The XX Factor

To Love, Honor, Cherish, and Trash—in Print

2008-07-08T18:15:00Z

Are yoga-toned women of a certain class all secretly dying to get divorced, you ask us, Hanna ? I find it hard to believe—whatever Ellen Tien at O might say about her own divorce daydreams. But a follow-up question might be: Are many women of a certain, er, journalistic class not-so-secretly dying to shred their husbands into tiny little pieces in the pages of a national magazine? Or in a themed anthology to be heavily promoted at the Barnes & Noble front table? Are simple bitch sessions with...(read more)

Divorce, Anyone?

2008-07-08T02:35:00Z

I want to take advantage of what Maureen Dowd dubs the celebrity divorce moment (Christie Brinkley, Madonna) to talk about how this great American pastime figures for the rest of us. When David and I did the Slate V feature in which we spent a day no more than 15 feet apart, I got one overwhelming response from women: How could you do that? I could never do that! That would be torture! For a while I wondered whether people were exaggerating their horror. Until I came across a story in O called "Divorce...(read more)

Q: Abortion Should Be Legal in (All, Most, Some, Few, No) Cases

2008-07-07T22:12:00Z

Rachael, All right, you caught me on my own overheated rhetoric (see what I get for posting at 6 p.m. on the Friday before a holiday weekend? I had a great time at Boston's beautiful fireworks, by the way—hope you had a fab weekend too!). No, I do not believe that being willing to perform abortions should be a requirement for getting and keeping a medical license. However, polls show that for the past decades, upward of 80 percent of Americans believe that abortion procedures should be legal at least...(read more)

A Defense of Anti-Abortion Rhetoric

2008-07-07T17:16:00Z

EJ, I hope you had a great holiday weekend. I don't want to wade into general disagreement territory, either—I suppose most of us have our heels dug in deeply enough that we're not going to change one another's minds. But I wanted to address a few points that you made . If indeed the "harsh rhetoric" has made abortion less accessible, isn't that a reflection of the unease that a large segment of the population has with the legality of abortion? Just because it's legal doesn't mean that we pro-lifers...(read more)

Thanks for the Poetry

2008-07-07T17:02:00Z

This abortion ruling strikes me as a lot like the religious culture-war debates, where we spend a lot of time fighting about symbolics and very little about things that matter (a creche vs. faith based funding, abortion language vs. actual access) The language suggested by the South Dakota law seems wholly beside the point. For one thing, sonograms make it obsolete. By now, women requesting an abortion usually have to undergo a sonogram to make sure there is a heartbeat, etc. If that doesn't shove...(read more)

No Free Speech About Women?

2008-07-03T21:48:00Z

As if Emily's article hadn't left me appalled enough about South Dakota's Orwellian new abortion "disclosure" law, I actually clicked over to read the 8th Circuit's appalling decision . Fortunately, no one else was in the office—everyone's sensibly headed out for the Fourth of July holiday—so they couldn't hear the astonished and foul language erupting from my corner. Let me add some thoughts to what Dana has been saying . First, I have trouble believing that any female in the country has failed...(read more)

One Quibble About South Dakota and Abortions

2008-07-03T20:36:00Z

Dana , Even though we sit on opposite sides of the abortion debate, I am also uneasy with South Dakota's law compelling abortion doctors to tell women that they are terminating the "the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." There are a million and one better ways to reduce the number of abortions, from better sex education and better access to birth control to charities who work tirelessly to support women who choose to keep their child or keep the pregnancy and give the child up...(read more)

Stalin in South Dakota

2008-07-03T19:36:00Z

But the point, Melinda , of my hypothetical story about the pregnant woman in South Dakota is that neither she nor her doctors necessarily hold the belief that abortion is the taking of a life. The doctors who require her to sign aren't "pointing out" that there's "a person in there" (or "a human being," in the carefully parsed words of the bill). They're being compelled by the state to go through the motions of simulating that belief, which, I'm sorry, is a Stalinesque absurdity that serves no purpose...(read more)

She's Nothing but Trouble

2008-07-03T17:14:00Z

I agree with Will Saletan that it is an abomination that the late Leona Helmsley wished her potentially $8 billion foundation to go entirely to the dogs. Uber-narcissist Helmsley left one of her largest personal bequests, $12 million, to her badly behaved (surprise!) Maltese dog, Trouble, an amount cut to $2 million by the judge overseeing the case. Looking at the photo of Helmsley's taut, rotten face cuddled up to Trouble, the only creature on earth who could bear the sight of her, fills one with...(read more)

Is Bullying Always a Bad Thing?

