Blogging and Feminism

Lakshmi Chaudhry published an article in In These Times called “Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics?” In it she asked whether blogging can become a legitimate grassroots movement if it’s primarily a white male enterprise. In reference to Daily Kos proprietor Markos Moulitsas Zúniga she wrote:

… “In [Moulitsas’s] view, it’s simply absurd to demand what he sarcastically describes as an”affirmative action of ideas”within an inherently meritocratic medium such as the blogosphere:”I don’t see how you can say, ‘Well, let’s give more voice to African American lesbians.’ Create a blog. If there’s an audience, great. If there isn’t, not so great.”Besides, he suggests, if a Salvadoran war refugee:in his words, a”political nobody”:like him can make it on the Internet, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same.

As for the relative paucity of top female progressive bloggers, Moulitsas is indifferent:”I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I find it totally uninteresting. What I’m interested in is winning elections, and I don’t give a shit what you look like.”It’s an odd and somewhat disingenuous response from an advocate of blogging as the ultimate tool of democratic participation.” …

Kos responded as follows:

“Another article with tedious whining about the supposed lack of diversity in the blogosphere. Fact? The top five progressive blogs, per TTLB’s ecosystem: Daily Kos, Eschaton, Crooks and Liars, Washington Monthly, and Firedoglake. (John Aravosis’ AMERICAblog would be in there if they had public stats.) Daily Kos, the largest political blog in the world by a factor of five, is run by a Latino and currently has five guest bloggers — four of them women. Firedoglake, dominated by two women, is the hottest and fastest growing progressive blog at the moment. AMERICAblog, among other things, ably represents gay issues. Two more women-run blogs round out the top ten.

“The blogosphere remains the most meritocratic media in the world, no matter how much people qvetch about “the A-list” this, and the “A-list” that. No one on the so-called “A-list” started there. They all earned their prominence. And blogs like AMERICAblog (just over a year old), Firedoglake (9 months old), and Glenn Greenwalk (5 months old) all are proof positive that talent can still rise to the top. The “A-list” looks a lot different today than it did two years ago.”

Chaudry’s reply to this is here.