Wednesday, July 30, 2008

women bloggers

I quite like this article by Rebecca Traister on blogging's glass ceiling. There's no real productive conversation about this subject. Most of the law prof ones are about "why aren't there more women bloggers" and then everyone piles on the theories that generally track already known debates about how women are over-stretched at both work and home with no time to blog and their voices are generally depreciated anyway and so what's the point of blogging?

Well, for now I'm still blogging. And, last time I checked, I am a woman. And while this blog has been incredibly trivial for a while now, occasionally I have said things of value and insight. (Ignore previous post.) I can't say I'm making any grand stand or gesture by it. I can't say that my voice and perspective are particularly valuable or distinctive. I have no idea if I would be better received if I were a male blogger.

All I can say is that for now, I am blogging. What else is there to say? All of these questions of public writing and why it done and what value there is in the enterprise are so tiresome. And they are separate from the question of why women are not well-represented in the blogosphere, which is another tiresome debate. I like Shamus's question--what are we doing about it? If it is regarded as a problem, then do something about it. I will be forever grateful to Jim Chen for inviting me to MoneyLaw (where I don't blog enough, I know) and to Jeremy Freese for inviting me to Scatterplot. We want more female bloggers. So, give them higher profile, aggregated platforms for their voices!

Maintaining a solo blog is a lot of work. This is why my blog has sucked so much lately--nothin' to say, nothin' to write, move along folks. Then I figure, "fuck, it's my blog, I will blog about breakfast if I want." And I'm not Glenn Reynolds, and so people don't come to my blog for one-line directions to links. Group blogs are great for relieving the pressure of daily blogging and allowing drop-in posting. I know that many group blogs actively recruit female voices--part of why I so enjoy Crooked Timber and The Valve. Women are not well represented in the legal blogosphere, but I know that's not intentional and probably more to do with glass ceilings at work and second shifts at home than the standby "lack of interest" argument or "no good female bloggers" excuse.

All very tiresome, as blogging itself can be. I imagine that I'll one day tire of blogging. So far, today is not that day.