What Not To Write About

You might not know this, but every blogger quickly learns which particular topics cause fights and arguments and lots of anger at the blogger. As fights and arguments and anger mean more hits, some bloggers always add those topics when the traffic is slow. Other bloggers (coughgentlegoddessescough) hate writing about those topics because the arguments are like a fog of old farting and never clear completely.

The list of explosive topics for feminist bloggers is slightly different than for, say, progressive bloggers in general. And no, I'm not going to give you the list because that would get the yelling started. But one of those topics certainly is the way Sarah Palin is treated in the political media and on various political blogs. The debate on her is predictable: Some (poor dear) feminist blogger points out that her treatment contains large chunks of sexist smearing. Then others note that Sarah is trading on her sexuality so she deserves the sexualized responses. Or that she's too stoopid for words and has such horrible politics that we really should dump everything possible on her head. Including misogyny, whenever appropriate.

And that's where things get ugly. It's nearly impossible to separate Sarah-Palin-hating from Sarah-Palin-as-female-hating, and that offers a nice opening for any closeted misogynist to exercise his or her inner demons without getting caught doing it. Ultimately the whole topic turns into free-for-all about tits and power and shit, and the only valid conclusion is that we are far from an equal world when it comes to getting and using political power.

That's why I'm not writing this post.