Ha, so I just read this.
We usually try not to talk about Jezebel too much on here, but because many of our readers met us as Jezebel commenters, I felt like I had to speak up on this particular topic, and the other Harpies are gonna weigh in in the comments. I’ll probably have more articulate thoughts on this later.
It’s a funny thing that in this day and age of only-the-media-cares, navel-gazing, solipsistic journalism one can write an entire article about a blog while having only passing familiarity with it. Linda Hirshman (she of “pull yourself out of your violent relationship by your own bootstraps” fame) calls Emily Gould an “occasional Jezebel contributor” – I think Emily’s maybe had a byline or two in the entire, year-long history of the site of which I have read nearly every post. She talks about an incident (Thinking and Drinking – Google if you happened to miss that bit of fun) that is now nearly a year old. So, safe to say that this woman has a highly selective view of what Jezebel is and does.
My suspicion is that to people like Hirshman, Jezebel represents an opportunity to generation-bash, without much cause or sense. If Hirshman is looking to be the Better Feminist (TM) by thumbing her nose from on high, I suppose she’s being successful at it. It’s not much worth the trouble, it seems to me, but hey, everyone needs a cause, and if Hirshman’s is to spend her time bitching about an internet website… well, Fight The Power, Sister! I’ll be over here caring about actual problems.
Now, I’m not gonna lie. I have definitely had my… issues with different writers at the site over the year or so I’ve been there regularly, some on grounds of mediocrity, others on grounds of sheer offensiveness. This, to me, seems like the case in any kind of collaborative media publication; not even the New Yorker (hell, much less the New Yorker) is on one hundred percent of the time.
I have even, of late, been a bit concerned about the commenting community there, and have gotten myself in trouble there for saying so. I do think that the commenters there, which, as anyone who reads Jezebel knows, can dominate the tone of the site even to the editors’ dismay at times, have taken a turn for the “no judgment!” worst. And I am definitely in the camp of thinking that feminism as empowerfulment is deeply problematic as a creed for young women.
But is Jezebel “hurting women”? Well, Mary, Jesus and Joseph, I tend to think that the only people “hurt” by asshattery and stupidity are the asses and idiots themselves. And everybody’s an ass sometimes; Ceiling Cat knows I am. I admit I would be happier if everyone owned up to their mistakes and apologized, all the time, but the fact that they don’t is a human problem, not a Jezebel problem. (Note: I didn’t see Ms. Hirshman apologizing for completely misquoting Katha Pollitt in her last debacle, myself, even after she was called on it.)
Moreover Hirshman fails to recognize that she too is falling prey to the persistent media trend is often “worried” about young women in the same way that the patriarchy is – in a sense, you want to damn us to save us. And sometimes, in the process, people forget that young women are not drones. We are not without the ability to react, and to think critically. The commenting community at Jez can often feel like a boxing ring (or at least it did until recently) where you cannot get away with saying things without being able to articulate some reason behind it. And that? Is refreshing in an age where young people are encouraged to have strong opinions, but actively discouraged from examining the reasons behind them.
Thus, for all my occasional issues with Jez, I can respect it because it has, overall, been a force in my life that forced me to think harder about why I believe what I do, and what that means. Twisty once called Feministing a feminism “gateway drug,” and while Jezebel is less obviously so, there’s some truth to that. I don’t love everything that’s written there, and I don’t love everything that’s granted the label “feminism” there, but by being there, I have been forced to explain why. And that is something. And that something is bringing far, far more young women to feminism than Hirshman’s finger-waggy, ill-informed, poorly-fact-checked screeds. Et tu, Linda?
***Note: we realize our commenters may have tons to say on this subject, but let’s try to keep this discussion from being linked to in future as a repository of internal Jez gossip, yes? Keep the critiques and thoughts abstract, please.
I’ve read Jez since it’s inception, and the only thing I remember Emily Gould writing there was a series on marathoning Sex and the City just before the movie came out. That’s it. I’m far more familiar with her as the editor of Gawker before it became so much of a boy’s club.
Beyond the fact that people keep primarily associating Jezebel with two contributors who are either no longer with Jezebel or are only part-time, I found it…interesting that she made a throwaway comment about not reporting a rape without touching on the deeper story: that reporting rape can be, for the victim, harrowing episode in which you’re basically interrogated, and frequently does no good.
