Lost Ur Mind..Women Are Dumb & Boring...???

Just feeling low and down as underwent a surgery that’s giving me awful pain…nothing much to do hence was just reading through some articles and thought I should pen down my thoughts today and make you folks a lil knowledgeable through my blog.

As a woman who writes on issues that matter to us, we have talked about relationships, glass ceiling in the workplace, expectations at home that make it difficult for women to perform equal to men and the evident absence of equal participation of women in politics and men in household activities. In many spaces, the issues that women face stem from the very fact that the base line was unequal. However, the inequality of opportunities and spaces, has decreased in many of our lives, especially some of us who have the independence of a job, have partners who respect that space and have been exposed to what we may name as women’s rights. (I am not discounting that even today there are some internalized social roles and expectations which pose as problems for us also) But things are definitely better than where we started from.

So, only for the sake of this post, I assume that many of us are in positions of equal status in family and work. I am inspired to write this post, based on a discussion with a male friend. He likes to tease me with extremely provocative statements, especially when it comes to women’s issues. However, those discussions do help me articulate my own thoughts on those issues. This time, our discussion revolved around knowledge. “Women are boring”, he started! Can I just whack someone who tag women as boring???? :/ and continued “….The only topics women can talk about are, Personal reflections and introspection on their lives, women s issues, children and relationship stuff he said….He did say Pooh look at what you also write in your blogs all silly stuffs…!!” I was like @!#$%

Of course…He had succeeded in irritating me. But then, these provocations did end up in a far saner conversation. However, it was true that I found it difficult to find women bloggers who followed politics, technology or movies with as much passion as they wrote about women’s issues or their own lives. I wonder why? In this discussion we keep aside all the professional women intellectuals who write about other issues. In this discussion we are not talking about professional writers but amateurs like you and me.

I continued on my stands, Women bloggers who write about only personal issues need not fall into the category of ‘boring’, according to me. Men/women bloggers who write about politics need not necessarily be ‘interesting’ either. It is the ‘how’ and not the ‘what’ that I look for in any post. I judge the blogger by the depth of her thought and the clarity with which she can put it across.

I stick to mostly personal posts in my blog because I know that I and only I can write it the way I write it and it is unique, guaranteed. A political opinion, for eg, carries the risk of being clichéd or repetitive. Admit it, we are all more ready to accept the masculine in women than the `feminine side of a man (a man in pink is still a faux-pas in a typical crowd but a woman in blue is deep, which goes to say that the spectrum of women has scope to be wider than that of men.

There then to prove my lil know how – I did the maths – 26% of all male bloggers are limited to 3 topics – “broadband, new media, telecom, gadgets” , “geeks, programmers”, “technology, gadgets, software”. Among male bloggers, I have examples of several bloggers who passionately follow politics, movies and technology. I would love to be proved wrong.
Food and Parenting blogs was a clear women’s space and Personal blogs had 75% women authors. Similarly, Technology blogs, Internet based blogs and Management blogs were typical male spaces. Blogs based on political and social issues had 75% male authors. Out of the 30 topic categories, only 6 topics had a majority of women authors with two topics with equal representation. As much as I hate to admit it, the trend seems to be in line with what my friend complained about. Women seemed to be writing about a narrow set of topics. This sample is interesting to me, because I presume that many of us would have got similar education compared to our male counterparts and yet we seem to be comfortable in a limited knowledge space. This includes me.

I don’t mean to say that what we write about has no value. As you might have noticed, very few men write about gender/women issues. So, if we don t talk about it, who will? In fact, I was a little uncomfortable with a tag named against gender stereotypes, especially when some posts displayed a tone which looked down on women who loved make up, fashion or the colour pink. At the same time, the tag also brought out that in many homes, women were more interested in financial investments than their male partners unlike what was usually believed. I don t think that all women should turn into men. If most women like some things and like to write or talk about it, there is nothing to be embarrassed about. I will continue to write personal reflections in my blog and I am proud that I have the ability to express my emotions unlike many of my male friends. And yes we do need to talk about our issues.

However, I would be a little concerned if our topics of interest are narrow, because it would mean that our world view is limited. My own personal experience with respect to my interest areas and topics of discussions, in my blog and in person, is quite close to this trend. When I spend time with my girl friends, we tend to discuss our personal lives more often than anything else although, I have to admit, talking to my friends is a stress buster. Politics takes very little time in our discussions. Technology is a utility mechanism and we talk about it, to perform a function. We do talk about movies, although, many of us write less about it. Of course, I dont talk much about sports but I am equally crazy about few of the sports as much as my male friends might be. We do talk a lot about women issues, mostly because our own personal lives are manifestations of those issues. I do follow a few articles on politics, sports and technology but you do get what I mean, right? I am not passionate enough to follow the intricacies of those issues, is the point..