trying to grok

GIRLY

A storm's a-brewin' over at RWN where Hawkins is discussing women vs men bloggers. The background is too complex to summarize here -- you can read it on RWN -- but Hawkins goes on to ask an interesting question:

So let me branch out: Why are comparatively so few female bloggers of note in the political blogosphere?

Personally, I have come to suspect it's just a numbers game. On the whole, women aren't as interested as men in politics, so therefore there are a lot less women than men writing about politics, and hence there is a much smaller pool of female bloggers with the talent to move up the ranks.

Some people probably won't like that answer, but hey, why aren't there as many women who are sports fans as men? Why are there a lot more women than guys who enjoy romance novels? Maybe it's nature, maybe it's nurture, maybe it's some combination thereof, but men and women on the whole don't have the same level of interest in politics.

As an aside, I see nothing sexist in that quote at all. I'm reminded of a heated argument that erupted a few years ago when one of my female friends took extreme offense when my brother made an offhanded comment that his college basketball team could whoop any WNBA team. Cries of Sexist! insued, but there's nothing sexist about saying something that's probably true. But I digress.

Maybe that's why I'm having a hard time finding wives who want to talk about this stuff with me. Maybe that's why I was so disappointed to find out Kim du Toit is a man. But you know what -- it doesn't really matter. I started to write "it's too bad women don't want to blog about politics" and then I erased it because it doesn't matter. Who cares if you're a man or a woman; in the blogosphere, it's ideas that count. Reynolds and Green do a lot of recipe blogging, which should be a "woman's" topic. Who cares? They say important things on the majority of their posts, so they can write the occasional post about chicken, or whatever. I don't care if I'm writing back and forth with a man or woman, as long as we have common ground and we a trying to help each other grok.

I sometimes write about girly things like knitting or how I think Stephen Green is cute. But I most certainly will never give up trying to grok politics and current events so I can, as Hawkins joked, "have more time to blog about make-up and house plants." I can't even do make-up -- I've never bothered to learn how to apply it properly, and it shows -- and I have one houseplant that I just remembered to water after reading Hawkin's post. Make-up and plants ain't never gon happen on my blog.

MORE:

By the way, I just got introduced to Cassandra and Debbye through Hawkins' post. So far I like what I see. I need to check back in with them often.

Posted by Sarah at April 29, 2004 09:01 AM