Linda Hirshman, writing at the new Slate-related site Double X, criticizes Gawker's Jezebel blog:
Liberation always included an element of sexual libertinism. It's one of the few things that made it so appealing to men: easy sexual access to women's bodies. (And to their stories about sex, which helps explain why 49 percent of Jezebel's audience is men.)
There are scarce commodities on the Internet, but sex is not one of them. I'm assuming many of Jezebel's readers are drawn to the site by the writers' frank talk about sex from a woman's perspective. But if all Jezebel's male readers were looking for was something akin to "sexual access to women's bodies" there's plenty of areas on the Internet where they can get that without the feminist perspective attached. Also, since Hirshman doesn't seem to know what percentage of Jezebel's audience is made up of heterosexual men, this seems like a bit of a leap.
At any rate, conservatism aside, you rarely see someone measure the success of a movement by how small they can make the tent. I put Double X in my RSS reader yesterday, but I guess I'll take it out. If I want to read someone dissing someone else for failing to report a rape as a teenager, I'm pretty sure I can find that elsewhere. Except I don't want to read that, so I won't.
-- A. Serwer
Update: Megan Carpentier of Jezebel takes on Hirshman.
