Jeremy Thompson

And the BiblioBlogger of the Month for March is …

Once again …

*Joel Watts*

And, congrats also to our new number two BiblioBlogger James McGrath.  He has taken over the spot formerly held by none other than me.  But that’s what happens when James keeps writing good stuff (except all that silly stuff about LOST, which I cannot even begin to fathom why anyone would like that) and I take about a two week hiatus from blogging (in the meantime, I’ve also gotten myself characterized as a poop slinging monkey … but that’s okay I know what Jim really thinks of me ;-)).

We have one newcomer on the list this month debuting in the top 50.  He’s Sabio Lantz at Triangulations.  Be sure to check out his blog.  And, congratulations to everyone else who made the top 50 (except for Joel because he’s lame ;-))!

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Jeremy

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74 responses to “And the BiblioBlogger of the Month for March is …”

  1. lucky for that lot i’m not among their biblioblogging ranks anymore.

    and yes, you’re right, you do know what i really think of you. 😉
    and i’m glad that, unlike too many, you have a perceptive mind.

  3. Jeremy,

    Thanks for the work, oh, and could you add Jim’s blog? I would like real competition. I’ve tried to buy him off, pray for him, but nothing works to get him to come back. Now, as Number One, I am employing a little known rule which allows the Number One to place someone on the list. There for, in accordance with ancient custom and tradition, for all the Sons of Abraham, I am place Jim West on the list.

    🙂

  5. Obviously, congrats again to Joel.

    But has no one noticed that there’s not one single woman blogger in this “the top 50”? Thanks to Matthew there’s Madeleine and to Calvin there’s Mandy and to Daniel there’s Tonya – but really what do these Alexis ratings in March tell us about what we read and, importantly, who we read? Can someone claim there’s not a male bias here (again)?

    http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/2009/09/womens-voices.html

  6. Thank you Jeremy for all you do! If you find anymore “real” biblioblogs, just email me; I am more than willing to give my opinion.

  10. Jim: Looks like you’ve been nominated though.

    Joel: I’m not sure if that’s allowed or not. I guess Jim could always deny the request.

    Rod: Thanks for helping with the process, even though Jim seems to like to point out grammatical errors. But then again, he is quite possibly the antichrist.

    J.K.: Basically, I have a list of blogs and a program that pulls their rankings from Alexa. I post those rankings. That’s it. If there is a male bias, I imagine it is with blog readers. If readers would read female blogs more often, it would boost their alexa rankings. They would make it higher in the list.

  11. Jeremy, What I meant to say (and really mean too) is Thanks for doing all this work! Yes, I know the male bias is with (us) blog readers. As Suzanne and April and many others have pointed out, there’s a silence here that is just downright awful. Why not read more women bloggers more?

  13. JK: A point well taken.

    Brooke: Congrats! I can’t believe this is your first time in the top 50. It must be just the frequency with which you can blog because your blog is fun to read and funny as … well, sheol I guess.

  14. Well, I think that is final proof that Alexa is a poor measure of traffic. I posted less this month than any other month since I started blogging (a mere 2 posts), and yet jumped up to my highest ranking ever. The only thing I did differently was to finally install the Alexa toolbar and visit the site with it now and then.

    The moral: you too can be in the top 25!

    • Ken,
      That’s as if a lame-o like Joel being number #1 wasn’t enough proof of Alexa’s mindlessness.

  15. Part of the issue with Suzanne’s blog, I believe, is that her entire post shows in the feed, so while I read it, I don’t always visit her blog to comment. That is a big part of the Alexa ranking, I suspect.

    Jeremy, as Number One, anything is allowed. Thus I have spoken, so mote it be.

  17. Can someone please explain to me how my Alexa rank fell from 1001510 in February, putting me at #35, to 1459123 today, so outside the top 50, although the number of visits to my blog rose nearly 50% from 5429 in February to 7839 in March? Was my higher position in February entirely because the top three in the list all linked to me in that month? Are these Alexa-based rankings in fact at all meaningful? Or is it just a matter of who is in a self-perpetuating little club of bloggers who link to one another?

    Joel, I’m sure you can give me some tips for getting a higher ranking, but what I want to see is a ranking that doesn’t rely on people manipulating the system.

