new york times

Here's a brief test of étiquette. You're a writer accused of asking an inappropriate question to a famous actor in a national magazine. Another writer takes you to task for what she sees as a history of this kind of inappropriateness. Your response?

a.) Ignore the criticism—you can't please everyone, right?

b.) Explain yourself—you really didn't intend to offend.

c.) Promptly imply that the other writer is jealous and unfuckable.

If you answered c.), hey! You must be Andrew Goldman! Step right up here to accept this week's Douchebag Decree.

The New York Times ran a profile of Gloria Steinem by Sarah Hepola on Friday that asked the question, "Where is the next Gloria Steinem, and why—decades after the media spotlight first focused on her—has no one emerged to take her place?"

How could one person speak for all of capital-F Feminism at this point? Why would anyone want to? Of course, I can't speak for everyone either, which is where this open thread comes in. What do you think? Does a monolithic feminism even exist anymore? Should it?

I blame Douglas Coupland. Before he coined the term Gen X and set it loose into the cultural lexicon, we didn't care about analyzing and compiling character profiles of generations.

I was reminded of how damn I annoying I find these caricatures while reading A. O. Scott's NYT piece on Gen X's mid-life crisis, or more actually A. O. Scott's piece about 40 year-old men feeling dissatisfied with their lives (gasp! really!) that he attempts to cast as a generational phenomenon by name-checking Ben Stiller's latest movie, John Cusack's Hot Tub Time Machine and a novel no one has read. I'd like to believe he was spoofing the ennui-associated traits that Gen X gets tagged with, but, unfortunately, I think Scott has actually swallowed the stereotypes attached to his peers (especially male peers) hook, line and sinker and has chosen to regurgitate them on the pages of the New York Times.

Well it's about damn time! Though physicians and therapists (not just Dan Savage, we're talking mainstream doctors) have been known for decades that vibrator use can be great for sexual health, there's never been a scientific study to back up the common knowledge. Until now!

Trojan funded a national research project to determine the extent and impact of vibrator use and la-di-da, look what they found: not only do a majority of American women use vibrators, they're happier for it!

According to the surveys of 2,056 women and 1,047 men ages 18-60, a whopping 53 percent of women (and 45 percent of men) say they use a vibrator - a quarter of those in the last month. Women who use vibrators were more likely to say they were sexually happy and more likely to get gynecological exams.

On August 23rd, the New York Times Sunday Magazine will release a "special issue" about women in the developing world.