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Your Friday firestorm watch: After NPR (NPR!) published an audio essay titled "Sex Without Condoms Is The New Engagement Ring" (which prompted a heated debate) Moe Tkacik of Jezebel responded with a wistful ode to the joys of barebacking. "[H]ere is the irrefutable," she writes: "it feels awesome." The biggest downside, as Moe sees it, is the increased likelihood that you'll have to have some very awkward conversations with your future partners.
The post has generated a lot of comments, both on and off Jezebel, ranging from people who agree with Moe to those who find her sentiment to be glib at best, flagrantly irresponsible at worst. Moe—who’s about to leave Jezebel for Gawker—seemed to take all the hubbub as one big don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out, and a few hours later posted a bitter, rambling non-apology.
Ignoring her ill-advised detour into STD statistics (the apparent point being: Lighten up, ladies. Chances are you’re white, which means you probably don’t have AIDS!), she touches on some issues that we’ve been mulling over here on "XX Factor," particularly with regards to Jezebel—namely, what’s the line between honesty and indulgent oversharing? Can you still be a feminist if you sometimes have very un-PC desires and opinions? Should young female public figures try to comport themselves with more decorum and propriety, or is that a condescending point of view?
In this case, at least, I’m more offended as an editor than as a feminist—Moe’s second post, in particular, flirts with incomprehensibility. As far as the charges of irresponsibility go, I’m tempted to say: Meh. Frankly, if you’re going to take sex-ed advice from a Web site whose best writer goes by the moniker “Slut Machine,” well, you have bigger problems to deal with. I’m mostly disappointed that the NPR story’s initial thesis—that deciding to go mano-a-mano with your partner can be considered a serious expression of commitment, especially when skyrocketing divorce rates mean that a marriage certificate isn’t the signifier it once was—got lost in the shuffle. That idea has a kernel of weird, gross, uncomfortable truth about it. I'm a big fan of Jezebel’s dedication to airing “Id-level truths,” as Moe put it in her second post. Sometimes I just wish they let their ego do a bit of cleaning—not for decorum’s sake, but for clarity’s.
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