As I mentioned yesterday, I've been so sick and so crazed at work that I'd fallen way behind in blog-reading, and had only just caught up with the women on my regular blogroll enough to see that many of them were taking up the Women in Blogging mantle again. (Both Amanda Marcotte and Echidne weighed in today, by the way, and here's some more from Shakespeare's Sister.) While I admit my ego's a little bruised that none of these posts even referenced Estrogen Month, so that men reading their eloquent diatribes might have come over here to see what we're doing and find hundreds upon hundreds of female political bloggers listed on my sidebar and my Bloglines bookmarks (as of this post there are one-hundred-and-ninety-two women listed in the largest of the three Gals in Waiting sections, and that's not counting the ones who've received votes from Pen-Elayne readers!), I also know it's not about me - the important thing is our refusal as women bloggers to remain invisible, despite the best efforts of some "A-list" male bloggers to retain their blinders.

That said, now that I've been through the male half of my blogroll, I note some men are indeed noticing us for the blogospheric equals we are and have every right to be, or at least they're showing signs of trying. Kevin Drum's still asking questions like "But why do fewer women blog about politics than men?" as though that's a given rather than a possibly-erroneous assumption based on his personal experience or perhaps a hunch. Steve Gilliard seems to dance around the question of women bloggers and go off on his own tangent about integrating lily-white newsrooms (which certainly needs to happen, but bloggers can influence the blogosphere a lot more than we can the mass mainstream media). Ezra Klein still wants us to color him puzzled as to why guys keep asking about women bloggers. Maybe because they're asking the wrong question, or if it's the right one they don't really want to know the answer, they're just "talking to hear themselves talk" on the subject and figure that talk, rather than action, constitutes some sort of stab at levelling the playing field? I'm not sure what Norbizness thinks of this, he's being all Norbizzy as usual, but as far as I'm concerned NTodd Pritsky gets in the best zinger.

For me, the two posts from the male part of my blogroll that stand out the most are upyernoz's self-examining "blogroll gender count" (which does reference Estrogen Month, thanks Jeremy!) and Professor Juan Cole's outstanding entry "The Blogging Phenomenon." Even though Prof. Cole doesn't have a blogroll of his own, the many women mentioned in this post, most of whom were brand-new to me, epitomize what I'd hoped more male bloggers would do during Estrogen/Women in Blogging Month. It's easy for us to find each other; what needs to happen is for men to acknowledge our contributions as well, the way we've acknowledged theirs. With all their talk about how unfair it is that think-tank blogging panels are stacked with right-wingers, isn't it past time that male left-liberal bloggers cast out the log from their own eyes? Or do we really want to return to the days of Stokely Carmichael's comment on the position of women in the SNCC?

Voting for women you'd like to see added to my sidebar blogroll continues in the comments section below. Tomorrow I announce my newest additions.