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I was going to write a post, at my friend Viviane’s urging, about women sex bloggers who are persecuted and their blogs shut down because their frankness offends members of their extended real world community, but I think the real issue we need to talk about is the high price women are made to pay, again and again, both for being sexual and for speaking their mind.
It’s not about the blogs, you see, it’s about the right for complete self expression. In other words, it’s about being silenced.
In my view, as much as we have strong women coming forth to share their experiences and beliefs, the culture at large is still making those who don’t fit the standard models—whether because of their sexual practices or their social mores—pay a price, and this is particularly true for women.
Many 70’s era feminists wrote endlessly about male privilege and gender bias, but today, in the third wave feminst Millennium, when women have appropriated the images of hooker, stripper and slut for their own purposes (think Paris Hilton, Audacia Ray, and Suicide Girls), the issue isn’t so much how we are seen, but being allowed to speak. The standards for men and women speaking out, as much as things have improved, are still biased and women are no less immune from being criticized and even ostracized for owning their truth. And this is true not only in the sex world, but in the tech community as well.
(Recent situations that come to mind are the Mike Arrington/Shelley Powers dust up over photographer Lane Hartwell’s decision to pull down a popular Richter Scales song/video because it contained an unauthorized and uncredited image, and the closing down of the Renegade Goddess blog because people in her public life—which was not actually discussed or identified on her blog—felt it jeopardized her professional life and the organization she represented.)
(As I write this, I imagine my friend Dave Winer saying that women are always accusing men of being sexist--my answer to that would be that point I want made is that our culture—women and men alike—is quick to censure and blame when anyone, but women especially, step outside the mainstream of what are accepted roles to share their own point of views.)
In the Bay area tech community, it’s danah boyd and Shelley Powers and Grace Davis who consistently speak their truth, popular or not. In the Bay area sex and feminism community, it’s Violet Blue and Susie Bright whose integration of what they believe and how they live is presented, seamlessly and relentlessly, in their blogs and writing. On the East coast, I’d call out Rachael Kramer Bussel , Audacia Ray and Chelsea Summers around sexuality and feminism and Susan Crawford as a tech voice.
But they’re not enough—and they struggle with the same issues the rest of us do.
