i was reading about the where-are-all-the-women controversy this morning. this topic is like groundhog day or "sphexishness", it just keeps mindlessly coming back as if we never learned anything before. and many other blogs that i read seem to be dealing with the issue far better than i could, so i've basically been silent on the issue so far, leaving the topic to them.
meanwhile, my blogroll policy has occasionally come up in other contexts here. there seems to be a clash of basic blogroll philosophy out there. some people add every liberal or conservative site they find . other's have a reciprocal link policy, and will link back to any blog that links to them. i do neither. my philosophy is to have a blogroll that roughly reflects what i read. it has nothing to do with who reads me (although when people link to me, there is a greater chance that i will notice the site). some people call me elitist for not following their philosophy, or for not showing enough "support" for other liberal bloggers (as if this paltry site has any heft). while some of these arguments have some good points in them, in the end i don't understand why i have to do it their way and not mine. i'm not here to lead a social movement, i'm here to vent and to read sites that i enjoy.
there are basically three ways go get onto my blogroll and those three ways correspond to the three categories on the right. if you are my friend in real life and i discover you have a site, you're pretty much automatically added to the "friends' blogs" list. if you're a member of the liberal coalition, then you automatically get on that section of my blogroll.
i generally add sites to "other blogs" if: (1) i find the site and like it, (2) at some later time try to find that site again, (3) while try to find the site again think about how much easier it would be if i just had a direct link , and (4) get around to it. coming off the "other blogs" list is even more nebulous. i delete sites if i notice that i just don't go there very often.
for the past year or so, i've been generally, though not always consistently, following the above procedure (if you can call it that). because i don't use links to consciously lend support to sites, i haven't been taking part in estrogen month. but today i got curious just how the gender breakdown of my blogroll falls. so here's my count:
friends: 8 female, 4 male
TLC: 13 female, 26 male, 1 mixed
other: 11 female, 29 male, 3 indeterminate
oof, not that great a record for those last two.
when i counted there were a few that arguably could be shifted around in different ways. for example, i counted american amnesia as male because kirk started the site. however, since he went off to iraq in january, it has turned into a group blog with both male and female contributors. arguably, i could pull that one out of the male column and call it "mixed.". both the agonist and daily kos are open-diary type blogs that can have any number of female contributors. but both are founded by and largely run by males, so they each counted as male. if i wanted to be a weasel about it, i guess i could have shifted them into a "mixed" category too.
and in the TLC category, i counted first draft as female but corrente as mixed even though both are group blogs with both male and female contributors. i did it that way largely for nit-picky reasons. technically, TLC membership goes with people, not sites. tena was a member of the coalition before "first draft" was created and so that site was added by virtue of her contribution to it. under those circumstances, i thought it fair to call it "female" though others may disagree. similarly, both leah and the farmer are TLC members so they get corrente classified as "mixed."
so what does all this mean? well, the TLC blogroll is not entirely under my control, so i can punt that one. though, i guess, maybe it's something i should bring up next time i'm hanging around the TLC clubhouse.
but i really have no excuse about "other blogs." all i can say in my defense is that i never set out to make such a lopsided list. this is more a matter of disparate impact than disparate treatment. maybe i should start rethinking that portion of my blogroll . estrogen month still isn't over yet and plenty of sites i admire have been pointing out quality political sites run by women. i'm still committed to the idea of a blogroll that reflects what i want to read. but maybe if i make a point to read more blogs by women it will change the sites i frequent. who knows? it's at least worth a try.
