Introduction

Feminism has changed considerably over the last thirty years; the days when groups of women met in person to discuss their personal experiences of social inequities are now few and far between. Consciousness-raising groups were pivotal to the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, despite the exclusionary tendencies many of them displayed—particularly toward women of color, lesbians, and disabled women.

In 1963, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique named the condition of many women across North America, the dissatisfaction of (white middle-class, heterosexual) housewives and the expectation of their domesticity. Friedan's book raised awareness and connected the experiences of these women to wider systemic issues of marginalization and oppression. Without recapping the Second Wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, it is important to note the political actions women took at that time, in particular, the groups of women who joined collectively to talk about their experiences of sexism and oppression under a system that traditionally undervalued women. The goal of these groups was what Kathie Sarachild called "radical consciousness-raising" or getting to the root of social problems.[1] A leaflet distributed by the Chicago Women's Liberation Union articulates the significance of consciousness-raising groups:

Consciousness-raising groups are the backbone of the Women's Liberation Movement. All over the country women are meeting regularly to share experiences each has always thought were "my own problems". A lot of women are upset by remarks men make to us on the street, for instance, but we think other women handle the situation much better than we do, or just aren't bothered as much. Through consciousness-raising we begin to understand ourselves and other women by looking at situations like this in our own lives. We see that "personal" problems shared by so many others—not being able to get out of the house often enough, becoming exhausted from taking care of the children all day, perhaps feeling trapped—are really "Political" problems. Understanding them is the first step toward dealing with them collectively.[2]

This excerpt is relevant to feminisms of the past, present, and future. First, many women think that the discontent they feel in their lives is a personal problem that is not worthy of a more public recognition or discussion, which in itself can lead women to feel isolated and alone. In the past, consciousness-raising groups helped women understand that experiences were often shared. Second, these feelings and experiences are not self-inflicted, but instead can be attributed to a social system laden with cultural and institutional ideologies that dominate and subjugate women. Third, consciousness-raising groups not only named the issues, but worked to build a community of women who could then collectively advocate for social change. With its roots in feminist consciousness-raising, the Internet, and in particular blogging, is working as a new vehicle for facilitating such intimate interaction and its potential for social transformation.

Much of what was printed in Sarachild's 1971 flyer is applicable today, despite the infrequency of face-to-face meetings. At a time in feminist history when feminism itself has been called fragmented, disjointed, or even dead, blogging is an important way for feminist thinkers to connect and build community and to advocate for social change. While we have to remember that technology is laden with ideological baggage, feminists of all tenets have the opportunity to carve out a virtual space for themselves, in what I call "feminist virtual consciousness-raising." The ubiquity of the Internet has located feminist[3] advocacy and consciousness-raising within the virtual world. Blogs are a useful tool to connect with not only academics and community activists, but also the "everyday" people whose experiences are often ignored or silenced.

Surveying the Blogosphere

Weblogs evolved from early Web sites that functioned as early online journals or diaries, reporting and keeping running commentaries on people's daily activities and interests. In the late 1990s, there were only a small number of these sites, which would later be called "weblogs" by Jorn Barger.[4] The tragedy of September 11, 2001, seems to have been a turning point in the blogging boom. Blogs proved especially useful in relaying information and communicating with others at a time when traditional media outlets were failing the general public. People wanted to hear firsthand what was happening in New York and to know whether their friends, coworkers, and family were safe. This horrible moment in American history, was a revolutionary one for blogging as means to communicate information.

The blogosphere has changed considerably since the beginning of the decade. According to Technorati,[5] the blogosphere continues to double about every six months; a new blog is created every second of every day.[6] People all over the world have caught on to blogs and are using the medium in several ways, from the political blogs that have received so much media attention, to online diaries and venues to discuss hobbies or specific interests. While there have been no recent, thorough studies detailing the demographics of the blogosphere, data from Perseus in September 2005 show that 68 percent of blogs in their sample were created by women and 58 percent by people under 19.[7]

While it may be difficult to determine how many of the 51.6 million[8] blogs Technorati tracks actually belong to women, their findings do show that there are a substantial number of women blogging. But what does this really mean? Looking back to the early days of the Internet, when only 20 percent of women were online, I discussed the negativity and the hostile terrain of masculine cyberspace,[9] where Web sites created by women or devoted to "women's issues" were few and far between.[10] Today the Internet is less hostile in some respects. Women and men are represented online in both the United States and Canada in more or less equal numbers. And in contrast to just a few years ago, there is a plethora of material related to women online. For example, a quick Google search of "domestic violence" provides over 75 million Web sites, with the first 100 hits from Google linking to information from academics, nonprofit and community organizations, and legal and government resources. When I conducted the same search in 1995, it provided only a handful of results, none of which was useful to me at that time.

