Category: Women

Kevin Drum blogs today about being invited to attend BlogHer, and Chris Nolan encourages him to attend. So far so good. But then Chris veers off the deep end and I have to ask, what was she thinking?

If you are a man who like code and software and things that plug in, and is perhaps having trouble finding a girl who likes Java (and knows it’s not just a coffee) and undersands your inner Geek, this might be the PERFECT place for you to spend a summer afternoon.

The ratio at most tech conferences is hugely biased toward men that will assuredly not be the case here.

I’m not planning on going to BlogHer (my reasons why are here), but I find that approach rather demeaning. Not “come to BlogHer to learn more about technology, politics, developing a niche blog, blogging for business and woman’s issues, among other things, and have fun too!” Nope, it’s flat out, “Come to BlogHer to try and get a date.” And then the official BlogHer weblog posted her comments, in an approving manner.

You’d think after all this time that we could do better.

All that said, knowing that Kevin is going does tempt me somewhat to go despite my previous post. I’d like to meet him. And looking over the evolving agenda, I see they’ve toned the mommy focus down somewhat (a plus for those of us who are childfree). And as a student, I can get in for a nice low price. So call me on the fence, but still inclined towards “no”.

A number of female bloggers have rolled up their sleeves, dug in, and done the hard work necessary to get a conference off the ground. BlogHer will be held in nearby Santa Clara in late July of this year. Kudos to them for doing the work, but I won’t be there.

It’s a curious place to be for someone who considers herself a feminist. Part of me feels that I ought to go to show support for fellow women bloggers, but I can’t summon any enthusiasm at all for the event. Perhaps it is because after having spent the better part of a decade working in the technology world, the concept of “wow, let’s have an event where all the techie women can get together” has lost its freshness for me.

But even more than that, I think it is because I resist being labeled as a “woman blogger”. I am a woman, and I have a blog. But Fiat Lux is not a “woman’s blog” any more than it is a “Jewish blog” or even a “political blog”. It’s just MY blog.

I write about some women’s issues, and some Jewish issues, and some political issues, because all of those things interest me. But I strongly resent being pigeon-holed into a specific category of blog based on my gender, religion, or choice of subject matter. Above all else, this is a personal blog. As Walt Whitman said,

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then. I contradict myself.
I am large. I contain multitudes.

Still, I wish the BlogHer women good luck.

Andrea Dworkin, dead at age 58.

I can’t say that I agree with some of her more extreme positions on the relationships between men and women, but she made some highly valid points about how pornography dehumanizes women in the eyes of men. And I have a lot of respect for the courage it took for her to step up and talk about these issues, despite decades of being decried as a man-hating lesbian and worse.

There’s another flurry in the recurring cycle of “where are all the female political bloggers” going on this week, fed by a couple of posts at Kevin Drum’s site.

I don’t think there’s some sort of deliberate conspiracy on the part of Kevin Drum and his pals to keep female bloggers out of their blogrolls. But I do think there’s a particular blindness that left-leaning men enagage in. I believe they generally do care about womens’ issues and want to see women playing a more active and vocal role in the general discourse. But simultaneously, they don’t realize that their inaction is not helping that day come to pass.

Despite decades having passed since “the feminist revovlution”, this is still much more of a man’s world than it is an egalitarian one. Men in positions of authority, like the top bloggers, need to realize that they have to actually do something to help change the status quo.

I just posted a suggestion on Ezra Klein’s site to this end, and I’m going to repost it here:

How about creating a new mini-blogroll on your front page. Update it regularly. In it, you link to bloggers who ought to have better recognition but for whatever reason, don’t get it. And make a point of being diverse in your linking. To make the workload manageable, I’d suggest updates every 4 to 6 weeks and no more than 5 to 7 blogs listed in the blogroll.

Even better, try to get one or two of the other big-name Lefty bloggers to do the same thing.

I’m not the only person to make this suggestion. Several people said more or less the same thing in the comments to Kevin Drum’s post. Ultimately, actions speak louder than words. Maybe the guys will take some steps to show they do walk the walk when it comes to advancing women. Or maybe deep down they really are a bunch of sexist pigs. Let’s see what happens.

When I first heard about this I thought it was a hoax, but it seems to be true. Apparently forced prostitution is not just for third-world countries.

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners