6.9.09

My two-penn'orth on the Biblioblogs 'hoo-haa'

I call it a 'hoo-haa' because I do not think it is a controversy and I think I am fairly convinced that it is also nothing deliberate on men's part.
So there is a top 50 Biblioblogs.
There is a site tracking and awarding Biblioblogs and this site seems quite high profile, has a lovely little badge you can place on your site and have just become affiliated with SBL.

Allegedly people are a bit suspicious as to the lack of women there.

I think that there are a variety of reasons for this:

Perhaps there are less women in the field of Biblical scholarly research who have also secured professorships in academic institutions. I remember reading about the sacking of one woman from a theological college early in the life of this blog and we lost Elaine Storkey from Wycliffe, remember. (90% of my lecturers are men.) Perhaps women feel that they need to hold a recognised standing in the world before putting their biblioblog forward for analysis. This is rather sad, if it's the case. We should be less focused on worldly authority and more in search of Spirit-inspired truth.


If the above is not the case, I wonder if women feel under more pressure to prove that they are the all-rounded creatures which they feel Bible-believing men want them to be. This could be a case of both the genders misreading each other but I know, at times, I have sometimes felt a little guilty for the lack of details on this blog about my children, family life and any other hobbies I might have. This blog is about the Church and the Bible and rarely is it about the other aspects of my life. That's just the way I like it and as regards hobbies, yes, a little sad, but this is the thing about which I am most passionate so quilting, biking, baking, gardening, building small wooden replicas of interesting buildings, well, things like that might interest me for a week or so but that's about it, so they would never be topic for a blog, so well - I just ain't well-rounded! The more well-rounded bloggers perhaps fail to get considered by Biblioblogs because you have to trawl through lots of reflections before you find the teaching and bible exploration and I suspect more of the 'well-rounded' blogs belong to women because we want to be perceived to 'have a life'.


Are women more modest by nature or nurture? Yiex, I don't normally go in for this sort of thinking, but isn't there a lot of implicit teaching in the world and religion that women are to support their men, you know the whole 'behind every good man there's a woman thing', but notice, she's behind. What I am really trying to say, is that perhaps not so many of us (women) are competitive, seeking recognition. Now I am not decrying Biblioblogs top 50 and all other ranking engines. At the end of the day these Christian blogs seek to edify the Church and glorify God, but, come on, I can admit it, it's great when you know you are being read, when you get to have those conversations and some of this must be muddled up with that human entity- the ego - that thing, that at times, can have a life of its own and is very hard to tame. Are men more at liberty, due to social conditioning to express this side of themselves? I don't mind admitting I am competitive by nature. Perhaps though, there are less women inclined to email Biblioblogs to ask them to look at their blog.


So, just a few thoughts, probably need developing and refining and ultimately, of course, yes, I am hoping that more women will make it into the Biblioblogs top 50.

Dave Ker at Lingamish suggests that us 'female biblioblogger types' should display this rather fetching mash-up of Zwingli on our blogs, emmm, what do you think? Any other ideas for a badge?
(Lots of links to the hoo-haa here)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Two penn'orth' is a contraction of 'two pennyworth', so 'twopenneth worth' is both spelled incorrectly and has an extra 'worth' at the end that it doesn't need. Hope this helps.
It isn't true in this case, but usually, in my experience, when people offer what they call their two pennorth (or, as I heard one not very bright person say, his 'tuppence worth' HUH!) it isn't worth tuppence.

Rev R Marszalek said...

Thank you for the correction - just proves you're never too old to learn - I will amend accordingly.

Yes, there was a degree of irony in the title.

Anonymous said...

A good example of the pedantry of some bibliobilioblogging (the first comment that is).

Rev R Marszalek said...

Absolutely ! ;-)

Doug Chaplin said...

I have to say I did read the sacking of Elaine Storkey as sexist, but also because she was seen as a too powerful representative of a kind of evangelicalism that was disliked by the new principal, and as a powerful woman, more widely known and read than said principal, was perceived as a very particular threat. Of course, that assessment is very much from the outside, but It was how I thought it looked at the time.

Anonymous said...

May I remind the anonymous poster that Rachel is a pedant by profession, and that it is a noble calling?

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