But then I suppose delving deeper wouldn’t have supported her point, and we wouldn’t want to do that.
On the theory/outlook spectrum, I fall closer to Twisty than to Feministing, and I think Jezebel succeeds far more often than it fails. It’s most successful when commenters talk about their experiences, from dating to giving birth to assault to family relationships (and even to the overshare-y anatomical stuff). I’ve learned so much from listening to other women talk about their lives through Jezebel. Isn’t that as old-school feminism as it gets?
I agree with you, PS–the commenters are so many and so thoughtful that no one “gets away” with anything. It’s less echo-chamber-y than other politically-minded sites.
The claim that Jezebel hurts young women is outrageous. Jezebel has been a huge asset to my life and to the lives of the vast majority of other commenters, I’d guess. We don’t all have the opportunity to address feminist topics off-line; many, many people have expressed how wonderful it is to partake in vibrant discussions with other smart, funny women (and men), about topics that affect us and other women around the globe.
She completely misrepresented what Jezebel is, who it “serves” and the issues it covers.
@Spark: I used to feel that more formerly than I do now, but yeah, back at the time Hirshman appears to be actually criticizing on Jez – again, over a year ago – I don’t seem to remember Moe and Tracie “getting away” with their shenanigans either.
It’s asinine to suggest that Jezebel is hurting young women, or feminism or anything else is ridiculous. The only thing destructive there is some of the editors’ penchant for saying/doing phenomenally stupid things in the public eye–for which Jezebel itself is at least partly responsible, since they allow these editors to speak on the record as Jezebel editors. They have a serious PR problem in that regard, which is why even though most of the editors Hirshman cites no longer work there–or in Gould’s case, never did–their idiocy still gets dragged out as a way to diss everyone involved with Jezebel. Which is a damn shame for all the smart, funny, feminist women who populate the site as editors, contributors and commenters.
If not for Jezebel, I never would have met my fellow Harpies, who have become among my closest friends. If not for Jezebel, I never would have commented anywhere on a regular basis and gained confidence that maybe, just maybe, people liked what I had to say. If not for Jezebel, I would probably still be looking for a place to vent my righteous outrage on topics that provoke such righteous outrage.
I don’t need anyone to worry about me. Really. I’m perfectly capable of choosing which sites to spend my time on, and I’m happy that Jezebel is one of them.
Before I saw the Hirschman piece, I referred in passing to the Thinking and Drinking incident on my own blog this morning. I was at the event, and what I took away from it was that Tracie is in deep denial about what leads to rape, and Lizz Winstead is a bully. It didn’t leave me with any impression that Jezebel was hurting young women — just that these particular young women, who were both at the time writers for Jez, had had too much to drink, and that one of them was spouting off harmful myths about rape (an attitude which mirrored that displayed in her recent and misguided posts on the subject), while the other was being publicly attacked for not reporting her own rape and was therefore thrown off her game and being defensive (I suspect the booze did not help).
While the editors have scolded the commenters for making the site too much like a message board, I must say that it’s because of Jez that I’ve met some of my closest friends. I have an amazing group of women that I can talk to about things that I can’t speak with other people about. I don’t live somewhere that it’s easy to find like-minded people, and Jez helped me to find those people. Some of them even know more about me than some of the people I see every day do.
Do I think the tone of the commenting has changed of late? Yes. And so I just close out when that happens. Have I had issues with certain pieces and certain editors? Yes. But I also respect and admire others. You take the good with the bad. And Jez is a great place because it helps package “feminist” issues and women’s issues in a more mainstream way. This allows people that may or may not have thought about these things before to open their minds without being completely alienated.
I know that if I was to begin my feminist education reading someone like Twisty, I may have been turned off. It may have been too much for me to understand. Jez is something that can package the ideas in easier to swallow and digest packages, and this makes it accessible to more people.
And while the site has changed from the site that I initially fell in love with, it can’t be blamed on the editors. Budget cuts and whatnot force fewer people to crank out more pieces, and oftentimes the editors can’t devote the time and energy to each individual piece that they once could. There’s definitely more to love than there is to hate, though.
