Monthly Archives: November 2006

Within the Irish blogosphere there’s been a lot of talk in the last few days about things like gatekeepers and how girls are just as good as boys at blogging.

To be fair there hasn’t been any suggestion from any of the boys that girls are not as good but some of the girls want to make sure that we know they’re as good even though we never said they weren’t.

What is a gatekeeper anyway? Is there a blogging Rick Moranis scuttling around saying “I am the keymaster. Where is the gatekeeper? All hail Zuul” while Sigourney Weaver floats seductively above a bed while the wind blows in the through the window?

We should be thankful that United Irelander is in semi-retirement because can you imagine his experts list?

Cooking – some bird
Cleaning – some chick
Ironing – some lassie
Knitting – some dame who should never have got the vote

Technology – a bloke
Driving and cars and stuff – a bloke
Blogging – definitely a bloke

Man, that really would have got the debate rolling. Where are you, UI? The blogosphere needs you.

The point is though that if anything is asexual it’s blogging. There are lots of blogs you have read for some time before you know the gender of the person writing. While I think there are probably still more men than women blogging in Ireland you only have to look at this list to see how many women there are on the scene (Fatmammycat as ‘family’ though – heh).

And it’s great. I’ve always had a good number of women bloggers on my blogroll not because they’re women but because I enjoy their blogs. Now, if I didn’t enjoy any women bloggers and I didn’t have any on my blogroll I’d hate to think people would get on my back to include them because surely that’s just tokenism of the worst kind?

There is this strange need amongst humans to be categorised and to try and pigeon-hole one’s existence. It happens in the blogging world. People object to other people’s personal choices. They want equality. They want a representation of the whole scene rather than simply allowing people to get on with what they want to do.

I don’t buy into the gatekeeper thing. Firstly because I don’t really understand what it means but secondly because it implies some kind of masonic influence over the Irish blogging scene by a covert bunch of testicle sporting man bloggers. It’s patently not true.

Anyone can blog. Rich, poor, fat, thin, beautiful (like me), ugly, male, female. And that is the beauty of blogging.

Let’s not make blogging ugly. Just blog your blog and let other people blog their blogs without trying to make everything about something, if that makes sense.

Now, which one of you dolly-birds is going to make me a cup of tea, then?