Megan Carpenter’s Glamour magazine blog asks “Why are all the big political bloggers men?,” and in the process says this:
Ezra Klein agreed with Amy about the ghettoization of female voices, noting that while male political bloggers are known as “political” bloggers, women are more often known as “feminist” bloggers. “There’s this rich and broad feminist blogosphere, which is heavily female and very political, but considered a different sort of animal. Is Jill Filipovic a political blogger? Ann Friedman?” he says. Male bloggers are seen as talking about politics with a universal point of view, but when we women bring our perspective to the field, it’s seen as as a minority opinion.
Rachel Lucas responds in some detail, but I particularly liked this response to the passage quoted above:
I clicked on the hyperlinks of both those names to decide for myself if they were “political” and not “feminist” bloggers, and in so doing, I discovered the names of their actual blogs. And I shit you not, these two blogs, which it is apparently so very wrong to label “feminist,” are called:
Feministing.com
and
Feministe.us
Bam. Game over, pal. You lose.
It’s like trying to claim that John Hawkins is unfairly labeled a “right wing news blogger,” and then providing a link to his site, which is called RIGHT WING NEWS. Sure, he writes about things other than right wing news, and those female bloggers write about things other than feminism and even women in general, but not a lot.
Plus, as Rachel Lucas points out, how do you ask “Why are all the big political bloggers men?” and miss Michelle Malkin? And if you mention some of the somewhat lower-traffic but still prominent bloggers, why ignore Megan McArdle and Ann Althouse (an omniblogger, but with a good deal of political and policy content)?
Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.