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Wednesday, July 30, 2008 12:00 AM

A blogosphere of their own

Outrage over the N.Y. Times' story on the all-female BlogHer convention prompts the question: Are women on the Web just not taken quite as seriously as men?

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  • Tuesday, July 29, 2008 06:50 PM

    The Wrong Question

    "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.

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