Blogging while female

Originally posted at the Independent Bloggers' Alliance

I first learned about the crass, insensitive remarks of Markos Moulitsas in this post by skippy, and later found a post by Steven D at Booman Tribune. In a later diary, Steven included what Markos actually said:

Look, if you blog, and blog about controversial shit, you'll get idiotic emails. Most of the time, said "death threats" don't even exist -- evidenced by the fact that the crying bloggers and journalists always fail to produce said "death threats". [...]

But so what? It's not as if those cowards will actually act on their threats. For better or for worse, this isn't a country in which media figures -- even hugely controversial ones -- are routinely attacked by anything more dangerous than a cream pie.

Since last night, I saw that skippy had updated his post with the following:

addendum: feminazi, commenting over at echidne's blog, asks this question:

i sent a email to http://www.mothertalkers.com/contactus asking them why they support misogynists through advertising. why don't you do the same?

good idea!

Except, I don't know how much choice they have, given that you see this at the bottom of the home page on that blog:

© 2005, Kos Media, LLC

I may be only a C-rate blogger (on a good day), but what do we usually do when we want to hold a public figure accountable for something they've said? Isn't it usually their advertisers that we write to? Or how about writing to some of the politicians and public figures who post diaries at Daily Kos. This Wikipedia article has a list.

I wouldn't recommend this if Markos' remarks were a one time thing, but as shirlstars' comment here indicates, this is part of a pattern of behavior.

See also:

How not to be an asshole: a guide for men

Why the lack of concern for Kathy Sierra ?

Take Back the Blog! March

Finally, as I noted here, I really haven't had it in me to do much blogging lately, and I'm still not feeling all that verbose at this point. But I do consider this to be an important issue, and, even if I don't manage to blog more about it, I'm going to make a point of adding relevant entries to my page of Google shared items, which you can find here.

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