Blogging while female

I first learned about the crass, insensitive remarks of Markos Moulitsas in this post by skippy, and later found a post by Steven D at Booman Tribune. In a later diary, Steven included what Markos actually said:

Look, if you blog, and blog about controversial shit, you'll get idiotic emails. Most of the time, said "death threats" don't even exist -- evidenced by the fact that the crying bloggers and journalists always fail to produce said "death threats". [...]

But so what? It's not as if those cowards will actually act on their threats. For better or for worse, this isn't a country in which media figures -- even hugely controversial ones -- are routinely attacked by anything more dangerous than a cream pie.

Since last night, I saw that skippy had updated his post with the following:

addendum: feminazi, commenting over at echidne's blog, asks this question:

i sent a email to http://www.mothertalkers.com/contactus asking them why they support misogynists through advertising. why don't you do the same?

good idea!

Except, I don't know how much choice they have, given that you see *this* at the bottom of the home page on that blog:

© 2005, Kos Media, LLC

I may be only a C-rate blogger (on a good day), but what do we *usually* do when we want to hold a public figure accountable for something they've said? Isn't it usually *their* advertisers that we write to? Or how about writing to some of the politicians and public figures who post diaries at Daily Kos. This Wikipedia article has a list.

I wouldn't recommend this if Markos' remarks were a one time thing, but as shirlstars' comment here indicates, this is part of a pattern of behavior.

See also:
How not to be an asshole: a guide for men
Why the lack of concern for Kathy Sierra ?
Take Back the Blog! March, a My Left Wing essay by Bruce Godfrey of Crablaw's Maryland Weekly.

Finally, as I noted here, I really haven't had it in me to do much blogging lately, and I'm still not feeling all that verbose at this point. But I do consider this to be an important issue, and, even if I don't manage to blog more about it, I'm going to make a point of adding relevant entries to my page of Google shared items, which you can find here.