“Where are all the female bloggers?” HERE, in my weekly “top ten.” Why “femmes fatales”? Because these are killer posts, selected for great ideas and great writing, general interest, and variety.

Lab Kat finds that living in a red state can seriously raise your blood pressure, as she hears how some of her workmates believe a traumatic late miscarriage must be an “Act of God”.

Notes from an exile, written by a Kiwi living in Canada, considers what the Waco siege reveals about America, and in particular American machismo, while Thoughts of an average woman reports how the American right extends its tentacles, assuming that those who felt for the plight of Terri Schiavo’s parents must also be anti-abortion, etc.

Saint Faron is visiting Agra, and pondering the sad decline of India since the days of Akbar, while Vixgirl, sounding remarkably like Sei Shonagon, ponders everyday pleasures and pains.

Rachie on Living for disco has also been going cultural, finding that networking across the language barrier does have its difficult moments. What’s new, pussycat is, however, remembering a small town, where the social highlight is “bumping into” someone in Woolies.

More fearful social interactions are explored by Purple Tigress on Blogcritics, as she tells how a friend struggled with the fear induced by a stalker, and Chez miscarriage ponders why a “Regular Arsehole” might be a better choice than a “Stealth Arsehole”, while Volsunga muses how a small slice of cheese can be a measure of loneliness.

If you missed last week’s edition, it is here.

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Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience” (particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), send me an email (natalieben at gmail dot com) or drop a comment here.

Disclaimer: the views here might not reflect my own. I’m trying to choose from as wide a range of female bloggers as possible.

“Where are all the female bloggers?” HERE, in my weekly “top ten”. Why “femmes fatales”? Because these are killer posts, selected for great ideas and great writing, general interest and variety.

* Trish Wilson, posting on XX, assembles a formidable array of statistics to tackle that old slur about single mothers “causing” child delinquency.

* Two takes on the Schiavo case: Frogs and Ravens finds there is a “relentlessly infantilizing”” of the body of Terri Schiavo that is typical of the tactics “Culture of Life” campaigners. It reflects, she argues, an attachment to an idealised infant and child, rather than the actual difficult, messy, self-conscious reality of human life. Brutal Women takes a look at it from a different angle, relating it to the pressure to martyr yourself “for Christian America and the MTV beauty machine”.

* Completing the political roundup, Body and soul explores the lengths to which evil can go in the creativity of rendition, an old word acquiring a whole new range of meanings.

* Scribbling woman reviews a novel about “a time of looming war and terrorism” – that’s the late 18th century – and finds that while there’s plenty to be critical about, it s worth persevering with the character’s “evocative opacity”.

* Who’s a big cheese? Jane Peppler, posting on Blogcritics, explores America’s enthusiastic venture into giantism in honour of Thomas Jefferson.

* Purse lips square jaw just missed out on participating on a seminar on IT and ethics, but looks at the ways the issue is being explored, stressing that the two words don’t operate in different worlds.

* Vitriolica webbs’ ite ponders the apparent sourness of the world just now, with a little help from the wisdom of Aesop.

* Living in Egypt, one of the most interesting blogs on my roll, relishes the healing power of women, and along the way introduces some living fascinating lives.

* Blogs often seem to be about anger, but I find some of the most poignant to be about grief.
Seedlings & Sprouts tells how she found a symbolic way to record the loss of her brother.

If you missed last week’s edition, it is here.

***********

Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience” (particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), send me an email (natalieben at gmail dot com) or drop a comment here.

Disclaimer: the views here might not reflect my own. I’m trying to choose from as wide a range of female bloggers as possible.

“Where are all the female bloggers?” HERE, in my weekly “top ten”. Why “femmes fatales”? Because these are killer posts, selected for great ideas and great writing, general interest and variety.

* Pinko Feminist Hellcat suggests that while the religious Right complained about Bill Clinton’s narrow definition of “sexual intercourse”, their own much-loved abstinence education programmes are producing the same ideas in their offspring. (Warning: not for the easily offended.)

