Annals of gender exclusion, Part XXXVI: Bloggingheads
It's been nearly four years since I counted the proportion of women published on the op-ed pages of the WaPo over the course of a month and found it to be a measly 10 percent. I haven't counted recently-- has anyone else? My impression is it may have gone up a little, but probably not much above 20%.
Still completely outrageous.
And now, we have the "new" media... And once again the male professional elevator and those effortlessly sharp elbows wielded by the boys guys have still been keeping us females largely excluded.
Today's exhibit: "Bloggingheads TV", which I guess presents itself as some form of an "edgy", low-tech public discussion forum-- and gets handsomely free-advertised on the NYT's op-ed page as a way, I suppose, for the Grey Lady to make herself appear a little more edgy and modern... (But it is also, really, really good for BHTV, too. I call this kind of reciprocal image-enhancement the "Rolex watch-ads phenomenon.")
On the front page of BHTV, when I checked there just now, I found: the names of 20 featured contributors, all of whom are male!
C'meon, guys, what kind of a world do you think you are representing, modeling, or building???
One in which men's voices and opinions are valued quite disproportionately over those of women, it seems...
I still have to write the longer analysis I have been thinking about for a while, of how the male professional elevator actually works in practice in modern American society. There are elements of lateral cronyism; elements of mentor-protege relationships; and elements of broader social attitudes in which these guys simply assume that the women in their lives can do necessary things like the shopping, childrearing, elder-care, etc, and thus they themselves have the free time left over to engage in cutting-edge things like BHTV.
I have frequently thought it would be nice if I, like so many of my male colleagues, had a wife at home to do those things. But as it happens, I'm very happy with the mutually supportive relationship I have with my spouse.
But for now, let's just all look at this BHTV example and figure out what we can learn from the rampant gender exclusion (sexism) on open display there...
Note: when I talk about 'gender exclusion', in general I don't mean the total exclusion of females from any particular forum of public discussion. Generally, I mean only their rampant under-representation. It has been amazing, sickening, and disappointing to me in recent years to see how the gains that we made through the 1980s and 1990s in achieving a higher degree of gender inclusion in the public discourse on foreign-policy issues have in the present decade been so effortlessly rolled back. (I have some explanations for that, too.)
But this BHTV example of total female exclusion was just too blatant to ignore.
On the whole women represent only 1/3 of all journalists in the US, and there's also a much larger population of male bloggers overall.
If you have no first hand experience of discrimination, I'd say this charge is pretty baseless. From the looks of things BHTV seems to publish just about anyone's vlog.
Have you ever offered them one? Have you ever inquired directly about their editorial policy? You might try that before throwing charges of sexism around.
A member of the Katsav et al school of discrimination heard from. Now why would anyone think that the above reaction is just what one would expect from a zio?
Kassandra, your reply is as usual a bizarre non sequitur verging on comedy. Zionism has nothing to do systematic sexism among bloggers, believe it or not. That you think it does speaks volumes.
Of course it does. When herrenvolk refuse to recognize the rights of one group, then it's not a far stretch to refuse to recognize and respect the views of others. Only someone utterly enbedded in their "chosenness" would refuse to recognize that.
kassandra, I don't feel "chosen" in any sense, so you're barking up the wrong tree. Last time I checked, I wasn't Israeli or even Jewish.
Unlike yourself I admit both the Israeli and Palestinian right to nationhood, and equal rights for Jews and non-Jews in both countries. I'm sure you consider this view at odds with 'Zionism' in your limited understanding of the term.
I can only encourage you to learn more about Zionism before criticizing it, otherwise you'll simply be talking to yourself.