To address the “she said women suck at blogging” school of thought following a harsh explanation of her refusal to blog, I will readily admit that Wente’s piece has all the tact of an elephant in a logic shop.
But, I will give her this much – her basis of analysis is correct. Men blog more than women. Moreover, all things being equal, men post more regularly than female bloggers. Further, they tend to express more decisive opinions when blogging than women. I know this because it was my undergraduate thesis. I’ll try not to be too offended that more people read the Globe and Mail than academic journals. Though to my credit, I included pictures! Well… graphs. But in colour!
The problem is that Wente took a factually correct and provable data point, and rather than reference a stat, just threw it out amidst a lot of self-interested, extremist explanation. Note to writers: if your editor asks you to do something, just politely refuse, don’t write a column about the ignorance of the mere suggestion.
It harkens somewhat to the Roy Macgregor piece last week about the difference in web hits versus good journalism. While I found his points valid, the impact was a bit lost on me as it too seemed to be some public defense of self-worth intended for his higher-ups.
So no, I don’t think Wente’s piece was sexist against women bloggers. In fact, the more I think about it, the more Wente’s piece *is* sexist – against men. It is unfair to suggest that the gender blogging differential is due to some male character flaw, without any recognition of the way we as a group socialize men to:
- have all the answers
- be assertive/take charge
- out-alpha other males
In my mind, it’s the equivalent of saying that the problem with women bloggers is that they can’t make a decision, are always changing their minds, or are always trying to take both sides.
First, show me the data behind your theory. Second, if true, show me this is due to an inherent gender-based flaw.
Studies prove that the responses children elicit from adults as infants differ based on gender and subsequently impact brain development from the earliest of months. Then times that by decades and decades of reinforcement.
Wente is taking a self-righteous approach to demean bloggers based on our demographic’s most prominent trait, but hardly – as evidenced by our blog – an all encompassing one.
There are many shortcomings upon which to criticize blogs (certainly fewer of them apply to our whimsical, brilliant forserious.ca, but let’s not get caught up in details). The largest lie in the medium, not the users.
So let’s not have a cow.
We all know the drill. Either you find a job with good health benefits, or your partner does (or you move to Canada, shack up with a doctor, win the lottery, or follow the health regimen of Arnold Schwarzenegger.)
Well, as of Tuesday, that story changed for some as human rights were thrown out with this Monday’s garbage when social services organization Catholic Charities actually changed its health coverage plan so that partners of employees who were in same-sex relationships would not receive the benefits received by those of opposite-sex relationships.
Same-sex spouses of what-might-as-well-be-re-branded Cathartid Charities employees don’t get any benefits through this new plan. Interesting timing, as tomorrow is the day that same-sex marriage becomes legal in the District of Columbia. read more…
This post opens with a disparaging remark about Gordon Lightfoot. It was a convenient joke, but an unfair one. GL has a long history of good music as well as dead sexiness.
Gordon Lightfoot became dead to a lot more than just contemporary music critics last week.
A false death report spread like wildfire over Twitter on Thursday, proving once again that social media – while a useful tool – has its definite limitations; in this case, veracity.
This isn’t the first time that a lie has spread so widely as to become “trending topics” on Twitter, a term used for the most highly tweeted issues. Last month Johnny Depp died and American Airlines offered free flights to Haiti according to Twitter. Twitter was also a major source of swine flu gossip and misinformation during the autumn, to the point that many medical experts were urging citizens not to engage in “twitter panic” incorrectly exaggerating the degree of the outbreak or its causes.
While many are quick to term these widespread misinformation waves “hoaxes,” I’m reticent to imply such malice. Certainly a few individuals purposeful began the lie, but surely the uptake by so many thousands and thousands of well-intentioned and possibly mourning others cannot be categorized under such negative and loaded terminology.
Nor are misinformation spreaders on Twitter innocent.
This phenomenon of tidal-wave like falsehood dissemination sheds light on some of Twitter’s currently problems – the medium suffers from structural limitations, a bad case of groupthink, and also some shirking of intellectual responsibility by its users.
Confessional time. I am in a rocky relationship with Jim Prentice.
I should have seen it coming, I really should have, as I suppose all good relationships must come to an end. Your true colours showed through, Jim, and not in a good, Cyndi Lauper kind of way.
The Honourable Jim Prentice began his speech to members of the University of Calgary School of Public Policy and School of Business on February 1 - though, at first, I could have sworn he was right next to me whispering sweet nothings in my ear – with soothing words about the federal government’s energy and climate change: read more…
As the only Forserious maven to live east of Montreal…or really anywhere outside of the Greater Toronto Area, I feel compelled to be the roving regional reporter, and not just because it rolls trippingly off the tongue. Today’s instalment takes me to Canada’s Ocean Playground.
Nova Scotia is currently embroiled in its very own MLA “spending scandal.” Let me first start off with the fact that as far as scandals go, this one is on the vanilla end of the spectrum. While the British MP spending scandal that broke last year had members of parliament fessing up for thousands of pounds worth of moat repairs, the sexiest thing to come out of the Bluenose province to-do was a 40 inch television and a copy of the Xbox 360 sensation Dance, Dance, Revolution.
For those of you without a daily subscription to the Chronicle Herald, here’s the short version: Last year, Darrell Dexter and the NDP strode into majority government, sweeping the then minority holding Progressive Conservatives into third place. Government accountability was the name of the game, and one of the first orders of business was to have the Auditor-General conduct an audit of MLA expenses over the past three years. This was the first time such an audit had been conducted in well over a decade.