Just to point out–the only place “hurting women” appears is in the title bar (not even the title itself) of the page, which I’m almost sure Hirshman didn’t write. I was expecting it to be much more polemical than it is from the discussion thus far. I’m a big Jezebel fan, but I also don’t disagree with the main point of what Hirshman says, and I think picking over stuff like how many times Emily Gould contributed to the site ignores some of the better, larger points she makes (such as, I note, how screwed the Jezebel writers are by Denton).
Oh yeah, Jez is totally corrupting our weak, tiny ladybrains, because whatever we read on teh intenetz, we accept as the pure, unadulterated and only truth! *headdeskery ensues*
I don’t have time to read as much of Jezebel as I would like these days, but I really do enjoy it (the posts and the comments). It’s fun reading the (generally) witty, sarcastic, and smart stuff on Jez.
I also feel like Hirshman’s using Jezebel as a strawman to make a point–”ooh, look at these young women who make mistakes and sometimes act in hypocritical ways!” Because young women have a monopoly on that…
Finally, I take what Linda Hirshman says about reporting rape and leaving abusive relationships with a big grain of salt, because she just doesn’t get it.
@SarahMC: I think that the discussion portion is key to Jezebel. If it were just a blog without comments, I wouldn’t bother to visit the site. However, each post is instead a conversation starter, and I certainly don’t believe that the editors can get away with just writing anything *because* of the number of individuals reading it and talking back. It’s not as though everyone blindly accepts all posts, particularly the ridiculous/offensive ones.
Also, a lot of people don’t report rapes because nobody will believe them, it’s your word against his, and you even have to pay for your own rape kit in some states. (A coworker once saw the police putting the wrong name label on hers and had to throw a gigantic fit to get it fixed. They didn’t want to switch an incorrect name label?) I certainly don’t think that anyone on the site encourages women NOT to, quite the opposite really, but at least they acknowledge the difficulty of doing so.
Lastly: 49% male? Where did this number come from?
I don’t know if the Incident counts as forbidden internal gossip, so I’m sorry if I’m breaking the rules of the thread. But it was really interesting to me to watch the video after reading (and being appalled by) the transcript. I interpreted Tracie’s and Moe’s comments very differently–and Lizz Winstead’s too, who was not just bullying but slut-shaming. Jezebel is often great at parsing moments when our feminism fails (or we fail it), and the whole thing was a missed opportunity to talk about how rape culture gets into our brains.
I find it frustrating that most of the things I’ve read about Jezebel focus primarily on Moe, Tracie, and sex. I realize this is probably because of the Thinking and Drinking incident, but it misconstrues what the site is about. I’d love to read something that discusses Megan’s posts (and not just in passing), or Dodai’s work or Hortense.
I don’t spend as much time there anymore, but I did meet awesome people through it, and it’ll always be important to me.
I absolutely agree that any site that has served as such an important “gateway drug” to feminism is helping far more people than it is hurting. I too started off reading sites like Feministing and Jez more than 5 years ago now, when my feminism was in the awakening stages. Now that it’s a full-blown aspect of my personhood, my views have definitely gone in the direction of Shakesville and I Blame the Patriarchy (and Harpyness of course), but I wouldn’t be the thoughtful and conscious second-waver I am today without those formative experiences. It’s really idiotic for anyone to only read what the editors write and think they know and understand the Jezebel community. For all the personal issues I’ve had with the site, for all the times it’s made me really angry, I keep going back. There are just so few places where deep and intelligent conversation between women can (somewhat safely) take place online, so clearly there is an underlying reason why the masses are clamoring for the community at Jez. THAT should be the headline story – not the things that Hirshman zoned in on. She don’t know nothin’!
What, exactly, was her main point, Mistermoonlight?
@cate: Yes, absolutely I think that focusing only on those editors completely misses the fact that Jez is more than just one tone and more than just one topic and more than just one attitude. And those women work hard.
Maybe the Hirsh should read my post about unprocessed rape kits that victims had to pay for.
It’s also interesting that she (and everyone else who disses Jez) chose to portray two white writers (one who left months ago) as the “face” of Jezebel.
@SarahMC: Yup, they always focus on the two pretty white girls.
OMG newsflash! Women are human, not plastic paragons of monolithic perfection! And a website with mainstream appeal reflects whole host of complicated issues that women grapple with. I’M SHOCKED, I TELL YOU. SHOCKED.
