There's been a debate raging this week in the blogosphere, about how women bloggers don't get no respect. This is old news, new battleground. For years I've been fuming at the New York Times Book Review, using my lil' ole math skills to tally up the percentages of books by males vs. books by females. (It's roughly 60-75 % in favor of males, with 10% falling in the androgynous category.)
I'm the mother teachers dread at the open house. When the reading teacher asks if there are any questions, I wave the reading list and ask, why are all these books written by men? What kind of message does that send--not just to our daughters, who might be budding writers, but to our sons, who'll one day control the pursestings at St. Martins, not to mention the frontlines of the editorial boards? (Good luck, Next Generation, at smashing those glass ceilings.) "Sputter sputter--but--but we're reading 'The Giver' as a supplement." Then, with more confidence, "And besides, boys won't read books by girls." (This was pre-Harry Potter. I think J.K. has pretty much put that one to bed.)
I recently got into an argument with my daughter, who complained that one teacher was too much of a "feminist," as if it were a dirty word. I realized she'd fallen victim to brainwashers while I'd been preoccupied with trying to elect Democrats and blogging. When women complain about the glass ceiling, we're accused of being "FemiNazis," as a famous radio blowhard likes to call us, conjuring images of stout German SS officers. If we ignore it, we're told we don't really want to advance in the boardroom anyway, it's PTA meetings and our babies' bowel movements we really long to control.
It's an argument we can't possibly win. (Even Mary Wollstonecraft died in childbirth.) The opposition assumes our lack of engagement equals acceptance, and our engagement is an indictment.
So what to do? Take a lesson from science fiction: It's called World Building. We start our own blogosphere, in this case. We've got some estrogen and a neat pair of ovaries, our trump mitochondrial DNA, and that uterus we were wondering what to do with.
Fortunately my sisters have already begun the work. In honor of Women in Blogging Week, here's some estrogen-enhanced blogs I've been reading today:
What She Said (great source of female blog)
Baghdad Burning
Rox Populi
Suburban Guerrilla
Trish Wilson's Blog
Mad Kane
Prairie Angel
Booksquare
Dogged
MomBrain
Left Turn Signal
Democracy for New Mexico
The American Street
Bookmark your favorites, and welcome to the feminine side of the blogosphere.
