Blog Sisters-- What's the Point?
A Q&A with Blog Sisters Founder Jeneane Sessum of allied.
What is Blog Sisters?
A loosely joined group of more than 100 women bloggers of all ages who come together to share knowledge, ideas, stories, conversation, wisdom, and the occasional dirty joke. Some of what we discuss at Blog Sisters revolves around serious issues-- breast cancer, divorce, body image, the struggles of women in other countries, human rights abuses, etc. But we try to make this a place for relaxation and laughter too. As they say, it's good medicine.
How Did You Come to Weblogging?
We're a family of webloggers here at my house. My husband George Sessum who's a music producer and bassist has a weblog on his life and views on the art and business of music (http://musick.blogspot.com), our six-year-old daughter even has a weblog where she talks and I type it, and I have my personal weblog (http://allied.blogspot.com) as well as Blog Sisters and Gonzo Engaged (http://gonzoengaged.blogspot.com). Elaine Frankonis, my Blog Sisters partner in crime, has her own weblog (http://www.kalilily.net), as did her son b!x (http://www.theonetruebix.com). Families are bringing families onto the net through blogging, and even making their own families here.
I started blogging October 2001 on a team blog I launched to discuss the ideas and implications of the book Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices by Christopher Locke. In November of that year I began blogging on my personal weblog allied. I realized through my interactions with other bloggers, through blogging myself, that weblogging was transforming me--my ideas at the very least--as a person and as a woman.
When Did You Start Blog Sisters and Why?
I woke up in the middle of the night last February with the word Blog Sisters ringing in my ears. One of those half-asleep/ half-awake dream states. I thought what better place for women to share and become more together than through a team blog for women? At that time, I wasn't reading as many women's blogs as I was men's and I wondered, "Where are all the women like me?" I knew Elaine and Denise Howell and Shelley Powers and that was about it.
I got up that morning and worked for 24 hours straight setting up a team site using Blogger, letting others know about it, and adding members. I added about 20 members that first day. The first member, Elaine Frankonis teamed with me in March to run the site. I couldn't keep up with requests to join, women wanting more information. Elaine is great at encouraging women to participate, keeping track of new members, adding new women to our blog roll, livening up the conversation.
Two months ago we also gave administrative privileges to blogger Andrea Roceal James-- our talented resident web design and graphics expert-- to help us take the site to the next level. We unveiled a new design in October 2002 and have had great response to it.
Who Belongs to Blog Sisters?
We now have nearly 100 registered members, ranging in age from upper teens to early 70s. Elaine says she's still getting an average of 2-3 requests a week from women asking about how to join the conversation. Plus we get comment posts from dozens of women who don't join as posting members but contribute nonetheless. These women are from across the globe: India, Latvia, Canada, Singapore, Russia, Poland, Australia.
We have married moms, single moms, single childless women, professional techies, totally non-techies, writers, journalists, employed, unemployed, underemployed, avowed feminists, professed non-feminist independent women. It's really amazing how it's taken off, but not so amazing when you think of what we're doing here and how the Net makes it possible-- even probable-- for women to find a place for their voices.
As Elaine puts it: "What's amazing is that, while posts have generated different opinions, there has never been any nasty stuff. The Sisters seem to go out of their way to affirm everyone's right to make their own choices about how they live."
I've just begun work on a book about all of this-- about Blog Sisters-- the phenomenon of women bloggers and what we're doing here.
Why Do You Think So Many People are Blogging?
Blogging is trusting people who are speaking, trusting their voice back to you. As Chris Locke-- father blogger to a bunch of us-- says, the common thread is the human heart. Sure, there will be bloggers out there taking on false personas, some as experiments and some because they are trying to dupe people. Some I'm sure play with gender too, and that doesn't bother me if it's real to them-- if it's a real part of them speaking.
But the folks who try to dupe readers don't last long because it's too obvious when someone isn't writing around their interests, their concerns. It's either obvious or boring. If it's not real to the blogger-- whether it's tech or politics or love-- readers notice. It's too hard to sustain that in blogging. So really, bloggers have an uncanny willingness-- braveness even-- to be real. The net is a place where we can be real, if that makes any sense. Take risks. Stake a claim. Voice an opinion. Speculate. Irritate. Titillate. You name it.
What Do You Think Weblogging Means to Women?
I've come across some astounding writers in my blog travels-- women who didn't know they could write, who still don't think they can write even though they're doing it every day. The words they choose are inspired by genuine emotion, not by years of study in the finer workings of grammar. Their thoughts are free from corporate confines, family confines, authority structure-- patriarchy if you will-- often for the first time. They are expressing what's meaningful to them-- from cat shit to divorce to RSS-- in a way that's meaningful to them. It's incredibly energizing.
The way I look at it, we're born with voice: it's the first expression of life from a crying baby. Our young lives are often about repressing/ stuffing within family, religion, institutions, patriarchy. For women at least, it seems we get this inkling of the re-emergence of voice when we separate from our family-- but that's often short lived as entering institutions like college or corporate world-- and even marriage-- can trigger the dysfunctional family roles for many of us, also patriarchal roles, resulting in the suppression the repression of voice all over again.
Today the net and weblogging are helping women recover their voice. Recapture what they mean, uncover, stop hiding, reclaim their voices. Resound.
In some ways, weblogging is a "Do-over" of our childhood. Complete with a new set of blog rothers and blog sisters. As David Weinberger says, we're "writing ourselves into existence."
What About Men and Weblogging?
What's great about this is that it's not all about women either. I think the interactions between men and women in Blogaria--between the women of Blog Sisters and the male and female bloggers they read and converse with--are really changing the way we relate to one another gender to gender. We tend to become mirrors to one another. I know Elaine's life stories, some of hers mirrors mine; I know RageBoy's stories, some of his mirror mine; I know Shelley's stories and Halley's stories and Mike Golby's stories and Gary Turner's stories and on and on with the mirrors to mirrors... seeing our own lives in a hundred connected lives and learning from what we see. It's so powerful. And women are making it okay for men to talk about more than tech and business-- many are bearing their souls. And finding out that's okay.
What Women Bloggers Do You Read/Recommend?
I read most of the women on our blogroll at www.blogsisters.com frequently. In addition, these are the women I rarely miss:
Shelley Powers - http://www.burningbird.net/weblog/
Anita Bora - http://justlikethat.blogspot.com/
Halley Suitt - http://halleyscomment.blogspot.com
Dervala - http://www.dervala.net/
Denise Howell - http://bgbg.blogspot.com/
Dorothea Salo - http://www.yarinareth.net/caveatlector/
Elaine - http://kalilily.blogspot.com/
Rebecca Blood - http://www.rebeccablood.net/
Esta Jarrett - http://www.diaries.com/es/
Jennifer Balderama - http://nonsense-verse.blogspot.com/
Sharon O. - http://www.wordwhores.com/absolute.html
Andrea Roceal James - http://www.jngm.net/arjlog/