2008-07-03T16:26:00Z

Actually, Dana , I am a big fan of moral bullying, and wish it had been more effectively used to keep us out of Iraq. I'm hopeful that eventually, through better moral bullying, we will join other civilized nations in outlawing capital punishment. And it is only by building a moral consensus - bullying, if you prefer - that we'll ever see a real reduction in the number of abortions performed in this country every year. I'm not so sure I approve of the particulars of the law Emily wrote about; if...(read more)

Pregnant in Rapid City

2008-07-03T14:58:00Z

Emily’s piece about the new abortion bill set to go into effect in South Dakota has me madder and sadder than anything I’ve read in some time. (Actually, the last thing that got me into this state was also in Slate : In Steven Greenhouse’s story about the scarcity of vacation time in America, he mentions that the United States is one of four countries in the world without required paid maternity leave. The other three are Swaziland, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea.) But back to South Dakota. Imagine...(read more)

All About Eve

2008-07-03T13:24:00Z

Pixar’s latest kiddie masterpiece, Wall-E , did some massive damage at the box office on its opening weekend. As A.O. Scott recently noted in a New York Times essay about Kit Kittredge (watch this space for more on that film), Pixar has yet to build a movie around a girl protagonist. But Wall-E does prominently feature a pretty bad-ass lady: Wall-E’s crush object, Eve, a sleekly minimalist commando-bot with an itchy trigger finger. What kind of girl is Eve? One XX Factor-er wondered whether Pixar...(read more)

“Out of Ashes Growing Lilies”

2008-07-02T22:19:00Z

The whole Yearning for Zion case left me creeped out. The feminist in me finds polygamy in general a little creepy, but even more so when young women—girls even—are married off to more powerful older men. The mother in me hates the way they kick out the boys to make the numbers work, and I'm saddened by stories that the children apparently grow up without toys or anything else that might inspire their imagination. But the civil libertarian in me also gets creeped out when the state oversteps its...(read more)

What's a Girl To Do?

2008-07-02T16:34:00Z

I'm struck by this debate because in many ways it perfectly encapsulates something I've been feeling lately. As a 20-year-old girl (woman?!) who aspires to a career as a conservative journalist, I find myself agonizing over where I'll find my place professionally. I've spent several summers working in journalism, and I've always thought it's better to be a conservative in a liberal pool than to hole myself away with a bunch of neoconservatives. But sometimes I feel like I don't get credit for that....(read more)

Chardonnay or Pinot?

2008-07-01T21:00:00Z

I'm saying, Emily, that it's not acceptable, much less a Fast Pass, to question feminist dogma on choice within the ranks of "mainstream media" — though I'm sure there are no shortage of book contracts to be had at Regnery. Until the Times hired Bill Kristol, weren't such voices almost exclusively consigned to conservative outlets? Maybe you're thinking, "Sure, isn't that where they're supposed to be?' (And maybe you're not, though ah, how much easier to win arguments with myself; I also enjoy solitaire...(read more)

Men Are From Mars, Women From Venus, and We're All on Pluto

2008-07-01T20:00:00Z

Emily, you asked why self-identified feminists like Susan Pinker and LouAnn Brizendine publish books that focus on the differences between men and women. The cynic in me says: The marketplace finds it sexier than more talk about feminist goals that haven't been met yet. (As you pointed out, Brizendine's book was a best-seller.) But to be less simplistic about it: It seems to me that we are at a crux where we think we know more about the brain than ever before. Whether we do or not is perhaps subject...(read more)

Three Fingers, Maybe

2008-07-01T19:53:00Z

Melinda , I think you are tellling me to go have that drink. Actually, I can think of more than two fingers' worth of women journalists who are pro-life, or who I think are, but I'll stipulate that they are relatively few. So what does that prove? That not many pro-life women are drawn to journalism, especially opinion journalism? Or that there are lots of women out there who are being stomped on by the liberal establishment and not enough conservative outlets to house them? I'm not sure I buy the...(read more)

Need More Than Two Fingers? I Didn't Think So.

2008-07-01T19:04:00Z

Emily : Ha! Here's a question in answer to your question about whether women who take on feminist orthodoxy are making a wily career move: How many pro-life female journalists do you know?...(read more)

Mars and Venus Walk Among Us

2008-07-01T15:23:00Z

Yes, I think it's safe to say that Clark Hoyt doesn't get Maureen Dowd, despite her efforts to explain herself to him (what a fun interview that must have been). Dowd said that she's playing with sexist gender constructs, not aping them. She also defended herself as an equal opportunity offender—she questions Obambi's masculinity as well as Hillary's womanliness, and this makes it all more OK. That works for me, most of the time. It does drive me crazy, though, when women writers or TV commentators,...(read more)

The Last Thing Newspapers Need ...

2008-07-01T03:15:00Z

I don't know how this escaped my notice, unless maybe it's because I never read anything newspaper ombudsmen (or ombudswomen) have to say, and not only because they are so boring. (With the business model failing, the industry in apparent freefall, staffs shrinking so fast the survivors have to scurry just to keep up on government disinformation, and left and right uniting against the lazy, dull-witted, and otherwise very bad people without whom we would know nothing—nothing!—that is going on in...(read more)