Why do women take to blogging?

A few weeks ago I met a friend in Harvard Square for lunch. She’d just come from a seminar at Radcliffe and she mentioned that the Schlesinger Library has a large holding of materials documenting the lives of women – letters, diaries, photographs, scrapbooks and so on. Many are of notables – Susan B. Anthony, Julia Child, Amelia Earhart, Betty Friedan – but also of unknowns, because “the papers of many ‘unknown’ women illuminate the experiences of their daily lives across centuries and geography.” My own alma mater has similar resources.

This got me thinking about the way we document our lives now – more and more of us electronically. We have fewer letters and more email, we store our family photographs in digital JPG form to share with our far-flung relations and friends. Some of us keep blogs chronicling the events of our lives, our thoughts, our struggles, our dreams. Are we drawn to blogging in the same way women have for generations set down our stories in diaries and journals? Is it different because it’s public?

In a recent article in New Communications blogzine, Evelyn Rodriguez asks “why do women take to blogging? And what do women bring to blogging?” She recalls a memoir writing course she took that only women signed up for, and she suggests that women feel the need to find their own voice, their own truth: “Blogs provide spaces for experimenting with, discovering and reclaiming our voice and vetting our truth and these reasons play a big part in why women blog.” She also sees blogging as “as a communal act - a sort of a breaking bread with others,” presumably because it is a more public forum than journal writing, with the comment function fostering conversation.

This public nature of blogging, though, tends to make us spin what we write more than in our private journals. On paper we may freely capture the raw material of our emotional lives. But when we post publicly we not only need to shape our thoughts into something coherent to communicate, we also selectively choose what and how much we want to reveal.

There was a recent discussion in the comments at Lucid Moment about authenticity in our blog writing. The blog’s author Kurt (yes, many men blog for similar reasons, I think) writes that “often I'm just staking a little claim for the kind of person I want to be. I readily admit that I'm not always the person I project here.” Patry, who writes at The Marvelous Garden, comments that, “Between the lines lies the real story. In conversation, on blogs, and elsewhere. Do we take responsibility for the creation of our own story or is it always someone else's fault?” In other words, do we choose to vet our own truth?

Last night I picked up a fat hardcover anthology my mother gave me a couple of years ago that I never managed to crack open before, The Norton Book of Women’s Lives, a collection of excerpts from women's autobiographies, memoirs, diaries and letters. The editor, biographer Phyllis Rose, writes in the introduction that “…any narrative you choose to make of your own life – represents a creative act, a hypothesis in the face of chaos which is just as much true as it is not true.” All autobiographers, she says, get to create their own story, selecting and choosing from among the “multilayered denseness of reality” to shape their “Self.”

So what do you think? Why do you blog and how much of what you write is “true”? How much do you reveal publicly, and do you keep a private journal as well? If you are a male blogger, do you think the focus of your blog or the reason that you blog is different, in general, from the female bloggers that you read? I'm curious.

Comments

[Natalie]

Leslee, first of all thanks for the interesting links.

Why do women take to blogging? I imagine it's for the same reasons that men do. To be heard. To be seen (as you are or as you wish you were or hope to be). To communicate with like-minded others. To give one's point of view or experience of some specific subject. As an adjunct to one's field of work. As a way to get out of isolation. For fun. For inspiration. For feedback.

“Blogs provide spaces for experimenting with, discovering and reclaiming our voice and vetting our truth and these reasons play a big part in why women blog.”
I think that these words apply to many bloggers,regardless of gender. When visiting blogs that are on my regulars list, or discovering new ones, I'm not aware of differences related to their authors' gender. The differences have more to do with style or point of view or subject matter but I couldn't possibly identify these characteristics as being either male or female. Many male bloggers reveal very personal details about their private life and/or psyche, and women bloggers likewise. The whole idea of keeping an online journal seems to encourage disclosures, especially when bloggers have adopted a pseudonym.
Personally, everything I choose to write about on my blog is true. I may leave out a lot of information that I don't find relevant and not write about things that are too private, but what goes up on the page is what it says it is. Nowadays my private journal is only occasionally turned to, but it used to be a constant. I keep thinking that one day, if I ever have time, I'll do something with all those hundreds of private notebooks.

[dale]

I think I'm probably female blogger, by most of the definitions I've seen, and most of the bloggers I like are too, whether they're anatomically male or female.