I’m annoyed by the article’s breathless amazement, like reporting that there are many different faces of feminism and of women is somehow *news*. And by the way it manages to set two different stereotypes of women up against each other, finds both of them wanting, and insists “there has to be a better way” — sure, there’s always a better way than a pair of constructed straw-arguments, and there already is something better; there’s the reality of living, breathing, feminism in all its complicated glory that the article pretends doesn’t exist.
I was going to say, “Jezebel’s not my thing, but this article annoys me anyway.” But that would be giving into this article’s invitation to disavow a group of women because their feminism doesn’t look like mine, and that’s bull.
So instead, I have to ask: who benefits from that article’s attempt to set us up against each other like that?
@Cheryl Trooskin-Zoller: Who knows, maybe she’s desperate for page views. Dissing a popular blog might do the trick.
Cheryl, the people who write for and comment on Jezebel don’t all have the same brand of feminism either. That’s why this article is so enraging.
That article made me profoundly uncomfortable. Primarily the paragraph in which she slut shames several women who were raped, for their rapes, and doesn’t see the difference between “raped” and “slutty,*” I cannot imagine being any of the women who were raped, and publicly talked about it, and then had to watch this woman bash them for being slutty/complicit in their own rapes/not really concerned about it.
I’m definitely way more radical than the average Jezebel reader, and I used to spend all my time on radical feminist forums–some shit that really changed me. But now I’m in grad school, and discussions of h-core feminist theory online isn’t really something I have the energy for; Jezebel is a way for me to do non-academic feminism and still have fun, and still read stuff that is thoughtful (usually). And also I really enjoy the arguments with people who are more normative in their feminism, because I love arguing. When a bunch of radical feminists are together, everybody’s just like, “Yep. The patriarchy. It fucks you up.” and the conversation slows after a while because there is very little about which people don’t agree. On jez, I feel like there are posts that turn into fights and then turn into people saying, “I’ve thought about that before, I need to rethink this whole issue,” which is really awesome.
I don’t know. I’m just about at the end of academic paper writing of the feminist nature, so I’m sort of inarticulate about this. But outside of Twisty, the “Feministers” folder on my bookmarked favorites has been dwindling and dwindling over the past three years, coinciding with a serious shift to the left. I don’t read Shakesville anymore, Feministing and Feministe have been gone for years. One by one they all disappointed me in their dedication to normative, fun-feminism attitudes (yes, even Shakesville). Maybe it’s because Jezebel is in my “funnies” folder, so I read it with different expectations, but even though they post about shit that I don’t care about, they haven’t alienated me yet.
(PS. Harpyness is the other proper feminist website that I read outside of twisty.)
*Quantitatively slutty, as in, havin’ lots of the sex. Without judgment (obvi) and also a word that I only use in this neutral way in spaces where having lotsa sex is assumed to be morally neutral. Like, here.
all articles like that do is bring more pageviews to the very thing they claim is “damaging”.
Clever girls.
hahaahaa – sorry but a blog which is solely set up as a competitor to Jezebel er attacks the site its competing with, why that’s straight from the Rupert Murdoch playbook of obvious, not terribly smart moves.
Also interesting – the fact that the Double XX website has er employed Moe to write for it more than once, so that’s an interesting policy of having one columnist slag off another contributer right there.
Yay for Slate’s (lack of) integrity, it warms my (cynical) heart to see an American website getting as down as dirty as the British tabloid press.
@Cimorene: “Maybe it’s because Jezebel is in my ‘funnies’ folder, so I read it with different expectations…”
Exactly! Jezebel is not now and was never supposed to be an explicitly feminist site. No one should go there looking for Feminism 101.
I’m a bit late to the debate here, but I just wanted to say that I stumbled across Jezebel at age 19 (two years ago, have been commenting for about a year) and it couldn’t have come at a better time in my life. I don’t know if the site prompted my feminist awakening or just coincided with it, but I don’t think I can understate the importance of that awakening to me personally. I know that reading the comments on the posts about rape, for instance, was one of the things that first made me realize that I had been sexually assaulted and not just the victim of a bad experience. That was really huge for me and I don’t know that I would have been able to develop that consciousness without Jezebel.
