Interesting email from a reader:

Jonah,
Like you, I hope my daughter (3 months old) doesn’t end up like any of the women on “Sex and the City,” but I think you’re just trying to score a cheap point you state that “I know feminists are still in the “it’s liberating to be a slut” phase”. Sure, some feminists may think like that, but the vast majority of women that I know view feminism as simply the right to make their own choices and be treated equally. “Sex and the City” is no more representative of feminism than, say, “The Man Show” is representative of modern masculinity. Both are good for a laugh now and then, both occasionally hit upon some bitter truths about gender and society.
I don’t know whether my daughter will choose to classify herself as a feminist when she grows up, but the fact is that she will benefit from the battles fought by them, just as the women on NR’s staff are themselves beneficiaries of feminism, whether they recognize this or not.

Me: I said this email was interesting, I didn’t say I agreed with it. Yes, of course women — and society — today enjoy numerous benefits from past “feminist” victories. And, no I wouldn’t want to roll all of them back. But I think this reader misses a crucial distinction when he compares “Sex and the City” to the “Man Show.” Nobody writes serious defenses about the “Man Show.” Nobody discusses the “Man Show” as a lighthouse illuminating the cultural landscape for young professional men. High-brow magazines don’t mention the “Man Show” except generally to condemn the coarsening of the culture or whatnot. Meanwhile, “Sex and the City” represents a whole tide of sexual nonsense championed by self-proclaimed feminists on op-ed pages and elsewhere. I see “Sex and the City” as being part of much larger cultural trend which includes everything from the Vagina Monologues to all the feminists who once went batty at even the faintest whiff of sexual harassment who suddenly celebrated Monica Lewinsky as if she was the Joan of Arc of sexual liberation. Remember those idiot-harridans, for example, in the New York Observer who thought the real scandal was that the President didn’t wear a condom when he was mentoring his intern senseless?