Comments on: Gender and Blogging

By: CKR/WV

CKR/WV — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 03:52:47 +0000

I may be completely out of order here, but I don’t see WhirledView on the Crooked Timber blogroll. So something is being left out, perhaps other relevant blogs as well. Perhaps there is a form to fill out and to be left at the proper office in Sproul Hall. Perhaps Crooked Timber has its own set of criteria (yes, I know, enunciated somewhere in this long thread) that I can hardly criticize, since blogs are subject only to their owners’ whims. I will note that a few days after my earlier post on this thread, a holiday get-together rehearsed the same old same old, “oh-so-tired systemic discrimination arguments” as someone put it here. Financial management firms care only about how much money you make, not about your genital arrangement. Various parts of the government are now overrepresented in women and blacks. Yeah, right. It really does get tiresome, and much of this thread repeats that. Women don’t want the [higher-paying/more prestigious/more set for advancement] positions because they [have found more satisfaction in/prefer/are more comfortable with/find that they fit their preferred schedules] the lower-status jobs. Oh yeah. The alternative, of course, is to be baffled that women say they want to [advance/get more money/be in charge/etc] when they actually wind up in the pink-collar jobs. This kind of debate has gotten nowhere for oh now, thirty or forty years. Or maybe I’m just not getting what’s going on in this thread.

By: Henry

Henry — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 15:24:50 +0000

All I was saying was that the discussion at hand shows that it isn’t “perfectly” clear. Some people mean “research,” some people mean “not anonymous,” some people mean “any blog by a person with an advanced degree.” Bitch Ph.D. – who exactly, apart from you, said that blogs that are “not anonymous” aren’t academic? Certainly not me – the reason that I didn’t count pseudonymous blogs in my quick-and-dirty count, as Kieran said, is that it’s messy data, not because they aren’t academic. The “Who Knows?” category on the academic blogroll was created precisely in order to include people who didn’t want to ‘fess up to their discipline b/c they were worried it would give them away, wanted to bitch about the profession etc etc. Is there anyone who’s seriously arguing that blogs which aren’t totally dedicated to academic research are ipso facto not academic blogs? Certainly not me, not Kieran, not John. Pseudonymous academic blogs count for us. We specifically reject the narrow definition of politics (see umpteen posts by Kieran, Harry etc in the past). It seems to me that a lot of this argument is heat and air – you came into this debate with a grievance which you never explained very well. You slide between general gripes about male attitudes in the blogosphere, and specific beefs with CT in a way that’s extremely evasive – you don’t seem to want to be pinned down as to what you’re actually arguing, or who you’re arguing against. One moment, it’s that the sample is skewed (fair enough – but that’s something that we acknowledge upfront; if you want to do a count including pseudonymous blogs you’re welcome to, and I’d be interested to see your findings), the next it’s that we (or somebody who’s left unspecified) don’t count pseudonymous blogs as real academic blogs. There’s a real argument to be had, but you seem to me to be mostly blowing smoke. bq. The “where are the women” discussion occurs about every three months (no kidding), and has been asked by Pandagon, Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and others. It’s frustrating because once the question is asked and the female bloggers have turned out to answer that we are indeed here, the question is cast aside, the blogrolls and interlinking don’t change, and no resolution is made on any level other than occasionally finding an unexpected ally here and there. Lauren – I think that this doesn’t apply to the CT academic blogroll, which does try specifically and deliberately to be as inclusive as possible. I think that the issue is slightly different here. It’s not so much one of refusing to change the blogroll, as that the academic blogroll at the moment seems to underrepresent women quite substantially. This could indeed be because there’s a large group of women academics out there that we’re not taking account of (Jill has already pointed me to several), but it does seem to me to point to some underlying structural issues – the disparity is large enough that it seems to me to be unlikely to be a result of our sample, given the open linking policy, and our relatively high level of visibility. I’m happy that Clancy seems to be undertaking some serious research on this – look forward to seeing what she comes up with. To the extent that there are women academics out there who should be on our blogroll, I’d like to hear about them so that I can add them. If the women academic bloggers turn out to answer that they’re here, I’ll only be delighted.

