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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (101504)	2/21/2005 5:53:58 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793779

Women and blogging. By Ann Althouse Kevin Drum asks why there aren't more women writing op-eds and blogs. So what's up? There aren't any institutional barriers in the traditional sense of the word, which means either (a) there are fewer female political bloggers and thus fewer in the top 30, or (b) there are plenty of women who blog about politics but they don't get a lot of traffic or links from high-traffic male bloggers. Ironically, he -- being a "high-traffic male blogger" -- failed to link to the female bloggers he named in this post, but, upon razzing, he unembarrassed himself and linked. Drum kind of wants to analyze the women and blogging but kind of worries about getting summersed (to coin a word): My guess is that it's a bit of both, and the proximate reason is that men are more comfortable with the food fight nature of opinion writing — both writing it and reading it. Since I don't wish to suffer the fate of Larry Summers I'll refrain from speculating on deep causes — it might be social, cultural, genetic, or Martian mind rays for all I know — but I imagine that the fundamental viciousness and self aggrandizement inherent in opinion writing turns off a lot of women. Sigh. Why is he assuming that promulgating opinions is a mean and domineering sort of behavior? I've certainly noticed that a lot of bloggers that I find unreadable display this tendency, but I think the best blogs are reasonable, good-natured, humorous, and well-rounded. Drum continues: [D]oes this mean that women need to change if they want to enter the fray, or does it mean that the fray needs to change in order to attract more women? As usual, probably some of both. Unfortunately, the blogosphere, which ought to be an ideal training ground for finding new voices in nontraditional places, is far more vitriolic than any op-ed page in the country, even the Wall Street Journal's, and therefore probably turns off women far more than it attracts them. I don't think women or the blogosphere needs to change. Each blog is a place unto itself, where a writer establishes a tone and a voice. As long as you keep the comments function off, you control your own space. A thousand vitriolic male blogs don't prevent one woman from setting up her own blog and making whatever she likes of it. washingtonmonthly.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (101504)	2/21/2005 6:27:07 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 793779

and I say this not just because English may win the competition. Mandarin might win; Barbara Wallraff of The Atlantic Monthly devoted a lengthy 2001 story to the idea that Mandarin will best English in the struggle to be the global tongue. Mandarin has more native speakers but I'm pretty sure English is the most common 2nd and third language and if your just looking at the number of native speakers wouldn't Hindi have to be considered as well. Many scientific and technical terms are either taken straight from English. If there is going to be one global tongue its going to be a long time in the future and I don't think it will be Mandarin, however it might have a lot of Mandarin influences. Certainly English would be a major influence as well. but I can't imagine what mechanism would drive the spread of Mandarin much beyond China Well there are a lot of ethnic Chinese in other Asian countries and China is large and has rapid economic growth, but still I disagree with the people who think China will overtake the US economically, militarily, and/or diplomatically within a generation. I don't think that China can sustain its current level of growth. Remember awhile back all the talk of Japan passing the US economically. Maybe in 20 years people will look ahead and think India will pass the US economically. Eventually someone will but I don't think its going to be by 2025 like some people have claimed. I expect it might not happen in my lifetime. If you were making policy in one of those countries, choosing a second language to teach everyone, wouldn't you, like Mongolia, pick English? I think that teaching English as a 2nd language makes a lot of sense for most countries. In Mongolia you have English competing with Mandarin (China is right next door), and Russian fading (maybe fading fast) but still having some significance. Tim