    • Peter,
      Alexa ranks are determined by a combination of “reach” (unique viewers) and page views (total viewe whether unique or not). So, I don’t think the links had anything to do with your rank in the month in which you were ranked higher, and I don’t think ranks are then determined by bloggers linking to each other. Considering their criteria it is quite possible that your number of visits could go up and your rank go down.

      http://www.alexa.com/help/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17&sid=1142965b02895216cf296b450b09c7b2

  18. Jeremy, thank you for the help. I realise that WordPress stats does not track how many unique visitors I attract. But it does seem odd that a 45% increase in traffic results in a 45% decrease in ranking. These are not marginal changes. Alexa reports a 30% decrease in my “reach” over one month, although a 100% increase over three months.

    I wonder if the problem could be that at some time during the month my hosting provider made gentlewisdom.org.uk a synonym for http://www.gentlewisdom.org.uk. Possibly my traffic is now split between two domains, although Alexa gives the same statistics for both.

    • Peter,
      There is also the issue that it matters to Alexa who is visiting your site. They are better able to track the usage of those who have their toolbar downloaded and installed. So, maybe in the previous month you had more visits from folks who had the toolbar and this month maybe fewer. I don’t know. There has been a lot of talk in the past about problems with Alexa, unfortunately I think there has been some recognition that there are problems with most, if not all of the ranking systems available. Not the least of these problems is that many of the more precise systems don’t work across all blogging platforms.

  21. Joel, I’m sure you deserve your top slot, and anything is fair in your battle to keep ahead of Jim W and John L, not to mention James McG and Jeremy T.

    By the way, is there something about having a name beginning with “J”? Maybe I need to change mine if I’m to compete in this world!

  23. Peter, not sure what you are getting hate, but are you adding a list of things you dislike?

    I assume that you are referring to my earlier attempt at answering your question about your urls. I suggested changing them to what Google and others had asked for to make it easier to pick up, you know, removing the post number and replacing it with the name of the post. This is hardly unfair or manipulation. Further, since I was freely sharing this with the world, it seems to me that everyone could partake of a little bit of the (non)secret of SEO.

    Frankly, I would love Jeremy or others to trample me in this thing.

  24. I doubt that I have much traffic recently since I am hardly ever blogging. At least, most of my recent posts are unpublished. I am not at all upset about my current low ratings, since I have never been rating driven. While I am sure that most bibliobloggers have very positive relationships with women in their life, the bibliosphere is simply not the place for women, as far as I can see.

    I think community is a real incentive to blog and I used to feel a sense of community at one time. But there were always the digs about being a woman who would not accept male authority from a few. And basically, my sense is that the bibliosphere wants to remain open to and uncritical, for the most part, of the male authority position. I cannot endure this any better than a former slave could bear to be a member of a group where slave owners were also members, and were able to proselytize without a reaction.

    While I am also simply busier than I used to be, I do feel the loss of community. It may be true that women don’t blog as much in this domain, but they do blog elsewhere.

    Unless space is made for women to be free from the directive teaching of gender-based authority, there is really no hope of a community where men and women can meet.

    Many, many thanks to Peter, Kurk for your continued pursuit of this topic. And many others for a strong offer of personal friendship. I do appreciate it.

    I would personally like to see an blogosphere where women who resist male authority, unrepentant homosexuals and unbelievers were all treated with respect.

  25. In rereading the comments, I disagree with the notion that men would not read female bloggers as much as male bloggers. But as a woman, I have lost much of my desire to blog because it is so fraught with misery over the general silence regarding how terrible the notion of male authority is. I do think many women blog less on this topic because of the severe conflict which this topic causes for women.

  26. I don’t get these Alexa numbers. My Alexa ranking is showing in this list as 303,680, but I haven’t been that low in ages. Throughout March I’ve been in the range between the low 240Ks to 220K.

  27. Joel, don’t take me too seriously. I should have put a smiley at the end of my last comment. I prefer short URLs to long ones, and it seems that Jeremy agrees with me. Alexa rankings really shouldn’t depend on such things.

  29. Glenn the numbers used are your 3 month number not the number that shows up in your Alexa counter. To see your 3 month score you need to go to Alexa itself and look up your site. (Apparently the 3 month number is more accurate.)