I *think* -- I hope -- that it's clear when I'm speaking in poetic or fictional personas and when I'm speaking in "my own." In my own persona I try to be as honest as possible. There's a lot I don't write about -- despite the impression I give, apparently, of being an open, confessional blogger -- because I don't feel the information belongs only to me -- it belongs other people as well. Occasionally I'll alter names and confuse details to make people and situations less identifiable. Even then I take pains to say only things that "might have been true, but just happen not to be."

A lot of the freedom I feel stems, I think, from working in a technical profession. It's hard for me to imagine most of my coworkers cleverly googling me up or being interested in my psychological or spiritual or literary maunderings, even if they did stumble across me. If I worked as, say, a professor of literature, or a therapist, I'd find it far more problematic.

My wife deliberately doesn't read my blog, so as to leave me that space free for me. If that weren't so -- if she read it, or if I didn't trust her not to read it -- the whole enterprise I think would feel completely different. It's often neither compassionate or appropriate to bitch and moan about your life when your spouse is present. I need to be able to pout and have little snits.

[mary]

Why have I (as a woman) taken to blogging? A good topic, Leslee. But I am not sure that I take the gender distinction as being particularly important ... male, female - if I relate to a blogger it is because of what they share with me, not their gender.

Some reasons:

To provide a creative outlet in a life that can seem very short on them at times;

To see if I can write and to hone such writing skills as I have;

A form of therapy I suppose;

To see what it is like to write regularly; I haven't really done so since my student days;

I have never taken to diary-writing, when it's just me that sees it; putting stuff up on a blog brings in an element of perspective and structure that I need and that I cannot seem able to provide for myself when I know I am the only audience;

A communal act: yes, probably. It would be a very different exercise if I turned the comments off.

I try my hardest not to "spin" but it's probably inevitable. I wonder though if the spin persona is not as valid an expression of who I am as the "genuine" part. The mask can mirror the real on occasions. I couldn't cope with not having a pseudonym though ... for me it facilitates real freedom of expression.

[leslee]

Natalie: Wow, "hundreds of private notebooks." Do you ever look in them? You'd have a gold mine if you decided to write your memoirs. But maybe you got the value you needed from them just in the writing. And I think you're right about the "why's" regardless of gender.

I, too, think that the male and female bloggers I read tend not to be all that different in the way they blog. But I wonder if that's just those I've selected to read as opposed to what the general rule in the blogosphere is. If that matters - we get to choose our own blogrolls.

Dale: Hmm, interesting how you play with personae and change details to "protect the innocent." Also interesting that your wife deliberately doesn't read your blog. I can see how that would give you a great deal more freedom to write, as do those who use a pseudonym. Having a standing relationship allows you to have that understanding. I'm not in that position, so I have to be pretty discreet.

Mary: Good reasons. And certainly seems enough to keep you going. As for the mask mirroring the real - sure. And if you're getting to the essential truth through non-direct means then it will still feel authentic. I think it's good to have a pseudonym - wish I'd done it! But it's another creative challenge to work around that. And I do have my private journal I can turn to for processing more private things.

[Elissa Malcohn]

The reason I started blogging was to bring some private journal entries into the light. The function of my blog has since expanded. But for years I'd wanted to work my "raw data" -- well over a million words at this point -- into a presentable format.

The "raw data" is just that, which is why I edit before posting. I try to be informative and entertaining as well as candid -- though my private journal contains rants, brainstorming, lists, and other "authentic" components that don't make it onto the screen. Rants are often transitory; I get them off my chest to exorcise them (I can complain about clutter until readers are bored to tears). Brainstorming can be so derivative that it's like an inside joke no one but me understands. Lists can be monotonous, since my private journal also doubles as my PDA.

I've always gone for the Voice aspect: writing and submitting fiction, poetry, and articles. I view blogging as another form of self-publishing. My motivation behind all my writing is to connect -- to see if my experiences (and the way I present them) can be of use. And to follow my passion.

[Fiona Robyn]

Hi Leslee - I don't think I've been here before, but recognise some common friends on your blogroll! It's an interesting question - I'm thinking of the different kinds of energy I feel coming from blogs written by men/women - in the same way that novels written by men/women have differences... very difficult to pin the differences down though. On the subject of sharing, I've moved from being quite personal and open in my writing to being more 'hidden', although maybe I give just as much away! It's a difficult choice, especially when the words we write stay here for all to see, sometimes for longer than we'd wish! Anyway, good to meet you and look forward to dropping by again.

[leslee]

My motivation behind all my writing is to connect -- to see if my experiences (and the way I present them) can be of use. And to follow my passion.

