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September 07, 2005
still at it
Matt Kirschenbaum explains Why I Blog Under My Own Name (and a Modest Proposal) (via).
The overall message: blogging can have great benefits if done properly.
My fingers itched to put scare quotes around the word properly. But really, I'm not being disrespectful.
Here's what I'm chewing on. Properly, I think for MGK, means professionally. It means talking about your research, research that is in various stages of progress. Other stuff: politics, current events, and "midnight anxieties"--off limits.
And I respect this. I have enormous respect for this, esp in light of his blog living on his public U's server.
(Pick your comparative transition), this to me feels patriarchal. Or masculinist. Forgive me while I spew out some terms I'm literally wrestling with. All of those things that have been traditionally marked (indicted) as feminine: the emotion, the daily living, the embodiment of the writer and hir experience is rendered useless. None if it has a place in/on the medium, or genre.
The line between public and private is a gendered one? I don't think I'm that far afield. In fact, that's somewhere in what I'm reading for exams. Somewhere.
Posted by mryonker at September 7, 2005 01:10 PM
Comments
Yes, definitely. Patriarchal or masculinist or whatever term - but you're absolutely right. Same reason why novels were so disrespected for so long (says the historian, who may have that slightly wrong!).
Posted by: New Kid on the Hallway at September 7, 2005 05:23 PM
I certainly find that I most enjoy reading pseudonymous blogs (by men as well as women). The personal stories, the political outrage, the feelings, the anecodotes -- these are what interest me.
But my own blog -- not anonymous -- serves a different purpose. It is primarily a "work blog". And because it carries my name, I censor myself fairly carefully -- "what if a coaching client or a psychotherapy patient reads this," I think. Sometimes I long to start a second pseudonymous blog --- but I think that I'd have to get rid of one of my four children to carve out the time to do so!
Posted by: Academic Coach at September 7, 2005 10:56 PM
I am so agreeing with you on this.
Everything in our culture is judged on the basis of "masculine" behavior and accepted standards. Ugh.
Posted by: jo(e) at September 8, 2005 09:57 AM