  30. Sue left some interesting comments. It’s a big loss for me & other readers when there isn’t enough “space” and support for women blogging in this area. I wish that there were more women (um, any women) in the top 50 of the Alexa biblioblogger list.

    There are plenty of female bloggists out there. I would love to see a comparison between the Alexa ranking of female bloggers in the bibliosphere & the Alexa ranking of female bloggers in related fields (eg. Linguistics, English/Literature, History, Philosophy).

  31. Peter (and anyone else curious),

    Your url should not affect your Alexa rating directly, unless your blog is counted as a subpage of a larger domain, in which case you will not have a separate rating for the blog at all. What I think Joel is getting at, however, is that your traffic in general would be better if you included the titles of your posts in the url, because this gets you higher in the Google listings, and hence more search engine traffic.

    Unless you install Alexa’s widget directly on your blog, Alexa can only measure a subset of your blogs traffic (namely, those few with the Alexa toolbar installed on their own computers). This small sample size can lead to some wild fluctuations in Alexa rating quite independently of your actual traffic, but in general the more search engine traffic you get they better an Alexa rating you will have (since most search engine driven traffic ends up being a unique pageview, and at least a few of those visitors are likely to have the toolbar installed). Thus, using full titles in the url leads to more search engine traffic which in turn leads to a higher rating, though only inconsistently so.

    As I noted in my previous comment, however, the best thing you can do to improve your rating–if you care to do so–is to install the Alexa toolbar (http://www.alexa.com/toolbar) and/or widget (http://www.alexa.com/siteowners) yourself.

  32. Amelia wrote “I wish that there were more women (um, any women) in the top 50 of the Alexa biblioblogger list.”

    I am a woman and I am in the top 10 (and have been in the top 5) of the Biblioblogger list. Quality content is what it comes down to – I don’t think anyone cares what sex the author of quality content is it is probably more due to the fact that fewer woman seem inclined to or capable of producing quality content in the philosophical/theological/jurisprudential sphere. I am sure there are blogging genres where women dominate and men are the minority.

  33. I was in the top 50 and was also in the top ten yahoo linguistics blogs in North America at one time. But now I am not.

    I agree with you that readers don’t care whether the author is a woman or not. But, I do contend that fewer women are inspired to produce online quality content in this particular area, in part, I suggest because as women we are exposed to something no man is exposed to and that is the teaching by some that we should be under the authority of our spouses.

    I really want to live – I want to be alive. I used to be someone who would rather be dead. I really cannot be part of a community that condones, by silence, the notion that a wife should be under her husband – take that however you like.

    I am quite sure that every woman has her own particular reason for not being in this community. This is mine. I do not think that it is because women are incapable of producing “quality content in the philosophical/theological/jurisprudential sphere”.

    My two best friends are an accomplished and recognized international scholar and a partner in a large law firm, and they would not be caught dead in a predominantly male club like this but their training in Biblical languages is excellent, one a gold medal winner at the university of Toronto, for example. They simply know that being exposed to the teaching of male authority is a no go zone. The disincentive for really accomplished women to move in these circles is very high, in my opinion.

  34. “I am a woman and I am in the top 10 (and have been in the top 5) of the Biblioblogger list. Quality content is what it comes down to.” — Madeline

    I wonder, Madeline, if your rankings would be different (i.e., lower) if your blog’s name were just “M: Madeline” rather than “M and M: Matt and Madeline” with your name coming after his. And I wonder if you yourself would write some differently if you had to negotiate your ethos in the male dominant bible-blogosphere as solely a woman. When I blog as “J. K. Gayle” at “Aristotle’s Feminist Subject,” most readers initially assume I’m female; but upon learning I’m not, they (whether man or woman) definitely change their tone towards me in their writing with or about me. I could write a book on that alone. / Sue’s own testimony, and that of her friends’ (i.e., the scholar and the lawyer), shouldn’t be the norm, but it seems they are. At the blog “Jesus Creed,” RJS has written a fascinating post that includes this paragraph:

    “The AAUW recently put out a study Why So Few? exploring reasons for the lack of women in STEM fields (STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).This study pointed to a few factors that will apply to women in ministry or any other male dominated field. These factors include stereotype threat, self assessment, external perception, competence evaluation, and the perception of learned vs. inate skills.”

