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

This week I’m a bit further on my way to the collection of 300.

First, I have to highlight Claire’s extremely promising new blog, We Are Still Here, which combines interests in feminism and history, so you can guess it is why the top of this list. Claire has been browsing the many little-known female writers on Project Gutenberg.

Staying on the artistic side, Gert, who promises she’s “woman-shaped”, on Mad Musings of Me, reviews a Donizetti concert performance. On Sudden Nothing, meanwhile, the Legendary Monkey wrestles with the difficult problem of writing about truth that is stranger than fiction. Then Deepa on Tea Shop on the Moon (what a lovely image) writes about Kamala Das, “one of the first women in India” to write about sex outside marriage, saying only now is she able to comprehend her courage, and her craft.

Moving on to “real life”, or something like that, Colette on Dancing on Colette’s Grave writes about the perils of internet dating. Bitter-Girl, who boasts she’s “now with extra cranky” is meanwhile detailing the perils of life in Cleveland and Lisset on Did I SHave My Legs for This? is lamenting the disconnections caused by the night shift. (Know the feeling – you might notice I often post at some pretty odd times.)

If that seems a bit depressing, then Laura Young on Musings of an Ant Watcher introduces Rasputina’s “wicked romp” “through territory one would never have dreamt possible for two cellists and a drummer” and Connie Phillips on Blogcritics is celebrating The Vanity Project, a musical celebration of “the LA dream”.

Finally, for those not yet convinced about Bill Gates and company, The Common Scold notes its non-existent diversity policy.

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Last week’s edition is here.

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Remember nominations are hugely welcome – I’ll probably get to you eventually anyway, but why not hurry along the process?

Women

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

After a fortnight of returning to old stamping grounds, this week I’m recommencing the collection of new female bloggers, on my way to an nice even number of 300.

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A Little Pregnant, who was obviously rather more than that, offers personal reflection and family accounts of Katrina, while in the other big US news of the week,”Pissed-off Patricia” on Blondesense has a pithy selection of questions for Judge Roberts.

Back in the UK, Gendergeek is angered by a spurious connection being made feminism and paedophilia.

Jenny D. on Back Talk asks some of the big questions: Can you teach? How do you know? Still in schools, on The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, you-can-guess-who asks if kids should be punished for their parents.

On the artistic side, Sweet Jane on Parisist is getting away from the grey of a Paris autumn with a spectacular art installation. (Even if you can’t read the French, check out the pics.) Jeanne on Body and Soul discusses the – rather odd when you think about it – idea of turning blogs into books.

Open Brackets, meanwhile, has come up with some useful new words, including Grouptard: [user] group + retard: The maddening and ever-present fool who apparently always populates otherwise lovely user groups.

On the personal side, Sara Lynn on the beautifully named Yeah, But Houdini Didn’t Have These Hips reports on how not to have a birthday. Belle in the Big Apple, meanwhile, is waying the choices and compromises of city life versus the Southern Boy. (Don’t tie yourself down, I’d say.)

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Last week’s edition is here.

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Remember nominations are hugely welcome – I’ll probably get to you eventually anyway, but why not hurry along the process?

|Women

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

Since I’m on holiday in France, I should be looking for French female bloggers, but to be frank the internet cafe is neither comfortable enough – it is supposed to be non fumeur but I keep getting great gusts of cigarette smoke from the air-conditioning – nor is the beach far enough away – to justify it. So if you know any, please tell me about them (whether they write in French or English).

So again this week I’m revisiting some old favourites …

Now I haven’t been following the Katrina debate in the blogosphere this week – after some spirited engagements on Blogcritics last week – but reading it in the French papers instead. (And yes they are slightly gloating, but then after a couple of years of being called cheese-easting surrender monkeys I can excuse that.)

But Bitch PhD has a nice roundup of blogs on the subject, and some thoughts of her own. Sharon on Early Modern Notes, meanwhile, is finding parallels in the Great Fire of London, “a vulnerable city, warnings ignored….” There’s also a nice collection of links about the “Great Plague”, in cqse you were wondering about what might be next.

Frogs and Ravens has a solution, impeachment. Much as I agree with her sentiments, I just can’t face it – imagine going through the whole Clinton saga all over again! Kameron on Brutal Women, meanwhile, reports that an entire city in Oregon disappeared under similar circumstances. (The question I haven’t seen asked, but keep wondering about, is whether it makes any sense to rebuild New Orleans, when an equally bad or even worse hurricane could just as easily come along next year, or next decade?)

After all of that it must be time for a laugh: Pandagon suggests some strategies for the “wingnuts” to combat feminism. Remember, coupon-cutting is a Marxist activity. America This Is Serious, meanwhile, finds that a Seventies book of lesbian ethics still has worthwhile messages for everyone.

Jessica on Feministing, in the meantime, has found a must-read “part memoir, part cultural commentary”, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants.

Staying literary, The Little Professor is sceptical about a claim for a newly discovered source for Oliver Twist. Shouldn’t someone have noticed at the time, she asks?

Then for a serious lump of real life, visit Real E Fun. She’s a non-religious funeral celebrant, but don’t let that put you off. The author of Personal Political, meanwhile, is encountering a new dilemma in an encounter with religion as a lesbian mother.

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Last week’s edition is here.

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Next week I’ll probably start collecting my next hundred female bloggers, to eventually take my total to 300, so if you’ve any nominations – including of your own blog – please leave in the comments.

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

I’m going to take it easy for the next couple of weeks; I’m 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.

So to links …

First to the big news of the week, Coleen on Some of My Days writes about being a refugee from Katrina, while Vanessa at Feministing explores the opportunities and threats for women in the new Iraqi constitution.

Echidne of the Snakes looks at the resignation of a woman with principles from the FDA. “Maybe this is the only workable alternative right now: don’t play wingnut games and watch the world collapse,” she says.

Egalia at Tennessee Guerrilla Women revists another infamous Pat Robertson quote. Trish Wilson at The Countess, meanwhile, has found a Chinese researcher on a similar wavelength: the greatest threat to civilisation as we know it is … nude web surfing.

Laura on Clewes: The Historic True Crime Blog has found an account of a carnival dummy that was actually a mummy. I was particularly taken with this tale since it seems to be the basis for a novel by my favourite crime writer, Kerry Greenwood.

On Purple Elephant’s Corner, there’s a scarey, but happy, encounter with Mother’s ruin – gin if you don’t know the term.

Now if you live in London you often see big groups of American teens over here on tours. Lisa is in Oxford, but she has the same enthusiasm for new experiences you see in London – something old cynics like myself should probably try to recapture occasionally. Pen-Elayne, meanwhile, is offering a photographic tour of New York.

Finally, Pandagon takes right-wing horror about girl scouts learning to look out for themselves and runs with it in: First you let the girls scout and next thing you know, you’ve got maruading bands of man-killers. I’m waiting for someone to take it seriously; bound to happen.

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Last week’s Femmes Fatales is here, if you missed it.

The collection of the first hundred is here. The second hundred will be collected soon, I promise!

Women, Feminism

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.