High Volume Automotive Repair Facilty, is in need of a mature, detail oriented individual with above average computer skills to help out with our front office operations. Must be able to multi-task and be able to handle a large volume of telephone calls on a regular basis. Knowledge of the Automotive business is a plus but not essential to performing the functions of this position, However a good sense of humor is, as well as a positive can do attitude. This job involves answering phones, invoicing, preparing service orders, adjusting inventory counts, scheduling and much more. The ideal person for this job will be able to think fast on his or her feet and be willing to do what ever is required of them in this type of position. Must be able to meet the attendance requirements of M-F 9am to 6pm have reliable transportation and be able to make a good presentation to my customers. Additionally the ideal candidate will have a customer service background and be able to pass a pre-employment background screening. If you feel you have the right personality and the unique set of skills for this position then we want to hear from you. Please submit resume and references. Compensation based on qualifications.

Now, all qualified Maryland job-seekers can apply for this position in peace, knowing that their potential employer only secretly wishes you were a hot, sexy lady who he could repeatedly refer to as “gal.”

Unfortunately, expecting that your employer comply with anti-discrimination laws comes with a price. The ad originally advertised an hourly rate of $13.75 to $16.85 an hour; now, potential employees are looking at $10 to $16.

We’re in the middle of the worst recession in our lifetimes. The state of Maryland is hanging at a 7.2 percent unemployment rate. And one Maryland employer has found a silver lining in the desperation of his countrymen: The potential for hiring a total babe.

Last week, an area job seeker alerted me to this Craigslist ad for an office assistant job at a Rockville, Md. automotive repair company. Necessary qualifications: Sexy “gal” who knows how to “take direction.” Unessential: Actual knowledge of cars.

Here’s the ad (it’s since been flagged for removal):

I am seeking an attractive self motivated, mature, detail oriented female with good computer and telephone skills to help me run my business. This is a full time position with full company benefits. Knowledge of the Automotive Repair business is a plus, but not essential to performing the requirements of this position, however a good sense of humor is. I need a gal that is confident with her sexuality and does not mind working around a bunch of guys. This is a very fast paced business so I need a gal that can think fast on her feet take a proper message and take direction and do what is needed of her. This job is not for everyone, I need a gal that can interact well with the general public and handle a large volume of incomming calls on a day to day basis. A good clear voice and good communication skills are essential to this position. Reply with resume and photo if available to this post, I like to have a face to go with a name. If you think you can keep up with me and our work environment then I want to hear from you.

Seeing as this job ad alone blatantly defies Montgomery County human rights law, which specifies (and I’m paraphrasing here) that you cannot exclusively hire hot chicks on the basis of their glamor shots. This employer better hope his new hire isn’t too confident in her sexuality. She may just end up suing his ass.

It seems as if my critique of last night’s Superbowl ads struck a nerve with the most loyal fans of the Dodge Charger. These are their stories.

stann thinks that painting men as a bunch of emasculated wimps in order to sell a Dodge is just tellin’ it like it is:

God forbid any commercial should be geared towards men, reflect the feelings of men or (worst yet) poke fun at women a little instead of making men look like idiots. The “Spine”, “Dodge Charger” and “You’re a man” commercials were some of my favorites and reflect what so many women don’t (or refuse) know about men. This may be why so many of them are divorced or can’t get a man.

gdmt is unconvinced:

stann, as a fellow heterosexual man, i think these commercials make men look totally pathetic. how can you relate to a commercial that makes men look resigned to spending miserable lives doing shit that they dont want to do all the time just so they can fuck a woman and drive a shitty dodge? maybe your life just sucks. sorry, stann.

stann insists that any man who doesn’t like the Dodge Charger is either emasculated, or straight-up female:

gdmt: Any “man” who says a Dodge Charger sucks on anything but gas should just admit she’s really pretending to man so as to give some credibility to her point of view. It would be no surprise though, that complaints would come from the same emasculated men depicted in the commercials. Sorry to show you up to a mirror, but that’s life.

gdmt points out that that makes absolutely no sense, since “the same emasculated men depicted in the commercials” are the ones meant to be buying the fucking Charger. Therefore, if it is only the “emasculated men” who are complain about the Dodge Charger commercial, the Dodge Charger commercial has failed on its face:

stann: I’ll gladly be called emasculated if asserting my masculinity requires buying a dodge charger. also; those emasculated men depicted in the commercial are the ones driving the car i.e. you.

Last year, we delved into the world of 7orbetter.com, an online dating network that caters to men with long penises—and the men and women who love them. Recently, a reader wrote in to ask if there exists any similar service for men with genitals on the opposite end of the ruler. He writes:

Hello Amanda, I recently read your article about this website and wondered if you found any others with the opposite slant.  I think the concept is great in that you do know up front.  As an alternative are there any sites that also advertise size but not focused on the larger variety of men.  I guess what I am getting at is getting the whole “size” question out of the way early so there is no disappointment when things are revealed.  A girl may not want a 7 incher but a 4 incher may also be unacceptable.

I’m not an expert on genitally-themed dating sites myself, so I reached out to my sole contact in the field of penis-length marketing: 7orbetter.com creator Steven Pasternack.

“As far as I know there are no sites devoted to men with a small penis,” he writes. However, Pasternack does foresee some room for his own large penis dating site to expand to smaller sizes in the future. “I had played with the idea of allowing men with all penis sizes on 7orbetter but it sort of detracts from the marketing angle of men with 7″ or better in size,” he writes. “As the site becomes more established I will probably open it up for everyone eventually, but by itself I do not see a very marketable site that is devoted only to men with small penises.”

7orbetter.com’s bias in favor of larger-than-average penises is no secret—after all, we’re not dealing with “7orlonger.com” here. I imagine that this “marketing angle” attracts two demographics: Discriminating ladies and gentlemen who are solely interested in men with big dicks, and guys who want a forum to brag about the size of their cocks. 7orbetter.com, in other words, is the perfect spot for hooking up shallow penis-seekers and conceited penis-holders. They’re perfect for one another.

A site like, say, “4orsmaller.com” would struggle to tap into such a cosmic dynamic. I’d like to think that some men and women would be attracted to a guy with the self-confidence to stand up in an Internet forum and say, “My penis is smaller than the average penis. Now, on to my various hobbies and personality quirks.” However, I doubt that those same men and women would want to restrict their online dating opportunities to a Web site specifically themed around shorter-than-average-penises. I imagine that men interested in advertising their genitalia on such a site might be better off finding an understanding sex partner the old fashioned way—real-life trial-and-error.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Local anti-sexual harassment resource Holla Back D.C. has declared March “Public Transit Awareness Month” in order to “focus on public sexual harassment on our public transportation in the DC metro area.” I’m inclined to support this occasion for the following reasons:

(a) About half of the groping stories I’ve heard (and I have heard a lot of groping stories) took place within D.C.’s public transportation system.

(b) The vast majority of the victims in these cases did not report their assaults to the police.

(c) Since many commuters rely on Metro to get to work, it’s really fucking hard to avoid this particular venue for public sexual assault. (Metro logs over 700,000 trips in its system every weekday).

(d) Metro police take public transit-based sexual assaults seriously—when the assaults are reported to them. Since only a small number of Metro-based sex offenses actually reach Metro officials each year (2009’s count was 43 sexual assaults), police don’t see Metro-based assaults as a serious problem on the whole.

It is so ordered.

Throughout the month of February, Holla Back DC is inviting comments for ways D.C. can tackle the problem of sexual assault and harassment on public transportation. I like the suggestion of one commenter: Why not stage a public awareness campaign directly inside the venue of many assaults—on Metro trains?

Last fall, New York City waged a similar campaign against subway sexual harassment. According to an MTA presser, the campaign included a series of subway banners (a colleague sent me a photo of one, above) as well as heavy distribution of bilingual brochures encouraging victims of subway sexual violence to report the crimes to the NYPD Sex Crimes Report Hotline. The full banner text reads:

Sexual Harassment is a Crime in the subway, too. A crowded train is no excuse for an improper touch. Don’t stand for it or feel ashamed, or be afraid to speak up. Report it to an MTA employee or police officer.

I think that a campaign like this is a really good start, because it addresses a few the reasons why some victims of public sexual assault don’t speak up: they’re taken completely off-guard by this sexual assault on their regular morning commute; they feel like no one would understand their reaction to such a thing; they doubt the authorities would care if they did report it. So, when are we going to see similar ads on Metro?

Photo by Andrew Beaujon

Why is the Superbowl commercial line-up, hailed as an achievement in advertising industry creativity, often so casually sexist, racist, and homophobic? Credit the watchful eye of the CBS Standards and Practices department, which ensures that Superbowl ads bring in millions of viewers looking to be shocked—without offending the delicate sensibilities of the American people.

In order to achieve this difficult balance, ad-makers are forced to play within a very small range of acceptably “outrageous” topics. Since casual sexism, racism, and homophobia are main sources of shock-jock humor—and since these attitudes are too pervasive to inspire true outrage in the average American—companies compete to put the most creative twist on the lazy stereotyping without going too far off the deep end. And so: CBS bans an ad that shows two gay men kissing, but greenlights several commercials that play off “gay” stuff for laughs. It bans an ad that shows a guy’s head up his own ass, but lets fly a commercial that makes fun of those silly, backwards South Asians who answer your tech support calls (racism: officially less controversial than asses). Even the advertisement decried as the most “controversial” of the evening—college football superstar Tim Tebow’s anti-abortion ad—concluded not with a politically controversial rallying call to life, but with Tebow totally sacking his own mother. That’s gotta sting!

Some advertisers choose to side-step this paradigm, of course, with varying success (See: Cute farm animals in love; everyone has T-Pain’s voice; coffin filled with Doritos). The ones that don’t end up being mildly but reliably offensive, and extremely boring.

RACISM:

This was one of the only Superbowl ads I noticed that featured people of color. The other was a Doritos ad where a black man walked into his date’s house, checked out her ass at length, and then received a firm slap in the face from his date’s small child. In Superbowl ads, people of color are never employed to, say, return an Orca to the ocean after a wild bachelor party; they’re just here to get some laughs out of racial stereotypes.

SEXISM:

Welcome female sports superhero Danica Patrick, who stars in the most Meta Controversial ad of the night. In this series of commercials for GoDaddy.com, Patrick is going around living her normal life—receiving massages, appearing on television news programs—when she unwittingly finds herself at the center of a “controversial” Superbowl ad. Wherever she goes, blonde ladies are just itching to take down their hair, rip off their shirts, and become the next scandalously hot Superbowl GoDaddy girl. This ad could have been a clever subversion of standard Superbowl bodice-ripping if Patrick’s character had been allowed to point out how totally fucking weird this is. Instead, viewers are asked to head online to check out the even sexier action. Just a reminder that even women who excel in traditionally male fields (a girl who’s really good at driving!) are still forced into traditionally female representation (boobs!).

Ah yes: the “men have turned into demoralized, overly feminine wusses who can only be saved by big machines that go RRRRARRRR” category. This ad, for the Dodge Charger, really opened my eyes, you guys: It really sucks to be a man, especially one in a serious relationship with a woman! (Seriously, guys, if it’s this bad, just break up with us. We’re not worth it). I have one question, though: Why are you carrying my lip-balm? As a member of the gender generally expected to carry an expansive purse instead of utilizing her limited pant pockets to store items, I have often carried this proverbial lipbalm for my significant other. And it has never been so traumatizing that I’ve been forced to shell out $30k for a Dodge Charger to heal the pain. But then again, I don’t know what it’s like to be forced to carry lipbalm as a man. I’m sure it’s very tough.

Did you know that men are also extremely stupid? Men are only interested in beer, sports, and sex; women are from Venus.

HOMOPHOBIA:

This ad subscribes to the same theory of gender as the Dodge Charger ad, but this time men can only be saved from their spineless, overly feminine lifestyles if they buy a hand-held television. Bonus: this ad is even clearer in its assertion that men who do anything attributed to the mysterious realm of “female shit” aren’t true men. Change out of that skirt, Jason.

I believe that this Megan Fox ad contains the Superbowl’s sole same-sex couple: Two guys who slap each other with dramatically limp wrists when they discover that one of them has been checking out Megan’s sexy pix on the Internet. Apparently, gay men can only be represented in Superbowl ads in the pursuit of hilarity. We are truly living in a post-sexual-orientation America, people.

At first, this Careerbuilder.com ad was is headed firmly down the casual homophobia route: Naked dudes! Around other dudes! Touching their own nipples! But then a couple of underwear-clad female co-workers show up, and the ad refuses to go the aggressively heterosexual route with them. Careerbuilder.com actually reveals itself to be the rare Superbowl advertiser that doesn’t exploit boobs for faux “sexy” controversy. Ah, the complexity of Superbowl ad politics.

Last week, Montgomery County high schoolers brought home an extra special science lesson with their report cards: A flier from Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) informing parents that their gay kids don’t have to stay that way.

The flier, which claimed to be in the business of promoting “diversity for the ex-gay community,” contained a series of “scientific” ruminations on human sexuality. It’s all good, but this is my favorite part (emphasis mine):

According to mainstream psychological associations, there are no replicated scientific studies to support that a person can be born “gay.” No “gay gene” or gay center of the brain has been found. No medical test exists to determine if a person is homosexual. Sexual orientation is based on feelings and is a matter of self-affirmation and public declaration.

The gay center of the brain: The final frontier.

So, while the world’s most brilliant scientists are busy mining the deepest recesses of gay brains in search of that elusive chocolaty center, I’ve got a related question for PFOX: How many real, live ex-gay people has PFOX discovered at this point?

PFOX claims that the ex-gay community grows by the thousands each year. But last time I checked, PFOX’s ranks were overflowing with “everstraights”—heteros who say they have never been gay, not even once in college—and positively hurting for members who had really, truly successfully prayed the gay away. I can only conclude that the world’s ex-gays are all on a very long vacation to somewhere just out of our reach—the gay center of the brain, perhaps!—sipping on Mai Tais and having enthusiastic heterosexual sex with their spouses, far away from the uncomfortable glare of scientific fact.

—

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) promotes diversity for the ex-gay community. Ex-gays demonstrate that those with unwanted same-sex attractions can seek help and information on overcoming their feelings. All individuals deserve the right to self-determination and happiness based on their own needs, and not on the needs of others. PFOX supports tolerance for everyone regardless of sexual orientation.

PFOX can provide: resources for parents and students, ex-gay speakers for your school or club, books for your school library, and brochures on same-sex attractions, bullying and tolerance.

Who are ex-gays?

Every year thousands of people with unwanted same-sex attractions make the personal decision to leave a gay identity through gender affirming programs, including therapy, faith based ministries, and other non-judgmental environments. Their decision is one only they can make. However, there are those in society who refuse to respect an individual’s right to self-determination. Consequently, formerly gay men and women are subjected to verbal and physical attacks simply because they dare to exist. Ex-gays and their supporters are denied equal access and support, forcing them to remain silent for fear of negative reactions and disapproval, while gays are affirmed for their decision to come out as gay. Former homosexuals do not think something is wrong with them because they decided to fulfill their heterosexual potential by overcoming unwanted same-sex attractions.

But aren’t some people born “gay”?

According to mainstream psychological associations, there are no replicated scientific studies to support that a person can be born “gay.” No “gay gene” or gay center of the brain has been found. No medical test exists to determine if a person is homosexual. Sexual orientation is based on feelings and is a matter of self-affirmation and public declaration.

If only one part of you has gay feelings, should your whole life be gay identified?

Many people would agree that just because one part of you feels a certain way, it doesn’t mean you entire identity is that way. Having feelings of same-sex attraction may make you feel different. We all feel the need to fit in and be accepted. But no one should identify themselves based on sexual feelings alone,. There is more to your identity than your sexual attractions. Thousands of ex-gay men and women had those very same feelings when they were in school. You may have heard, “You must be gay!” But no one should be labeled based on the perception of others. Get smart! Explore the origins of your same-sex attractions. Why do I have these feelings? Where did they come from? The decision of a prom date, a car, or whether to super-size those fries can be based on a feeling, but important decisions should not be made on feelings alone. In order to make an educated decision, you have to be informed! Sexuality develops over time. It is not necessary to label yourself today.

Find out more at www.pfox.org !!!

(These materials are neither sponsored nor endorsed by the Board of Education of Montgomery County, the superintendent, or this school.)

Illustration by Robert Ullman.

After it was reported this week that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had used the phrase “fucking retarded” to refer to a group of Democrats, Sarah Palin took to Facebook to decry Emanuel’s word-choice as a “slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities”—and to demand that Obama give him the ax. Prepare to get totally fucking deep into the philosophical import of a Sarah Palin Facebook update, everybody.

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I parse the new Republican PC strategy, examine Palin’s record on disability (it ranges from condescending to damaging), and propose that Palin’s adoption of a far-left feminist talking point is a sign of the coming apocalypse.

SADY: Why hello!

AMANDA: Hello, m’lady

SADY: What shall we discuss on this fine morning? In my newly adopted 19th-century-dandy idiom, apparently?

AMANDA: Indubitably! Or something! I dunno: How about Sarah Palin’s Facebook updates?

SADY: OH GOOD. I ALWAYS KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS. Yeah: What strikes me about this Facebook update, aside from the obvious “Oh God I am reading Sarah Palin’s opinions on Facebook” feeling, is that her call-out of Rahm Emanuel is continually framed as being “not about politics.” And yet, she is calling for someone in the White House to be fired? And going all, “the President is responsible for this! Directly responsible! WHY haven’t I heard from him about it, hmmmmmmmm?” And that seems… political.

AMANDA: Yeah. Of course it is. Although the thing that struck ME about her Facebook entry was that she used euphemisms for two words: “F—ing” and “N-Word” but not for the word she was concerned with everyone banding about in this case. And another thing! It’s also kind of funny that Sarah Palin thinks that the President of the United States firing a member of his staff is, like, a reasonable result of a Sarah Palin Facebook update.

