Today's Indie 500 Blog of the Day is:
Gia's Blog
Chosen specifically because it's authored by a woman.
I was over on Political Animal and Kevin Drum asked the quarterly question, "Where are the women political bloggers?" A lot of the women who have already answered this question several times over, jumping up and down screaming "I'm right here!" got kind of pissed off that no one paid attention the last time they answered this question, and this brought out the inner misogynist of the moderate Democratic male in the comments thread.
I think one of the main reasons that the women (myself included) were pissed off was that the reason that the men believe women don't have political blogs is because the women don't like the vicious, down and dirty fighting that politics brings with it. And then, when the women were showing how they were not above a good political fight, the men got dismissive and obnoxious, talking about hormones and bitches and hysteria. It was ugly.
I'm not a really confrontational person. Growing up with an abusive alcoholic father, I developed sensitivity to and accommodation of bad moods and anger as a survival tactic (if daddy was cranky, it was time to be the good daughter, otherwise I might get punched in the face). Then I married a guy who thought I was going insane when I fought the way my parents fought, and I had to learn how to control my temper so we could actually have productive arguments, that usually result in resolution of the conflict.
But the internet actually makes it much easier for me to have a political debate, because I have time to make my argument, to think about how I feel and what I want to say. I went back to Kevin's blog this morning after thinking about the subject of woman bloggers, and maybe the comment thread is no longer active, but I had my say. I think the political blogosphere can only benefit from the diversity of viewpoints that are out there, including women and black people and Asian people and Hispanic people. I'd like to see the big liberal bloggers take a more active role in increasing the diversity of the political blogosphere, because they actually have the power to do something about it.
I think it is shameful that the liberal/lefy side of the blogosphere has so many outstanding female voices that are not highlighted and promoted. Like I said over at Kevin's blog, Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin are the most popular female political bloggers on the TLB's ecosystem, and I think that's awful. How about some of the big bloggers (who happen to be almost entirely male) give the lesser known bloggers (many of whom are women) a hand up that ladder?
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