I agree that this seems like generation-bashing. It was particularly shitty of Hirshman to refer to Tracie as “slut machine” when she got rid of that name long ago. Whether or not you like her as a writer or entertainer or public persona or whatever complex role celebrity bloggers are called on to fill–this is a real issue in the Gawker empire, I think, which in my opinion is probably an overly demanding burden. Could you imagine living SO publicly? Being judged SO harshly? For a living? I can’t. Their job is much harder than what I do in that regard, that’s for sure–it’s a matter of basic and simple respect to call someone what she wants to be called. For heaven’s sake. And to call Jezebel today’s “problem that has no name?” PLEASE. There are other, much bigger problems without names, it seems to me. I didn’t read the other responses, but I am almost positive that each of the other contributors has a better idea of what it might be. Off the top of my head, the deep division and divisiveness in this country Becky alludes to in her recent post seem much more pressing and even more slippery to define. Gawker already has a word for what Hirshman complains about: femiladyism, and you have a tag: empowerfulment. See? Names!
A frequent Jez commenter recently sent me an email: “Everything that’s wrong with Jez. GO.” We had about a 40 email exchange (these were like gmail one liners, not whole tomes or anything like that) complaining about it, but I don’t think “hurting women” came up at all. One problem with jezebel is I think that it is SO big. It’s easy to imagine that a lot of commenters get their news (a complaint this commenter brought up in said 40 email exchange) exclusively from jezebel and then repeat what they hear in the echo chamber of the comments in public, which could be embarrassing for some others. It’s a little ridiculous, though, to charge all jezebel commenters with representing “women” when out in the real world, and it’s probably a little arrogant, too, to be embarrassed on behalf of “women” when one lazy thinker says any given lazy thing. I admit I am guilty of this: I cringe a little bit more when I hear someone talk lazily about a cause I hold near and dear than when I hear someone talk lazily about something that truly does not matter, but that’s probably just my own self-absorption and self-righteousness showing.
That brings me to the echo chamber. The resistance to judging women at any cost, decrying it as “GoG crime” is ludicrous to me. The repitition of the same, boring arguments is just as dull online as it is in real life. I do truly value the opportunity to work out ideas outside of a classroom, but I feel like that opportunity has been stifled with how fast Jezebel grows. There are “big commenters” (a group of which every one of the harpy writers and a good portion of harpy commenters is a member, FWIW) and most other people never speak up or engage in conversation with those “big commenters.” It’s hard to break in to that club, especially because the new threaded view allows readers to ignore commenters who don’t have stars because those comments are more likely to show up collapsed on the page (it is frustrating to me, for instance, with my measly 28 followers and no star, that my posts rarely get more than one or two replies even though I think they’re generally pretty interesting [again, this is almost certainly a function of my own self-indulgent solipsism. Boy am I a brat]).
Again, this doesn’t really “hurt women” though, especially because I’d wager that MOST women in this country or even in NYC don’t read jezebel, don’t care about it, and are resistant even to the mild feminism that shows up in the posts of some editors.
One of the biggest things to remember is this: Jezebel is an internet ladymag. Hirshman isn’t leveling these criticisms at Cosmo, or Elle, or Glamour, or whatever. This is an internet ladymag. There are snapshots of celebrities (although I love the new policy of using different kinds of pictures), chat about fashion, and trends, and food, and in general the kind of thing that appears in ladymags, just without exercise tips and with lots more news. Which I like, and a lot of women who don’t want to be told at every.single.turn to hate their bodies and who are even vaguely interested in the state of politics in this country and abroad, especially w/r/t reproductive issues probably like that too. And I know we said no specifics, but Jezebel does have an editor who is seriously wonderful at following up on stories regarding women’s rights consistently and thoroughly. I appreciate that, too. I’d much rather have that than tips about how to do crunches and drop 10 dress sizes in 4 days or give the perfect candle wax scrunchie blow job or whatever is in print ladymags.
As much as I complain about the Jezebel echo chamber (and hoo boy, THIS IS A LOT), there is a wider variety of competing views there than on other, more hard-line feminist blogs I like. Not everyone there would be comfortable at oh I don’t know feministing or (ha ha, laughing so as not to cry here) kateharding.net or somewhere. There might be unexamined opinions — but they won’t be unexamined for long, at least as long as their holders are paying attention. Laziness and irresponsibility in thinking are ubiquitous, though, and I daresay less common at Jezebel than elsewhere (cosmo readers? conservative talk radio listeners? I like your boxing ring comparison here).