SADY: Well, you know: it is the POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA! But I mean, I keep thinking that the reason she’s all, “this isn’t about politics, it’s about God’s children and a patriot in Somewheresville and decency because life is precious, and God, and the Bible,” is that she’s playing kind of a rhetorical con game. In that disability IS a political issue, but it’s one on which Sarah Palin happens to be on kind of the wrong side. So it has to be apolitical in her framing – even though her means are political – so that, you know, we don’t get to politicizing it and figuring out some basic stuff like universal healthcare keeps disabled people from dying on the fucking subway platform where they live, and so on and so forth.

AMANDA: Right. Palin’s concerns are clearly entirely political, and not at all about securing actual rights for the disabled. But even so: words are important, and Palin has gotten 13,841 people who probably do not give a fuck about this stuff generally to agree that using that word is offensive. She also got Emanuel to apologize, which I think is a reasonable expectation (compared to forcing him out of the administration).

SADY: Yeah. And, I mean, people are having a conversation about the word. People aside from the left-of-the-left people I’m used to seeing discussing the word.

AMANDA: However, now we also have people who hate Sarah Palin (and there are a lot of them) using that word in spite. Like this commenter: “Give us a break Sarah, the people he was addressing were acting retarded and that group didn’t contain a single person you are defending. We all know he was not referring in any way to children or any other mentally challenged individuals.” So, the way that we talk about this stuff is important. Starting this discussion in order to score an absurd political point—and refusing to engage in issues of disability beyond politics—isn’t helping anyone.

SADY: Yeah, exactly. What kills me is that in the comments, people who are anti-Palin are starting to get really amped up about making “retarded” jokes to prove that they don’t like Sarah Palin. Like, one guy just wrote “your baby is fucking retarded.” Or there’s this example of point-missing: “Come to think of it I believe Rahm Emmanuel has a mental deficit that he and his president fail to recognize or adknowledge.” FROM A SUPPORTER.

AMANDA: Oh my goodness.

SADY: But I guess she said “mental deficit?” Because if she’d just said “Rahm Emanuel is fucking retarded,” THAT would have been wrong? And that’s where these language games get tricky. Because it’s true: the only people I’m used to seeing discussing this are the left-of-the-left disability activists, often disabled feminists because that is where I roll, discussion-wise. But when it makes it into a more mainstream discussion, especially when it’s tied to something this obviously disingenuous . . . You have someone who’s making an ableist comment but isn’t able to recognize it as such because she’s only identified the PEJORATIVE WORD as the problem, not the attitude. Or people who now construe using the word “retarded” as a pejorative as a bold political act.

AMANDA: It’s a can of worms. I do find it interesting that Sarah Palin, Republican darling, has taken it upon herself to become the queen of “PC” now, even though complaining about liberals forcing political correctness on the world is a treasured Republican pastime. And I think Sarah Palin does represent the worst kind of “PC,” which is to be only “politically” correct, and not correct in your social policies, or the way you live your life, or your expectations of all people, but “correct” only in a way that sticks it to people you don’t like.

SADY: Right. It’s the use of certain, I guess we can call them “PC,” actions to boost your own status as a righteous person rather than to make any change. And obviously she’s always been selective with her PC—one of the great triumphs of Sarah Palin in politics is that she kind of, if not pioneered, then perfected the use of typically left ideals to shut down the left. Like, “sexism!” Which means not challenging my candidacy, but sticks because there is actual sexism on the left. Or, “choice!” Which… actually, I don’t even know how “choice” applies to anything Sarah Palin has ever stood for.

AMANDA: Being brave enough to make the choice to keep a baby and then making the choice to force all other women make the same choice? I mean, part of the reason that it does stick is because us liberals are, like, interested in this stuff. We’re interested in dismantling sexism and ableism and racism (OK: Sarah Palin does not seem overly concerned with racism), and we’re interested in doing it from all sides, but Palin is only interested in doing it from her side. The amazing thing, to me, is making it stick among conservatives.

SADY: Right. That’s the thing: She’s coming at the left in the places that they care about. She’s found the Achilles heel, which is – you can call us Commie pinko bleeding-heart pussies from now until Doomsday, and we won’t really care. But DON’T TELL US WE ARE INSUFFICIENTLY SENSITIVE. Because we care about that stuff, and are trying hard (uh, some of us) and aiming that accusation at us forces us to slow down and self-examine and meanwhile you are whipping a crowd of racists into a hardcore voting frenzy. Which is why I think she’s so beloved by certain Republicans; this is good “politics” even if it’s not good politics. Although, on the topic of Emanuel’s supporters, I have to say: Some of them are not doing themselves (or myself) any favors here.

AMANDA: Yeah. Also, I mean, I don’t doubt that there are many people among Palin’s fan base who do care very deeply about these sorts of issues, because, like Palin herself, they were brought into caring about disability through a child or other family member. And now, tragically, I think, Sarah Palin is there to tell these families that they can do just fine raising their kids without any sort of government “interference,” which is probably true of a certain person who just sold a billion copies of a book that certain person didn’t have to write.

SADY: Yeah! Government interference is totally unnecessary, if you happen to be a rich lady! Which is why it is so weird that disabled people only ever belong to families that are super-rich. God has a Special Plan for us all, truly! Also true: All disabled people HAVE families. Private wealth, which all disabled people have access to, is always and totally sufficient to their needs. Like: WHAT. I have no doubt that Sarah Palin cares about her son, but if she cares about the ISSUE, she’s either completely devoid of empathy or just really, really stupid.

AMANDA: Now the only thing left to be cleared up here is Rahm Emanuel’s mouth!

SADY: Dear Rahm: Your usage is unbecoming. I like to swear, just like you, and also I like to rant at people in a kind of mean way over issues, as I am aware that you apparently do also. I am here to tell you that you can be a big swearing jackass without using the term “retarded.” Love, Lady Who Yells On The Internet.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Yesterday, the New York Daily News reported that a New York woman recently filed a lawsuit against former NFL player Eric Green, claiming that Green “forcibly sodomized her” in his Scottsdale, Ariz. condo. According to the woman’s suit, Green claimed to be taking her back to the condo so that “he could telephone his dealer, get some marijuana, and get high,” and also, bizarrely, to “introduce her to his friend, the Prince of Bahrain.” Green and the woman began having consensual sex, the suit claims. But when Green realized that his sex partner was transgender, the woman claims that Green held her down and forcibly sodomized her against her will.

At this point, no armchair observer in this case could reasonably determine whether this woman’s story checks out or not. But the New York Daily News commenters are already inventing dozens of reasons why the assault could never have occurred—and if it did, she deserved it!

According to the commenters, the woman engaged in a variety of behaviors that screamed she was “asking for it.” They include:

ENTERING A ROOM. Sure, this commenter doesn’t write in full sentences. But intelligent women will still heed his advice: Never enter a room by your own free will:

She went to a room with on her own free will. Bad move.

BEING A TRANSGENDER WOMAN. No. 1 way not to evaluate claims of rape: “So let me guess what happened”:

So let me guess what happened. he met “her” in a club, took her back to his condo thinking “she” was a woman, then it got all “Crying Game”. Shocked and embarrassed he told her to get out. “She” in turn was humiliated and even though “she” isn’t a woman, did what many women that seek revenge on men do . . . cry rape?

BEING IN THE VICINITY OF A PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYER. This commenter claims that anyone who goes back to the home of an NFL player to party—even a straight, cisgender, red-blooded, meat-eatin’, football-lovin’ American dude—should reasonably assume that that football player will rape him. Observe how thoroughly this commenter is not a bigot!: No matter who the rape victim is, he or she still deserves it!

Man/Woman/Gay/Straight/Transgender/Whatever…you go home with a biga$$ football player you don’t know, you are playing Russian Roulette. I wouldn’t feel sorry if it were any of the above. Has no one learned anything about personal responsibility for personal safety?

BEING IN THE VICINITY OF ANYONE WITH TESTOSTERONE. A closely-related argument: Big football players just can’t help themselves:

Half the NFL players I would never want to meet in the bedroom, they are hulking gigantic people. If you disrupt the testosterone/steriods then your on your own.

BEING A TRANSGENDER WOMAN, PART TWO. Did you know that if you are transgender, your rape is so much less crucial than the consensual sex partners a professional football player prefers?:

Let’s keep an open mind about this. Maybe Green has a fetish for transgenders.

BEING RAPED BY A PERSON WHO HAS FRIENDS. Oh, this old standby:

why are you people so quick to assume that any of this is true. all of his friends know him and know this is something he isnt even capable of doing. why be so quick to jump on the media bandwagon. because some person who obviously likes to file lawsuits everywhere it goes were supposed to beleive. dont be so quick to judge because if you knew him like i do you would know that he is one of the nicest, happiest person you ever met, he lights up a room when he enters it so instead of going with the looney maybe you should support the one who is truly the victim. ERIC.

BEING A TRANSGENDER WOMAN, PART THREE. According to commenter “RotorRooter”—surely, “the dominant expert on the subject—this woman’s story is false because she is just too womanly!

I can almost guarantee that this was a situation in which he was naive and did not even know that this woman was actually born a man. Chances are that he tried to get intimate with her, she told him that she was experiencing her menstrual cycle, and offered her backside instead (happens all the time on Jerry Springer- LOL!). Afterward, she saved some DNA evidence and made up this cockomamy (no pun intended) story as a get-rich-quick scheme.

TALKING ABOUT YOUR RAPE. Congratulations to commenter “ccb94.” Never has a victim-blaming argument come so close to exploding my brains out of my fucking head. Here you go:

I bet he never touched her. If he did, she wouldn’t be this mad. I don’t take those harmones, I am born with them and know that is how a woman would be. If she were raped, she would be acting differently and more quietly!!!

This one’s for the tweens. Say you’re a typical seventh-grade girl. And so, as is typical for a girl your age, a good deal of your existence is devoted to self-loathing. You hate everything about yourself—your skin, your weight, your clothes, your hair, the way you eat, the way you talk, the way you walk, the way you look in a swimsuit, the way you look in shorts, the way you look in pants, the way you look to boys, the way you look to other girls.

Perhaps you are wondering when this hell on Earth is going to end? When you’re going to gain a little bit of confidence in yourself? When you’ll be able to do things humans do—eat, walk, talk, dress, swim—without hating yourself for it? Eight grade, maybe? Ho ho, not so fast, girl who doesn’t want to hate herself anymore! As Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I discover in this edition of Sexist Beatdown, insecurity is all part of the social hierarchy of girl culture. Sure, a little bit of confidence might help you live a full, human life—but it just might make all the other girls in school hate you.

Sady has already laid the groundwork on this pervasive negativity of girlhood, in which  a social order is built upon this delicate balance between feeling like shit and making other girls feel like shit, too. Fast fact: according to Rachel Simmons‘ Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, the no. 1 way to put yourself on the fast track to social hell is to be a confident girl. In order to avoid appearing too confident—while keeping other girls self-loathing as well!—passive-aggressive social strategies develop. Sady points to two particularly odious rituals of girl culture:

a. The Complinsult. Sady on the “complinsult”:

Here’s one of the best I have ever received, which I keep close to my heart: “Your outfit is amazing! I think it’s so great that you can wear that out in public. I’d never have the nerve.” The words are saying “I suck and you are awesome,” and yet? That is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what it means.

b. The Fat Talk. Sady on the “Fat Talk”:

For years, I thought this was some grody stereotype that you only found in male stand-up comedians’ routines about how women are awful. But then I met women who actually did it: the thing where, before ordering dinner at a restaurant, you all talk about how you should order this and you absolutely cannot order that, because you are so disgusting and you cannot stick to your diet and eating a cheeseburger will literally send you right straight to hell, and if you are the girl who straight-up says she wants some nachos so covered in cheese and guacamole and various meats that they might as well not even have any chips involved – just a big mess of meats and milk fat and squished-up avocados, that is the experience for which you are aiming, and also it would help if the entire thing had sour cream all over it – well, you just might have earned yourself a Complinsult about how brave you are with your dietary habits, young lady.

Any social order which denies girls the most delicious nachos of all simply cannot stand. So: How do we get out of this mess?

AMANDA: Before we begin this conversation, I should inform you that I am fat, and also that I think it’s so great that you’re the type of girl who could post a long, introspective essay on self-esteem and female relationships, because I would never have had the nerve to say such a thing in public.

SADY: I think it’s really brave of you to admit that in public, Amanda, considering the sort of backlash you are likely to get from people who think it is stupid! Although I, myself, have a hard time concentrating on what you are saying, because mostly I am thinking about how ugly I am at the moment. Have we done the rounds yet? Do we need more backhanding?

AMANDA: I think we’re fine for now. Until you start to get too confident! Then, I will commence with the outright shaming.

SADY: HA. This is something I have been thinking a lot about, the shaming! And it had two causes: one, the Clay Shirky piece I read [Quick plot overview: Dude thinks women just need to act more confident, and all the problems of women will be solved. -Ed.] and then used as a platform for my particular dive off the Deep End. And, two, the fact that I Googled myself.

AMANDA: Oh continue!

SADY: And the first thing I thought, after commencing the Googling, was—not that there weren’t nice things and bad things and one bad thing from a guy who wrote a bad thing about me before and then had to list it in his top-trafficked blog posts of the year, I think because I read it 9,000 times—the FACT THAT I HAD A GOOGLE PRESENCE sent me into this weird shame spiral. I was like, “Oh, no! For every person that knows about me, there is ONE MORE CHANCE for someone to HATE MY ASS SEVERELY!” And this led a very strange series of reflections. Which I will not dominate the discussion with, because they are boring.

AMANDA: I’ll reflect on something: I feel like for much of my adolescence, I was both repulsed by and unable to ignore the self-shaming hallmarks of female bonding. I hated myself, for sure, most furiously during the 7th-8th grade years, but I was also extremely uncomfortable with other girls expressing their own imaginary failures—the “I’m too fats” or the “I’m too uglies” or the “I’m too dumbs.” I think I did realize at the time that this was an odd form of bonding that had to be engaged with in order to prove your friendship to the other person—”you’re not fat! you’re not ugly!”—but I never felt comfortable engaging in those kinds of proclamations.

SADY: Right. And I think this is something that I actually ran up against when I started to engage with other feminists: like, people would point out that I apologized for something trivial ninety thousand times over the course of the discussion, or couldn’t have a conversation without being like, “By the way, have I pointed out that my outfit is horrible?” But it was very hard to get over, even though I could notice it when other women did it and provide support for them in that respect. And I think that it’s interesting, in that those things can become social currency among girls—you have to apologize for taking up whatever space you take up—and is pretty clearly part of the Patriarchy deal which is that women aren’t supposed to take up space. But it gathers a new level of nuance. Like, somehow, we’re so caught up in this that it exists even when no dudes are present in the room, and we self-lacerate and lacerate each other to the same degree.

AMANDA: I agree, and now thinking back on it, I think part of me, as a kid, just wanted my friends to deal with all that horrible shit silently. I didn’t want to talk about that stuff, so when my friend in the 8th grade who was stick-thin repeatedly complained about how fat she was, I got annoyed at her, instead of understanding what a fucked-up situation she was in and talking about THAT. I didn’t have that kind of awareness then however, and I wonder where those kinds of conversations would have situated me in the female social group I was in.

SADY: Right. Like, allow me to present you with two ways I have handled this conversation in the past: “What are you talking about?! YOU WEIGH LESS THAN I DO.” Which amounts to, basically: shut up, your body insecurities are not worth my time. Or: “What are you talking about?! THAT IS SO SELF-LOATHING.” Which, while engaged in with a slightly purer intent, still translated to: shut up, your bodily insecurities are not worth my time. Like, instead of engaging women on their insecurities, I would try to shut them down. Which is clearly super feminist, right?

AMANDA: Right? I think the way that I handled those situations was to, again, put it in the perspective of this hierarchy where a) someone skinnier than me was saying she was fat, which b) implied that i was fat, which c) made me lash out at this person in some way. It’s certainly interesting to see how boys in our culture at least have defined their social hierarchies by boasting, while girls have done it by passive-aggressively cutting themselves down in order to lift themselves up in another way.

SADY: Right. And I think that this is where “Odd Girl Out,” the book I have been reading that I think everyone should read, and also the “Trashing” essay from forever ago [Quick plot overview: This shit that little girls do? Grown feminist women do it, too. -Ed.] comes into play. Because, the thing is, we are dealing with this excessively complex hierarchy wherein (A) Women aren’t supposed to value themselves over and above the people around them, (B) Women, to demonstrate how not-selfish they are, are supposed to be nice all the time, and (C) Women find it easier to lash out at OTHER WOMEN for violating these tenets than to examine the fucked-up rules in the first place, but (D) You still have to win the Nicest Person in America trophy, so you can never express the lashing-out in a direct way. It has to look like something else.

AMANDA: The trick for me has always been staying out of that horrific, horrific structure without shunning other women.

SADY: Yeah, exactly. Like, shaming women for DOING this isn’t exactly breaking away from the overall structure of women-shaming, you know?

AMANDA: that’s one of the main complaints about the Rant About Women, which that it explicitly tells women that the way out of this trap is just to act like dudes. When the point is that we don’t get to choose, actually. The pull-yourself-out-of-your-gender-by-your-own-bootstraps argument doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

SADY: Right. And I think we can agree that this is perhaps overly simplistic.

AMANDA: this is where we come up with a better solution. :-/

SADY: HA! Um, carousel rides for everyone? Overthrow the capitalist system? For me, I guess I’m situated at a weird place with this argument, which is the place I always wind up in with structure/agency arguments. Which is: YOU, by yourself, cannot singlehandedly escape the system. Your bootstraps are NOT THAT POWERFUL. However, you cannot say that there is no way to RESIST the system, in your own personal life. Like, even if I acknowledge that registering www.sadydoyleisthebestever.com will have more negative consequences than positive ones, being freaked out and self-sabotaging and constantly downplaying everything are ALSO not likely to have the most positive consequences. Does that make sense? Am I point-missing, here?

