mentioned that I'm not being repressed because The Cake Eater Chronicles is not in the top 100?
• I am however in the top thousand. So you can go ahead and bite me.
• Men are free to link to whomever they damn well want to link. I, too, am free to link whomever I want to link. That's called "Hyperlink Justice" in Cake Eater Lingo. I link things I find interesting. If I don't find your stuff interesting, I won't link you. Conversely, if someone doesn't find my stuff interesting, they are under no obligation to link to it just because I possess a (fabulous) pair of breasts

Get off this goddamn topic already, would you? It's a waste of time because it misses the goddamn point. To quote a marvelous female blogger:

{...}First and foremost I am a writer. That the content that makes up The Cake Eater Chronicles comes from a female shouldn't have anything to do with the validity of the opinions presented. They either have merit or they do not. It's quite simple. The blogosphere is all about ideas and opinions. It's a veritable smorgasbord. There's something for everyone. The sex of the author shouldn't come into the equation unless we're talking about things directly related to our sex---like tampons or jock straps. To miss this point is to miss the exact essence of the blogosphere. And the internet, for that matter.

Now, go and read what Doug and the MAWB have to say about all of this.

See also: Red and Sadie

Posted by Kathy at April 8, 2005 12:03 AM