I guess I’m taken a little by surprise by all the commotion recently in the blogosphere about BlogHer and women bloggers. When I look at my feed reader and do some rough her/him calculations I find that nearly 35-40% of my favorite feeds are by women. I never thought much about it until recently. So how are women bloggers different then men bloggers. In most ways they aren’t. There are good women bloggers, bad women bloggers, and all the ranges in between. Many are as or more technically competent as any man I’ve read. Their post are just as keen, insightful, humorous, and thoughtful.
There is one difference I sometimes perceive…perspective. I read blogs to learn. A woman sometimes draws from places and experiences that I as a man can only imagine but never know. Their view is sometimes from a different perspective. This difference provides opportunities to analyze my own thinking, a chance to broaden my view, a chance to learn. But this is not only true of women. It is true of anyone that is far outside my own world of common experiences. Someone from a different country or culture can also provide this difference in perspective.
So while I celebrate and enjoy women as bloggers, I have to wonder if they really want to be separated out as being different, or unique, or worst yet as a group all the same? This thought was echoed in a post by Kathy Sierra on Creating Passionate Users where she stated she was not a women blogger.
And while I cannot speak for all (or even most) women in tech, I am tired of others speaking for ME. And in the recent coverage of the BlogHer conference, I’ve seen some disturbing sweeping statements that lump all bloggers-who-happen-to-be-women together as the “Women Bloggers”, with detailed descriptions of what’s it like to be one of “us”.
A good blogger is a good blogger. If someone has something to say and says in well, people will come back to read them…male or female. Isn’t that what most bloggers want?
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