Electrified Fences and Conversation Hopefully to Remove Them

In a single sentence [my book critic] reimposed the very dichotomies I had constructed the book in order to call into question, putting electrified fences around the categories “academy,” “criticism,” and “writing” to keep the various critters from intermingling, maybe interbreeding to create some nameless monster very like the one I aspire to be.
--Nancy Mairs

Thanks to Kristen, Suzanne, and Theophrastus for joining in conversation yesterday around three posts here, each related to Shawna R. B. Atteberry's helpful and hopeful new book, What You Didn't Learn in Sunday School, Women Who Didn't Sit Down and Shut Up.

Suzanne says, most recently:  "Okay. I have to admit that this conversation has me completely baffled."  Kristen writes again, "Switching gears here to talk more about the actual blog post."  Theophrastus, still in high gear, signs off as "Emmanuel Goldstein" after confessing first, "I haven't read Shawna's book (and I'm not likely to ...), and then further complaining, "I think that weak arguments benefit the oppressor....But most of all, I think her 'Godde' and 'Christa' are gimmicky and reminiscent of Newspeak."

I myself am feeling again what Tonya and Daniel have kindly acknowledged: "Conversations in person are rarely this stressful."  And now I'm afraid that this weekend I'm not going to have much time to add anything, hoping that the conversation, nonetheless, will continue on without me as it is important, to me, and to the conversants here so far.  I know it's important to Shawna and the readers of her book.  Please feel free to join in, as you would.  If things get (more) heated and out of hand, then please do watch your own boundaries of protection for yourself.  (Remain anonymous or pseudonymous even, as you wish.)  The space of a blog can be hurtful.  The personal is, nevertheless, important.  So is, I think, your voice.  Please don't sit down or shut up; this is Shawna's point.

I'm going to use my remaining few minutes on the blog today to quote one of my favorite writers from one of my favorite books of hers.  She does expose the sorts of judgmentalism that would seek not to listen but to silence others.  This writer expresses resistance to binary thinking of the sort that would force a neologism, such as Godde, into a pure and one-gendered category (i.e., as if it must always and only be the exact opposite of the "divine masculine," somehow obviously just "feminine," and clearly, theologically heretical).  I'm hoping the writer I'm quoting below here will encourage us to keep talking and to consider more what Shawna is saying, what women of the Bible are saying.  Here's the quotation; its from pages 3 and 4 of the book Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer, by Nancy Mairs:

     An anonymous reader of an early version of this book, about whom I only know that “she” is “an academic,” concluded:  “It is obvious from her criticism that she wasn't meant to be an academic, from her encounter with French feminist theory, that she wasn't cut out for a career as a critic.  What is obvious is that she is a real writer.”  I could have wept, if frustration any longer had the power to elicit the tears reserved now for anguish unspeakably deeper.  In a single sentence she reimposed the very dichotomies I had constructed the book in order to call into question, putting electrified fences around the categories “academy,” “criticism,” and “writing” to keep the various critters from intermingling, maybe interbreeding to create some nameless monster very like the one I aspire to be.
    And what queer syntax. “Meant” by whom?  “Cut out” by whom?  Is there a God in the Academy creating academics in His own image and dispensing careers according to some holy plan?  If I'm the product of intention, I'd like to know who intended me.  And how is a “real” writer distinguished from other sorts (what sorts?) of writers?  These are not idle questions.  And they do not have merely private significance. The capacity -- the drive -- to segregate and hierarchize intellectual pursuits, to speak of them in the passive voice as though they were ordained by some anonymous agency, and to envision “real”as a discrete state distinguishable (by the rigorous critical mind) from some other way of being infects otherwise fluid and flexible intelligences with a kind of cerebral tetanus that inhibits jouissance before the first lovely ripple of pleasure has fairly begun.
     I am a not a “real writer.”  I am a writer.  Without modification.

The Gender of the Biblioblogger Count

This quick post is just an update of "The Gender of Blogger Clout."

