Philobiblon

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly “top ten” collection.

Starting on the serious side, Pandora’s Blog offers a reasoned defence of experimentation on animals in the light of the closing, under the pressure of sometimes-criminal protests, of a guinea pig farm in England this week. I fear, however, this is not a subject on which some people are amenable to reason.

Et. al is horrified that pupils are being issued with E-books as textbooks. “The pleasures of the library must be learned,” she argues.

The D Spot provides pithy anecdotes about life in New York, including its so-not-tactful ladies who shop. Kat on Ratblog, meanwhile, has been encountering some not-so-tactful men in her lab. My first degree was agricultural science and her post reminds me of the lecturer who used to intersperse slides of naked women in between those of cow uteri, “just to liven things up”.

Shorty PJs is musing on the place her occasional journal plays in her writing life, which sould seem to be a tortuous one, judging by the accompanying picture. (I don’t know where she gets the illustrations from, but they are brilliant.) Becky’s Journal’s author meanwhile, has turned her hand to poetry for the first time ever, and it was published on Salon. (Regular poets out there are not allowed to turn green with envy – read it and you’ll see she deserved it.)

Still on the literary side, but very much at the cutting edge, Jill/txt is musing on the possibilities unleashed by the release of the source code of the early 3d first-person shooter Quake. The idea, as I understand it in my largely “old literature” mind, is to turn it into a three-dimensional narrative. I’m interested in this because it seems to me there must someday pretty soon be a real breakthrough in the nature of popular fiction into a new form exploiting all of the possibilities of the web. But it doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

Broken Clay Journal, meanwhile, is cleaning out her wardrobe and finding lots of black skirts. I guess most of us have a fashion “tic” like that – mine’s black jackets.

Are We There Yet meanwhile, provides Reasons to ride your bike. Not a new post, but as you may have noticed, it is one of my areas of interest.

The Daily Blog with Kelley Bell, who might have some links with the Mary Daly school of feminism, is trying to start a debate on The Da Vinci Code, saying she finds it attacks the “wicked step mother and seeks to put men and women back on equal footing”. I can’t in all honesty see it myself, but read the post and make up your own mind.

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Last week’s is here if you missed it.

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I’ve now made a collection of 200 female bloggers: I’ve already collected the first hundred together, and I’ll soon put up a collected list of the past ten weeks.

I’m going to take it easy for the next couple of weeks – Femmes Fatales will continue, but mostly revisiting some of the old favourites. I’ll probably pick up the hunt for new bloggers after that. Nominations of new blogs to include are still, however, highly welcome.

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly top ten posts.

On Bane’s Desmene, the author is musing on the ways in which being a girl is a pain, while Academic Coach warns us to watch out for a deluge of supposedly women-friendly websites.

La Lecturess is musing on the value of academic gossip, while Sarsparilla is listening to the sounds of holiday life.

Pretty hard dammit is finishing her thesis – I think many of us can sympathise with that. In this post she goes back to its origins, an upsetting discovery made when she was still in high school. (To think it has taken me 40 years to even know what subject I might want to do a thesis on.)

Badgerings is remembering the ‘theatrical strange-making’ of an Alice Cooper concert. (And if you think life is tough for you at the moment, read her introductory post, and weep, and be glad if you live in a place with proper access to healthcare.)

Still on the health side, Code Blog: Tales of a Nurse, has an ambiguous story from inside a modern ICU unit.

On Sisters Talk, a mother wrestles with the issues of ADHD, particularly medication, while Geeky Mom is considering whether compulsion in education, at least for women in maths and science, wouldn’t be a bad idea.

And if that all seems a bit serious, visit Girl with a One-Track Mind for a post in which she gives a man with a one-track mind a lesson in chatting-up etiquette. (Not, perhaps, a suitable-for-work blog.)

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Here’s No 18 if you missed it.

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Please, if you’re impressed by something by a female blogger in the next week – particularly by someone who doesn’t yet get a lot of traffic – tell me about it, in the comments here, or by email. Remember, I’m going for a list of 200 different female bloggers.

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly top ten posts.

