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Women shouldn't blog because.....

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

Monday, a male agent in my office forwarded me some links to coverage of the Kathy Sierra story. For those who don't know tech blogger Kathy Sierra, she's shuttered a successful blog, Creating Passionate Users because of harassment and death threats. I've read Sierra's blog since last fall, although some of it is waaaay over my head. I hope Sierra will be back blogging soon.

In March Sierra wrote: Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech" The disturbing photos that were posted originally have been removed but there is language....

The agent in my office forwarded some links about the death threats to our manager. Tom (Active Rain member...Tom's never blogged.. that's OK...)in hopes he would forward the information to the agents who blog in our office. Tom did not respond, so the agent forwarded the links about Kathy Sierra receiving death threats to me. The agent wrote to our manager:

"This incidence just points out that women are a vulnerable in a sense on the web as they are in open houses, showing houses etc.

You might want to make this information available for the office because I know you have some blogger agents."

My first reply to the agent in my office was an Active Rain Invitation! Join Active Rain has become my pat answer to all inquiries about blogging.

In an email exchange about blogging I wonder if the male agent in my office is trying to discourage blogging, and the two people blogging in our office just happen to be women, Elaine Reese and me. He's a Kathy Sierra fan, he's read her books, I'm a Kathy Sierra fan, I read her blog.

Does "women are a vulnerable in a sense on the web as they are in open houses, showing houses etc."mean blogging's not safe for women?

I am a real estate agent, but it's not safe for me to blog, it's not safe for me to do open houses, it's not safe for me to show homes? It is safe to sit in the office, answer the phone, and type up the listings? Only men should blog, only men should do open houses and only men should show homes?

Yes bad people occasionally do bad things at open houses. Yes bad people have done bad things on showings. Agents of both sexes have to be careful in conducting business. Yes there are creeps that read blogs.

I remember in the early 90's we started putting personal photos in our newspaper ads at Coldwell Banker and some of us got obscene voice mails. Women shouldn't have real estate ads with personal photos because there are sickos out there with telephones?

What about a traditional website? A static site is OK for a woman but a blog is not? Why? I remember being creeped out by my picture being on my website when I first got a real estate website. Wait... not a great example....that picture was really creepy.... clients would write and call to tell me what a horrible photo it was.

Did Joseph Ferrera and Rudolph Bachraty of Sellsius° Blog encourage unsafe behavior when they encouraged women in our industry to blog? Sellsius Blog's Top Ten Women Real Estate Bloggers post, from August 2006, encourages women real estate agents to blog. Does BlogHer.com with their tagline "where the women bloggers are" encourage unsafe behavior?

Is Real Living encouraging unsafe behavior by asking, us it's agents to blog? Elaine Reese got two listings from blogging recently. Elaine should stop blogging because women are vulnerable? Elaine shouldn't show the properties because it is unsafe for women to show homes? ....because there are some creepy men (and probably creepy women) out there?

What would Active Rain look like without women bloggers? As much as we joke about blogging and especially Active Rain being an addiction, I could stop if the surgeon general said blogging was harmful, but short of that, I'm not stopping any time soon.

Why discourage something because there could be bad? Encourage good behavior. Discourage bad behavior. If you read deep enough into the Kathy Sierra thing a lot of people could have said "stop it" to people who were behaving very badly, for a long time. Other bloggers were complicit in encouraging bad behavior, bullying and harassment. Death threats aren't protected as free speech. One of the websites that was set up by some of the tech bloggers was called MeanKids.org The MeanKids.org site got out of control. That site and another have ceased to exist because of bad behavior.

I love the blurb just before you leave a comments on Creating Passionate Users:

"We LOVE to hear from you, and we think of this blog as a big dinner party. Y'all are our invited guests, but if you're being rude and obnoxious we'll let the bouncer toss you. So please, stick to debating and criticizing ideas rather than personal attacks. Also, if you don't see your comment right away, it means we've turned on moderation to fight the evil spammers. It'll show up soon."

Other blogs about the whole episode:

There are a few of us on Active Rain who are Kathy Sierra fans. Active Rainer Rhonda Ruthman wrote about the death threats - Active Rain Members Only.

There have been two entries on Kathy Sierra's blog since the death threats....

