“Gateways” not “Gatekeepers”

James at EirePreneur gets a ribbing for posting a list of “Experts” and not including any women on it. A finger was also pointed at Damien Mulley which, to my mind, represents the most ludicrous thing I’ve read this week.

From these posts by Damien and James, Annette infers that “women ain’t allowed in” rather than either “there are few that Damien or James know” or “when they make themselves known, we can add them to the list” or even “We didn’t realise we were going to be ANALysed for posting a list of people”. The very IDEA that a list might be compiled with the idea that we MUST include women on there in case we get rumbled as sexist pigs I find to be actually quite sickening. What next? We can’t post a list of “people” without covering every sexual and ethnic minority just to be politically correct?

Maybe there are female bloggers in Ireland with something to say but there’s few of them on my feed list. And it’s not because I don’t value what women have to say, but just that I have half a dozen Irish blogs (Damien, James, Twenty, Murphy…maybe one or two more) and none of them are men (making an assumption with Twenty admittedly). I do have female bloggers on my reading list, but none of them Irish. Tell a lie, I read Cinematic Endeavours by Gillian Morrison. I’m now going to read Annette’s blog to see if there is any interesting content (and not just finger pointing).

I see popular “A-List Irish bloggers” like Damien and James as Gateways rather than Gatekeepers. They enhance your ranking in the blogosphere rather than limiting it.

It’s not a unique way to gain blog ranking: pointing an accusatory finger at a local A-lister. You’re bound to get some syndication that way though my inclination is “this person is a Political Correctness nut and has nothing INTERESTING to say” rather than “this person has interesting things to say”. What Annette did was gain a few readers. But at what expense?

My blog ranking is crap. Obviously I should have a better blog ranking because I’m a white, male blogger in his thirties.

Would I deserve a better blog ranking if I had tits?