Misbehaving
So, it seems like the ladies at misbehaving.net think I have misbehaved. Liz Lawley writes in her blog about catfights and unsheated claws, pointing to the comments on misbehaving. Well, I am just glad I kept the post that has been criticised in my own "bully pulpit" and didn't intrude on their space for my "singling out" of one person.

What I tried to do was to connect some statistics and research with a post by Danah Boyd, whose statement disagreed with the statistics. I "singled her out" because she was the one who wrote that bloggers seemed to be white males - not because of her particular habitus. I did however feel that her post and perceptions revealed something of her habitus: her position as a woman with interests in a field that is mainly male dominated.

Danah Boyd did not offer any support to her question but her personal experience. When we expose ourselves in this manner in a quick and not-so-formal environment such as this, once in a while things can feel a little more personal than if we get the reply to our statements half a year later in a scholarly article in a peer-reviewed journal. The discussions on misbehaving.net have made Danah Boyd and Elizabeth Lane Lawley post about blogs being unsafe spaces. Yes, they are. Sometimes even intelligent, experienced and high-profile bloggers like Elizabeth Lane Lawley read posts too fast. Reading the update to Liz Lawley's post on misbehaving.net you will find this:

Update: Ah. I just realized that Torill's probably referring to danah's post "why are bloggers mostly straight white men. That makes the post make a little more sense to me. I do note that danah specifically excludes LiveJournalers and other "journalers" from this characterization--which the Perseus study that Torill cites does not. In re-reading the comments to that post, I think danah does a pretty good job of qualifying her perception in the specific context. I don't think it's socialization that causes the perception that the visible technical and academic bloggers are primarily men.

The link to Danah Boyd's post was in my post all the time, nothing "probable" about that. I have been thinking about editing that post, because I saw that my language was Norwegianised and so seemed a little less precise than I desired. I will however leave it as is.

If I am wrong, and it is not socialisation that causes Danah Boyd's perception that the blogosphere is dominated by males, then fine, my assumption is wrong, or the definition of blog is wrong, or Perseus is wrong. But being wrong is something we have to deal with if we want discussion. And I thought we wanted that?