April 4, 2007- about the death threat blog being moved so it is not so prominent

April 6, 2007 - old favorites and Sierra writes about whether she will blog again

Tim O'Reilly calls for a Bloggers' Code of Conduct beause of the death threats

Tim O'Reilly's observation about reaction to a Bloggers' Code of Conduct

Greg Swan of the Bloodhound Blog about the brouhaha and the call for a Bloggers' Code of Conduct

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Edit - The sequel to Women shouldn't blog because... Misogyny or Blogsogyny? There is more to the story of why blogging should NOT be encouraged.

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The illustration above is A Private View by Frith from Wikipedia. It is not a copyrighted image, it is in the public domain according to Wikipedia.

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Posted by Maureen McCabe Central OH Homes on 04/18/2007 10:34 AM

Comments (56)

blogs, blogosphere, activerain, blogging, technology

56 Comments on Women shouldn't blog because.....

APR

2007

Mary McKnight was chased away from AR by some creep sending threatening emails. I even heard of a lady who was e-stalked after her email address was gotten from forwarded joke emails. Don't disregard the strange ones.

This is outrageous, Maureen. Have the police followed up with these death threats? Can't these types of e-mails be traced? The perpetrators should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, in my opinion.

I agree that discouraging women from blogging is preposterous. This is the 21st Century, isn't it?

I don't think any of these creeps will be messing with TLW anytime soon, do you? ;-)

Greg: I am not disregarding it. I was on Active Rain through the whole Mary McKnight thing. I read about the Kathy Sierra death threats the day she posted it on her blog in March and have never doubted it happened. The story takes some twists and turns and I don't believe they know who did it to the point of prosecution but I still believe women should blog.

If creeps scare away the good bloggers with their malicious fun and games and creeps can shut down a great blog like Creating Passionate Users, thats a problem.

Stefan: I think if you read the blog on Creating Passionate Users, the police have been involved for a long time. The threats were not made via email, but were posted on blogs. Some on her Creating Passionate Users blog, many on the two sites which have ceased to exist. It is a crazy convoluted story. I think the one that is posted in the Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech" was on her blog, but I read all this such a long time ago I could be mistaken, maybe it is from another blog. Something left on her blog she should have a URL I believe to hand over to the police. Something on the other blogs, she had to rely on the bloggers who set them up to provide the info to the police and the two blogs were taken down. One because it got out of hand, I think the second because the "$hit hit the fan" when the police got involved and the story became public. Or maybe it was already taken down because of what was being posted.

We all have to be careful how we present ourselves on line. Man or woman! There are crazy people out there everywhere. We can ignore who we need to and report who we need to. Is that 100%? No, probably not but NOTHING is.

Blog consciously, paying attention to who you are attracting. You have to "find your voice" when blogging. You may need a different voice or slant.

Maureen,

Wow, what a great topic. Thank you for bringing this up. "Women shouldn't ________ ." That's just lousy thinking. Do I think blogging is a different experience for women? Yes I think it probably. Blogging isn't for everyone, however we cannot generalize in such a way as to say women shouldn't blog. OF COURSE THEY SHOULD! I don't like to think of all I'd be missing out on if I didn't have you, and all the other women here to learn from.

I'll do my best to help protect and make this a safe place for all members.

Thanks again Maureen.

As we've talked on the side, I'm just so amazed what personal info people put in their posts. As I've posted before, people that put photos of their children in posts just scares the daylights out of me. While anyone can really track us down, via the internet, I "try" to remain somewhat obscure. That's why I wouldn't want any magnet signs on my car identifying me, as I could be followed home. Then Sargent Murphy would have to protect me! ;-)

We have to remember that we are very vulnerable to the sickos - online or in person!

Are we still allowed to vote? There are "creeps" everywhere and they will find you even if you're sitting in your basement behind barred windows if they want to. Always, always be careful, no matter what you are doing! Women should always be aware of their surroundings no matter what they are doing, but should never have to stop doing anything for fear of "creeps"!

Maureen - based on my own experience there are a lot of things that are not always safe for women and blogging is one of them. I have no intention of stopping any time soon. While I have not received death threats I have received some unwanted a attention by persons that were not interested in my most excellent real estate services. I would suggest that taking a walk is more dangerous fro women than it is for men but I won't stop walking either. I almost couldn't write another blog post after something that happened to me. Interestingly enough it was some men that said the right things at the right time and got me going again.

