Maybe men by and large don't like to talk about personal feelings, and that persists even to the anonymous blogosphere. I, for one, don't talk much about that with friends in real life.
LOL! Dr. B, I love it!
only considering non-academic blogs, there are tons of male bloggers, to the point that there are long laments about the lack of women bloggers in the blogosphere (!).
CT has tons of academic blogs written by men: are you possible distinguishing between academic blogs that talk about personal matters and academic blogs that don't ?
I haven't checked the vast field of academic blogs but I would suspect that male such tend to deal more with subject matters, rather than the diary entry type, though I sort of do the latter. At least that struck me on my occasional perusal around various sites.
Very interesting... Little Professor just posted about the exact *opposite* (http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/
the_little_professor/2004/12/engendering.html), based on a discussion at Crooked Timber about the dearth of female academic bloggers.
Suresh, but as I pointed out, I linked to every academic blog I found, regardless of content; and every blog that linked mine. So I don't think content can *possibly* be the explanation.
Heading out: That raises a second question, which I'll address in another post. Why are "male" academic blogs so boring to read and devoid of personality?
Your sample could be baised even though you linked to every academic blog you found because of the large scale structure of the way blogs link to each other. If most male blogs link mostly to other male blogs, and likewise for female blogs, you may have to travel though many nodes in the network before you get to the male blogs. Once in that bizarro parallel universe, though, it will seem like there are only male blogs. Also, spock is evil and has a goatee and willow is a lesbian vampire.
That said, in philosophy, a lot of the big famous bloggers (brian leiter, brian wetherson, etc.) seem to be male.
Too funny, Dr. B. Yes, yes, and yes. My blogroll is a little more biased than yours because I selected blogs--I like this one, don't like this one--unless they linked to me and then I linked to them (but most of those I like anyway). Honestly, I don't think there are any real numbers yet and your post points out that if you use your own narrow world (not suggesting that yours is), your numbers reflect a certain reality which may or may not *be* reality.
I've also found that there don't seem to be many blogs in the sciences and engineering, regardless of gender.
This rather amuses me since we just had a discussion on my blog about how few female bloggers there are who discuss and argue politics at length.
At the moment there are estimated to be well over a million blogs. I'm not sure how one would even go about accurately sampling them to start to draw conclusions.
I do go out of my way to find interesting female bloggers, for whatever that's worth.
As for sampling issues being the reason why it "appears" that academic blogs are female-dominated, that is a more complicated discussion.
But I will choose to be provoked 
, by your question as to why male academic blogs are so "boring" ? doesn't this merely revert to a "standard" gender question (with blogs merely reflecting the natural tendencies) ? On average, men prefer not to discuss personal matters (profgrrrl had a poll out about this, and I am waiting for the results).
However, if you go down to livejournals/xangas/the other web diary forms, you might see a different style of writing, more personal across the board.
Does the blog format lend itself to certain kinds of discussions -- for example, the questionable legitimacy of the "life versus work" distinction -- that women are for various reasons especially interested in finding an outlet for? I know I've been thinking about blog "genres," but thinking of the gendering of genres is interesting, too.
I know that I sometimes feel moved to post theoreticalish meta considerations of blogging or of communication. But I also feel moved to talk about bras and soup... what I'm trying to say is that elasticity of the "blog" format has made it a useful container for my impulses to talk about stuff that is too lax or unformulated or angry or funny for "work" (i.e., scholarly discourse as such), but too abstract for casual conversation. And I wonder if that's the case for others.
It occurs to me that blogs I check most regularly -- and all but about two or three are, I'm just now realizing, written by women -- have both strong tangible narrative components about daily domestic details (~the truth about other people's lives! how other people negotiate consumer society!~) AND have thoughtful, theoretical, literary, or philosophical components.
This may say more about my reading interests than about blogs in general, but I do think that the blog's ability to sustain lengthy inquiry as well as humorous snippet makes it especially attractive to those, like me, subject to writing both. And it does make sense to me that because of women's historical relationship to domesticity, this fusion of mindwork and domestic observation might have a gendered slant.
I'm thinking about how a male colleague told me he doesn't like to talk with ideas about women because "they take everything too personally". Or is it that he doesn't take things personally _enough_?
oops. talk ABOUT ideas WITH women.
blogs are rewritable or correctable, too.
Dr. B, these comments are weirding me out...!
I belong to a "stitch-n-bitch" group made up of female staff and faculty at Granola U. I was thinking the other night that the weird thing is we're not bitching about men a la Sex and the City -- it's nearly always about our jobs. I wonder whether there's a real need out there for safe forums (fora?) where women can feel free to vent their job-related stresses, in particular their (perceived or real) failures.
Additionally, most of the female academic blogs I read seem pretty up-front about their work/publication/teaching problems, whereas most male bloggers seem very reticent about admitting any kind of failure -- maybe that's why many male blogs are boring. Maybe this goes back to the cultural pressure on men to be successful in their jobs, whereas it's "OK" for women to flunk out. Or maybe women have to work harder to be judged by the same standards as their male colleagues.. so there's just more need to vent.
New Kid, email me and let's chat about it, hmm?
I think your answer is in the post above this one.
We guys are just too busy taking care of hearth and home for you scatterbrained women. It's all that unappreciated cooking and cleaning and other housework we do.