By: Jill

Jill — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 12:03:09 +0000

Here’s a list of some of the academic blogs written by women that I regularly read. None of these are on Crooked Timber’s blogroll. FWIW, I doubt I would have sent in my URL to be included on the blogroll. For one thing, Crooked Timber obviously consists mostly of academics in fields other than my own. I spend more time reading blogs of people doing research directly relevant to my own, or who are writing about things that interest me in other ways. It’d be great if you could add these to the blogroll. Deborah Gussman http://caxton.stockton.edu/Distracted/ English literature Angela Thomas http://anyaka.blogspot.com/ English Education Susanne Sperring http://paeonia.blogspot.com/ New media Kari Kraus http://karik.wordherders.net/ English literature Terri Senfft http://www.livejournal.com/users/tsenft/ New media, performance Hilde Corneliussen http://www.genderandcomputing.no/ Gender and computing Vika Zafrin http://wordsend.org/ (Humanities Computing) Stephanie Hendricks http://mylookingglass.typepad.com/ (English linguistics, new media) Marika Lüders (New media) http://home.no.net/marika75/log/ Lilia Efimova http://blog.mathemagenic.com/ (Knowledge Management) Kaye Trammell http://kaye.trammell.com/blog/ (Mass Communication) Jean Burgess http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/~burgess/ (Cultural studies and new media) Hanna Wallach http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~hmw26/join-the-dots/index.html (Computer Science) Lisbeth Klastrup http://klastrup.dk (Game studies, new media) Torill Mortensen http://torillsin.blogspot.com (Game studies, new media) Elouise Oyzon http://weez.oyzon.com/ (she teaches design, web stuff, writes some about academia, teaching, lots of personal stuff)

By: Lauren

Lauren — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 04:04:06 +0000

Since we’re all keen on having others do our research for us, Clancy was kind enough to compile a link of links directly related to WATW. http://culturecat.net/node/637 Additional references are welcome.

By: sennoma

sennoma — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 18:53:16 +0000

In general, since CT is well-known and known to give out free links to academics, I’m surprised that eligible folks aren’t stepping up to ask for links. Just a data point: I qualify for a link (research scientist, blog about work from time to time) but am not on the roll because I’m squeamish about self-promoting. Same deal with PZ Myers’ Tangled Bank: I’d play, but you have to send in your own posts, which I won’t do. Somehow I don’t mind including the url when I comment on other people’s blogs; that seems “legit” to me. Odd, now that I look at it. My point is just that there are lots of reasons for not being on the CT blogroll, and the “free links” policy doesn’t bring everyone running. (Oh, and since it’s not obvious from the nick: I’m a guy.)

By: nic

nic — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 10:19:43 +0000

pollie anon, first, I’m not and was not “mad” about anything, I quoted your line on linking and credibility because it sounded patronising and made a joke about it. I think it’s amusing to address all “gals” by telling them they should learn linking and quoting to get credibility, when you consider the tactics of some of the popular political bloggers like “professor” Reynolds. Joke explained, how boring. Secondly, I’m not a “dude”. I understood what bitch pd meant as referred in general to that “where are the women” question, not necessarily how it came up here. I don’t read blogs based on gender but on content. I totally agree with what bellatrys said about the fun blogs like Sadly No!, Poor Man, Felber (Roy Edroso too) which take the piss out of sexist wingnuts of both genders. I don’t think I should welcome more women bloggers just because they’re women, regardless of what they write. It doesn’t automatically bring more “diversity”. So to me the question is a non-issue. The way deb frisch raised it was patronising, as she was treating “the lovely ladies” (her words) here as tokens rather than individuals. Whenever that WATW question has popped up before, I don’t know it seems to me it’s inevitably flawed because how many women bloggers you see and read depends entirely on your own selection of blogs. There’s no such thing as a blogosphere that’s fixed and the same for everyone. Unless by that we only mean the top 100 in Technorati or something like that, but that’s not a personal kind of selection. So it’s just amusing to see people try and explain, sometimes in terms of generalisations (women probably like to do this more and do that less; maybe women are less interested in this and that, and so on), a phenomenon – the supposed lower presence of women in blogs – whose existence or inexistence is based entirely on which sites you read. I do think there can be forms of bias in the “top” lists, in how popularity builds or how credibility, indeed, is perceived and assigned. That probably reflects similar mechanisms in society at large. I don’t know, I don’t really see the need for generalisations. Some people say women tend to prefer writing about personal life and mixing it with political commentary, I don’t know if that’s true, but look at Lileks. He’s more incoherent and rambling than the worst stereotype of women, goes on and on about his little daughter, poor girl, his shopping and home life and all that, yet in his accolade he’s an authority. On the other hand, you come across very entertaining accounts of personal experiences told by both men and women, like dooce’s posts about getting fired. They were not strictly “political” but at the same time they were. It doesn’t depend on the gender of the writer (or reader), if something is an interesting read or not.