This is not the safest business for anyone, male or female. However, you can't hide just because it's possible that bad things might happen. I used to be a bank teller. My branch was robbed three times in one year. In one robbery, the guy jumped the over counter with a gun and robbed each of us, then turned and fired the gun in our general direction on the way out the door. The bullet went in the wall beside me. I was at work the next day. I had to make myself go in, but I did it.

I've been in other bad situations, I think we all have. In each one, you can give up and hide or you can keep going and have a nice life. I like what I do. I'm not going to hide because there are weirdos out there. I see it as a form of terrorism when people try to scare you away from a job you like. Sure, we should be aware, we should pay attention and we should watch out for each other. But I like my job and I like my blog. I'll proudly keep blogging right along beside you.

<Me, stepping off soap box.> :o)

The thought of some sicko reading my blog has crossed my mind. I'd love to share more about my kids and other things but then I envision a psycho sitting there and taking notes. It's sad that a few blogging terrorists can cause so much fear.

Thanks everyone for the comments. I need to run take photos but I will be back. I do want to say, I am not calling the agent in our office a male chauvinist... I consider him a friend. I will admit I was angry at him for trying to discourage blogging by trying to get Tom to scare us.

I don't think he really believes women shouldn't do everything. His wife and daughter are out there in the world I don't think he tries to cramp their style. I just think the tale of Kathy Sierra was an opportunity to discourage blogging in our office. I don't think he likes blogs but that is a whole nuther story and maybe I am wrong.

The episode with Kathy Sierra is different than any of us is ever going to experience too because she is a female blogger in the tech world. They have been blogging a lot longer than we have and it is different. She is an A List blogger for the whole entire blogosphere... it is a different league.

No matter where you go, who you meet, there will always be some nut case out there trying to put a damper on things. And when someone doesn't like something someone else is blogging about or anything for that matter and tries to threaten or scare by using intimidation....then the person has some serious control issues....

Good story....good writing....

This is all really interesting and pretty terrible. I *think* I saw a story about this on the local news recently. If not, it was something similar. But I am pretty sure this was it.

Just this morning I updated my profile a bit and added a photo of my family enjoying living in Colorado. For now, I just deleted the photo as I want to give it more thought. I don't think anyone should not blog in the same fashion that they shouldn't stop doing anything they enjoy. But I guess we do need to be smart about it, whether we are men or women and make sure we make good decisions about what we want to express & show.

It is very important to have openness and honesty in your blogging. But at the same time you must use care, care for yourself as you would in any public environment. Blogging is VERY public.

While we must take care, and a have respect for the public and somewhat anonymous nature of the medium we should not be discouraged.

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On an off-topic note: Tim lost your marbles? ;)

Maureen, I remember reading the post from Kathy Sierra way back when. I don't remember how I found it, but it was in someone's real estate blog.

I think sometimes you have to sit down and have a conversation with yourself (that's a general you, not a Maureen you) and decide if you want to allow someone else to rule over your life decisions. Do we not go to college because some nutcase in Virginia went on a shooting spree? Do we stop driving because there are drunks on the road? Do we stop having open houses because there might be someone with bad intentions coming to the open house?

I firmly believe we each are in control of our own future. If we operate from fear, our future will be fearful. If we operate from our strengths, our future will be strong. If you let one nutcase make you cower in fear, the nutcase wins.

Geesh, I'm getting way to philosophical today

To take what I said one step further, for those of us that do have young kids - my oldest is wanting to be online more & more and I am sure its only a matter of time (I still have a few years but its coming....) before he will be setting up profiles for this & that. I guess its just a good idea to set a good example now and learn as much as I can about on-line communities so that when the time comes I can lead by example & show him how to do it properly & as safely as possible.

Maureen, this is one of the things Greg and I discussed during one of our brief phone conversations. It didn't cross my mind until Greg's post about the situation on Bloodhound, and he did strongly suggest that I keep comments moderated to keep pyschotic types from posting on my blog, but anything can be posted anywhere...

>"We LOVE to hear from you, and we think of this blog as a big dinner party. Y'all are our invited guests, but if you're being rude and obnoxious we'll let the bouncer toss you.

