The Sigla Blog

Crazy week this week, so only getting to post this now. Thought the Big Bite on Tuesday with bloggers was quite interesting. Some good points raised all round by Richard Delevan, Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole, Jon Ihle, Gavin Sheridan and Caoimhe Burke. Great to see Blather on there as well and particularly that Sue represented only one of two women on the panel.

I know there are a lot more male bloggers in Ireland than women and that the cyclical debate about how gender seeps into blogging came up again. Caoimhe said something that struck me, that there is a hypothesis that male blogs tend to be more intellectual. A lot of political blogs (in Ireland anyway) are certainly written by men, but does ‘political’ always have to be a by word for intellectualism? Surely the excellent literary blog Bookish which doesn’t generally dabble in politics qualifies as intellectual?

Caoimhe also mentioned that blogs by women tend to focus on the personal and in a way if this is a generally held view, surely there’s an inherent sexism in it. It’s about time that - in blogging terms anyway - that the personal is as relevant as the political. I can safely say I’ve read personal blogs that are far more intellectual than some of the longeur rants that pass for some political blogs I’ve been unlucky enough to stumble across.