Breaking into the quintuple digits

Before yesterday, this blog had received a little over 3,000 visitors in the couple months it had been around. I was very happy with that, for a new blog.

Yesterday, I received over 10,000 visitors. 10,172, to be precise.

Almost all of them got here through links to the post below this one, about the disadvantages of being a man. Thanks again to my mom, Instapundit, Reddit, Dean Esmay, and Conservative Grapevine for that. ADDED: Also Villainous Company, where there's an extended discussion going on about my initial question, which I think is surprisingly hard to answer: Is it be better to be born a man or a woman in the current-day United States?

As you might have gleaned from the post itself, I was kind of nervous about putting myself out there on such a potentially inflammatory topic. So I was heartened to see that the response (in the comments section on this blog and others) was overwhelmingly positive.

I don't have time to get to people's substantive responses yet (I do have a job), but just to indulge in some shameless self-promotion, I can say that I knew I'd done something right when I saw comments like these:

I love you for writing this post. It was so thoughtful and thought provoking and perhaps you have just touched the tip of the iceberg.

John, your premise has all the makings of a serious book on the topic, not some jumped-up Dr. Phil exploration, and I wish you luck should you delve further into it.

A wise professor once talked about the Marlboro man and how that man had never learned to express or communicate or be intimate. It was an eye-opener for me, and I was ever so thankful for it. This was a great piece to read and reminds me how fragile we all are, how kindly we should look on one another and how different the world could be with just a bit more attention to the how's and why's of our actions.

Hey there, this is my first time here, and let me say what a thoughtful and well written article that was. Outstanding! ... You are a brave person, perhaps braver than you realized, and I wish you well on your journey.

My goodness. A tremendous, very well written, passionate post. I'm neither here nor there about metafilter, but I'm glad I was able to read it. Wow.

ADDED: One more, from Summer:

John's post about gender rules and the disadvantages of being a man prompted me to stay up wayyyyyy too late last night reading and thinking about the topic. There's a lot of talk in the comments field about the MetaFilter deletion, but the issue at the heart of the post is going to be runnin' around in my brain for awhile.

Having originally been unsure whether the whole thing was worth even talking about, I now have absolutely no doubt that this conversation was worth starting.

Speaking of conversation, I will be looking through all of the feedback the post has gotten, both on this site and others.

It'll take me a while to get to all of it. My first priority now is to inaugurate a new blog feature tomorrow -- Music Friday! -- for which, stay tuned. [UPDATE: You can keep track of all the Music Fridays with this link.]

But I'll definitely update and expand on disadvantages faced by men in light of the comments (which will inevitably bring up disadvantages faced by women, too). Reading over some of the comments reminded me that despite how excessively long the post was, there's so much it left out.

This issue is not going to go away.

At least not on my blog.