On my blog's About page (which is acting up right now) I have something very similar. I'm hoping I won't have to deal with this, but I think you bring up a very significant point that it's up to everyone to cry foul at the first sign of anti-social behavior. We are not in school, we are adults, we do have the option to help other bloggers out by "bouncing" bad behavior.

It's unbelieveable sometimes the things that people will do when they can hide behind the Internet. Our support team has to deal with reports of harrassment from both sexes here on ActiveRain. It's truly sad how often this type of thing happens on the Internet.

I was wondering what happen to Mary Mcknight....she was awesome. To bad to hear that though. I can tell you first hand that I've had my fair share of creeps. But ultimatly I think a lot of them do it just to be funny...I never hear from them again. Its the ones that keep at it that you really need to worry about. And i've had those too, never respond to them, and keep a paper trail on every creepy email, call or blog comment. You never know when you may need to call the police. But, dont let it scare you away from your career.

As a women, I understand that it can be more dangerous for us out their, that open houses are just a calling card saying that your alone in an empty house. HOWEVER, I also beleive in the righ to bear arms and protect myself.

Maureen,

It is sad that having some sort of celebrity (even just being an A-list Blogger) seems to bring out the weirdos.

I have a dear friend who managed a real estate office years ago across the street from Arthur J. Shawcross's residence. She used to say hello to him on a regular basis. Thank heaven he never took an interest in her.

In general, whether you are a male or female, getting the wrong person all "twitter-pated" could be disastrous.

Great post. (....whew! wiping away anticipation perspiration.) Thanks for the honorable mention! ;)

Best wishes and continued success!

Rhonda

I think that when dealing with the public in any profession, you must use your instincts and acknowledge any "red flag" that might arise during any given situation. A good friend of mine says ... "never rationalize away a red flag".... I think you can apply that to this and any other situation where the potential is there for a problem.

Fred beat me to the punch - do we stop going to college? stop driving? Yes, we need to be cautious and prudent in every aspect of our lives, but not stop living.

Philosophical Phred and Sharon: My manager brought up sending kids to college yesterday morning when we were talking about what the warning about the dangers of blogging should mean to us. I like 'but not stop living."

Desiree: The red flags and the funny queasy feeling in the pits of our stomachs need to be paid attention to.

Rhonda: I never heard of Shawcross. Ick.

Rhonda's also got another great entry about Sierra's blog on her Active Rain Blog, The Brain Attraction, about Negative People. Back when this all started lots of blogs I read about the Sierra thing initially said Sierra pi$$ed off a lot of bloggers by being a happy, positive, sunshiney blogger...

Liz: Yep that's what happened to Mary McKnight, she is missed on Active Rain.

Matt & Caleb: I don't envy the Rain gods.

Teri: I don't want to moderate comments on my other blogs. I can't here... and I get so much more here when I blog...and really just a smidge are psycho. On my other blogs I will just keep my anti-psycho force field up for now.

Steve: You' re going to be way ahead of a lot of your kid's friends parents because of your exposure to online community. It is amazing how much kids will disclose to strangers. You may have seen it on the news, Kathy Sierra lives somewhere in Colorado, and it was on CNN two weeks ago... local or regional news may have picked up the story.

Sally: There will be nuts everywhere... thanks for the comment

Sarah on the soapbox: Wow regarding the bank robberies... it gives you an interesting perspective we don't all have about fears.

Teresa: I remember you receiving attention from a couple of nuts, now that I think about it.... It can be unnerving

Tim: Nice signature line... I thought you changed it for this blog about nuts but it's just a coincidence.

Karen: When I was fuming about this yesterday, I wanted a picture of a suffragette... or I was trying to think of other things women were not supposed to be able to do at one time or another but I could not find anything in an image to illustrate it.

Elaine: I hate to think people can't be proud and show off their kids but you are right there are lots of weirdos out there.

Virginia: I think when you get to the level of Kathy Sierra no matter what your voice is, the nuts are going to be attracted. It is high profile.

Hope I did not miss anyone. Thanks all for the comments. There was an update on the Sierra story on Wired.com on Monday. Still a lot of unanswered questions and contoversy but she does know the identity of one of the people and is not threatened (scared) by it as she was before:

"Another post, which included an image of a noose, was made by a meankids.org contributor who later acknowledged authorship of that post to Sierra. Sierra acknowledged this poster's explanation and no longer considers the poster a physical threat. The contributor, who has asked not to be identified, confirmed this version of events."

