women bloggers – Don't Gel Too Soon

Women Bloggers Are NOT Cute Little Girls: Tell the New York Times

What is it about women who blog that scares so many people – even other women —
even the New York Times? Once again this time, they’ve decided to offer an “analysis” or a “portrait” or an I don’t know what
about bloggers who are women and moms. And when they do, they write with
a condescending, bemused attitude that is what I remember from the early days
of the women’s movement, when men would joke about our desire to open our own
doors, earn our own livings, make our own decisions. It was kind of cute
to want to be able to get credit cards without a husband’s permission, to cover
a story without having to go up in the balcony, to keep our names when we got
married. Feminism was just so adorable.

Now, we’re free on so many levels, and one manifestation of that freedom is the
vibrant world we’ve created online. Sisterhoods that cross race and
politics and religion and age as we share ideas and pain, joy and pride, birth
and loss and every other story that is part of living a life. There have
been a couple of wonderful responses to this irritating TIMES piece (and it’s
not the first…) One of my own favorites, Mom-101,
whose admirers are legion, wrote

“…once you
get past the first half of the article, there’s actually some solid information
in there….But I wish [all] that had been to focus of an article about my
favorite blogging community that just made the front page of my favorite
section of my favorite Sunday paper. I wish it had opened with the yearning
of bloggers for the community to return to good writing, and the evidence that
in the end, that’s mostly what pays off….

Of course, there
are more. My friend Danielle Wiley, known to many of her friends as Foodmomiac but also an executive at Edelman PR, has also weighed in.

I invite you to read the full piece and form your own opinions, but sentences like “bringing
together participants for some real-time girly bonding” might very well stop
you in your tracks. As I write this, my husband (and fellow Edelman executive
Michael Wiley) is at SXSW. Would Mendelsohn classify that experience as macho
bonding? Or would she write that he is attending a conference for the purposes
of education and networking? Why do people, including Ms. Mendlesohn, continue
to refer to networking among women as girly bonding? I seriously doubt the
participants at Bloggy Boot Camp were wearing jammies and braiding each other’s
hair. However, from the tenor of the piece, it was pretty easy to jump to that
conclusion.

Here’s the bottom line: I’m old enough to be the mother of both of these women
and many of their peers yet they have welcomed me as a sister – a blogger and a
friend. They’ve honored the sappy posts I’ve written about my sons
and my marriage and they’ve shared ideas and advice in comments, in twitter and even in real life.

They and their compatriots are talented, compassionate,
ornery pioneers
who have built what I think of as the new quilting bee, the new Red Tent where they share the wisdom and mysteries that are women’s lives. And they do much more – just go check out the list in Liz’s post. Not for one moment are they
silly or unaware or careless or trivial. And to gain a few points with
silly headlines and denigrating phrases isn’t bad taste, it’s also bad
journalism. Go see for yourself.

Sonia Sotomayor: A Blogger Tour (of Sorts)

What do Sonia Sotomayor and Elle Woods have in common? Plenty, according to a wonderful post by the ever-original PunditMom. That's just one of many, of course. I'm offering here a kind of tour – mostly of women whose views are notable in one way or another.

At the ABA Journal, Debra Cassens Weiss offers – and debunks, the four most likely knocks on Judge Sotomayor.

We all love Culture Kitchen's Liza Sabater. This time she's outdone herself in several intriguing (and some fun) posts on the nomination. Meanwhile, Jill Tubman's post on "sexist attacks" appears both at New Agenda and Jack and Jill Politics. There's a video conversation at Laura Flanders among Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and Jose Perez who's a lawyer with Latino Justice.

Thinking about the judge's environmental record? There's a brief exploration by Karen Murphy at SuperEco. Want to review more newsy discussion? Professor Kim Pearson, at Professor Kim's News Notes, has a nice early review. Jezebel has a survey with a little more attitude, too.

Jen Nedau provides a review of the record and some thoughts beyond and Jill Filipovic a nice exploration of differences of opinion and the judge's underlying value.

Finally, at Tech President, Nancy Scola offers, as usual, an original perspective: just how has the White House put the nomination out, and with what ammo? It's pretty interesting.

This is just a sprinkling of what's out there; add your own in the comments and I'll include them too.

BlogHer, Bella, Books and Us Women

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women. You know where; the Web has been full of posts and tweets and messages about BlogHer, the women bloggers conference. Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them. For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength and power of both the gathering and each woman, most far younger than I, who is part of it. Audacious and rambunctious, honest and gifted, they are far beyond where I was at their age. I’ve always known that all of us, sisters from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, scratched and kicked and pulled and fought to move our lives, and those of the women around us, forward. In many ways, we made a difference. I’m proud of that.

