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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
badstoat
Published Letters: 1
"Feminine" climes are where female writing voices are not simply heard but are also remunerated and celebrated. Why shouldn't writers pursue the success where they're encouraged, rather than banging their heads until they bleed against the door that continues to bar them from mainstream, and therefore still male, modes of discourse about things like politics, technology, the economy, business or science?
Ultimately, though, you're asking the wrong question. Why are politics, technology, the economy, business, and science the "mainstream" in the first place?
Why do we consider the body, illness, the personal, the emotional, and anything pertaining to the realm of home (like motherhood) to be on the margins of society? They are just as crucial and just as important.
The idea that they aren't is something you perpetuate in this column.
Some of the best political writing I see is on personal blogs, and it's intertwined with personal writing. Because their blogs hybridize the personal and the political (which is how most people actually experience the two), they don't get the attention and respect a blog traditionally in the "male" realm of "politics" gets from mainstream media.
The "Lemonade Life"-style blog titles and self-help-y signs aren't something wrong with the female blogosphere that needs fixing. The problem is a system that automatically devalues women and anything culturally attached to women.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
