Surfette

Mommyblogger? Princess? Single white female? Bitch?

Last week while I was away, Sweetney hosted (another) discussion of the term mommyblogger. Thanks to Elisa Camahort, I found it. The result, "Mommy+Blogging" is one of the best and most revealing discussions of stereotypes about moms-who-blog by moms and not-moms that I've enjoyed all year. Read it.

I've already weighed in on how I feel about the term mommyblogger for myself. And don't get me started about the other archetypes in the headline above. (Hey, I reserve the right to be all four of these characters. In the next hour.)

Instead, I want to address a larger question, one of self-determination. I wonder, would it be possible in 2006 for a bunch of bloggers to help each other turn the tides-o-soundbite-stereotypes? For me the question is how to do it--not why. Why is well documented and why is easy, given the ease with which new labels magically expand to shrink wrap and diminish great accomplishments, particularly those by women. My favorite case example is the term soccer mom, an interesting psychographic label for some American voters that was quickly abused and applied to virtually all women who vote. Never mind that women have been the voting majority in the U.S. since 1964, don't vote alike (duh) and many of us have never entered the ovarian olympics or demonstrated the voting pattern required to match the moniker.

These are the fingernails scraping my lexicon's chalkboard. Which leads me back to the question: How to stop the noise. The temptation is to respond in kind and play the sterotype game from the other angle. For example, I live in Silicon Valley. Give me a scene -- say, one Porsche Boxster, one cell phone, one single white male with an MBA and one side-part--and I'll give you 12 laugh-till-you-pee labels, depending upon my mood. A funny exercise. An easy exercise. And, ultimately, an empty exercise designed to inflame the problem.

The real answer is much less sexy and mucho harder. Particularly for a writer. I think the solution to counteracting labels that belittle women or that risk belittling any of us -- the elusive how -- is to give people the opportunity to define her or himself. In other words, shut up and ask first. Which requires listening. Label later, if you must, but only once you can do so with the full opinion of the label-ee.

That's what Sweetney appears to be doing. And by doing her own research, Sweetney has come up with some support for her own brilliant self definitions ("mutha blogga") and recruited new ones from her audience ("Awesometastic-kickassticblogger"). She's also given the mommybloggers (Jenn, Jenny and Meghan) a great forum in which to describe why they're embracing the term and working to take it back.

Not that it's easy. Read the dialogue closely and you'll see--this conversation ain't a group hug. This kind of hearty agreement-to-disagree is a beautiful and rare thing in online communities, particularly about emotionally charged identity issues. The blogosphere isn't exactly known for its civility in this quarter. As Jeneane Sessum (who knows a little something about women and blogging) recently wrote about what happens when this kind of dialogue isn't invited:

"So, if mommybloggers are cool with being called mommybloggers (i would say i am one sometimes, just like I'm a PR blogger sometimes, a tech blogger sometimes, a poetry blogger sometimes, and whatever else you want to call me save late for pizza), why does it piss so many women and men off?

"First, the very subject matter of children can ignite a firestorm among the bloggers--the SAHMs vs. the Working Moms vs. the Childless By Choice, vs. the Queen Mother. Everyone gets into the action and I've seen it escalate until someone takes down their blog or makes another kind of dramatic statement that says, you all suck!"

Jeneane's right. And, impressively, that isn't happening on Sweetney's blog. The women in this conversation are courteous and clear when they don't see eye to eye. And for me, the reader, I found it moved the conversation forward. I learned.

So now that I've watched the "how" in action, I'm prepared to call Sweetney whatever she wants. And better trained to ask other people too -- as well as demand I be asked in return.

Proud member of the mom-ocracy

Moms who blog were a huge part of my reward for BlogHer '05, from a barn-burner of a panel discussion to Finslippy's brilliant comment at the closing session. "These women, their writing, it's all irresistible," I told my own mother the next day. "But could I ever be that brave?"

The answer is: Sometimes. I recently took the plunge and tried on mommyblogging. The founders of Mommybloggers.com -- Jenn Satterwhite, Jenny Lauck and Meghan Townsend -- put me on the hot-seat, asking 20 questions and booking me to write this guest column.

Like good mothers do when they want an answer, they properly grilled me. That was the easy part. While I'm always happy to sound off about women and the media, I was particularly happy to be asked to go on the record about these two questions:

• What I think of the oft-dissed term "mommybloggers"

Mommybloggers: "Were you surprised at the venom towards mommyblogging as a genre [at BlogHer]? What about the disdain towards the term mommyblogger? What do you personally think of the term mommyblogger?"

Lisa: "Sadly, no, I was not surprised. Because I was the target of plenty of venom and disdain myself when I had the audacity to suggest a conference for women bloggers. Perhaps this disdain toward the word "mommy" is why so many women I know struggle ferociously with their identities when they become mothers. I mean, what kind of a reward is this -- we struggle through a pregnancy, survive birth (moment of silence please), embrace motherhood, which is the scariest and mind-blowing thing I've ever done, and we get put down for it? That's the root issue -- ambivalence over what "mommy" represents. Well, I love "mommy." Because to me it isn't a disembodied word anymore. It's who I am. It's carved in my heart. And in my stretchmarks. I just wish I could convince my nine-year-old to be less cool and call me "mommy" again every once in awhile..."

• What I think of mommyblogging as a business opportunity:

Mommybloggers: "Lately, the business world is sitting up and taking notice of moms who blog - marketing to moms isn't new, but is using mommybloggers to get the word out seems to be big right now. Do you see that as the new way to go in marketing or just fad? Do you think our opinions really influence?"

