...is that although "feminism" means different things to different people and means different things in different contexts -- it is always good and always correct. For feminism floats high above mere logic.

From argument to argument, its principles may mutate wildly. You may need to perform tortuous mental gymnastics to reconcile the stuff that condtradicts the other stuff. You may need to constantly rationalize the bits which make no sense so that you resemble a cult-member explaining why the world failed to end on the predicted date. (Women are strong! Women are weak! We have our own free wills and minds! But every embarrassing thing that we do is the fault of men!)

Just as long as one thing remains unchanging: feminism is always good and always correct. For your fragile identity depends upon it.

May I, as a man, mention that I kinda like hairy armpits? Basically I'm a monkey I suppose, I like hairy women. Hairy legs, hairy arms, hair on faces (the hotest girlfriend I ever had had a better mustache and more chest hair than I did at the teenage time), hairy private parts, Uummm. In fact, I REALLY like hairy women. They tend to be better at hot monkey sex, duh.

As an ardent feminist, could you please stop using hairiness as an insult as you argue it out?

Oh, and I do love the fights, keep it up. It is high time women were as rude to each other as men are. I love the piece all to crazy. But please, quit dumping on the hairy.

That is all.

Keep the power! Divide and conquer.

They obv. only hired Linda Hirshman to drive up traffic, which is fine as they are a business and all, but she is obnoxious and should probably just be ignored. I won't get started, but what angered me the most is when she argued that Megan doesn't have the right to critize the military's handling of rape because she didn't report it when she was raped when she was 17. She was in a different country, she didn't trust the judicial system there, and she was about to leave. She was brave for writing about her experience. If Linda Hirshman was always like this, I feel sorry for the students that had to have her as a professor.

All these women! All these blogs and publications! All these ideas being slung freely and with gusto!

Rebecca Traister nails it right here. That is precisely the feeling — of round-eyed, "squee"-ing excitement — that motivates the self-congratulation of many of these online women's magazines. "All these blogs and publications!" An embarrassment of riches.

Yes, Double X and Jezebel and their ilk sling ideas freely and with gusto. We have another name for places where that sort of thing happens — we call it "school." The exchange of ideas there is noteworthy mostly not for those qualities but for what it lacks — coherence, precision, and depth.

We don't expect high school students, say, or college sophomores to elegantly, concisely express truly original, provocative ideas.

But it is reasonable to expect those things of adult writers, and publications, with any pretense of weight to what they say.

From Wonkette to Jezebel to Double X, women in the blogotopia "enjoy" a perverse ability to make it big despite a paucity of talent or original thinking — or quite possibly because of it, if you buy the idea that women who are mediocre writers are less threatening to those who employ them.

As reactive and derivative as Broadsheet can sometimes be, I'll take Salon over these other rags any day. Girl power is great, but it's no excuse for crap.

So many of the articles I read have nothing to do with my or other women of color's experience. That needs to change - so there can be as many 'fights' in the blogosphere as they like, but it still won't mean much to me.

It's a backlash-y myth that second-wave feminism was ever some monolith, hairy-armpitted women marching in lockstep with like-thinking hairy-armpitted women.

And thanks to you, Rebecca, that myth gets a little more life. Congratulations!

When I read this I thought, "this(the hububb) is a big deal? I think it shows how the virtual world warps peoples' sense of what's important or in this case what other people think is important. Ultimately, we're probably talking about a few thousand people for whom this is important but Traister, because she lives in the world of fem blogs, is convinced that this is what people are talking about. I dunno, no one I know talks about feminism, and Jezebel is just a turd in the Olympic sized pool that is the internet. I mean these ladies could probably just have this debate via email and it wouldn't make much of a difference. It's realy just a subject for people are lucky enough(for now) to get paid to think and scribble about such things. When I was growing up, the riot grrls were the vanguard of feminism. They were cool because they made zines and had DIY bands. It seems like most of those girls sold out. I mean Jezebel with it's 'celebrity gossip', that's feminism? So now instead of admitting they sold out, they say feminism changed.

All these women! All these blogs and publications!

All these energetic young people WASTING THEIR TIME yammering online about theory and politics and "feminism"! It's so wonderful!

Why don't you at Broadsheet start encouraging women to go out and ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING? You make your living chattering about useless crap like Michelle Obama's arms and Carrie Prejean's bigotry or the latest OMGSEXIST ad from some local paper. How very useful!

When I think of all the real-world solutions that young women could dedicate their lives to, which you are very studiously NOT writing about, it makes my head go all desky. When it comes down to the bottom line, just what is Broadsheet good for, anyway? (Besides bitchery and sneering, I mean.)

Please tell it has something to do with them having experienced multiple orgasms.