Sex Bias In Blogging
A question that comes up repeatedly in the sex blog world is “Why aren’t there more male-written sex blogs?” Start clicking links, take a poll — it quickly becomes clear that there are a lot more women than men writing about sex in the blogging world. Focus on blogs that (unlike this one) are mostly introspective and personal, and the imbalance comes into even sharper focus.
Susie Bright, having recently returned from a Blogher conference of mostly female bloggers, touches on this question in the course of a long and interesting essay on gender bias in the blog world. Unfortunately, when she tries to answer the question, she hits us male sex bloggers up aside the head with a big chunk of her own gender bias, and I’m just not willing to sit here and take it quietly. She writes:
Why don’t straight men include sexuality in their blog writing– aside from the resolutely anonymous few that sex-blog professionally?
Because outside of the “adult” world, a straight man writing about his sexual life– his erotic self-reflection– is considered feminizing. It would make him a pussy to his peers.
I fall squarely within her category of the “resolutely anonymous few that sex-blog professionally”, and I’m calling bullshit. Read my archives, I could give a shit less what “my peers” (the male ones, or the subset of them who could use “pussy” as an insult) think of me. They aren’t right in the head, and they don’t seem to like women very much. Indeed, in Susie’s own interview with me, I spoke of my belief that a lot of guys are “broken” when it comes to their views of women. Why would I let the views of broken people affect my behavior?
Ironically enough, Susie gets a lot closer to the truth just two paragraphs down the page of her essay. Here, and she’s talking about women even though she says “folks”, she says:
Some folks at our panel talked about the risk of hurting loved ones if we blog about our sexual lives. They were concerned with boundaries, respect, and discretion– timeless issues for authors in any era.
Those concerns are about ETHICS.
Damn straight they are, and the ethical concern goes a lot further toward explaining why I don’t write much about my own sex life than the fanciful notion that I’m worried some misogynist male shithead is going to call me a pussy. Why aren’t these ethical concerns (expressed by the women at Susie’s conference) supposed to be available to me, a man?
This is really just an extension of the basic “Don’t kiss and tell” rule. Yes, there’s a gender bias built into that rule, or at least reflected by it, because it is (or, at least, was taught to me as) a rule for the protection of women. The women I know don’t seem to have been taught it, or taught that it should apply to their discussions of men. That’s because — I’m speculating — men aren’t seen as being so vulnerable to reputational damage when their sexuality becomes a matter of public discussion.
So there it is, male sex blogggers. You’re damned if you tell (because it’s just not safe for women to have the details of their sexual lives broadcast, and a real man doesn’t put a woman he loves, or even “just” fucks, at risk) and damned if you don’t (because, Susie says, you’re just a coward who remains silent because you fear “feminizing” censure from the lowest of other men). I know not what course others may take, but as for me, I’ll continue doing what I’ve always done — speaking when it seems right to me, and be damned what anybody else thinks.