Maureen,

Just keep on blogging. There are weirdos everywhere, Internet, streets, malls, ball games, you name it. That's the society. We do have to deal with them as they come using our best judgment and then go on with our lives. And blog some more.

Wow...I Have not `heard about any of this! Gives me the creeps because I post pics of my kids and my grandson.

I need to go through your links and figure this story out.

Maureen - we cannot live in fear, that's the bottom line. A few months ago I receive a scary phone call from some man saying he could see me inside my home and had nude photos of me that could be a potential embarrassment if they were to turn up in one of our listings. The guy tried to blackmail me and I hung up, had the call traced and called the police. Although I was really disturbed at the time I can now look back and laugh....my own mother even said that those photos would be good for business (can you believe that??) - she was trying to make me feel better.

There are sick people out there and we need to continue our lives - we do need to look behind us and pay attention to our surroundings, but NEVER live in fear.

APR

2007

We live in an open world. If you own property, anyone can know where you live (unless you are clever about the way you hold title). If you're in real estate, folks will know you're cell number, email address etc. There is a degree to which you have a LOSS of privacy by choosing an arena in which you wish to be recognized and found.

It's important to be safe when you interact with the public, whether online, at an open house, showing a vacant home, etc.

Be smart. But don't cave in to the fearmongers!

Esko:with three blogs Iam not going to stop blogging. I had not mentioned the whole Kathy Sierra thing i to Elaine (works in my office) until Saturday because it is such a bizarre story and I don't want to discourage blogging. Or scare anyone. It's freaky our co-worker was trying to get our manager to forward it to us at the same time. I followed it from the beginning but had not read anything new in awhile. It has actually gotten boring

Monika: Concern about kids photos on the web, at what age is it safe then? When they do a MySpace page? I think not posting childrens photos (innocent, proud Grandma or proud parents photos) borders on an irrational fear. I always think of Michael Jackson's kids walking around wearing veils... not just in photos but in real life. He is or was in the spotlight. I can imagine not wanting the kids to be identifiable... but??? It makes me think of women in birkahs (not sure if that is spelled right) because of men's evil thoughts. Spell check does not know if I spelled that word right... middle eastern garment that covers a woman head to toe.

Inez:Why did CSI Miami, Miami Vice and every other cop show set in South Florida suddenly come to mind, reading your story! What an experience! One of a kind. Were the police able to locate the crackpot?

Mary Pope-Handy: fearmongers nice word!

Maureen, your post made me think long and hard. I've been thinking along these lines for a while now. I have always thought that a sicko can be met anywhere, at the local library, the post office or the internet. Because of this, I will not stop blogging but I try to be careful, as I am in "real life." I have never mentioned my kids' names in my blog nor put their pictures up. I have wanted to blog about the great programs going on at their schools, but that would mean I'd have to give the school names out. I'm not comfortable with putting that much information so readily into the hands of someone who may want to use it with bad intentions. I'm still up in the air about leaving my picture on my advertising. Some of you may remember I was a "mango" for a few weeks. I was scared then. I had gotten a phonecall that didn't sit well with me. I had to work through my fear and feel comfortable putting my picture back. But I removed it from my website that same day and have not put it back. I may remove it all together from everywhere. If one phonecall scared me like that, I cannot imagine the emotions Kathy was/is feeling. Technology has made it all to easy for bullies to hide really well as they continue their bullying full force. It's very sad.

Maureen - the whole experience was very surreal, the problem was that I hung up on him before he was able to give me the monetary blackmail information. They did find the person registered to the number but it seems there is a system where you can use someone's number to appear in caller id's and traces (very CSI Miami) - so charges would not stick. I'm sure the perpetrator got a good scare and hope he will stop doing that to other innocent women.

Maggie: I don't like my picture on advertising. I don't use a personal photo on either of my two real blogs. Part of my reason for not liking a photo on advertising is the old 1990's real estate ads all about the real estate agent not about the real estate... is not my cup of tea. Most of my comapnies advertising is set up to use a personal photo unfortunately.

