A while back I wrote a post that started to explain what it is like to be a male blogger in a world that seems to only want women bloggers. The title of the posts was “Relative Relevance, and Reality.”
Yes. Alliteration. I like it a lot.
I won’t bore you with the number of women bloggers out there. And I won’t insult my male readers further by recounting what google spits out when you search for male bloggers.
It is interestingly confusing. The reason that I am taking this on again is that this last weekend there was a blogging conference in San Diego called, “BlogHer.” And even though this conference allows men to attend, the majority of the panel speakers are women. And the majority of the sponsors look toward women as their demographic. And that is fine. But lets go back to men bloggers again, just for shits and giggles.
I entered this into google search….”male blogging conference.” The first item to appear is a list of blogging conferences for 2014. None of them are specifically for men. The very next item is a post about the BlogHer conference that was just held in San Diego. The third item is a blog that basically says the all male conferences are horrible because they perpetuate a negative stereotype.
Now that last statement is both a problem for me, and it is something that I can understand. I am a man. I know that men can be stupid, make stupid statements, and look like idiots. I also know that women can do the same thing.
Maybe I am just being pissy about having to attend a blogging conference called “BlogHer” if I want to learn more about building my audience and making some money off of this collection of words. I know that I am sick and tired of the way Madison Avenue continues to portray men in their commercials as mindless saps who would die without women to take care of them. And I am tired of the whole concept of “Feminism.” It is about time that we worry about treating people, be they male or female, the way that they deserve to be treated…with dignity and respect.
The unfortunate thing is that my only resources as long as I don’t write about technology, food, alcohol, cars, and the like are conferences similar to BlogHer. Way too many male bloggers have commented that to get a bunch of guys into a conference room would result in some sort of competition as opposed to learning and cooperation. Which continues to perpetuate that stereotype of men as chest thumping simians.
And brings me once again back to my concern as to where my resources are. So far I have progressed fairly well by gleaning info from the interwebs. But, man…..it would be so much easier to be able to pick the brains of a group of bloggers at one time.
Or maybe the demographics don’t lie.