Sure, most bloggers are making neither memorable literature nor substantial money. In some sense that's entirely beside the point. Woolf wasn't saying that every woman would write well given the opportunity, but that widespread opportunities to write would lead to a few women becoming great. Most middle-class men who've put pen to paper throughout history have sucked too, but a few have grown up to be Hemingway or Nabokov.

My point is not that your average mom with a blog is writing anything should be shelved alongside Woolf's work in the Western Canon, but that we're embodying the cultural change Woolf wanted to see happen – breaking down the barriers that stop housewives from becoming writers.

When I first read the NYT article, I wasn't personally offended by it. I just shrugged it off because it was so obviously not about me and what I do as a professional writer. Then I re-read it after seeing a lot of other prominent, professional bloggers and journalists get upset and realized that in fact it was about me – it was just assuming that no mom with a blog could be doing anything other than exhaustedly recording the minutiae of her day.

Which, now that I think about it, was sort of Virginia Woolf's stock in trade. Have you read Mrs. Dalloway?

(aside: can you e-mail me privately and let me know what failed for you when you tried to log in and leave a comment? If it's something I can fix, I certainly will)

First of all, I too am commenting anonymously. I made a good faith effort to log in, spent a couple of minutes trying to post that way, and bailed when it didn't work. I'm a casual blogger and have an OpenID account, but I don't choose my browser and operating system to optimize my blog posting experience and I don't take it seriously enough to change my viewing habits to meet the conventions of the blogging world.

Which leads into my next point: Most bloggers, of any stripe, are blogging the way our friends are tweeting or posting to Facebook. We post what we had for breakfast this morning, because it's the only thing we can think of at 7:30 in the morning while we eat our cornflakes. “Mm, cornflakes!” “Cornflakes again this morning.” “Am beginning to get tired of cornflakes.” We don't set aside time for blogging, so our blogs focus on whatever happened in the hour leading up to being able to find time to log in. “Kids are finally in bed, so I have a chance to log in now.” “Kids went to bed easily tonight. I wonder what I'll blog about.” “Youngest fussy. Sorry for short post.” Of course there's no literary merit. It's not about the literary merit. It's about feeling a little less alone in the wilderness.

The issue is conflating “mommyblogging” with “breakfast blogging”. Comparing a breakfast blog to journalism doesn't do either one any good. Obviously the NYT article belittles the journalists by lumping them in with the diaperbloggers (if I may use that term to mean mommybloggers of no literary merit). But insisting that diaperbloggers be considered alongside Virginia Woolf just invites scorn and condescension of the “aren't you cute” variety.

Something else I have in common with her is a willingness to attach my name to what I write, even when I'm saying something my audience probably doesn't want to hear.

At the end of the day, this strikes me as mostly a lot of dissatisfied, white, middle-class women whining about the choices they've been fortunate enough to have in their lives.

And before you jump down my throat, I'm a mom with a blog myself. Which I also get done (along with freelance writing and other legit work) during nap times and late nights. It's just, once I'm done changing the poopy diapers, I don't really feel like investing any more time into it by blogging about it. There are just so many other interesting things going on in the world (and in my brain).