I had a analogy moment today. I’ve been talking to more people who don’t identify as bloggers but who self-proclaimed bloggers label as bloggers because the activities are seen as the same. I’ve heard this rhetoric before. From dykes and lesbians.<\/p>\n
A lot of dykes engage in activities that lesbians would recognize. Lesbians call dykes lesbians and dykes rebel against that label. Lesbians roll their eyes at the dykes, failing to understand what difference the dykes feel.<\/p>\n
The difference is that identity labels are not simply based on activity. Identity labels are a way of self-identifying with a culture, a set of practices, and a set of values. Even when dykes and lesbians engage in the same practices, the dykes don’t see themselves as part of lesbian culture or embodying lesbian values. Part of this has to do with gender identity; part of this has to do with politics. And of course, the boundaries are not so cleanly rigid. Some people identify as both dykes and lesbians, depending on what fits at that moment for them. But there are also quite a few on extreme ends (see Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival).<\/p>\n
One assumption about dykes and lesbians is that they just sleep with women. What about tranny boys\/bois? Or what about the various self-identified dykes who have sex with bio boys… but whose only sex practice is anal sex where the girl penetrates the boy with a strap-on? It’s not exactly “straight” as most people would recognize…<\/p>\n
So, how does this translate to blogging\/journaling?<\/p>\n
We have a tendency to label people based on their activities. Yet, identity is self-prescribed. Outsiders can certainly label people based on behavior, but to engulf them into their identity simply because of shared practice is dangerous for all. It means that the two groups who might otherwise share a commonality have a repulsion because one feels oppressed or devalued because the other has tried to enforce a foreign label onto them.<\/p>\n
What are the implications for bloggers\/blog tool creators to see people who identify as journalers and try to enforce that label on them? How does this affect tool design, community understanding and cultural development? Although i’m only just beginning my interviews, i’m already fascinated by the subtle differences in what people identify as valuable. Both groups talk about community, but the kinds of support and the relationship between the community and the text seems to be different. More motivation for interesting work.<\/p>\n
PS: If you’re going to be at SXSW and would love to do an interview and you identify in this spectrum, let me know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a analogy moment today. I’ve been talking to more people who don’t identify as bloggers but who self-proclaimed bloggers label as bloggers because the activities are seen as the same. I’ve heard this rhetoric before. From dykes and lesbians. A lot of dykes engage in activities that lesbians would recognize. Lesbians call dykes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}