Sex Backlash Is Mostly Sexist

The masses have spoken: Sex and the City is a success, a tentpole, and with a $56 million opening weekend, a blockbuster even. But if you hear men talk about it, you’d think it was the most horrible thing to ever happen to cineplexes, writes Ramin Setoodeh. They grow angry and annoyed, as though they resent these girls hijacking a summer that rightfully belongs to Iron Man, Hulk, and Indiana Jones.

Critics, a mostly male lot, were brutal—for example, Anthony Lane of the New Yorker called Carrie and Co. “hormonal hobbits, all obsessed with a ring.” Maybe the movie isn’t Citizen Kane, but it hardly deserved such ire. Sex succeeded because it was about actual, believable women, not doe-eyed superhero girlfriends. Men need to give the ladies their due. (More sexism stories.)