Quote of the Day
by JS
Today’s “quote of the day” is from an article someone on Twitter described as a poorly written attack on Gawker Media. I thought the piece made an important point about incentives in for-profit blogging.
As of this writing, Carmon’s post has generated almost 1,000 comments and nearly 90,000 page views. It’s a prime example of the feminist blogosphere’s tendency to tap into the market force of what I’ve come to think of as “outrage world”—the regularly occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate‘s own XX Factor and Salon‘s Broadsheet. They’re ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. These firestorms are great for page-view-pimping bloggy business. But they promote the exact opposite of progressive thought and rational discourse, and the comment wars they elicit almost inevitably devolve into didactic one-upsmanship and faux-feminist cliché. The vibe is less sisterhood-is-powerful than middle-school clique in-fight, with anyone who dares to step outside of chalk-drawn lines delimiting what’s “empowering” and “anti-feminist” inevitably getting flamed and shamed to bits. Paradoxically, in the midst of all the deeply felt concern about women’s sexual and professional freedom to look and be however they want, it’s considered de rigueur to criticize anyone, like Munn, who dares to seem to want to sexually attract men.
The post causing all the controversy is here. The Daily Show responds here. If you’re interested in learning more about feminism, I’d recommend avoiding the blogs and starting with any of the numerous articles at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
