Two recent articles about the way women work and are portrayed in the media caught my attention.  The contrast deserves an eye, I think.

First, John Hawkins has a really interesting article up in which he interviews 5 female bloggers of conservative mind about their experiences working in Internet media.  One common theme:  Female bloggers are frequently targets of degrading attacks on their sexuality and their intellect. 

Just a quick quote from Pam Geller to peak your curiosity:

Pamela on feminism.

I don’t need equal rights….I’m already equal. I don’t need somebody telling me something that’s already a fact. All these women like Gloria Steinem, “Oh, we made it happen for you!” You didn’t make it happen for me. That whole movement…is rooted in Marxist-Leninist propaganda….I’m not a feminist, I’m an anti-feminist. I think it has hurt women enormously.

Recommended reading.

In contrast there was the “We Scream, We Swoon” piece in the Washington Post in which Charlotte Allen totally nukes the notion of gender equivalence, going so far that I - an avowed male chauvinist - actually physically cringed while reading it the first time.

I can’t help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women — I should say, “we women,” of course — aren’t the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial.

Wow.  And there’s more where that came from.  Allen’s observations are not entirely unsupported.  My own beloved wife says that she would never vote for a female president because, and I quote, “women are too emotional”.

I’m not sure I buy that.  Margaret Thatcher, it seems to me, was a pretty darn strong, effective leader.  And the 3 bloggers John interviews who I read with some frequency - Geller,  Carpenter, & Malkin - all generally use what I consider good logic when staking out their positions.

Interesting that it’s the left-of-center WaPo that knocks women’s intellect - albeit more subtly that these conservative bloggers are attacked on Kos, etc. - while they get fair and equal treatment in Hawkins’ article.  Not surprising to me, though.