A Blog and a Woman

These nights, since I seem to have developed a bad case of clinical insomnia, I try to kill time by surfing all over the place. And when I was doing that, I recently came across an Indian blogger (The Compulsive Confessor) who got her book published by Penguin. It's supposed to be explicit for Indian standards and rediff has published some excerpts from the book.

What sickened me was the kind of comments people gave after reading the excerpts. It is terribly disgusting to see Indians thinking that a woman who writes about sex has to be either morally depraved or corrupted by Western influences. Some even went to the extent of calling her a prostitute. Imagine, a well educated, beautiful woman in her 20s who writes a column for a paper and gets her book published is the target of all this crap.

This got me thinking about sex on blogs. The world over, women are writing sex blogs, attaining instant fame and getting their books published. They are also bringing their own bit of feminism in it. One such sex blog that I regularly read is Girl With A One Track Mind. And never once have I seen a comment that judges the writer because she's a woman. In fact, people applaud her openness on topics such as date rape, orgies and the lot. Guess that happens only in India!

I started wondering if tomorrow I start writing a sex blog, would it be popular? Would I get a book contract? The answer is probably yes. I wouldn't write it, not because I can't, or I have moral issues. I don't want to, because that's not the kind of writing I want to attribute to myself. I'm too much of a litterateur and have heavy weight idols to look up to. Writing should not be about this or that. Writing should just be. Period.

The first blog I ever read was by a woman. She got a book deal as well. It was a 'Sex and the City' meets 'Erica Jong' kind of thing and was used to heavy traffic all the time. Then the lady married, got pregnant and now writes about her babies as well. But to me, Stephanie Klein (Greek Tragedy), you still rock!

Which brings me back to Indian blogs and sex. People might condemn such blogs but will still secretly go back and read it. That's because we are a nation of voyeurs. What people do in their bedrooms will always be exciting to read. But I still believe women and blogs can do much better than that. I do know a blog by an Indian woman that's exceptional in its writing (River's Blue Elephants). We need many more such efforts than mere voyeurism.