BurningbirdAside from being a terrific dad to several cats and a cute dog, including my god-daughter Sparql, and a good writer, patient advocate of RDF, artist, and writer, Danny Ayers is also a very good hearted man.
It’s an honor to know him. I haven’t met him, but it’s still an honor to know him.
Thanks, Danny. For dropping some positive words when this tired old writer needed them.
Charles from Disinfotainment is posting videos of various aspects of Japanese culture, including this this one on a program to upgrade bathrooms within the educational system.
What’s interesting about the program is that the students have a say in how the bathrooms are designed. In addition, they also have to maintain the bathrooms. I imagine that the students do take greater care when they have to take a turn doing the cleaning.
Charles clarifies that contrary to western assumption, not all of Japan is living with the latest and newest of bathroom appliances; a significant percentage of the country is still using the old style of Japanese toilet, which is nothing more than a trench in the dirt.
Young students are also being taught how to use western toilets, the same as most of us would have to learn how to use the Japanese squat toilet. It makes me hurt, just to look at it. Great way, though, of making sure your populace stays flexible.
Contrary to rumor no, I did not get married recently and/or change my last name to Harrison. Besides, I wouldn’t change my last name if I were to get married — and didn’t change it when I was married. I was born Shelley Powers (well, Michelle Powers) and that’s how I’ll go to my ashes.
However, Tim Bray did get my first name right, and I’m thankful for that, considering that the use of the second, and admittedly extraneous, ‘e’, causes confusion and most folk just drop it. But I like my ‘e’. As I’ve said before, without the second ‘e’ the name falls over.
Names aside, when reading Tim’s examination of the issue of women in weblogging and technology, I found statements I agree with and statements I didn’t. For instance, I disagree with Tim’s too easy acceptance that some fields will ‘always’ be dominated by one sex or another; while I agree that regardless, this is no excuse to make those who cross the ‘gender divide’ feel like a freak of nature:
I personally suspect that engineering will remain male-dominated and early childhood education female-dominated no matter how hard we try to be inclusive. And that’s probably OK. What’s not OK is if the engineers are trying to keep out the women who do want in, or the elementary teachers are trying to keep out the men.
Whatever his view on professions and gender identity, Tim doesn’t believe that weblogging should be imbalanced between the sexes, and in this we’re in complete agreement:
I think the griping about the big-name-blogger imbalance is justified and there is a problem here. Shelley Harrison hasn’t quite convinced me that dropping blogrolls and top-100 lists would help that much, but it’s an interesting direction and worth thinking some more about. I’m pretty sure, though, that a little bit of affirmative action in choosing who to link to is likely to be helpful, moral, and smart.
Tim also brings up the classic bathroom issue, where planners provide equal bathroom facilities for men and women, and women end up waiting in line. I don’t think any of us doubt that women and men are built physically different, and there are times to keep this in mind. But until such time that someone can prove to me that there’s a weblogging gene and it’s sex related, I’ll assume other factors are in play when it comes to issues of sex disparity.
Tim sums up his personal view of the situation with the following (and I know I’ve stolen his punchline, but I love it to pieces):
I ain’t in this for Justice or Fair Play or any of that stuff, but rather because I find it viscerally irritating to spend so much time in physical and virtual rooms full of middle-aged white guys. I don’t know why it’s so irritating and I don’t care that much; it’s broken and it needs fixing.
Amen! And Tim, you can make a start by recommending a woman as the third presenter at this event; because from what I can see, the Speaker List is broken, and needs fixing.
Tagback: WhereAretheWomenofWeblogging
I’m mostly considered a technology weblogger, if I’m pigeonholed into any category (usually I fight this kicking and screaming). I’ve written on politics, but I don’t focus on it. Same as I write on technology, but not exclusively (and hiking, and photography, and travel, and …) When I’ve been included in lists of ‘female political webloggers’, this has been more of an inclusive gesture than not, and appreciated.
So I haven’t been too involved in a recent continued discussion about the Steve Levy Article, Kevin Drum’s take, and the reaction thereof. However, one issue that keeps getting raised–that there aren’t as many women political webloggers because we women can’t handle the heat–can be firmly and safely put to rest when you read the responses of the lady politicos at the following weblogs:
We’re not going to get anywhere as long as the male bloggers who post about this issue continue to do so with such appalling intellectual dishonesty. In private emails, male bloggers who publicly wring their hands about how to solve the problem of the dearth of women bloggers in the upper echelon, will admit that the reality is the difficulty of finding women worth linking to.
