Our friend the controversy fairy really does favor us over here at TechnoGirlTalk. This week, a blog post hit many a sore nerve with its provocative headline: "A Rant About Women." Written by Clay Shirky, a professor at NYU, the post suggests that women need to be able to bluff and bluster the way men do if they want to get ahead.

Writes Shirky, "I’m not concerned that women don’t engage in enough building of self-confidence or self-esteem. I’m worried about something muchsimpler: not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant, self-aggrandizing jerks."

The argument stung for a lot of women, many of whom said they were sick and tired of being told to act more like men in order to succeed. Deanna Zandt, author of the upcoming book on how we can use social media to change the world, "Share This" (Berrett-Koehler, 2010) had a much-retweeted response on her blog in a post entitled "Shirky to women: Ur doing it wrong:"

Wrote Deanna: "Asking women to be more like men (which is different than what Shirky claims we're doing when we ask men to be "sensitive" and "listen" —that's just asking for a little humanity, there) falls on a spectrum of prescribing feminine behavior that is dangerous and unhealthy."

And one of the more pointed comments I've read so far was on another blog, finslippy:

"Can yousee how it might chafe to have a man ... tell us ladies how to behave? I'm not saying his points are all completely out of left field, but do you see how infuriating it mightbe, while everything around us tells women to behave and shut up and look pretty and be thin and not complain, how every time we speak upwe're knocked down, for a guy to say, 'Hey, you know what you women should do? You should speak up!'" 

In short, I can't wait to get into this on the upcoming TechnoGirlTalk podcast. Oh, and we'll also talk about social media, tech, and whatever else strikes our fancy. My guests will be: Tamar Weinberg, social media marketing consultant, community and marketing manager at Mashable, and author of "The New Community Rules" (O'Reilly, 2009); Jame Ervin, implementation consultant at Echo Lane and tech industry insider; and Jennifer Meyer, global programs marketing manager at Dell. What a lineup!

We hope you'll tune in.