SiglaMag this morning featured
a post on women bloggers in the Irish blogosphere (reminding me that I need to update my blogroll as well….that’s next on the list) which made some really good points on the importance of encouraging more women to blog. As blogging becomes more and more important culturally we should be concerned with ensuring that as many women as want to blog can blog. Now this is important – people will say things like ‘
anyone can blog, that’s the whole idea of it’ but the pertinent question is whether women are facilitated in blogging?
Often blogging can seem like a very ‘masculine’ activity because it’s sometimes seen as a techie pursuit and because sometimes peoples’ lack of techie skills is noted, (teasing for having a generic template, for example, tends to originate from ‘de boys’ that like techie things whereas if, like me, you just want somewhere to write and barely know what a template is then you don’t really care as long as it works!) there might be some perception that blogging isn’t
for the girls.
The blogosphere might also be perceived of as sexist. Take, for example, the dubbing of
Ann Althouse as
the Berkeley house whore when she criticized the (moronic) Pajama Media corral? You wouldn’t find someone calling a man a whore for criticizing something or expressing an opinion – it’s a gendered slur and indeed Althouse was disappointed (understatement?) that feminist bloggers hadn’t rushed to her defence after that slur was thrown (in fact she is referred to by the new ‘nickname’ in the
Wikipedia entry on Pajama Media…). Is that ‘welcoming to women’, ‘facilitating women’? No – I think it makes the bloggosphere somewhat intimidating for women who mightn’t have Althouse’s mettle…
In response to the Sigla post
Auds put up the ‘I’m 22 and a woman and I hate feminism and it makes my skin crawl’ post on
www.realitycheck.ie. Here’s the choice extract:
I'm a 22 year old girl and I hate feminism. I'm not a feminist. As a woman, I don't want my achievements to be lumped in with those of my sex. My decisions are my own and my opinions don't come straight from my ovaries. And I really don't like monologuing about my vagina.
I've no interest in the great big loving sisterhood bursting through glass ceilings. (Especially when the women left behind to sweep up the glass fragments are underpaid women for whom "career" is a foreign notion and work is a matter of cold, hard cash - and have nothing in common with the feminist establishment)
This entire passage is based on stereotypes of feminism and feminists as people who tend to monologue about their vaginas, write poetry about menstrual blood and commune with the Goddess (and there are some women like that as well) mixed with a stereotype of feminists as the powerful, scary, shoulder-pad-laden corporate woman who climbs the ladder and then pulls it up behind them. In truth neither stereotype reflected in this extract accurately reflects feminism and what feminism is about and, aware of the danger of sounding condescending, it reflects a complete and utter lack of understanding of what feminism is. Feminism is a complex, political belief that recognises that women have been systematically disempowered in society and are disadvantaged as a result of their gender and sex. It is a movement that aims to redress that disparity in power and opportunity. From there different schools of feminist thought develop and people tend to decide on how they give want to give expression to their feminism based on which school they find most theoretically convincing. Just like any other political movement there is a theoretical underpinning to feminism and as a political movement it can’t be legitimately criticised unless there is an understanding of that theory.
Auds simply bashes feminism in this extract and fails to offer any justification for her self-confessed hatred of feminism: she doesn’t engage with the theory, she doesn’t explain her point of view. This kind of polemic is reflective of the ignorant dismissal of feminism rife among young women who have the opportunities they have
because of the feminist movement and who now shun that label, shun the movement that helped to liberate them, fail to recognise the inherent patriarchy within a liberal system such as Ireland’s and refuse to inform themselves about feminism for fear of being labeled
the undesirable man-hating feminist.
Maybe Auds will create a sensible, reasoned post on why she hates feminism and then we can actually engage in debate on its relative merits and on why increasing the number of women bloggers in Ireland is important.