Women don’t give me much linkable material.
Women write on subjects that don’t interest me.
Women don’t know how to compromise on abortion rights.
Why don’t women post about Social Security? It affects them, too.
Women don’t write commentary, don’t come up with new ideas.
Gender politics is all secondary issues.
… clearly there’s a disconnect between what some male folk convey on their blogs and what they truly believe. And, I strongly suspect the leadership of the Democratic Party works much the same way.
Compromise on abortion rights? Social Security? And women are accused of following trends like a dog with its nose buried in its own turds? Right. Real original, dude. And I’m not even going to mention how specious it is to suggest that women are “uninteresting�? because we follow legislation that directly, tangibly affects us and only us.
Oops, here I go with that hysterical shit again. At least I’m more reserved than Jeff Jarvis’ rowdy channelling of Bushwick Bill: “Damn it feels good to be a cracka.�?
This subject is so unbearably boring and repetitive — and yet so freakishly maddening. And this time especially so. Apparently the candle lit romanticism induced by wide-eyed men blogging about the sad dearth of femininity in the political sphere is nothing but a sham.
(Jonathon, “Damn it feels good to be a cracka!” is better than “White, male, and proud of it!”, don’t you think?”)
What is different is the defense floated out there that isn’t a hierarchy in the major blogosphere. This is ludicrous — there is passive resistance to acknowledge, seek out or promote new political voices, especially those that have something to say about gender politics from a perspective that is not white or male — why wouldn’t you want to bring something fresh to the table. You wouldn’t if you didn’t have a serious interest in those issues.
Our big boy bloggers have tended to gloss over the fact that the blogosphere is still, looking at sheer numbers, the domain of the Technorati testosteroni. Men currently rule the roost in terms of perceived bloggers of influence, and the article points that out. Guys arrived at the party first, and it’s a remained a fairly closed system on the Left for reasons that are complicated, but not excusable.
Grr, ladies. You make me proud.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I knew as soon as I saw the Steve Levy article that we would see a backlash about the domination of whites and males in the weblogging ranking systems. While my “Guys Don’t Link” post tried to make a point with humor, and invite the guys to be part of the joke, and the understanding that follows, Levy’s was guaranteed to first of all get notice (after all, he is a white male journalist); get credibility (after all, he is a white male journalist); and, lastly, generate a great deal of guilt.
Guilt is the killer of conversations and the destroyer of discussion because no one wants guilt dumped on them. Mr. Levy, you have hurt us, and you did so with no more than a passing glance and a feeling that “this is just another story”.
But it happened and here we are, and though I sympathize with Roxanne’s weariness of this discussion, I do want to speak to this backlash, and the causes for it. And then I too, will have exhausted all that I can say on the topic, and walk away from it.
First, to the white guys who have been proclaiming your race and sex with such pride: It would seem that not only are you not content with being king of the hill, you also want to be chief underdog, too. Not content to being the center of too many dialogs within weblogging, you also want to be the center of one discussion that, oddly enough, doesn’t center around you: being a weblogger who is not a male, or is not white, or both.
So you’ve perverted the discussion until it is all about you, effectively shutting it down, while making sure that the bits you so desperately need understand that their rightful place is forming a swarm about you.
You see, White Guys, it’s all about you. And you’ll do everything in your power to destroy even an effective conversation, unless it is all about you.
When Levy mentioned ‘lack of diversity’ and pointed a finger at the grouped white males, you cried out ‘foul’ and hastened to point out that Glenn Reynolds and Atrios may be white and male, but they have different opinions, and hence any group they’re in, is diverse. All I can say is that George Wallace would have been proud of your verbal footwork, and supported your distinction.
When a gentle and curious question about having a conference focused on women in weblogging is proposed, you come into comments and you harrangue and harrass and manipulate the discussion, until the concept is tainted almost beyond repair, and yes, the conversation does flow around ‘you’. I, being tired, fell for the trap. Again. I forgot that the greatest hurt I can do to you, the most effective weapon I have, is to ignore you; by not feeding this insatiable and sad need you have, to have all of this be about you.
You proudly claim that yes, you are white guys and discount all the concerns and questions that are being asked, and the challenges being made–not because you necessarily disagree, but because the conversation isn’t about you. It doesn’t matter if you’re seen as good or bad, right or wrong; all that matters is that the conversation be about you.