3 things:

1. A comparison of woman : male ratios in the top OpEd journals with the woman : male ratios in the top Biblioblogs.

theopedproject.org VS, biblioblogtop50.wordpress.com

2.  A couple of related posts and comments.

There's a new comment at the post where, as Rod puts it, "April DeConick was labelled a man-hating angry feminist as some of us just dismissed all too easy her request to even change how the stats take place (another day, another time)."  The commenter self-identifies as a woman by name and says:

I don't know about the Alexa ratings, but for those lists that exist because someone nominates a blog or requests that their own blog be listed-- if this is being perceived as a "boys club" (whether accurately or otherwise), some women may simply not be trying, or may not be interested in trying, to get in. Why try if the deck is already stacked against you? (Even if that's just a perception, it could be affecting the ratings.)

There's a new post at The Biblioblog Top 50 blog.  We can imagine, from the "us"-vs.-"them" and the "we"-vs.-"you" language, that the writer of the post is a man (and not one of those women bloggers of the Bible).  He is ostensibly speaking on behalf of the top men blogging the Bible.  He's taking a stab at humor, is saying "Now accepting women!" and is playing on "April" DeConick's name.  His final sentences are as follows:

We will also oppose those forces of systemic gender inequality that exist to marginalize (but not in a victimy way, ok, April) women in academia and in academic biblical studies. In solidarity with all those who are othered by the hegemonic centre, we call on all bibliobloggers to discontinue blogging about those institutions which defend the status quo, such as the Bible, the political system, the churches, biblical studies, and the Biblical Archaeology Review - until such time as the system crumbles and falls! Ok?

So is the deck stacked against women who are bibliobloggers?  Who is really interested in joining this Top Club now?  Are "we" men now joining "women in academia and in academic biblical studies" in opposing "systemic gender inequality"?  Is our equal strategy really "to discontinue blogging about" any given or particular topic?  Is that what this man thinks women want?  Yes, I know.  Get serious now.  This guy (who doesn't need to identify his sex or even to use his name) is just funny and really only just wants a laugh.  So lighten up.  Ok?


3.  A comment on the title of this post.

The title of my posts can also be humorous.  I'm following Anne Carson's lead here; she writes that insightful and funny essay, "The Gender of Sound."  She has not, it seems, done anything to discontinue writing "about those institutions which defend the status quo."  She does, in fact, write about the bible, the political system, and translator bias, and gender bias, and Aristotle, and so on and so forth.

The Gender of Blogger Clout

My dictionary defines clout as “power and influence.”  Synonyms include “pull,” “authority,” “sway,” and “weight.”  In the public sphere, traditionally, clout has been gendered male.  To an overwhelming degree, it still is.

--Deborah Siegel,

"Girl w/ Pen!"

It is likely, anyway, that in the home women in Classical Athens could have a voice and make their feelings heard, but it helped if they had some kind of hold over their husband, especially if they came with a large dowry or from a powerful family....  She did not own her dowry, but it came with her, and that gave her some clout. Women were considered to be closer to beasts than a fully rational man and to have strong appetites for sex, food, and alcohol....[M]arriage was widely acknowledged as his best chance of "taming" a woman.

--Robin Waterfield,

Athens: A History, from Ancient Ideal to Modern City

Some of my blogger friends are noticing, are experiencing, the trouble of clout.  Often, it's the trouble of gender.  In this post, I want to explore that a bit.

In America, the word clout has come to be used informally for power and influence.  The Oxford English Dictionary notes that as "Personal or private influence; power of effective action, weight (esp. in political contexts). slang (orig. U.S.)."  But the more universal and earlier uses of the word have been to suggest "A heavy blow, esp. with the hand."  Men, it seems to me, tend much more to gain their power and influence, their right to be heard above all others, by exercising this heavy blow with their hands.  I'm now using "heavy blow especially with the hand" metaphorically, not literally.  And I want to show how this works, in my view.  We can agree then that women for the most part (and some of us men also) just don't have time for it.  That's not to say that women, and girls, and even female feminists working for the rights of the oppressed, don't use heavy blows of the hands to put others down and to help raise themselves up.  Bullying is not particular to any sex.  And yet the agonistic, the physical taming of the other, tends to be something more of a male-dominant and patriarchal thing, across cultures and through history.  Men can mean to exercise their clout in fun, in jest.  It can be part of the rules of the combatants, as in fight club, where the first rule is to agree to silence.

