Today I’m over at Huffington Post, writing about Why BlogHer’ll Got Me Angry.
BlogHer is a a major women’s blogging network, and last week I attended and spoke at their annual conference.
What is most important to say was that this post was hard for me to write. It expresses a clear point of view that I know everyone won’t share. It’s vulnerable to share it. It offers some ideas that sound – at first glance – pretty ludicrous, pretty absurd, backwards even.
But I think our culture needs some major redesign, and that doing that redesign will involve talking about ideas, batting around possibilities, that at first sound ridiculous.
Check it out and see what you think.
Love,
Tara
Why Blogher’11 Got Me Angry
A great piece, Tara. I would go further to say that our redesigned culture needs to do more than elevate “traditional women’s” topics to the front page, it needs to act as if those things are relevant to all of the so-called “serious” topics like economics and politics. We still have a tendency in the present culture to separate our interests into little boxes instead of acknowledging our interrelatedness. If the war-makers allowed themselves to care about the lives of children — really care — how would that change the nature of the military? If economists raised their gaze from their calculators long enough to care about quality-of-life topics, like having air to breathe and water to drink, how would that affect their calculations? I don’t want to be just thrown a bone and have someone just “handling” us women so we’ll be satisfied and quiet. I want and need the world to recognize that we — as Nicholas Kristoff says — hold up half the sky. (More than half, if you ask me.)
Maybe when women become more powerful in OUR media (i.e. blogging/social media) the world WILL change. We are slowly gaining power. Pretty soon, the “Men in charge” will be more evenly balanced by the WOMEN.
excellent. thank you for writing this. and so glad it is in the huffington post. xoxo
Well done, Tara. And I would agree: an important topic. What you said is so true. I know that my generation (I’m 62) was very conflicted as to whether we should be housewives or career women. Many of us decided to do both and it was very difficult. When trying to succeed in both arenas, I mostly felt frustrated and undervalued.
Thanks for adding your articulate voice to the discussion … if even is a discussion yet.
Finally!! Someone has expressed so succintly what I’ve been feeling ever since I discovered the term mommy/mummy blogger. It really, really annoys me! Because we are all so different – we may be mothers, but not all of us write about mothering! “Mommy blogging” sounds so incredibly condescending and patronising to me. It’s like “yes, yes, you little women just keep on writing about your little women’s stuff..”
As you say, Tara, it is not little stuff. It is stuff that is more important than anything else.
I long for the day that women’s role in shaping, nurturing our society is recognised and valued and supported.