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For the past two weeks, the Facebook creation-myth film "The Social Network" has topped the U.S. box office ... and generated a ton of buzz about its portrayal of women as sex objects and psychos.

Many Internet-types contend that only strong female characters in the film are Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriend (her dumping him leads to Zuckerberg creating the icky Facebook progenitor "Facesmash") and a young lawyer portrayed by Rashida Jones, both of whom get little screen time.

It seems like everyone and their feminist mother has something to say about this movie.

Jezebel's Irin Carmon examines the issue by drawing from her own experience as a Harvard undergrad (she was a year ahead of the real-life Zuckerberg) and notes that the raucous "club" parties (an Ivy version of frat keggers) depicted in the film "were rarely, if ever, the tabletop-stripping, girl-on-girl-action harems the movie makes them out to be."


Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon asked female programmers if the role of women in "The Social Network" was similar to their experiences working in the trenches of Silicon Valley; the answer was a resounding "maybe." As long as a programmer does good work, gender tends not to matter, but one woman Clark-Flory interviewed did agree that the "girls as prizes" mentality does exist and that she sometimes feels "like a Peggy Olson" in the boys' club.

Other critics have wondered if the blatant sexism is intentional, and now "Social Network" screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has finally weighed in, commenting on TV writer Ken Levine's blog. Sorkin writes, "It's not hard to understand how bright women could be appalled by what they saw in the movie, but you have to understand that that was the very specific world I was writing about. Women are both prizes an [sic] equal." The characters in the movie are a "very angry and deeply misogynistic group of people," writes Sorkin, who adds:

These aren't the cuddly nerds we made movies about in the 80s. They're very angry that the cheerleader still wants to go out with the quarterback instead of the men (boys) who are running the universe right now. The women they surround themselves with aren't women who challenge them (and frankly, no woman who could challenge them would be interested in being anywhere near them.)

While many of the women in the film are just a better stylist away from a 1980s hair-metal-video vixen, maybe the fact that a conversation about women in the technology industry is occurring can be considered a positive. If we hash out these issues now, maybe the inevitable Web 3.0–phenom film of 2020 won't have to feature a Jonas Brother snorting coke off a nubile intern's bare stomach.