    “I would personally like to see an blogosphere where women who resist male authority, unrepentant homosexuals and unbelievers were all treated with respect.” — Sue

    Sue, As I read this morning so many bible blogger friends celebrating Easter so loudly on their blogs, I also read what Monica Roberts writes. She’s an African-American transwoman who’s perspectives (because of who she is and because of dominant-culture and dominant-gendered white male bible bloggers’ perceptions) most won’t read or care to read. She writes, remembering:

    http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2010/04/not-so-happy-easter.html

  35. Actually, although Matt is the one who generally handles the biblical scholarship and theology, it’s Madeleine who is often seen as the one who boosts the site’s profile. Experience (with Mads and with others) suggests to me that when it comes to websites (as opposed to scholarship more broadly), a woman, rather than a man, who is outspoken and articulate in this field is more likely to draw attention and/or gain kudos. The reality is, there are simply not that many of them doing it, and if there were, I’m certain that they would be represented here.

  36. “a woman, rather than a man, who is outspoken and articulate in this field is more likely to draw attention and/or gain kudos.” — Glenn

    Glenn, April DeConick (a woman, rather than a man, who is outspoken and articulate in this field) has drawn attention herself and other women. She rightly recoils at the tokenization, the notion and the language of “women’s biblioblogs at the margins.” Rather than kudos, DeConick’s gained attentional alright, but attention in the form of questions from men (and a few women), a firestorm of sometimes mocking criticism for writing things like this:

    http://forbiddengospels.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-are-we-going-to-do-about-blogger.html

  37. J. K., I have seen men receive that kind of negative attention as well. Surely one example is nothing. If there were as many female scholarly bloggers in the field as there are men, I see no reason to think that the current top 50 would look just as it does now.

  39. J. K., J. K., (let’s not go down the road of condescention, OK?), whether it’s more than one case or not, let me just point out that I have in fact seen more than one man get negative publicity for his blogging comments. Better? So some women share the negative experience of some men. I would expect nothing else. The principle of what I said remains exactly the same. Surely you’re not going to suggest that we have to seek out and elevate a female minority to popularity, skewing the stats, just to avoid the boogeyman of inequity? Inquality of popularity is because of inquality in numbers of scholarly biblical studies blogs by women. Why must that be unthinkable?

    You can say, if you like, that it’s unfairness and bigotry at work here. I call BS. I know of scholarly blogs that are popular in part because of their female authors. If you want to see more women in the “top bloggers” list, then start recruiting women as scholarly biblical bloggers. You’re complaing to the wrong people. This is the outcome of a market environment. Don’t like what you see? Change the supply! Don’t assume there’s no demand for it.

  40. I started my last comment as I did because of the way that the email notification runs lines together, without showing the line breaks. It looked like J. K. had said “Glenn Glenn, were it just one example.”

    My mistake.

  41. Glenn,
    Thank you for rereading what I wrote and for writing a 2nd time. You’re right; I intended no condescension in addressing you, and just to be clear let me say I’m sorry I came across that way. Aren’t we illustrating something related to the silencing of women? It it really often intended? Perhaps there are profoundly unseen societal and economic and (Mary Daly suggests even) ecological forces at work, and powerfully so until re-read and re-written.

  42. I do think that a woman can boost rankings of a blog, and I think I did that once, a couple of years ago. But when I was not able to take the “why won’t you obey your husband” questions with humour, as if it was a joke and not a matter of a legal crime, then I felt not welcome, by some men, but not all. But I felt that there was an attitude that they had the right to make personal comments on my life.

    I felt that I should make some public statement to the effect that I do wear a bra – I am not a completely radical feminist. How many men feel that they have to make that kind of statement to stop being hassled.

    I also was not comfortable chitchatting with men who viewed their own wives as vehicles of perpetual conception. Even though there a few enough of these men, they were not made to feel that their views were a difficulty for women, and should not be expressed in public to other womb-bearing creatures.

    In my view, it is like smoking. We should create an environment where those who want to talk about gender-based authority, have to do so outside, so as not to blow the smoke in the face of those dying of cancer, which was the way I, and at least one other woman blogger, experienced male authority.

    It was my choice to retreat and cut back. It was my choice to recoil in view of some of the negativity, it was my choice to say, I don’t want to breathe in second hand smoke. But unfortunately, I have still felt driven to protest patriarchy, in spite of how unwelcome my protest is. I am sorry about that.