I do not let my photo show up as online on Active Rain. A bunch of us did a thing with a purple question mark rather than our photos one weekend.... I think that was when we could not turn off that we were online for a real short time. Maureen Francis had a post about it... Kristal has that purple question mark on her outside of Active Rain blog right now...on an entry I recognized it. B4 Maureen Francis introduced the purple question mark I was using my photo of Columbus for my photo here for a short time. At first the MyBlogLog.com photos a lot of us have on our blog creeped me out. I have gotten used to that... kinda. I like to see peoples face on Active Rain, the people who use a logo rather than a photo I don't feel like I bond with them... but I am tempted to not have my photo on Actve Rain.

The Kathy Sierra thing is so convoluted, it will take anyone who cares to read about it a long time to digest. Some of it is pretty sensationalistic. I did not share it to scare anyone. I don't think she shared it to scare women away from blogging.

Sometimes it is better for us not to share some of the mischief that goes on via the internet, because a reaction is part of what the mischief makers are looking for. It's their payoff.

Hi Maureen - I had read some posts about what happened to Sierra quite awhile back, and I saw some of the pictures you mentioned that have since been taken down. It creeped me out when I read it back then, and it still does, even though she does now know who one of those nuts is.

Men are just as vulnerable in this business, and in life, as women are. We've all read about and/or heard about various attacks, attempted attacks, murders, etc. done to both men and women in this business, so I would think all the advice about precautions apply to all of us equally. I love what Fred wrote - we cannot be held prisoners by others' misdeeds, we must go on living our lives as best we can or what's the point?

Thanks for the update on Sierra, and I hope things really settle down for her sometime very soon.

Ann

Maureen your post is right on. We should not and cannot live in a constant state of fear over what might happen. Yes, the world is full of unpleasant people. Inthe wake of the school shootings, many people are on guard and frightened. Thank you for writing this!

Maureen - I read this quickly in a spare moment the other day but had to come back to read again. It is a sad day when women, or men for that matter, might consider not blogging because of the possible dangers. Of course one must be realistic, and realize that the Internet CAN be a dangerous place - plenty of stories about child predators, etc. To consider that women should not blog is, IMO, to consider that they should not teach, work incorporate jobs, deliver mail, drive buses, work as real estate agents, and so on and so on. But we all have to be mindful of our safety and do what we can to ensure we are not putting ourselves in danger whenever possible. Unfortunately there are the unknowns, and the Internet is a public place like no other, and the ability to be anonymous possibly encourages more threatening behavior.

Thank you for a very thoughtful blog, and for the insightful comments it inspires.

Jeff

Ines: It is amazing what technology has done to make prank phone calls and obscene phone calls something that is not as common, they don't have the anonymity that they once did. With caller ID, phone tracing, etc. mischief makers have to be more sophisticated than they used to.

Ann: The picture that was photo shopped disturbed me but somewhere there is a link to a Flickr page where a photographer had a series of staged photos and the photo of Sierra is a take off on one of them? I don't know about copyright issues with a personal photo. I don't think it is polite to use someone's photo to make fun of them, embarass them, blog about them negatively. I would be hesitant to blog about you and say nice things and use your photo without first asking your permission to use the photo...

I believe the image she knows who did it and is no longer frightened by it is the photo of the noose. When I saw the image of the noose, the first thing that came to my mind was CLUE Game, as in "it was Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the rope." Of course the noose has nothing to do with me, is not directed at me but the first time I read it I thought about the context of what was written wasn't there, it was not directed at me so it was not a scary image to me. The comments about throat slashing, hanging etc. when directed at you probably feel very different than reading what someone thought was satire. Supposedly that is what MeanKids.org was all about satire.

Allison and Jeff thanks for the comments and good observations.

I have every intention of adding blogging to our next safety presentation. It is a concern and I think all of us can use a reminder, now and then. Unfortunately, sometimes it provides an excuse for lack of activity and thereby deminishing probability of success. Fine line, isn't it. Great discussion! Good job!