In a perfect world, the "digital divide"—i.e., the inequities of income, gender, skills, access, etc.—that has been a key concern of many Internet scholars would have ceased to exist. But while the number of women who have access to the Internet has increased substantially, there are still those who lack access—for example, many women in rural areas. We also cannot ignore the digital divide in developing countries, where many women continue to be excluded from the Internet.

Early feminist Internet researchers speculated that, as more women gained access to the Internet and learned the skills to use it effectively, women would be less likely to experience harassment and negativity in the virtual world.[11] Other feminist researchers felt that such a broad and generalized approach to women and the Internet ignored the underlying ideologies concerning women and technology that are pervasive in our culture.[12] For these scholars, more women online would not necessarily mean equity or a reduction in the virtual resistance encountered by women. While the prevalence of overt hostility toward women online may have decreased substantially, women are still faced with barriers and obstacles in the virtual world, some of which can be seen in the blogosphere.

The Woman Question: Feminists and the Blogosphere

Feminist blog research is attempting to address problems of the blogosphere. For example, the paper "Women & Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs" by Herring et al. examines the obvious absence of women from public discourses about blogs.[13] The authors argue that "filter-blogs" (blogs that link to world events, online happenings, etc.) have been constructed as privileged blogs. Primarily authored by men, these blogs not only tend to marginalize the content of women's blogs (which are often diary-journal style), but also legitimize a certain type of (male) blog as valuable and worthy of readership. It is this type of blog (and blogger) that receives the most attention in the blogosphere and outside media, such as newspaper and television, where the focus is rarely on women's blogs or their content.

Given this construction of "worthy" or "legitimate" blogs, there have been numerous debates around the absence of women. The central question remains, "Where are the women in the blogosphere?" Indeed, there are many women blogging, but whether these blogs are legitimized is another story. Trammel and Keshelashvili's research supports Herring's findings that men outnumber women in producing the Web's most popular blogs.[14] These "where-are-the-women" debates stem from several issues: First, there are few women listed in many of the top blog lists, or what is often referred to as the "A-list" of bloggers. A-list bloggers (bloggers with thousands of hits a day) often seem to dominate the blogosphere, and their viewpoints are often the ones that are most read, commented on, and linked to online. A-list blogs are typically "filter-blogs" or "knowledge blogs" (blogs about technological information and observations). There have many blog posts dedicated to the problems inherent to "A-listers" and the hierarchies of blogs themselves.[15] Many of these posts discuss how many A-listers belong to a certain demographic—white, right-wing, heterosexual men—and how this works to exclude others.

Second, given the hierarchies of blogs and bloggers, there has been much discussion about the experiences of women within the blogosphere, which is itself a gendered and raced environment. Kennedy and Robinson's research indicates that the comments people leave on blogs reflect gendered communication patterns similar to those evident in face-to-face communication.[16] Their research shows that women tend to be more expressive and inclusive of others in their comments, while men's comments are generally assertive and competitive. We need to keep in mind the implications of such gendered interaction patterns within blogs, as women's opinions may not be heard, validated, or taken seriously by other readers.

What becomes evident in feminist discussions of blogs and blogging is the tumultuous relationship between masculine technological discourses and women's online and offline experiences. Women's historical relationship with technology has been rocky at best. For example, feminist literature concerning technology focuses on the importance of social roles, the hierarchy of these roles, and the relationships of power between women and men in relation to technological skills and use.[17] There is often the expectation that the sole purpose of technology used in the home is to reduce labor and save time in order to alleviate women's domestic responsibilities, but this has not been the case.[18] Having said this, what are the benefits of blogging for women and how can women overcome the gendered, raced, and classed barriers that currently exist in the blogosphere? While the blogosphere can be considered challenging terrain for women, we cannot and should not ignore how blogs can be utilized by feminists as tools to raise social consciousness, build community, and promote cultural change. There are several specific ways in which blogging as a virtual consciousness-raising tool can be a vibrant platform for feminist activism, as both an intimate and communal political practice. These areas include self expression, sharing stories, and interaction and dialogue.

Self Expression

Many blogs are diary or journal style, serving to document events in everyday life. While seemingly mundane, this style of blog provides a useful way to express oneself, a place to unload and unpack feelings and situations. What is useful about blogs in particular, as opposed to a more traditional media, is that these expressions are automatically documented and archived, making it easy to refer back to one's own narratives in one's own words. In addition to journaling, blogs can be a place to vet and share opinions on current events, political standpoints, and social issues. While these diary-style blogs are often excluded from blogging discourses, they are particularly valuable to women. An important lesson from the Second Wave movement, which emerged out of consciousness-raising groups, is encapsulated in the slogan "The personal is the political." Carol Hanisch's short essay, "The Personal is Political," notes that consciousness-raising is not simply "therapy." She says: "One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time."[19] Blogging about personal experiences can be a way to situate those experiences within broader sociocultural contexts:

The "personal is political" therefore meant that our personal lives are in considerable part politically delimited and determined so that improving our personal experiences meant we must collectively address political relationships and structures.[20]

As early feminists recognized, telling stories is often only the beginning of a larger feminist process of engaging collectively to pursue social reform.

