Double X

Slate seems to have spun off a site chock full of stuff to interest women. It's called "Double X" and in case you didn't get that XX chromosome reference, were you to visit the site you'd know in an instant you were on a site for the ladies because the font color of choice is a shade I think of as "Ob/Gyn" purple. It's the purple of your pill packs and ovulation predictor kits, of cervical cancer information booklets and breast health reminders. Because the good folks at Slate seem to have agreed with all the big pharma designers out there that grown up girls just can't let go of lavender.

Here's the thing, Double X is a spin off of the Slate blog "The XX Factor." For whatever reason ever since it started (I believe they introduced it during the campaign), I've resented it. Now, I know there's a place for web sites devoted to "women's issues" and "women's politics." I know sites can spin off the way Jezebel spun off from Gawker, but somehow a ladie's celebrity/politics/women's site doesn't bother me in the way that the Slate site and the XX Factor itself bother me. I mean, I went to a women's college, I believe in Women's Studies and it still drives me up the wall.

Maybe it's because Slate, a web site devoted to analyzing culture and politics, has a bunch of women writing about culture and politics without laboring under any taglines like that of the "XX Factor" -- namely, "What women really think." The fact of their womanhood didn't seem to matter particularly until the XX Factor came along and they along with family issues and education moved over there. I'm not saying that those writers don't write the way they do because of who they are and gender contributes to that, but male writers do the same thing. In any case, something about the whole thing just seemed entirely too bogus. The women staffers of Slate were already writing about the campaign, so why did they have to write about it in the women's blog? And why did the women have to write about the candidates' position on family leave and why should those kinds of stories be pushed to a section labeled as of special interest for women?

Can't those smart guys over there just pretend like we're all part of the same culture and equally invested in education, health care, and tort reform? Because sometimes pretending is like smiling when your heart is breaking -- you might know in your soul what you're pretending isn't real, but it still makes it better.

And, seriously, did they have to go with that purple?