I first learned about Charlotte Allen's controversial column in a response writen by Alex Leo in the Huffington Post and titled "Charlotte Allen Is a Bigot", which is bound to get anyone's attention. But before I jumped on the Anti-Charlotte bandwagon, I figured I'd do two things: 1) read her column and 2) contact her.
I did both.
I got this response from Charlotte, who was kind enough to take the time to write back. Now, "CA" is her and "ZA" is me.
CA: Zennie:
I'll try to respond to your queries, but briefly:
ZA: I write a blog called Zennie's Zeitgeist
http://zennie2005.blogspot.com and I have a question for my post about
your column that has caused such controversy.
What was the movivating factor for writing it?
CA: Just fun--a friend of mine and I had been ventilating about all the dumb things women say and do.
ZA: Also, is there some discomfort with being a woman?
CA: I love being a woman?
ZA: In other words, what's wrong with essentially being how you're wired?
CA: Nothing--I'm not one of those gender studies types who believe that gender traits are all socially imposed.
ZA: Also, isn't it true that a lot of women aren't that way?
CA: Sure--I carefully pointed that out in the article.
ZA: I'm just curious. Also, did you expect to launch a controversy?
CA: I knew the piece would be loathed by many feminists, but not quite on this scale.
ZA: Would you still write the column if you knew it was going to piss off so many people?
ZA: It's been overwhelming trying to answer all the e-mails, but of course I'd do it. I refused to be intimidated by humorless politically correct types.
CA: Thanks! Hope this helps!
Actually, it does. I figured that Charlotte had -- as I told her -- her tongue way down her cheek when she wrote the column. I took the episode as something where she wanted to piss off a particular group of women who perhaps take themselves too seriously and she hit the mark -- bullseye.
Still, now there's a bullseye on her back. With so many calls for her head amoung the 1,000 comments and 10,000 blog responses, it will be interesting to see what happens to her. My bet is that she winds up on some TV show. Hey look, the WashPost editors must be loving this stuff. It's online churn of the first order.
I disagree with Alex Leo as I do think it was satrical and also balanced; not the divisive work Leo painted it to be.
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