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In The Supremes Edition of our XX Gabfest this week, Hanna and Meghan
and I talk about (of course) Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, Judge
Sonia Sotomayor. Also a new study showing that women are more unhappy,
not less, 30 years after the sexual revolution, and why Terminator
Salvation has such lame female action stars... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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This week, Hanna, Meghan, and I inaugurated the Double
X weekly podcast, called the "XX Gabfest" in tribute to some of
our Slate offerings, the "Political Gabfest" and
the "Culture
Gabfest." We hashed out our thoughts about Obama's speech on abortion at
Notre Dame, Nancy Pelosi's troubles, and... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Our first week at Double X is drawing to a close. And we’ve heard all sorts of responses. We’re not feminist enough. We’re too feminist. We say we’re not feminist but then we talk a lot about feminism. We (and Slate) are ghettoizing women. First, I want to second my co-editors Hanna and Emily in what they wrote yesterday and today about why we wanted to create Double X and its relationship to Slate. Second, I want to take this moment to... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Like Hanna, I accept Ann Friedman's welcome challenge. Yes, please! We want to influence the national conversation,
and send our writers and editors out to go forth and prosper in plenty
of other pastures. We're not interested in roping ourselves off into a
pink ghetto. I understand the fear that other people will do the roping
off for us. When we first started talking about the idea of a separate
site early last summer, several of the veteran women of Slate
said, hey, we've spent years getting strong women's voices into the
magazine. We've succeeded. Now you're taking us out and putting us
somewhere else? The answer we all settled on, in the end, was... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com!)
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Today in the American Prospect, Ann Friedman asks a question we've heard from many feminists since we launched Double X
on Tuesday: Why do we need a women's web site? Did we kill the "ladies"
page in the newspaper only to recreate it online? This is an excellent
question, and one we wrestled with ourselves... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Apparently, if you launch a website for women in 2009, the most
important question is whether or not it's feminist. At least, that's
what you'd think, judging by today's launch of DoubleX.com. Only, the funny thing is, I thought feminism was dead. I mean, didn't we kill it already?
At best, it seems odd to judge a 21st century production by the politics of a decades-old movement, the relevance of which... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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If you're reading this you already know that Double X, the new magazine from Slate Group, about "what women really think" launched today. Double X inherits a legacy of women's content that spanned decades of comfort food factories such as Ladies' Home Journal ("Can this marriage be saved?"), McCall's, and Redbook, then spawned junior versions Seventeen, Glamour, and Mademoiselle (featuring David Newman and Robert Benton's advice column, "Man Talk"), before blossoming... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Calling all XX Factor readers: Today is the launch of Double X, the new women's site that this blog has given birth to. Come take a look! The blog will continue to live in Slate, so you can still access it the same way you always have. The one change is that to read posts and conversations in their entirety, you'll click over to the new site. We also hope of course that you'll find much more to interest you there. To kick things off today, we have:
A thought-provoking piece by a mom who is giving pot to her son. He is 9, and he has autism and a medical marijuana license.
Celebs including Amanda Peet, Margaret Cho, and Sandra Day O'Connor on who they wanted to be when they were little girls.
Hanna on the passive aggression of Elizabeth Edwards.
What's the Problem Now? A discussion about the ongoing dilemmas of feminism. Includes Linda Hirshman taking down Jezebel.
To make Double X succeed, we need you. Much of the site's vibrancy will depend on your comments about blog posts,
articles, and everything else. The comments on Double X will be
directly beneath the blog posts and the stories. And the homepage will regularly
showcase excellent quotes from commenters. Our goal is to generate dynamic
conversation. That's what has made XX Factor thrive, and now we hope your
feedback on Double X will add depth and new view points to the discussion. We're
especially eager to seed the site in its first weeks with smart, thoughtful
comments. And so we are turning to you for your help. If you post early and
well, you'll set the tone for the site right from the start.
We'd also love your suggestions about how to make your reading
and commenting experience a good one. Post a comment or send mail to
doublexletters@slate.com. We already consider you part of the
Double X community, and to that end
we're going to start having cocktail meetups and other fun events for our core
commenters in New York and D.C. Again, any suggestions for meeting places or
event ideas are welcome!
Thank you,
Emily, Hanna, and Meghan
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I second Jess' call for you to become fans of Double X on Facebook. But as happy as I'll be to share that virtual connection with you, I'm not happy this is what Facebook has become. I joined Facebook in the golden years, back when the bulk of its users were friends of friends of Mark Zuckerberg. Younger than Friendster and more exclusive than MySpace, Facebook let us figure out college life as a group. We shared snippets of this strange new experience with the kids we met in class that day and kept tabs on our scattered high-school friends. Facebook let us grow up and apart within view of each other. And then, suddenly, also within view of the grown-ups. And that's when the fun ended.