AMANDA: That makes sense to me. But I mean, I also haven’t had significant issues with the typically feminine self-esteem stuff since I left high school, so maybe I’m one of the lucky ones. [OK, actually, in retrospect, this is totally not true! I think what has actually happened is that I have become so accustomed to the casual and absurd self-loathing that women experience (i.e. "I'm fat") that I don't even recognize it anymore, I just consider it a constant fixture of my life. Fuck! -Ed.]

SADY: I am building an escape pod from this whole deal where I basically surround myself with ladies who tell each other how great they are all the time, and are cool about ladies! That’s what I’m doing. JOIN THE LADIES ARE GREAT PARTY, EVERYONE. That’s my shitty little personal solution that doesn’t fix everything! YAY LADIES WOOOOO.

AMANDA: Maybe we can all pitch in for a cruise ship or something.

SADY: HA! If there are any super-rich ladies, maybe they can help us build Self-Esteem Island. That seems like a solution! Yes, I think we’ve just fixed it. ALL BY OURSELVES. RIGHT HERE. YOU SAW IT HAPPEN.

AMANDA: well great! I’m going to have a nap then.

SADY: Okay! I’m eating a cheeseburger. Like, THREE of them. RIGHT NOW.

AMANDA: Oh shit I forgot. I REALLY want those nachos you spoke of.

SADY: Extra guacamole is a feminist act, dude. Enjoy!

Photo by bugeaters, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

This week, it was revealed that accused Mary Landrieu phone-tapping conspirator Stan Dai, 24, was once a promising aspiring playwright. In 2004, while a student at the George Washington University, Dai penned a dramatic piece entitled “The Penis Monologues” for campus conservative newspaper The Patriot.

In the great anti-feminist tradition of college-aged male Republicans, there have been many “The Penis Monologues.” Over the years, dozens of these men have been brave enough to bare the innermost thoughts concerning their genitalia. Mainly: “Wahhh! Why is ‘The Vagina Monologues’ only about vaginas! Pay attention to my penis!”

Having trouble paying suitable tribute to every 20-something Republican dude’s genitals? A quick primer on the many “The Penis Monologues,” after the jump:

“The Penis Monologues,” 1990’s, by Penn State student Jason Cassidy.

Penis Insight: According to student newspaper the Daily Collegian, “‘One monologue is about a guy—after having sex he tries to pee but he can’t control his penis so he’s peeing all over this girl’s bathroom and eventually pees on the girl,’ [explained one] performer . . . At the end of the show, each performer will make one last appearance clad in just his underwear. He will then tell the audience his favorite nickname he has heard for a penis and make different orgasm sounds.”

Anti-Feminist Ire: “A guy wrote a script that’s kind of mocking Vagina Monologues—well it’s more so a response to The Vagina Monologues,” a performer told the Collegian. “He put together a series of monologues performed by all men. It’s all about sex, masturbation, peeing and all of the crude testosterone things guys talk about.”

—

“The Penis Monologues,” 2002, by Oregon State University student David Rapoza.

Penis Insight: Due to a birth defect (?), David Rapoza’s penis is incapable of gaining your consent (or something?):

So I thought about my penis. I’m positive he’d sport a black leather trench coat and titanium sunglasses. He’s got a terrible case of Keannu-envy. He’d also drive a Beamer while head-banging to the harmony of ‘NSYNC. What does he say? Nine times out of 10, he begs for more attention. Yeah, he’s demanding like that. The tenth time out of 10, he asks you to repeat yourself. He lost his ears during the third trimester and sometimes has trouble reading your lips.

Anti-Feminist Ire: Um: “Bobbitt has become a trendsetter. A firestorm of insane copycats rages after the spark of her famous gender-war crime. According to Time Magazine, over a hundred cases have been documented in Thailand alone. The penis is a symbol of power. Cut the symbol off, and what do men have left to rule you with? Their brains? Ha! This must be the rationale supporting penis decapitation.”

—

“The Penis Monologues,” 2004, by George Washington University student Stan Dai.

Penis Insight: “MY PENIS IS ANGRY!!!!!!! You want to know what happened to my penis? Joan happened to my penis! There I was, sleeping peacefully when Joan stormed in and dragged me out for ‘an educational program.’ I thought was going to see Mr. Rogers! But nooooooo! It turned out to be the ‘Whine-gina Monologues!’”

Anti-Feminist Ire: From the piece’s Editor’s Note: “What are these vaginas angry about? Tampons, thong underwear, and gynecologists. Shouldn’t feminists be more concerned with encouraging women to go to the gynecologist to prevent cervical, uterine, and breast cancer (which, of course, are the fault of evil repressive men)? Why must the only reference to the sanctity of motherhood be given to a lesbian couple? Can’t men be more than just sperm donors and rapists in a feminist’s world? Justice Blackmun doesn’t even get a shout-out!”

—

“The Penis Monologues,” 2005, by Roger Williams University College Republicans.

Penis Insight: In order to combat a presentation of the Vagina Monologues on campus, Roger Williams College Republicans constructed a gigantic penis, dubbed “Testaclese.” From the National Review:

”Testaclese’ tipped the scales when he approached the university Provost, Edward J. Kavanagh, outside the student union. Apparently taking him/it for a giant mushroom, Provost Kavanagh cheerfully greeted him. But when Testaclese presented him with an honorary award as a campus ‘Penis Warrior,’ the stunned official realized that it was no mushroom. After this incident, which was recorded on videotape, the promoters of P-Day were ordered to cease circulating their flyers and to keep Testaclese off campus grounds. Mindful of how school officers had never once protested any of the antics of Vagina warriors, the P-warriors did not comply. The Testaclese costume was then confiscated and formal charges followed.

Anti-Feminist Ire: According to the National Review, “Unhappily, P-Day may be the only effective means of countering V-Day with all its c-fests, graphic lollipops, intrusive questionnaires, outsized effigies of vaginas and its thematic anti-male play.”

—

“The Penis Monologues,” 2006, by University of Rhode Island student Chris Ferdinandi [Update: not a Republican!]

Penis Insight: Chris Ferdinandi discovers the shocking secret of the “Penis Monologues”—that there’s nothing progressive about a bunch of guys talking about their dicks:

So how about it, guys? Feel liberated? Yeah, me neither. I could go on and on with more examples: stories about men circle-jerking as they learn how to enjoy their penises together; a lament about all the injustices committed against penises—’turn and cough,’ ungroomed women, kung-fu grip; me shouting the word dick louder and louder to free the word from its negative social connotations.

Anti-Feminist Ire: Surely, the feminists are to blame for this. “But honestly, none of that does anything to express the true value of manhood and masculinity. If anything, it reduces men to their genitals, and it’s quite obvious that The Monologues does the same thing to women. Ironically, that’s something they accuse men of doing to them on a fairly regular basis.”

Photo via Sundve, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

In this week’s episode of the Real World D.C., Ty gets romantic in McFaddens; random lady in purple leggings gets some action; Josh isn’t getting his dick sucked. Refresh yourself with the first, second, third, and fourth episode sex recaps here).

The top 10 sex-ish moments of the third episode, after the jump.

10. JOSH’S MOTHER TATTLES ON HIS GIRLFRIEND

Josh’s mom calls in to inform him that somebody in Philly saw GF Ashley kissing some guy called “Richie.”

9. CALLIE IS NOT ATTRACTED TO SINGLE MEN

He does.

8. TY AND EMILY HAVE A SERIOUS TALK

Ty wants to do it, then gets philosophical on gender: “For Emily to put on a facade and pretend she has no feelings, pretend she’s not a woman, it kind of makes me lose a little respect for her.”

7. CALLIE REVEALS HER ADDICTION TO DRUNK DIALING

Emily: “That’s a douchebag. Hang up the phone.”

6. JOSH CRIES

“The pain of my nose being pierced, and the pain of Ashley allegedly cheating … they’re both hard to deal with.”

5. TY MASSAGES BUTT

Emily: “Will you massage my butt? That’s my biggest turn-on.”

4. JOSH MAKES OUT WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND FOR A WEEK

3. . . . BEFORE MAKING OUT WITH LADY IN SPARKLY PURPLE LEGGINGS

Erika: “I kinda feel like Josh is a scumbag.”

2. JOSH BREAKS UP WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND

His last words: “I’m not getting my dick sucked, which I could be.”

1. TY TELLS EMILY HE LOVES HER

. . . inside McFadden’s.

The women’s poll asked questions like these: Have you ever been groped? How did you react? Did you report the incident? The men’s poll, on the other hand, asked questions like these: Have you ever groped a woman? Do you think groping is morally wrong? Do you think it’s inappropriate to furtively sniff a woman’s hair?

The gender-specific polling left us with a significant information gap. How many men are victims of groping, anyway? Do male groping victims call the police? How do they process the experience? Do they scream, hit, freeze, or quietly escape? And how many women have reached out and touched a man without his consent?

Below, four stories from D.C.’s male groping victims —and the testimony of one female groper.

“[I] could barely look myself in the mirror.”

A couple of years ago, a local law student was sitting on a crowded Red line train when his seat-mate decided to make it a bumpy ride. “As the train started moving . . . I felt some motion from the man next to me—his body was kind of moving slightly up and down against my side,” says the student, who was busy studying a casebook for class. “At first, I thought this was due to the natural movement of the Metro train, but it soon became clear that the movement was not from the train, but from the man.”

As the train continued down the track, the guy’s movements advanced beyond the realm of “natural movement.” “As the train moved on, the movements got more intense to the point where the man was grinding his side and back, half his ass, and part of his leg up against me,” the student says. When the student attempted to edge his body away and focus on the reading, his assailant stepped up his activity. “My efforts to get away from him seemed to only embolden him more, and at one point he even reached back to lift up his shirt so the skin of his back was rubbing up against my arm, leg, and side,” he says.

The escalating rubbing left the student “horrified and disgusted.” But as the train approached the student’s station, another response hit—”extremely frightened.” The assailant was trapping him in the seat, and he’d have to confront him to get out. At the last minute, the confrontation was avoided—one station before the student’s stop, the man abruptly exited the train. The student hadn’t uttered a word. “I got home to my apartment that night and could barely look myself in the mirror,” he says. “I was scared, disgusted, felt violated, and also was pissed off at myself for not doing anything.”

The crowded, enclosed train isn’t the only breeding ground for D.C. public transport groping; gropers have been known to stage their assaults in all corners of the Metrorail system. Another of the District’s male groping victims got grabbed while ascending from the Foggy Bottom station on an escalator. The man “felt someone drag their hand along the bottom of my ass and then give it a squeeze,” he says. “I looked back and it was a 20-something woman . . . She just gave me this ‘dare you’ smile back.”

As he stepped off the escalator, the woman commented about “loving a good ass,” then walked away. The victim, who said nothing at the time, says he had mixed feelings on the event: “I was kind of stunned and torn between outrage—how dare you grab—and flattery—hey, she likes my ass. And then wondering what the hell was wrong with me for feeling flattered.”

Later, the man was groped again on the Foggy Bottom stop’s escalator—this time, going down. As he descended into the station, “someone behind me slipped their hand into my back pocket,” he says. “I turned around and it was a lady in her 40s or 50s. She just smiled and told me I should be careful leaving my back pockets unbuttoned,” he says. “I was just . . . flabbergasted. . . . I never had a response for either of them, vocally or otherwise, other than stepping away. I’m not sure why.”

—
“I was too stunned to punch him.”

Date Rape Anthem: The parade of female-sung Date Rape Jams continues. Kiely Williams‘ “Spectacular,” a song about getting wasted, passing out, and having the most incredible sex of your life!

Relevant Lyrics:

Last I remember I was face down
Ass up, clothes off, broke off, dozed off
Even though I’m not sure of his name
He could get it again if he wanted
Cause the sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular

Why It’s So Rapey: Although Williams insists—several times—that the sex was “spectacular,” she also reiterates that she doesn’t remember the damn thing. “What was I drinking, I can’t believe I blacked out,” she purrs, before getting specific on the sweeping memory loss: “I hope he used a rubber, or I’m a be in trouble, problem is I don’t remember, except for (unintelligible).”

From time to time, commenters on this blog will pose the following burning question about consent: So, what if your sex partner was too drunk to consent to sex—she was ass up, clothes off, broke off, dozed off, and blacked out. But what if—what if—when she wakes up the next day, she’s totally pumped about what she can’t remember happened the night before? [See: The controversy over broke off, dozed off consensual sex at American University last year].

What if, indeed? Well, OK: If the lady in question is heading into the recording studio to sing the praises of the stallion who spectacularly sexed her when she was passed out, that stallion is probably in the clear as far as his legal situation is concerned.

That doesn’t put him in the clear as far as my feminist shaming is concerned, however. I understand that the exact moment a potential sex partner becomes too drunk to fuck is not always obvious. But surely, dozing off in the middle of sex is a good indication that you should stop, no matter how spectacular it was when she was actually coherent. You’ve got to have meaningful consent before and throughout the act, no matter how she feels about it the next day. If your sex partner’s kink is being fucked while she’s asleep, that’s a situation that you’ve got to set upbeforehand. And even if she ends up telling you the sex was great when she wakes up, that doesn’t let you off the hook, either. A commenter on Bossip put it this way: “so she got slipped a roofie, date ra.p.e.d and wrote a song about it. life gives you lemons you make lemonade i guess.”

And another thing! How many pieces of popular music have to be written about how pushing booze on women until they vomit all over themselves and ultimately juuuust barely consent to having sex with you is sexy? Because these songs actually glamorize the behavior of rapists. And even if you’re the elusive chick who happens to be into that, presenting this situation as “spectacular” is both a) not particularly interesting, as far as pop music is concerned, and b) harmful to all the women who wake up in that same situation and have a much different descriptor for the sex: “rape.”

For 15 years, Rob Kampia has served as executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a nonprofit group dedicated to the reform of marijuana laws. In that capacity, Kampia, 41, has pursued two goals. One is the steady advancement of the organization, which he founded out of his Adams Morgan home in 1995. And the other is cultivating an office environment suited to his sexual appetite. A brief inventory of Kampia’s knack for mixing business with pleasure:

• In 2008, Kampia dated a 19-year-old MPP intern.
• “How was the NORML Conference?” a staffer asked Kampia one year. Kampia replied, “I got laid.”
• At a staff happy hour, Kampia guessed a female employee’s breast size and told her that she would be “hotter with a boob job.” (Kampia denies the conversation occurred).
• Kampia made it known that a female employee’s dress had “made an impression on him.” Later, he directed her to leave some room in his schedule for “bone-girl,” a woman he was “trying to bone.” He also repeatedly informed her of his intentions to perform a “breast massage” on another woman.
• At the conclusion of a staff happy hour last August, Kampia escorted a subordinate back to his home. The woman was so upset by what happened next that she refused to return to work at MPP ever again.

As office creeps go, in other words, Kampia can lay claim to being king of the water cooler. Kampia’s office politics hit the headlines this month with the announcement that he’d be stepping down to take at least a 90-day leave of absence in order to undergo therapy. “I just think I’m hypersexualized,” Kampia told the Washington Post. The coverage, accordingly, has focused on Kampia’s hands-on management techniques.

Less has been said about Kampia’s deputy, Alison Green. When Green, a longtime friend of Kampia’s, joined the organization six years ago, she brought along some serious management bona fides. Green, 36, writes a weekly online column about workplace issues at U.S. News & World Report. She started a blog called “Ask a Manager,” where she doles out workplace solutions to HR reps and low-level staffers alike. And she co-authored a book called Managing to Change the World, which MPP department heads were required to read in order to bring the organization in line with her philosophy.

How did a manager like Green deal with Kampia’s office conduct? By cleaning up after him.

Rob Kampia with chief of staff Alison Green

Case in point: In fall 2008, MPP’s director of membership, Salem Pearce, was rifling through some back e-mails of a recently fired female employee when she happened upon a past office flirtation: Kampia had sent an e-mail to the employee asking for her private e-mail address. “I discovered they had gone on a date and maybe more than one,” Pearce says. “I had known about how Rob acted toward women for a long time, but this is one instance where I had proof that he did it.” Pearce approached Green about the situation and told her it was a “problem,” and Green agreed to take the issue to Kampia.

Kampia and Pearce met. “You’re abusing your power,” Pearce recalls telling Kampia, adding that the 20-or-so females working at MPP are the only women “in the world that you can’t date.” In Pearce’s recollection, Kampia disagreed with that position. As for Green, Kampia’s input on the matter settled things. “Alison would always go and try to convince Rob,” says Pearce. “She did realize that it could be a problem, but she didn’t have the power to stop Rob’s libido.”

In Green’s view, Pearce’s concerns didn’t rise to the level of a “complaint” against Kampia. “I would not characterize that conversation as a complaint,” Green says. In fact, Green claims that she never received any complaints about Kampia’s sexual comments or behavior. “It was openly acknowledged in the office that many people on staff, including Rob, used crude sexual language in the office,” says Green. In her time at MPP, “I got some eye-rolling about Rob and others, but I never received a formal complaint.” As for Kampia’s pursuit of employees? “I call that terrible judgment,” Green says.

A formal complaint was hardly necessary to bring Kampia’s behavior to Green’s attention. The sexually loaded chatter—from Kampia as well as other MPPers—was hard to miss. “She was aware of it, for sure. Everyone was,” says Kampia. “You’d have to be blind and deaf not to notice it.” Green says that she approached Kampia with concerns about the inappropriate office environment “multiple times every year over six years,” but that Kampia “disagreed that it was something that required changing.” At one point, Kampia and Green even discussed instituting a sexual harassment policy at MPP, but Kampia ruled the possibility out. “I did discuss it with Alison,” says Kampia. “I thought it would be a bad idea at the time, because if we had a policy, two-thirds of the staff would have been in violation of it for their language and dating practices.” As executive director, Kampia was responsible for them all.