A recent example among bible bloggers can illustrate.  In the past several days, long-time blogger David Ker decided to make a book of some of his blogposts at lingamish.com.  This morning, at another of his blogs, he writes of his experience and confesses he got the idea from the big boys, Cory Doctorow and Seth Godin.  So, thinking about himself, he asks "but what about the little guy?"  He mentions his various motives, and confesses further:  "My quest wasn't purely academic. I liked the idea of having a book published. David Ker, author. Sounds impressive."  What Ker doesn't chronicle of his experiences is how, right out of the gate, he gets a blow of the hand from John F. Hobbins, a top Bible blogger with considerable clout; Hobbins writes an entire post with a title that mocks the title of Ker's book and also calls out the "little guy" by name.  At issue?  Hobbins remembers how he himself has been "David’s favorite Old Testament whipping boy."  Yep, it's all in fun.  But do notice the agonistic metaphors.  Hobbins uses his own viral metaphors, which Ker has to ask about in comments; Hobbins continues the power rhetoric:  "The deepest strength of your take on the Bible is...."  They end up slapping each other on the back, all in good fun, and the first rule of fight club is....

Another of my blogger friends, Deborah Siegel, looks at the issue of blogger clout, but at her reluctance to play the game.  The context, for Siegel, is quite different from the Bible blogging context, where sometimes the goal is to get the highest rankings by having the most reader votes or the highest Alexa numbers.  The context is, rather, a "Mom's with Clout" contest, the winner of which gets not just fame but an iPad 2. 

Siegel asks herself and us her readers why she was so reluctant.  "And why should we care about clout?"  She has some great answers, not just for women, but for women and men.  Women should care about clout.  Not clout so that there can be a fight club, not for a top-50 reputation of blogger fame, not just to be a published author (which Siegel has been for some time).  Rather women should care about clout, says Siegel, because it is power and influence.  She troubles the notions of collaboration preventing clout, of feeling bad for the other as preventing clout.  She points to "game-changing initiatives like The OpEd Project, where established thought leaders help fellow female experts embrace their expertise and get heard, “clout” is being redefined as something more communally achieved."  So I urge you to read Siegel's post for yourself.  Then hop over to The OpEd Project to see how few women are represented in many many arenas today, but how the clout is changing for women, for all of us, men and women.  If you do come back to this blog, to this blogpost, then I'd like you to notice something else, from yet another of my blogger friends:

Maybe you've already seen Rod's three-blog call.  Now, that's some good clout.  Rod of Alexandria has influenced the powerful top-bible-blogger Joel Watts to ask a woman to join his so-far all-male team of bloggers at Unsettled Christianity.  He's already already solicited from one fellow (i.e., male) blogger the links to "3 great blog’s that are written by passionate women" (noted in the first comment here).  However, Rod is asking women to lend their clout:  " women in seminaries or PhD students or famous authors of books that are popular."  He's asking not just men but more women also "to join the Bibliobloggers." 

Rod's call is very much like the effort of the staff of The OpEd Project.  Here's their work:

Since women currently do not submit op-eds with anywhere near the frequency that men do, we target and train women experts in all fields to write for the op-ed pages of major print and online forums of public discourse.

Rod has even put the call to women to voice their opinions, to join Bible bloggers, out on facebook. One woman has now responded, but with this reluctance:

I'd do it, but I don't understand blogging. I mean, I understand what it is but I don't think anyone would be interested in anything I have to say. Not in a "I have low self esteem" kind of way, just in a who cares what I think kind of way.

So who cares what she thinks?  Is clout just for men?  What will we all miss, men and women, if we only hear from men, and from mainly men with heavy handed clout?