mellysblog

I'm a loyal subscriber to Jezebel, and in particular to Tracie Egan, or Slut Machine, her Jezebel pen name.... I first stumbled upon Tracie's writing for VICE magazine last year, in which she convinced them to fund her rape fantasy. I had some serious issues with the whole concept, first as a rape victim, secondly as one who is concerned with the fucking LACK of prosecution in rape cases, third, as someone against blurring the lines of legitimate rape, the whole concept of gray rape, remember that?? and finally as a feminist who's interested in the psychology of sexuality. Despite the raciness of the post, I was hooked on her writing both on her personal blog and on Jezebel, on her ability to describe crusty yeast infections, on her willingness to share and in fact over-share so much of both the excitement and ho-hum-ness of women's daily lives. She wrote the way I wanted to write, blah blah blah.

Jezebel has been a bit disappointing recently. It's not just a women's site for news... and I can't in good conscious call it feminist, although within the celeb tabloid gossip they tackle the same issues that the more hardcore sites like Feministing, the Feministe, and the F Word do...they just have a lighter, more comical, and sometimes completely destructively insensitive response.

Such is the case in the following video from Lizz Winstead's show Thinking and Drinking, in which Tracie and Moe were invited to speak. They both showed up drunk, despite the fact that lots of women had paid to hear them talk about issues that they knew would be on the table... they ended up making total asses of themselves...




Ridiculous generalizations about the type of men who are rapists, the IQ's of the type of girls that get raped...it's pretty sad..it pissed off a lot of patrons, and showing up drunk for a talk is kind of disrespectful to your audience. I'm open for a lot of interpretation on various feminist issues, and non-consensual sex is definitely an issue that extends beyond feminism... callousness from the Jezzies is thoroughly disappointing. Can we all agree that rape is a problem, and not one to be taken so lightly? I'm all for humor, but insulting your readers and indulging in victim blaming is probably not the best way to keep them coming back to your site.