So: In order to determine the accuracy of the groping coverage, Weingarten set up two reader polls, one for men, and one for women. The good news: The poll confirms that groping is a serious problem for women! The bad news: 84 percent of Gene Weingarten’s female fans have been groped.

Some key results of the poll for women:

* Of the 1553 women who took Weingarten’s quiz, 84 percent attested to have been groped at least once; 18 percent claimed to have been groped “so often I lost count.”

* 78 percent of women said that they never “officially complained about being groped”—whether to the groper or some sort of authority.

* 61 percent of women said that if a stranger touched them in order to become aroused on a crowded train or bus, “I would quietly try to get out of there, but not make a scene.”

* Despite those numbers, women were pretty divided on whether my groping coverage “overstates the problem.” 21 percent of women say that the column “seriously” overstates the problem; 44 percent say that the column overstates the problem “maybe a little bit”; 34 percent don’t believe the column overstates the problem “at all.”

Meanwhile, 1001 men submitted their thoughts on groping to Weingarten’s quiz. Ever wonder how many readers of Gene Weingarten’s column are serial sexual assailants? Now we know!:

* 90 percent of men think that it is “ethically and/or morally wrong” to grope a woman.

* 77 percent of men claim never to have committed a grope; only 12 guys (1.2 percent) admitted to practicing groping “often.”

* 5 percent of men have this view of groping: “I think playful touching is exactly that, playful touching. If a woman complains, Ill stop, but otherwise, cmon.”

I thank Weingarten for taking up the groping issue over at the Post, and for crunching the numbers for a significant slice of the D.C. population. I do wish that the groping quiz had asked the fellas if they thought the groping problem was overstated, as well. Ninety percent of men think it’s wrong to grope a woman. But do they believe groping happens?

Last week I was on the train and happened to pick up the city paper. I started to read stories of other women being assaulted on the streets and their reactions. I had though about what I would do in that circumstance and what I should do, but never really believing it would happen to me.

Last evening while on a run, a older man grabbed my butt as I went past him. I was so stunned that I was a few strides away before I turned to find out if this may have been accident. As I turned to look at the person, the man had a look on his face that indicated he meant to do it. I confronted him by [saying] “that is completely inappropriate”. My response apparently amused the man. He had this creepy smile that basically [conveyed] to me that he knew what he was doing and there is nothing I could do about it.  I looked around for a cop, but at that time there was none to be seen. I didn’t know what to do at that point and left feeling helpless.

When I got home, I spoke to a few friends about it. All my male friends encouraged me to call it in. All my females said nothing or the older ones scolded me for even confronting him. I knew it was wrong and I knew it was assault, given the information in this series, so I called and reported the incident. It turns out there are a few of these guys around in my neighborhood.

I don’t know what will come from my reporting the incident, but if he does it again and we continue to report these incident, [he] eventually will be caught and held accountable.

Date Rape Anthem: Last week’s Date Rape Anthem, Ke$ha’s “Blah Blah Blah,” has inspired some interesting discussion about what happens when women take on the traditionally male anthem. Bitch Magazine says that Ke$ha’s music “turns the traditional male-chauvinist, sexist attitude on its head to deploy the same tactics for her own purposes: being the life of the party.” But can female rapiness ever be empowering? Let’s examine the case of Paradiso Girls‘ “Patron Tequila,” a song that commenter riese hails as the “rapy-est song ever!” Surprise twist: It’s sung by ladies!

Relevant Lyrics:

Hey girl, where’s your drink?
We can all get fucked up tonight
Hey girl, I got bud
We can all get fucked up tonight
By the end of the night
I’m a have you drunk and throwing up
By the end of the night
I’m a have you so fucked up!

Why It’s So Rapey: Serious role reversal, right? Lyrics like “hey girl, where’s your drink?” and “I’m a have you drunk and throwing up” are generally reserved for such Date Rape Jam hall-of-famers as Jamie Foxx and T Pain. But the gender reversal is strangely incomplete: In the song, the Girls aren’t pushing the booze on the male objects of their affection, but rather on other girls. It’s almost as if the record execs took a Foxx B-side, fed it to five ladies, and didn’t bother to change the pronouns to conform with the Paradiso Girls’ (presumably) heterosexual image. The result? An “empowering” role-reversal, whereby the Paradiso Girls get girls so drunk they vomit—just like the boys do!

Perhaps the music video for the track can explain this interesting new breed of girl power. A-ha: In the video, our five lovely Paradiso Girls are not pushing other women to drink, vomit, and sex it up by their own free will. Their date-rapiness is, in fact, controlled by a random guy’s magic sex headphones. Role-reversal: It’s still all about male fantasy. That’s right, folks! We’ve finally discovered the elusive Super Meta Date Rape Anthem, in which a set of voodoo headphones forces women to assume the characteristics of date rapists, against their will! Observe:

Yeah. No surprise here: While our friend Ke$ha at least writes her own songs, the music of the Paradiso Girls is the product of some decidedly male influences. The Girls are a pop supergroup designed by Pussycat Girls mogul Jimmy Iovine. And in case you couldn’t smoke him out by the trademark crunkness: Lil Jon had a hand in writing this track.

One of the gripes leveled at the Sexist’s recent groping coverage is that it has so far focused on only one category of victim—women. Men get groped, too, so let’s hear one male victim’s story. This weekend, a male MPD officer was subjected to a public genital grab, courtesy of a violent burglary suspect. The incident was aired on the MPD 1st District Listserv on Saturday:

On Friday January 22, 2010, at about 3:00 pm, Officer Andrew Zabavsky (Third District) was off duty and walking his dog in the 500 block of 6^th Street SE. About the same time off duty Officer Andrew Horos (First District) was responding to work at the First District Sub-Station.

Officer Zabavsky was walking his dog (on a leash) when he observed a citizen yelling for help and the perpetrator fleeing. Officer Zabavsky then identified himself as a police officer and attempted to restrain the perpetrator. The perpetrator started violently choking Officer Zabavsky. Officer Horos was responding to work when he observed the struggle, alighted from his vehicle and assisted. Officer Horos identified himself and asked the perpetrator to stop resisting. The perpetrator used profane language then grabbed the genital area of Officer Horos.

According to police, the 47-year-old suspect has been charged with burglary and assault. As for the Andrews? “Both officers are okay,” the Listserv claims. If you’re a man who has been the victim of groping, tell the Sexist your story here.

File photo by Darrow Montgomery.

This week on the Sexist: Puppies! Just kidding, this week’s topics were far more depressing than that.

1. Rape Victims vs. Prison Rape Victims, in which victim-blaming takes the form of a change of clothes.

2. How Bystanders Can Help Groping Victims, in which we get servicey on this groping stuff.

3. Why Would I Want to Touch Your Ass: When Groping Victims Talk Back, in which victims respond to gropers

4. Sexist Beatdown: Guys Who Grab Butt Edition, in which, yep, more groping.

5. Sexist Comments of the Week: When Dudes Don’t Wear Condoms Edition, in which you do the talking.

Photo via George Eastman House

The death of feminism ain’t news. Feminism has died a thousand deaths by this point. But wait a second: Today, someone is killing feminism in a totally new way, and this time it involves something called a “diamanté phone cover,” whatever the fuck that is. This, according to Nina Power in her book “One Dimensional Woman.” Power writes:

Stripped of any internationalist and political quality, feminism becomes about as radical as a diamanté phone cover. [Jessica Valenti] ‘truly believes’ that feminism is necessary for women ‘to live happy fulfilled lives’. Slipping down as easily as a friendly-bacteria yoghurt drink, Valenti’s version of feminism, with its total lack of structural analysis, genuine outrage, or collective demand, believes it has to compliment capitalism in order to effectively sell its product. When she claims that ‘ladies, we have to take individual action’, what she really means is that it’s every woman for herself and if it is the Feminist™ woman who gets the nicest shoes and the chocolatiest sex, then that’s just too bad for you, sister.

That’s right, everybody. You know that sparkly, fun-loving, chocolate-coated feminism that’s so popular among capitalists nowadays? Not familiar? Well: It is killing feminism! And how: By making it accessible to more women. Wait, what?

Valenti herself has already responded to Power’s critiques on behalf of non-humorless-feminists everywhere, and her points are quite reasonable, particularly when you consider the fact that she’s responding to a person who has just compared her to a yoghurt drink. “First of all,” Valenti writes, “why anyone wouldn’t want feminism to be the latest must-have accessory is beyond me—because that would be awesome.” Agreed.

Join Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown as we draft an application for inclusion in the Real Feminists Club, bedazzle our feminist credentials, and attempt to get to the bottom of this feminist yoghurt drink analogy once and for all. I’ll tell you one thing: There better be some fruit at the bottom of this sucker.

SADY: Hello! I have chosen to make myself accessible! In the name, of course, of FEMINISM.

AMANDA: On to it!

SADY: Yes! Are too many of the kids today into it? Should we make it harder for them? SHOULD THERE BE A WRITTEN APPLICATION? Such are the questions before us now.

AMANDA: I have to admit, I found the whole accusation that Jessica Valenti is not a serious feminist a bit … puzzling. If Jessica Valenti is a fluffy feminist, then what are we? Are we like marshmallow feminists?

SADY: I am a pure spun sugar feminist made of glitter and twinkles. I am the feminist that floats upon the air, so lightweight am I. And this is the thing, the thing that gets me kind of so angry: For years and years and years upon years, people have been like, “Well, of course The Patriarchy will attack us for being humorless and dour, but that is a harsh stereotype and a lie!”

AMANDA: Hah!

SADY: And, yes: Yes it is. So why is this lady suddenly piping up to tell Jessica Valenti to keep it down over there and not have so much fun?

AMANDA: Well: I understand the general argument. If people accuse me of being “too serious” about feminist issues—which they do, whenever I write about harassment or assault or rape or whatever—the appropriate response would not be to just sexy up my sexual assault coverage. However! There are issues related to feminism that are, in fact, not depressing at all! Like, when feminism happens, and then we can all have sex with whomever we want to when we want to without being assaulted or called whores. This is, indeed, a sexy development! And I fail to see the harm in celebrating that.

SADY: Right you are! It is extremely sexy. And, I mean, I think there’s a line between “feminism that is accessible”—let us say, YOU, for I am in a complimentary mood this evening—and “feminism that is so very accessible that it is even accessible to people who are not feminists because it is not actually feminism at all” —let us say, Sarah Palin. And I think that a lot of people are just trying to figure out where that line gets drawn. I understand the calls for more “seriousness,” insofar as they are asking you to “seriously” think about the issues in question. But I do not understand “seriousness” insofar as it is like, “I am sorry, this must be written in some modern super-language, for I can read it even without a post-graduate education in Ladyology.”

AMANDA: Right. Like if you’re a teenager who happens to not identify as a feminist, which is the group Valenti was largely writing her book for. I think one of the arguments against the happy-go-lucky feminism was actually like, Oh No! If we pretend that feminism is a wonderful happy thing, these women will be sorely disappointed when they become feminists and realize that there are like, some serious issues to deal with as well. Again … I fail to see why the soft pitch ends up being a bad thing. If a girl decides she’s interested in feminism because she understands what Valenti has to say about the more “girl power” type stuff, and then she ends up realizing why it’s important to support feminism for ALL women, what is the problem?

SADY: Right. And, I mean, there is something to be said for the gateway drug. The only problem is if the kids don’t get past the gateway. Like, let’s just point out that I am not talking about Feministing or Valenti here, because they have in fact always managed to cover the hard stuff as well as the basics—more of the hard stuff than I have, in fact, because my goal is basically to be the Skittles of feminism—BUT. There is, in fact, something to the idea of “consumerist feminism” or “lifestyle accessory” feminism. Which is, I do think there are some ladies whose involvement with feminism is exclusively confined to their own problems, which they elevate to the position of WORST PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD, even though they are like, “a guy won’t like me unless I shave my personal regions” or “I worry that women nowadays are taking the pole-dancing classes, which is gross!” Which: nothing to be said against those problems! Mandatory bodily presentation or the idea that women are always sexual and that “sexual” equals “sex industry performance” at all times are things we can talk about! BUT, it’s when we get stuck there, because then feminism becomes sort of obsessively, exclusively personal, and you’re not thinking about anything else.

AMANDA: Agreed. I’ll reiterate that presenting Valenti as the representative of that kind of feminism is whack, however. I mean, Nina Power compares Valenti to a “friendly-bacteria yoghurt drink.” What the fuck does that mean?

SADY: I have NO IDEA. It reminds me of those Activia commercials, though. And, on the overpersonalizing-feminism thing, can I say? I think that’s a line everybody has to walk, and I fall on the wrong side of it sometimes. If by “sometimes” you mean “A LOT OF TIMES.” But I think that this is the thing, like the core problem with the argument insofar as I understand it: she IS CONFLATING “accessible” with “shallow.”

AMANDA: Yeah. I’ll tell you one thing that’s not going to make feminism accessible to the masses: Feminist infighting! I realize I may be implicating this very Sexist Beatdown by saying this, but feminists arguing about who is the bestest feminist? Not particularly riveting to non-feminists.

SADY: BUT I WAS GOING TO GET THE BEST FEMINIST AWARD! WHY ELSE WOULD I BE DOING THIS.

AMANDA: But since Nina Power is concerned with feminism becoming too accessible, perhaps this was her plan all along! “I know. I’ll write a book dedicated to feminist infighting that makes absurd claims about several well-known ‘accessible’ feminists. That’s sure to throw them off their work of making feminism more accessible! At least for a few blog posts!”

SADY: True! Now we can all quote Serious Theory at each other until we fall asleep. Also, in the morning, there might still be some sexism? But whatever! I get Cixous!

AMANDA: I get Yoghurt.

SADY: Um, OK. Lightweight.

Photo via love♡janine, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

In this week’s episode of the Real World D.C., cast member Andrew’s dubious relationship with consent jumped from cartoon panel to bedroom; Mike wishes Ashley would play with her vagina; Andrew gets an all-night boner (Refresh yourself with the first, second, and third episode sex recaps here).

The top 10 sex-ish moments of the third episode, after the jump.

10. ANDREW POSITIONS HIS CROTCH NEXT TO THIS WOMAN’S CROTCH

Andrew actually finds a woman who tells him that she “loves nerds!” He responds by aggressively making out with her . . . and then making out with her best friend in front of her. Busted. At least he got his creepy crotch action in early in the game.

9. MIKE CALLS ASHLEY A BITCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN

8. ANDREW GETS SOME ADVICE FROM THE LADIES

The women in the house join together to instruct Andrew how to pick up women. One golden rule: “No whispering in her ear creepily.”

7. TY GETS REAL

Realest moment of the episode: Ty tells Ashley, “I need you to trust me. I need you to take my hands right now.”

6. ANDREW TOUCHES BRA

.

When the women in the household announce they’re “going to teach him how to one-handedly take off a bra,” Andrew holds a real, live woman’s brassiere in his hands. It takes him a few minutes to get it right-side up.

Thanks to Alyssa Rosenberg for pointing to the new trailer for Roman Polanski’s upcoming film, “The Ghost Writer.” As Rosenberg notes, the movie looks extremely silly, from Kim Cattrall showing up with some sort of non-specific accent, to a sign for the “Fisherman’s Cove Inn” ominously swinging in the wind, to Pierce Brosnan acting as blatantly evil as he can possibly get away with. There is a silver lining here, however.

Finally, we’ve got the perfect rejoinder to one of the most common Roman Polanski defenses out there—you know, the arguments Polanski defenders throw out in order to justify not prosecuting a convicted rapist who skipped the U.S. to avoid serving time for his rape. That argument is this: “But Roman Polanski made the Pianist!” And if Polanski had been forced to actually serve jail time for bedding a 13-year-old, the argument goes, perhaps the fabric of time would have been irrevocably torn, resulting in the Pianist never been made, or something!

This was the argument preferred by the hundreds of Hollywood luminaries who signed a petition for Polanski’s release: “Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison.” In other words: Roman Polanski makes good movies (just like we do!). Give him a pass.

If The Ghost Writer is half as bad as the trailer, it looks like it’s time for the free pass to be revoked. Now, an appropriate response to the “But he made the Pianist” argument might be this: Well, if Polanski had been kept in prison last year instead of being whisked away for house arrest at his Swiss ski chalet, where he reportedly finished up work on The Ghost Writer (presumably to ensure that that dramatic musical swell behind ominously-swinging sign was synced up just so), then—my God!—maybe somebody else could have made this movie, someone who wouldn’t cast Pierce Brosnan in it. Plus, Polanski would have actually served his time for raping someone. And everyone wins.

The Metro transit system is one of D.C.’s most popular venues for public gropers. Whether it’s the guy pushing his erection into your back on a train or the man reaching out to grab your genitals at a bus stop, these transit-based assailants have at least one thing in common—they’ll almost certainly be assaulting again somewhere down the road. Eager to help stop the Metro system’s most egregious offenders? Last week, I spoke with Captain Kevin Gaddis of the Metro Transit Police about how victims can report their Metro-based sexual assaults.

* Metro sexual assaults are underreported. In 2009, Metro police received 47 sexual assault cases—”anything from unwanted touching to groping to indecent exposure,” Gaddis says. (To date, 13 of these cases have been closed). To Gaddis, the number is “miniscule.” “We have a million people riding Metro every day,” Gaddis says. “Forty-seven cases a year is a very small number.” But the true rate of sexual assaults on Metro is impossible to tell: “I honestly don’t know how often it really happens, but I know it happens far more than it’s reported,” Gaddis says.

