I think one value of Jezebel and the way its influence lives on was to define feminism for a readership whose experience with it had mainly been historical. It defined feminism as acceptance and introduced things like the concepts of fat- and slut-shaming to the wider internet (or at least, the slice of the internet that reads blogs like Gawker) — whereas, previously, I think those concepts had generally been contained within strictly feminist sites.
I mean, something I think this piece completely misses is that it’s not really noteworthy that these websites are often silly and inoffensive — what’s interesting and noteworthy is that they actually DO bring many strong, critical, feminist pieces to the forefront, alongside posts about cat bonnets, etc.
Like do you remember that “Ask an Abortion Provider” essay on The Hairpin? That was astonishing, and it was ALSO (yes, alongside “Women Laughing Alone With Salad”) one of The Hairpin‘s most popular posts of the year.
"— Nika Knight in conversation with Kelly Schmader for Full Stop, capturing a lot of the complicated responses I also had to Molly Fischer’s n+1 Essay about ladyblogs
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