By: bitchphd

bitchphd — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 05:10:13 +0000

Oh shit, I didn’t actually answer the question. My bitching about the definition of academic was specifically in response to Kieran’s own kind of testy comment Oh, come off it. It’s perfectly clear what “academic blogger” means. All I was saying was that the discussion at hand shows that it isn’t “perfectly” clear. Some people mean “research,” some people mean “not anonymous,” some people mean “any blog by a person with an advanced degree.” My own blogroll includes people who have left academe but still talk about it sometimes. I’m just saying that assuming everyone is on the same page is problematic.

By: bitchphd

bitchphd — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 05:06:10 +0000

I honestly wasn’t criticizing CT’s blogroll (didn’t I say that already?). I’m not invested in whether or not women are on CT’s blogroll; I honestly don’t care. I was just objecting to the reiteration of the “where are the women bloggers” question. Having said that. I never asked to be on CTs blogroll; I have no idea how I ended up there, though I get hits fairly regularly off of CT. No, I wouldn’t have emailed to ask to be on it; possibly b/c the blogroll is (or was, until Playing School and I ended up on it) discipline-specific, and I don’t declare my discipline on my blog. Or maybe b/c I’m just not inclined to ask to be noticed—am quite willing to speak up if I’m around, but not that self-promoting. Also, as I said in this post, my own academic blogroll is pretty long, and about 75% women. I realize that CT is going for a “definitive” academic blogroll (not that such a thing is ever really achievable). My objection isn’t so much to saying, “gosh, we don’t seem to have a lot of women on the blogroll, wonder why?” as it is to the turn the conversation took, which was to start throwing out a lot of stereotypical explanations for what’s wrong with women/women bloggers: they don’t self-promote, their blogs aren’t academic enough, whatever. (I also think it’s silly to exclude pseudonymous blogs: it’s not that easy to find out the gender of most pseudonymous bloggers—through either content or simply clicking on their profile or “about me” page. That’s how I determined the gender of a lot of people on my own blogroll, just for the sake of argument.) In other words, if CT feels their blogroll isn’t inclusive enough, that’s their problem, not the women bloggers’ problem; and if CT wants to, they can fix it. If they don’t want to (b/c admittedly, it’s work—and I don’t blame them, for the same reason that I don’t go link-hunting to support statements about things I know to be fact—it’s a blog, not a thesis), then they don’t have to. No one was complaining about CT’s blogroll except CT. If CT wants to add more links, there have been a lot provided in this very thread to help out.

By: jholbo

jholbo — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 04:20:11 +0000

Bitchphd, I’m still waiting to hear how CT (and/or Kieran) is guilty of construing ‘academic’ in some unpardonably narrow way. I’m not just needling you. This is a serious question regarding one bit of evidence about the gender breakdown in academic blogging. The CT blogroll is not technorati, as Kieran has wearily pointed out. You have to ask to be on it. But since that’s all it takes, the CT blogroll is, so far as I know, the single most complete mapping of the academic blogosphere out there. (Harumph, it’s nothing special, you reply. Well point me to a more complete list, if you please.) So: is the CT blogroll seriously and systematically underrepresenting female academic bloggers, because we fail to recognize certain stuff as academic, even given the apparently maximally accommodating link policy? I think the answer is probably no. You think the answer is obviously yes. Please defend your answer. In general, since CT is well-known and known to give out free links to academics, I’m surprised that eligible folks aren’t stepping up to ask for links. (Don’t all bloggers crave links? No, seriously.) Maybe the CT blogroll is getting a bit creaky and antique? Once upon a time it was new and everyone wanted onboard, but now maybe there are whole buzzing, blooming young academic blogospheroids out there that don’t know about us, and we don’t know about them? And they have a happier male-female ratio? And please spare me any ‘when I say you are wrong, I expect you to do the research that shows you are wrong.’ I don’t think that attitude is really very sensible or productive. Just answer the damn question if the answer is so obvious as all that. Laura and Clancy (was it Clancy?), thanks for the comments and links. I am willing to grant for the sake of argument (I just don’t know the facts, ma’am) that there may have been studies done that unfairly defined ‘feminism’ out of political existence. And I do of course understand that there are concerns about how social dynamics and unconscious attitudes, so forth, can relegate women to the sidelines. But this just brings me back to the CT blogroll. It should be immune from those tendencies, since it’s just a ‘send us an email’ thing. I really want to know if there is some reason to think women academics are disproportionately disinclined to send that email, hence disproportionately under-represented in the CT blogroll. If so, is there any plausible way to come up with a better estimate of gender ratios in academic blogging?