Given the debate there’s been in Britain around the term this week, this is the multicultural edition. On that topic, Shanti on Dancing with Dogs finds much condescension in those who use the term.

And the term “cultures” can have many different aspects, not just ones related to regions or ethnicity: Autism Diva is worried that the guidelines issued to police on spotting potential suicide bombers might apply equally to some people with autism, and a real-life Professor McGonagall describes how she reached got students with a religious background and non-science majors interested in anatomy and evolution.

Now this might be described as indirect women’s blogging, but I found very interesting the thoughts of “Mrs A, a Saudi woman in London”, as transcribed by The Religious Policeman (a blog that has lots of interesting material about women’s issues in Saudi Arabia). She says wryly that the “immodest” dress of the locals, “in spite of what the Imams say back home … does not drive the local men into a frenzy of lust”. Back in Saudi Arabia, Jo is steaming with the frustration at the restrictions on women.

So off to India, where Uma on Indianwriting is musing on friendships made at the gym, and how they can extend across continents. I was taken by the farewell for a personal trainer – as a special favour, no cake was provided. $uparna has meanwhile started the third year of her mechanical engineering course, and found things suddenly getting serious.

Then off to Australia, where MelbourneHumanFemale is having a rough day in the call centre; remember she CAN get your number. LadyCracker has meanwhile been applying “facial analysis” to some Australian politicians. John Howard would be horrified by the results.

On Nat’s News, my namesake, who’s teaching English in Phnom Penh, is travelling through Vietnam, and has found a South-East Asian city where parkas are on sale and an embroidery festival is a cause for great excitement.

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Here’s No 17 if you missed it.

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Please, if you’re impressed by something by a female blogger in the next week – particularly by someone who doesn’t yet get a lot of traffic – tell me about it, in the comments here, or by email. Remember, I’m going for a list of 200 different female bloggers.

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly top ten posts.

The author of All’s Well, Jezebel, a resident of London, is thinking “about extremes, about fanaticism, breeding hate and suicide” and wondering what the world would be like if children and clowns were given more of a say. Another Londoner, Lisy Babe, meanwhile, has a grave concern for her security and safety, because the doors just keep on attacking her.

Minerva, however, has escaped from London, but finds there are plenty of shocks in the countryside, in meeting another level of the food chain. (And check the design of her blog – it’s brilliant.)

Two sides of discrimination. Thus Spoke Zuska checks out the latest report on US education, suggesting: “If we were just a tad less efficient at turning women, minority men, and lower-income students away from the doors of our science and engineering classrooms, we’d probably have all the science and engineering talent we could use”. Mary Johnson on Edge-centric, meanwhile, wonders how a Supreme Court justice who is suffering from cancer should be treated, when he had ruled that a university was within its rights to sack a professor because she had the disease.

Then in the “news you can use” category, Creepy Lesbo offers a practical guide, gleaned from hard experience, of how children can deal with bullying. Dorothy Thompson, meanwhile, is a guest blogger on Author and Book News. She asks: “Are you prepared to be an author?” and offers some tips to make sure you are.

Now I might be being a little parochial here, in pointing to a London restaurant review blog – but the writing’s good, so you can enjoy it, and all of the world comes to London sooner or later, or it should. So check out Krista likes food’s verdict on Bibdendum. (Importantly, she always includes a comment on the “ladies”.)

And on the week that the other Bridget has returned to the British media (what do you think, BTW?), Bridget Who is wielding something rather more exciting than a glass of chardonnnay. It’s a “weapon of minor destruction” – but don’t worry, it is only being used on the hedge.

Staying on the lighter side of life The Hot Librarian is seeking a date for Jemajesty, a small stuffed monkey. The librarian may not be like those with which you are normally familiar – in her profile she says is addicted to Jamba Juice. I’m not quite sure what that is – judge for yourself. (Not for those of Victorian sensibility.)

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Here’s No 16 if you missed it.

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Please, if you’re impressed by something by a female blogger in the next week – particularly by someone who doesn’t yet get a lot of traffic – tell me about it, in the comments here, or by email. Remember, I’m going for a list of 200 different female bloggers.

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly top ten posts.