* Report ASAP. If you witness or experience a sexual assault on a train, why not alert police while the assailant is still stuck in transit? Call Metro Transit Police immediately—either from your cell phone, at (202) 962-2121, or from one of the call boxes at the end of the car (just pick up the receiver and ask the operator to connect you to Metro Transit Police).

In Maryland, Virginia, or D.C., Metro Transit Police will deal with incidents in Metro cars, platforms, parking lots, and garages. With a little bit of information—a description of the suspect, the line, and the train number—an officer may be able to reach you immediately. “We have a lot of officers out there on foot,” says Gaddis. “The best thing we can try to do is intercept the incident at the next stop or a couple stops down.”

* Or: Report later! “If the suspect is already gone by the time the victim reaches us, the victim can still identify the person and allow us to get an arrest warrant later on,” says Gaddis. Even victims who never see their assailants—or can’t provide a complete description to police—are encouraged to report their assaults.

“Some of these people—particularly the indecent exposure suspects—are repeat offenders,” says Gaddis. Even reporting the time, place, and nature of an assault can help police figure out assault patterns. “The ones that do it, it’s probably not the first time they’ve done it, nor will it be the last time. In 2009, it’s unlikely that our 47 cases involved 47 different assailants . . . We know that a lot of these repeat offenders always ride on the same line. There’s usually some type of pattern. Every little bit of information helps us.”

Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

Last week, the Sexist highlighted a fairly common reaction of groping victims around the metro region—say nothing. A woman who got assaulted on a crowded dance floor, a woman who got rubbed on Metro, a girl who got her ass grabbed—they all kept it to themselves. What if they’d said something? What kind of reception would they get? Below, five groping victims who spoke up—and what happened next.

THE INSIDE VOICE.

Vee Meadows’ job required her to stick her butt out a little bit. Meadows, a seasonal employee at a Dupont Circle bookstore, had bent over to fetch a bottom-shelved cookbook for a waiting customer, forcing her posterior to jut slightly into the aisle. “I suppose it was an irresistible temptation for a couple of guys walking by,” Meadows says. “So, one of them grabbed my ass.”

Meadows, 25, wasn’t expecting anybody to sexualize her cookbook duties. At that job, she had always felt like “less of a woman and more of a bookstore clerk.” And so Meadows assessed the situation like a bookstore clerk would. “I did feel like I had to act professionally in front of the customer,” she says. “I ended up having to be polite to my customer while I was inwardly fuming.” Post-grab, Meadows whipped around and administered a verbal response befitting her position: “As professionally as I could, I did say, ‘What the hell?’”

THE TIMID REPORT.

When Elizabeth, 28, felt a guy “shove his hand between my legs, all the way to the front” while waiting in line for her morning bus at PG Plaza—then caught the creep smiling at her—she didn’t say a thing. What she thought was, “Oh my God, I’m going to miss the bus.”

So she hurried on board and sat through the 15-minute ride to her museum job in College Park. When she arrived, she headed straight for the office bathroom and dry-heaved. Even though her body was attempting to puke the experience away, Elizabeth says she “played it down” when she informed her boss what happened. “I was agitated and livid, like, ‘Why are some men jerks like that, what is wrong with people?’…[But] I wasn’t calling it what I felt it was—and what I now know it was—which is a public sexual assault.”

When it came time to replay the scenario to her boss, “I felt ashamed—not of what happened to me, but of how I responded,” Elizabeth says. “I feel like I should have known better. I should have screamed.”

FLIPPING YOUR SHIT.

Emily was walking down U Street on a Friday night with a few girlfriends when a man walked up and helped himself to her scalp. “His hand went up to hold the back of my neck, then up my scalp, and down through my hair,” Emily says.

Emily, 22, has had her run-ins with gropers before. She’s endured an ass slap at a crowded bar a few times. But nothing like this. “It was such a violation. All I thought was: Wait. He’s groping my hair. What the hell is going on?” Emily says. Her response was too explicit to repeat: “I just started screaming at him: ‘What the bleep are you doing? What the bleep is wrong with you? Don’t bleeping touch me like that!’”

The man who reached out to caress Emily’s hair without her consent was not very open to considering Emily’s feelings. He fell back into a group of friends and joined them in “laughing at the 5′4″ white girl
flipping her shit,” Emily says.

Emily’s friends begged her to stop yelling and resume their stroll to the bar. “My friends just kept saying, ‘Come on. Come on. It’s not worth it. You’re embarrassing us.’ When I finally left, I told them, ‘I’m sorry, guys. He was really close, and it creeped me out,’” she says. “I shouldn’t have apologized for myself. I hadn’t done anything wrong…I could still feel him in my hair.”

Dani, a friend of Emily’s who witnessed the petting, says the crew wanted to err on the side of caution. “I definitely am in support of Emily reacting that way, because it can make people think,” she says. “On the other hand, it’s not the safest of neighborhoods. After it happened, we were just kind of like, ‘OK. Lets keep walking.’ We didn’t want to cause any more trouble.”

THE PUBLIC ACCUSATION.

Jessica Graves screamed, too. Graves was waiting in line for the bathroom in an Austin, Texas, coffee shop when a man walked by, dragged his hand under the hem of her skirt, and grazed her butt. “He got a pretty good swipe,” Graves recalls. She followed him out the door. “Did you just touch my ass?” she demanded. “Why would I want to touch your ass?” he replied.

Graves had refused to be a passive victim. Her groper got even more of a thrill out of that. “I could see the sick sense of satisfaction on his face,” she says. “His expression said, ‘Gotcha! I can deny this, and you can’t do shit about it,’” says Graves. “I was enraged for hours. I didn’t sleep,” she says. “It made me so angry that I wanted to hurt people, and I’m not a violent person. I was so pissed off that I just shook with rage.”

THE JOKE.

The hug was not Allyson Rudolph’s idea.

Rudolph had hailed a cab after a night of drinking with some co-workers. It was late, she was tipsy, and a secure cab ride from the West End bar to her home in Shaw sounded like a good idea. “The bartenders had started bringing us shots, which is usually about when I realize I need to go home,” she says. “I’m a very cheap date.”

On the ride, Rudolph struck up a conversation with the driver, and the discussion turned to cab-riding etiquette. Both concurred that it’s important to exchange pleasantries between cabbie and customer. “We
were in solid agreement that one should never ignore a person they happen to be sharing a car with,” she says.

That’s when the proposition came. “Can I have a hug?” the cabbie asked as the ride came to an end. Rudolph obliged. “I was drunk and we’d been chatting, plus I love hugs, so it seemed like a great idea,” she says. Rudolph and the cabbie both opened their doors and stepped out of the car. “Then he squeezed my boob and tried to kiss me.”

Rudolph, who says she was too tipsy to report the cabbie, settled for laughing at him. When Rudolph tells this story, she casts the cab driver as a pathetic buffoon, his unsolicited grab at her breast marking him as inept instead of threatening. “I make light of this a lot and tell it to friends as a funny story, but actually it really angers me,” says Rudolph. “It’s easy to see how the story could have had a much less funny ending.…It’s only when I start to put the story in the context of a major social issue that it stops being funny. It’s a really clear example of the way the world is just different for girls, and that is something that I don’t find entertaining at all.”

This column is the third in a series. Catch up with Part 1: Touch and Go: How Groping Happens. And Part 2: I Just Wanted Him to Finish And Leave”: Why Some Groping Victims Stay Silent. (Illustration by Brooke Hatfield).

Yesterday’s post on a guy named “Dirty Jersey” who refused to strap one on sparked a more general discussion about guys who refuse to wear condoms. Then, commenter Shinobi chimed in with an area  for further inquiry: “Hilarious reasons guys can’t wear a condom.”

Shinobi kicks it off:

Can I get a WTF on college aged guys who bitch about wearing condoms? Not that I took a represenatative sample or anything……. but it happened a LOT. (Actually, after college too… again, not a representative sample.)

I think what college papers actually need is a column about how men who want to get laid need to have the testicular fortitude to wear a fucking condom, and in fact, provide said condom, and show a little fucking consideration for the girl and not make her practicly beg you to put it on.

Also, don’t take it off in the middle, because that’s fucked up and means you are a scumbag.

I think I needed to use the f word more in this comment.

Liss chimes in:

Super extra fail to the guy who told me that he “couldn’t” wear condoms because he was JUST TOO BIG for them! (Even though bigger guys than him had worn the exact same type of condom and gotten off just fine with them.)

So: Have you heard a hilarious reason why a guy won’t wear a condom? Even better: Are you a guy with a hilarious justification for why you won’t strap one on? Best: Are you a lady or guy with a hilarious justification for why you don’t want your sex partner to condom up? Even bestest: Do you totally object to the idea that your reasons for not wearing a condom are, in fact, hilarious? File it in the comments.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

It’s time for more Dr. Laura YouTube fun! This time, Dr. Laura Schlessinger answers the age-old question: Can (hetero) men and women be “just friends”?

Answer: Men and women can be friends as long as it’s a “cool quality, casual friendship fun thing where they both golf together, and that’s it,” Schlessinger explains.

But once these opposite-sex friends start having conversations that go beyond, say “Fore!,” it’s time to adopt an extreme concern for their ability to remain monogamous to their partners. Schlessinger explains the rules of hyper-monogamy: “Is this someone he tells the privacies of his life to? Ultimately, that would be his wife—and if that worked out, it would be you,” Schlessinger says. “If a married woman is spending time with a guy, sharing intimacies about her life, that’s inappropriate.”

So: Talking to other people is considered cheating now. Let’s see how this moral position might play out in a typical marriage: “You have a life outside of this marriage? That’s cheating.” Or, “You told your friend that I cheated on you? That makes you a cheater.” Or, you know, “You told your friend that I accused you of cheating because you found out I cheated on you? I can’t believe you cheated on me again.”

Welcome back from Winter Break, sexually active college students (and old people wondering what those darned kids are up to these days)! The battle for ideological dominance in our nation’s capital’s collegiate sex columns continues. Are our local campus columnists on the forefront of radical sex writing, or are they bringing back the good old days of pretending that sexual orientation is just a “phase.”

This week: When you’re fucking a guy named “Dirty Jersey,” and he doesn’t want to wear a condom; how to stop being friends and start getting laid; is bisexuality the new black?

HOWARD UNIVERSITY:

Sex Tips: in “Is Bisexuality the New Black?”, Aaron Randol surveys Howard University students about this crazy new “trend.” “Is college a catalyst for bisexual behavior? And if so, does this mean bisexuality is nothing more than a trend, the new black?” Randol writes. “The notion that bisexuality in college is just a trend proves controversial for[one bisexual man]; as he, like many others, have had feelings towards both sexes before college.”

Life Lessons: One of Randol’s classmates describes the campus male bisexuality epidemic: “I am positive more guys at Howard than girls are trying bisexuality. Less than 5 percent of the girls that I know of here are trying or have tried it, but I’d say 50 percent of my guy friends have tried. I don’t know if it’s Howard or if it’s how people are leaning in general. But it seems like here, 1 in 3 guys are gay or bisexual. It’s not even weird to hear a guy is gay or bisexual at Howard any more.”

Progressive Meter: After setting up the trendy bisexual straw man argument, Randol is ready to smack down that particular theory. Let’s hear it, Randol! “So is bisexuality the new black, nothing more than a trend, a staple on the public scene?” he concludes: “Maybe not.” Bleh. ZERO.

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY:

Sex Tips: Georgetown Hoya dating columnist Colleen Leahey reflects on the Swiftian nature of her romantic life. Taylor Swiftian.”The entire situation was straight out of a silly Taylor Swift song: I had a thing for my best guy friend. While he dated various girls, I put myself in the friend zone, giving him advice and being there when he needed to vent to someone,” she writes. “Secretly, though, I was hoping he would realize that I was the one he truly liked.”

Life Lessons: Refreshingly, Leahey combats this trademark Swiftian passivity by advising unrequited lovers how to step up and do something about it. “So, this new year, if you’re finally ready to admit to your inner desires, then do be more aggressive with your feelings,” she writes. “Go with your impulse; if you think there’s a spark and it’s not one-sided, make a move. . . . Don’t overanalyze or freak your friend out, but you do have to make a slight effort if you want something to actually happen (unless you’re trying to be the next victim of the T. Swift syndrome).”

Progressive Meter: Slight effort! What can I say, I’m a sucker for refusing to fall victim to the T. Swift Syndrome. SEVEN.

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Sex Tips: Hatchet sex columnist Layla admits she’s done it without a condom—with a guy she calls “Dirty Jersey.” “Since [the first night we had sex], despite his protests, I insisted on a condom every time like I knew I should,” Layla writes. But that didn’t last: “Somewhere during the next five or six times we had sex, my resolve dissolved. I went from being adamant about using protection, to making Dirty Jersey pull out to get a condom, to finally staying quiet about it. Part of me hoped that he would catch on to my desire to use a condom, but he never did. To be perfectly honest, it felt amazing without it and it was just as much my fault as it was his.”

Life Lessons: Fuck that guy! “I may be guilty of condom-use abuse in the past, but now, I am most definitely reformed,” Layla writes. “It also helps that I’m not dating Dirty Jersey anymore.”

Progressive Meter: What does strapping on a rubber say about your politics? According to Margaret Talbot’s “Red Sex, Blue Sex,” teen pregnancy is higher and condom use lower in this country’s red states. So we’ll count this prophylactic flip-flopper as a moderate. Feminist bonus: She ditched a guy who clearly didn’t give a shit about what she wanted in the bedroom. Too bad she softens that with a healthy dose of self-blame.  FIVE.

photo via nerdcoregirl, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Last week on the Sexist:

1. Lil Wayne Jokes About His Own Rape, in which the rapper spells out the cycle of abuse.

2. “I Just Wanted Him to Finish And Leave”: Why Some Groping Victims Freeze, in which frotteurs practice their fetish in the D.C. Metro system.

3. A Groping Victim’s Guide to D.C., in which you can get help.

4. Can Having Three Condoms In D.C. Get You Arrested?, in which D.C.’s policies are bad for sex workers.

5. Rape Analogy Redux: The Stroll In The Jungle Theory, in which comments abound.

Photo via Flickr Commons

Public sexual assault: I’m still fucking talking about it! But this time, I’ve got a little bit of help from the illustrious Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown. Join us for a Very Special Episode of Sexist Beatdown, specially tailored for Guys Who Grab Butt, and what the hell is wrong with them.

When our powers combine, we get to the bottom of your most pressing groping questions. Such as: Why doesn’t Sady appreciate it when you comment on her jugs? If it’s not featured on an episode of SVU, does it still count as sexual assault? And if the girl whose butt you grabbed responds by assaulting you back, is she going to get in trouble, or what?

SADY: well, HI! I am so excited to join you on the Train to Gropetown this evening!

AMANDA: Hi! The Train to Gropetown departs now.

SADY: Perhaps we should note that many ACTUAL gropings take place on trains, which is a bummer? Truly, Gropetown is a destination of the spirit, and not one of mere place and time.

AMANDA: Right. And that on these trains, and subway cars, and buses are dozens of other people who are not gropers or groping victims, but really just witnesses who are standing but feet away from a sexual assault. One thing I hear all the time is that sexual assault is so difficult to “prove” and to “deal with” because it happens in private, tucked away behind doors and in intimate relationships. But really, it happens all the time in front of people’s faces, too! And most people still don’t really give a shit about it.

SADY: Yes. Oddly, I think people have a problem conceptualizing public gropings as sexual assault—the same way they don’t think of street harassment as sexual harassment. It’s just supposed to be one of the many things that, as Ann-Margret would say, help you to Enjoy Being A Girl. Like, there is a “Special Victims Unit” concept of sexual assault that most people have, the kind done by scary dudes for dark and wacky purposes—and then there’s getting your ass grabbed on the subway, which, CALM DOWN, sweetheart!

AMANDA: I, too, have noticed a big resistance to considering groping on the spectrum of sexual assault. Of course, I have all sorts of feminist conspiracy theories as to why that’s the case.

SADY: Ha. The BEST kind of conspiracy theories! But I honestly think it’s the same blanket denial of assault as reality that you find everywhere. Sexual assault is rare; therefore, if it’s common, it’s not sexual assault. I don’t know anyone who would sexually assault someone; therefore, if I know someone who would do this – or if I MYSELF would do this – it’s not sexual assault. I’ve never been sexually assaulted; therefore, if it happens to me, it’s not sexual assault. It’s a wonderful loop of logic that keeps anything from ever changing EVER!

AMANDA: Your arguments appear sound, forcing me to discredit you as a man-hating feminist. But seriously folks. One of the most interesting things I’ve discovered in doing this series is that a lot of women respond to being sexually assaulted by freezing and shutting up. But if you look at your other options—like, say, screaming—you find women who report being stared at like she’s an annoying bitch for screaming for no reason, in public.

SADY: Allow me to submit to you some anecdote as data, in lieu of an explanation for why this might be the case!

AMANDA: great!

SADY: So: picture, if you will, Sady, a burly man-friend, and a not-at-all-burly lady friend walking up the stairs of the subway. The lady friend occupying the stair level in front of me, the gentleman and I behind. Lo and behold, I see before me a hand! And the hand is most definitely reaching out to grab – and subsequently grabbing – my friend’s ass. I freeze. The lady freezes. The dude who is with us keeps on a-walkin’ like it’s no big thing, but, whatever. After about 2 seconds, I grab the butt-fondling dude’s arm and shove him into the side of the stairs and yell at him, because, WHAT THE FUCK. But for a second there, nobody was prepared to deal with what was happening. And as soon as I took action, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Am I going to get in trouble for this?” Honestly, I think people are worried about getting in TROUBLE if they respond. I think that is part of the deal.

AMANDA: I actually have a request out to the D.C. police department addressing this very issue. I haven’t heard back from them yet. But my question was basically, “So, women want to know, if men touch them on the genitals, may they respond by punching the men in the face?” And they’ve been working on it for, like, a week. SO, surprise ending to that conundrum to be revealed later!

