Steven Levy wonders why the blogosphere is dominated by men. I confess that I'm frustrated that anyone has taken Levy's column seriously. Men do not dominate the blogosphere. Levy might legitimately have asked "Why does the media point almost exclusively to weblogs created by men", or "Why do the male bloggers most often referenced by media, primarily reference weblogs maintained by other men?" But neither of those situations has anything to do with the composition of the blogosphere. There are whole clusters composed of women linking mainly to other women, and lots of mixed blogrolls, besides. Truth is, whichever weblog you first find will lead you to other, similar, weblogs (all of which link to others like them) and from that you will come to a completely erroneous conclusion about the composition of the weblog universe.
She continues with an astute series of observations that totally invert the question.
As does Chris Clarke in this bit of serious whimsy X marks the chromosome on Creek Running North.
And Pinko Feminist Hellcat has her say here.
The whole issue is clearly a you get it or you don't sort of thing. And as most of us with the weaker Y chromosome have discovered, somethings truly are beyond our limited frame of understanding. As Lovin' Spoonful have it "It's like tryin' to tell a stranger 'bout rock-n-roll."
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