Letters to the Editor
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Glen: on Digby's voice
"I thought for a few days about why I had such an entrenched assumption that Digby was male. You identified many of the factors -- the masculine-sounding psuedonym (though is it really?) and the picture of the man at the top of the blog (wiich is definitely a big factor). But there is clearly more to it than that. There is something about her writing voice that just makes people think she's male. It's an interesting question as to why that is. I still haven't really figured that out."
I'm mortified that I made exactly the same assumption for the same reasons. What is truly mortifying to me, as a woman and as a writer, is that I suspect it has something to do with the easy directness of Digby's writing -- that there's no hint of apology for her arguments. She's never arrogant, but she's also wholly self-possessed (and not defensively so) in her prose. Many women, myself sadly included, corrupt our writing with self-referential and self-conscious locutions -- self-, self-, self-, all the time. Like I'm doing now. . . .
Digby is a great lesson. I've been reading her for years and I will now do so with an attuned ear for how much more I can yet learn from her.