Clancy Ratliff, "Attracting Readers: Sex and Audience in the Blogosphere" (Page 4 of 4)

Conclusion: For Further Discussion

In a post titled "Getting Started With Blogging for the Attractive Female Blogger," Scott Johnson advises novice female bloggers that "[g]iven the facts stated above that blogging is a community, that many, many blog readers are men and that you want to be read, the more compelling identity you create for yourself, the more likely you are to be read. And, while this advice may be offensive, from a marketing perspective, if you actually want to be read, it does make sense."[24] He then encourages women to post photographs of themselves on their Weblogs and claims that "sex sells," so if, for example, a woman wanted to write about public relations, she should opt for a title like "A Blonde Chick on Public Relations" rather than "PRBlog." He also includes a screen shot of a man's Weblog, on which the man has posted a photograph of two topless women with their arms around each other. In the post, the man explains that he was conducting an experiment to see if his site traffic went up if he posted photographs of attractive women. Johnson points out, "Interestingly, you can be male and even leverage this kind of female imagery." Indeed, the arguments about sex on Weblogs can be read in quite a cynical fashion: All one has to do to get readers is to follow the formula of posting sexy photographs or writing about sex. "Readers" in this case are heterosexual men, who seem to be the target audience of Weblogs according to this line of reasoning.

This view influences the discourse on Weblogs in at least two different ways. First, it serves to confine the women who do want to explore sexuality on their Weblogs, insofar as their readers cast them into that role, expect sexual content and suggestive photographs regularly, and take their posts about other topics less seriously. Admittedly, any blogger who writes about sex or posts suggestive photographs on a few occasions is not compelled to do so on a regular basis. However, due to the constraints of the medium, the bloggers who include sexuality and who gather an audience this way may feel compelled to bring readers back to their sites. Women who are genuinely interested in exploring sexuality on their Weblogs also may find that their writing is not taken to be sincere, but instead as a ploy to drive traffic to their sites. Second, when women are discussed on men's Weblogs in terms of their sexual attractiveness, this discussion acts as a subtle exclusionary tactic, and women end up being discouraged from participating in discussions in the comments of those Weblogs. We are left, unfortunately, with no easy solutions to this rhetorical and social problem at this time, but it is clear that women's participation in blogging is circumscribed, and the discourse in the blogosphere is "tainted," to paraphrase Fraser,[25] due to the ways sex functions in blogging.

In this essay, I have tried to provide a snapshot of the complex issues regarding sex and attraction in blogging practices. Many questions, however, remain unaddressed here. For example, what does this case reveal about how masculinity is performed? Men are represented stereotypically here as lechers who are ruled by their libido. Do men experience social pressure to behave this way online? Do bloggers sometimes discuss sex and attraction from an ironic stance, in order to critique the norm? How might this discussion be enriched by examining queer feminine and masculine rhetorical acts? My purpose here has been to start a thoughtful conversation about sex and audience in blogging, and I hope that others build on these questions and more, both on and off their Weblogs.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Endnotes

1. Clancy Ratliff, "*The* Link Portal on Gender in the Blogosphere," posted to CultureCat: Rhetoric and Feminism, December 21, 2004, http://culturecat.net/node/637 (accessed November 5, 2005). I had no predetermined set of criteria for how I selected the posts I was going to analyze for this project. Rather, I kept a running list of the links to these posts as the bloggers posted them, and when they linked out to other bloggers who were responding to the "where-are-the-women" question, or when other bloggers sent trackbacks to their posts, I added those links to the list as well. In other words, I began with the feminist Weblogs I read regularly and tracked the conversation network as widely as possible by looking at posts that the bloggers linked to. While this group is admittedly homogenous in terms of sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and cultural background, I argue that their remarks about the issues of sex and attraction have much to reveal about the place of sexuality in blogging communities and its influence on the discourse in these communities. The complex issues surrounding sex and attraction are undoubtedly multiracial and present among gay, lesbian, queer, and transgender bloggers as well as heterosexual bloggers, but even among nonwhite and GLBT blogging communities, the discourse takes place in a majority white, heterosexual social context and does not exist outside of the influence of that context. An intersectional analysis of sex and attraction as they reveal themselves in blogging practices is much needed and would be a valuable contribution to the existing work in computer-mediated communication. The heteronormativity throughout the discourse will be clear, and I hope simultaneously to describe this norm at work and critique it. [Return to text]

2. A. S. Bruckman, "Gender Swapping on the Internet," Proceedings of INET'93 (San Francisco: The Internet Society, 1993); S. Correll, "The Ethnography of an Electronic Bar: The Lesbian Café," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 24 (1995): 270-298; S. Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); K. Hall, "Cyberfeminism," in Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. S. C. Herring, 147-170 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1996). [Return to text]