This sort of reminds me when I was looking for my first job after obtaining my MBA way back when. I had several job offers in other parts of the country, but wanted to move to Kansas City. My husband's employer arranged me to talk with "Flo". Flo met me and "counseled" me that I should look for something where I could use my shorthand and typing skills because, "after all, you are a woman." I stood up, looked her in the eye, and said, "I've been a woman all my life and it's never held me back. I'm not going to let it start now. " (I am Woman, Hear Me Roar was my theme song in those days.) My husband was very proud of me and I found much more suitable employment. Many years later I was going through a bit of despair, and he came to me and said, "I want to hear your roar." God love him. Keep at it, Maureen. Perhaps TLW won't mind if a few others roar once in awhile. lea

Tom Tom Tom... you gotta sign in to get points. If you don't sign in I don't get points and I am only here for the points, or so they say. You could have had 20 points and I could have had two points. I got four points from Elaine Reese and Fred Pickard commenting here...

Wait Tom's not signed in so he won't read this. Tom Holcombe is the manager of our office... he's in charge of encouraging us to blog. I think Tom's comment about us talking about blog safety in the office is tongue in cheek. I invited the agent from our office to join Active Rain again today and told him I'd blogged about him and copied Tom on the email.

Lea: It is good that things have changed isn't it? I think the sentences I quoted from the male agent in my office were really just an attempt to discourage blogging more than anything about women but I was angry Monday and Tuesday for all women. I was up in arms.. I was roaring. The Helen Reddy song never crossed my mind though... strangely. Thanks for the memories.

Hey, the Helen Reddy song was my National Anthem back in the 70's - it gave me the courage to ditch my ex. I've been ROARING ever since! No offense to TLW.

I agree with your comment to Lea, in that the agent wasn't saying it to be anti-women. He's never given me any impression of being that type of person.

There are creeps out there. This is just one more venue for them to get off on.

If anyoe leaves ....the creep will still be there. So why leave? I don't believe in giving my power away to creeps!

APR

2007

Elaine: I emailed him that Tom was ready to blog and he'd scared Tom off from it...... or something like that. I hope he is not mad at me. I decided only to blog about the one statement in the one email that he wanted Tom to publicize

"This incidence just points out that women are a vulnerable in a sense on the web as they are in open houses, showing houses etc.

You might want to make this information available for the office because I know you have some blogger agents."

Not get into the stuff about blogs and search engines...that was private emails... and the issue is complex enough with just the Sierra story, safety, fear, women roaring...

We had fun with the Helen Reddy song when I was a kid.

Joan: if I may cross pollinate on Sarah Cooper's 'Do Not Fear' post (which came from this post) you wrote there:

"Fear and Intimidation seem to be "In" these days,Red alerts,bomb threats,terrorist attacks,Sars and on and on. This society is permeated with violence.

These are not what frighten me...it's societys acceptance of them as the norm!"

The MeanKids.org site were set up for "satire" I've read anarchy too... and both of the sites with a lot of the content were already down before the "$hit hit the fan" over Kathy Sierra but to me it sounds like the sites were used to terrorize at least one person by a gang. The gang carried keyboards rather than guns or knives but the acceptance of it or even a fragment of societies acceptance of it interests me and makes my skin crawl at the same time. It seems creeps had a lot of power on the two sites.

It makes one wonder if the biggest threat isn't from within!

APR

2007

Maureen,

You raised lots of things I honestly hadn't thought of before. Great post - thanks for sharing.

APR

2007

Joan: I always wondered about how creepy people find creepy people, when I read about certain crimes where people physically hurt others.

Cyndee: I read something after writing this about children blogging and it said parents should watch that their kids don't mention their school colors or school mascot? That would never have crossed my mind (I do not have kids.) I would bet lots of kids on social networking sites trade this info with other kids publicly without blinking an eye. Kids can't have school spirit?

SEP

2007

I can add a few more thoughts to this, after this time has passed.

In my market, Dayton, small beans blogging-wise, online is a guy world. Do other women feel that way? Conversations seem driven by men...Maybe I should post about this myself, but I'm really feeling lonely in Dayton for female blogging company....

Re/ MySpace. MySpace is for kids, and here's the cool thing that I see happening- First you educate your kids about who to talk to, then your kids get their real life friends to be on MySpace, and it becomes as insular a world as real teen life. They form groups that literally lock-out outsiders. If someone the 'group' doesn't know, becomes someone else's "friend" they ask, they demand, they go on teen witch hunts to find out who this person is. IOW, they protect each other from the creeps.

