Links Updating!

I notice a few blogs who have added me to their blog-roll. Thanks if that's you. I try to link back if your blog looks interesting but inevitably I miss some. So this is an open post - put your link up if you'd like to be in my blogroll and I'll have a look.

I Woz Ere Too

By the way - since every other blogger seems to have mentioned it: yes I was at the Guardian-sponsored liberal bloggers conference on Tuesday. I didn't take a camera so I've had to poach this image from Tory Troll (thanks!).

I am not sure I can identify all the people pictured but top row: Boriswatch, Cath Elliot & Georgina from The Guardian & Dave Cole, Me & The F-Word.
Middle row: Me & Tory Troll, Conference, Scribo Ergo Sum.
Bottom row: Holly Combe & me & ??, panel, ?? & Sadie Smith.

I generally enjoyed the chance to meet other bloggers. I wasn't so impressed with the insistence on having a second half dedicated to essentially "Why aren't women and feminist bloggers getting more recognition?". Speaking as someone who was featured on the Stephen Nolan show on BBC Five Live AGAIN this evening, is often on BBC radio and TV, has been asked to write articles for the BBC online, featured on Liberal Conspiracy, The F-Word and mentioned in the Evening Standard, The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times I worry that if feminists feel they aren't getting enough attention it may be because I'm hogging the limelight - sorry!

Of course there is always more that can be done and I'd certainly love it if more people linked to me and promoted my stuff. It just seemed that we set out saying "Why are women failing in this arena?" and I don't think we are. I think the blog-o-sphere has done wonders for the women's movement - it's encouraging people to speak out and get involved even where they live within entrenched misogynist communities. And it's giving people a voice who otherwise wouldn't get the chance to express themselves. And I meet loads of brilliant women bloggers online, and often later in person. I think it's the best thing to happen to feminism in a long time.

But instead because of the way the question had been posed I had guys barely old enough to grow facial hair coming up to me afterwards saying "You know one thing you could do to promote your blog is try to cover more non-women-specific topics, that might help. Also you could try asking bigger blogs to link to you and..." And I was thinking "Dude where's your blog with it's huge numbers of visitors? I'm actually pretty happy with the way my blog's doing. I'll cover the stories I damn well want to and if I want your advice I'll ask for it, now shove off and let me get to the free food."

Blog-Roll Deletion

I like to keep my links and so on as open as I can - keep as wide a range of people as reasonably possible involved in the debate and I've always linked to Mind The Gap Cardiff, thought it was a great site. Recently I've noticed a few things:

1) Only one author (Zenobia) is still writing there. Fine if it's good interesting stuff but...

2) Harsh criticism of the other feminist blogs - claiming they don't pay enough attention to racism and classism, which is odd considering they're a feminist blog, you could argue that to focus on anything other than women's issues is beyond their remit. One particular recent post criticises the F-Word for saying they have been "losing sleep" over allegations of homophobia. Surely if they had responded saying that such allegations "didn't bother them at all", that would be a lot more worrying. And also criticism of myself in the comments section over at Brown Femi Power blog - the main criticism apparently being that I went on holiday to Africa in 2005... I have responded on there, rather than going through it all again here.

3) No comments sections any more. This is particularly an issue for me on posts where others are harshly criticised. To attack others for not being open enough to debate and others views while having no comments on your own blog is just downright hypocritical.

So adios MTGC. If anyone out there wants to be added to the blogroll then just let me know - more the merrier, I always like to highlight interesting stuff.