Elissa: I like that. I think I'm in the process of going from just unloading experiences to trying to form more presentable pieces. It's very helpful for me to see others like yourself who are good at doing that. Thanks for sharing some of your process.

Fiona: Thanks, and welcome to 3rd House Journal! I just surfed around - love your essay in ChickLit on Conversations with Poems and the Poetry Writing ideas, too. Very inspiring. Hope to see you 'round blogland.

[Dave]

Good conversation. I tend to believe in difference feminism, so I guess that predisposes me to see differences between male and female blogging that may not be so important in reality. As you say, there's been a strong tendency for women writers down through the ages to employ the confessional or diaristic mode. But surely part of the reason for that was their social disempowerment, and their concommitant need to assert the importance of precisely those aspects of life that had been devalued - dailiness, domesticity, the intimate details of their private lives - as worthy subjects for literate reflection. But if, as I believe, we are moving toward greater equality between the sexes - at least in low-paying professions such as writing - than this need may may not seem so urgent to many women. (Let's face it, most of the best poets writing in English today are female, and many of the best novelists, too.) And of course for every woman unafraid to assert herself, there's a man who's unafraid to show his vulnerability - someone like Dale.

I haven't tallied them up, but I believe women bloggers must account for at least three quarters of my blogroll. One could make further generalizations about age and ethnic background, too. But I don't know how much this reflects a genuine tendency in the blog world, and how much it simply reflects my subjective sense of what is "vaguely compatible" with my own style of literary/philosophical/artistic blogging. I'm guided by a personal vision of blogging as more product- than process-oriented, so naturally I tend to seek out other bloggers who also take care with their writing and view blogging at least in part as a form of self-publishing, rather than (say) as another flavor of email or instant messaging.

If I don't write about my daily life in detail very often, it's not because I don't enjoy that kind of writing, it's just that I bore myself. I am really far too assertive and obnoxious in real life, and thus when I write I find it most rewarding to try and actively relinquish ego-attachment, writing as if I were barely there, or were a mere bystander to the events of my life.

[Sara]

I like what Dave wrote. In fact, the first sentence and a half of his last paragraph above almost could have been written by me. I bore myself, too. I get bored with typing "I."

One difference, though, is that I don't enjoy that kind of writing, the description of minutiae, especially personal minutiae, unless I have a larger artistic point to attempt or information to share that I know other people want. Therefore, I've never been a diarist of any kind, though I've always kept mostly verbal sketchbooks, usually filled with poetry developed around things I see and things that move me deeply, whether they happen to me or others. I do publish excerpts of this from time to time on my art website, but I have no illusion about any of it being interesting to anybody else. I put it out there almost as a way of making it real and finished at the same time as I let go of it. Once art, even casual art, gets set out into The World, I feel it's no longer mine and I can stop working on it and move on.

So how did I get to blogging? Well, I only started my first blog because I perceived a particular need in a community of people I belong to who've gone through various versions of a certain unusual and rather unpleasant physical experience. There's a complex aftermath of this experience, and it's very difficult sometimes to get straight answers and practical solutions for some of the things that come up. I thought a blog would be the best, simplest, cheapest way to create a nexus in the community where people could find answers, ask questions, and share experiences without forming a support group. (Support groups abound. Practical advice and experience on a detailed, quotidian, business-of-real-life level -- not so much.)

I had to think long and hard about whether I wanted to talk publicly about my experience, which has the potential to make me very vulnerable to a lot of unpleasant stuff, including having to interact with some of the weirdos that my condition attracts. (You wouldn't believe some of the search strings that bring people to this blog, and I certainly won't share them here.) I had to think about how safe it would be to include photos. I ultimately decided that the most important thing was to get the information I have gathered out there, to my community. I decided that if something I know can help free just one person to go about a single normal day, it will have been worth the risk.

The result is not a typical blog. I do not make daily entries, because I simply don't have the amount of time it would take to do so. Because I am trying to clearly transmit specific information, I have to edit each entry very carefully, and because many entries include detailed instructions or descriptions necessary for other people to use them, entries do tend to be a bit long. Also, because honesty and privacy are important for the users of this resource, there are no ads, and the site does not advertise itself except by word of mouth within the community. I am by default documenting my life and sort of facilitating others to do so a little bit, too. Meanwhile, though I try to inject humor wherever possible and also maintain on this blog an informal blogroll on totally unrelated subjects just to remind visitors that there is life outside this condition, I don't include gewgaws like memes, counters, or Amazon wishlists. So is it still a blog? You tell me. I'm using the structure, but this is no electronic diary.

