Yeah, it's another post about gender and biblioblogging. Deal with it.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I wanted to come back to Pat McCullough's invitation to the Emerging Women blog to join the discussion. Pat mentions in his post (emphasis mine):

If you are not familiar with the Emerging Women community, you might be pleasantly surprised at large collection of quality blogs by intelligent women on matters spiritual, biblical, theological, political, cultural, ethical and more. I’m not certain that any would qualify as focused upon “academic biblical studies” (I haven’t searched through all of them), but they are definitely a collection of blogs of interest to our field.

Take another look at the emphasized portion, then ask yourself "why not?"

A few months back, when Jim had only been #1 biblioblogger for 3 or 4 months, there was some moaning about how his wasn't really a biblioblog because he spent too much time on other things. Such moaning was rightly shut down, because most people (=bibliobloggers, who are for the most part other men) agreed that Jim's varied interests don't preclude him from being a biblioblogger; rather they make him eclectic.

Now take another look at what DeConick wrote:

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.

Is that really so objectionable? Is it really that difficult to imagine that a blog about feminism and the Bible would be more often relegated as a "feminist" blog rather than a "biblio-" blog? And that, if that happened with enough subjects, and with enough authors, women bloggers would begin self-selecting out of the biblical studies blogosphere and into other -spheres where they were more welcome and where their posts/thoughts/blogs were linked to more often and more favorably?

This isn't hypothetical, by the way, as should be clear from everyone's RSS readers. Every other post, whether positive toward DeConick's question or negative, contains some disclaimer about how awful it is when this issue comes up. It's such a waste of everyone's time. We have better things to do, right? Like, I need to link to as many auto-tune the news as possible!! Such an un-welcoming attitude is also on display in comments such as Rob's:

forget her producing 270 female bibliobloggers, let her find even 27 that have been overlooked.

Is it really so inconceivable that there have been a couple dozen women bloggers overlooked? And what happens if DeConick comes back on Monday with those extra thirty blogs? What if she comes back with another 100? Would those blogs' intent/scholarship/categorization immediately be questioned? I hope not, but I fear so.

The reason the biblioblogosphere is actually a great place to "pick a fight" about oppression is because it is such a wonderful illustration of this more silent, and therefore more sinister oppression. When Jim posts on how much he hates cats, it's because he's an eclectic blogger. When a woman posts on how much she loves cats, it's because she's not really a biblioblogger. Such an attitude should be stopped.

Finally, to those who fear that their male priveleges will be squelched and that the search for more female bibliobloggers will greatly infringe upon their rights and that the mere suggestion that there might be institutional stumbling blocks to women attempting to blog about biblical studies is beyond the pale, and that therefore such discussion ought to be ended, and its instigators flogged because, hey, everyone gets called names, and everyone gets oppressed, and you ought to just get used to it, go read this.

Then come back.

Now then.

Seriously?

We should expect more of each other, not less. It's not a badge of honor to have been slandered and personally attacked. It's not a desirable consequence of blogging to be mocked, called names, have your positions misrepresented, and generally treated as less than. That's no demonstration of equality or lack of oppression. A biblioblogging woman should no more expect that she will be abused (take it however you want) online than anyone else should. And you know what? When it's 270 to 20, biblioblogging women are taking a disproportionate amount of abuse from men, and the answer is supposed to be "so what? we all go through it." Really?

I disagree.