I'm delighted to announce the debut of a new weblog on the topic of gender and technology:
We've got a really amazing group of women participating on this site:
- danah boyd
- Caterina Fake
- Meg Hourihan
- me (Liz Lawley)
- Dorothea Salo
- Halley Suitt
- Gina Trapani
- Jill Walker
We all believe it's important to begin changing the public perception of women in the context of technology, and that one of the best ways to do that is to make women's accomplishments, writings, and contributions more public and visible.
I hope you'll add the new site to your blogroll and/or aggregator list!
Well, thanks for nothing.
As I posted on your weblog, Shelley, there are a lot of women who are not authors on the site--it doesn't make them not women, nor does it make them invisible. You're listed on the sidebar, along with a lot of other women for whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration.
What? Am I not a blogger? Am I not... oh, OK, I get it.
Actually, when the Blog Genres group was presenting at AoIR and noted that bloggers are "mostly male," I thought to myself: that's me, all right, mostly male.
What? Am I not a blogger? Am I not... oh, OK, I get it.
Actually, when the Blog Genres group was presenting at AoIR and noted that bloggers are "mostly male," I thought to myself: that's me, all right, mostly male.
I suspect I already know your answer, based upon a previous post (in which you asked the men not to post--and I happily remained silent), but is there a reason that a blog dedicated to gender and technology should consist solely of women? On the site, it actually says "women and technology," but even in that case...
I pulled my post, as I mentioned in the email to you. It was wrong of me to take personal offense about being excluded from your group. I was just...surprised, and a bit let down.
I will continue to write on technology at my site for what its worth, and even mention women and technology. But I hope that your new group remembers to leave room for the bloodied and tired women who have fought the battles in the trenches. as well as the dignified women in the towers. And I wish you luck.
Congratulations, Liz, and the rest of your co-misbehavers, too. It promises to be a fabulous site, and I'll look forward to staying up with it!
Alex-
I wanted misbehaving.net to serve not just a way of disseminating information about gender issues, but also as a way to spotlight women in the tech field in positive ways. That's why the authors are all women...
Congratulations! I think misbehaving.net is a great idea and very much needed! I, for one, will definitely be reading it. Well done!
I am glad that you created the site with your co-authors, I think it is much needed. I hope to see your list of women contributing to this body of blog-knowledge expand - I have been searching for women who blog about tech issues, and there are not too many.
By the way, it was good to meet you F2F at AoIR.
It's just that by excluding Shelley, you're excluding a practicing woman technologist with impeccable chops and also one of the most eloquent bloggers out there, in favor of a strictly academic focus. Your group blog is impoverished without her perspective. As I say at my own blog, it's like Roman Jakobson excluding Vladmir Nabakov from the Harvard faculty on the grounds that one wouldn't appoint an elephant as a professor of zoology. Or, more aptly, it's like saying Donna Haraway's perspective on women in science is more valuable than Rosalind Franklin's. No, it's not.
It's not a strictly academic group, by any means.
Meg Hourihan, Gina Trapani, and Caterina Fake are all actively working in the tech industry. While I'm an academic now, I have quite a few years of tech work under my belt preceding my time in academia. One of the original invitees, Adina Levin was too busy with her company's software launch to participate this week, but will be on board by next week. My intention was to have balance--age, location, profession.
This is a brand new blog, started by someone who was virtually unknown by most of the world a year ago...it's far from "the Harvard faculty," and it was never intended to represent the sum total of all women's voices and perspectives. The wonderful thing about virtual real estate is that it's not a zero-sum game, and that nobody owns the top of the hill.
Actually, the wonderful thing is that it's not real estate at all.
That it's not real estate at all is not a WONDERful thing at all.
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I have nothing to contribute to the actual discussion so I'll just pick nits too. I just needed to be noticed.