The other blog I created, the Poem of the Day site, is, as you know, just a game, and the intended participation includes basically anyone in the world who wants to play. It seemed like a good exercise for me to try, and as I've mentioned to you in our conversations there, I needed people watching as a gentle little spur on my butt, just enough pressure to keep me from slacking and then dropping the practice. The more others participate, the more fun it is and the more reason I have to keep it up. It's just another part of my verbal sketchbook, only it makes me put in more stuff -- and publish it sooner, usually long before it's finished, which is very humbling and strengthening.

I am intrigued by Patry's remarks quoted above about reading between the lines and also Kurt's remark about at least one ambition behind his blogging. Naturally, this is very different from my experience as a blogger, though I understand it as a devourer of other people's more artistic blogs. Writing either blog that way just wouldn't work for me, though. I'm not a fiction writer, though sometimes I mess around with it, and lying at all would be counterproductive given the goals of each of my blogs. One blog is exactly about sharing truths, very openly. Another is about painting them, with words, very selectively. Neither one is really an autobiography, but there is necessarily a lot of me in them, and part of why I feel safe putting it there is the amount of information I can leave out and still remain honest and generous. So I would say that for me, it's not the opportunity to reinvent myself or draw a better self for which to aim, and it's certainly not to rearrange any facts, but rather it's the opportunity to share the real parts of me, my knowledge, experience, vision, and love, that I can afford to give away for whatever reason -- and invite others to do the same to whatever level they feel comfortable. Yeah, breaking bread -- over a project.

I think everyone reading this and participating in this conversation must surely know that there's never any way to tell the whole truth, partly because truth is big and complicated, that "multilayered denseness of reality" Rose spoke of, and partly because it changes like the flavor of light when the sun moves. I have a strong attachment to truth, though, to trying to catch at least a handful of it here and there. My mother used to say that to make great art, it wasn't enough to be clever; the art also had to be true, even if the truth of it was only something very small. I'm not trying to make great art with either of my blogs. But that sense of the value of truth, of it being the difference between cleverness and greatness, between a trick and something real and valuable, is something that's stuck with me and made truth something worth pursuing, no matter how anonymously I can do it.

Okay, enough. For someone who doesn't like to talk about herself, I sure have spewed a bit here. Sorry. I do feel this is a thrilling frontier, though, and that recording the true breadth of its development is a valuable pursuit. Thanks for continuing the conversation here.

P. S. -- Phyllis Rose wrote one of my favorite books, Parallel Lives. If you haven't already read it, I recommend it.

Cheers!

[leslee]

Dave: Thanks for your thoughts on this. I'm still thinking about the topic and may have more to say in the future. For one thing, I wouldn't be surprised if more creative people - writers, artists - feel the need to keep diaries or journals as a storehouse for creative ideas, dreams, etc. I wonder if those of us who feel like outsiders in some way, or have felt unsupported in our differences, are more likely to keep diaries much as women traditionally did because they felt much of their lives marginalized. You, I understand, were blessed with a childhood environment that encouraged your creative explorations. So maybe you feel less need for diary keeping because of that!

I just started reading Tristine Rainer's The New Diary so that may trigger some ideas.

[leslee]

Whoa, Sara! You and I must have been writing here at the same time. I will have to read your comments later on - have to run right now. Thanks for contributing to the discussion!

[leslee]

Sara: Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I think the types of blogs that you have are still blogs! I think it's a flexible medium that allows for as much creativity as its authors put into it, and as much variability as the people themselves. I also don't think that diaries and journals need to be collections of minutiae of the day either, as Tristine Rainer's book (The New Diary)shows. I don't record the quotidian things of my day - except perhaps when I'm traveling so that I can have all the telling details later on to bring back memories and potentially for travel stories. Usually it's things I'm working through, insights I don't want to forget (I don't often go back and read, but the writing down of these ideas lodges in my consciousness better), sometimes dreams, sometimes brainstorming associations for use in a creative piece. I do get tired of the "I" too! Which is why I stopped doing those freewriting sessions (morning journal, writing down the bones...) because I'm already tired of hearing my mind yakking about these things, I don't need to write them down!

I like your idea of sharing information about your physical experience as a service that could help others get out there. My other blog, The Sensitive Traveler, is somewhat like that idea - not posted regularly, but when I have something useful to share. There are support groups for the Highly Sensitive Person and they have their place, but I wanted a fun and encouraging site - encouraging myself as well as others.

Thanks for the recommendation of Parallel Lives - I'll check it out.