All around the mulberry bush,
The monkey chased the weasel . . .

Just thought you’d need that tune in your head before you read this post. Inspired by Bitch, Ph.D.’s post about the question of women bloggers being raised yet again, I thought I’d link around and summarize a bit. I am trying my best to keep my anger in check and I know no one’s really going to read this and since most of my readers are women (my own sizing up of the readership), I am going to try to keep it light and happy. You deal with the subtext.

First, I recommend three of Dr. B’s posts: 1, 2, 3
And there’s links in there. Basically, a lot of people are pointing out that a lot of white male liberal bloggers have some latent sexism. Am I surprised? No. Remember my post about sexism among my colleagues. People of good conscious are sometimes sexist. I’m not sure how to remedy that.

Mel has a nice post about diversity in the blogosphere, about the importance of hearing other voices and the potential for the blogosphere to allow those voices to be heard. I think that is why we always get up in arms when the woman question comes up. It’s because everyone touts the blogosphere as being so democratic and diverse when it’s not. Partly it’s that the msm only pays attention to what’s at the top. And the top bloggers are only paying attention to what’s at the top. Everything else just under the surface gets ignored. There’s lots of diversity bubbling beneath the surface.

Another thing I find funny about the “Where are the women?” question is that there was just a bunch of bru-ha-ha over the mommy blogs. Hello–those are pretty much all women.

Here are some thoughts from my own hunt around the web. Chris Nolan’s 10 reasons why people keep asking this question. James Robertson on Chris Nolan.

Professional lurker has an excellent post about the issue and especially thoughtful on the idea of gendered language.

Another long and thoughtful post at Body and Soul (a blog I immediately blogrolled).

Burningbird looks at it from the technology standpoint, a view I’m quite interested in. And this whole issue dovetails with the sxsw vs. e-tech controversy that both danah and liz lawler write about at many to many. In fact, Dave Winer’s response to the question (which I’m not going to link to because others have) is primarily that, hey, there’s a lot of men in the tech field and blogging started as a techie thing, so of course, it’s still heavily a man’s blogosphere. God, can we get past the “women aren’t techies” or “women aren’t political” stuff. Because it’s. just. not. true.

I could go on and on, but I won’t. The thing is women are everywhere, but somehow they keep getting rendered invisible. I think everyone who asks where the women are should read Invisible Man. And I think no matter how tiring it is, we have to keep shouting “We are here! We are here! We are here!” Because if we don’t, into the beezlenut oil we go.

Update: I also want to add Cleis’s post at Sappho’s Breathing which has a great list of reason’s men give for not reading women’s blogs.

One more update: Echnide (one of my favorite blogs) has some great thoughts on the issue plus links to her own posts on these supposedly “male” political issues.

P.S. Promise this is the last update.