No Sex, Please, We're Fascists

It may be that the more interesting part of my recent columnist survey will not be the survey itself but the reaction to it.

In a kind of "Song of Myself" mood, for the past week I have worked very hard trying to cram every reference to my survey onto this blog, whether the reference is praise or ridicule. All the links and comments have flowed from Dave Astor's "Editor and Publisher" story. With one exception, those links and comments have concentrated on the element Astor found most newsworthy; that is, about 17 percent of my "salaried columnists" likened the act of writing a column on a regular basis to the sex act.

What I am beginning to notice is that some of those who have commented on this part of my survey seem to be using my results to attack liberal female columnists by presenting female column writers -- I am suggesting that Maureen Dowd is used as shorthand for that group -- as engaging in "bad" sex of some kind. I've got derisive references to both masturbation and "female superior" or "cowboy" sex.

Indeed, I get the feeling some of these writers find any sexual act chosen by -- rather than imposed on -- a woman to be a little creepy. Seems to me we may be on the trail of something anti-sex and anti-female in the minds of certain conservative media critics.

Here's an extrapolation on the theme of the abomination of the sexually active female liberal columnist from something called the truthlaidbear, a name that in itself suggests its creator goes to bed with visions of Ann Coulter's sugar plums dancing in his head.


Quick bite
moxie
2006-07-07 13:23:26
Advice: You might want to read lefty columnists while wearing a (soy-based, recycled) condom. Survey Shows Some Columnists Get "Hot" While Writing When asked "what writing a column is like," 26% of salaried columnists called it a job and 17% likened it to sex. Does that make their columns spooge or an abortion? Feels like the latter while reading them. That's all I have to say. Afterthought: If you didn't feel dirty after reading Maureen Dowd and her cronies BEFORE this article, you certainly do now.

I guess I better start a list of such invidious comparisons, checking it twice.