emilygould:

I found Molly Fischer’s essay about Jezebel, The Hairpin, xojane.com and Rookie interesting, provocative, and deeply frustrating. Her dissection of these blogs’ aesthetics and the rhetorical styles they’ve bred in their commenter-bases is skillful, but what is its point?

[…]

Which leads me to my other point. In composing an essay that ranges from the smell of Moe Tkacik’s forgotten tampon all the way to whether it’s creepy that thirtysomething women revere Tavi Gevinson, it’s going to be hard not to leave anything out.  But here are some things that don’t fit comfortably into Fischer’s theory that these blogs’ internet is “a place to make people like you: the world’s biggest slumber party”:

1. Sady Doyle’s sharp-edged, honest, explicitly didactic Rookieessay about how to survive sexual assault, written sensitively and clearly for an audience of teenagers and adults.

2. The Hairpin’songoing series about the work and lives of abortion providers.

3. Rookie’sguide to masturbation.

These pieces are not likeable. They are not about “performing inclusion.” They are not about “how to belong.” They are about some of the most treacherous and controversial aspects of being female, and I am so glad they exist. […]

I read Molly Fischer’s n1 essay this morning, and found it to be a little too much like the Pitchfork piece from the not-the-this-one-but-the-last-one n1. I’m not sure if I’m ready for an accelerating incidence of internet hagiography-cum-demythologizing, yet. Good points (click-thru, above, to read the rest) by Emily Gould, of course.