Tedra Osell, "Where Are the Women?: Pseudonymity and the Public Sphere, Then and Now<" (Page 3 of 4)

This brief historical sketch may sound very familiar to blog-savvy readers. The dominance of political blogs looks like the early stages of canon formation: newspapers and news magazines are, of course, most interested in (and threatened by) political and news blogs, so those receive most of the traditional media's attention. But as with the essay periodical, one of blogging's main strengths lies in its ability to be both topical and personal, to address a broader range of experience than that deemed "newsworthy," to bring private experience into public view.

Bloggers have been making these arguments for some time now, but focused study of the genre has only just begun. My personal interest in blogging, along with my academic interest in issues of periodicity, audience, authorship, and genre, have led me to begin looking into the way they resonate in this emerging form. Because blogs are perceived as uniquely democratic—anyone who can write can, theoretically, keep a blog—one of the main questions in blogging is, Who blogs? And on what subjects?

These questions have even been the focus of national legislation: in January, the reauthorized Violence Against Women Act contained a provision making it illegal for someone to use the Internet in order to "annoy" "without disclosing his identity."[22] Bloggers are concerned: does this mean that anonymous or pseudonymous blogging could become illegal?[23] At this moment in history, concerns about security and civil rights coincide with the rise of blogging to make pseudonymity a particularly pressing issue. Given the historical association of pseudonymity with women's writing, I began by asking: Do women, in fact, blog anonymously more often than men?

In order to begin to address this question, I conducted an exploratory survey of both male and female bloggers. I posted two announcements on my own pseudonymous blog: one asked for women, the other for men, willing to answer questions about their blogging. I explained that I was particularly interested in the questions of who blogged under their name and who blogged pseudonymously, and welcomed responses from those who blogged with ungendered or cross-gendered pseudonyms. I e-mailed survey questions to all who requested them. Survey respondents were therefore self-selected from among a broad group of bloggers and blog readers who are largely interested in gender and academia; responses are therefore probably somewhat atypical in having a heightened awareness of gender and self-presentation. Nonetheless, it is a starting place. In fact, given the feminist inclinations of most respondents, I would expect any distinction between men's and women's answers to the survey to be magnified in the general population.

The survey asked respondents whether they were men or women; whether they blogged under a pseudonym; whether this pseudonym was male, female, or gender-neutral; whether their content was masculine, feminine, or neutral (and how this was demonstrated); whether readers had mistaken their gender; and whether readers had criticized their content in specifically gendered terms. I also provided space for respondents to add their own thoughts on gender and pseudonymity. I wanted to find out if there was a marked difference between men's and women's tendency to use pseudonyms, or in their reasons for doing so; if men and women differed in their consciousness of expressing or masking gender in their writing; whether they found that readers were conscious of gender cues in their writing; and if so, whether this consciousness was generally positive or negative.

Eventually, I received over 500 responses to the survey. This article reports the results of the responses that were available at the time I wrote it, twenty-seven of which were from men while 114 were from women. One respondent identified as neither male nor female; this person was in transition between genders. One hundred and five of the 141 respondents used pseudonyms. Seventy-eight percent of the men and 67 percent of the women used pseudonyms. Five women reported using male pseudonyms; no men reported using female pseudonyms. Forty-seven percent of all pseudonymous bloggers reported that their pseudonyms were gender-neutral. Forty-three percent of pseudonymous women and 34 percent of pseudonymous men had ungendered pseudonyms. Most of these reported that they had not deliberately chosen an ungendered pseudonym; however, a few women reported that they had chosen ungendered or male pseudonyms in order to preempt gendered criticism of their writing. No men mentioned this being a concern, although some men did comment that they had occasionally felt their opinions were dismissed or minimized (for example, on feminist issues) because they were men.

The distinction between the gender of respondents' pseudonyms and the gender of their content reflects the fact that, according to the bloggers surveyed, most gender-neutral pseudonyms were chosen accidentally. That is, they realized that their pseudonyms were not clearly gendered, but had not thought about this when they began blogging. Ninety-two percent of pseudonymous women reported that their content was clearly feminine: for instance, they discussed pregnancy, their husbands, their concerns as women in academia, and so on. Only one woman reported deliberately avoiding mentioning anything that could be gendered in order to guard her privacy and ensure that her writing was read without gender bias.

In contrast, only 65 percent of male pseudonymous bloggers thought that their content was explicitly masculine. I have not confirmed whether the 35 percent of pseudonymous men who reported that their content was gender-neutral were accurate in their assessment; one commented that he had never considered whether his gender was reflected in his writing and that therefore he assumed it was neutral, and two men reported neutrality but also said that they mentioned their wives (one resolved this apparent contradiction by explaining that "nowadays, that doesn't necessarily mean anything").

Both men and women reported occasionally having readers mistake their gender. Men and women alike reported that a minority of these mistakes were offensive, although more women than men found their gender being used to cast aspersions on their content. One man reported having his opinions dismissed as "typically male"; fifteen women reported having their writing criticized in gendered terms.