Comments on: Blogs, Balls, Babes and Morality

By: nmlavoi

nmlavoi — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:00:36 +0000

Virago-Great point. I too find the name not inclusive and alienating. But to make change you gotta be in the conversation. -nml

By: Virago

Virago — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:00:27 +0000

I am a female sports blogger who would never go to such an event, just because of the “Blogs With Balls” name. It sounds like geeky guys trying to be edgy. Truly confident men wouldn’t take the chance of alienating women bloggers with such an offensive name.

By: nmlavoi

nmlavoi — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 21:28:33 +0000

niamh, thanks for the post! I hope you’ll come back regularly. -nml

By: Niamh

Niamh — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:33:59 +0000

Interesting point about the bloggers – it probably reflects the state of sports journalism in general where male athletes and their sports take most of the focus. I write mostly about female athletes and have been told by fellow scribes that it’s too narrow a focus but when I ask them why they ‘only’ write about boys, it’s seen as a joke question! On the positive side, there was a time when women’s sports were seen as a joke in themselves so it’s good to realise how far we have come already. (found your blog from Women Talk Sport, look forward to reading more!)

By: nmlavoi

nmlavoi — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:30:57 +0000

Sarah,
I know exactly what you mean about perceiving the event as not welcoming to women. Just the title alone is off-putting and not inclusive. There was some of the “hot chicks serving drinks” the first night. As a fellow “girls who rants a lot”…we need to come together to create space and power in the blogsphere and educate that women DO love sports and CAN blog intelligently and DO have something to say and contribute. But to do that, we have to BE there…or create our own conference. I had suggested to someone we could have a separate “Blogs With Bras”…but that seemed kinda funny for a second, and then just reproducing the same thing BWB does. So please keep in touch and stay tuned…I’m considering organizing the women sports bloggers somehow. -nml

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:01:57 +0000

As one of the “token women in NBA blogging” I now wish I’d gone. I’ve always meant to, but every year it’s a bad weekend for me. The first year I was pretty squicked out that the official party had “hot chicks serving free shots” or some nonsense that I saw when it came through my email.

I feel like I have great (twitter) interactions with most of the guys who run NBA blogs, many of whom have even cross-posted some of my more controversial posts, and I’d like to meet them in person. But I’m not interested in having to always have my That Girl Who Rants a Lot hat on, at the same time, or not feeling like an event is “for me” because the advertising features hot chicks. (Again, this was in 2008 not this year.)

By: nmlavoi

nmlavoi — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:10:26 +0000

KofC,
I saw your blog today as @Quick13 sent it to me as she knew I’d be interested. Christine Brenna also did a nice column about how sexist it was here http://content.usatoday.com/communities/christinebrennan/index,
I’m considering organizing a female version of BWB and if so, I’ll be tapping you. -nml

By: KofC

KofC — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:45:37 +0000

Thanks for this. Now I wish I’d gone (I live in Chicago). I caught some of the conference with the iffy online feed, and read the tweets. I would have talked to you about these issues–so you can count me as someone interested in a conference on women and sports (you had an idea for 2011?).

I don’t cover women’s sports much in my blogging (yet), but I do try to discuss gender occasionally (such as the “Chrissy Pronger” poster today). Looking forward to reading more of your work!

By: nmlavoi

nmlavoi — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:43:55 +0000

gunaxin-
Your points are well taken! Thanks for posting. -nml

By: gunaxin

gunaxin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:43:26 +0000

I think you may have mis-interpreted the “Mommy Blogger” talk. I believe it was in relation to advertising, with P&G mentioning that. These is an entire of genre of women who blog about being mommies, and I believe they call themselves Mommy Bloggers. If a man was blogging about being a Daddy, then I guess Daddy Blogger would make sense. However just a man blogging about Sports doesn’t make him a Daddy Blogger, and a woman blogging about Sports wouldn’t be considered a Mommy Blogger either.

I appreciate the rest of what you typed here, but most of it made my head hurt. I would attempt to discuss it further, however I fear that I am greatly out-gunned for such a battle.