It's not as if American culture encourages women to do bad things to their bodies ever. No way. For sure. Those high heals and that crash diet, they're, you know, empowerful.

And do we really need a vitamin D deficiency, for goodness sakes, to somehow justify being opposed to burquas?

/eye roll

You made me smile.

Though I would be an enthusiastic supporter of a salon dudesheet as well. Or even a salon gendersheet, since in my experience "women's issues" are not in the slightest bit the same thing when you start taking into account race, class, sexual orientation, etc. Gender gets played out in so many different ways just in our own country. Where it really gets interesting is in the intersection of those identities and the different experiences that result. Sometimes I wonder if the whole model of a bimodal approach to gender is hopelessly outdated and even works in the service of patriarchal constructions of identity. And I wonder if the assumption that there are topics that can be assigned universally as "women's issues" might just be giving us white women some cover and an excuse not to notice the extreme differences in the lives of women who are not like us.

That's not to say I don't believe there is sexism - hells yes I do, I've stared it in the face a million times - but I wonder if an approach that was gender inclusive (and inclusive of intersex and transgender as well), and that freed itself of the assumption of universal gender experiences, might be more substantive.

(presented here for the purpose of discussion; please don't hold me personally accountable for what Broadsheet says about itself or how well it fulfills it's own goals)

"Our aim is to cast a spotlight on news that puts women in the center, because while we've come a long way, a quick scan of bylines and stories in most major newspapers will show you that women are still not always being seen -- or read. Broadsheet will be taking the ladies seriously, whether that means tracking news about how our rights are holding up, how well we're representing ourselves politically, or how the advertising world has decided to address us, what kinds of health advances are ahead of us -- all the news of our (usually) two-steps-forward, one-step-back march to equality."

...

"Our goal is to be opinionated about topics that affect women, but also a filter by which we can look at the news from a (mostly) female point of view."

...

"Which brings us to your inevitable question: What about men? Where do they fit in here? Broadsheet believes that any discussion of "women's issues" must include men -- hey, they still hold most of the power in the world, and, well, almost all of us live with them, work with them, love them. So expect plenty of editorial input from our male colleagues, especially Farhad Manjoo, who has been one of the biggest boosters of Broadsheet since the beginning. Men are crucial to any discussion and we want to bring them into the conversations we'll be having every day. And if Salon's history of spirited debate between readers and editors is any indication, we're sure you guys will show up in our comments area too and tell us what you think."

[end of quotes]

On a personal note, I liked the part about male editorial input and wish there was more of that here. There are plenty of feminist blogs out there with male contributors and I think that would be a great idea. Wish I was seeing more of it.

While I think that our meta discussion about the purpose and effectiveness of Broadsheet is a really important one and I'm glad to be reading it, I also want to notice that the discussion of lesbians seems to have fallen by the wayside. Seeing as non-heterosexuals are often marginalized in our culture, I don't want to just forget that this was the subject of the original post. Non-heterosexuals are so often treated like they are invisible. Let's by all means continue our other discussion but let's also not add to that marginalization here by derailing the topic entirely.

Perhaps Broadsheet could give us a space to have this meta discussion without having to derail other important subjects? It seems to be popping up like crazy lately and could be really fruitful (and yes contentious but I think we can all survive that).