The XX Factor: What women really think.

Our Early Reviews

The early reviews of XX Factor are in, and they’re ambivalent, to put it nicely. The complaint is mostly the concept. At Tapped, Dana Goldstein  is "discouraged that another mainstream publication has put its feminist blogging in a separate space." At Huffington Post, Jessica Wakeman writes, "I still wish for the day when women-on-politics blogs don't exist anymore." Here’s a meaner take from Gawker.

I don’t really wish for the end of women-only spaces to discuss politics, or culture, or current events (the "etc" in our tag line is supposed to stand for all of that). I like those conversations.  I work in a mostly male office (Slate DC, that is, not Slate as a whole). I like that space, too. I also like to read legal blogs. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what kind of content or discussion belongs where.

My basic defense of a women’s blog is this: A bunch of smart women mulling over various issues that interest us together—what's wrong with that? We started the blog in part because we thought women might be more likely to read women writing about politics. I don’t think women-only conversations somehow hold back the larger project of integrating women into other discussions. If anything, it might embolden them.

Some of our (also smart critics) object to the personal element in our posts. That’s one kind of blogging gestalt—there are plenty of male bloggers who inject the same informal note. Nor does XX mean that any of us will stop writing longer, less off-the-cuff commentary. Yes, as Jessica W. says, it should be a given for the media to be filled with smart women writing about politics and everything else. We’re all part of that Slate-wide, whoever-wide conversation. Now we’re having this one, too. Hey, we’re multitaskers: We can try on different hats.