Jezebels Gone Wild: In Which Feminism Finally Bends Over And Eats Itself From The Ass Up

I have been, for some time, a fan of the website Jezebel and its writers. It's long been pretty consistent in serving up daily doses of smart feminist commentary on all things pop culture (see, for example, their MissDemeanors feature, their MagHag pieces and - oh the belly laffs they hurt me - their LOLVogue layouts) and its writers seem to have perfected, for the most part, an ability to be both thoughtful and snarky in one written breath.

Which is why my mind was pretty much blown to facking pieces when I saw clips of an appearance of two its editors/writers on Shoot The Messenger, a comedy-slash-debate show hosted by Lizz Winstead, one of the creators of and former writers for The Daily Show. It should have been kick-ass. Should have been. Sadly - alarmingly - it was one of the most horrific trainwrecks of a public presentation of any kind by women - including that really bad varsity theater performance of The Vagina Monologues I saw while in grad school - anywhere, ever, for reals, amen.

You can read Lizz Winstead's recap - and expression of outrage - here. You can read another recap, as told by a college student who was in attendance - and who backpedalled on her criticism of the two Jezebels when they made an appearance in the comments section of her blog - here. Some of us blathered comments concerning our horror at the whole spectacle here (also has video).

And you can watch video of the whole thing here. Or - my recommendation, because to watch the whole thing is to basically sit through the apocalypse of feminism, and so a little bit hard to stomach - you can just watch some of the more mind-boggling parts here.

In a nutshell: the two Jezebels - Tracie 'Slut Machine" Egan and Moe Tkacik - arrived at the show somewhat inebriated - which, whatever; sometimes a little drunky drunk makes for more interesting debates, yanno? (cough *grad school* cough) - and, through the course of the discussion, become steadily drunker and drunkier. Which, again, whatever - there are worse crimes. What made the whole bizarre, drunken debacle so alarming, however, were the off-the-hook insane pronouncements of the Jezebels on the issues of birth control and rape and their status as role models to young women.

A sample:

(On birth control)

Moe: Pulling out always works for me"

Tracie: "And I know it's an irresponsible thing to say, but it's (pulling out) the most fun way not to get Pregnant"

(ed. note: pulling out is the most fun way to become a parent, yo.)

(On rape)

Moe: "I don't know if this (rape) has happened to me or if I just drink too much..."

Tracie: "I once paid someone to rape me once... Well, I didn't pay for it, I had a magazine pay for it."

Tracie (responding to Lizz's questioning about why she doesn't think rape is something that women like her should worry about):  "I live in Williamsburg, there aren't very assertive men there"

(and on why she hasn't been raped): "I think it has to do with the fact that I am like, smart"

Moe (on being raped):  "The third guy I ever had sex with, date raped me, and I got very mad at him, but I wasn't gonna fucking like turn him in to the police and fucking go through shit..."

Lizz: "Why not, you see that's the problem, why not, I am just curious?"

Moe: "Because it was a load of trouble and I had better things to do, like drinking more."

There're also awesome nuggets about Gloria Steinem being a dinosaur (a riff on an oooold dig at Gloria, but still) and their sex lives and abortions - abortions as birth control, no less, which, *head explodes* - AND ON AND ON AND ON OMFG MAKE IT STOP.

Now, I get that there's this idea out there, among the young'uns, that there's this thing that we might refer to as (*waggling fingers as air quotes*) New Wave Feminism, which embraces total openness about sex and our bodies and everything that we do with our bodies and other people's bodies and so on and so forth and I'm, like, totally down with that (*hikes up mom-jeans*) BUT what the fuck? It's supposed to be liberating to regard abortions as something only slightly less mellow-harshing than pulling out? Rape as an alternative sexual experience that's available for purchase on Craigslist, unless, you know, you're one of those stupid girls who asks for it? OH MY HELL. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley just burst into flames in her grave.

My guess is that the Jezebels - this is certainly their account of the event - were just not expecting the show to be anything other than drunken silliness, and behaved accordingly. And I can totally see that, even though that misunderstanding could have been avoided had they bothered to do any research on the show that they were appearing on. I'm also sympathetic to the plight of anyone who has said or done something less-than-stellar in public - I have been there myself too many times to count - and so I don't want to demonize these women. They are not their words. But godDAYYUM if the spectacle put on here - two women appearing at a public, taped event, as representatives of an online magazine that's widely perceived to be feminist, before an audience that includes adoring young female fans who regard those women as their 'ultimate feminist heroes' and just being piss-stupid drunk and asinine - doesn't tempt me to get all judge-y- judge-y and finger-waggy and, well, mom-like (my twenty-five year-old self is somewhere in the mists of time rolling her eyes at me right now.)

I won't, because a) the stupider elements of this whole thing just aren't worth discussing, b) the Jezebels themselves don't need to be bitch-slapped any further by angry middle-school feminists like myself, and c) I can't stand it when my former selves roll their eyes at me.

But I'll put it to you - does this kind of thing spell the death of feminism, or just give it a really bad smell? What does it mean when the feminist role models of today's young women say shit like 'I didn't report that rape, because I had other things to do, like get drunk' or 'I've never been raped because I'm smart' or 'pulling out is the funnest birth control ever OMG!'? Does it even matter? And, am I too old for this shit?

Because, really.

UPDATE: Jezebel.com has finally addressed the issue.