    In short, I do not think that women bloggers would be less read, but I think that they post less in this community and on the topic of biblical studies because of the overall environment.

  43. Sue when you wrote “I do not think that it is because women are incapable of producing “quality content in the philosophical/theological/jurisprudential sphere”” You twisted what I said. I never made the blanket statement “women are incapable of…” I said:

    “fewer woman seem inclined to or capable of producing quality content in the philosophical/theological/jurisprudential sphere.”

    Note that I said “fewer” not none. As such, the point you went on to make regarding your friends who are trained and have succeeded in the fields of theology and law was not incompatible with what I said. I am friends with Cactus Kate and Lydia McGrew – both are highly respected female bloggers with large followings who produce quality content, the former in the jurisprudential commentary sphere the latter in the philosophical theological sphere. Then there is myself; I write more in jurisprudence and philosophy than I do in theology but I have written some theological posts on my own blog and I have a very large blogosphere following in my own right due to people liking my content and appreciating its quality. Take a look at some of my own posts, you’d be hard pressed to find many blogging women who can write as well as I do (and you’d find it even harder to find many women who’d actually write that last sentence).
    See my posts:
    http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/11/religious-restraint-and-public-policy-part-i.html
    http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/03/can-state-expropriation-of-minerals-be-justified-part-i.html
    http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/three-strikes-proportion-and-protection.html

    So I agree with you that there are a few woman who write in this area who are actually any good at writing in it but this is not inconsistent with what I wrote. My point that there are not large numbers of women writing quality content in this area remains sound.

    As to why that is, I don’t know. Why do more women seem to write the “day in the life of” or “parenting moments” or “craft” or “baking” type blogs than men? Is it because fewer men are inspired to produce online quality content in this particular area, in part, because of the teaching by some that men should be under the authority of their spouses in that area or maybe it is the notion that a husband should be under his wife when it comes to parenting and talking about his thoughts and feelings on life – take that however you like. Or maybe J.K. Gayle has a point and it is because of stereotype threat, self assessment, external perception, competence evaluation, and the perception of learned vs. innate skills on those subjects causing men to feel inferior or be less valued when it comes to blogging on them.

    Personally, and this is just my experience of 37 years of being a human being speaking, I think the reason more men write in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, biblical studies, philosophy and jurisprudence is that their brains are wired to primarily use the more technical, logical, analytical hemispheres whereas when it comes to emotions, insight, relational, creative topics women are better at tapping these areas of the brain. Some are wired the other way around or can do both, of course, like me, which is what I meant by fewer women are either less inclined to or less capable of … But so what? So what if men, as a general group, are more typically wired one way and women more typically another – so what? Is one way better than another? Of course not!

    As for the suggestion that my “rankings would be different (i.e., lower) if your blog’s name were just “M: Madeline” rather than “M and M: Matt and Madeline” with your name coming after his.” I suspect they would be different i.e. lower if the blog was named “M: Madeleine” – ditto if the blog was named “M: Matt.”

    The success of MandM is the husband and wife thing, the fact that as a team we both have complimentary talents for writing quality content that is rather different to most blogs and that we are married – that gimmick works very well for us as a marketing tool as how many blogs are out there where married couples can and do both write well on the same field? However, if we did separate and write our own blogs individually I suspect we’d both still rank highly. When I write a post I commonly attract lots of comments, links and hits to that entry, ditto Matt. We are fairly even in terms of followings. Views of our profile pages place mine slightly higher than Matt’s but then, as Maverick Philosopher said, I’m prettier than him 😉

    As for the order of our names – you have got to be kidding! MandM is the blog of Matt and Madeleine, in that order, simply because I made the blog so I put my name last. If you were signing a birthday card on behalf of a group of people, one of which is yourself, etiquette says that you sign your name last. Further, “Madeleine and Matt” does not roll of the tongue as well as “Matt and Madeleine”. I guarantee you that if I edited the blog and changed the order of our names our blog readership and links would continue to grow at the same rate they have been recently because, again, people read our blog because the content is good – it has nothing to do with whose name is on it and in what order and which author possesses a penis and which does not.

