Letting the importance of a goal suck the needful joy out of the struggle to achieve it. I would trade a hundred grim-visaged warriors for one genuinely joyful believer, regardless of the cause.

That said, it is all too easy for the forces of marketing to co-opt anything worthwhile these days, so some wariness is always in order. But never at the expense of joy.

Broadsheet... don't point out the catfighting between feminists... this is not a highlight... it IS okay to be a girl.. You should be free to be whatever the hell you want to be.. I have a friend who gets this a lot... pretty blonde hair blue eyes... smart as a whip.. but the first thing other girls thing when they see her... If we stereotype ourselves (girly girls can't have feminist values... pretty girls can't be smart) then why wouldn't men? I like pink and I like shoes... I also like equal pay and women's equality and freedom from oppression throughout the world... this is a stupid argument and it makes me not want to read "patriarchy" anymore.. they seem to be wanting to do to feminists what snake handling churches do to christianity... scare the rest of the world away... being feminst doesn't make you human.... a publication can support feminist values and still discuss everyday things.. or are we not supposed to style our hair or buy dildos until all women everywhere are free? while we fight... life goes on... and maybe they

re just trying to recognize that.. reading a motherhood magazine that covers other life topics doesn't make you a bad mother, right?

How could anyone ever be good enough for this movement when all anyone ever does is criticize?

Why bother? There are enough ways to lose your self esteem in this world without being picked apart by sarcastic judgmental women who will never be satisfied with other women.

I tried to reach out to feminism when I was in physics graduate school, but all I got were angry little postmodern lectures on how science is nothing more than a tool of the patriarchy.

Oh yeah, that really helped me. That really fixed all my problems dealing with the hostile climate in my field.

The blogosphere has made it all worse. Huge swaths of Internet bandwidth turned into a broken bottle-strewn wasteland of snarky asides.

And I'm wondering -- with all of this anger towards Larry Summers, how much of it came from women who could have studied science in college, but majored in Angrily Berating American Culture instead?

I enjoy reading Bust, but it IS by and large a light read. It's not seeking to do any serious political organizing, reporting, or deep analysis of the issues. There's very little content that extends beyond the confines of middle class America. But I think that's okay.

Magazines are like informational candy. I read them for entertainment purposes, not for deep intellectual sustenance. To its credit, I have found that it can take me a couple of weeks to read through an issue of Bust. I could breeze through Cosmo or some other truly silly magazine in the time it take me to relieve myself. At least there is creative content beyond advertising--sadly, this factor alone makes it a valuable publication.

It would be nice to see a feminist magazine with a more global outlook (does one exist? not that I know of...). But I think Bust is right not to stretch itself too thin. As an American living far from the US--Bust is one of a handful of American magazines that I've found worth importing.

"Traditional femininity" and "traditional gender mores," the last time I checked, weren't traditional avenues for breast braggadacio and vibrator discussions. I don't care if feminism comes flavored "fun" or not (though I don't see much fun there and don't seek it), but I do want commentators to exercise some consistent thought when writing about feminism. That would be serious enough for me, no more, no less.

Page, Page, Page. You mischaracterize my argument when you summarize it as an attack on, of all things, fun (fun, the regulating principle of spinster aunting, is a practice to which I devote many happy hours daily).

So, no, fun isn't 'antifeminist'; in fact, 'fun' isn't a political movement at all. What chaps the Twisty hide isn't so much that young hipsters like to read magazines about hair-dos and clothes, but rather that this superficial consumerist self-absorption is billed, apparently without irony, as some kind of "in your face, patriarchy!" political action.

If you subscribe to the "BUST" version of feminism, you're still a woman willingly playing into the hands of the patriarchy with her makeup and pretty hair. If you subscribe to the "Twisty" version of feminism, you're a humorless feminazi who doesn't shave her legs.

Neither are appealing. Can't we find a happy medium and stop bitching at each other?

During the Vietnam War, I turned in my draft card, along with about 90 other young men, at a demonstration in Central Park in NYC. Afterward, we split into six groups to discuss what we had done and what it might mean for our future.

During the discussion, the men who thought they would go to jail started sniping at the ones who were considering Canada as an option. The inmates-to-be thought theirs was the higher moral stand.

I did not participate in the discussion. I was appalled.

I think this has always been the downfall of the left.

I can't speak from the inside (i.e., as a woman) about the BUST bashing, but I do know that I strongly agree with your last paragraph that we should take aim at the enemy and "reserve the heavy artillery for the political action itself."

(But that's meant in the FUNNEST way, of course.)

This is a perfect explication of Broadsheet's own raison d'etre and fatal philosophical flaw.

Let's see, could we have a Blacksheet section? Let's try it! Okay, we could run articles on segregation, rats in schools, and Beyonce! Yeah!

YES, you can have a sense of humor while writing things that oppressed people might relate to. Just ask Sam Clemens. NO, you can't segregate them in a separate area without second-classing the issues themselves.

All together now: giggle.