That’s the question Glamour is asking — and specifically, why it seems that so many political writers are men. And thanks to Ezra Klein for the shout-out. He makes the point that:
“There’s this rich and broad feminist blogosphere, which is heavily female and very political, but considered a different sort of animal. Is Jill Filipovic a political blogger? Ann Friedman?” he says. Male bloggers are seen as talking about politics with a universal point of view, but when we women bring our perspective to the field, it’s seen as as a minority opinion.
And “women’s issues” are seen as marginal, even though they often impact far more people than “mainstream,” more “serious” political issues. So women’s voices and issues are ghettoized, and women simply don’t seem to be talking about universal problems.
The article makes the point that the internet is far from a meritocracy as far as gender is concerned — and I’d agree, plus I’d toss race in there, too, along with a whole list of other characteristics that shape our identities online as much as they do in the real world. The argument against that, inevitably, is “But Jane Hamsher is a woman and Markos is Latino!” Ok, sure. And yes, there are some women and some people of color who write for the top blogs — but, sorry, a few vaginas and brown faces do not a meritocracy make. This isn’t unique to blogs. We’re so used to white men dominating the discourse that any time you toss in a person of color or a woman (or a few women and people of color), it’s seen as “equal.” But that isn’t reality. It isn’t equality.
The issue of meritocratic use of material has come up a lot this week. I don’t want to get into the specifics in this thread — and I will delete comments that bring up individuals or that re-hash events that have been well-covered elsewhere — but this seems like a good place to strategize how, as political bloggers, we can share the wealth of information, links, traffic and discussion. How can we promote more women’s voices in ways that respects their identities and unique views without ghettoizing them or turning them into “special interests”? How do we make the internet, or at least the blogosphere, more of a meritocracy?
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And “women’s issues” are seen as marginal, even though they often impact far more people than “mainstream,” more “serious” political issues.
Very true. It’s frustrating that more people don’t get that. When I tell people that this blog and Pandagon are my two favorite political blogs, some of them look at me like I have two heads.
The reason I, as a man, am interested in feminism is that 1) at bottom, it’s about basic fairness and decency, and 2) it affects a “minority” that is in fact half the world’s population. Feminist bloggers, like Jill, who keep that in mind will have little trouble keeping their ideas and content relevant to a wide audience.
These are good questions, but I feel they are really separate concerns. The answer to the first – or really, one of many answers – is to engage (or really, keep on engaging) the so-called “mainstream” bloggers who are recognized as “political” and to keep pressuring them to recognize the inherent political character of issues affecting women, people of color and everyone else marginalized by patriarchal and capitalist forces. Obviously not a silver bullet, by any means, and there will be lots of resistance, but that’s to be expected.
As for the second question, I am still uncertain about the desirability or feasability of a meritocracy of blogging. Anyone can blog, which is the great thing about the Internet, but also the more annoying thing, too. As a librarian, I have heard and read plenty of criticism of blogging as a cacophony of voices contributing too much noise to the public forum (former ALA President Michael Gorman was a prominent voice among them.) Most of the criticism has been obviously elitist, and that is quite the opposite of what you are proposing here. Like yourself, I want more voices being heard and being recognized for their contributions to the conversation; and we can best achieve this by making the proper attributions, citing our sources, encouraging good posts, including consistently good bloggers on our blogrolls, etc. A portal or RSS feed strategy might also be useful. But there is always going to be competition, and people will seek out the voices that speak to them most strongly. That is a good thing. But it makes a meritocratic scheme difficult to create.
Well to answer that question (how to make the blogosphere more of a meritocracy) you would have to know how the big blogs became big in the first place. Unfortunately, being late in the game, I have no idea. Larger blogs having blog ‘whore’ days and blogrolls is a start, but it obviously isn’t enough.
This may seem really basic, but what about encouraging female and POC bloggers through education?
Say a teacher has a women’s studies course – I bet if she gave her students credit for writing about women’s issues or even just maintaining a blog throughout the semester, many women would get into it.