Young people love to be shocking? And talk about sex? Well COLOR ME ASTONISHED, Linda Hirshman! This is a non-point, and I think it’s a sign of the generational-warfare thing you mentioned.
Some editors have fan clubs, and that’s fine. There’s a reason certain bylines get the same commenters, commenters who rarely show up when there’s another byline involved. I hardly ever even click on posts not by the aforementioned thorough and consistent editor, for example, because I don’t have a ton of time throughout the day and I find that her stories are generally more interesting to me. I think Hirshman is unfairly focusing on certain fan clubs rather than others, which frankly don’t even interact all that much. Commenters on TV posts rarely show up in News at 10, in my estimation. I might be wrong on this, but I don’t think so.
I fully agree that Hirshman’s attitude is condescending and paternalistic. Ugh.
And… sorry for that. I was away from the internet and had a whole hour to vent about this to myself. And now with you.
I lost a sentence in there somewhere. I was trying to say that a lot of young women start out with really negative preconceptions of feminism (I know I did) and so a site like Jezebel is an ideal way to connect young women with feminism without being alienating, like some of the more explicitly theoretical or ideological like feminist blogs can be. There may be issues with Jezebel as a ‘serious’ outlet of feminist thought but, as Cimorene and others have said, it was never intended that way in the first place. I am really radical now but when I first started looking at blogs, I certainly would never have started out reading the stuff I do now like I Blame the Patriarchy, and probably would never have gotten there at all if it weren’t for Jezebel.
I love Jezebel because women talk like my sister and I talk to each other when we don’t care if anyone is listening.
To me, her whole argument misses the point, the same way that creationists miss the point when they condemn the teaching of evolution in school. (It’s a reach, but bear with me for a second.) The point of science class is not to teach kids what to think, but to teach them how to think for themselves (and, of course, how science works). Likewise, the point of Jezebel is not to present to women how we are supposed to think, it’s to give us a space to be who we are (plus information on fashion, sex, culture, and anything else we’re interested in).
Just like kids aren’t empty vessels that can be stuffed with the correct world view, neither are women.
@HistoricUpstart & Cimorene: Ha, I was thinking the same thing. Jez always made a point to say it wasn’t a feminist blog. It might have some feminist writers, articles & commentators but it was never meant as something more serious. I, too, have Jez in my “fun” folder while sites like this one, Feministing, Shakesville, Racialicious are all in my “news/politics” folder.
And while I was very upset with Jez for that incident, I know that doesn’t represent Jez as a whole and still go back…. just not to comment much anymore.
I should mention that especially in the not-too-distant past, and still now, the community aspect of jezebel is wonderful. I’m a person who has always valued the Internet as a medium for interpersonal communication and I think in general jez gets it right.
What seriously shocked me and made my jaw drop was Hirschman’s bizarre paternalistic slut shaming.
“But unregulated sexual life also exposes women to the strong men around them, and here, the most visible of the Jezebel writers reflect the risks of liberation.”
So, rape, pregnancy and icky sexual partners are all new phenomena? I just found this point so bizarre and she really spent a long time on it. Is it like, late blooming regret over “introducing” sexual libertinism to feminism in the seventies? And then at the end she seems to weaken and ask for some “middle ground” between earth shoes and being drunk in a bathtub, without recognizing a. ALL the middle ground and more radical ground on both sides that Jezebel editors and commenters comprise or b. resolving the tension she points out between the strength and independence feminism builds in women and the supposed “vulnerabilities” of that freedom. Middle ground? That’s your solution? Not too sexy, not too frumpy? I found it disappointingly wishy washy after being so inflammatory. Why doesn’t Hirschman just say we should be wearing earth shoes if that’s what she thinks? It would be a more defensible position.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the comments section of Jezebel has become *less* echo-chambery since the vast expansion of its readership over the last 9-12 months. By that I mean less agreeing with each others points of view, not less inane comments consisting solely of “THIS!” “THANK YOU!”.
Sometimes “big commenters”, of which I’m not sure I’m one, spend time playing whack-a-mole in posts dealing with privilege/sexism/racism/weight issues which they wouldn’t have done 18-24 months ago when Jezebel got maybe 10 comments a post, but I really do think it’s useful. You can see how some readers have turned a corner in their perspective on patriarchy and media and sexist behaviors.
