On July 5, we published this article by Charles Clymer critiquing a Senate bill that would require women to register for the draft.

On July 15, after readers brought to our attention the author’s history of lashing out against feminist critics, we decided to unpublish this article. This is an extremely rare and significant decision for Bitch—we pride ourselves on standing behind our writers, even when they have controversial opinions or are imperfect feminists. In this case, Charles Clymer’s documented behavior was clearly unacceptable. A big part of our mission at Bitch is to support and promote writers who don’t get a voice elsewhere—keeping this article up on our site would help build a platform for Clymer, which is why we’re taking it down.

The editors who approved this article were not aware of Clymer’s problematic actions. If we had known about this behavior, we would not have published this article. We apologize for not having this history on our radar and want to extend a thank you to the readers who pointed us to articles on Clymer’s actions. If anyone would like to know more, you can read several feminist responses to Clymer’s work here, here, and here.

— Sarah Mirk, Online Editor, sarah@b-word.org