For once, we had the opportunity to actually explore issues of diversity in weblogging — international as compared to US-based webloggers; white as compared to not white; male and female. We could have grown and been enriched, and maybe we would all been the better for it. More importantly, we may have looked more closely at the technology that drives our perceptions, and had a chance to explore whether blogrolls and popularity lists are more harm then they are worth.
Instead, in a burst of emotional self-defense, it became Whitey versus the Gang. I am waiting for one or more of you to put “White Male and Damn Proud of It!” stickers in your sidebars, as you nod among yourselves about putting down this particular insurrection. After all, this is the ultimate egalitarian environment–anyone can have a weblog. Anyone can become famous. All you have to do, is write well.
Except that you forget that popularity in this environment can lead to opportunity, which, in turn, generates more popularity, and hence more opportunity and so on. Or maybe I have it wrong–you never forget this.
Let me ask you all something, though: if members of Congress or Parliment or whatever body rules you, did what you are all doing now, standing up in session and yelling out, “I am white and I am male!”, would you support this?
If President Bush or Tony Blair or Howard started their next speech with, “I am white, and I am male!”, would you support this?
If the next time most major corporate boards got together the members stood up and said, “I am white, and I am male!”, would you support this?
I would ask that the white guys attending the O’Reilly ETech conference stand up before each session and proudly proclaim, “I am white, and I am male!” If they do, would you support this? (ETech attendees do me a favor: do this, please. I think more could come of this one act than anything I’ve been saying for three years to Tim O’Reilly.)
Perhaps I’m an optimist, but I still think something constructive can be derived from all of this, and that is to look more closely at the technology that is generating the divide between us. I asked earlier whether blogrolls and popularity lists cause more harm than good. I think the answer is, a resounding, “Yes!”
I’m going to borrow some words from Jon Stewart, when he appeared on Cross-Fire (bless you, Norm, for making these videos available). He accused the Cross-Fire journalists, and, in fact, many journalist of harming America because of partisan reporting. He said a simple thing: You are hurting us.
At the time, I didn’t agree with Stewart, for about the same reasons I don’t agree with Levy now. I felt Stewart does more with his satire than he did with this direct confrontation. However, I’m beginning to appreciate the strength of his simple, and compelling approach.
So I’ll say this, directly and honestly, to Dave Sifry from Technorati: Dave, you are hurting us.
The Technorati Top 100 is too much like Google in that ‘noise’ becomes equated with ‘authority’. Rather than provide a method to expose new voices, your list becomes nothing more than a way for those on top to further cement their positions. More, it can be easily manipulated with just the release of a piece of software.
You have focused on comment spam and you see this as the most harm to this community, all the while providing the weapon that is truly tearing us apart. You are hurting us, Dave.
NZ Bear, you are hurting us. With your Ecosystem, you count links on the front page, which give precedence to blogroll links over links embedded within writings, and then classify people in a system equating mammals and amoeba. Your site serves as nothing more than a way for higher ranked people to feel good about themselves, and lower ranked to feel discouraged. There is no discovery inherent in your system — no way of encouraging new voices to be heard. So NZ, you are, also, hurting us.
In fact, to every weblogger who has a blogroll: you are hurting all of us.
Rarely do people discover new webloggers through blogrolls; most discovery comes when you reference another weblogger in your writings. But blogrolls are a way of persisting links to sites, forming a barrier to new voices who may write wonderful things — but how they possibly be heard through the static, which is the inflexible, immutable, blogroll?
So for all of you who have a blogroll, you are also hurting us.
If I had a wish right now, I would wish one thing: that we remove all of our blogrolls and take down the EcoSystem and the Technorati 100 and all of the other ‘popularity’ lists. That whatever links exist, are honest ones based on what has been written, posted, published, not some static membership in a list that is, all too often, stale and out of date, and used as a weapon or a plea.
I would suggest the same for your syndication lists, too–when did you last update it to reflect those sites you really read? I would be content,though, if centralized aggregators such as Bloglines stopped publishing the number of subscriptions for each feed. After all, what true value is this information?
Then we would all start fresh. It would be a new start, and the emphasis would be less on who we know and who we are, then what is being said.
And now, I return to topics of greater cheer: travel and photography and technology, and following my yearly ritual of tweaking the folks at ETech.
update
Jonathon Delacour heard the call for a sidebar sticker, and has come through in admirable fashion.
Gents, this is for you:
