An opinion piece in The Daily Beast ignited a half-baked controversy in the blogosphere last October by taking The Social Network‘s screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, to task. Writer Rebecca Davis O’Brien perceived the film as misogynist — or sexist, or something — complaining about the absence of strong female characters in the film. On that count, she is largely correct. The Social Network is about a group of young men inventing something that became fundamental to how people communicate online. But is that, by itself, indicative of some kind of unfairness toward women?

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