What Women??

Atrios writes:

In the year 2013, misogyny and gender inequality persists in part because male editors pay women to write anti-feminist screeds, allowing men to continue feeling good about their misogyny.

Am I supposed to do a “George Bush looking for WMDs under the tablecloths” maneuver?

Where are these women of which you speak?

Do you mean the ones employed by Fox or the past-their-writing-prime variety like Maureen Dowd who graduated from Catholic school when women still wore doilies on their heads in church?

There are pitifully few women writing for major newspapers in the op/ed section and even more pitifully, a mere tincture of women bloggers cited by blog aggregators like Greg Sargent’s PlumLine.  It got so bad last year that we started a Plumline metric, a ratio of female to male blogger citations.  The numbers would have had to triple before they were even slightly significant.

I’ll be the first one to support the notion that women should stop bashing women.  But when the DNC threw all of its support behind Obama, bashing women became inevitable- because his main opponent and best qualified candidate was a woman. Since the DNC determined that he was going to be the nominee, women were forced to bash their own in order to keep the slender reproductive rights they had in 2008.  And how did that turn out?

This problem didn’t just spring out of nowhere.  It has always been there because our numbers in the op/ed world have always been few.  It’s just worse now because the graduating class of 2008 was almost exclusively male.

If Atrios had been paying attention, he would have noticed that there are plenty of female bloggers waiting for paying gigs who are not writing anti-feminist screeds.  Oh wait, he would have had to seek out those writers on his own.  They never get mentioned by the opinionmakers and they’re not bloody likely to get mentored by anyone.  Heck, WE can’t even get on his blogroll.

Nevermind.

********************************

Hey, remember this little ditty?  I know *I’ll* never forget.

Winter break

Hi guys, I’m still working on my super secret project which I hope to unveil to you soon.  The news is at lull level at the moment while the various forms of government play Conan the Barbarian (the Republicans) or ritually immolate themselves (the Democrats).  There may be a method to Harry Reid’s madness, I don’t know.  I think he’s capable of playing at least 3D chess.  We’ll see.  But anyway, I’m drifting again…

So, I thought if might be a good idea for all of us to take the day off and pamper ourselves so that we can be refreshed and ready for the insanity that starts next week.  I’ve chosen this video from youtube blogger Julia at TheThirdShift, a Canadian-Swiss who has access to a rustic cabin in the Alps for weekend getaways.  In this video, Julia describes a spa day.

Go brew some tea, light your fire, fill up the tub and relax.  Baby, it might be cold outside but it’s warm and cozy in here.  Ahhhh….

Start with Julia’s trip to the cabin.

And follow with the oatmeal mask.

(Yeah, yeah, I know that bed is to die for.  Some people have all the luck.)