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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
As an older feminist I think much of what appears in this blog is pretty and other third wave blogs is pretty fluffy. Maybe that is why women are not taken seriously. The whole ideas was to be treated equally.
Perhaps it is beyond the pale to you that a man would be upset about this -- enough so to write about it for a blog called Feministe, no less -- but 'tis so. Here's the profile from PhysioProf's own blog:
http://physioprof.wordpress.com/about-physioprof/
"Feminine" climes are where female writing voices are not simply heard but are also remunerated and celebrated. Why shouldn't writers pursue the success where they're encouraged, rather than banging their heads until they bleed against the door that continues to bar them from mainstream, and therefore still male, modes of discourse about things like politics, technology, the economy, business or science?
Ultimately, though, you're asking the wrong question. Why are politics, technology, the economy, business, and science the "mainstream" in the first place?
Why do we consider the body, illness, the personal, the emotional, and anything pertaining to the realm of home (like motherhood) to be on the margins of society? They are just as crucial and just as important.
The idea that they aren't is something you perpetuate in this column.
Some of the best political writing I see is on personal blogs, and it's intertwined with personal writing. Because their blogs hybridize the personal and the political (which is how most people actually experience the two), they don't get the attention and respect a blog traditionally in the "male" realm of "politics" gets from mainstream media.
The "Lemonade Life"-style blog titles and self-help-y signs aren't something wrong with the female blogosphere that needs fixing. The problem is a system that automatically devalues women and anything culturally attached to women.
Thought I should probably clarify two things, as one of the founders of BlogHer:
1. People seem really fascinated by the affirmations in the restroom, and many have taken it as face value that those were an official conference thing. I never saw them myself, but I assume whatever Kara saw was placed there by some well-meaning attendee.
2. BlogHer announced its dates well ahead of NetRoots Nation after specifically checking in with them about when they planned to hold their event. Six weeks after our announcement they announced their dates, now rescheduled to coincide with ours, apparently because they had some venue scheduling issues. I have found it interesting that people also assume that overlap was due to BlogHer indifference...we were anything but indifferent.
Thanks.
Elisa Camahort Page
BlogHer Inc
I went to BlogHer, not Netroots Nation. I thought it was likely to be far more interesting, and regretted that I'd missed previous editions. I'm pretty sure I made the right choice. Definitely something big and important going on there.
While I can understand disappointment with perceived condescension from the Times, I think the most important thing that the BlogHer bloggers -- or any other group that is busy defining itself and presenting its own face to the world via its own media creations -- can do in regard to the Times is stop worrying about what it says. Newspapers are suffering a slow eclipse with all its attendant pains. Bloggers are better off doing their own thing than obsessing over the Times' coverage.
Fortunately, from what I could tell at BlogHer, that is exactly what most of the attendees are busy doing.
So why was the power of the conference ignored by everyone but the prospective first lady, the most marginalized of any political actor? (And P.S. Why is she marginalized, anyway?)
Is this so hard to understand? The "First Lady" is "marginalized" because she is not a political actor or a politician any more than other political spouses. She is at best a stateswomen by custom. It is not sexism that marginalizes this "position," it is sexism that we haven't had a female president. If Clinton won the presidency, as she came fairly close to doing, we wouldn't have a first lady at all, we would have a first gentleman.
Or was the writer talking about Michelle Obama personally?
Let me see if I can summarize the points in the post (so if I end up commenting on something that wasn't there, you all can let me know):
(a) Blogher didn't get the respect it deserved in Jesella's article, not so much because of where it was placed (it had to be Styles anyway, since that's where she was working), but because of her excessive attention to (stereo)typically female topics and 'cute' details like the infamous bathroom message;
(b) Netroots Nation, on the other hand, got a much more even article, which took it much more seriously than Jesella's article did BlogHer.
Hmm... let's see. I'll address some of the questions in the post.
Why should Netroots receive more attention? As Rebecca said, it had more important people, journalists, etc. Because there was a larger emphasis on politics, economy, science, business, etc. -- topics which interest more people. And -- pace badstoad -- maybe they should. These are things that concern us as a community, that may affect our lives in unpredicted ways, and in which we're supposed to participate as citizens. I note even here at Salon that, say, articles on politics get far more comments than articles on health. So, given the larger political impact, I am not surprised that Netroots got more coverage. Just like the G-8 usually gets more coverage than the Mercosur.
But why shouldn't BlogHer be as powerful? There are many women who surf the net, read blogs or write them. But they talk about frivolities... well, they shouldn't. If more of them talk about serious things, their impact will increase. The number of New Yorker caricatures will decrease, and they will increasingly give the impression of being in poor taste. So here is an appeal: women bloggers, first ladies et al., please go against the mainstream expectations and talk about politics, jobs, the economy, etc., in your blogs. The more the better. Express opinions, contrast facts, research events, present predictions, compare polls, analyze tendencies. Go ahead! Change the mainstream interpretation!
I'm not against blogs on other topics -- health, lifestyle, etc. But if these topics do not get the coverage that politics, economics, etc. does (and I think there is a reason why they do), then the more women bloggers get involved in these topics, the more power BlogHer will have. And the coverage will become better.
A final question -- how hard is it for a woman to be a serious political blogger, as opposed to, for example, a serious political reporter or journalist? Is it really harder? (What would Salon's Joan Walsh say?)
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
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