Bloggasm

Simon Owens: Which conservative bloggers do you think create the most spin? And if you had to pick a conservative blogger to label a worthy adversary, which blogger would that be?

Echidne of the Snakes: The spin created depends on the particular topic we are discussing. The ones that create spin about the Iraq war, for example, may not be able to create spin about something else. Drudge seems to have a lot of power, but I’m not sure if he is regarded a blogger as such. Andrew Sullivan is fairly widely read, too, and so are InstaPundit and Powerline. Bloggers like Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin appear to me to try to create a lot of outrage.

Simon Owens: As a feminist, how do you view women who tend to be conservative? Do you consider them naive people who aren’t looking out for their own interests?

Echidne of the Snakes: I view all women as individuals who differ from each other as much as men differ from each other, so the conservative women tend to be like the conservative men. They value the same things in life. They may feel that the current society has dealt them a good hand, for example, or they may be very religious, and religions tend to be fairly anti-women in their preaching.

I don’t think that they are necessarily naive, though all sorts of people can be naive. What makes any person tick is really hard to decipher from outside, but I’d say that “looking out for ones own interest” doesn’t make for a good understanding of wider policy dilemmas. Because as I said, people are individuals with more or less in common, and we don’t want to make the world based on only our own life experiences.

Simon Owens: What are some of the main problems females face now in the 21st Century?

Echidne of the Snakes: This depends on the part of the world we are looking at. In Africa, the main problem of women is to try to stay alive and healthy. AIDS is a serious problem for all Africans, but it is an extremely serious problem for young women in countries where women don’t have the right to refuse unprotected sex. And then there are medical conditions such as fistulas. Google them to find out the kinds of horror stories that are daily life for many African women.

In some extremely Islamic countries women will have to fight to keep any of the rights we take for granted: the right to travel without a husband’s permission, the right to have a job, the right to inherit.

Family violence is a concern in many countries. Wife beating is culturally sanctioned in quite a few countries.

In the United States, the major problem women face today is the pushback from those who would like to reverse Roe vs. Wade. If this is combined with an attack on birth control we are fairly close to a world where women can’t decide on the timing and spacing of their children. The ability to do this seems to me to be a precondition for gender equality.

Then women will also have most of the same problems men in the same countries have, of course.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

Echidne of the Snakes: This is a tricky one to answer, because there are so many good blogs out there, and because the blogs I read for writing purposes are not necessarily the same as the blogs I read for pure entertainment or in order to learn more about something. But if we limit the question to political blogs from the left blogosphere, I’d recommend Digby (for deep analyses), Eschaton (for an unerring finger-on-the-pulse type of news), James Wolcott (for excellent writing in irony), Pandagon (for posts about feminism, racism and homophobism especially) and the Suburban Guerrilla (for just good reporting and analysis). But I could immediately write another list of five and so on…

You can find Echidne of the Snakes over here.