The XX Factor: What women really think.

Is Blogging While Female Really So "Perilous"?

On the occasion of a zillion geeks descending on Austin for SXSW, the Austin Chronicle considers the so-called "perils of being a female blogger." According to the article, while the blogosphere is rife with chicks everywhere you click, the "professional blogging sphere" raises the question: "Where are all the women?" From the ranks of the purportedly underrepresented, Mediabistro's Rebecca Fox and the Daily Beast's Rachel Sklar step forward to helm a SXSW panel: "Why Is Professional Blogging Bloodsport for Women?"

To wit: "For professional female bloggers, writing online can get painfully personal—and so can the criticism. Oversharing, sex-blogging, fameballs, Tumblettes, Jezebelism—why is it (still) so difficult to be a woman online?" Who's to blame for making lady bloggers online lives so miserable? The patriarchy and Christianity, of course! Or, as Fox puts it, "keeping your mouth shut has long been tantamount to being 'good,' and the virgin/whore complex is alive and well both online and off." In the end, they conclude, it's (gasp) "dangerous to be a female blogger."

Dangerous to blog if you have a vagina? Blogging while female a "bloodsport"? "There are endless examples of female bloggers coming under the knife for being bitches or media whores, while male bloggers' gender is either ignored or heralded," the Chronicle's Sofia Resnick writes. Really? If there was ever an equal opportunity attack forum, the Internet is it. Mostly upper-middle class, well-educated, by-and-large Caucasian women who seek to publish their words on the Web get what everyone else gets online: a free, uncensored platform with a roving pack of readers who have the right to say whatever they want as part of the "conversation." Get over yourselves, and get on with it, ladies.