By: Pollie Anon

Pollie Anon — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 01:13:21 +0000

Yeah, bitch except this isn’t feminism 101. this is feminism 511, stuff that those nice feminism 101 explanations don’t cover. and no, women aren’t asked any more often than men to back up their cases. i remeber once being pissed off at a boss for what i thought was a patronizing paternalistic lecture. Then a male colleague came into my office and informed me he’d just received the same lecture. of course that doesn’t mean that there aen’t any more “little lady” lectures going on out there. it just means that not everything you think is an anti-feminist putdown is in fact an anti-feminist putdown. time to move beyond feminism 101 bitch. progress happens. theories need modification. get with the times gal. whoops, sorry, I mean bitch. Cuz you all have let me know that unlike gal, bitch isn’t at all offensive. now, fare the well. enjoy wallowing in feminism 101.

By: Jimmy Ho

Jimmy Ho — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:52:25 +0000

It wastes our time to continually teach feminism 101, and I refuse to do it. Right on. In other words: why bother? It is still kind of disturbing to see ignorance promoted in such fashion on a self-described “academic” blog (and I do have a lot of respect for Crooked Timber as a whole).

By: bitchphd

bitchphd — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:25:36 +0000

I was bitchy b/c the information is out there, not hard to find, and it’s lazy to ask women (and women do get asked, every single time this comes up, and no I’m not going to go link-searching for anyone) to “prove” that what they’re saying isn’t a load of crap. B/c of course, gals, by definition, lack credibility. It wastes our time to continually teach feminism 101, and I refuse to do it.

By: Pollie Anon

Pollie Anon — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:55:26 +0000

ok, before I begin I have to say that I hope you won’t hold the fact that I wrote “here” instead of “hear” against me. there’s a liquor store strike on where I live. I,ve been forced to drink leftover gin instead of wine and it takes its toll. so, ok, i read a lot of those WATW posts and some resonated, some didn’t. most of the blogs I read are by men but I do read some women—maybe 30%. re my other reading, if I had to estimate, which is very difficult since I seldom think of the sex of the author, I’d guess closet to 50/50 for fiction and 30 male/70 female for non-fiction. my problem with this whole man/woman/blogosphere thing is that anyone can start a blog and i find it very questionable to start raising all those oh-so-tired systemic discrimination arguments. of course, yes, systemic discrimination may affect the approval and attention given—or it may not. personally, i’m more inclined to the latter although that may be my personal bias. ultimately, i have to say i’m puzzled by the WATW question. or should I say where are the gals/birds/chicks….

By: Pollie Anon

Pollie Anon — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:15:39 +0000

That would be chicks not checks. calling dr. freud. clancy, i just assumed at first you were a tom and then i realized that was silly and that you too might be a gal/chick/bird. must avoid strong cocktails! (heh)

By: Pollie Anon

Pollie Anon — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:11:31 +0000

dude (nic) and gal/dude thanks for the links. will read and check in later. nic, dude, hope you registered your disapproval in the thread where dsquared called everyone birds and there were many references to checks. or are the aviary references a-ok? it’s just the “gals” that turns you off. and what about “dude,” dude? let’s here what gets you mad enough to pull out the “quotes.” later, duuuuuuuude. Pollie