blogging notes & miscellany

1. my daughters discovered my blogs yesterday (and that more than any other single thing perhaps) is making me interested in returning to blogging.  They're most curious, it seems, that several other bloggers have written against me and my blogs.

2. others who are coming to Aristotle's Feminist Subject (and The Wombman's Bible) for the first time may want to know I'm a boy not a girl.  That was announced shortly after my mother gave birth to me, but some good blogger friends wrote about it too, once upon a time.

3. one of my mentors, a blogger herself now and the chair of my dissertation committee, got me into blogging.

4. because blogging is such a time suck, and because some people want to pick fights in the b'sphere, I've left several times.  I thought leaving was for good but then last week misogyny and gynophobia and sexism (Aristotle style) reappeared with the authority of "the Bible" that sucked some of us back into a dark period of American history making us want to have better conversations in the light of where we're going, how we're hoping, as we're changing.

5. the next thing I'd like to do, if blogging can be sustained, is to explain something.  Some have seemed to object to how they say I read the bible.  (For example, John has).  I'd like to explain that a little better but not necessarily in direct response to the criticisms.

There's something more productive to be gained, I think, than a direct response to critiques of me.  I'd like to talk more about good feminisms!  My blogger friend Suzanne very kindly called a list of books influencing my read of the bible "Very feminist." (Ken, the blogger who started several of us publishing lists called mine "completely unique.")  In light of last week's discussions about the disparity between women and men with respect to their blogging on the bible, I'd like to talk through the "very feminist" and "completely unique" influences on my reading.  I'm hoping then to do a post on each person listed as my influences.

6. perhaps, I'll update the old blogroll.  Until I do, Suzanne has up today a wonderful list of wonderful bloggers worth reading regularly.  And April is updating her blogroll, we anticipate.  (and below the old blogroll on the sidebar of this blog, there's a current roll of some incredible blogs by several who so kindly link here.  And thanks to Polycarp and to Daniel and Tonya and to Jane ! for their public encouragement of me as I announced, again, I was giving up blogging. My biggest regret in returning to blogging so early is not having taken D&T up on their offer to let me guest post at their blog.)

7. Happy Birthday to Hallie (my eldest daughter)!

What are we going to do about the blogger gender gap?

April DeConick says, "Alright, the gender gap among bibliobloggers is appalling. The gender gap has nothing to do with the internet or women being afraid to blog or publicly speak our minds since women do this in many other internet forums."

At her blog, The Forbidden Gospels, she goes on to make a proposal for what we are going to do about the blogger gender gap! Her hypothesis and proposal:

So this is my hypothesis. I think there are as many women bibliobloggers out there as men, but they are not visible. Why? Because many of us women post on subjects that are considered marginal (even heretical, especially if there is any feminist bent) to bible studies by the men who are blogging about the bible. Our blogs are easily justified as unimportant. They remain unknown or unread because they haven't been linked to by the male bibliobloggers who dominate this blog niche and the field in general, a point that Julia wisely raised in the comments to my last post on this subject. Julia wrote: "But I also wonder about the role of networking and way that many of the blogs in the top tier regularly reference one another. How do we encourage each other's success, make sure that others find the good work that's out there?"

So I say, enough of this nonsense and rationalizations. This is what I'm going to do. This weekend when I have more time, I am going to get the women bibliobloggers (all of them) into my sidebar blog roll. I am going to start with this list that Biblioblog Top 50 has so kindly put together on women's blogs (their so-called marginal blogs). And if any of my women readers have biblioblogs not in that list, or if any of my readers know of other women bibliobloggers not in that list, send that information to me and I will add it to the blog roll. Those links will be there for anyone who wishes to copy them and get them into their own blog rolls.

So feel free to join in! April links to her email address at her own blog. Read that full post, and feel free to do something about the blogger gender gap.

(To be clear, I myself am not blogging. Just relisting my old blogroll of the blogs of many of you whose blogs many men in the biblioblogosphere may have considered "marginal." It's here now both in an RSS feed form and in the sidebar (individual links) format. For those of you sifting thru, you'll find blogs by some who've stopped blogging, many who are feminists, many who are bibliobloggers, and some who are feministbibliobloggers. The point is there are many who "post on subjects that are considered marginal (even heretical, especially if there is any feminist bent) to bible studies by the men who are blogging about the bible" and there are many more to recognize.)