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You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around.

Traditional head-scratch at dearth of women in blogosphere.

Ritual response-link to What She Said!

Ancillary self-serving notation for record of new linchinography entries: Pinko Feminist Hellcat and Echidne of the Snakes.

Close with traditional packing away of subject, with flourish, someplace easily accessible. Note in calendar to exhume and respond to head-scratch again in three months’ time.

(You want to know what the funny thing is? The ice-edged gut-punching joke of it all? Five minutes spent perusing any feminist comment thread or discussion group would be enough to rapidly disabuse Messr. Drum and his commentariat of the idea that women aren’t “comfortable with the food fight nature of opinion writing.”)

  1. julia    Feb 21, 11:09 am    #
    The hell you say.

    Me personally, I'm a mewing baa-lamb.

  2. Elayne Riggs    Feb 21, 12:47 pm    #
    You forgot a couple steps. The first one, before the head-scratch, should be something like "Male blogger starts with fallacious premise." The last one should be "Lots of great links to new female-run blogs posted as a result of responses and comments; added some to my blogroll." Without that last one, the cycle starts all over again.

  3. PZ Myers    Feb 21, 01:42 pm    #
    Yeah, but does that last step ever happen?

  4. Newswriter    Feb 22, 03:17 am    #
    No, and that's why Step One happens again in 3 months.

  5. Trish Wilson    Feb 22, 04:36 am    #
    Two months, now. The guys are getting ahead of themselves.

    See you on this topic again around April or May. ;)

  6. --k.    Feb 22, 01:41 pm    #
    And hello to all and sundry from the Political Animal! —I should probably note that Kevin's point is somewhat more nuanced than has been represented (which is understandable: it's somewhat more nuanced than his own last presentation): he isn't saying so much "Where are all the women bloggers?" as "Why aren't women bloggers better represented in the blogosphere?" —Of course, given the benchmarks and Kentucky windage he's using to guage that representation, his question boils down to "Why don't bloggers with a lot of traffic link to more women bloggers?" and, as he himself is a blogger with a lot of traffic, the answer can only be a variant on physician, heal thyself. (It's like all those people in the media decrying the actions and attitudes of the media without ever quite grasping the fact that they, themselves are, well, the media.) It's a more pragmatic place to find a workable solution than in questionably essentialist generalizations: really, when was the last time you read a blog by Woman? —There's a lot more going on in the bigger picture, yes, and it's related to everything from how smashmouth batshine tactics benefit their side more than ours, and how voters trust the Republicans when it comes to national security and not the Democrats despite all evidence to the contrary, and whether progressives really need a Limbaugh of their own, and even the care and feeding of circular firing squads, and just how big a part of the actual "blogosphere" is the small but noisy poliblogging corner that all too often hogs the name entire? But all that's for another time, or several other times. Right now it's maybe enough to note that Elayne's point is welcome enough, and—though I doubt any of them will have stuck around to read it—advise those members of the commentariat who made a joke along the lines of how like a woman (or how like a bitch): it's not because we're humorless that we aren't laughing with you, or at you, or near you. It's because your sense of humor is godawful pathetic.

  7. julia    Feb 22, 04:32 pm    #
    Oh, have the sensible center been here?

    We really should try to be more like them. It'll definitely bring the security moms back.

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