Sharing Stories

A question central to blogging is: "Is anyone reading this?" While not all women who create blogs are concerned with whether or not anyone is reading them, wider readership can open up a new public space that might lead to more meaningful interactions and recreate the notion of the personal as political. One of the key differences between Web sites and blogs is the linking structure—permalinks,[21] trackbacks,[22] and blogrolls[23]—between blog posts and bloggers. These forms of linking allow feminist women to connect with each other and establish social networks. Kathie Sarachild's explanation of consciousness-raising groups in the 1970s is pertinent:

The aim of going around the room in a meeting to hear each woman's testimony, a common—and exciting—practice in consciousness-raising, is to help stay focused on a point, to bring the discussion back to the main subject after exploring a tangent, to get the experience of as many people as possible in the common pool of knowledge. The purpose of hearing from everyone was never to be nice or tolerant or to develop speaking skill or the "ability to listen." It was to get closer to the truth. Knowledge and information would make it possible for people to be "able" to speak. The purpose of hearing people's feelings and experience was not therapy, was not to give someone a chance to get something off her chest . . . that is something for a friendship. It was to hear what she had to say. The importance of listening to a woman's feelings was collectively to analyze the situation of women, not to analyze her. The idea was not to change women, was not to make "internal changes" except in the sense of knowing more. It was and is the conditions women face, it's male supremacy, we want to change.[24]

These changes are now beginning to transpire in cyberspace through blogging, leading to an awareness of larger social inequalities. Some bloggers are even connecting across differences of race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality to see the broader implications of their own positions, as well as those of other women. Blogging has the potential to help create and encourage a new form of feminism that better avoids some of the pitfalls of an earlier generation of feminist activism, those often exclusively middle-class and heterosexual consciousness-raising groups.[25] We can also avoid the dangers of ethnocentrism[26] and the notion of "rescuing" women from other cultures according to our own definitions of feminism and advocacy. For example, the Muslim Woman's Blog[27] shows the individual and collective struggles of Muslim women and how they work to address the social inequalities they experience. Reading a range of feminist blogs can help us get out of some of the ideological boxes that often trap us in old patterns. These blogs help us consider alternative and diverse perspectives and lead us to consider for ourselves more rigorous feminist positions.

Interaction and Dialogue

While some are content to simply read their favorite feminist blogs, one of the key features of blogs is the potential for interactivity. Online dialogue through blogs can happen in two ways: First one can respond to a blog post on one's own blog and link back to the original post via permalinks and trackbacks, thereby connecting bloggers and establishing a feminist network. Second, if the blog has an "add comment" feature, conversations can occur within the blog itself. This is useful to feminist virtual consciousness-raising, as it allows readers to actively engage in discussion. Bortree's research illustrates that blogs help build intimacy among women and enable dialogue about experiences that would otherwise be difficult to share.[28] There are, however, some problems with enabling comments on blogs. For example, the abundance of spam comments that have infiltrated blogs has caused many people to disable the comment feature on their blogs. While passwords and word verification programs might alleviate some of the comment spamming, it is difficult to avoid altogether. Enabling comments on blogs is double-edged. While it allows feminists to openly discuss and engage in dialogue, it also opens the door to antifeminist commentary. Many of the responses to the "where-are-the-women" question clearly reflect hostility and sexism. One only has to look at the comments on any feminist blog to experience such resistance, misogyny, and antifeminism. Feminist bloggers are constantly in the position of having to validate their standpoints and dialogue with those who blatantly display antifeminist sentiments. The endless harassment and rants can become tiresome. leading some to cease to respond and some to disable the comment feature or delete comments. If we are to consider blogs as a vehicle for consciousness-raising, we have to be wary of the ramifications of opening up feminist discussions to the World Wide Web. As evident in the flaming that took place in early feminist listservs,[29] the public nature of the Internet allows feminists to dialogue and network, but it also permits antifeminist groups to do the same—even in virtual feminist spaces. Despite this negativity, difficult responses are a reminder that there is much work to be done. As a feminist strategy, interactivity and intimacy as a type of virtual consciousness-raising can be seen as stemming from feminist activism of the Second Wave, and I strongly encourage feminists to lay claim to this corner of the Internet.

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]