Many blogs are a-twitter today about how voting closes tonight for the blog awards. But why bother to vote if, for the eighth year in a row, the “weblog awards, aka 2008 bloggies” has consistently overlooked the category of human sexuality?
They have “sports”, “gossip”, “fashion”, “food” … and someone really ought to tell them that it’s really, like, all sweet that they have a category for people who can be sorted out of the populace for their sexual orientation. Someone should really let them know that they have the letters in the wrong order. The standard is LGBT, not GLBT, which sounds more like some blog category sexual minority sandwich their mom made at the last minute so no one would feel left out. But letters aside, someone *seriously* needs to get them up to speed on the word “transgendered”. It’s “transgender”. For fuck’s sake, you don’t call someone “lesbianed”.
I get the sense that sex blogs, from our traffic-monster Fleshbot on down to the sexual health, culture and politics blogs occupy a serious slice of the blogosphere pie. I think if any so-called blog awards are truly serving the communities that comprise the entirety of Blogistan, they need to grow up. They need to see the communities around them, acknowledge the real online world and participate in the future we’re all building. Why is there no category for “Best Sexuality Weblog”? Twice, a highly visible sex blogger snuck in the backdoor via a regional category (Girl With A One Track Mind), and we all got excited that one of us got to sit at the grownups’ table. Yeah, it feels like that.
The awards are meaningless if they’re exclusionary, for whatever reason. No sexuality category is a huge oversight, if not just plain prudishness. It’s time to act normal about sex, not treat it like Blogistan’s ghetto. If they must do so, then they make no distinction between blogging and mainstream media. No community, no conversation, and just the same people talking about the same things all the time.
Since they’re handing out the awards at SXSW, and Jonno and I will both be there — along with *dozens* of other well-known sex and culture bloggers — perhaps we should all just show up and ask them. I know I will.
Now go vote for the same people who win every year in a row. It makes them feel special. Especially when they blog the same thing us sex bloggers do five days after we’ve already posted, opined, explored, and moved on.
Lovely rubber ball gag image courtesy my sweet friends at Madame S.
Update: The Blog Herald has a nice response, Are you scared of sex?