Same with high school students. I think it’d be great for teachers to encourage their students (maybe from English classes) to keep a blog. It’ll help students express their ideas in the way they feel comfortable doing (lots of kids don’t like essay-writing, since it seems like a stiff form), and also encourage literacy.
I also really like how blogs like Feministe have multiple authors. How about networking sites that link up bloggers who want to write combined blogs about specific topics?
I second Danakitty’s suggestions.
I’d also say that a sort of “small blog of the week” feature on big blogs would be nice.
I don’t see why that’s anti-meritocracy. Meritocracy doesn’t mean there’s no competition and everyone gets heard the same amount, it just means that the competition is about having the most merit as opposed to about being the “right” gender, race, etc.
Mostly I think people won’t read stuff that makes them uncomfortable unless they already have a reason to – people who are sexist/racist in real life aren’t likely to change online. Then again, part of the reason I write a blog is the hope that magically some people will change online. So I guess I’ll just keep pretending, haha.
I don’t know how to get the mainstream to care about feminism or take women seriously. But since feminist writers are already into listening to silenced voices, I think an obvious way of making the feminist blogosphere more meritocratic is to read, link to, and promote women of color bloggers, and other bloggers that normally get ignored. I know that’s not exactly a new idea, especially right now, but really, it seems like the biggest step we’re capable of taking right now, so let’s do it. I’d love to see some lists of good WoC-run blogs.
you’re doing it.
by pointing out inequities; by creating dialogue; by LABELLING the realities, eventually they become less a “woman’s issue” and more issues that should be looked at, addressed and recognized.
Blogs like this create dialogue outside the medium of the internet; I can’t be the only one that sometimes is introduced to issues of which I was unaware or specific cases or causes that shoudl be (and are) addressed. Which I then bring further by discusisng with friends – friends who are male, female, white, black, and every stratum in between ….
I trully believe the web is bringing into reality the equality that women in particular have been seeking for centuries in the concrete world .. and as web realities become more and more part of the very real fabric of the physical world, attitudes change …
One thing too is raising commenter positions to the top page as valid and interesting commentary on the point of the day up for additional comment. Especially considering how important commenter feedback is to the discussion at hand, and also considering how important commenters are to the individual blogger.
Also, I was chatting with Ilyka earlier and she mentioned how during the WHERE ARE THE WIMMINS days white feminist bloggers were looking for inclusion whereas WOC bloggers are simply looking for recognition for their ideas. Recognition and attribution is an important factor in these conversations, IMO. Link, link, link.
I think the politics of political blogging mirror real life in the respect of this idea that if White male bloggers are given the most credence, then that has to be due to a meritocracy. If White feminists writing on women’s issues are viewed as being more important and significant (even while blogging on issues which predominantly impact women of color and their communities) and that’s seen as being based on a meritocracy. That’s close to what happens in other media in society.
I think Danakitty’s right in having students blog as part of the education may be good if the students have access to computers, internet, etc. Part of the problem is that many people in this country still don’t have access to these tools instrumental to blogging.
Many women who blog also get harassed, some to the point where they stop blogging. That can be very difficult to deal with, trying to keep your blogging when you’re being harassed as I’ve learned from experience. Other female bloggers have written about this on their own blogs including The Angry Black Woman this past week.
Whoa whoa WHOA, I can’t let this go by:
No! Not “simply.” That whole thing kind of implies I’m trying to speak for WOC bloggers and HELL, NO. Let me flesh it out:
Where “the way white feminists often treat WOC is just like the way male progressive bloggers often treat white feminists” breaks down is–well, it breaks down at multiple points. What I was trying to say is that I had started out believing it was a fairly solid analogy, but having read more by various women of color bloggers since then, and Blackamazon in particular, I don’t think I can say anymore that it is. The problem might be similar, but the solutions I don’t think always are.