SADY: Hahaha. Well! I imagine it would take some time to think that one over! Except that is the thing. When you get grabbed, or someone is masturbating in your general direction on the subway, there’s no time to rifle through the bylaws. And I think you just freeze up because, what are you supposed to do?! There is no chapter in Miss Manners that tells you how to politely request that someone put his boner away! And there’s the possibility of retaliation, too. Like, I can’t tell you HOW many times a dude has gotten up in my face to be a dickhole, just if I ask him not to compliment my astounding jugs while I am WALKING, or whatever.

AMANDA: Bitch!

SADY: I KNOW. I am a total bitch; many a person on the streets of New York has confirmed this. Also, I am not in fact all that, and although they once thought I was attractive, further study has revealed that I am not so fucking hot as was once supposed.

AMANDA: And the scary thing is that real people—people who are not the scary dude who just yelled at you on the street—would probably agree with that sentiment.

SADY: Exactly. It’s the culture of tolerance around it that is the real psychedelic freakout bad trip of terror. Like, people seem to believe the phenomenon of groping to be HIGHLY COMICAL.

AMANDA: Or that grabbing a guy’s arm for touching your butt is such an overreaction! Silly, emotional women.

SADY: Or, for example, you can be telling a story about a guy who grabbed your boob in a bar, and male onlookers will weigh in to tell you that you have no idea how hard it is for the men, what with their having to initiate sexual encounters!

AMANDA: HAH. That one I haven’t heard! “You don’t understand—if I can’t just reach out and touch your butt, what am I supposed to do? Talk to you?”

SADY: I KNOW. Perhaps they feel that the ladies will appreciate their forthright natures! And I’m not entirely sure that this is all coming from guys who grab butt, either. I think these are non-grabbing guys who are just, like, “oh my God, if ladies are talking about how OTHER behavior is inappropriate, perhaps someday they might interpret MY PRESUMABLY DIFFERENT BEHAVIOR as inappropriate as well! And then I will not get laid! When clearly the priority here is for ladies to make it easier for me to get laid.”

AMANDA: By any means necessary. But if you end up not being able to get laid, hey—there are butts everywhere up for the grabbing.

SADY: Like, I don’t think we’re long past the stage when casually smacking a strange girl’s butt was considered a cute and roguish flirting maneuver, rather than a reason for that girl to methodically snap off your hand like the head on a Barbie doll. And I think that people for some reason still conceive of gropers as people trying to “flirt” who are awkward and inappropriate and Go Too Far. At least, some people. So for a girl to respond with anger rather than, I guess… sympathy? Dating tips? A welcoming smile? That is just SO CRUEL.

AMANDA: That’s the real crime. I mean, the other thing that has been striking to me is how open victims of groping are to consider how their groper feels. I’ve spoken with women at length about what they think was going on in that guy’s head when he rubbed his erect penis against her back, or whatever. You know—maybe it was an accident! Maybe he didn’t mean to, maybe he was abused, maybe he can’t connect with women, maybe they learned it from their dad, maybe they don’t have any other sort of social power and so they want to get it this way. Because they want to know why this happened to them. I seriously doubt that these poor, lost souls are giving the targets of their erections the same courtesy.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, the point at which you casually assault someone is the point at which we can determine, objectively, that you do not give a fuck about how that person feels. That’s kind of the rationale: “I want this, she has no right not to give me this, I will therefore have it without her permission. And who gives a fuck about consequences! I’m getting off at the next stop!” But that’s part of women being expected to bear the burden of empathy; the last thing you should do is be a person who doesn’t TRY to care, so even when people act in an uncaring way, you try to figure out motivations or whatever instead of just dealing with their actions. And that’s not necessarily a bad way to be, unless you’re in the presence of someone who takes advantage of it.

AMANDA: I’m not sure I have anything else to say about groping right now. I’ve been kind of hitting the groping sauce pretty hard lately.

SADY: Lay off the sauce! Perhaps you can get on the Job Discrimination Wagon! Or enroll in a program for Pick-Up-Artist Methadone! Truly, I think we have delved far enough into groping. And for this, and for your excellent coverage, I thank you.

AMANDA: Does the Train to Gropetown stop anywhere near my house?

SADY: Let us hope not. I am less than fond of their preferred local entertainment.

Excellent question.

Yesterday, I spoke with Lauren Taylor, lead instructor of Defend Yourself, a D.C.-based self-defense organization that shops around “skills for stopping harassment, abuse, and assault.” Taylor, who has over 25 years of experience teaching self-defense, offers some tips for bystanders who find themselves witnesses to harassment or assault, and want to do something about it:

* Look out for number one. “Always think about your own safety first,” Taylor says. “Look at who’s around who could back you up if necessary. If you’re inside, say at a bar or social event, figure out where the doors are.”

* Speak to the victim. “When you’re thinking about intervening, address the person you think is being targeted,” Taylor says. “Say to her, ‘Are you OK?’ Or, ‘Can I do anything?’ Or, ‘Do you want to come with me?’ This won’t necessarily solve the situation, but it will let her know that there are other options. It will let her know that people are seeing what’s happening, and it lets the harasser know the same thing. There are witnesses, and it’s not going to go unnoticed.”

* Make a scene. “For example, you could draw attention to it by saying something like, ‘This guy is putting his hands all over her!’ Or, ‘This guy is harassing her!’ and that could draw enough attention to the situation that the harasser would cut it out,” Taylor says. “Airing any of these things, and making them more visible, will ultimately make them better.”

“Now, the harasser may respond by saying, ‘Who are you? This has nothing to do with you! She doesn’t mind!,’” Taylor says. “But you still have transformed what’s going on, and possibly made it safer. The harasser talking back doesn’t mean it didn’t work.”

* Even if the victim doesn’t ask for help, you can still do something. “Like with everything, it totally depends on the situation,” Taylor says. “Especially if it’s a partner thing, you may hear the victim respond, ‘Oh, I’m okay, go away.’ But I still think it makes a difference that it was noticed and recognized.”

“There’s no prescription for anything in self-defense,” Taylor says. “It’s the options that are empowering, not the solution. I can’t promise that any one thing will work, but I can give you the things to try, whether the target asks you for help, or whether you say, ‘this looks unacceptable, and I’m going to check it out.’”

In need of a more servicey approach to the Sexist’s groping series? Here’s a collection of sexual assault resources for victims of groping—and everyone else.

KNOW THE LAW.

D.C.: Groping is sexual abuse. In D.C. unlawful sexual contact is defined as: “touching with any clothed or unclothed body part or any object, either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or arouse or gratify the desire of any person,” without that person’s consent.

VIRGINIA: Groping is sexual abuse. In Virginia, unlawful sexual contact is defined as: “The accused intentionally touches the complaining witness’s intimate parts or material directly covering such intimate parts”—including their genitalia, anus, groin, breast, or buttocks—without that person’s consent.

MARYLAND: Groping is sexual abuse. In Maryland, unlawful sexual contact is defined as: “intentional touching of the victim’s or actor’s genital, anal, or other intimate area for sexual arousal or gratification, or for the abuse of either party,” without that person’s consent.

REPORT YOUR GROPE.

Call 911.

Contact police Sexual Assault Units in D.C., Virginia, or Maryland.

If you’ve been groped on the Metro in any jurisdiction, contact Metro Transit Police.

For more specific assistance in D.C., contact the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Liaison Unit, the Latino Liaison Unit, or the Asian Liaison Unit.

SAY SOMETHING.

Submit your story for publication in the Sexist.

Hollaback D.C. publishes stories from women who have been sexually assaulted or catcalled in public.

Stop Street Harassment collects accounts of street harassment from women around the world.

LEARN MORE.

Defend Yourself offers a variety of self-defense classes, including one specifically targeted at addressing street harassment.

Hollaback D.C.’s Street Harassment Map charts incidents of harassment by intersection.

GET HELP.

D.C. SANE Program. Based out of Washington Hospital Center, the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner provides care for sexual assault victims in need of medical attention.

D.C. Rape Crisis Center provides support for victims of all kinds of sexual assault.

BE AN ALLY.

How Bystanders Can Help, with advice from Lauren Taylor of Defend Yourself.

Men Can Stop Rape organizes men to help prevent sexual assault before it starts.

READ MORE ON HARASSMENT IN D.C.:

“Nice Ass!,” Washington City Paper, June 2007

“Diary of a Catcall Hater,” Washington City Paper, June 2007

“Too Sexy For My Shirt,” Salon, May 1999

“The Assertive Response to ‘Hey, Baby,’” [PDF], Washington Post, October 2003.

* Know of additional resources for groping victims and allies? Submit them here.

Photo via luisvilla, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

It’s about time that this blog begin to address all the incoherent rape analogies that are floating around out there. Previously, we heard from people who believe that rape is like a natural disaster. We’ll call this the Hurricane Rape Model: “Under this model, rape is like a hurricane. Everyone agrees that hurricanes are devastating. Hurricanes cannot be prevented—they can only be predicted, planned for, and vigilantly avoided. Because no one can be blamed for causing a hurricane, the onus is on the victims to make sure they stay out of the disaster’s path.”

Today, a commenter submitted another absurd model for thinking about rape: The Stroll In the Jungle Theory. The commenter postulates that by turning up in places where women sometimes report being raped—like frat parties—women are exercising horrible judgment, much like the explorer who walks into the jungle loaded with “terrible and deadly beasts.” He writes:

Going to a rowdy frat party just might really be exercise of bad judgment. If somebody takes a stroll into the jungle with full knowledge that there are terrible and deadly beasts out there that are known for killing people, because the stroller through the jungle likes taking strolls in jungles—that just may be some pretty bad judgment. That is, unless getting eaten was the intention (I’m assuming it wasn’t). Likewise, petting a hungry bear isn’t a wise thing to do, either. Also likewise, going to a frat party knowing that there may be dangerous people present may not be the wisest of choices.

Let’s see how this analogy bears out. Hah. Get it? Bears? Anyway. Ways in which rape is not like a stroll in the jungle:

(1) Men are not like hungry bears. Unlike hungry bears, men do not have an insatiable survival instinct that forces them to rape women. The vast majority of men are not rapists. As commenter K points out: “To say a rapist is equivalent to a hungry bear is to say that they can not be held accountable for their actions,” she writes. “I’ve been drunk hundreds of times with men I knew well and men I hardly knew at all. And not one of them has ever raped me.” I have gone even deeper into the heart of darkness: I have been co-habitating with a hungry bear for some time now, and despite having hundreds of opportunities to do so, he has never raped me. Even when I’m sound asleep! Men are not like hungry bears.

(2) Getting eaten by bears is not a major social problem. Wikipedia lists 29 deaths by bear in North America over the past decade. Meanwhile, someone is sexually assaulted in the U.S. every two minutes. (A person is eaten by a bear in North America once every 181,241 minutes).

(3) Nevertheless, people take murderous bears really fucking seriously. When a person gets eaten by a bear in the wild, some people will respond by saying, “What a fucking idiot to get eaten by that bear!” But that sentiment is, at least, almost always accompanied by this one: “Holy shit! Man-eating bear on the loose!”

What is the fate of the man-eating bear? Many of the past decade’s person-eaters were either shot, killed in some other way, pepper-sprayed, lured out of the wilderness with elaborate traps, or quarantined in animal training. Sixty percent of rapes are not even reported to police, which seriously impedes the government’s ability to trap rapists. Why aren’t these women reporting their rapes? Oh, perhaps it has s0mething to do with jungle rape theorists who suggest that everyone who gets raped is a big ‘ol dumbass.

(4) There is not much societal benefit to reducing the number of jungle deaths. How much effort ought society devote to reducing the danger of jungle-strolling, and how much effort ought it expend to address the problem of rape? In order to answer this question, we’ll have to examine the societal benefits to people taking walks in the jungle, and to women being in situations where rape is possible.

There is no societal benefit to people walking in the jungle, a fact which the U.S. government recognizes by not encouraging its citizens to walk in the jungle. If you like to walk in the jungle, whatever—that’s your thing.

What does the government encourage women to do? The government does encourage women to get married, even though marriage is dangerous—raping your spouse was relatively recently outlawed across the U.S. The government does encourage women to contribute in their communities, even though being acquainted with other people is dangerous—73 percent of rape victims know their attackers. The government does encourage women to attend college, even though attending school-sponsored functions (like frat parties) is dangerous—sometimes, women are raped there.

Since over half of our society is female, it makes sense that society would work to allow women to lead full lives. That means leaving the home, working, attending parties, getting an education, having relationships with women and men, and generally doing what humans do—without the constant fear of being raped. In order to (a) allow women to live their lives, and (b) prevent them from being raped, the only thing left to do is (c) not allow people to rape. That’s it.

(5) Women can’t escape the jungle. Women aren’t raped because they attend frat parties, or get drunk, or walk alone at night—they’re raped because they’re women. One in six women will be raped sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, compared to one in 33 men. Are women far more likely than men to attend frat parties? No, “frat parties” don’t rape people. Rapists do. It’s easy to look at every rape victim and say, “that girl shouldn’t have put herself in that situation.” It’s so, so lazy to say that. It’s much harder to put the time and energy and work and funding into actually eliminating rape. But you know what? It’s not difficult at all to admit that that’s what needs to happen.

Photo via allspice1, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

It used to be that Jessica Graves was always up for a dance party. So when she headed out to Dupont Circle gay bar Cobalt one night in 2006, Graves and a male friend hit the crowded dance floor hard. “We were being kind of raunchy,” she says. “When we go out, my friend says things like, ‘Trash me!,’ and I play along. It gets pretty outrageous sometimes. But my friend is gay, and we’re just being ridiculous and having fun.”

Later in the evening, another dancer decided to join in on the fun. “I was grinding with my friend, and this dude got up on me from behind,” says Graves, now 27. The interloper inserted a leg between Graves’ legs and latched his hands around her waist. “He was strong enough that I had to adjust my body to not get knocked over,” she says. But everyone at Cobalt that night was dancing close, and Graves didn’t think much of it—until something shifted.

“At some point I figured out the guy was straight,” she says.
The man had developed an obvious erection. “We were all still moving,” she says. “He rubbed up on me with an erection and wouldn’t back off until, as best I could tell, he had ejaculated.” Graves stayed silent as the man assaulted her. “By the time I figured out what he was doing, I just wanted him to finish and leave.…I didn’t want anybody else to notice what was going on, because I was so embarrassed by the whole thing,” she says. When it was over, Graves bolted for the bathroom in an attempt to rinse off the experience. But years later, Graves still remembers the look on her groper’s face: “He just had this nasty smile on his face. He knew he had me. And I was too stunned by the whole thing to really stop him.” Graves rejoined her friends and waited out the rest of the night inside Cobalt. “I had to stay,” she says. “My friends were my ride.”’

Stephanie Rinehart’s grope occurred on a brightly lit Metro train, in plain view of dozens of people. But she did not immediately register a physical reaction to the assault. “I wasn’t actively groped,” explains Rinehart, a 24-year-old office administrator. “Well, not with a hand.”

In May 2009, Rinehart was in the middle of her standard commute—a Yellow Line to Red Line switch in the direction of Silver Spring. “After shuffling on to the Red Line at Gallery Place, I was sandwiched with my crotch in some poor lady’s face, and a gentleman standing slightly behind and to the right of me, who stank of alcohol,” she says. Before the train left the station, the man had already begun “noticeably rubbing his front parts to my back parts,” Rinehart says.

She froze. “I couldn’t move forward, or sideways, since I was smashed in place by the other riders on the train,” she says. “It was discreet enough that my friend, standing five feet away, never knew it happened, but it was alarmingly obvious to me.” Rinehart wasn’t eager to acknowledge that a large, drunk man was rubbing his genitals on her body in the middle of the crowded train. “I did have a moment where I thought, ‘Maybe he isn’t doing it on purpose,’” she says. “I’ve had my share of accidental brushes on the Metro.”

In fact, Rinehart was being accosted by a type of sexual assailant so common that the French have a word for him: frotteur, or “one who rubs.” Rinehart stood still as the man frottait. “I didn’t know what to do or say to him,” she says. “It wasn’t until two stops later, when I shot quickly into an empty seat, did I notice that he had a full-on erection.” Later, Rinehart was able to process exactly what had gone down. “Nothing that happened to me, I know now, was an accident.”

Liz, who asked to be identified only by her first name, was also groped on the Metro—just feet away from where her parents were standing. “I was in charge of navigation on the subways, because my parents are, in general, inept,” she says of her family vacation duties. “I motioned for them to get on to the next train, which had just pulled into the station. As I moved toward the open doors, some middle-aged man with a Walkman grabbed me by the ass cheeks and herded me onto the train.” As the man grabbed her, Liz looked back to see her parents still waiting on the platform. “I had to pry his hands off my ass to get off the train and back to my parents,” she says. “I was 14.”

A couple of years later, Liz was groped again—this time at a concert in Philly. “I walked past a guy,” she says. “While maintaining eye contact with me, [he] grabbed my crotch.…I remember he smirked, and his friend laughed. I’ll never, ever forget that, because it’s probably the most degraded I’ve ever felt in my life. I felt violated, and pissed off, but I couldn’t even muster the courage to make eye contact.” In both instances, Liz did not confront her attackers. “I remember feeling a sort of quiet desperation,” she says. “I still get mad that I didn’t respond.…To this day, I wonder: Why didn’t I do anything?”

Why didn’t these women do anything? Perhaps it’s because they were being abused by professionals. A groper doesn’t strike just once. He repeats his depravity so often that he knows how to prey on the various conditions that allow him to go unpunished—surprise, uncertainty, fear, and shame.