3. Several researchers have compared the blogosphere to a public sphere. O'Baoill, 2004; T. Roberts-Miller, "Parody Blogging and the Call of the Real," in Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs, ed. L. Gurak et al. (University of Minnesota: 2004), http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/parody_blogging.html (accessed August 1, 2005); Ratliff, "*The* Link Portal"; M. Barton, "The Future of Rational-Critical Debate in Online Public Spheres," Computers and Composition 22 (2005): 177-190. [Return to text]

4. N. Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. C. Calhoun, 109-142 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992). [Return to text]

5. Ibid., 121. [Return to text]

6. J. Hawkins, "Tweaking Delicate Feminist Sensibilities in the Blogosphere," posted to Right Wing News, April 22, 2004, http://www.rightwingnews.com/
archives/ week_2004_04_18.PHP#001965 (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

7. L. McKenna, "Why Don't More Women Have Political Blogs?," posted to Apt. 11D, March 12, 2004, http://apartment11d.blogspot.com/
2004_03_01_apartment11d_archive.html#107913704556492034 (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

8. Cali (girl), comment at "Blogs, Politics, and Gender," posted to DanielDrezner.com, March 11, 2004, http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001151.html#012336 (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

9. Adoherty, comment at "Blogs, Politics, and Gender," posted to DanielDrezner.com, March 11, 2004, http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001151.html#012336 (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

10. SSJPabs, comment at "X Chromosome Blogging," posted to Political Animal, June 3, 2004, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
archives/individual/2004_06/004066.php#186162 (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

11. Eukabeuk, "X Chromosome Blogging," posted to Political Animal, June 4, 2004, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/
archives/individual/2004_06/004066.php#186329 (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

12. I recently received the following message via e-mail: "Okay, so I'm reviewing a manuscript for publication and I'm not sure if the author is using performativity correctly and I hate unnecessary critical jargon and when I google I find your blog. Today's musical question: what's better than a smart Ph.D. candidate? One that's really cute and hot. Carry on. In Vino Veritas, [name omitted]." I get e-mails like this every few weeks. [Return to text]

13. J. Hawkins, "There Is No Such Thing as a Glass Ceiling in the Blogosphere," posted to Right Wing News, April 12, 2004, http://www.rightwingnews.com/
archives/week_2004_04_11.PHP#001939 (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

14. K. Blair and P. Takayoshi, "Introduction: Mapping the Terrain of Feminist Cyberscapes," in Feminist Cyberscapes: Mapping Gendered Academic Spaces, ed. K. Blair and P. Takayoshi, 1-18 (Stanford, CT: Ablex: 1999), 7. [Return to text]

15. Ibid., 8. [Return to text]

16. G. E. Hawisher and P. A. Sullivan, "Fleeting Images: Women Visually Writing the Web," in Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies, ed. G. E. Hawisher and C. L. Selfe, 268-291, (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1999), 287. The term "cyborg" as it is used here comes from Donna Haraway's 1985 essay, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs." [Return to text]

17. Reproduced with permission. The content at Feministe is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Available at http://www.feministe.us/
blog/archives/2005/02/22/on-women-and-blogging/. [Return to text]

18. Wonkette is now maintained by two editors, both of whom are men. [Return to text]

19. M. Catalano, comment at "Attention Whores Get All the Attention," posted to A Small Victory, April 12, 2004, http://asmallvictory.net/archives/006461.html (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

20. Ibid. [Return to text]

21. Fraser, 120. The idea that societal inequities are reproduced on the Internet is far from a new observation. Much research has been done about identity online; see S. C. Herring, "Two Variants of an Electronic Message Schema," in Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. S. C. Herring, 81-108 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1996); Hall, "Cyberfeminism"; L. J. Gurak, Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997) and Cyberliteracy: Navigating the Internet with Awareness (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001); L. Gerrard, ed., "Computers, Composition, and Gender," special issue, Computers and Composition 16 (1999): 1-207; C. L. Selfe, Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999). [Return to text]

22. Bitch Ph.D., comment at "I Admit It, There Are Women," posted to Unfogged, February 22, 2005, http://www.unfogged.com/
cgi-bin /mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=3039#013552 (accessed November 5, 2005). [Return to text]

23. Bitch Ph.D. [Return to text]

24. S. Johnson, "Getting Started with Blogging for the Attractive Female Blogger, posted to The FuzzyBlog!, 2002 http://radio.weblogs.com/
0103807/stories/2002/08/30/
gettingStartedWithBloggingForTheAttractiveFemaleBlogger.html (accessed July 19, 2006). [Return to text]

25. Fraser, 121. [Return to text]