Helen summarizes this blog post, saying,
No one says that women blog about nothing but their cats and their babies. What I am saying (I won't speak for RSM) is that a woman who is good at blogging will find no problem getting ahead (Kathy G, the Iqra'i ladies, McArdle, etc.), and women who don't become successful bloggers fail because they're no good at what they do. For women who suck at blogging to blame misogyny for their failures is indeed whiny.
I'm going to leave aside the issue of whether it is actually harder for women to succeed in many fields, on average, regardless of their skill level (though I will include a link to this study, in which resumes with female names got fewer callbacks that identical resumes with male names). In my experience, women who succeed using 'male' strategies in 'male' fields may be respected as professionals, but not as women.
In my high school AP Computer Science, I was the best female coder, hands down, and among the best period. The guys in the class treated me like 'one of the boys' and were comfortable collaborating on projects, asking for help, or just hanging out. At this point, I mostly wore baggy shirts that concealed my figure, but one day, I wore a pi shirt from thinkgeek that was form fitting, but not, according to my mother, indecent.
The boys spent a substantial portion of the class making fun of the size of my breasts, and, for the rest of the year (and even stretching into our summer D&D games) any comment about size or position of any object would spark a joke about my chest. Even though I reverted to baggy clothes.
I could be a good programmer, or a woman with breasts, but not both. The boys had no trouble interacting with the other (lousy at programming) girls as girls or flirting with them. I don't want to have to live in drag to be successful
If feminism means fighting the idea that my love of programming nixes dating, I'm all for it.
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