Since the article published, Lipman has been taken to task for her tendentiousness and factual inaccuracies, for her “gratingly pompous” tone and “insanely massive overwhelming ego” — her ego, I have to confess, was refreshing — as well as her bizarre argumentative mash-up connecting 9/11 to the supposed flame-out of female advancement. (This argument, a colleague of mine pointed out, was first made by Susan Faludi, though I would say not very convincingly then, either.) But what of Lipman’s declaration that cultural attitudes toward women have regressed? Have they gone the way of the caveman in recent years?

It’s unlikely there’s a woman who writes for a living, or whose work has made her subject to public judgment of any kind — hell, it’s unlikely there’s a woman living in America today — who would argue with the assertion that the “conversation online about women” is “just plain ugly,” as Lipman writes. She tells readers that she has been called “a witch and a bimbo.” Most women, at some point in their lives, publicly or privately, have been insulted similarly, or worse. (When I wrote for Salon about my faulty iPhone, the reaction was overwhelmingly sexist, with letter writers calling me, in various colorful phrases, a dumb girl.) The Internet, of course, is a magnifying glass for all forms of vituperation, with bloggers and commentators drawing on a rich fund of misogynist language. And the sexist talk of male media personalities, including many of the supposedly liberal persuasion — Keith Olbermann and David Letterman and Chris Matthews and Bill Maher — is often shocking, especially when they are criticizing women reviled by their fellow liberals, like Michelle Malkin or Sarah Palin (or Hillary Clinton). 

This sort of abuse needs to end. But are the attitudes on display new? Didn’t the Internet just provide a novel, free, easy-access, anonymous pasture for the age-old dinosaur of sexism to roam? Perhaps more to the point, do such attitudes, even if they are more public or available or distributable than they once were, indicate a corresponding stall-out of progress? Might they actually be a result of progress? During the presidential election, in an essay I wrote about Hillary Clinton, I argued that the success of her candidacy had brought long-latent fears about women and power to light. The criticism is loudest when the successor is approaching the throne. Seventy-seven cents on the male-earned dollar, or the dearth of women in corporate boardrooms, are indeed pitiful statistics, but I’m not sure they indicate backsliding, or even that progress has ground to a halt. What about the proliferation of feminist Web sites and mommy blogs? What about those women in Congress? What about all the “great news” with which Lipman opens her essay? The picture may not yet be rosy, but I’d still say we are inching along.

Lipman is right to argue for an overhaul of “popular perceptions” vis-à-vis women. In order for women to, well, progress there needs to be a change in the way we are perceived. But for this to happen, we must put an end to the notion that we are fundamentally different or “Other” — a few short steps to “inferior.” Tossing out  Lipman’s own gender “exceptionalisms,” as Jezebel’s Anna North calls them, would be a start. Lipman tells us that women are risk-averse (and thus hesitate to ask for things, like raises), that they tend not to laugh at their mistakes, that they are “built to withstand hardship and pain,” and that they “are less likely to define themselves by their job.” I am a ninny about pain, and if I lost my job, my identity would suffer. I know I’m not alone. Friends who work as accountants and software executives and real estate agents in the Midwest, where I was raised — women who, unlike me, have children and houses and husbands — would feel the same. My mother, who runs a marketing company, tells me her female employees do in fact ask for promotions and raises, often with a greater sense of entitlement than the men. You might say that Lipman’s own attitudes about gender are as antiquated as the more poisonous ones she decries. 

Jan 20: Barack Obama is inaugurated as president.

Feb 17: The president signs the stimulus package into law.

Feb 18: President Obama proposes his mortgage relief plan.

Feb 19: Rick Santelli delivers his rant on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

 Feb 26: The White House releases its bold budget proposal.

Apr 15: Protesters mark Tax Day by attending Tea Party events around the country.

May 26: Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court.

May 27: Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comments emerge.

May 27: Newt Gingrich attacks Sotomayor as “racist.”

May 28: The president calls criticisms of Sotomayor “nonsense,” but adds, “I’m sure she would have restated it.”

June 2: Sen. Pat Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, calls attacks on Sotomayor “unbelievable” and “vicious.”

June 4: The president delivers his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.

July 1: Unemployment reaches 9.5 percent.

July 13: The Senate Judiciary Committee begins confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor.

July 15: Sen. Tom Coburn tells Judge Sotomayor, “You’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

July 20: The first notable disruption of a congressional home district meeting occurs, when a Birther hijacks Delaware Rep. Mike Castle’s attempt to discuss healthcare with constituents.

July 20: The arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. at his Cambridge, Mass. home becomes public.

July 21: The president comments on the arrest in a press conference, saying the police acted “stupidly” in arresting Gates.

July 22: Liz Cheney attempts to justify Birtherism on CNN, saying, “People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas.”

July 24: Obama says of his comments on the Gates arrest, “I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”

July 28: Birther frenzy reaches an approximate peak.

July 28: The Senate Judiciary Committee votes to confirm Sonia Sotomayor.

July 29: Obama redoubles his healthcare sales pitch, holding public meetings in Raleigh, N.C., and Bristol, Va.

July 30: Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. Joseph Crowley go to the White House for a beer with the president and vice president.

Aug 3: Members of Congress on recess find hostile, combative crowds at town halls.

Aug 6: The full Senate votes to confirm Sonia Sotomayor.

Aug 7: Sarah Palin worries, in public, about “death panel” measures in the healthcare reform proposals.

Aug 11: William Kostric brings his 9 mm pistol to the president’s town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H. He carries a sign saying, “It is time to water the tree of liberty” and seems to touch off a trend of bearing arms to town halls.

Aug 22: Obama denounces “outrageous myths” about healthcare reform.

Sotomayor, of course, was born in the Bronx, and besides, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens — so strictly speaking, she has nothing to do with immigration at all. But why should that get in the way of a good scare? “What do you think Obama and the Globalists plan to do to Americans next?” the e-mail asks. (Americans such as… Sotomayor, presumably.)

“Resistance to Sotomayor’s nomination was considered light by Senate staffers due to their ability to convince most Americans that resistance was futile,” the e-mail continues. “We expect this same PSYOPS technique to be used in the push for Amnesty next. Many thanks to all of you that called, e-mailed, faxed, and fought bravely. If more of our fellow Americans had joined us we could have prevailed.”

The group is soliciting comments from its members on the Sotomayor vote here, if you want to read more in the same vein.