The best bad advice

I admit it: I thought Jezebel's "resident sexpert" was a well orchestrated prank, but given the tumble that the site has taken in the past year, a sex advice column written by someone who has to look up the meaning of "cisgendered," shouldn't come as a shock anymore. And I'm far from the only one questioning its validity. Amanda Marcotte weighed in on The Raw Story , saying of an earlier post on whether "facials" are degrading or not (note: the advice was to ignore one's inner voice that says "ew," and all things feminist-y, of course):

"Encouraging women to silence the inner voice that warns them that the man they’re dating is degrading them is really a bad, bad idea. Women do that already. In fact, the problem is that women are already socialized to ignore and minimize degrading behavior. If you convince yourself to silence that little, “That’s not cool!” voice, you’re going to attract men who belittle you, undermine you, try to control you, and even soften you up so they can abuse you. Listen to that voice! That voice is there to protect you. If a man’s behavior turns on your spidey sense, instead of telling that voice to shut up and going along to get along, stop and listen to your spidey sense."

I rag on Jezebel a lot -- they're making it really hard not to these days with banning popular contributors , locking down members who express even a hint of criticism , and continuing to publish a man who on his blog admitted that years ago he tried to kill his ex-girlfriend. Yeah, those things are bad, and to their credit, Jezebel has never been an explicitly feminist blog. Their writers have always been upfront about their flaws, and I actually did at one time appreciate the "warts and all" attitude. But what Jezebel sometimes forgets is that they are a lot of young women's entry into feminism, and with that should come some sort of responsibility. Or at least a counterpoint post.