Gender and Milblogs

In past conflicts, soldiers separated from their homes and families had little opportunity for communication. Letters, ham radios, and telegrams were used by the military to help soldiers stay connected. The length of time for a letter to reach home, the need for someone to be present for a ham radio transmission to be received, or the uncertainty that letters would reach the intended soldier were all problems that, until now, soldiers had to deal with. Now soldiers have an unprecedented communicatory advantage over their forefathers: the weblog.

Soldiers in modern conflicts write hundreds of posts every day. Some write directly to family and friends, others use blogging to provide commentary that we at home would not be able to see in mainstream media. These accounts can be raw and unfiltered, and on the outside they may all look similar.

In her article, "Composing as a Woman," Elizabeth Flynn suggests that men and women have different ways of writing. In other words, that written rhetoric has a gender. This same concept may be applied to military blogs. Through examinations of pieces of writing, Flynn was able to detect differences in topic, tone, and word choice that enabled her to extract the gender. I conducted a similar experiment with two milblogs: one from a man, the other from a woman. Both authors have posts dated when they were serving in Iraq, and both served in the United States Army. Contrary to Flynn, however, my findings were not so clear cut.

"365 and a Wakeup" - Danjel Bout

The first blog, titled "365 and a Wakeup," the most popular blog on milblogging.com, was written by Danjel Bout. Danjel is a husband, a son, and a brother, and wrote that he joined the army to earn money for college. Danjel's post ranged from February 2005 to January 2006, with roughly 15 posts per month. In order to narrow down the research, I've randomly chosen one post from each month to examine. All of Danjel's posts were written when he was in active duty.

"365 and a Wakeup" consisted mostly of Danjel's commentary on the war and his place in it. There was little mention of day to day happenings, as one would see on a traditional blog or read in a diary. Instead, Danjel analyzed his life carefully and reflectively. It is interesting to note this because according to Niels van Doorn et al's study of Dutch weblogs, men were less likely than women to disclose personal information and were also careful not to present themselves as too emotional (150). My study of Danjel's blog has led me to believe the complete opposite. All but one of the posts reviewed in the blog contained passages about Danjel's very personal emotions. Mentioned many times was how much he missed his wife. In a post titled "In Love's True Light," Danjel wrote that "pushing through mission after mission speeds time passage, but it did little to hush the keening thump of my heart." He continued to say that even though the internet cafes on the base stay packed, he was willing to wait hours in line for a couple minutes of communication with his wife. This was one of the most outstanding qualities of "365 and a Wakeup." Danjel mentioned later, in March 2005, that the absence of home "has left a sliver of my heart as silent and dark as a long vacant room." These intensely personal feelings about his family were shared so freely by Danjel. However, this iwas not the only way Danjel broke gender stereotypes.

Another way to tell a woman's writing from a man's, says Elizabeth Flynn, is that women write more often about the need for human connection and community than men. As one might imagine, a person, male or female, who is in the army for months at a time with the same people would develop some solid relationships. It is important to keep this in mind when examining this next set of blogs from "365 and a Wakeup," because this strong connection is the reason that Danjel's posts could be identified as feminine. It is my belief that the gender of a military blog cannot possibly be determined by looking at the mention of community, because most every soldier feels it. Danjel wrote in his post "Under an Angry Moon" that he and his squad returned late one night after a mission. They stepped out of their Blackhawk helicopters and "the next few moments were a tide of happy reunions that washed away the arid bitterness that seemed to hang in the dusty air." In a July 2005 post titled "The Rebound," he even went as far as saying that being part of a group is a primary reason that infantry soldiers stay in the military. This strong connection to his community that Danjel mentioned again and again shows that mentioning a need for relationships is not a sign of a female author, contrary to Flynn's findings.

The final note to make about Danjel's blog is that none of the posts examined were written in a traditional diary fashion. That is to say, there was no, "Today I did this" or, "And then he said...." Danjel's posts were informative comments on his life in Iraq. This idea of men writing informatively is congruent to Trammell and Keshelashvili's findings in "Examining the New Influencers: A Self-Presentation Study of A-List Blogs." In terms of gender, Trammell and Keshelashvili concluded that "men are information seeks and women are communicators online" (977). The notion of women as communicators is seen very clearly in the examination second blog in this study.

