Househusbandnot In Gender Sensitive Shocker

I had a bit of a ranty email from a 'feminist' friend of mine last night about men blogging. The gist of her argument went something along the lines of: men are all evil and should not be allowed to blog, or go outside. Which got me to thinking about househusbandnot: a feminist issue?

When I sit down to write househusbandnot, I have no idea what gender the day's audience is going to be. I know my wife reads it, and blokeihaventseenforages is a regular reader, and I'm hoping the the Hawaiian Dude will come back some time. But as for the other 6,997 of you good people, I have no idea if you are men or women. So, I try not to be too blokey or girly. Not a mention of the cricket. No pictures of babies. Nothing on how big my hifi is, or cake recipes, or PS2 cheats, or why men/women are mad. In fact I like to think of househusbandnot as a groovy non-gender specific place, where we can leave our gametes by the door and hang out - genderless - together.

I may be completely wrong. househusbandnot could well be littered with dangerous stereotypifications, achingly politically incorrect role models, and horrifically gender-insensitive language. My testosterone-filled eyes might just be too blind to see it. But I like to think not.

I care about content of blogs but I'm not that bothered about the gender breakdown of bloggers now that we've established that househusbandnot is gender groovy. (I love self-validation.) I am actually most concerned about the American bias, having learned that of the 147 million Americans who are on line, 12 million have blogs. Statistically, that's 12 million of them against one househusbandnot. Seems pretty stacked to me, leaving househusbandnot to swim - or more likely sink without a trace - in this sea (nay, ocean)of US-orientated blogs about how much Kid Rock rocks, how Simon Cowell should be nicer to people on American Idol, and the constitutional right to have a Starbucks Caramel Frapuccino every four minutes. I don't see why househusbandnot should sit in a cyber-corner while Crunch from Idaho tells us that he's thinking maybe it was not such a great idea re-marrying his cousin before moving on to describe how to make a bitchin' poker table out of a dead raccoon and a car door. But it's a free world, as they keep telling us.

Speaking of nationality, I got a Russian-language advert up on the blog the other day. I am hoping this is for something nice like wooden dolls or caviar rather than machine guns or human organs.

Since my sister has royally failed to do anything on househusbandnot's sister blog housewifenot, I offered it to my feminist friend. But she said she was setting up her own blog and didn't need a man helping her to do it. Frostmatic lady.

[My friend responded to this post approx four minutes after I published it with a qualification: "I think you missed the point and I am not a ranty 'feminist', you twat. I am a feminist without the inverted commas, you prick. I meant more along the lines of how I find the male predisposition towards narcissism is one that is expressing itself in bogs...do a survey." Right.]