Pioneer Woman -> Process -> BlogHer -> Homosocial -> MMMB

Last night, I was trying to think of what to post about next.  I had made a vow to myself to post more often than I did with my last project, Conduct Yourself.  Immediately after creating my blog, I went through and typed up all the “Food for Thought” suggestions in our research project syllabus into eight separate word documents.  I am hoping that by already having these prompts typed up, I will be more likely to follow through and post my responses.  Here’s to good intentions.

So, back to last night.  I could write my first food for thought response, or I could get more creative, but I was coming up blank.  I decided to browse through my daily websites for inspiration, and that my friends, is when I hit the jackpot.  The Pioneer Woman actually posted “Ten Important Things I’ve Learned About Blogging” earlier that same day.  She saved me.  This post ties into revealing the process of both research and blogging, which is what this project is all about (that and our selected texts).  If you’ve never heard of Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, you are missing out, big time.  I am excited to find a way to tie her into my own research project because I love her and her website so much.  If you’re asking yourself what does a pioneer woman have to do with my research project, well, let’s take a look at her post on blogging.

Ree includes the following list:   

1. Be yourself.
2. Blog often.
3. Be varied.
4. Exercise more.
5. Allow your boundaries to set themselves naturally.
6. Bring back retro phrases like “hanky panky.”
7. Don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself.
8. Try your best to spell words correctly and use proper grammar.
9. If you have writer’s block, push through and blog anyway.
10. Value every person who takes time out of their day to stop by your blog.
11. I love ya.

You really need to click on the link for the full text of her post, because her writing is wonderfully humorous.  Even thought this is an academic research blog, as I stated in my Welcome post, there will be a mixture of academic and personal reflection.  I can’t keep my personal self out of this research and I think it would be a mistake to do so.  If I am not excited and passionate about this project, and if I cannot find a personal connection with the text, then why would I expect my readers to slog through boring and uninspired writing?  This is why I will be taking Ree’s advice to heart, especially number seven.  I’ll be expanding “don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself” to include taking risks, despite not knowing how things will turn out.  Because that’s what I’ll be doing with my project, taking a huge risk – I don’t know if I’ll be right or wrong but I know I’ll enjoy the process of finding out.     


If you do visit Ree’s site, you’ll notice a link to the BlogHer website.  Stay with me, I promise this will all make sense soon.  BlogHer is “the largest community of women who blog: 20+ million unique visitors per month (Nielsen Netratings). Engaged, influential and info-savvy, these women come to BlogHer to seek and share advice, opinions and recommendations” (BlogHer: About).  Now, to me, the BlogHer website is like an updated, web-based version of a commonplace book.  It is a collection of women’s websites and blogs, an index if you will, of modern women’s writings – and while they are on the web, could we not liken them to unpublished manuscripts?  Would looking at these women’s blogs be a way to expand the canon of women’s writing? 
 
These women are of all races and ethnicities, single, married, divorced, widowed, lesbian, transgendered, straight, poor, middle class, rich, employed, unemployed, stay at home mothers, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, etc.  I can only assume that the blogs cross international lines as well.  And it is accessible to anyone with access to the internet, not bound to a small circle of women and friends within a certain geographical location like Moore’s commonplace book.  Can it be that the BlogHer website/network is also a concrete site of the female homosocial?

[If you are interested, you can go here for a PDF file of The BlogHer – iVillage 2010 Social Media Matters Study.]

In order to answer that question, we need to look at the definition of the homosocial (me especially, because I knew about it in only the vaguest of senses).  Let’s look at the listing for homosocial in The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism for more information:

A term referring to social bonds between people of the same sex, homosocial was popularized by Eve Sedgwick in her discussion of “male homosocial desire.”

…
 
According to Sedgwick, female homosocial ties, on the other hand, are not so emphatically opposed to homosexual ties between women.  Lesbian relations, in her view, are seen in our society as more continuous with the sanctioned relations between mother and daughters, between female friends and coworkers.  It is precisely this broad spectrum of women’s homosocial loyalties that Adrienne Rich has referred to and celebrated as the “lesbian continuum.”  Unlike Sedgwick, however, Rich argues that lesbian desire is not tolerated but severely punished, and that female homosociality in general is devalued.  The work of historian Caroll Smith-Rosenberg suggests that passionate friendships between women – in which homosocial ties include intensely erotic feelings – were somewhat more socially acceptable in the nineteenth century.  See also GAY CRITICISM, LESBIAN CONTINUUM, LESBIAN CRITICISM.  

Rich, Adrienne.  “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.”  In Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985.  New York: Norton, 1986.

Sedgwick, Eve.  Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
 
--.  Epistemology of the Closet.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
 
Smith-Rosenberg, Caroll.  “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.”  In Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America.  New York: Knopf, 1985.

What you’ll notice is that these articles and/or books were all published between 1985 and 1990.  A lot has changed since then, and I’m sure there is more up to date literature regarding the concepts of the homosocial, and the lesbian continuum.  However, in order to understand the current criticism, I know I need to read the original, groundbreaking criticism of the women listed above.  I would argue that female homosociality is no longer devalued as it was in the 1980s (according to Rich), and that it is now being celebrated, as evidenced by the thriving BlogHer website.  I’m sure we could all think of other examples of a thriving female homosociality if we put our minds to it.

 I should note that last night, I was going through my notebook from my previous class with Dr. Logan, "American Novel and National Identity—Romanticism and Imperialism," and I found a note I made about the Smith-Rosenberg article and proceeded to download it from JSTOR.  I now have all the sources listed in the definition for homosocial except the two Sedgwick books.  I suppose a visit to the UCF Library is in order, so I can properly educate myself on the cornerstone theory for my research project.  Do you think the short hike from parking lot H to the library and back counts as the exercise Ree recommended?  Let's hope so.




Works Cited:

BlogHer. "About BlogHer." BlogHer: Life Well Said. Web. 09 Sept. 2010. <http://www.blogher.com/about-this-network>.
 
Drummond, Ree. "Ten Important Things I’ve Learned About Blogging." The Pioneer Woman. 08 Sept. 2010. Web. 09 Sept. 2010. <http://thepioneerwoman.com/blog/2010/09/ten-important-things-ive-learned-about-blogging/>.
 
--.  “About Pioneer Woman.”  The Pioneer Woman.  Web.  09 Sept. 2010. <http://thepioneerwoman.com/about/>.
 
"Homosocial." The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism. Ed. Joseph W. Childers and Gary Hentzi. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. 138-39. Print.