Tracy L. M. Kennedy, "The Personal is Political: Feminist Blogging and Virtual Consciousness-Raising" (Page 4 of 4)

Where Can Feminist Bloggers Go from Here?

The blogosphere provides various challenges to feminist bloggers—some old and some new. However, we need to recognize the numerous benefits of feminist blogs and blogging and put ourselves in a position to reap the rewards. Above all, we need to recognize how blogs can—and already do—facilitate a new generation of virtual consciousness-raising. But how can feminists better utilize this tool? Most feminist bloggers already have a group of blogs they visit regularly. I encourage feminists to make their blogrolls public and to feature new feminist blogs in their posts. And above all, keep blogging. Blogging increases the likelihood of expanding your feminist network. Readers are key to the success of blogging, and the Web is central to building new and more diverse virtual communities of feminist activists.

Conclusion

Blogs are undeniably a new and valuable site for feminist consciousness-raising. In the twenty-first century, there has been considerable feminist-backlash, antifeminist sentiment, and talk about feminism being dead. By simply looking at the presence of feminists on the Web, we know that this assertion is false. What is evident is that feminism has indeed changed. In an Internet-saturated culture, feminists need to take on these "master's tools" of technology and embrace the Web, making it our own.

I started my Netwoman blog[30] in August 2003 mostly because I wanted a place to talk about my research interests concerning gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and technology—particularly Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). I thought it was a useful place to reflect and share my viewpoints with others both locally and globally. In some ways, I had hoped that by talking on my blog about women's issues within the context of ICTs I could initiate a virtual consciousness-raising platform. I wanted to tell people, "Hey, this is what I think," encourage them to reflect on my commentary, and engage them in discussion. The ubiquity of the Internet in our increasingly impersonal world offers feminist advocates a more convenient venue to enact social change, even with all of its inherent challenges.

I have consistently been involved in feminist activism, yet the complexities of my own personal and work schedules have led me to spend less time in my geographical community. Now it seems that I am working within the "global virtual community" for my activist work. Some might say this is "Third Wave" or "cyber" feminism, but regardless of the name, using virtual spaces to transcend physical borders with the goal of inciting collective action and social change can build bridges between women globally. From our homes, offices, or schools, the Internet permits us to do what feminist consciousness-raising groups did in the 1960s and 1970s—cross boundaries and make connections among and between diverse feminists, diverse women.

Endnotes

1. Kathie Sarachild, "Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon," in Feminist Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978), 144-150. [Return to text]

2. From a leaflet distributed by The Chicago Women's Liberation Union in 1971 Available at http://www.cwluherstory.com/
CWLUArchive/crcwlu.html. [Return to text]

3. I do not define feminism in this essay because of the numerous strands of feminist theory. I used the term feminism and feminists broadly to encompass all these strands because, although we may differ in what and how we advocate, all feminists share a commonality to recognize social inequalities for women and other minorities and strive for social change in some way. [Return to text]

4. Rebecca Blood, "Weblogs: A History and Perspective" (2000). Available at http://www.rebeccablood.net/
essays/weblog_history.html. [Return to text]

5. See Technorati.com, a Web site that tracks blogs and allows people to search for them through topics, author, and so forth. [Return to text]

6. See http://www.sifry.com/
alerts/archives/000419.html. [Return to text]

7. Most of the demographic data from Perseus comes from LiveJournal and Xanga, so it is not inclusive of other blogging software. For example, a Pew "Internet and American Life" report in January of 2005 noted that 57 percent of bloggers are men and 48 percent are under the age of 30. Report available at http://www.pewInternet.org/
PPF/r/144/report_display.asp. [Return to text]

8. As of August 19, 2006. [Return to text]

9. See T. Kennedy, "An Exploratory Study of Feminist Experiences in Cyberspace," Cyber Psychology and Behaviour 3, no. 5 (2000): 707-719. [Return to text]

10. In 1996, I was one of Chatelaine Magazine's Digital Women of the Year for a Web site I created in 1995 that addressed issues of women and violence. I started this Web site because of the lack of online content targeted to women. [Return to text]

11. D. Spender, Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace (Toronto: Garmond Press, 1995). [Return to text]

12. J. Wajcman, "Patriarchy, Technology and Conceptions of Skill," Work and Occupations 18, no. 1 (1991):29 45. [Return to text]

13. S. Herring et al., "Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs" (2004). Available at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/
blogosphere/women_and_children.html. [Return to text]

14. K. D. Trammel and A. Keshelashvili's research ("Examining the new influencers: A self-presentation study of A-List blogs," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 82, no. 4 [2005]: 968-982) supports the findings of Herring et al. ("Women and Children Last"). [Return to text]

15. See Clancy Ratcliff's list of blog posts from 2002 to present: http://culturecat.net/node/637. [Return to text]

16. T. Kennedy and J. Robinson "Does Gender Matter? Examining Conversations in the Blogosphere," conference paper for Association of Internet Researchers, Chicago, Illinois, 2005. See also D. Tannen, Gender and Conversational Interaction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1993); K. Hall and M. Bucholtz, Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self (New York: Routledge, 1995). [Return to text]

17. R. S. Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983); "The Consumption Junction: A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology," in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, eds. W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes and T. J. Pinch (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 261-80; "The Industrial Revolution in the Home," in The Social Shaping of Technology, ed. D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999), 269-300. [Return to text]

18. J. Wajcman, "Patriarchy, Technology and Conceptions of Skill," Work and Occupations 18, no. 1 (1991): 29-45. [Return to text]

19. Carol Hanisch, "The Personal is Political," in Feminist Revolution: Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, ed. K. Sarachild (New York: Random House, 1969 [1978]), 204. [Return to text]

20. Z Magazine: http://zmag.org/zmag/
articles/julyeditorial97.html. [Return to text]

21. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permalinks. [Return to text]

22. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackbacks. [Return to text]

23. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogroll. [Return to text]

24. See http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/
wlm/fem/sarachild.html. [Return to text]

25. b. hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984). [Return to text]

26. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism. [Return to text]

27. See http://www.themuslimwoman.org/. [Return to text]

28. See D. S. Bortree's "Presentation of self on the Web: An ethnographic study of teenage girls' weblogs," Education, Communication and Information Journal (ECi) 5. no. 1 (2005). [Return to text]

29. S. Herring, "Gender Differences in Computer-Mediated Communication: Bringing Familiar Baggage to the New Frontier," keynote talk at panel entitled "Making the Net*Work*: Is there a Z39.50 in gender communication?" American Library Association annual convention, Miami, June 27, 1994. Available at http://cpsr.org/cpsr/
gender/herring.txt; D. Winter and C. Huff, "Adapting the Internet: Comments from a Women-Only Electronic Forum," The American Sociologist 27, no. 1 (spring 1996): 30-54. [Return to text]

30. See http://netwomen.ca/Blog. [Return to text]