The possum regularly comments over at LP so you might wonder where his brain was when he posted this -
“We see the same things with political blogs in Australia – the ratio of male to female comments here ranges between about 4 to 1 on a good day, through to 10 to 1 depending on the topic.
Pollbludger is similar.
Over at Catallaxy it’s nearly all male, Tallyroom is nearly all male – the only place on the Australian political net where the gender balance seems to be a little more equal is with some threads at Larvatus Prodeo.” on his blog the other day.
I guess he got a deserved education about the definition of politics but it interesting how Crikey responded with the post by Sophie Black the next day (and by a woman too!) However being prone to wonder, I checked out a few of the blogs that possum defined as political (with the big P) and compared them with some of those that my instincts led me to. The blog at Catallaxy left me stone cold and no matter how brilliantly qualified William Bowe might be, his Pollbludger blog is really just more grist for the Crikey mill. Tallyroom seems a little more digressive but it still obsessed with mainstream Politics.
Now possum didn’t really think or have any idea but his statement would appear to be socially self limiting. The reason isn’t that hard to explain so I’ll have a crack. I survey the known universe and lo and behold there are only men talking about politics, omg what is going on, where are the women? Spot the problem? By definition the know universe consists only of those blogs known to possum which cover mainstream big P politics which excludes any women who might be blogging about other politics. Sophie’s post the next day is far more considered, she simply asks women to participate, unlike possum who stupidly declared women bloggers to be invisible to his all seeing male gaze.
Understandably a few women bloggers got pissed about this.
When I followed my instincts, as opposed to possum’s directive, I discovered some interesting blogs by women, discussing, would you believe, politics! The thing is, it wasn’t the boring blokey big P politics dominated by machismo and verbal diatribes, but it was intelligent and insightful which underscores a fairly radical concept, something possum is possibly unacquainted with. That is to say, that internal systemic change of the kind that would follow from a more even gender distribution in political analysis and decision making will fundamentally affect a meaningful change in our daily lives which is after all, what I thought politics was about. Achieving gender equality is a political issue which means that talking about gender issues is important just like carbon is important and wealth is important and so on. You don’t need to be too smart to understand why men might feel a little uncomfortable and defensive about gender debates. Hopefully possum and crikey learn from their mistakes. As for some of the crass, belittling and sexist comments made in response, I guess it shows how far we have to go 