Screencapture from the CBC story following the Harper Government's re-announcement that they plan to do a little less than ziltch for this Canadian being held in a US prison.
I get that sometimes it’s easier to forget the horrible mistakes we made. For example, adding a competitive poutine-eating station into the outdoor skating rink obstacle course in first year university. It doesn’t take a physics major to know that puke and ice don’t mix.
But in the case of one of our country’s biggest poutine-overconsumption-esque boo-boos, the Canadian government has an obligation not only not to forget that it meekly stood by while a 15 year old citizen was unjustly incarcerated by the US government, but furthermore to fix the situation by now repatriating him, eight years later.
Instead, Harper and colleagues have chosen the path of least responsibility, the “Omar WHO??” defense. This is sad for myriad reasons, but obviously the main one is that it shirks a government’s obligation to defend and fight for the rights of its own citizens, particularly those who have not been proven guilty. For those of you unfamiliar with the debacle, a backgrounder by CBC is here.
This story of inaction resonates with me deeply. I’m the same age as Omar, I too was born in a Canadian hospital, raised in a Canadian city, and I too had some kooky parents that left something to be desired on the parenting file. My dad encouraged me to participate in soap box derbies down unsafely steep and often car-addled terrain. His dad encouraged him to consider terrorism as a future career.
The point is, we can’t blame people for their parents, especially as minors. It was wrong and the Canadian Government needs to fight to bring Khadr home.
Read this article first in order to maximize blog-reading experience.
If the circulation statistics, advertising sales, and voice inside my head are to be believed, the National Post is disappearing from many Canadians’ coffee tables (though it does populate more and more fireplaces). Forgive us for being skeptical. We would wave good-bye without shedding a tear, but we are pretty sure this angry, divisive and dubious “paper” is simply pretending to disappear.
To start, the radical writers behind their editorials have done untold damage to families, our court systems, labour laws, constitutional freedoms and even the ordinary relations between men and women.
National Post editorials have taught that all time spent reading the National Post — or nearly all — would have been better spent making paper mache Stephen Harper tribute dolls. Their Editorial Board has argued, with approximately-whatever-a-friendly-thesaurus-word-is-for-ZERO success, that rights should be granted not to individuals alone, but to whole Editorial Boards, too. This has led to newspaper subsidy – printing papers based on one’s depth of pocket rather than on an objective assessment of quality reporting. read more…
“What does an ulcer feel like?” Zoe asked us aloud as she tilted her head for a split second and pondered the striking throb in her lower right stomach after a double cappuccino chug. “I could Google it,” she announced.
“Well that didn’t help me much, except to tell me that I probably “work too much”. Shocking, thanks for nothing Wikipedia.”
In that exact moment we considered calling the Prime Minister’s Office and asking, “So sorry to disturb, but is the reason that Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament because he was afraid of getting an ulcer?”
Surprisingly, we realized, mid-visualization, that we might actually rest content if the answer on the other end of the line was, “Why, yes!” because a reason – ANY reason – would have been an excellent start to Harper’s “Dear John” letter to the nation.
Instead, he went all old-school and sent it to Canadians telegraph style:
PARLIAMENT CANCELLED STOP OLYMPIC FOCUS URGENT STOP PRETEND NOTHING HAPPENED STOP TTYL
STEPHEN
And with that, here is a snapshot of where our country is at, where it could have gone, and where it will go instead, in the next 60 days:
So here’s why I interrupted my frivolous YouTube watching of recent Glee episodes (which I watch primarily to life-plan for the day that climate change is solved and I can finally pursue my dream of amateur Broadway. It’s between that and becoming the Jodie Foster à la Contact):
It’s that time of month again. Alllll the countries in the world (that can afford it) are in Bankok for a United Nations meeting on climate change. There has been a handful of them this year, about once every 6 weeks. There are discussion and working meetings for countries to talk about their climate change commitments.
The last of this year (where all the decisions have to be made) is in Copenhagen in December. (Kind of like each week of So You Think You Can Dance Canada leading up to the final showdown, and everybody wins in their heart regardless of those who technically come out on top.)
One would think, hope, etc, that the United Nations is an efficient and effective playground for ideas and decisions that ultimately impact the world for the better. Today in plenary, the main hall in talks that include all countries, Canada dragged out the conversation for a little longer than I would deem allowable, even by democratic standards. read more…
Slit-leggings at American Apparel and Current Climate Policy in Canada
I can’t stand either. (Read: Major gaps existing in otherwise quite good material and design.)
Said tights.
Said bill.
Among the most important memos of the 21st century (aside from ‘It’s highly respected to still know all the words to New Kids on the Block’s ‘Step by Step’” and ‘No, it’s not okay to wear tights as pants, especially the slitted ones from American Apparel.’) is: ‘All other governments in the developed world are doing way more on climate change than Canada’.
Memos are what they are. Pop culture stands strong, fads fade (or are imagined) and the ambition of politicians tends to fall out of their pockets unnoticeably as they run down the halls of Parliament to their next meeting.
Turns out, losing ambition also means losing cred as a country that used to pride itself on environmental leadership – perhaps one of the biggest slip-ups of our time. (Likewise, losing your concept of ‘pants’ also means losing cred as a person who used to be able to dress themselves – perhaps one of the biggest plead to be on What Not To Wear of this season*).
