a hearty cheer from Liberal Street Fighter
I’ve added a great new blog to my bookmarks: Our Word, where I happily find some voices that are absent from the dailyCLARK post Piegate. Their mission:
Our Word is a community where women’s voices are valued and respected, a space for telling the truth of women’s lives and working together to improve them. This site is owned by all members who post here. It is the aggregate of all of our words, all of our ideas, all of our experiences.
I haven’t registered yet (so many blogs, so little time), but I’ve found some great stuff there in its short time on the web, as well as some discussions that can make a madman squirm. That is a GOOD thing … it’s important and vital that we all get knocked off our pins once in a while, the written equivalent of a zen teacher striking a meditating student near their shoulder blades. Knock out stuck perception, break free the mind … WHACK WHACK.
However, the proliferation of focused sites sometimes worries me. Does the bullying on some sites serve to drive people into blog ghettoes? Some of this worry is mitigated by the very nature of the blogoverse — the contant crossposting, linking and trackbacking helps to keep communication lines open. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not blaming anybody who goes off and creates a new forum in response to rabid pack behavior and bullying. I blame the bullies, their childish taunts and mocking comments of “well, if you don’t like it blogger is free, start your own damned blog!” This very attitude is contrary to the power that we all like to ascribe to the blogosphere.
That is a worry, and I’m curious to see what others think about it. I do applaud that communities like Our Word are there, having the vital discussions that are increasingly being silenced on big blogs focussed on “party activism” (i.e. fundraising). As a feminist, as a humanist, I do believe that the only way out of the cul-de-sac this culture is trapped in is to confront one another, communicate with one another and try to empathize with one another. I think that is the true power of blogs … not in fundraising. Start direct fundraising, and you invite in the pros, the ward heelers and political fixers. One can only wonder if that is the reason so many voices considered inconvenient are being driven to create their own sites.
I’m glad that people with something to offer aren’t being driven into silence, that vital new communities are springing up, and I’m glad that Our Word is one of them.