    I found this telling:
    “And I wonder if you yourself would write some differently if you had to negotiate your ethos in the male dominant bible-blogosphere as solely a woman. When I blog as “J. K. Gayle” at “Aristotle’s Feminist Subject,” most readers initially assume I’m female; but upon learning I’m not, they (whether man or woman) definitely change their tone towards me in their writing with or about me. I could write a book on that alone.”

    Your first sentence undercuts your point. You assume that women, given a choice, would not choose to write in this field. In fact, if I went blogging solo I would write as I write now because that is me, it is who I am. The topics I have always been drawn to are philosopical, analytical, theological and of course legal.

    The women I have seen on threads being treated negatively for their contributions to a topic in an academic environment have generally been treated so because their contribution lacked quality but then the men whose contributions suffered the same ills were treated the same. Each were judged on their content not their sex – half the time online you can’t tell what sex an author is anyway.

    As for your assumption I do not know what it would be like to negotiate the male dominant bible-blogosphere solely as a woman you have got to be kidding. When I venture onto another blog and comment in a discussion I frequently do so with all present not having a clue who I am, where I blog or whom I blog with. MandM was added into the biblioblog lists pretty much solely as a result of my contact with Jeremy, Joel and others – Matt rarely comments much on other blogs these days as he is working so much and his dyslexia slows him down.

    It it still beyond me as to why women and men must be represented 50-50 in every sphere or somehow we must conclude that there is some discrimination going on. Why does no one care when there are more women and less men represented in an area and why is no one agitating for women to increase their representation in the negative male areas – why are so few women on death row for example. I prefer to get on with just being me and if that exercise results in my being a top blogger in my chosen field then yeeha! If more women want to join me then get researching and writing and promoting.

    All this has distracted me from the point I intended to come here and make. I do not just disagree that men and women are treated differently in this field, I actually think women have an advantage over men in this field. If anything my being female has probably helped MandM rise to the top in this field. In a discussion thread I can leave a comment and Matt can leave one but when examining the resulting visitor paths back to our blog almost always will show that more people got there by clicking on the link behind my name than his even if his comment was better than mine. My being pretty female blogger navigating a field dominated by men attracts a lot of people to our blog and I am sure that the same factor works in reverse in the parenting or day in the life blogs – an attractive man making a thoughtful or insightful comment in a thread full of women will have the same effect – but at the end of the day quality content is the only thing that will keep people coming back and linking to your blog. Blaming lack of blogging success on your genitalia is just not going to cut it with me.

  44. I wrote a lengthy response but it has vanished. Women are wired differently to men, generally speaking, but so what?

    Sue I have been blogging with my husband for coming up 4 years and before that on my own for a good 5 years. The respect I have within the blogospheres I write in is my own. If I write a less well argued and supported post it goes down, if I write a really good one it goes up.

    The only different treatment, if anything, that I have found from my being a woman blogging in a male dominated field is that I have an edge or an advantage over the men writing in the field. If I leave a comment in a thread and my husband leaves one in the same thread more visitors will come to our blog via the link behind my name than my husbands even if his comment was better than mine. Maverick Philosopher, when he commented on noticing that phenomena on his own blog (where both Matt and I had commented and he could see the exit paths of his own readers) put it down to the pretty female fact factor and I think he is right. My profile page gets more clicks than Matt’s – though we both get a lot. However, what gets people to stay and linger on our blog, come back and link to it and give backlinks to our posts is our content. Both Matt and I receive a lot of links and comments and hits to our better posts – my following is every bit a strong as his but that is because I am pretty good, a lot of women who write in this field are not.

  47. Madeleine,
    Your first comment went to spam for some reason. Sorry.

    To all,
    Also, I apologize to everyone having trouble unsubscribing. I’ve never had enough people comment on a post to merit me having to think about that I don’t guess.

  48. Madeleine,

    I hope it is clear that most of what you write is not directed to me or to anything that I have writtenn(although I appear to be the only one you address). I have stated clearly that I DO think that women bloggers attract readers in a predominantly male community. And this was my experience in the linguiblogs community also. The only reason that I don’t have so many readers now is because of mine own choice to blog less and to blog content that is not aimed at the bibliosphere. I am okay with this and have never complained about a lack of readers. I complain that the conditions in the bibliosphere do not create the kind of community which attracts most women.

