If I Said You Had An Interesting Blog, Would You Hold My Y-Chromosome Against Me?

I recently discovered, beneath the calm, Utopian surface of the blog-o-sphere; beneath the even-handed and pleasant blogs about sex, religion and politics, a seething underworld. I found shocking revelations of governmental and corporate conspiracy; economic terrorism; mental, physical and emotional torture; legal wranglings between accused & accusers.

That’s right, I discovered the “Mommybloggers.”

I’ve laughed. I’ve cried.

(Okay, so maybe I haven’t cried yet, but I did laugh.)

I stumbled across the Mommybloggers on the eve of their big convention “BlogHer 2009″ and at a time when the whole subculture is in turmoil over what I like to call “pay-to-say.”* Some mommies were publishing blogs about products they’d received for free from manufacturers. An even smaller group of these were allegedly publishing positive reviews of products they may or may not have actually used, in return for more free products. As a result, there was a call for a boycott of all product testimonial blogs, and even a call to “Blog with Integrity.”

I’ve got nearly nothing in common with these women. I don’t have kids, or a vagina, or ovaries, or breasts. I don’t have to deal with day care, or or bras, or shaving my legs and pits.

So why do I feel like these are my people?

I finally realized that what resonates with me is the genuineness. They write about things that are close to home. They write about their hopes, their fears. They write about all the little failures and triumphs of daily life. They rant about the things that irk them, and rave about the things they love.

Gee, that sounds familiar. That sounds like my blog.

I don’t often use my blog in the original sense of the word. Blogs started out as simple lists of sites that people came across, tidbits of novelty that the writers stumbled upon in their daily explorations on the Internet. My blog is more of an online journal. It’s a wall where I can scribble my graffiti. It’s somewhere I can let go of my frustration about my job, my daily struggle with chronic pain, my satisfaction or dissatisfaction with my nation and my world. It’s nothing earth-shattering. It’s just a little bit of me, in fairly easy-to-digest pieces.

And that’s where my blog and the Mommybloggers’ sites meet on common ground. We’re just trying to get a few things off our chests whether those chests are enhanced with breasts or not.

So here’s a short list of some of the mommies I’m currently reading:

• Anna Lefler’s Life Just Keeps Getting Weirder
• Sara at Suburban Oblivion
• Kristen Chase at Motherhood Uncensored
• Megan at Velveteen Mind
• All the ladies over at Aiming Low
• Stephanie at PR Mama

Oh, and there’s one Daddyblogger, Father Muskrat, that I’ve recently started reading. I can’t leave him out, just because we both have Y-chromosomes.

*© 2009 Tim D. Williamson

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