Sinéad is again talking about the lack of women in the Irish blog(g)osphere and has received some good comments on her post.
Auds from realitycheck(dot)ie replied saying she doesn’t think there needs to be a highlighting of women and thinks this is some kind of feminism and she’s not fond of feminism but she does say having the perspectives of women in the mix is a very good thing. Beth Bond and Suzy also left comments on Aud’s blog highlighting all the things feminism has done to improve the lot of women. UPDATE: Fiona has gotten into the debate too. I’d agree with what they say and would add that feminism did a lot for combating all forms of discrimination and created the framework on how to make things more balanced.
I wouldn’t see wanting and encouraging more women to blog as either positive discrimination/affirmative action or being hypocritical to equality. We need more in the blog gene pool, we need information coming at us which is not so homogenous and another shade of concrete. I’d like my blog to be like my (ideal) diet. A combination of so many things and well balanced too.
The Irish bloggersphere now is male and tech heavy and I feel getting more perspectives of women will make things more interesting and take conversations down new paths. I feel the same about introducing other people into the mix. I’d really like to get the perspectives of the “non-nationals” (Is there a better word? I dislike that term.) who we interact with daily in the real world but we don’t see in the ‘sphere. Apart from Tatiana I’ve not seen many blogging.
And then there’s the disabled, the invisble people who Suzy talked about yesterday and how they don’t appear to have a voice for various reasons. How many disabled are in the community and how many are in the blog community?
It may all be voyeuristic reading the blogs of people we are ignorant of but is it not more polite then approaching a disabled person and going “so you’re disabled then. What’s that like?” Actually I was asked once “So how’s this whole gay thing working out for you?”. People are ignorant but many recognize their ignorance and don’t know how to address it. Blogs may be a way of doing that. Read the daily lives of a cross-section of the whole of society and not just one small group. It’s not disruptive and is non-instrusive.
As a non-national with a gender-bending name, you’ve encouraged me to write more about the soft edge of technology. My first article might be about the fact that many college students don’t use the word “blog” but they spend a lot of time with their online journals, Facebook and music sharing through instant messaging. I think the next generation will bypass some of the tech-heavy bits of the blogosphere and keep connecting the dots in the way that suits them best. That would be on the soft side of the connected community.
Well Im dyslexic blogger but I don’t know if that counts as a disability as you would define it.
Maybe you’re just looking at the techy male end of the blogworld – we are out here, you know. But perhaps we’re not writing about the sorts of topics you’re interested in? And that renders us “invisible”, although we do exist. It’s all a matter of taste, at the end of the day. 🙂