    But if you check the science blog community, I think that a good 25 to 30% of writers are female, compared to 1% in the bibliosphere! So, the one statement that you have made that I fully disagree with is that fewer women are “capable” of writing a certain type of blog. My sense is that fewer women are “inclined” to do so because dealing with the male authority doctrine is extremely painful for some of us, and endlessly irritating for many others.

  49. Jeremy – In January, it was the top 237, and in Feb the top 362. I’m sorry that this thread seems to be hijacked by the discussion over the very apparent dearth of women bloggers in this top 50.

    Madeleine – You raise some very very very important questions: Could it be for us men that “their brains are wired to primarily use the more technical, logical, analytical hemispheres[?] whereas [could it be that] when it comes to emotions, insight, relational, creative topics women are better at tapping these areas of the brain.[?] Some are wired the other way around or can do both, of course, like me [Madeleine], which is what I meant by fewer women are either less inclined to or less capable of … But so what? So what if men, as a general group, are more typically wired one way and women more typically another – so what? Is one way better than another?” The fact is that in even in emotional, insightful, relational, and creative areas disciplines — such as the arts particularly, where my son is excelling, for example — men still predominate in the fields. Male counselors and psychologists and therapists earn more on average than their female counterparts; and have more university jobs at higher positions. Male cooks (i.e., chefs) earn more than women on average who are their counterparts. Studio artists who are the most successful? Again men? And women are in the museums but more as the nude subjects of male artists. The Guerrilla Girls have been bringing attention to this for some time. Film? Acting? Theatre? Music? Literature? Philosophy? Theology? Biblical Studies? Language Arts? Rhetoric? Linguistics? Again, men have the top places and the top salaries.

    No one is arguing that anyone of us should diminish difference between the sexes. No one is suggesting that there must be some sort of absolute 50/ 50 representation (or even some kind of sexual affirmative action). It’s wonderful that you write such compelling things and that your posts and your profile are more often read than your husbands! No one is suggesting that sex or gender should be the marker of “good writing” or “attractive personas.”

    Rather, I think we all know deep down that we must ask whether the sex difference demands the woman’s place, where that place is ontologically always (or even naturally and generally) to be the place under the man’s (because of her difference from him). The question is whether we all somehow value the difference of a woman as marking her to be lesser than a man, in any field (i.e., whether those disciplines where men traditionally predominate or those fields where women are expected to excel because of ostensible brain difference). Are we okay with letting ontology, and Nature, and biology (even brain science) and tradition keep women always in the margins of our societies?

    Sue – More of us ought to be outraged when a certain prominent top 50 male biblioblogger censors you. More of us ought to scratch our heads that you rightly felt (less “inclined”) to be part of a team of linguistic bibliobloggers. Eavesdroppers get the idea from him and from them that it has nothing to do with your sex. The waters of discussion get muddied when you and some of the rest of us try to talk directly to the issues (say, about the bible and its languages) while gender gets abstracted and boxed away once again. The fact is that the kind of blogger shunning I’ve seen of women (by men) is a good bit different from the kind of would-be censoring of a fellow man (by men) in the bibliosphere. I’m not sure this male brain of mine can really account for all of this male nonsense.

  51. “Madeleine, Your first comment went to spam for some reason. Sorry.” – Jeremy

    Jeremy, I think if you’ve enabled comments here then others’ comments may have gone to spam too. D&T have written me to say that they wrote here “a lengthy comment that didn’t make it.”

    Although it may not be as cool to write your thoughts at my blog to continue the conversation here, I do offer that to anyone:

    http://speakeristic.blogspot.com/2010/04/gendered-bibliloblogger-conversation.html

    • JK,

      I’ve been checking my spam folder off and on since Madeleine informed me of her comment going to spam. I didn’t seen D&T’s comment. I think the issue may be what Brooke has suggested. It doesn’t matter much to me where the conversation takes place, whether here or at your blog. As for me, I think I’m going to hang with Brooke over at his post (metaphorically speaking of course) and you all can have at it here for as long as you want to.

  52. Kurk,

    I appreciate your comments and I don’t in any way mean to diminish the differences in gender. However, I read and summarize psychological assessments for a living, so I am aware that the differences which are cited as more ‘relational’ for women and more ‘analytic’ form men, refer to about 5% of the population. This creates an observable statistical difference between men and women, but it should not create the differences we see in the bibliosphere today.

