I was going to write a really nice introduction for Chris. I was going to say stuff like he mentored me through my first novel (and helped me get published), he knows everything about childrens/YA lit (and is famous in the kidlit world (president of ALAN at one time or another)), he writes amazing books (non-fiction, fiction, picture books), etc. etc. etc. Not to mention being kind (ha ha ha ha), level-headed, and normal. Then I read his post. You can judge for yourself.
Blogging is for sissies.
I know this because I’ve surveyed the blogosphere, and of the three blogs I looked at—Throwing Up Words, Crash Test Dummies Diaries, and Chick Lit Books—I’ve discovered that 3 out of every 3 blogs are written by women. The sites are awash with pastels, and floral patterns, and striped green wallpaper with dandruff flakes floating across it. Stuff like that. What compels the fairer sex to such diversions? It can’t be that women don’t have the chance to talk to each other often enough: they’ve got cell phones, home phones, Twitter, and Facebook. It can’t be that they’re bored: women make up nearly 50% of the workforce (according to Newsweek) and after work those who are married to Neanderthals still need to hurry home to cook dinner and tend the kids. Women run PTAs, corporations, church groups, and schools. In their rare free time they read books and workout and hike. Surely they don’t have the time for blogging.
Yet my research shows that all blogs are written by women. I just don’t know what to make of it.
Real men don’t blog. They surf the web, cruising to manly websites like ESPN, Bloomburg, and Do It Yourself. We don’t need—or want—to hear fellow men blathering about their phobias or spouses or kids or hobbies. We’re not interested in the intimate personal details of people we don’t know. We don’t have any desire to think out loud online. We don’t want to read the idle thoughts of amateurs who just happen to have access to the internet and an account with Blogspot. We’ve got better things to do then to figure out how to set up a blog and then how to arm-twist all our friends into writing vapid blog posts about inane topics. Men don’t need an invisible virtual audience to read and to comment on their deepest or shallowest thoughts.
Real men don’t blog because they are already in touch with their feelings and they are so skilled at articulating those feelings that they don’t have the need for a virtual sounding board. We’re so confident about ourselves, our bodies, and our professions that the very idea of wringing our hands about such issues on (or ‘over’ or ‘in’—what’s the right preposition here?) a blog seems ludicrous. And embarrassing. And self serving.
If the Great Emancipator were alive today, I have no doubt that he would refuse to put his words into cyberspace. Abraham Lincoln so valued words and language and manliness that he would not lower himself to such a genre and would not respect any man who allowed himself to so lowered. In fact, I bet that if Abe were here today, he’d roll up his sleeves, take a firm grip on his trusty ax, and smash the nearest blog station/computer in half. And if he did, no one would be surprised because, after all, wasn’t he already known as the blog-splitter?
Chris
Throwing Up Words 