I’m going to attribute this to my sense (nothing more) that the readership skews pretty young these days. I am 28 and I can tell I’m among the older readers. These are girls still learning. Any ladymag, internet or otherwise, that gives teen girls a space for learning and speaking without diet tips or makeovers is ok by me.
SkiptomyLou I think there are older readers, it’s just that younger ones are in school and have time to comment more (more!) than us working gals.
I actually agree that there is a ton of healthy dissent in comments. For every “getting breast implants empowered me” there are usually 8-10 comments criticizing that view.
I was also totally shocked by her calling out Megan for not reporting a rape, ignoring the fact that she DID report a more recent rape, and then suggesting it was because she was so slutty she didn’t even think it was that bad to get raped that she had to report it. When Megan has written MULTIPLE posts about the complexities of reporting or not reporting. My argument when I studied rape law in evidence class was always that slutty women should actually be trusted MORE when we say we are raped — wouldn’t girls who regularly consent know what non-consent feels like? And be less likely than more virginal women who may experience the “bad sex regret” and “mistake” it for rape as we are so often told happens? Just really, really retrograde, damaging messages in this piece.
Not to mention, hello! Jezebel had some of the most nuanced, long lasting, deep conversations about DV of any site in the wake of the Chris Brown assault. It’s like she’s mistaking headlines for conversations.
I go to lunch and my sleepy thread explodes. Typical!
@MisterMoonlight: I think it is generally important, if one is about to hold up some object as paradigmatic of a particular school of thought, that one be at least more than vaguely familiar with its contents. It isn’t clear to me that Hirshman is. So I don’t think I’m nitpicking here.
@romastrega: They actually have never themselves stated that they are “not a feminist blog,” as far as I know, but they do seem, in my understanding, to believe themselves to be of wider interest than to just “feminists.”
As to this “big commenters” issue: I am often accused of being this lately, and I was made uncomfortable by it because I used to attack this in others on the site. So I have quit it, for the moment at least. I think the problem is that if what one likes about Jezebel is that it has certain standards about the type of thing it is okay and not okay to say in conversations, then some people do have to play whack-a-troll. But lately it seems the tide has turned against having some sort of base standard. I have no problem with opening the space that SkipToMyLou speaks of, but in that case, I personally don’t belong in it.
AND as I mentioned elsewhere I think it could be very cool for Linda Hirschman to like, do a panel with some younger feminists, or do a guest blog, or do an email convo ala Anna and LaToya from Racialicious…there are so many ways we can engage and dialogue and recognize we are part of the same movement and have all generations learn from each other.
Yeah, JD, some healthy dissent. Also a lot of crappy dissent too. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out whether the majority voice is “the patriarchy hurts men and women equally!” and “weight focus hurts skinny and fat people equally” and the dissenting view is the perspective you’d find at Harpyness or Feministing, or vice versa. It’s hard to get a handle on the the editorial view is. I think it’s pretty divided up in their sometimes.
Please excuse horrid grammar and spelling. Apologies.
@J.D.: Calling out Megan for that is particularly despicable. I didn’t report when I was sexually assaulted on a subway, and while I regret that, I would not stand for having it attacked. The slut-shaming in the piece is all too evident.
What’s going on with Linda Hirshman? I used to like her point of view, in an Overton-window kind of way. Like I don’t agree that women should sacrifice our interests/career goals so that we can be soldiers in the fight to break the corporate glass ceiling–but I liked that she made that argument, it was a good conversation starter. But between this and the “why don’t women leave their abusers?” piece, I’m starting to wonder about her.
Skip I definitely agree with your assessment of commentland.
Spark, I also loved her pragmatic guide for upper class white professional women (I’m kidding, but I also really do like it despite its insane myopia and casual classism and racism). I enjoy that she doesn’t fuck around with idealism and just says right, we want more power, how do we get it? It almost seems like she is just really deeply, viscerally troubled by the concept of women as vulnerable. She wants us to be strong, competent, successful, in the mold of men. I think it causes her intense feminist anxiety to see women make choices that she thinks weakens their position societally (not leaving abusers, being vulnerable to rape, having sex with the undeserving). She wants a feminist army! I kind of appreciate it about her even though it is a little cuckoo sometimes. That’s what I meant when I say I wish she had just gone all the way with it like she did in her earlier work — tell us to wear uniforms, tell us only to have sex with people who will enrich us in some way, tell us to teetotal so as to remain vigilant at all times! The didactic and take no prisoners tone of her earlier work is provocative and extremely problematic but truly made me think and reassess the way I was living my life and how I viewed feminism. This essay? Does not do that.
