Dear Jezebel,

Just over two weeks ago, Jezebel published an article entitled American Guy in Paris Freed From The Idea Of “Consent”. In said article, an American named Edward Pasteck described a recent trip to Paris and certain revelations that struck him while embarking on his relationship endeavours. As the title of his piece might suggest, curious Edward discovered that, in Paris, it was okay to rape women!:

A specific example from my time in France helps illustrate my point. I once fell madly in love with a woman named Madeleine. I thought she liked me too because she kept agreeing to see me and she once elegantly blew me a kiss as she descended into a Metro station. We were never intimate because the moment never seemed right to try to kiss her. Lovesick and unsure of what to do, I complained about Madeleine to a female French friend who said to me, “Have you tried getting her drunk?” Obviously my friend’s recommendation was based on the assumption that after getting drunk Madeleine would be easier to seduce. This idea of plying a woman with alcohol (something that is applauded by American men in private) often enrages American women because they view it as an assault on their right to consent. Is this really a good thing?

Predictably, the article lit up Jezebel’s comment boards as users expressed their disgust—partially at the fact that someone actually had the audacity to suggest that there could be a time/place where consent could be overlooked. The other side of the disgust coin that readers were likely feeling was the fact that a self-proclaimed ‘feminist’ website could have published an article in the first place that was essentially advocating rape.

Though the negative response was immense, five days passed before anyone on the Jezebel staff acknowledged the article. Finally on Monday, Editor-in-Chief Jessica Coen posted an apology—albeit, not an apology for advocating rape, but for not prefacing the article in question with a statement along the lines of ‘Jezebel encourages the facilitation of discussion etc’:

I believe that we’re not always doing our job if we don’t ourselves publish and discuss that with which we may disagree — or outright oppose. Looking purely at what gets posted on Jezebel, it’s often a one-sided debate on matters that readers are hearing about secondhand: we relay news or information or the opinions of others, then we react or issue some sort of verdict. And that’s the core of what blogging is, of course. But sometimes it’s worth being confronted with the voice of an issue head-on, particularly in a place such as this, where you can safely react and discuss if you so choose. The idea of consent is not up for debate, but this young man’s way of thinking, how he came to it and what can be done about it — that is something you can and should discuss.

Of course, there are a couple of contradictions in the above paragraph. The most glaring one is in the last sentence “The idea of consent is not up for debate, but…” The fact that there’s a ‘but’ in the place of what should be a solid period pretty much speaks for itself. Second, for a website that makes such a hullabaloo about keeping the discussion open on “that which we may disagree”, they have conveniently turned off the comments on said ‘apology’ post.

Later in the day, Jezebel claimed to receive a response from an anonymous French woman who pretty much said what any feminist could have said anyways—rape is rape no matter what part of the globe you’re from (and that creepy anti-feminists [looking to get a book deal] who blog otherwise are likely to destroy the reputation of anyone who gives them a platform to speak).

Alas, Jessica’s post and the anonymous author’s article seem like superficial efforts to pacify a problem that clearly didn’t start with the rape post. An addendum to the original ‘American Guy in Paris’ post states that “His views do not necessarily reflect the views of the site.” The addendum might as well have said “We authorize controversial posts like these because they bring in massive amounts of traffic—don’t take it personally”. Jezebel is already notorious for using a tactic known as link-baiting—getting more readers to click posts by using misleading post titles, objectifying images, or straight up porn—but even though these methods may seem wrong to any feminist, there is a sad reality to the fact that sometimes in order to make ends meet (and to be able to highlight the issues that really matter), such an organization will likely stoop to this baiting (See: the Huffington Post).

The fact of the matter is though, a self-proclaimed feminist website should not be providing a platform for misogynists. Jezebel’s feminism seems to hinge on creating controversy and, even ignoring the clues that they fabricated both the original article and the follow-up as some sort of Thanksgiving stunt, they undoubtedly crossed a line in the pursuit of ‘generating discussion’.

When Jezebel was founded, it proposed itself as an explicit alternative to traditional women’s magazines. As any first-year women’s studies major will tell you, these glossies make money by exploiting women’s insecurities. The editorial content creates ego-wounds (“Do you smell bad? Why isn’t he into you?”) that advertisers handily salve by offering up makeup and scented tampons. But Jezebel must also sell ad space, and its founders knew that they are marketing to a generation that knew the score about how they’d been marketed to in the past, which meant those old-fashioned print tactics weren’t going to work. Page views are generated by commenters who are moved to speak out, then revisit the comment thread endlessly to see how people have responded to their ideas. Ergo, more provocative posts tend to generate far more page views, and the easiest way for Jezebel writers to be provocative is to stoke readers’ insecurities—just in a different way.- Emily Gould from Slate wrote a piece highlighting some of the ways in which Jezebel generates its pageviews

I, like many others, demand an actual apology from Jezebel. Not a quick note stating that they regretted the fact that there wasn’t enough context added to the article or some bogus claim that they aren’t compensated for page views–when that clearly isn’t true, but something that actually acknowledges that what they posted was HUGELY inappropriate, triggering, demeaning, offensive, and disgusting. I can’t say I’ll be reading their site in the future after this and I would encourage you to do the same (and spread the message to your friends, family, Jon Stewart)—I’m sure though that fundamentally their newscycle will continue to spin in the same perverse way that adds snark to every commentary, negatively judges pictures without context (snapjudgment), and generally adds sensation in order to make their feminism the most popular.

With that said, it is rather poignant than that on the same day that the original article went up, Jezebel sent out this tweet:

You probably know the answer, and so do we.

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