Female Bloggers

So a woman pundit poses a question to the L.A. Times opinion editor and sparks off debate in the blogosphere as to why there are so few women bloggers.

Well, Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly speaks his opinion here, and I've seen others write about it too.

Okay, first of all, I'm going to talk about the comics retailer syndrome - which is, whenever you ask a comic book retailer how many kids go to his store, he will say a small percentage. But if you do the actual math, you will find that the actual number of kids who go into that store is higher. But why is his perception skewed? Cause human nature says you recognize those of the same stature or higher, not lower. Unless the kid gives the retailer a reason to remember him/her, chances are the retailer will dismiss him/her.

(Don't believe that's human nature? Quick, how many waiters were in that nice restaurant you went to for Valentines? Okay, now how many waitresses?)

Thus, Feminist blogs tends to have blogrolls of women or men who write about those issues and political blogs - (because politics is a male-dominated field) - tends to act towards women bloggers in a myopic fashion.

The second reason for the lack of women bloggers in a punditry fashion is... (I think I'm going to get slammed for this) the way we write and talk.

I once heard a joke that went something like this. "Ask a man where the sugar is and you'll get, it's under the sink. Ask a woman where the sugar is and you'll get "Well, I went to the grocery store, found it on sale so I bought a whole bunch, and then came home to find no room! So I put most of it under the sink, and the rest I filled up in the container over there."

Some people have likened this to Men are from Mars.... etc. I just think that men give the answers and women give the circumstances so you understand the reasoning behind the answers.

It is two different ways of communicating and this is not to say that one cannot be trained in the other way of communicating nor is it solely isolated to one gender and not the other.

In terms of political commentary, I think readers prefer a more theorem-proof way of writing. By this, I mean break out the dusty geometry books from high school and look up proofs. Political commentary is set up like that. Pose a theory, use formulas and logic to present your arguments 1, 2, & 3, restate your theory and show that it's proven.

I look back at my own ramblings here and tho I can be snarky, sarcastic and opinionated, I do tend to run all over the place. I feel no need to organize my thoughts. So don't expect to see me on any blogrolls anytime soon lol

Filed under Reveries & Paranoias.