Response to the Margaret Wente column that asks why bloggers are male
I caught wind of this column via a Tweet from @suzemuse (Susan Murphy of Suzemuse). Margaret Wente, a Toronto Globe and Mail columnist, published a column called Why are bloggers male? She makes a number of interesting assertions on how blogging is a male activity and that women communicate differently both in terms of venue and thoughtfulness. You might want to read the column before reading any further so you can ground yourself.
I’ve written a response to her column. I have E-mailed it to her separately but I’m publishing it here as well since I thought some of you might have some thoughtful responses to her column.
My response is a bit long, but I hope you’ll be able to read it through to the end. I’d love to know what you think.
# # #
Dear Ms. Wente:
This E-Mail will discuss a (very) recent column you’ve written in order to express my reaction and point of view about that column. It is, of course, your choice to read this E-Mail. I hope you do read it (if you’ve gotten this far, there’s a decent chance that you’ll read the whole thing) and I would appreciate reading your response to my opinion in some fashion. My hypothesis at this point, lacking the ability to read minds, is that it is unlikely that you will do either, but I’ve certainly been proven to be wrong before, so there is always hope that you might choose to do both things.
I read your well-crafted Globe and Mail column (noted above in the subject line of this E-Mail and here with this link) with some interest as I’m both a blogger (I consider myself to be a writer as well but most of my output is published electronically using blogging platforms) and a man. A couple of my female contacts have expressed their disagreement with parts (if not all) of the column, but that is a small sampling of your potential audience. I could point out that you reference small samples of people when you wrote about:
- Your theory about blogging being related to “male answer syndrome”
- The experience of being “struck dumb” in being the presence of stranger
- Women have never held peeing contests – this is speculation and it’s also virtually impossible to prove a negative statement when speaking about an entire gender composed of billions of members over the millennia; I do agree that it seems a bit far-fetched since I have no evidence one way or the other.
But that doesn’t necessarily invalidate your opinions. For that matter, it doesn’t make the opinions of my female contacts incorrect either.
Your reference to Andrew Sullivan makes me think that your opinion of blogs and male blogging in particular are based on Mr. Sullivan’s blog as a typical example. Your reference to the childish and abusive behavior of blog and website commentators – which I certainly don’t dispute as being all too frequent on popular blogs and websites, although I’m very fortunate to not have to worry about such problems at present – is also another example of presenting an overgeneralization. I suspect that you are aware that you are making these generalizations because there is a lot of value to you and your employer in creating a bit of controversy and stimulating some discussion. However, on the off chance that you might truly think that these opinions are factual, I’m going to present a few counter opinions and facts.
Blogging is now used as a more generic term that when bloggers like Andrew Sullivan rode the wave of the emerging medium. Blogs were originally pages full of links with some description (hence the original term weblog, to represent an ongoing log of websites that the blogger had visited.) Over time, as blogging platforms have become more numerous and richer in functionality, it has become much easier to use these platforms to display written and graphical content, while incorporating both audio and video content. The end result is a medium which can closely mimic the layout abilities of magazines, books, and newspapers and do even more. As a result, bloggers have been gravitating towards writing longer form content. Articles published on the web are able to exceed 400 words very easily. In some cases, many bloggers regularly publish 1000 words or more in their articles and posts, accompanied with other embedded media and hyperlinks to other websites.
I’m assuming that these facts are new to you, although it’s quite possible that you do know this already. Even probable.
Let’s both be honest, OK? I think we both know that there are plenty of digital publishers out there who represent different extremes of brevity, contentiousness, depth of feeling, logical arguments, and civility. For some reason you’ve chosen to focus on a (relatively) famous male blogger whose blog posts tend to be relatively short, even compared to many blogs, plus he actually republishes a lot of other people’s content. In fact, I’m making the assumption that Andrew Sullivan is your “ideal” male blogger (i.e. the mental model you have in mind when you write about male bloggers).
The peeing contests that you mention seem to be related to the commentators that I mentioned above. Are you lumping the commentators into the same class as the bloggers themselves? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch? Wouldn’t that be like comparing you (a Globe and Mail columnist) to the people who comment on your blog? I don’t actually see a direct link to the peeing contests that you mention and the commentators. But, of course, the parallel that you could be drawing here is that the kneejerk responses of the commentators could be similar to those of the bloggers themselves, who seem to ejaculate (sorry, but it seems to be a fitting metaphor when you bring in the subject of male answer syndrome and its sexual origins) posts multiple times per day with an admirable recovery period that might make some men jealous if you apply the analogy far enough.
I appreciate the fact that your writing displays a sense of sophistication and craft that “bloggers” seem to lack in your eyes. In fact, while taking the time to craft a piece of well written opinion, you’ve managed to engage me emotionally and trigger a response. It’s amazing how you’ve managed to provoke a response, much like the opinionated male bloggers that you mention in your column. Except, of course, your method of provocation is somewhat more subtle that the typical pundit blogger that you refer to. As for me, my spelling, grammar, punctuation and tone are more civilized that the commentators that you’ve referred to: folks who are doing the digital equivalent seeing how far their stream of urine will reach and, if they’re feeling ambitious, trying to write profanity or perhaps draw crude sexual imagery with the aforementioned streams. Hopefully I haven’t mistaken your intent here, but given my gender I am occasionally cursed with an inability to appreciate subtlety. Sorry, I was born this way.
It’s interesting that you include a suggestion for creating an audience in your column. Apparently all I would have to do is to write “Margaret Wente is an idiot” and I could likely increase my subscriber and page view counts by some multiple. I could point to studies and statistics (and, come to think of it, actual web sites) which show that there is a plethora of women bloggers, many who are talented and thoughtful, but they also share the blogospheres with more opinionated members of the same gender. But, Ms. Wente, I do not think you are an idiot. Not at all.
The reason is simple: no one with the experience in old and new media that you must have could possibly believe such a stupid idea, that bloggers are exclusively male or that the desire to “blog” is a male behavior. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that the act of “blogging” is now a diverse activity that encompasses many types of digital publishing. Self expression isn’t a gender specific trait. It’s regrettable that you and some of your female friends had difficulty communicating in the presence of strangers. If it helps at all, it certainly isn’t a female-only phenomenon and I suspect it has more to do with personality types and social conditioning than gender. I know I was afraid to speak in front of strangers for many years and even today it doesn’t come naturally unless I feel very strongly about something. Whether it was a change in hormones or personal development, I don’t know, but at least you feel more confident and self-assured and this is a good thing.
Thank you for stimulating some thought today. I’m both E-Mailing you and publishing my response on my blog so that: a) there’s a chance that you’ll read it, as I mentioned earlier and b) other people can weigh in on this topic. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally attract a few trolls with this.
P.S. An obvious advantage of the blogging platform I don’t have the same constraints on column space that newspaper columnists do. Although I’d concede that the more you write, the harder it is to keep someone else’s attention. If you’ve made it all the way to the end of this response, then kudos to you and thank you for taking the time to do so.
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