Feminist Writer: Women Don't Keep Up With News Because There Aren't Enough Female Opinion Writers

Okay:

The problem of women being shut out of opinion media, even progressive opinion media, is related to the one you describe of women not voting. Anna Greenberg has done research into this and discovered that a major reason these women don’t vote is they feel like they’re not well-informed and therefore aren’t qualified to vote. One reason they probably don’t feel well-informed is that they don’t keep up with political media as much as men, and I’d wager that one reason they don’t do that is when they turn to it they don’t see anyone who looks like they do or is talking about their concerns in a way they can relate to.

I presume this means that men shouldn't bother with female commentators, as women don't "look like they do or [talk] about their concerns in a way they can relate to."

"Even progressive opinion media." No, change that to "especially progressive opinion media."

With all due respect, there aren't as many female (or minority) commentators, especially on the left, because they tend to spend most of their time in an ideological ghetto. Many women write about "women's issues" and many ethnic minorities write almost exlcusively about "minority issues" -- again, especially on the left, where such identity-politics are celebrated. They are limiting their audience by limiting the subject matters upon which they opine.

This is much less of a pheomenon on the right, where identity politics are dismissed as childish, and thus women and minority opinion writers tend to write on whatever topics are most pressing -- sort of just like white male opinion writers do. A black conservative opinion writer may write more on racial issues than a white one, and a female opinion writer may write more about cultural and sexual issues than a male one, but they're all also writing on economics and Iran and everything else.

Among the very top of the conservative pundicracy are minority, female, and gay writers like Thomas Sowell, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and Mark Steyn (who is a notorious homosexual, or at least he's British or Canadian or something, which is pretty much the same thing).

Meanwhile, Maureen Dowd is writing about who whacked whom on last week's Sopranos and who's sleeping with whom on The L Word.

Women on the left tend to be disciples of "critical feminist scholarship," and minorities on the left disciples of "critical racial scholarship," so even when they write on broader issues, their writings are infected with clit-crit or snit-crit Marxist victimological cant. (It should be noted that white male leftist writers are equally awful, but for slightly different reasons: they're just plain stupid.)

You ever try to read this crap? It's all about "narratives" and "power structures" and other airily eye-glazing academic nonsense.

"I'd wager that one reason [women don't read the news or vote as regularly as men] is when they turn to it they don’t see anyone who looks like they do or is talking about their concerns in a way they can relate to."

How condescending. Women can only read writers that "look like them" or who write in a way they can "relate to," presumably all girlied-up and filled with "news you can use," like stuff about menses and recyclable diapers and vulva health.

I say crap like that all the time, but I'm kidding.

It's a strange inversion. Those who insist the loudest that there is no difference between men and women are forever suggesting there are great differences between them; while those, like conservatives, who believer there are indeed major differences between men and women behave as if the sexes are more or less the same and should be treated equally.

Except when it comes to things like moving furniture; women have a strong evolutionary advantage as regards moving heavy couches up stairwells, and I of course always allow my ladies to show their full womanhood by managing such tasks themselves.

posted by Ace at 01:00 PM

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