The formatting of the post leaves too much of the text buried behind the “recent comments” box for me to understand the point you are making, but I know I’m sorry to be at least one focus of a post that seems to be focused on bickering and “unladylike behavior.”

Online, even in moderated forums like Bloggernacle blogs, you have to be prepared to defend yourself, even to go on the offensive, if you’re going to (1) express opinions *and* (2) continue to comment. My participation on any blog seems to be a magnet for anger and disdain from some, even to personal remarks that have absolutely nothing to do with the post or my comments. So I fight back. If Nick’s slurs are to be allowed while my “unladylike” defenses are not, then I guess Mormon Mentality is one more blog I’ll have to stop reading.

Ardis–I don’t think your behavior was criticized in this post; the example was that other bloggers have picked on you and Annegb finds that distasteful.

WOULD SOMEBODY FIX THIS???WHERE ARE ALL YOU GENIUSES???

No Ardis I wasn’t referring to you at all—I was referring to Nick and that other guy’s response to you. I was bothered by that. You’re absolutely right in the way you describe blogging interactions. I find myself often involved in the type of things you describe and then I have the unfortunate unladylike result. I think I understand because while some people really like me, others really don’t.

My address is 710 West Canyon Road, Enoch, UT 84721.I think a legal argument could be made here. You agreed to an interview and when I said I would send you a phone card, you agreed. You didn’t ask but there was an agreement to which you reneged. Frankly, I’d paypal you $50,000 for an interview. Let’s do this. Let’s be friends! And you let me interview you and I’ll let you completely review anything I print about you before I put it up. You can trust me, ardis, for while I’m a bit off menttally, my word is my absolute bond. I must say, if I were you and decided not to do the interview, I would have returned the card with regrets. How hard would it have been? But people love your posts and you are a bit of an enigma and I would KILL to interview you. You are the Jackie Kennedy of blogging.

I know it sounds hypocritical, ESO, but I think we women are basically gentle creatures and if you could have been a fly on the wall of my brain when I saw that, you would have died. I was so mad. I would have been mad if somebody said that about our guy bloggers, too, but not as mad. That sort of thing lowers the person who says it.

I don’t know, there’s something sort of icky when a man takes a dislike to a woman. But not the other way around. I know it’s not politically correct but if you just look at the emotional response maybe you’ll agree.

I read once that when danger strikes a woman will step behind her husband and in front of her children. Women are nurturers and men are protectors. A child can dislike an adult but an adult’s dislike of a child demeans the adult. Boy can I hear the feminists rise up with this. But it’s my opinion.

I’ve been in a couple of blog fights — not with women though (as far as I know). But, I always hate myself afterwards; so, typically, I try not to get involved because I always come off like an arrogant son of a gun (which is probably about right). If people only knew how often I hold my tongue…

There was a post attacking one of our female bloggers? I must have missed that one.

Orwell, I wish I could say I’ve only been in a couple of blog fights. It sure doesn’t feel good to be attacked or to argue with anybody, man or woman. I still argue though.

I think that post was deleted rather quickly. Because I saw it and went back a moment later, meaning to delete it, but it was gone.

Brian, maybe if you get mad and want to be really, really insulting, you could ask “are you a man?”and then go from there.

I’m pretty sure I’m the kind of woman to whom a man would say “I’ve never hit a woman before, but..” LOL.

“I think men should always treat women like queens” then no female would ever fall pregnant!

I mean, like, imagine trying to impregnate Queen Elizabeth or Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, wt…

Nope, sometimes women need to be treated like porn stars :)

“My address is 710 West Canyon Road, Enoch, UT”…..Can I drop by for tea next conference? April 2010?

Oh, sure, we can have tea. I drink herbal, but I have Lipton’s on hand; I also have some cooking wine we can spike it with.

Sure, Matt, I’ll pay you $1000; will you take an IOU? At the moment, I’d have to give someone an IOU for anything over $1.32 which is what I have on my dresser.

MELANIE FRANTI, DO YOU LOVE MY GUTS?? Because I took the smiley face off when I remembered they annoy you LOL.

I was thinking, you guys, that maybe the person whose mean words about ESO didn’t know ESO was a girl. I think it may have been a trackback, from a funny blog. When I thought it was something someone said thinking she was a guy, it was suddenly funny. What is up with my bias??? I thought about just taking down this stupid post altogether, since I probably ran Ardis off—dang, Ardis, you’re touchy!—but then I thought, well it’s food for thought in many ways.

I was wondering somewhere out there, one of our fellow bloggers has started up a snarkernacle type blog and didn’t know ESO was a girl. This is easy to do since we’re all very busy and most of us have never met each other. And they’re feeling guilty but they can’t reveal their secret.

It’s true, Harold, we people are crazy.

annegb, I don’t think that’s a fair description. I know full well that Ardis can take down the best of ‘em, and that she has no fear of engaging the likes of me or anyone else on any level.

That said, all I did was say that I like both her and Nick (with whom she was sparring). I did comment on T&S’s closed-door policy with respect to the truth and how it’s led them to ban commenters who are inconvenient to their One Chosen Path, which I in no way identify with Ardis, nor did I intend anybody reading it to. On the contrary, I was simply using the fact that both Nick and I were banned from T&S a piece of common ground between him and me and a surprising number of other ‘nacle notables.

Success!

Charlie: wrong analogy. The #1 duty of a queen is to produce, or have produced, an heir to the throne, and to ensure that, they are supposed to produce several because of childhood mortality.

When Princess Diana had her second child, the British tabloid headlines read: “An heir and a spare.”

Annegb: You’re right it’s a double-standard, and is enshrined in church practice if not in policy. Priesthood leaders regularly will tell the husband to apologize to his wife (or tell any man who is subject to a woman’s claim of offense) to just apologize and get it over with, even when the priesthood leader totally believes the man’s side of things.

A recent female convert quickly saw through this (perfunctory or insincere apologies or other verbal communications) and noted it in her various relationships with men in the church, calling it a Mormon tradition of “polite lies.”

So my question to Annegb is, is insincere niceness better than gender-neutral egalitarianism? Is empty chivalry what you’re asking for? Or is insincere/empty niceness preferable to a more sincere, but perhaps more brutal, honesty ?

At times, the chivalry of a Jimmy Stewart has to take the back seat to the rough get-it-done-ness of John Wayne. Anyone remember the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?”

“Pompey, get me my rifle.”

Charlie, royalty don’t get married based on looks or love. It’s a political deal.