No feminist site will ever link to my blog because I don’t see myself as a victim of anything and I don’t believe that “society conditions” me to do anything.
No academic website will ever link to my blog because I don’t consider my students to be stupid, my colleagues to be envious, and my job to be miserable.
No progressive website will link to me because I believe in individual responsibility.
Other people won’t link to me because I’m a progressive feminist academic which, for them, is the same as the devil incarnate.
But in spite of an almost complete absence of links to my blog, it’s very popular. This must mean that, deep inside, people like me and feel there is something to my contrarian opinions.
Clarissa's Blog 
Visitors like you and enjoy your blog because you are always honest and because you always treat honest comments seriously whether or not they are favorable to your viewpoint.
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Thank you for the support, Charles Rowley!
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People won’t link to you because they are too busy cranking out their own posts. Have you looked at other people’s blogrolls? Half the sites on an average blogroll have been moved or have been discontinued.
I don’t link to you because I don’t have a blog.
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I know, blogrolls have been disappearing everywhere. Are they going out of fashion, or something?
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I’d link to you, if I ever found something to write about. I’m not an academic (yet?), but my job is awesome, too. Today we found out that our work is valid.
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I don’t blog, but I’ve retweeted you at least a couple times. That’s like linking, isn’t it?
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Oh, thank you! I appreciate!
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I’ve linked to your articles a few times. By the way, social conditioning is real. It’s not fully deterministic, but that is no reason to view is as unreal. If someone confesses.”I’m socially conditioned to gesticulate like an ape in the zoo!”, there’s no reason to doubt them. They are what they are. It’s just that it doesn’t logically follow that one is bound to tolerate any sort of behavior just because it is “socially conditioned”.
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I’d get it if a person said, “I’ve been socially conditioned to do X, I hate that, here is what I’m doing to escape from that conditioning. Instead, I see endless manifestos enumerating how people are conditioned, are miserable as a result, but have zero interest in doing anything about it. That’s the attitude I don’t get.
Take the endless moaning about housework and mean horrible husbands and partners who are conditioned not to do any. This sort of conditioning can be modified in exactly two days. Yet people choose to moan about it for decades.
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A timely post indeed. I was just thinking of linking to your blog — and now I have 🙂
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Thank you, Jonathan!
I didn’t mean this post to sound like I’m fishing for links but I guess it does look this way. 🙂
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I am with Jonathan. I was just thinking of how I should link more often to blogs I read – yours, Jonathans, etc. I think it is because my blog posts aren’t usually inspired by what I read on blogs, but by questions students and colleagues ask me IRL. But, I will try to link more, as it is part of the community participation.
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You do enough with writing your extremely useful blog, Tanya. It is truly a wonderful, hugely helpful blog.
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Thanks, Clarissa! Thanks for linking back as well.
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Inside Higher Education linked to you at least once.
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Yes, that’s true. And it was more like 3 times.
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Your blog is in my blogroll. I don’t always agree with what you say, but as a retired academic I find your posts on academia interesting, and some of the others as well.
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If I had a blog, I would link to you, even though I don’t agree with everything you say 😉 You have a very different perspective on things than I do, and since you’re a smart and (usually 😀 ) reasonable person, your posts make me think about why my opinions are what they are. I think those bloggers who do not challenge their world views are totally missing out.
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RationalWiki linked to your post about homeschooling, and RW’s fairly progressive. I should know because I’m an editor there and that was how I discovered your blog. o:
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Oh really? That’s how you found it? Now I’m really happy I was linked to there!
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I like your blog because you have no problem pointing out that feminists are not the perfectly progressive angels they try to trick everyone into thinking they are.
But in spite of an almost complete absence of links to my blog, it’s very popular. This must mean that, deep inside, people like me and feel there is something to my contrarian opinions.
I know I do. In fact that you can say your blog is popular despite the things you listed against you is pretty impressive.
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I’m surprised you care about this. Getting linked from other blogs would be, literally, networking and I know you’ve expressed your hatred of networking many times.
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Networking implies actively soliciting links and I never asked anybody to link to me. But it does annoy me that every Tom, Dick and Angelina get promoted while people who are supposed to be in the same ideological boat with me pretend that I don;t exist just because I don’t spout the usual platitudes 100% of time.
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That’s a valid point.
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I’m a progressive feminist and I’ve linked to your blog several times. An exception that proves the rule or something?
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I guess only exceptional people link to me. 🙂
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Great minds… 🙂
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Another thing that strikes me………maybe many of your readers don’t have blogs? I love reading blogs but don’t have the energy to write one. But if I did have one, I would like to you. 🙂 I have noticed that many (not all) blogging communities are very insular. They link to one another, praise one another, NEVER offer critique, and link to one another once again. It’s a continuous ciricle of never-ending praise–even when the blogger is being patently ridiculous. I don’t think your blog lends itself to that sort of community (which is a good thing.)
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I know, I’ve seen such blogging communities. Even just reading them made me feel stifled. Everybody always repeats the same thing and it’s like people have code words that are accessible only to them. It’s even a little creepy.
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I actually just started doing a weekly link roundup on my blog! I’ll probably be linking to you. 🙂
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This is good news! I really like link roundups, even those that don’t link to me.
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