This was a really thought-provoking situation for me, because I have read Tracie's blog for awhile and find her interesting and intertaining (and that she looks eerily like Diablo Cody) but I've known Lizz Winstead for more than 20 years since she's a Mpls transplant, and vividly recall when Lizz was Tracie and Moe's age and how I considered her a fabulous and interesting adult female who always made me think with her own overwhelmingly flippant and sarcastic point of view. Now with this, I feel like I'm very much in the middle of something people are saying is conflict between old school and new wave feminism and it's nearly impossible for me to consider Lizz "old school" since I feel like she's a contemporary and I can't imagine not finding Tracie and Moe on certain levels also contemporaries. The most interesting part of the whole incident/debacle is the vehement support of Tracie and Moe, portraying Lizz as a bad guy, which I really don't see happening when watching the whole footage.

The thing is that if anything, women who are sexually active with multiple random partners should know that they are only lucky. Percentage-wise, sadly it's only a matter of time before something happens no matter how good your own instincts might be (and when drunk, how good CAN they be?) and it's just tempting fate to think that it hasn't happened because you are smart and they are lazy.

I think Tracie and Moe were out of their element. I don't think they were prepared for a public speaking engagement. I read Jezebel regularly, and I've read Tracie's blog (only recently). I think being a writer is totally different from being a public speaker and these two girls got in a bit over their heads.

I am not familiar with Lizz, but after watching the whole show it seemed to me that things started out OK, and took a bad turn when Tracie & Moe tried to make jokes that Lizz and her audience didn't find funny. The folks at Jezebel have brought up unpopular sides of arguments in order to start a dialog going. And a lot of those online dialogs are very interesting. I see other sides of things I hadn't thought of. However, in an interview setting, trying to do something similar (if that's what they were trying to do) doesn't work. And thinking on the fly is much harder than writing things out, going back and fixing arguments that don't make sense, etc.

I think Lizz is a seasoned interviewer and reporter and used that to her advantage. I'm not saying Lizz was wrong for doing so, it made for a much more interesting show and it has gotten her a LOT of coverage online. That is totally to Lizz's advantage. I don't fault her for that. But to paint Tracie & Moe as vapid or stupid or not feminist, was unfair. They have an odd sense of humor, and I feel like that's what they were doing.

I do think Lizz made a mistake attacking Moe about not reporting her rape. Never attack the victim, don't assume you know what you'd do in that situation. No one can ever know what their reaction will be to something traumatic. And making Moe feel bad and apologize for not reporting it now, serves no purpose but to make her feel worse than she already probably does. That was completely uncalled for on Lizz's part.

I agree that Lizz is a confident performer unafraid in front of an audience. I also agree that it's totally different to be a persona on paper as opposed to someone confident to express yourself in front of a live audience. The entire senario seems more and more like a metaphor for the very potential for rape that was the subject that evening.

Sometimes you don't get the opportunity to even start to say no or handle yourself as you would have liked, whether it's because you've been drinking or the person you're facing makes you feel less confident than you normally feel, and sometimes the things happen as a result of that are far worse than being embarrassing.

Exactly. I think you're right, that is exactly what happened. Neither Tracey nor Moe were particularly confident walking up there. I'm sure they both had too much to drink, and Lizz just did her job.
I don't blame anyone in this. Mistakes were made, it is over, and done. Time to move on, and hope that Tracey and Moe learn from this experience.

I think that they were both drunk, and said a whole bunch of incredibly shitty things. Hopefully they regret it now...

But no matter how to slosh it, they came off looking bad. Really bad.

I'm not familiar with either of those bloggers but wow... WOW is all that I have to say. No part of me is comfortable calling any part of that feminism.

I think that alltogether they were just too drunk and were not prepared. If you read Tracey's response to this video she had been having a pretty rubbish day and then to go onto something like that... you can see how daunting it must have been, especially if they had been drinking.
All in all I love Jezebel and I know that their sense of humour is an acquired taste that obviously didn't come across well with people who were taking the topic extremely seriously - the speakers were not matched well with the audience.
I thought the worst part of this video was not so much as what was being said - as clearly they were drunk - but the fact that they were all talking over one another and ended up yelling. Moe in particular.

It might be prudent to cover the coverage of this at Jezebel as well--they are well aware of what went wrong, and they also point out how Lizz Winstead edited this on HuffPo to put both Tracie and Moe in an even worse light. Just saying you might want to check out everything before judging. I agree that their are some very ill-advised opinions expressed in this interview, but let's not witch (or feminist) burn just yet.

Also, the same way Angelina's weight is not Jane Seymour's business? Moe's rape is not Lizz Winstead's business, at least not her reaction to it.

Moe brought up her rape in the conversation herself,quite flippantly in response to a question about things she might regret. It's not like Lizz researched Moe's personal life and dragged it out in public. The entire interview is available at www.shootthemessenger.com and that is what I watched rather than something edited to illustrate a point of view.

I cannot get over this interview. Rape is not a sexual regret. Rape is not a choice. As someone who has experienced rape, this interview absolutely mocks survivors. Did any of these girls actually consider the implications of their words? It places the blame of rape on the victim. I would love to sit with them and ask them if they think I deserved to be raped. I cannot overcome how ridiculous their comments are.

this was like the illest form of reality tv. it's one thing when ignorant tramps say things like this on mtv's the real world - it's another thing when successful, supposedly intelligent women speak so flippantly and self-degradingly about something like date rape. i'm looking at this from a few perspectives. first of all, i know moe and some of her friends, as well as a few guys she's dated. she's got a drug problem that is clearly self-destructive (and vice versa). i assume that not so far below the surface of her nonchalant demeanor, she's got some intense self-esteem and/or psychological issues. i know it sounds like i am attacking her, but i actually say these things in a concerned way - i wish her the best - and going on this show and saying what she did...well, it was extremely offensive to me.

i too was date-raped. it wasn't in college. it happened when i was in my late 20s. i was mad at myself for getting into a situation like that, as if i should've been old enough to know better. but honestly, people fool each other all the time. the guy was a friend who had done a bunch of nice favors for me, who i had never slept with before, who i had only ever kissed on the lips after seeing each other for a month. i never could've guessed it would turn out how it did. and i was also stupid, because when we hung out that fateful night, he didn't even have to roofie me -- he offered me an ambien, saying that if you take it and don't fall asleep, you actually hallucinate/trip. i thought this sounded like a fun thing to try with a "safe" guy, until i completely blacked out and woke up the next morning with a crumpled up condom still inside me and no recollection of what had happened.

he drove me home the next morning and i was just confused/upset. it wasn't until after i showered, and thought about the whole situation all day that it dawned on me what had happened exactly (or not, since i couldn't even remember it). i felt like the situation was too weird and hard to prove, and that it would be a lot of drawn out drama in my life (i was out of work at the time & had just broken up with a boyfriend, so i was already it a sensitive place). i reported his name to some rape hotline, and he contacted me to semi-apologize a few times, but i refuse to have anything to do with him anymore of course.

anyway, i've been in therapy ever since that and while it may not even end up being the worst thing that's happened to me in life, it was certainly a devastating incident for a long while. i would never ever speak of rape so flippantly, and i would especially never joke about it, being a victim myself...if this is how moe deals with it, that's fine for her, but she should not attempt to speak in a public forum about it again without a lot more self-reflection, as well as empathy for her potential audience.