That’s a quote from Ann Althouse on the subject of women and law blogging. I had to extract it from a much longer post larded with the usual Althousian misogynistic exceptionalism, but this part at least makes a lot of sense to me:
Theory #3: Women are more prone to professional or personal attack, so they avoid blogging….
There’s some truth to this, but again, I’d like to see some personal responsibility.
The internet is not going to coddle and comfort you. In fact, the internet wants you out of here. If you’re going to be the sort of person who doesn’t want to insist on her place when she can see that other people want her out of here, you’re not going to get very far blogging.
Some blogosphere folk may want to make this a nice, inviting place for you, but they don’t control the environment. It’s a big, crazy world in here, and you have to stake out your place in it. There are plenty of people who are only too willing to use the techniques that work to exclude women, and you have to decide that you intend to stay. It takes some nerve, and there’s a price to pay. It is harder for women. Do it anyway.
The very next sentence starts out “Stop whining, blaming others, looking for protectors, and blog…” just so you know what you are in for if you go to the Althouse blog and read the whole post. She is right that the Internet is a nasty, hostile place, especially for women, (even more especially for feminists, thanks in part to Ann Althouse) and you kind of have to accept that if you are going to blog.
–Ann Bartow
I love(spit on) that first sentence.
“Women are prone to” magically cause other peeps to attack them. What a cheesy way to try to say women are responsible for what others do.
Women are prone to do this or that, indeed, but to write that they are prone, inclined, to be attacked is erroneous. Asshats are prone to attack women. The inclination belongs to the actor, not the one acted upon.
Criminy! That’s only the first sentence.
Actually that’s one of the “theories for why women don’t blog” that Althouse was responding to. You can read the whole article. “Where Are All the Female Law Bloggers” by C.C. Holland here: http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202424993736
Althouse uses it as a platform to make a lot of generalizations about women, most of them negative, because no one could ever be as cool as she is.