And so, after being assaulted on Cobalt’s dance floor, Jessica Graves never even mentioned the violation to her friend. “My friend would have brushed it off anyway, because it’s a really raunchy dance floor,” Graves says. Nowadays, Graves doesn’t go out like she used to. She prefers dancing of the ballroom variety, with rules that emphasize decorum and personal space.

Graves’ attacker had succeeded in exploiting the gay bar’s different rules—where innocuous touching between gay men and straight women is common, and women don’t expect to be targeted by sexual aggressors. “It was extra creepy because I was in a bar where the women are not there to get picked up,” says Graves, who says there were fewer than five women at the crowded club that night. “I certainly didn’t have my guard up like I do in a club where I expect there to be straight men.” The guy who shows up at the gay bar looking to target straight women is aware that his victim is unsuspecting. “This is a hyena coming in and scavenging,” Graves says.

Rinehart didn’t speak out about her attack until several months later, when she relayed the story to her boyfriend. “He’s the only person who knew, and he laughed about it because it was ‘unbelievable,’” Rinehart says. “I think there’s a large amount of society that views what happened to me, or incidences in a public place, as not a valid form of molestation or groping.…It’s something that women should just brush off and get over.…[There’s] this mentality that, ‘After all, honey, it was just an accident, your clothes were on, you were safe in a public place.’” After her assault, Rinehart retraced the factors that contributed to her temporary paralysis. If her groper had only been smaller, less imposing, not so drunk—then, maybe she could have said something. “I do have those moments where I think, ‘Next time! I’ll get him next time!’,” she says. “But there hasn’t been a ‘next time.’”

Nine years after she was first groped, Liz, now 23, doesn’t talk about her experiences, either—not even to her boyfriend. “It’s not like my logical brain thinks he’ll be mad at me, but I’m embarrassed that a stranger touched me so intimately and I did nothing about it,” she says. “What it comes down to is that I don’t want him to ask me why I didn’t say anything.  I don’t think I could explain that in a way that a guy could understand.”

This column is the second in a series. Catch up with Part 1: Touch and Go: How Groping Happens. (Illustration by Brooke Hatfield).

Over 1,200 people have signed a petition to demand the right to carry three condoms in the District of Columbia without fear of arrest. Why do 1,200 people think that carrying more than two condoms is against the law?

Widespread media reports of a “three-condom rule” in D.C. began with an item on RH Reality Check investigating the District’s anti-prostitution provisions. The item, written by researchers Aziza Ahmed and Brook Kelly, claimed that in the District of Columbia, “Anecdotal evidence suggests that having three or more condoms is considered a proxy for being a sex worker.”

When that piece of intel migrated over to the Women’s Rights blog at Change.org, Alex Dibranco phrased Ahmed and Kelly’s anecdotal evidence this way: “Think you might get lucky tonight? Well, if you’re in D.C., don’t bring more than two condoms in your purse, or you could be arrested as a prostitute.”

Last week, the three-condom rule hit Jezebel, where it received 4,426 page-views—and inspired dozens of comments from women concerned that a late-night prophylactic run could send them behind bars. “Don’t many brands sell in 3-packs? Anyone who carries around a new package is automatically carrying 3,” one wrote. “so people in long term relationships that decide to stock up are really screwed,” wrote another. Feministing also picked up the three-condom rule. On Amplify, Jaclyn Friedman worried that her new “cute red vinyl condom case” designed to hold three Trojans could be grounds for arrest. “I once used over a dozen [condoms] in a particularly memorable weekend,” Friedman writes. “And I still wasn’t a sex worker.” Meanwhile, Dibranco’s post has been viewed over 40,000 times.

Where did this “three-condom rule” originate?

It’s not a legal standard. In D.C., police can set up temporary “Prostitution Free Zones” where officers who suspect you of loitering with the intent to commit prostitution can force you to leave the area. If you don’t leave, they can arrest you. The zone can remain in place for up to 10 days. According to the Prostitution Free Zone Law, “prostitution-related offenses” include “repeatedly beckoning to, stopping, attempting to stop, or attempting to engage passers-by in conversation for the purpose of prostitution,” “stopping or attempting to stop motor vehicles for the purpose of prostitution,” or “repeatedly interfering with the free passage of other persons for the purpose of prostitution.” Cops can also ask you to disperse if they recognize you from previous incidents as a gang member or a sex worker, or if a “reliable source” informs the police that they have observed you engaging in prostitution. The law contains plenty of objectionable procedures—they can make me leave my neighborhood if someone “reliable” tells them I’m a sex worker?—but no mention of contraceptives.

According to D.C. police spokesperson Gwendolyn Crump, carrying condoms can lead an officer to suspect prostitution—but there’s no three-condom arrest rule. “Although the possession of multiple condoms may be a factor that leads an officer to suspect (reasonable suspicion) that a person is engaged in prostitution, it is not enough to establish probable cause for any crime,” Crump writes. “Depending on the circumstances, factors such as this may justify an investigative stop—but not an arrest.” She adds: “Essentially, if police cannot arrest someone for having two or more condoms outside a [Prostitution Free Zone], police cannot arrest them for it within a PFZ.” [Update: DCist also reported on this statement from Crump].

Of course, it’s possible that some D.C. police officers don’t always follow the letter of the law. Is there any evidence that D.C. police have an internal three-condom rule?

Both RH Reality Check and Change.org cite a 2008 “Move Along Report” on the Prostitution-Free Zones as evidence of the cops’ condom counting. The report cites plenty of evidence of police officers confiscating or destroying sex workers’ contraception. According to the report, 8.6 percent of sex workers interviewed claimed that officers had taken “safe sex supplies” from them during their interactions with police; the report also cites evidence of police officers seizing or destroying condoms in Las Vegas and San Francisco. Again, the report’s findings reveal police conduct that can be extraordinarily harmful for D.C.’s sex workers. However, the report includes no magic number of condoms required to ignite suspicion—and it doesn’t provide any evidence that condoms alone are enough to get you locked up.

Cyndee Clay, Executive Director of HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive), says her organization has heard from “many, many” sex workers in D.C. who attest to police targeting them over condom possession. “People will come in and tell us they’re afraid to carry too many condoms, because they’re afraid of drawing attention from the police,” says Clay. Still, no specific number has emerged as a red flag.

Brook Kelly, who co-wrote the original RH Reality Check item, wrote in an e-mail that the three-condom tidbit emerged during the course of her research. Kelly’s work included “interviews with sex workers’ organizations, sex workers, or individuals who do not identify as sex workers but who seek support from DC based sex worker organizations, organizations that worked with drug use in the DC area, lawyers working on issues of HIV/AIDS, homelessness and poverty, and law enforcement.” But even though Kelly’s anecdotal evidence suggests that “having three or more condoms is considered a proxy for being a sex worker”—at least according to one source she interviewed—her report didn’t mention anything about three condoms leading to arrest.

D.C.’s anti-prostitution laws and internal practices are dangerous to sex workers. Frightening sex workers into being unsafe—or physically removing their protection from them—is an extremely harmful practice, whether it’s reinforced in the law or not. But the blogs and petitions that extend the harm of these practices to any girl who runs over to CVS for a three-pack of condoms are misleading. “Did you know you can be charged with prostitution in Washington D.C. if the police catch you carrying three or more condoms on the street?” the petition reads, in an attempt to rally all of D.C.’s condom users against the Prostitution Free Zones. Really, condom possession is only going to present a problem if you’re a sex worker. And that should be enough for all of us to get angry about.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Listen to the extremely defensive wind-up to this Dr. Laura question, from a mom preparing to enter the workforce: “With so many layoffs happening, what do you do if there is barely any income being brought in by your husband and you are forced to work?” Dr. Laura Schlessinger, staunch defender of women making careers out of making babies, finally figures out how stay-at-home moms can pursue their careers (if sheer poverty absolutely forces them to do so): Just bring your baby to work! Meanwhile, your unemployed husband . . . does what exactly?

Over the weekend, I watched the first portion of The Carter, an unauthorized documentary on Lil Wayne released on the Internet last year. The Carter was originally undertaken with Lil Wayne’s blessing, but the rapper later withdrew his support for the film (and sued the filmmakers), ostensibly due to its depictions of Wayne’s heavy drug use. But the film shows more than just Wayne sippin’ on sizzurp, a topic that the rapper himself has covered in many of his own songs.

In the middle of The Carter, an obviously high Lil Wayne jokes openly about being raped at the age of 11 with the encouragement of his surrogate father, Baby—and informs Lil Twist, a 15-year-old member of Wayne’s record label Young Money, that Wayne is going to help him get raped, too.

The scene comes in the second section of the documentary on YouTube (where the film migrated after failing to secure a theatrical release). While reclining on a couch in the dark with a group of friends, Wayne confronts Twist about the teen’s sexual history: “You sucking clits over there?” he asks.

“How old are you, Twist?” Wayne continues. “Fifteen,” Twist responds. Lil Wayne can’t believe that a 15-year-old boy may be a virgin.

“You ain’t fuckin’ yet? . . . I was fuckin’ at eleven!” Wayne tells him. Wayne explains that Twist needs to get laid, because that’s the way things work in Young Money. “It ain’t ’cause you’re a male, it ain’t ’cause you’re 15, it’s because you’re Young Money. You’re supposed to,” he says.

“I got raped when I was eleven, Twist,” Wayne tells him. “I loved it.”

Wayne describes how it happened. “I’ll never forget that day. They was all in the kitchen, I was scared, it was good . . . I’ll never forget their words: ‘Suck Lil Wayne’s little dick! Girl, you know you’re such a good dick sucker . . . Suck Lil Wayne’s little dick!,’” he says. “I’m sitting there like, Shorty! I ain’t never had this shit happen!” Wayne tells Twist that Baby, Wayne’s father figure, was one of the men encouraging the woman to perform oral sex on him. “I’m a do you like Baby and them did me,” Wayne informs him.

After the documentary was filmed, Lil’ Wayne spoke about his childhood sexual assault again, in an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Kimmel goaded Wayne into talking about “losing his virginity” at the age of 11. Then, Kimmel—along with, oddly, Charlie Gibson, who was also a guest on the show that night—teamed up to tease Wayne over the incident, which they presented as an impressive display of Wayne’s manhood. Except that this time, Wayne was no longer up for joking about the matter, and he finally explained to Kimmel that the experience was a negative one. It was also revealed that the woman who was being encouraged to “suck little Wayne’s little dick” was 14 years old.

After the Kimmel segment aired, Cara at the Curvature wrote an excellent piece about the cultural tendency to respond to sexual assaults against males by recasting the assault as a positive sexual experience for the victim:

In the majority of sexual assault cases, where a woman is the victim of a man’s violence, rape apology is rooted primarily not in the denial that male violence exists, but in the denial that male violence means something and needs to be stopped. Conversely, in cases where a man is the victim of a woman’s violence, rape apologism is strongly rooted in the denial that women’s actions can count as violence at all—and especially that their actions can count as sexual violence against men, who are routinely construed as incapable of being victims.

In light of Wayne’s account of the incident in The Carter, it’s obvious that Wayne’s sexual assault was not only recast as a positive after-the-fact, but actually orchestrated beforehand by an adult who was responsible for raising Wayne. The fact that the girl chosen to carry out this sexual assault was 14 years old shows that both Wayne and the girl are victims of that man’s actions. When sexual assault against males is excused as a joke or even held up as a badge of honor, that doesn’t just work to erase victims after the fact. This attitude directly causes sexual assaults. Twist is told he needs to have sex whether he wants to or not, just like Wayne did before him. As Wayne tells Twist, “It ain’t ’cause you’re a male, it ain’t ’cause you’re 15, it’s because you’re Young Money. You’re supposed to.”

According to the Ottawa Sun:

Testifying through an Ethiopian-dialect interpreter, [the defendant] denied doing anything but his job and said he didn’t even remember the woman until confronted by hospital officials.

He refused to agree with prosecutor Paul Attia that the woman was attractive, insisting he only found his wife beautiful.

Fournier scoffed at that.

“If 50 men, self-respecting, objective men, men who respect women, were to view (the woman), however briefly, they would conclude that she meets the standard of an attractive woman, at least in the city of Ottawa,” Fournier said.

The accused refused to admit it because he knew it would bolster her account he was showing her “undue attention,” Fournier argued.

“Here is a woman, relatively attractive, scantily dressed in a miniskirt, at times she is lying on the bed, exposing a great deal of her leg,” Fournier said.

“This accused refuses to acknowledge he noticed that. In my view this is virtually impossible.”

Strangely, the Sun piece does not mention any additional facts in the case that may have led to the orderly’s conviction. As far as this account is concerned, the woman’s appearance alone was enough to stick the guy with a sexual assault conviction.

I agree that claiming, in a court of law, that you are only capable of recognizing your wife’s beauty is a pretty stupid defense. But it’s depressing that even as a judge convicts a man of sexual assault, he insists upon reinforcing the most victim-blaming sentiments about women bringing unwanted attention onto themselves based on how they look and what they’re wearing. When a judge uses the word “scantily” in his description of a victim, you know you’re in trouble. (She was coming straight from work, remember). And the idea that a woman exposing “a great deal of leg”—in a hospital exam room—is just too tempting for a medical professional to ignore is ridiculous.

But Fournier didn’t stop there—he then launched into a little hot-or-not scenario in open court. If he were to invite 50 regular dudes to come in and ogle this sexual assault victim, most would agree that she “meets the standard of an attractive woman”—well, at least for Ottawa! (Because she’s not that hot, amirite?). Way to re-victimize a sexual assault victim even while convicting her assailant, Judge Fournier.

The Washington Post has apparently ended its internal ban on using a colloquial term for Georgetown’s most notorious sexual assailant: The “Cuddler.” Over the past two years, Georgetown University students and the campus press have invoked the “Cuddler” nickname to refer to a string of odd sexual assaults that have occurred in and around the university. Since 2008, the unidentified assailant has been accused of everything from sneaking into women’s beds, covering them with blankets, and even placing his penis on a woman’s thigh.

Today, in an item entitled “‘Cuddler’ reported,” Washington Post reporter Matt Zapotosky submitted his own contribution to “Cuddler” lore. Early Sunday morning, Zapotosky reported, a woman awoke to find a man “cuddling in her bed” next to her.

Previously, the Post had avoided using the term “Cuddler” to refer to the dozen-or-so assaults that have plagued the Georgetown area. In a story on the phenomenon from Sept. 2009, Paul Duggan confined his “cuddler” references to direct quotations from Georgetown students, but never invoked the nickname himself. Over the past two years, the Post has only published the word “cuddler” three times: in Zapatosky’s story, Duggan’s direct quotes, and a “Date Lab” feature in which one blind-dater claimed that he had been told he’s “a good cuddler.”

There are a couple of good reasons for a crime reporter to avoid “Cuddler”:

(1) Placing your penis on a stranger’s body is far from cuddly;

(2) It’s possible that we’re not dealing with a “Cuddler” here, but rather “Cuddlers.” As the Post reported back in September, police don’t know whether or not the dozen-or-so assaults reported over the past two years were even committed by the same perpetrator. Witness descriptions have yielded a range of heights, ages, and ethnicities, and attacks attributed to a “Cuddler” have been reported as far away as College Park, Md.

The “Cuddler” nickname occupies the space between fact and mythology. He is both a flesh-and-blood crime suspect and an archetype—a convenient shorthand for a pattern of crimes that the cops are unable to pin on one guy. The most recent assault failed to reign in the Cuddler’s steadily expanding resume. The victim, Zapotosky reports, was “not able to give officers a good description of the man.” And the woman’s bed is located almost a mile north of the upper reaches of Georgetown University, on the 3800 block of Calvert Street NW (pictured)—hardly a campus attack.

Zapotosky’s item awkwardly attempts to bridge the gap between “Cuddler” legend and reality. “Looks like the District has another ‘cuddler’ on the loose,” he wrote. “His latest victim: a Northwest Washington woman who woke up just before 6:30 a.m. Sunday to find him cuddling her in her bed, police said.” Zapotosky’s “Cuddler” is both a new suspect (”another ‘Cuddler’”) and a serial criminal (his victim is merely “his latest”).

Of course, there’s one good reason to invoke “Cuddler”—since the assaults gained mainstream attention last year, D.C. residents have been fascinated with all things cuddly, and invoking the nickname helps interested parties know that they should listen up. But the Post is less interested in the nickname than readers. When asked about the more liberal use of “cuddler” in official Post copy, criminal justice editor Mike Semel responded, “You’re reading more into it than there is. There’s nothing going on” in terms of policy.

Additional reporting by Erik Wemple; photo by Darrow Montgomery

EUPHEMISM: “Bedrock.”

DEFINING MOMENT: Young Money’s “BedRock,” in which Lloyd announces, “Call me Mr. Flinstone, I can make your bed rock.” (Thanks to Heartless Doll for the tip).

LITERALLY: “Bedrock” has several classic associations. According to Wikipedia, bedrock is the stratigraphic term for “the native consolidated rock underlying the surface of a terrestrial planet, usually the Earth.” Bedrock, when employed as a proper noun, is also home to animated prehistoric family The Flinstones. It is this definition which the Young Money lyrics favor.

UNDERLYING MEANING: Has there ever been a weaker sexual euphemism? According to Urban Dictionary, the phenomenon of bedrock—the sexy kind—occurs “when two are enjoying intercourse & the man shakes the bed.” Obviously. “Bedrock” is mostly pun at this point, but if Young Money’s track takes off, we may see this term come into its own as a bonafide euphemism. On the other hand, for a song filled with references like “Call me Red Bull / we can fly away” and “I be stuck to her / Like glue, baby,” I’m not betting on this track’s lyrical stylings enduring.

Today, Tucker Carlson launched The Daily Caller, a Web site that has been hailed as the conservative answer to the Huffington Post. Given my peculiar obsessions with Arianna Huffington’s left-leaning political tabloid, I had but one question for Carlson: Will there be nipples?

