Rebecca Fox and Rachel Sklar are next in Sexerati’s Sex @ SXSWi series — for their panel, “Why Professional Blogging is Bloodsport for Women.” Rebecca is the Managing Editor at Mediabistro; Rachel was the Founding Editor at The Huffington Post’s Eat the Press, and is now with the media consulting firm Abrams Research.

First I got Rebecca to give me some answers far more concise than my questions themselves, on sex, gender, and being better bloggers, if not better people. I know. Read.

MGG: How do women open up their personal lives more online?  Why is that what’s thought of as our “personal” lives is that much broader than it is for men?

Rebecca Fox: Social networking has cracked things wide open with respect to how much of our personal lives end up online, for both men and women. Through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other platforms, it’s become easy to be privy to formerly private interactions between people, along with information about where they are, who they’re with, and what they’re doing, frequently in real time. A byproduct of that is the sense that everything that’s online about a person who is using these technologies is fair game, i.e. open to discussion and commentary by anyone who sees it or has access to it. Women may not be doing more of this online than men, but what got me thinking about the idea of this SXSW Core Conversation were the different kinds of repercussions experienced, overall, by women compared to men.

MGG: For “professional” bloggers — we leave out so much of our private lives, or at least, we’re expected to. But even when we don’t explicitly write about who we’re dating or how we’re feeling or where we hang out and with who, all those details can get fleshed out for us by other bloggers, or in photos or on Twitter or whatnot.  Does one have to blog as if those other stories don’t matter?  Or is that a phenomenon of just particularly hyper-bloggy media cliques?  How do we maintain integrity even if we don’t have control over our story?

Rebecca Fox: Hyper-bloggy media cliques, as you call them, do seem to increase the amount of online hay (comments, reblogs, etc.) that is made over the personal information that appears online. Having all that information online doesn’t have to be by design, necessarily — it can occur just by virtue of one’s friends having personal blogs, Twitter accounts, FriendFeeds, Flickr pages, etc. I am impressed by those who maintain a clear voice and online presence, regardless of what kind of online feedback loop they may find themselves within. One of the reasons I’m glad to have Rachel join me for the SXSW Core Conversation is that, over the years I’ve been in online media, I’ve found hers to be an intelligent, ‘call it like you see it’ sort of voice when it comes to both being a woman who works in media, as well as portrayals of women by and within the media. She’s someone who regularly responds to the feedback she receives online, be it positive or negative, which takes more chutzpah than I think she gets credit for.

Engaging in debate and discussion over issues that are important to you, and about which you can shed some light or add to the conversation, shows integrity — even more so when done in the face of probable negative blowback. Participating in online dialogue when you have something to say or add, or some air to clear, gives control over the story back to you, particularly when you’re conveying an unpopular or underrepresented point of view, or are standing up against personal attacks.

MGG: Some writers try to cope by opening secret blogs.  I’ve had a hard time finding men who do write about sex & their interior lives without using a pseudonym.  It makes me wonder if after all this time, maybe I was reading Jason Kottke or Nick Denton’s secret sex blogs.  To me, it’s these well-known male bloggers’ choices *not* to write about their sex lives — we know Kottke likely has sex, as he’s reproduced, and well, Denton is quite out — that reveal as much about their personality as what they *do* choose to tell us.  Is it gender, and women having to answer for our sexuality whether we blog about it or not, that leads to the double standard, or is it sexuality more than gender?  I know this is a massively unfair and convoluted question.

Rebecca Fox: Gender and sexuality continue to present challenges to women in the online space, much as they have historically complicated things for women prior to the Internet. I’ve said this elsewhere: Being quiet has long been tantamount to being ‘good,’ and if you’re blogging and you have a strong voice, then as a woman you’re neither quiet nor good in that way. That sets the stage for much of the backlash vociferous women experience online.

MGG: One strategy I’ve advocated for in dealing with the public/private divide in blogging is to try to deliver gossip about myself before others can.  If I’ve already said the “worst thing” someone can say about me, what power do they have?  Does that make any sense?  What saner ways are there for women bloggers to avoid the bloodsport?  (I want to believe that it’s not about acting like a “good girl.”)

Sure, delivering your own gossip first makes sense — compared to all the problems that can occur online when your story winds up in someone else’s hands for the telling, that’s a relatively sane approach. But I worry about a climate in which we are outing information about ourselves we’d otherwise not want to share, just out of fear of someone else getting there first.

Alternatively, jumping in and offering clarification when something isn’t true, fair, or accurate is a way to diminish the bloodsport. Participating in online dialogue without resorting to sniping, or tit-for-tat exchanges, is crucial. Take the high road, and know when to move on — do it a half-step before you think you should. On the less effective side of things: Issuing ultimatums seems to just create a schadenfreude-ish appetite among those waiting for you to renege — for instance, swearing off of blogging, or quitting the Internet. Historically, that hasn’t worked so well for people. Taking noisy, gratuitous public stances tends to create problems. And lastly: Get right with relinquishing your own preconceived notions. Strive to avoid tethering yourself to any one way of thinking about a topic, issue, product or person — one thing we’ve seen and experienced is that the Internet is nothing if not constant, fast-moving change. To keep up, you have to be able to change your thinking, and stay open to things you might not initially endorse or understand.