I don’t think there’s much chance I have anything philosphically in common with the woman who writes Den of the Biting Beaver. Indeed, her views strike me as horrifying and repressive; she hates pornography, reveres Andrea Dworkin, and slammed her own 14-year old son for having the temerity to suggest that fighting and dying in a war might be worse than being raped during one. (In her own words: “I stomped out that little glimmer of Patriarchal nonsense before it had taken a real root in his tender little psyche.” Nice parenting, yo.) Worse yet, she actually believes in thought crime; she’s got a detailed theory of why it’s wrong and bad to fantasize about things you shouldn’t or wouldn’t actually do.

So why the attention? In a word, quality. Her posts are entertaining-tending-toward-rants, well-written, considered in the sense of acknowledging and addressing obvious counter-arguments, and fun to read. If everybody in this multi-sided culture war we’re fighting came to battle in the same spirit as she does, we would all be having a lot more fun.