KATHA POLLITT is guest-blogging over at Kevin Drum's place today, and for the next little while, and just in time, too. Her topic is Women in Opinion Writing, and even more specifically, political opinion writing. This has been a perennial subject in the blogosphere: Every few months, the cry goes up, "Where are all the women political bloggers?" Kevin asked the question most recently, got more than he bargained for by way of response from the women who are writing political blogs, and decided to put his money where his mouth was (to his great credit). He has been linking to more women-written blogs, has added 19 new blogs written by women to his blogroll, and now has invited the aforementioned Katha Pollitt (among other women) to write guest blogs on his site.

Unfortunately, there are still more male political writers like Andrew Sullivan than like Kevin out there. Sullivan spoke at the conference on blogging held at the Brookings Institution today, and there he opined (as paraphrased by Juan Cole) that "the blogosphere will remain primarily male, because the atmosphere of highly charged argumentation is more appealing to males."

That is absolute nonsense. (Another word comes to mind, but I'll restrain myself.) There are thousands of women who write political blogs, at the very least. Morgaine (who, by the way, is not exactly a timid little girl who shrinks from confrontation) lists and reviews 500 of them on her blog alone.

So, as I said, Katha Pollitt's first guest post at Political Animal is right on time. I hope Andrew Sullivan is paying attention.