In preparation for the launch of the Double X page, I started off on a mission to "clean up" my FB profile. I'm friends with my bosses now, after all, so it's time to get profesh. But the same drunken pictures that I know I should untag are also the ones I most love revisiting—driven by that intense nostalgia that causes me to reread my humiliating middle-school diaries every time I visit my parents' apartment. Ever since adults crashed the party, though, Facebook profiles are more like cover letters than diaries. So I embark on my Facebook makeover grudgingly, because I'm way more embarrassed to reveal myself as self-promotional than drunk.
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The XX Factor blog is spinning off into its own site called Double X in the spring (more on that here). If you want to stay informed about our latest stories, news, and events, you can click here to follow our Twitter or click here to become a fan of our Facebook page. We're so excited to bring you the new site and will be keeping you posted.
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We are very pleased to announce that Peggy White will be the publisher of Double X, the online women's magazine that Slate will launch later this year. Peggy was formerly general manager of Yahoo Finance, and before that vice president and general manager of Business Week online and vice president of sales and business development for MSNBC.com. She'll start March 9. We can't wait!
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Calling all intellectually curious, engaged, and excited readers: We're looking for two summer research assistants to help us at Double X, the new website that is developing out of Slate's XX Factor blog (For more on Double X, click here). One of these assistants will be in the DC office, the other will be New York based. Interested applicants should send a résumé, three clips (published articles, blog entries, and classroom assignments all acceptable), and a short critique of the XXFactor blog. Email this to doublex.slate@gmail.com with Research Assistant in the subject, and please specify whether you want to be considered for the DC or NYC position.
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So does that gal attempting to auction off her virginity to the highest bidder remind anyone else of the young woman at Yale who was supposedly documenting her multiple self-induced miscarriages as a senior art project a while back? Not that I have any trouble believing that lots of people would cash that check. Yet something about the whole enterprise seems fishy to me. And I dunno about those "housewives'' either; are they for real or just hideously conforming to expectations? (I wouldn't know, of course. Not because my tastes are so refined but on the contrary because I have to either limit my intake of trash TV or else become one of those people whose life revolves around it. Which I realized years ago when while crossing the street on the Upper East Side, I ran into actress Ruth Warrick, who for years played Phoebe Wallingford on All My Children, and absent-mindedly greeted her—"Hey, Phoebs''—like I thought I was in Pine Valley. Halooo, she called back.) So there it was, my last digression on this blog—but only, of course, because it's also my last post. Honestly, if I have ever had more fun in print than here on XX Factor, it was so long ago that I don't remember. So I'm going to be your biggest fan over at AOL News, where as of next week I'll be writing a column and helping to launch their forthcoming political Web site, PoliticsDaily.com. (My first story—on Hillary's confirmation hearing, as if you had to ask—went up yesterday, and oh, those commenters are way scarier than you guys. My favorite outraged observation: "Hey, this is nothing but your opinion!" Tuh-rue.) So knock 'em dead with Double X, as I'm sure you will, and thanks so much for the great conversations, XX!
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We're pleased to announce that Jessica Grose is coming on board as the managing editor of Double X, Slate's new women's web magazine launching in the spring. Jessica comes to us from Jezebel, and before her stint there, Spin. Jessica, welcome—we're very glad to have you.
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We're looking for a publisher for Double X, the women's Web magazine that Slate is launching in the spring. If you're entrepreneurial and you have deep experience leading sales and marketing efforts for digital media properties, we'd love to hear from you. Candidates should have a track record of closing sales. They should also have experience managing sales and marketing teams, and collaborating across editorial, tech, and marketing sections. We also want to find someone with good industry contacts, including relationships with ad agencies and clients relevant to Double X.
If all of that sounds like you, please send us an email at doublex.slate@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
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In the spirit of post-election adventure, Slate is starting to work on a new Web magazine: Double X. A magazine by women but not just for women, Double X will spin off from our "XX Factor" blog, where we've started a conversation among women—about politics, sex, and culture—that both men and women enjoy listening in on. The new site will do all this and more. It will take the Slate and XX Factor sensibility and apply it to sexual politics, fashion, parenting, health, science, sex, friendship, work-life balance, and anything else you might talk about with your friends over coffee. We'll tackle subjects high and low with an approach that's unabashedly intellectual but not dry or condescending. The blog will be at the heart of the site, but we'll also publish essays, reporting, and other features.
We believe this is the right moment to launch a women's magazine that doesn't resemble any other in existence. The new site will tap into a crossroads moment in feminism, when the 1970s are firmly behind us but no one knows what's next. (Generational cross-fighting, post-feminist indifference, proof of biological sex differences?) We invite you to help us work out the new dispensation and to have fun doing it. At the moment, we're looking for ideas and writers and also for a managing editor. If you're interested, please send us a note at doublex.slate@gmail.com. And if you'd like to sign up to get e-mails about our launch this spring, please send a note to the same address.
We look forward to hearing from you.
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