* On Blogcritics Yvonne DeVita commemorates Women’s History Month with a post on the Women’s Rights National Historical Park that focuses on Amelia Bloomer and her courage in standing up against one of the most painful human weapons – ridicule – in promoting the garment that bears her name.

* Would you like a cup of tea? Shaula Evans, writing on the Canadian group blog Tsuredzuregusa, explores the complexity of that question in Japan, Korea, the United States, Canada, and that special, and she thinks unattractive, state of Starbucks.

* Personal political takes a quick skip across the British election campaign (the vote hasn’t been called yet, but the campaign is on) before settling in to ponder how Britons expect children as young as four years and two months to cope with a formal classroom setting.

* Media girl defines, bluntly and angrily, why “women’s issues” are majority issues.

* Petite Anglais celebrates the joys of a Paris spring, including white blossom, cheerful birds, sunlight filtering through the shutters and a toddler learning to count.

* Dawn Olsen concludes that the Right might be right, as she calls for “zero tolerance” for crimes against children.

* Give me spirit fingers finds some Chinese leopard “porn” (safe for the office; they really are animals) and muses how it relates to aging men, aphrodisiacs and young mistresses.

* If you think you’re snowed under with work, study or life, consider the task facing Molecular Revolution, who before an April 8 exam plans to relearn Old English and read Vanity Fair, among scores of other texts.

* All accounts I’ve read of high schools in the United States, and the horrific events that so often seem to happen in them – as again this week – suggest they can be terrible places for those who can’t or won’t “fit in”. I am Dr Laura’s worst nightmare reports on how such attitudes most usually work out, however, with the “odd one out” harming themselves – in this case a 14-year-old girl who killed herself. Read it and weep for a wasted life.
(This post dates from early March, but I’ve only just found it and thought it worthy of as wide an audience as possible.)

If you missed last week’s inaugural edition, it’s here.

***********

Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience”, send me an email (natalieben at gmail dot com) or drop a comment here.

Disclaimer: the views here might not reflect my own. I’m trying to choose from as wide a range of female bloggers as possible.

In answer to that endlessly circulating question “where are all the female bloggers?”, I’ve decided to make a small weekly collection that answers: HERE!

Why “femme fatales”? Because these are killer posts.

This week’s is drawn from my own blogroll, but in the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger (and no I’m not doing chromosome tests so I can only do by self-identification) and think “that deserves a wider audience”, send me an email (natalieben at gmail dot com) or drop a comment here.

I’m trying to get a wide sample of subjects and approaches, as I hope this selection indicates. This is not only about blogging on “women’s topics”. I’m going to limit it to ten, to make it manageable.

So this week’s ten (in no particular order – this isn’t a competition):

* Shakespeare’s Sister directly, and passionately, addresses the refusal of male bloggers to link to women.

* Green fairy has an unpleasant encounter with the “old” media, in the form of her appearance in Marie Claire, in between “Murder in Suburbia” and “Sandra Bullock”.

* Veiled4allah briskly dismisses the claim that jihad means simply “holy war”.

* Echidne of the snakes sees how the US Budget debate has exposed the fact that “some Republicans really are Democrats and some Democrats are Republicans”.

* In response to the claim that women don’t like to get into arguments, Bitch PhD leaps up to say: I DO!

* On Break of Day in the Trenches Esther describes her role in the naming of a bus after a local war hero.

* On Early Modern Notes Sharon explores what Women’s History Month does and should mean.

* Real E Fun is a non-religious funeral celebrant who is an absolutely inspiring, unmissable read. (Really!) In this post she’s attempting a little neighbourhood match-making.

* Patia Stephens, in a heart-wrenching post, describes what it has been like to “struggle with beauty for what feels like my whole life”.

* Melinama recalls a disastrous St Patrick’s Day, in which her idea of Irish music was found to be not in concord with those of Florida partygoers, then how a visit to a funeral parlour led her to change her mind about “Danny Boy”.

P.S. My hit level is only modest (60 to 80 a weekday, since you asked), but I am also going to post this on Blogcritics, where it will hopefully garner a much wider audience.