For example, Seal Press: They really did interpret BA’s “fuck Seal Press” remark as a plea for dialogue and inclusion, when it was anything BUT. (The word “inclusion” is itself problematic, but that could be a whole post in itself, and one I think many women-of-color bloggers have already written more than once.) I think you have to look hard at the entitlement that must exist to enable a white woman to read “fuck you” as “please invite me to your lunch table, please dialogue with me, please publish me.” Or, really, “please” anything. Seriously, if a white woman says to another white woman “fuck you,” can you imagine any believable scenario in which the other white woman would respond with, “I can see how much you want to dialogue with me, let’s do this?” It’s insane.
Let me punt to Vanessa’s post here:
pluckypunk.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-reconciliation-is-not-really-primary.html
–because I know that’s a point that goes right by me 90% of the time, even though it seems so obvious once Vanessa lays it all out. “Reconciliation” centers the needs of white people. The real primary goal, as she states it, does not. This is not always easy for me to drill into my skull because I’m not used to facing the fact that I am not the center of the universe.
Apologies for the digression, Jill. And I am damn glad you got a mention as a political blogger.
I think the distinctions are wrong. The white male Big Bloggers often write about “politics” from the point of view of, to be brutally honest, the horse race that accompanies what *I* would call politics. I mean, the entire point of blogs like the Daily Kos is, for lack of a better word, political mechanics, or to be less charitable, machination. Now, all politics must involve machination at some level in an adversarial world.
But a lot of the female and POC (hate that abbrev—I’m one, I can hate it—but whatever) bloggers tend more often to talk about politics as in the effects that policy have, and the incidental policy effects of political machination.
It is part of privilege that allows someone to talk exclusively about political machination. However, in the way of such things, talking about political machination confers greater power and prestige. Why? Because the political machinators are more interested in what you do, if for no other reason. And political machinators are the ones who deal in power—power to effect policy.
I’m of two minds of this. On the one hand, I would like feminist blogs to be taken seriously. On the other hand, as someone who flees Daily Kos, I don’t want a more “mainstream” audience, because mainstream audiences leave horribly sexist comments. I like the feminist blogsphere because I don’t get called “bitch” “slut” “cunt” or whore in the comments, and if I do, there are way more voices saying “that’s not okay”.
Argh, my bad, Ilyka. I’d had a drink in me when I wrote that comment and it came out all fucking wrong. Thanks for clarifying.
I believe that the representatives from Seal Press also said that books by women of color weren’t commercially viable or something like that. If they’re financially struggling as they say, maybe their lack of scope is part of their problem.
And yeah, I do see a lot of parallels between how White feminists often treat women of color and how men treat women though I think I get back now that making that observation is not acceptable within feminism.
If the goal is to get more women blogging about politics, then the suggestion that good political comments from non-bloggers be lifted up and published as blog entries is an excellent one. And once this is done, these commenters who are not already blogging should be browbeaten into starting their own blogs.
I was a regular commenter at Driftglass and one day I woke up and moseyed over to see what was going on and discovered one of my drunken rants posted on the front page. Then Driftglass and his ratfucking band of scurrilous commenters mercilessly hectored me until I started my own blog. The bastards.
Anyhoo, the point is that this technique is highly effective at getting new people blogging.
Politics is about power so anyone who writes about gender, race, class, sexuality or disability is a political writer. Feministing won Best Political Blog at the 2007 Bloggers Choice Awards. Clearly, these are all political issues. The netroots and mainstream media lack a gender, race, class lens and has therefore been wrong in all its election predictions.
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Personally instead of arguing for a meritocracy I think that is the wrong way to look at it. The goal should be to promote diversity. A diversity of opinions.
If you have a diverse amount of sexes and colors promoting kraft cheese and they are doing that because they are the best at it you haven’t really added anything.
Whereas if you have people who have genuinely different opinions and backgrounds adding their voices to the mix that is something to be proud of.
I don’t read bloggers because they are great writers. I read them because they have something different to say. So I think the focus on merit is a bad idea. Instead the focus should be on diversity. It is about promoting a community rather than a bunch of individuals
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