Pen-Elayne on the Web

Estrogen Month - Day 15

Beware the Ides of Estrogen? No wait, that can't be right... Anyway, Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month is more or less explained in this post, for those of you wanting to catch up. I wanted to do a couple more follow-ups on previous posts:

Lisa Stone asks, "Should BlogHerCon be open to men?" Her post seems to be mostly in response to questions from a man - not coincidentally, the man who organized the first Bloggercon, Dave Whiner Winer, about whom I wrote here. Based on Winer's queries, my impressions of him since I made that post a year and a half ago haven't changed. I mean, let's reverse the gender here, a good way to detect imbalance. Readers, can you imagine a Bloggercon prep discussion at which anyone asked "But will there be female discussion leaders? Will women be allowed to speak without being ridiculed? Will men who say sexist things about women be challenged, or will people who disagree be shouted down?" Okay, I'd probably ask the first one, but based on how many men in the blogosphere at best still ignore women, and at worst treat them like some sort of threat encroaching upon their precious territory, I pretty much know the answer to the others, as well as the reaction of many men to whom such questions would be asked in the first place. Seems to me that, given the obvious fact that the blogger playing field is still not perceived as level, men still have much more to worry about in cleaning up their own houses than in pursuing the remote possibility of "reverse discrimination" at a conference where the doings of men aren't the subject matter.

Kui Kihoro at Mama Junkyard's is one of the many people publicizing Estrogen Month (thanks to all of you!), and offers the following additional sites for voting consideration:

AfroMusing

Guessaurus

Kaki (Scentiments)

Kenyan Pundit

Nehanda Dreams

Wambui (Snapshots of New Orleans)

Wituu

Provided they all have site feeds (Update: Nehanda Dreams' feed isn't on), they'll go on the Gals in Waiting section as soon as I'm able (Wambui, who's already cast her vote in yesterday's comment section, is on there already)! And a special welcome to everyone Kui directed here, even if it does look like y'all are starting to stuff the ballot box... (Kidding!!) Thanks again to everyone continuing to participate in this!