My philosophy with my daughter is 'strength in numbers', and when they are out they 'never leave a woman behind' which all her friends will quote as they jump, giggling, out of the car when I drop them off. It's the same on MySpace- it's a teen world and anyone not a teen is a creep, and anyone unfamiliar is weird and therefore not to be trusted, and they hold their real freinds accountable for their online behavior.

This is the healthy/ healthier use of MySpace. If a child is troubled, of course, MySpace is there waiting as well, but MySpace does not create troubled children. Media hype creates hype.

Me, sorry. Didn't log in. ;)

I saw the two comments and came running (figuatively) to see who the anonymous one was and what you had to say to them!

That's interesting about Dayton and probably true in most areas. Most Columbus blogging is men, lotsa football and sports. But there is Tina who does Green Buckeye in Columbus. A few of the food bloggers are women. Real estate blogging is probably equally men and women but the men seem less consistant than the women, other than Toby. There are lots of younger men doing the tech blogging thing, cartoon blogging thing in Columbus. Maybe younger women are more into MySpace, Live Journal social type stuff rather than having a lonely stand alone blog.

Someone wrote on ActiveRain about a study that showed something very similar to your observation with MySpace and kids. Most kids are not unsafe on MySpace, they don't need the attention. The troubled kids on MySpace are troubled kids off MySpace.com and they have a "creep magnet" sadly.

It was Mary Pope-Handy I believe now that I think it!

Blogging in Dayton is politics mostly, we have serious issues in Dayton, and it's all men that except there is a husband and wife team, but I think he posts more than she. It's lonely.

I didn't even consider the scarcity of female bloggers because I started here on AR, and I think AR is (I'm going to get in trouble here?) kinda a chick world- it's warm and fuzzy, compared to "out there".

But. I've joined a Dayton webloggers meet-up group (Meetup.com) and eventhough it's the same motley crew I know, perhaps another female will join?

I avoid politics usually. I know last fall when I was trying to find blogs about sports I found a lot of "Buckeye" blogs they were about politics. I assumed "Buckeye" meant football.

Carole and I played with the political issues last fall on our blogs (non AR) and I was surprised by how much interesting it really was. I beleive that is when Carole met Jill? A NE Ohio political blogger. Her blog is 'Writes like she talks" ???

I'm considering my options re/ politics. I think I'll jump into the fray, but only to post H Hts- keep it hyper-local and only to post press releases... I don't know. I can't pretend it doesn't exist, but I don't want a "Jane you ignorant slut" discussion going on. :)

And it's just going to attract guys. I'm posting family stuff like mad trying to intice a H Hts woman to comment. Geez. Easier to pull teeth.

Have I just hijacked your post? Sorry. ;)

Teri that... SNL line is a whole different post but the two are certainly related.... I think. I think the whole Kathy Sierra thing was about she needed to "stifle herself" as Archie Bunker would say to Edith.

I started asking what is H Hts? Huber Heights. Duh.

I guess I have not thought about attracting either or whether or not they comment... I get some comments. I have some regulars. I can see from the stats that someone is reading CBB but I can't tell their gender.

Don't worry about hijacking this old thing....

But you've brought up a great point with this post, and now that I've blogged awhile outside AR, I'm seeing different things about how males and females approach blogging. I do think, as Caleb said in his comment here, that it is a different experience.

I know H Hts women read my blog because they tell me, but for the most part they don't comment. It's a passive experience? They don't want to be heard? I don't know the answer.

I really should post about this I guess. Someday.

SEP

2007

Not sure how I missed this. "H Hts women"... you can be anonymous but I would know that voice anywhere, it's got BrickRanch written all over it!

I'd come to your blog to see if it is "frou frou" enough for women readers but I was ejected by your bouncer / wordpress guru last tme I mentioned the look of your blog.

:-) I just didnt' sign in, it's a bother, not trying to be anonymous.

It's frou frou, trust me. I purposely made the look more feminine than masculine, because 1) women buy houses and 2) my market is young families and single female HOH. My blog is targeted to women. And women read, they just don't comment.

Maureen, I don't know if you are joking or not. I hope and thought that was water under the bridge, but- FWIW, I recently emailed the person you are referring to and let him know that any more flamey stuff and he'd get bounced. He's promised to "try to be nice".

I am joking. It is water under the bridge but I do have to admit I think two, three, four times before leaving a comment on your blog.

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