“Oh joy. Yet another issue of The Atlantic Monthly lands in my mailbox and yet again – it’s been a year now that I’ve been keeping track – it contains a minimal contribution from women writers. We’ve come to expect this from “serious” political magazines and newspapers but it’s nevertheless annoying.
“And this month, in a commission that is breathtakingly insulting on a number of levels, The Atlantic had its marquee female and sometimes feminist writer Caitlin Flanagan discuss one of the more pressing social issue of our time: Teenage girls and fellatio. I am not making this up. In a long, rambling and, in the end, confused piece “Are You There God? It’s Me, Monica” Flanagan goes on at great length about what we old folks think teenagers are doing with themselves and each other.
“I so wish I were joking about this. It sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit, doesn’t it? Picture the pipe-smoking Henry Higgins-like editor, scratching his chin: “We’re not stodgy white guys who don’t care about women’s role in society. We denounce the sexual exploitation of women just like the feminists! I know! Let’s write about teenagers and penises! Let’s invoke the name of the nation’s best known shameless hussy we know – that girl who wanted the president to come in her mouth! – to show how hip we are. And let’s have a woman write the, er, piece. No one ever will guess we’re indulging our fantasies and fears about our daughters, step-daughters and their cute, sexy friends just to have a bizarre and one-sided conversation about the sexual habits of hot teenage girls. No one will ever guess!”
Read the whole thing here.