    I realise that I have some difficulty in expressing why I think women are not participating. However, here is a post by Makeesha, a popular female blogger. I think it may clarify a bit,

    “When I see men I (generally) respect, affirming groups like Acts 29 – a group that oppresses women by telling them they can’t be pastors because they were unlucky enough to be born female, I get angry. That’s just me being honest. We would not tolerate it if the man was affirming a group that didn’t allow a black person to be a pastor because he was born with more skin pigment and yet we put up with it when it’s about gender. I just don’t get it.

    I suppose people could argue that “the church” is just “not there yet” with the gender issue but I guess I don’t really buy it. It’s going to take strong, prominent egalitarian men to say “no, I will not speak at your event” or “no, I will not endorse your book” and explain why and do it publically before this will change. Because it won’t change by women speaking out about it. Racial inequality really started to shift when powerful white people started taking a stand. Gender inequity in our churches will not really change until powerful men take a stand.”

    I suspect that most men in the bibliosphere do not think of women as needing to be “under authority.” But they often affirm men who do promote this doctrine. And that simply excludes most women from the community.

  53. So, I simply think that most men don’t realize that although they have never said anything negative to me, (most bloggers have not) they do often affirm men who teach that women’s rebellion against male authority is the cause of all divorce, and that women can stop their husbands from beating them by being submissive – and other dangerous and abominable teachings.

  54. Again with the Women……

    Summary: The community of bloggers in academic biblical studies is overwhelmingly male compared to the non-blogging discipline. Question isn’t whether this is sign of illness, but rather how to address the plain fact of ill health…….

  55. Jeremy,
    First, on the spammed comments: it *may* be that your settings automatically relegate posts to spam if they have a lot of links (like the one that Madeleine had posted). You might see what your options are for moderation.

    Second, this thread prompted me to write a post on the subject. I “trackbacked” it here, but don’t know if that trackback will “take” (sometimes they don’t). The post is here:
    Anumma: Again with the Women…

    Brooke

  57. No offense to anyone, but this conversation is one of those things which I believe is a direct benefit of having this list.

  59. it’s hard to care really. if women want to blog the bible, no one is stopping them (in spite of their ‘woe is us, we are marginalized’ whining to the contrary). and if they don’t want to, again, who cares.

    it’s a tempest in a teapot and it always has been. it’s an absurd issue that keeps being brought up only because some are ignorant of the history of ‘biblioblogging’.

  61. Jim,

    Now who sounds whiny? If you’re not stopping women from blogging the bible, might you be silencing women otherwise in other ways? How about teaching us all a nice history lesson instead of lobbing accusations of ignorance?

    • I read them. No big deal. In fact, if I could make one requirement for being a part of the list it would be having a sense of humor! If anyone takes all of this too seriously, you can rest assured it ain’t me. When I took over the rankings, I got a lot of thank you’s and still a ton of people click through to check them out. So, I’ll probably keep them up. As it stands they only take me about 10-15 minutes to generate. But, if it ever gets to be a drag, I’ll be the first one to jump ship.

      BTW, I’m hoping to finish writing within the next couple of months, though Christo is having me run a couple more tests. Hopefully, you guys may still be around when I finally get to come for a visit.

  65. J.K. Gayle wrote:

    “I’m with Jim – just get on with it and blog.” – Madeleine

    Madeleine, but is Jim with you really?

    I have no idea. It is a bit hard to see from number 8 all the way down to wherever he ranks LOL 😉

  66. For the record I know I’ll be slipping in the rankings. There are a few Christian blog terrorists who have forced me to moderate comments, and when I do, my rankings suffer. But I’d rather have a respectful discussion or none at all, even if my rankings suffer, and even if this is the goal of these blog terrorists.

    Go figure.

    BTW: My latest book “The Christian Delusion” is now available:

    http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Delusion-Why-Faith-Fails/dp/1616141689?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwdebunkingc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969

    I welcome all honest, intelligent and respectful criticisms of it.

    Cheers

  68. Jeremy, I’d like to be added to the biblioblog list. I don’t expect to be very high on the ratings, really, but hopefully I’ll get a few more visitors if you introduce me!