For the Love of Women Bloggers

Originally published at Towards Harmony on Friday, April 15, 2011

Photo by Ed Yourdon

Women's Voices!

(Prathm blogs from Ahmedabad India)

I have been wanting to write about this for a long time, but never was able to structure my writing enough. Now I am going ahead for fear of never writing about this because of not being able to structure my thoughts.

I am an ardent fan of TED and I believe in the new age, with alternate forms of media and mass communication such as TED, blogs and YouTube. If you look at my blog list you will see that there are many blogs with names indicating feminist viewpoints.

I thought the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women was an incredible initiative. When I saw Courtney Martin's Reinventing Feminism I discovered a world of such initiatives (check out my blog roll). Martin is one of the editors of the blog Feministing ; a blog for feminist writers and activists.

I know many people think feminists are men bashers, but hey-- there are many women out there who need bashing too.  Look at Sarah Palin advocating against abortion and contraceptives and preaching abstinence and our own Poonam Pandey offering to strip for the Indian cricket team. (Just Kidding!)

So its not about bashing, its about bringing an inclusive perspective to things- - policies and constitutions that include not only women but people of colour, different religions and origins as Martin rightly says in her TED talk.

In spite of how much the world has changed for women, we still live in a society which has pretty stereotypical images of women and men. Media, movies and advertising propagate a misogynistic view of things. Anita Sarkeesian has an interesting video blog called Feminist Frequency where she analyses and criticizes pop and media culture that stereotypes and objectifies women. 

A special thought here for my Women's Writing teacher in St.Francis - Secunderabad who inspired us to analyse Indian media for female stereotyping 10 years back.

Indian media, Bollywood and advertising objectify women everyday. Women are eye candy on Axe ads, they are offering sex to men with phones, waiting patiently at alters while their grooms are driving their favourite cars and so on. The image of women that Bollywood throws at us everyday is repulsive, scantily clad damsels in distress ready to jump into the arms of the MAN.

Anyway what I wanted to say was that women writing about media, public policies, movies, as well as their lives and challenges is important.  It's necessary to see their perspective and this perspective is essential for the world to develop a gender sensitive society and Internet blogs and videos are an excellent medium. 

So Women writers around me, you inspire me everyday. Write away! Hurray to women blogging!