@JDRegent: As Megan has told it to me, in the incident she’s written about, the rapist was arrested, prosecuted and subsequently deported. I believe she once talked about being a victim of date rape many years ago, but the attack she mentions in her most recent posts was definitely reported.
If she hadn’t reported it, she would no have deserved that kind of slut-shaming REGARDLESS. That was particularly low. Hirshman clearly feels she can cast judgement on women with regard to something as private and traumatic as rape. To which I say, fuck her.
Re: the big commenter thing, I sort of yearn for the days when comments were more regulated and there was a higher standard. I certainly didn’t mean this to be an accusation or otherwise negatively charged observation. It’s just that some names are more recognizable than others and there’s a certain weight that goes with that. I am all for a higher standard of what is and is not okay to say. I do think, like others, that the commenter base (if not the readership) seems to be skewing younger and younger. That isn’t necessarily bad, but I do think it explains some naivete and some (not all) of the more egregious unexamined comments. [FWIW I'm only 22]
The problem with jezebel, i take it, is essentially that it is really really really popular. This means that there will be a variety in how worthwhile or interesting any given comment is; there’s just a greater level of participation than before and with broader appeal comes a greater number of comments one particular reader might not like or find worthwhile (but another reader would. etc.).
I think Hirshman is here trying to capitalize on that popularity for herself (cf. emilyanne’s comment above) more than anything else.
And obviously I think Hirshman’s slut-shaming is totally sickening and inexcusable, as well.
I’m not particularly interested in Hirshman or Jezebel, but I was surprised to see this:
everyone needs a cause, and if Hirshman’s is to spend her time bitching about an internet website… well, Fight The Power, Sister! I’ll be over here caring about actual problems.
I understand that you’re angry and that you disagree with this person, but it’s disingenuous to dismiss her as petty because she cares about what people discuss on the internet. As a blogger yourself, it’s evident that you consider the internet to be an important medium for communication and political activism. Not only are you yourself one of the people on the internet whom Hirshman might potentially discuss, but several of the posts here at PoH are, in fact, discussions of what other people have said on the internet; this post is one of them.
If you’re mad at somebody about their beliefs and ideas, criticize those–criticize the hell out of them! But to belittle someone in a way that isn’t relevant to any criticism of their beliefs doesn’t do your argument any good. Additionally, your remark smacks of the naggingly anti-intellectual whine, “You think too much!” which gets whipped out in lieu of actual argument whenever someone criticizes something we hold dear. Silencing someone by sneeringly deriding what they think about and how much they think about it does not exactly enlarge the discourse.
@Laughingrat: My remark was largely off-the-cuff and therefore I’m not particularly interested in defending the tone of it to the death (to wit: sometimes I am an ass!) but I do think it’s worth pointing out that Hirshman was asked to write a piece on the question “If you had to pinpoint today’s problem that had no name, what would it be?” (by reference to Friedan) and Jezebel was her answer. My ill-phrased remark was aimed not at the idea that Hirshman thinks too much; it was at the idea that she has her sights set on a target that I can hardly believe is as influential as she claims, not least because she appears to know nothing about it herself other than what she’s read selectively and secondhand.
And it seems to me that it is a substantive criticism of her piece to note that there is a bit of disingenuity to using such a piece as your opening salvo against a market competitor, as emilyanne pointed out. It’s pretty obvious what was going on here and why “Jezebel” was chosen as the Big Problem Facing Feminism Today. And I say this as a not infrequent critic of the site.
You also seem to assume that I am offended on grounds of holding Jezebel dear, which is a bit of a gloss on how I feel about the site, frankly, and not at all what I said in the post.
All of which to say, your point is taken, but you seem to admit you are not particularly familiar with the issues at play here, and it might have been useful to familiarize yourself with them before scolding me.