Today though I was reminded of a real heroine, one whose star lit the way for much of what we did, in a wonderful piece in The Women’s Review of Books: Ruth Rosen‘s review of Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
Rights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
the Way–an oral history of the life of Bella Abzug. Among other things, Ruth says:

She fought for the
rights of union workers and African Americans, protested the use of the atomic
bomb and the Vietnam War, waged endless battles to advance women’s rights, and
spent the last years of her life promoting environmentalism and human rights.
When she plunged into the women’s movement during the late 1960s, Abzug infused
feminism with her fierce, strategic, take-no-prisoners spirit. As Geraldine
Ferraro reminds us,
She didn’t knock lightly on the door. She didn’t even push it open or batter it
down. She took it off the hinges forever! So that those of us who came after
could walk through!

And with a bow to Bella and so many others, walk through we have. It’s tough to pass the stories ‘I walked six miles to school in the snow’
fogey. Younger women, though, would find courage to fight their own
battles in Bella’s story and in many of our own."

For me, Bella was a brave, untamed beacon of defiance and energy. Her story, and ours, laid the ground for these determined, gifted "blogger generation" women. I would so love to be able to tell them about her – and about all of us, just so they could know the solidarity, the battles, the anger and the hope. And why seeing them all together, hugging, laughing and raising hell, makes me so damned happy. And that Bella would have loved them.

OVER ALREADY: BLOGHER ’08

This photo was taken at the closing plenary of BlogHer08 and I’ve barely covered the event at all. There are so many moments I’d love to tell you about: readings by bloggers whose words hold incredible power; one by one they reveal intimate moments of sadness and joy, anger and hilarity. The words, drawn from their posts, are the clearest evidence of the power of this institution, not yet five years old and already a gigantic force for good in the lives of the women who have come here. So many more.

We’re all on our way home now; to Austin and Sacramento and Virginia and Manhattan and Minneapois, energized for another year, ready to write and comment and commit ourselves to that which we create. From these two days we’ve learned about traffic and writing, activism and art, gender and age tribalism, friendship, sisterhood and the joys of San Francisco. What we gain here informs the rest of our year: makes us wiser and funnier and more determined. And really, whatever I would have written had it not been for Sabbath obligations and general exhaustion boils down to that. So thanks Elisa and Jory and Lisa (and Jill and Mary Margaret and Kristen and Asha and Erin and Sarah and Devra and Jill and Kari and Beth and Tekla and Catherine and the other Catherine and Morra and Nicole and Liz and Kelly and Jen and Julie ) and all the other beautiful bloggers who, when we’re all together, raise the roof of whatever building we happen to be in, and also – every one of our spirits and our hearts.

ALL POWER (or at least MORE power) TO THE BLOGGERS!

Yesterday I went to a briefing on political blogging held by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet and mega-PR agency Edelman Associates. It was pretty interesting. Among the findings: (Read to the bottom – you’ll be glad you did)

27% of the US population reads a blog in any given week (@60,193,913 folks – larger than the adult pops of CA, NY, TX combined)34%+ American influentials (people who influence others – logical, right?) read a blog at least once/week
28% of American adults that have read a blog have taken action on based on in- formation they received on that blog.

The US age breakdown is kind of interesting too.

18-24s are largest blog users, as you’d imagine. They report reading a blog an average of 1.6 days/week.
The next highest isn’t 25-34 (many of whom fell into a kind of "gap" in school computing access and average 0.8 pages/week) but 35-44s who average around 1.05 days/week.
Then there’s another surprise – the next age cadre, 45-54 is lowest so far at around 0.7 days/week
Those early Boomers 55-64 are higher, matching the 25-34s at 0.8.
65+ averages only around 0.5.

And gender – are we traveling the blogosphere less intensely than the guys? Well the only stats the report had were for political blogs and their researcher says the numbers were pretty much in the margin of error:

Blog readers who read political blogs: 24% female – 30% male
Take action from political blog info: 26% female – 30% male]]

A second study, released in October 2006 by IPDI and @dvocacy Inc. showed:

Daily political blog readers were 75% male and 25% female
Daily “all others” blog readers were 60% male and 40% female

OK NOW here’s why you read to the bottom: women don’t do their politics exclusively on “political” blogs – not at all! Read Been There or Mom-101 or Lizawashere and see for yourself. As usual, we don’t fit into anyone’s categories – combining family, food, politics and love into the total life we all live. Good for us — we just have to make sure the pundits know this too – so they can find some of our brilliant sisters as they think, write and provoke us to do both better.