I’ll start with a first for this series: an elected representative, indeed a member of the UK parliament, Lynne Featherstone. I learnt about her on last week’s Radio Four’s Any Questions?, during which the presenter, Jonathan Dimbleby, said “if you don’t know what a blogger is, you should”. We’ve arrived, you might say. (I wonder if she’s the first guest introduced on the show – which has a central place in British political debate – as a blogger?)

Then to a short post on a group blog, Cafe Liberty, by Jeanne Marie. It describes a political theory book she is working on with a co-author. I had to draw a diagram to make sense of it, but it sounds fascinating.

Back in the world of flesh and blood, Kathy on Liberty Street offers a reminder that while much fuss might have been made about the London bombs, Iraqis are living with the real threat of death every day.

Still, in a way, on politics and war, Giskin posting on Medical Humanities, a group blog that is “a conversation about the intersection between medicine and the arts”, describes what she sees as an “attack of the metaphors”, in which language usually applied to terrorism is creeping into medical dialogue.

The notably named Arse poetica – it occurs to me at this point there must be a PhD thesis in blog names, with a good bit of postmodern analysis – is finding enjoyment in America’s much-discussed heatwave, while Everyday Goddess just missed a golden opportunity in the form of a second iced tea.

Also on the personal side, Unveilings is saying “no” to twisted and jealous lovers of all kinds, while Rebecca on Adventures with Applied Maths is exploring her complex relationship with time.

Jenny on State of Mind is collecting interesting images from the web: I was taken by this one’s message: “From strange little girls, strange women grow.”.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, on the day before BlogHerCon starts, I’ll link to Surfette’s post on the questions women bloggers need to ask themselves. I guess I’m answering a few of them in this series of posts: I think we all need to work to promote and support each other, not for glory or money or clicks (although they might be the by-product for a few), but because that way we can form networks to get more out of the web, whatever that more consists of.

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Here’s No 15 if you missed it.

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Please, if you’re impressed by something by a female blogger in the next week – particularly by someone who doesn’t yet get a lot of traffic – tell me about it, in the comments here, or by email. Remember, I’m going for a list of 200 different female bloggers.

Where are all the female bloggers? Here, in my weekly top ten.

The blogosphere seems to have been leading the way on the Karl Rove story this week; Out Loud has an excellent, angry, summary and link set.

Deserving of mention for her stalwart defence of abortion rights is Crazy Cat Woman, but I have to select for special note her post on the man arrested for showing his chest in public – that’s what you call equal rights. (He seems to have had what are known in the UK as an extreme case of “man-boobs”, which are not usually considered an attractive feature.)

Culture kitchen is meanwhile using what is obviously broad psychology/philosophy reading and bringing it into everyday language to try to understand what is the big deal about rape.

But I think I’ve found a solution to teen pregnancy – all potential mothers (and fathers) should be forced to read Raising Weg’s post about how replacing daipers (nappies) with potties is not necessarily all it is cracked up to be. (Well she does have triplets.)

If that’s not enough, sympathise with This woman’s work, who wakes up counting the hours until she can get to sleep again.

Slightly later in the lifecycle, Through the cellardoor of existence has a personal take on the exams versus coursework debate. The Underwear Drawer, written by “an anesthesiology resident in New York City trying to get used to the idea of calling herself ‘Doctor’ without using those finger air quotes”, is meanwhile enduring the tests that really matter – at least to her patients.

Going cultural, Broad View enjoyed seeing the “Britgirl rapper” Lady Sovereign, despite being trapped in the middle of a crowd “dancing like they were knee-deep in aerobics class”. In a more relaxed format, Surburban Guerrilla relished a rare day away from the front line.

And I guess I’d better finish with a Harry Potter link (hey anything that gets kids reading has to be commended, even if the hype is now hardly bearable): and The Austen Blog finds one attempt to tell a part of the story in the new book (or is it? – tomorrow will tell) in the style of you-know-who.

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Here’s No 13 if you missed it.

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Please, if you’re impressed by something by a female blogger in the next week – particularly by someone who doesn’t yet get a lot of traffic – tell me about it, in the comments here, or by email. Remember, I’m going for a list of 200 different female bloggers.