xoJane’s tagline is “where women go when they are being selfish, and where their selfishness is applauded.” They pride themselves on applauding women from all walks of life, regardless of: “age, size, ability, location, occupation, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, economic status, relationship status, sexual preferences or lifestyle choices.” They claim to be non-snarky and supportive, and maintain that their website is not one where “is not about changing yourself to fit any mold of what others think you should be, or even what you think you should be.” They also emphasize the importance of the comments as well as the articles, and deliberately blurr the line between the two by accepting article pitches from readers, and allowing the authors to comment with a high amount of freedom. The website also seeks to distinguish itself by refusing to use any stock photos – instead, authors illustrate their posts with selfies.
By taking this approach, xoJane has quickly built up a sizeable community of contributors and regular commenters. Although there is no dedicated forum, there is a weekly open thread in which users are encouraged to post about the things they most want to discuss. Most women who frequent the comments appear to be straight, white, liberal, and between the ages of 20-40, although there are substantial numbers of women of color and queer women as well. Men occasionally, but infrequently, participate in the community as well. Most visitors are American, but the site also has many international commenters and contributors, especially from other English-speaking countries.
Although xoJane is not explicitly named as a feminist site, most of the contributors and many of the commenters self-identify as feminists. This has a major effect on the overall tone and content of the site. Popular topics include lighter issues such as makeup and fashion, and even scary stories. More intense topics such as sex-positivity, rape culture, same-sex marriage rights, and the pro-choice movement. A popular column, “It Happened to Me” or IHTM for short, features amateur writers who talk about a particularly unique or traumatic event in their lives. Although most of the articles about sex and sexuality are geared towards women who are open to having casual sexual relationships, they have also published articles from women who have had few to no sexual partners, and a few ITHMs have even been written by women who are virgins at unusually late ages.
The commenters tend to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the site, at times praising it and the writers immensely for putting out well-written and unusual content, and at others criticizing the lack of copyediting, repetitive topics, and the occasional publication of a piece that they might consider to be tremendously out of line. Despite this, many stay because of the good articles the site does put