“But I Married One!”
By It’s pretty depressing to see Keith Gessen resort to one of the hoariest lines in the male chauvinist playbook. I mean, really, “how can I hate women — I enjoy having sex with them?” In 2013? Not in the American Spectator, but made by a nominal progressive associated with a (deservedly) prominent literary magazine?
As Amanda says, it’s possible (and, indeed, depressingly common) for great artists to have objectionable views about women. I don’t believe that this eliminates artistic accomplishment. But Gessen’s bad faith is just the aesthetic Stalinist flipside — the idea that if someone is a great artist he therefore can’t really be misogynist is really silly.