Eh, the post title didn't quite come out as well as it sounded in my head where I was referencing "Fear of a Black Planet." "World" seemed to scan better but oh well...

There is yet another entry in an apparently eternal and repetitive bleat from male bloggers asking (c'mon, all together, you know the words): Where are all the women bloggers? Twisty Faster has some biting commentary over on I Blame The Patriarchy in an entry titled At Last! Radical Feminism Explained By Right-Wing Dude. Har! Loved it! Sadly, male bloggers who might learn something from the post will undoubtedly take umbrage and sneer about how feminists don't have a sense of humor. I guess that's the cock tale they tell themselves over and over in order to maintain a sense of superiority.

Let me spin you a tale of my own. A long time ago at a college far, far away, your humble correspondent was a member of a feminist editorial collective responsible for publishing the campus newspaper. "But," you may ask, "aren't you a... man?" Yes, I am. Yet I was part of the collective. And what a merry time had we!

One week, our printer didn't like our pictures of "blood prints" on the front page of one issue and refused to print that issue. What are blood prints? A quick google search shows this doesn't appear to be well defined online so I must tell you. In brief, a blood print is made when a menstruating woman presses her genitalia to a sheet of paper. The result looks a little like Rorschach ink blots. Fortunately, we were able to find another printer and eventually got it published. [Wordlackey sez: This paragraph edited slightly since my original phrasing had a "Silence of the Lambs" vibe to it. Need I add this is a voluntary act by the woman?]

Now why would I tell you this story? Because your individual reaction to the idea of blood prints says something. Part of the reason we ran those images was because of the taboos surrounding menstruation in our culture. This was intended to challenge the norms, the conventions of society. The thing is most of those societal taboos still reign.

This draws me back to the beginning of my post. Some men lash out at feminism and feminists in a way so obviously rooted in insecurity and fear that it's unmistakable. Oh, I'm sure these men have intellectual rationales out the wazoo, with point-counterpoint worked out in great detail. But at core I mostly smell fear and anger behind their words. And I think it smells like an overripe locker room.