badstoat: "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."

badstoat: The former are perceived as "mainstream" because they are ascendant and aspirational, while the "realm of home" seeks to preserve and protect what already exists.

Both are very important, but the former is much more exciting and daring! I would further submit that the mainstream topics are more male-oriented because men typically *seek* the dangerous, as a whole, over women.

I don't think I was snarky in the slightest in my original post beyond the part where I jokingly said "Let's say it altogether now!." (Ok and ha! the part about throbbing members) I believe you're a bit overly sensitive, actually. It was ONE post and you started running amuck with the "can't discuss this seriously" "knee jerk reaction" bandwagon. You could have simply asked me to elaborate.

My point continues to be that this kind of marginalization of women goes on everywhere and it's part of our society. If you want to discuss that, great! But you've yet to do anything but nitpick over your interpretation of my post. That's not really my problem, except in so far as I engage you in conversation. I couldn't possibly have discussed it all in one post. That first one was the topic sentence. Feel free to continue!

Or, I can continue it using The Jim's post. He believes, for real, that most women don't read the first page of the newspaper, instead going to the Style section the way the kids go to the comics. I take exception to that, although I don't think The Jim is a woman hater. But whether he's aware of it or not, to believe women aren't interested in important matters of state and of the headlines of the day, places them in a category on par with small children. He implies something that is truly ridiculous about women, that is, that they aren't interested in world events but only in shoes and parties and such. I think that attitude needs to be firmly relegated to the era where it belongs, the 1950s and left out of this one.

But that's what happens in a society where one gender is given fewer privileges than the other and where even the language is coded as male and female with 'male' language superior and 'female' language as inferior. Then, we have maddening things happen like a columnist suggest a more masculine name might make all the difference. And there are so many things wrong with that assumption that, pardon the pun, it's hard to name them.

The word "feminist" is essentially meaningless, judging from those that boast the label. When Traister says "the popular feminist blog Jezebel," one might wonder if she has ever actually visited that site. It links to porn on every page and that isn't exactly feminist. Unless you believe that "feminist" means "pro-exploitation of women." That's not the dictionary definition, but it seems to be the way the word is used these days! Why do people bother to call themselves feminists if they really believe that a woman's place is in the porn? Are they that clueless or do they have a serious investment in confusing people about what feminism actually is and whether or not 'feminists' think it's ok to abuse women?

As someone who doesn't read too many political, science, business, and technology blogs, where can I find evidence that females writing these types of blogs are being ignored by the blogosphere? Are we saying that women who write insightful commentary on these subjects have no readership, no one's linking to their pages, and no one's commenting on their posts? That sounds a little far-fetched to me, but I could be wrong.

My other question is regarding the intended goals of the BlogHer conference. If a gender-neutral/blind blogosphere is the goal (and shouldn't it be?), wouldn't holding a gender-specific conference go against that goal?

And not to be a hater, but this article seems to be typical of Rebecca's commentary, which is to say it's rambling, unfocused, and as far as I can tell lacking a real point.

What you said was looks great on a bumper sticker or greeting card but it is utterly without meaning and does not take reality into question. Yes it is great that we should strive to come together on out common humanity but in the real world different people have different and competing goals that can not be ignored or over come by shared humanity or compromise. It would be wonderful if those times when there is not a zero sum outcome that we could strive together to reach the optima outcome but as soon as one side makes it a zero sum game all the rest of players are basically forced to concede and play by the new rules. Some of us try sometimes better and sometimes to the detriment try to point out these cases or try to show the other players why to improve the game but even here there is an adversarial relationship, and much of the problem occurs here where the zero sum player sees any adversarial relationship as the same instead of one group that wants to play the opposite side on zero sum game and another that just wants to change the outcome of the game.

Okay, let me get this straight: you asked why a conference for women who use the internet shouldn't be as powerful as a conference for all people who use the internet?

Fail math, did we?

Women count as part of "all." Men count as part of "all." Men don't count as "women." Therefore, there are more members of the set "all" than the set "women."

Any other questions?

Yes, you mentioned two well known women political bloggers, but there are many others of us out here who are on the rise, as well. I am mainly a political blogger and have been for over two years -- at my own blog, PunditMom, as well as at MOMocrats, The Huffington Post, MomsRising AND at BlogHer, where I am a Contributing Editor for Politics & News.

The BlogHer conference also featured a variety of political panels, including a joint simulcast session on which I was a panelist, between BlogHer and Netroots Nation.

We are out there and are on the rise. Soon, there will be more than two blogs you can mention when you're writing about this topic.

PunditMom

http://punditmom1.blogspot.com