"Life as a Baghdad Babe" - Rebecca Burt

"Life as a Baghdad Babe," written by Rebecca Burt, is the second blog to be studied. Rebecca served as a journalist in the United States Army and has recorded posts for three years. The posts from 2003-2004 are the ones that will be examined, as they deal with her experiences in Iraq. Again, I have randomly chosen one post from each month for my study.

Quite the opposite of Danjel's blog, Rebecca's blog was her way to stay connected to home. Nearly every post ended with "Love, Becky." She also included small notes that were directed to her family, such as, "Mom- please, please send me one of those wrist brace things for carpal tonal as quick as you can!" Direct messages to home like this one were found throughout "Life as a Baghdad Babe." Danjel's blog, while mentioning his wife, never directly addressed her. This was one of the few ways I was able to extract gender from the milblogs.

There was one topic discussed in Rebecca's blog that was never mentioned (in the posts I looked at), and that was God. Rebecca writes in a December 2003 entry, "The difficulties (forcing me to count on God), paired with several excellent chaplains, allowed my faith to grow and I was baptized in front of my fellow soldiers and Christians before we left Kuwait." I am not proposing here that women are more religious than men- I merely want to point out that Rebecca mentioned God multiple times, while Danjel did not.

On October 26^th, 2003, Rebecca posted a narrative about an attack on a hotel she stayed in. A reader would never know that this post was written by a woman; until she writes that she had to find a man to help carry a wounded soldier because she felt she was not capable. I find this extremely interesting. A possible explanation is that war is a traditionally masculine activity, so naturally one assumes that an account of war would be from a man. Recently, though, as more and more women join the military, this trend is breaking, and Rebecca's blog is a wonderful example.

Rebecca also discussed the issue of comfort, which Danjel did not. She writes, "a lot of people are starting to have problems with breakouts and rashes because it's impossible to stay clean. I haven't had too many problems yet, luckily, but wearing a helmet most of the time is making my scalp go crazy from the sweat - yuk!" This difference between Rebecca and Danjel could be explained in two ways. First, Rebecca's blog is more of a diary, so therefore she writes about everyday issues. Or second, women are stereotypically more hygienic than men.

Conclusions

Through the study of these two blogs, I have found that it is not as easy to extract the gender from a military blog as it is in other forms of rhetoric. The conditions (traditionally masculine) that soldiers must endure, and the formation of close relationships destroy the gender identifiers that one might find elsewhere. With few exceptions, if Rebecca hadn't specifically mentioned the fact that she was a woman, I would have never been able to guess her gender. In the same vein, Danjel's constant talk of community and missing home might lead Elizabeth Flynn to believe that he was a woman. Also, van Doorn et al cite Miller and Mather in their study on weblogs, writing that men's pages are shorter than women's (145), which was not at all true in the military blogs examined here.

It is my belief after studying these two military blogs that one cannot say whether a man or a woman wrote a particular blog. It can be concluded that only one classification of person writes a military blog: a soldier.

Works Cited

365 and a Wakeup. 25 Jan. 2006. 7 Dec. 2007 http://thunder6.typepad.com/

Flynn, Elizabeth A. "Composing as a Woman." College Composition and Communication 39.4 (1988) : 423-435.

Life as a Baghdad Babe. 26 Oct. 2006. 7 Dec. 2007 http://iraqifreedomadventure.blogspot.com/

Milblogging.com: The World's Largest Index of Military Blogs. 14 Dec. 2007. 5 Dec. 2007 http://milblogging.com/

Trammell, Kaye D., and Ana Keshelashvili. "Examning The New Influencers: A Self-Presentation Study of A-List Blogs." Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. 82.4 (2005) : 968-982. ABI/INFORM Global. ProQuest. 18 Dec. 2007 http://www.proquest.com/

Van Doorn, Neils, Liesbet van Zoonen, and Sally Wyatt. "Writing from Experience: Presentations of Gender Identity on Weblogs. " The European Journal of Women's Studies 14.2 (2007): 143-159. Women's Interest Module. ProQuest. 18 Dec. 2007 http://www.proquest.com/