I got a kick out of Margaret Wente’s column in the Globe and Mail today. She says that women don’t like to blog because – and I paraphrase here – blogging is just a new way for guys to engage in a pissing match.
The irony of Wente’s tossed off piece about the lack of women bloggers is that her column, as many of hers do, reads just like a blog, pulled out of the air with no research to back it up. Her bald statement that the blogosphere is dominated by men comes out of nowhere.
It’s kind of like her trash of universal daycare, when she asserted that women don’t want universal daycare, they’d prefer to make their own arrangements. No actual data quoted in that one, either. Well, maybe she talked to a few friends, as she does often as a means of getting some of her ideas. But, basically, if you ran her column online, it would suit the blogosphere perfectly.
As it is, three of the most well-eyeballed blogs ever are written be females. Let’s start with Alina Percea’s little number last year, in which she decided to auction off her virginity online in order to pay her university tuition. Or, how about the current rage, Donna SImpson? She’s blogging on the pleasures of eating her way to 1,000 pounds.
Guys may blog to stroke their own egos, but both of the above examples suggest that women have their own reasons to blog. They want attention, they want to exploit their sexuality or they, too, feel the need for online validation for their personal expression.
And don’t forget Julie Powell’s famous blog about cooking her way through Julia Child’s cookbook Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. That blog only spawned the major motion picture Julie And Julia.
The again, some of us women blog because we have opinions that matter.[rssbreak]
