The Sister Revealed

The Sisters Revealed

Blog Sisters’ (www.BlogSisters.com) slogan “Where men can link, but they can’t touch” describes itself very well. The Website is a team blog with over one hundred registered female members of all ages who “come together to share knowledge, ideas, stories, conversation, wisdom, and the occasional dirty jokes” (Sessum). Jeneane Sessum founded Blog Sisters in February 2002 based on the premise that men bloggers outnumber women bloggers by a great amount.

The Sisters come from diverse backgrounds but have a common passion for blogging. The members range in age from upper teens to early 70’s. They come from different countries including Australia, Canada, India, Poland, Russia, and Latvia. Members include married mothers, single mothers, married childless women, single women, professional technicians, writers, employed, unemployed, feminists, and non-feminist women.

In this blog women share information, ideas, problems, advice and simply “vent”. Some of Blog Sisters’ discussions deal with breast cancer, divorce, and human right abuses. Some of the latest posts include a parody of Senate hearings with Condoleezza Rice (Cooper); criticism of Bush’s “Culture of Life” rally; a review of a book The Good Body by Eve Ensler (Suyaffolee); and a marriage discussion (Wells). The archives of the blog date back to February 2002 with the first entry posted by the founder to welcome the Sisters. Ever since the first entry the members have been posting regularly, from one to fifteen entries a day.

It is no surprise that women in this blog are well educated and many have at least one degree in fields such as Literature, English, Educational Administration, Sinology, Journalism, Business, and Neuroscience. Many members are (or were at some point) schoolteachers or college and university instructors. The women appear to be technologically up-to-date: in touch with their computer and web browser skills. Most of the members have a blog of their own. Jill Walker, Elizabeth Lawley, and misbehaving.net are affiliated with Blog Sisters.

The posts are versatile: besides politics the blog features topics such as relationships, religion, entertainment, economy, and even a recipe Green Bean Casserole. After reading some of the entries it becomes clear that these women like to mix entertaining, informative and educational comments on every day life.

Although the members have different values and opinions there is a sense of mutual respect observed among the women. Despite numerous controversial issues there has never been an inappropriate or offensive comment (Frankonis). A lot of these women live by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s quote “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” These are women who are not afraid to speak their mind and want to be heard. The “weaker sex” makes daring and provocative comments such as “Like any under-achieving intellect, Bush likes to crib from other sources without giving them credit…” (G.), and “What was very disturbing to me was the number of children in this [Pro-life] camp… I stared down this one kid, and he stared right back. "F#$@%#, you're ten. Go home and color," I wanted to say” (Jamun).

Many of the members opted to provide links in their posts, which are helpful and make it easier to connect to other bloggers or to read a specific article if needed. The links (as well as the posts themselves) are dissimilar, linking to websites such as various journal, magazine, and newspaper articles; personal web pages or web logs; pictures and videos; flyers; nonprofit