Lisa: "Yes ma'am! Mommybloggers are weaving some of the Web's best stories by and about women -- women who, let's not forget, control 80 percent of household spending. That's right, from the family car to the computer (you geeks, you) to the Legos (sigh) to the Pampers.

"Let's look at another medium as an example: Right now, the top revenue-generating news and entertainment shows on television are by moms for moms. Look at NBC's The Today Show starring Katie Couric: By a mom for moms, and the top-rated morning news show for ten straight years. How about Oprah, a daily conversation by the-mother-of-us-all for moms. There's ABC's The View, which is a coffee klatch of moms, mugs included. Don't forget ABC's Desperate Housewives, the made-up moms (take that any way you like). Hell, ABC's World News Tonight just put an anchormom, Elizabeth Vargas, in Peter Jennings' old chair, for heaven's sake!

"This is great news for mommybloggers because all these famous shows are in a money-making medium (television) where the numbers are dropping. Their problem is that us viewers now use the Internet more than we watch TV or read magazines. Instead of watching other people talk, we're getting our own word out. That used to mean message boards, the best place to hold online conversations. But now that we have our own personal printing presses -- blogs! -- better watch out. And the world is watching. This is why I've often thought that Dooce is more than a brilliant blogger. She's a metaphor for what's happening to the media and the value of what mommybloggers are writing--to advertisers as well as to readers. She's the Saturday keynote speaker at the SXSW conference. That says a great deal." (Read the rest of the interview.)

The scary part was writing a mommyblog of my own. Let's be clear: The mommybloggers who attended BlogHer include some of the best wits and writing in the blogging bidness. So I let someone else write it: My nine-year-old. Hey, why invent my own material, I told myself, when his is better. See what I mean? Here's an excerpt:

"....There's nothing like Mother Nature to bring a girl down a peg. A few days later, the flaws in my teaching moment were revealed, as so many things are, in the frozen food section of the local grocery. As I rounded the corner of one aisle, my son looked up at me from the front seat of the grocery cart where he had been playing with his seatbelt. "MOMMY?" he inquired, in that loud, piercing outside voice he favored those days. I scuse-me'd past the cart of an older man who was waist deep into the ice cream, his back to us. I was headed for the pie. ""Uh-huh baby?" I said as I opened the freezer to check out the goods. "SO YOU'RE SAYING THAT MEN HAVE A..." Read the rest.

Someday my son will either forgive me - or not. Meanwhile, it's nice to have a draft of the stories I can tell when I'm also part of the Grandma-ocracy. I'm beholden to the mommybloggers for making a home for it.

Happy holidays to you and yours. I won't post again on Surfette until the week of Dec. 26.

'Gilmore v. Gonzales': Of "secret laws" and showing your ID at the airport

As posted on Legal Blog Watch:

I'm now so paranoid about losing my ID on airplane trips that carrying my driver's license just doesn't cut it. I mean, what if I lost it? Hey, I've lost worse in World's Biggest Purse.

So I bring my passport. And a copy of my passport. And, just to be safe, a copy of my driver's license. But here's the part that makes me realize I've completely lost it: The copies are in plastic baggies. Separate ones. Just in case, somehow, a pool of water materializes in any airport I might visit, and said documents manage to escape World's Biggest Purse.

Perhaps this is why I am so impressed by John Gilmore's decision to put his many millions of dollars behind the question "why do we have to show ID?" Gilmore is now in his third year of litigating the federal requirement that commercial airplane travelers show ID before boarding planes (see Justin Scheck's story). Gilmore argues that this law is an invasion of his privacy. At the end of last week, Gilmore v. Gonzales made its latest court appearance, this time in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. His lawyers "asked the judges to remand the case to the trial court, where a record could be established for the 9th Circuit to review," and plans to challenge all transportation-related ID checks if they do, Scheck writes. The government, "on the other hand, asked for a complete dismissal -- or for the 9th Circuit to address it directly," Scheck adds.

There's been lots of blawgging fallout about the hearing, and not just about the Dr. Seuss socks Scheck saw peeking out from under Gilmore's Birkenstocks. The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drumm wrote on Saturday:

"John Gilmore is suing the government because he doesn't think he should be required to show ID before boarding a commercial flight. I think this is stupid and he deserves to be thrown out of court.

"At least, that's what I'd think if it weren't for this:

'The Bush administration ... claims that the ID requirement is necessary for security but has refused to identify any actual regulation requiring it. ... The Justice Department has said it could identify the secret law under seal, which would be available to the 9th Circuit but not necessarily Gilmore's lawyers. But any public description would not be permitted, the department said.

"WTF? Call me naive, but I've never heard of a secret law. I've heard of secret courts and secret evidence -- which are bad enough already -- but not secret laws. When did this happen?" Much more here. (For Gilmore's account, read the official Web site, where Gilmore or one of his team describes the original incident at San Francisco International Airport.)

I don't think it's as bad as you think it is, responds Volokh Conspirator Orin Kerr to Drum. Kerr takes on the case in a lengthy post, from which I'll excerpt this nugget:

"I think reasonable people can disagree on whether TSA's practices are a big deal. Some will find them deeply troublesome, and others won't.

"At the same time, I think it's important to recognize that this dispute appears to be significantly narrower than Kevin's post suggests. First, Congress isn't passing any secret laws; the undisclosed authority is a regulation, not a statute, and the TSA's requirement is widely known. Second, no one is being arrested; as I understand it, the issue is only who can be let on an airplane.

"Finally, the court isn't being called on to interpret a law it has never seen. DOJ filed a motion attempting file [to] a version of its brief under seal ... "

What do you think? Does it make you feel better to show your ID? Is it an invasion of your privacy? Both? I welcome your thoughts. I also recommend the comments on Drumm's and Volokh's blogs.