This last week to ten days have brought a lot of opportunities to discuss women and women’s issues.  Being one myself, I’ve got a vested interest in taking on these topics – but they’re moving so fast that I can’t keep up.  I’ll have to triage them and make a to-do list at the same time.

First – the women and power topic that Fiona and Harald batted around this week.  The answer is right there, between them; they are both right.  But I can’t cover this one right now; it’ll take a couple of days dedicated to the topic.

Second – the issue of women in archetypes; Marya and Fiona and Dr. Omed produced some highly provocative works that call forth archetypal responses that are feminine in nature.  Awesome stuff, but another couple of days worth of work.

Lastly (at least for now) – the issue of women in blogging: why do the Top 100 blogs only contain three (3) blogs by women?  Halley Suit asked first, with her question picked up by both Joho and xian at RFB.  Why?

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Yeah, I think I can at least start with a few small bites of that last elephant.  It’s not that women don’t blog; as I pointed out in comments at xian’s RadioFreeBlogistan, there are entire rings built around women bloggers.  Check out the rings at http://ringsaround.net; you’ll find most of them are comprised entirely of women bloggers.

What I think is an essential difference is womens’ motivations for blogging; their motivations are in turn, built upon an essentially different consciousness.  Take a random and representative sampling from womens’ blogging and you’ll find they are highly personal journals or highly personal conversations.  Contrast this to the Top 100 Blogs referenced in Halley Suit’s post and you’ll see a considerable difference; most blogs in the Top 100 are NOT highly personal, are NOT intimate.  For the most part, the Top 100 represent compilations of analysis of external events which affect large communities or whole segments of a population, not individuals in a fairly tight circle of acquaintances.

So…is it that women – in general --  have the same expectations of blogging as a communication media that they have from other communication media?  Are womens’ blogs expected to enhance the degree of intimacy within a small range of relationships?  Does Shirky’s Power Law not work in this context, at the quantum level of internet relations for this reason?

Conversely, do men use blogs in the same way they use other communication media, to support their achievements and to deconstruct the achievements of others?  Do they tend to read only other blogs which support their own analysis – and in turn, forfeit the intimate and personal blogs of women?

Joho calls it the “inner pig” – I don’t think it’s that, per se – but it’s a nearly hardwired competitiveness that drives the male bloggers (gross generalization, yes, I know) to read each others blogs the way they check ESPN and FOX Sports.  Don’t let the next guy get one up on me about the stats from last night’s game; I gotta’ have those stats right now, dammit turned rapidly into What’d that blogger say today about the latest White House leak? I gotta’ know before I blog…

Granted, there is introspection across the blogosphere, regardless of gender.  But introspection takes different shapes.  Of the Top 100 blogs, which ones are the most introspective?  Does introspection make for popular reading?  Is there a correlation between introspection and  intimacy?

Who are the consumers of the Top 100 blogs, anyhow?  Are they men or are they women or are they representative of the cross-section on the internet?  I have a suspicion that readership of the Top 100 isn’t driven by women, but I don’t have that data.  Do you?  Prove me wrong, please.

I’ll write more on this, I’m still chewing on it.  Part of the challenge with this topic is that anything I think or write – anything any of us think or write – is colored by our perception of reality, based in no small part in our gender.

Another challenge with this topic is that it’s in-flight, moving very quickly from blog to blog.  Try reading everything that’s been said since Ms. Suit first posted her observation, digest, draft and post your take before the NEXT post in the chain.  Damn, it’s no small feat.

Especially if you’re a woman with kids under foot.

3:30:57 PM    comment []

I recently encouraged a couple people to write; they’ve got it in them, the gift of words.  They just need to begin, be less self-conscious about what and how they write and simply start to write.

One person in particular I encouraged to “Write from pain, write from joy; if something strikes you as photoworthy or especially sing-able, write about it.”

Here is a quintessential example of writing from pain – although there’s clearly more than pain involved.

Go, read it, tell me you don’t have something like this you could write about.

Granted not many of us will be able to write this well, but it’s an incredible benchmark.

2:01:49 PM    comment []

No blogging this morning; I'm off to the library for a couple hours, to research challenges in space travel and trips to Mars for our Lego League project.

This ought to be a major challenge of my squirrel-herding skills - six little highly-wound people scavaging through the library at the same time - without a peep?  Not likely.

More later, on the topic of women and blogging.  Seems to be a topic on our minds lately.  Well, some of us.

9:45:41 AM    comment []