You know, a question about this whole blog from the get-go is: how do we know that those who post are actually women? This is the fundamental issue of identity on the 'net, that through that little browser window, how can we tell to whom we are truly speaking....

One funny note about this is that this is actually the original version of the famous Turing test -- you know, you are chatting over the 'net with someone else, if you cannot tell if that 'person' is actually a biological human or a sophisticated program, then the program has proved itself to be 'intelligent'. But the original version of the test, as proposed by Turing (who single-handedly had an enormous impact in shorting WWII by his cryptographic work against the German Enigma code, and yet was hounded to suicide because he was gay) was that you chat with someone and try to determine their *gender*.

Anyway, just an interesting historical wrinkle on the fundamental conundrum many readers of the 'XX Factor' may face, as to whether this is really a collection of women sharing these view or merely people (or maybe very intelligent computer programs?) pretending to be women?