I don't know what's more hilarious: the original post or its more earnest comments. But it is hilarious nevertheless.
On an unrelated note: why is there so little ironic humor in the blogosphere? It seems like the major blogs - by which I mean the ones I read, and the ones I linked to while I still kept a blog - keep re-hashing the same general arguments again and again in full earnestness without any sense of different rhetorical styles.
Is it because bloggers are so aware of the possibility of misunderstanding and misrepresentation that they put extra effort into making all of their posts crystal clear to whichever readers may drop by?
Guys just don't have the patience. Women just like to talk/chat about their feelings more than us. They want to talk and get some attention that they may not be getting elsewhere. In fact, in this way they may be liberating for both women AND men. The woman may not be getting the attention she deserves from her man, hence, she sounds off on her blog, gets loads of nice little comments and support from her readers and the guy doesn't have to take the pressure is taken off the poor guy. Perfect!
Personally i find them quite interesting as it is a fascinating insight into a woman's mind. However keeping one myself, as a man, would require a huge effort of discipline that I just don't have. I just don't think about my emotions and feelings as much as you, or at least don't feel the need to talk about them as much.
Sorry second last line of first paragraph doesn't read correctly. Should read... "...readers and the pressure is taken off the poor guy"
ok, I guess I was one of those more earnest commenters. I guess I should recognize pure satire when I see it. I guess I should have realized Dr. B knew full well her sampling method wasn't representative.
Gotcha, Rob! Actually your earnest comment had some good sense in it, and that was kind of my point: asking "where are the women" automatically implies an androcentric perspective. As a woman and a feminist, my world-view is feminist-centric, so it sort of stands to reason, yeah, that the blogs I enjoy reading would reflect that.
I was surprised that you didn't get it, I admit. But I was also highly amused
I've found that even when I lay on the irony with a trowel, lots of my readers will take it straight.
And then I read all these really outrageous posts on other blogs, and I've just posted my scathing comment when I realise ...
I forget how I stumbled onto this - but who cares? But after wading through - what seemed a lot of self centred waffling - I finally found the comment below (at the end of this demented ramble), which I was going to make anyway.
I don't hold with "feminism" nor "chauvinism" - they're too soul destroying. I worked for 10 years in accedemia where I was the only male in an institution of 35 staff. Life was certainly interesting. Thank God I was happily married and we had a bunch of healthy kids and a happy home. Next year we celebrate our "Golden" - so our 'instutution' must have survived well : without all the sexist hangups that seem to plague so many.
"We guys are just too busy taking care of hearth and home for you scatterbrained women. It's all that unappreciated cooking and cleaning and other housework we do.
PZ Myers" - as we would say here : "Good on yer, mate!"
lol ; )
I'm a man and an academic, but I'm in the process of quitting my teaching gig. (My last class EVER is scheduled for tonight -- I'm leaving my tenure track English position at the local community college.) My blog deals mostly with urban firefighting, since my "other" job is battalion chief in a northeastern city.
So...do I count?
I'm not sure why there's a male/female academic blog gap. Perhaps women find it easier to share their thoughts. I can only speak for myself, though -- I'm a grad student hunting down my PhD, and yup, I'm definitely not a man!
Oh, great blog, by the way -- I just stumbled across it today. I'll certainly be back!
Ward, congrats on your last class. Imagine it's pretty bittersweet.
Whether or not you count is up to you 
The last class makes me sad, actually. Maybe I'll do some final ranting, then read aloud "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and get all weepy before I send them on their way.
Tell them to fight the power, man.
I try to read blogs by men, really, I do. I just find that they don't click with me for the most part. (After November, really, there's only so much politics I can take.) But I'm getting increasingly addicted to ever more blogs by women in the Dr. B. mode--whip-smart, great writers, heavy into irony, blunt, nontraditional, funny as hell, painfully honest. Especially if the blogger either has a kid in the neighborhood of 4 years old, or has contended with infertility or a preemie.
But they can't be all cutesy-poo (husbands may bear pseudonyms or their real names, but they may not be referred to as "DH" for "darling husband.") And you can't ask for a better pseudonymous kid name than "pseudonymous kid."
I basically lead a super-traditional life (home with a kid, do a little freelance work), but I haven't moved to the suburbs, started scrapbooking, or defined myself in super-traditional ways. Dr. B. and her fellow (nonacademic) bloggesses demonstrate that I'm in good company.
Been away for a bit and so missed the conversation, but I've noticed the same thing. I suspect that my blogroll has similar proportions. I have wondered, however, whether there is a male academic community out there, which just doesn't overlap much, because I've noticed that the longer I've been blogging the more male bloggers I come across, and not all of them are of recent vintage. When I started, I think my blogroll was nearly all female. And the creation of academic blogs appears to me to be increasing exponentially, so it will be interesting to see how the demographics play out in the long run.
jwb
Props to the prof! This is hysterical - uh, in the good sense of the word, of course!
Wow. A beautiful post/comments example of how people can bullshit justify anything.
Nicely done.
Very funny post, and the commentors who thought you were serious were a stitch.
That reminds about a satirical column I wrote many years ago for Newsday about the C# minor chord causing violence in both lab rats and humans. You'd be surprised how many people thought it was for real.
Great work!
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