Marlo Thomas is something of a personal hero to me, but I was admittedly disappointed by her recent article for the official launch of the new HuffPost Women’s Page. I was raised on Free To Be…You And Me (I still occasionally catch myself humming the tune to William Wants a Doll), I have great respect for the Ms. Foundation for Women, and I was recently extremely touched by a blog post Thomas wrote about the devastating consequences of bullying.

But when Thomas suggested that women use the recent official launch of the Women’s Page on HuffPost to “take stock of how far we’ve come” and proclaimed that as women we’ve “reached our era of great expectations” I immediately bristled.  After all, in her piece Thomas laments the limitations on women of her day by recounting that “if you wanted a job, you’d look at ‘Want Ads for Women,'” but in 2011 her important piece is being published on the Women’s Page of a large online news site! Of course there’s some cross-posting of articles, but isn’t segregating certain news and issues as meant for women still perpetuating the same gender stereotypes as defining certain jobs as of interest only to women?

I have no bone to pick with Thomas’ basic point that women have come a long way and that our hard-won rights must be protected. As a feminist, I feel thankful every day to have been born at a time (and under economic circumstances) where I have extraordinary opportunities, limited more by imagination than gender.  I am deeply grateful to the women who have paved the way for me. But I also think it’s time we have an honest discussion about when it’s helpful and when it’s hurtful to put things that are assumed to be womany (that’s a technical term) in their own special category. Do we no longer believe that real equality comes from men and women being able to experience and pursue any opportunity regardless of gender? Isn’t that why William wanted a doll?

Just as putting jobs for teachers and dental hygienists in the “Want Ads for Women” section of the paper explicitly categorized those jobs as suitable only for women in Thomas’ day, placing content in a specific women’s section of an online news site implies that it’s meant solely for, or is pertinent only to, women.  And that brings up the difficult issue that the Huffington Post must now navigate: determining what topics are particularly important or exclusive to women. (Try it. It’s a damn slippery slope of a thought experiment.) Arianna Huffington’s blog post introducing the Women’s Page says it’s “designed to be a place where women can come to be informed, inspired, entertained, and celebrated.” I respect Arianna and I am willing to accept that at face value. But I also can’t help thinking that real progress would be to make the bold assertion that women’s issues are all of our issues.

As a general rule, I don’t think there is anything wrong with groups or organizations where women are segmented. In certain situations there are enormous benefits to women. This was clear in women’s consciousness-raising groups at the dawn of second wave feminism. It’s clear to this day on the campuses of women’s colleges. There’s undeniably a lot of power in connecting women to each other, and frankly, we ladies don’t harness that power nearly enough.

But as women, we owe it to ourselves to distinguish between when categorizing things as “women’s issues” benefits us, and when it’s simply a convenient excuse for the rest of the population to ignore our concerns. It’s often the critical difference between women self-selecting into affinity groups and being segregated into them. It may be the difference between, say, a women’s site like Jezebel (which I enjoy) and a women’s section within a general news site (which makes me uneasy). Admittedly, making this distinction is not always easy and I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers. But I think many will agree that birth control or reproductive choice or the sex trade or even relationships and marriage – along with many of the other topics featured on the HuffPost Women’s Page as I’m writing this – are not important only to women. Shame on us for letting men off the hook so easily.

For women, gender is, and will continue to be, an important lens for understanding our world.  But how our gender defines us and influences our expectations is changing rapidly. I founded Role/Reboot on the premise that in my generation, both men and women are navigating a world built on outdated assumptions about gender roles. After all, for the almost one quarter of marriages with breadwinner wives, there are also more caregiver fathers. What section is made for them? And let’s not forgot the increasing numbers of unmarried folks or intentionally childless couples, gay couples, or all the folks with lives that don’t easily conform to antiquated expectations dictated by gender. There’s a new generation that’s bucking these entrenched gender expectations, and we ought not exclude them from discussions they may want to know about or be involved in.

Whenever possible, we ought to look at the fate of all men and women as intrinsically tied, and recognize that, oftentimes, to treat certain topics or issues as if they should only matter to one gender is to sell us all short. I hope HuffPost Women will engage in this important conversation.

This post was updated on August 9, 2011.

Photo credit mpujals/Flickr.