Last June, I noted the Huffington Post’s regular publication of “nipple slips,” or the accidentally bared nipples of major and minor celebrities. I argued that the promotion of these red-carpet snafus encourages readers to objectify women’s bodies, while denying those women the agency to control their own nipple exposure—and that these non-consensual erotic displays compromised the Huffington Post’s ostensibly progressive bent. (Recall this intensely zoomed-in image of the outer reaches of Beyonce’s areola to reveal the depths of HuffPo’s obsession with accidental nipples).

When pressed on what it all means, editor Arianna Huffington insisted that a nipple slip is divorced from political ideology: “As Freud said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’—and a nipple slip is just a nipple slip.” (Translation: Sometimes a cigar does not mean a “penis,” but sometimes a “woman’s nipple” does mean a “woman’s nipple,” and that means lot of page-views).

Huffington’s armchair psychoanalysis failed to shed any light on the matter: How is the objectification of women justified by political progressives? With the launch of Carlson’s Caller, I was presented with a rare opportunity to see how a right-leaning Web site might deal with women’s boobs peeking out of their dresses. Would it lean toward the side of abstinence-informed modesty? Would it tend toward boy’s-club objectification? Or would it just publish, like, real news?

I e-mailed Carlson to ask him about his site’s political ideology, and whether it would embrace nipples. Carlson’s response: “I can’t promise the site will be areola-free—in my experience these things are hard to predict—but even at this late stage we haven’t settled on a firm nipple policy,” he wrote.

So far, the Daily Caller has yet to promote images of any accidentally naked celebrities on the Web. A perusal of the Daily Caller’s “Entertainment” page reveals some tabloid fare (”Lohan in paparazzi incident…again“), and some sexy news (”Avatar was supposed to have a sex scene“), but, alas, no nipples:

Yet.

Last week’s essay on groping in D.C., “Touch and Go: How Groping Happens,” inspired several readers to write in with their own experiences being touched without their consent. More ways groping happens—from the unsolicited arm-over-the-shoulder to the assault from a new father-in-law, after the jump.

k writes about the unwanted touching that slips under the “groping” radar:

Can we also talk about dudes who put their arms around you, touching you in places that are pretty damn safe – shoulders, back, etc – but who are total strangers? I always find that weird – you’ll be sitting at the bar, and some guy just casually throws his arms over your shoulder. You look over, thinking it’s your friend, and then you realize you have no idea who this dude is. You shake him off, and then he’s mad—he didn’t GROPE you, per se, so why are you freaking?

Just another way in which women’s bodies are considered public property.

This week on the Sexist, one Real World housemate likes to draw sexual assault scenarios, we talked about groping, and we fact-checked the claims of “Booty Pop.”

1. Rape Cartoons By the Real World D.C.’s Andrew Woods, or as I like to call it, “Tucker Max: Illustrated.”

2. Touch and Go: How Groping Happens, in which dozens of D.C. women share their experiences being groped in public.

3. Why do Gropers Grope?, in which the gropers respond.

4. Having a Butt Won’t Change Your Life, in which joining the butt club ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

5. Sexist Comments of the Week: Real World Rape Cartoons Edition, in which opinions are aired.

Photo via the George Eastman House

And they say we can’t communicate anything in under 140 characters.

[via Mike Riggs].

But that’s not all! Rogan is also an expert on why the word “faggot” is not offensive to gays. And if it is offensive to you, as a gay person, that means you are just “the gayest.” And Rogan means that in the “faggot” sense of the word.

Got it? No? Well let Joe Rogan break it down for you, gay people! In an interview with Peter from Brightest Young Things, Rogan explains—at excruciating length—why calling people (also, dogs) “faggot” has “nothing to do with your sexual orientation.” Trust him on this—he has spoken to at least one gay person!

BYT: Your act is often about brutal honesty, and can include stuff that some folks might find offensive. But when I hear someone like you or Louis CK use offensive language or talk about people’s use of “bad words” it’s hilarious and seems like an expression of your personality. As opposed to when my idiot friend . . . yells out “Faggot” in a bar, when it’s just embarrassing and hurtful. Can you explain the difference between these instances so I can print it and he’ll cut that shit out?

JR: [Laughs] Well one of them is done for comedy and planned out. Sometimes faggot is the right word. There’s a trend in this country to avoid words: “We can’t say that one anymore it’s offensive.” Interesting thing happened when I filmed my last comedy special. They told me they were going to censor everything when it aired before 1am, but then after 1am they were going to leave everything in–you could say fuck, cunt, all the seven dirty words– except faggot. They were going to beep out faggot. I was so confused. I was talking to this gay guy about it and asked, “What is that? I’m not talking to a human being when I say faggot, I called a dog a faggot.” You know it’s the talking dog in the anti-pot commercials. The bit is about the guy realizing that the first thing his dog has to say is to tell him not to smoke weed. Like, you motherfucker you could talk this whole time? This is your message? So then he has a bunch of messages to his dog like “How about you stop chasing your tail faggot!” Just talking shit to his dog.

So this gay guy I was talking to was like “Well you can’t say it. I can say it because I’m gay. But you can’t. It’s our nigger.” He literally said that. I was like, “This is a new thing that the gay people have decided? That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” You can’t do that. You can’t decide that a word is forbidden now collectively amongst your group of human beings, that the word is a slanderous evil nasty word about homosexuals. It’s not, the word doesn’t mean that. And sometimes it’s a good word to use in comedy. That’s what your friend has to realize when he’s at a bar just yelling out the word.

According to Rogan, “faggot,” which everyone everywhere has agreed is a slur against members of the LGBT community, is not “a slanderous evil nasty word about homosexuals.” The word actually refers to dogs, because Joe Rogan called a dog that once. Sure, Rogan employed the term in order to imply that the dog, by cultivating an obsession with its own butt, was acting like Rogan’s own offensive idea of what a gay person does. But whatever: It’s just a dog! If only us regular folks could figure out why calling a dog a word that refers to dogs makes for a funny joke, then we could all be color commentators for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

BYT: Well that’s the thing his argument is similar to yours but not as nuanced. He has plenty of gay friends but he says “Well I’m not talking to them I’m talking to this straight guy who I think is an asshole…”

JR: Faggot never meant “gay” when I was a kid. You kind of knew that you could call a gay person faggot if you were ignorant, but nobody ever called someone a faggot if they were gay. Like if you all were going to go out and one guy’s like “you know what man I’m going to stay home I’m feeling kind of shitty,” you go, “You faggot.” That’s what it means. It’s about a guy wimping out, being a douchebag…it has nothing to do with your sexual orientation. It’s a great word! The whole thing about language is, it’s supposed to be broadcasting your intentions. These are my intentions and these words broadcast my feelings. If all of a sudden you have forbidden words that doesn’t make the intent any better. It’s just appeasing sensitive people.

The plot thickens. Rogan admits that it is, in fact, ignorant to “call a gay person faggot.” However, calling a presumably straight person “faggot” is a convenient way of communicating that that guy is “wimping out, being a douchebag,” as wimpiness and douchebaggery are qualities that Rogan apparently associates with gay men. To review: anti-gay slurs are only offensive when used against gay people. But that’s not an issue, because nobody would actually ever think to use an anti-gay slur against a real, live gay person.

BYT: I agree that it can be a funny word but when someone says “don’t say that around me because it hurts my feelings” I don’t really know what to say.

JR: Well then you say OK and you don’t say that around them. And then you don’t hang around them either. Because they are a sensitive cunt. There’s no time in life to hang around people who want to argue over the nuances of words we’ve used for hundreds of years. Just shut the fuck up man.You want to talk about the word faggot because it really offends you? Well you’re a douchebag. It’s really that simple. Anyone who gets annoyed by certain words or gets upset and outraged…though the word ‘nigger’ is different since it’s dehumanizing. There’s a a lot of hate and anger behind that word…I don’t think ‘faggot’ has the same connotation to the people who are saying it.

And Joe Rogan’s theory of “faggot” comes full-circle. If you are offended by the word “faggot,” you are a “douchebag.” And, if you can recall, being a “douchebag” makes you a “faggot.” By the transitive property, people who are offended by the word “faggot” are “faggots.” And since we’ve already established that the gay community is offended by the word “faggot”? Yep: You’ve just observed Joe Rogan proving to himself that gay people really are “faggots.”

Behold the final paragraph of Katie Roiphe’s latest New York Times Magazine Book Review story on the lost art of freaky sex writing pioneered by the “Great Male Novelists” like Updike, Roth, and Mailer:

Why don’t we look at these older writers, who want to defeat death with sex, with the same fondness as we do the inventors of the first, failed airplanes, who stood on the tarmac with their unwieldy, impossible machines, and looked up at the sky?

In other words, why don’t we sit around praising the “unwieldy, impossible machines” (or, you know, penises) of these white, heterosexual guys who are still writing masturbatory prose about lesbian threesomes involving strap-ons, after all these years? Is it because:

(a) The feminists! They have ruined everything!

(b) The pr0n on the Internets! It has made us more likely to watch a short video depicting lesbian threesomes involving strap-ons, instead of reading some white heterosexual dude attempt to describe it for us, in words!

(c) Those danged marginalized groups! People other than old, white, heterosexual men have taken a stab at the whole sex-writing thing, and it turns out they actually have some interesting shit to say about it!

(d) The impotence of old white dudes! Those old dudes can’t get erections anymore, I hear!

Find out in this edition of Sexist Beatdown, featuring Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and myself, chattin’. After a brief holiday hiatus, Sexist Beatdown is back—and now with new and improved capitalization! Same amount of exclamation points, however!

SADY: You know, I believe it is time to discuss the DUDES OF TODAY! And more specifically, whether they are all huge pusses who refuse to write sexy strap-on scenes for Katie Roiphe’s entertainment. The DUDES OF YORE (and ALSO TODAY, although they are older now) did not have this problem!

AMANDA: They did not. Though they do have a different problem, which is: They will not stop writing like it’s 1960, and some females Katie Roiphe has observed are just livid over this!

SADY: Right??? I mean: first of all. I think SOME of Roiphe’s concerns about the Dudes of Today, which have been repeated in many a forum and in my own personal mind, are valid. There is a creepy quasi-sensitivity about some of the DoTs she mentions, which freaks me out. I think of Kunkel’s “Indecision,” which has the dude protagonist making these big speeches about how the girl he’s dating does not deserve him, due to his aforementioned Indecision about her, which does not prevent him from being, in fact, a douche. Or this Dave Eggers essay, about how he won’t use the word “fuck” to describe the tender and glorious act of making love. Which sounds like THE WORST PICKUP LINE IN THE WORLD, actually. It sounds like a guy who TOTALLY wants to fuck, but tells you he will never use that word because it is so disrespectful, so that you will, you know, fuck him. Yes, sexism continues, even among the DoTs! But it is less overt than the Dudes of Yore, which (I think???) is why Roiphe is mad about it.

AMANDA: Right. The striking thing about this essay, to me, is that it outright states that its concern is with the “Great Male Novelists of the last century” and their male heirs. It’s also explicitly concerned with female readers, and feminists, who reject the sexual narratives in these works. But Roiphe never makes the obvious point that there are options beyond the Great Male Novelists … like Great Female Novelists, who also do The Sex. She basically limits the discussion to, “Why don’t women appreciate these classic male, heteronormative sexual narratives that treat women like cum dumpsters?” when the answer is … pretty obvious.

SADY: Yuh huh. I mean: I think I mentioned this to you, when you were talking about it earlier in the week. And Bitch blogs (yay for Bitch Blogs) mentioned it also!

AMANDA: (Yay!)

SADY: BUUUUUUT: Did she somehow miss that ladies write sex scenes nowadays? Even FEMINIST ladies? The first person that springs to mind is Michelle Tea, who writes these very funny, detailed, daring sex scenes, about fisting and hitting people with the chain whips off bicycles and all sorts of nonsense. Or—this one was brought up by Bitch—Mary Gaitskill? You can find some sex in Mary Gaitskill! And this stuff is often interesting, and has new perspectives, in ways that the Great Male Sexy Time Authors stopped being a long time ago. Like: the problem with Roth’s “hot lesbian strap-on threesome” scene is not that it includes lesbians, or a strap-on. It’s that it is very obviously a straight dude’s IDEA of how mystical and magical and shamanistic and pervy threesomes including strap-ons are. You can find better ones written by people who know a damn thing about it, these days! Thanks to Feminism, ruiner of sexy times. (For boring dudes.) [Note: Roiphe eventually explicitly acknowledged the sex writing of female and gay writers---in an interview after the fact. -Ed.]

AMANDA: Sure! And I think Roiphe acknowledges that to some extent—though she blames not the oppressively hetero male perspective, but rather the fact that these hetero male sex writers just can’t get big erections anymore. Which is weird! But, you know, a theory! But my favorite part comes at the end, when she says this: “Why don’t we look at these older writers, who want to defeat death with sex, with the same fondness as we do the inventors of the first, failed airplanes, who stood on the tarmac with their unwieldy, impossible machines, and looked up at the sky?” So, basically, Roiphe is concerned that readers today don’t bow down before the phalluses of the Great Male Sexy Time Authors enough. That we don’t honor Updike and Roth and Mailer enough! I mean, given that she doesn’t even deign to mention a female author, I think we honor these men quite enough, actually!

SADY: Okay, and here we enter the area that caused the MOST perplexity for me, which is: WHAT WORLD IS SHE LIVING ON WHERE PEOPLE DON’T FALL ALL OVER THEMSELVES TO PRAISE PHILIP ROTH AND JOHN UPDIKE??????????

AMANDA: A world ruined by feminists.

SADY: Or where criticizing DAVE EGGERS or BEN KUNKEL or, jesus, JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER is somehow taboo????????? People criticize those dudes all the time! Roth is treated like a national monument! WHAT HUH WHAT WHERE WHYYYYYYYYY.

AMANDA: I think Roiphe presents a really interesting (if extremely contentious) discussion, and then decides to end it with: “People are too critical of literature!” She basically just tells women to stop thinking so much and just honor the great works of men without comment. What?

SADY: Oh, yeah. And I really appreciated large parts of her argument. I forgot that one line in “The Corrections” about the lady being “still beautiful” at thirty-fucking-two, which did in fact cause me to throw the book across the room when I read it initially. Mostly from that book I remember the couch-fucking! Dude fucks furniture. It’s kind of wacky.

AMANDA: Yeah. She’s right about that stuff. And perhaps the part at the end where she tells us to honor these great pilots of Ye Olde Sexytime, she’s speaking to the new crop of Great Male Unsexytime Writers, and telling them that they are more derivative of these earlier authors than they will admit.

SADY: But, I mean, the “sexual ambiguity” she seems to have such a problem with, the idea that people no longer believe key parties and talking about the naughtiness of watching a girl jack off or—shock!—jacking off themselves is, IN AND OF ITSELF, a symbol of Man’s Ultimate Freedom From Social Mores, I kind of . . . don’t have a problem with? I mean: the sexual revolution, it had Consequences! Including feminism, yeah. But also: a lot of fucked-up relationships, which, as DFW mentions in the very essay she quotes, men of his generation were probably witnessing as children. Or, you know, they were young in the ’80s when AIDS became a rising concern.

AMANDA: Right, and we talked about this earlier in regards to college sex columns, but you don’t have to be some sort of radical to talk about sex anymore. A lot of people talk and write about sex, and some of them are hyper-conservative, or worse, boring.

SADY: Ha, RIGHT. I mean, there WAS A TIME when talking or writing about sex—graphically, grossly—was actually a way of challenging rules about what writers, or people, could and could not do. Now, it is an art form practiced and cultivated by Tucker Max. Yes! You have sex! So do the rest of us! Say something new about it, other than the fact that it involves human lady vaginas, because otherwise I may get a case of the ZZZZZZZZZZs.

AMANDA: Yes! Our favorite. And the fans who defend Tucker Max, the college boys who are likely unfamiliar with the Great Sexy Time Authors of Yore, ultimately defend him on the basis of Freedom of the Press. They act like people who dare to critique Tucker Max are “censoring” his “opinions,” and are therefore both dictatorial and prude. And that may have been the case in the past, but it’s just not a relevant argument anymore. The sexual exploits of the late-20’s upper-crust white American frat boy are not being censored by anybody! Tucker Max does not need to spread his literary seed in order to finally speak truth to power for all the man-children like himself. It has been done, people got over it, and now people like Tucker Max and Katie Roiphe are pretending like we need to pay attention to the “problem” of not really valuing this narrative as exciting anymore. Well … as much as we used to. Because, of course, Tucker Max is a best-selling author.

SADY: Right! I mean, I think the age in which you could daringly place a smuggled copy of “Tropic of Cancer” or “Lady Chatterley” on your bookshelf, so that people would know you were a rebel and sexual and literary sophisticate, ended a LONG TIME AGO, actually? And now, I mean: the issue with Updike writing a scene where a dude delivers his special package all over a lady’s face, or Roth and the mystical shamanic strap-on of power, is not that these scenes are shocking to us, and not that ANYONE would EVER try to censor them. It’s just that they are these very flowery, elaborate, pseudo-highbrow depictions of things that are just not that surprising because at this point everyone in America has seen them actually depicted, on film. It’s the false daring that makes them boring. And they read like they were taken from studying film, not life. Although if Updike actually had a thing for face-jizz, I would prefer not to know.

AMANDA: I agree—it’s the pretentiousness of it that makes you not want to just put it down but also throw it away, and I’m not sure that really has much to do with feminism, but rather just being a person who reads books.

SADY: yeah, precisely. I mean, Roth still has the power to get up my nose, which might in fact be evidence of why he’s good at what he does, but also, I get these letters from fellow feminists that are like, “Give Roth another chance! He’s great!” I think mine might be a minority vote, actually. And I think placing the entirety of the responsibility for why we seem to have moved away from this depiction of sex on Feminism, and mean feminists who want to take your literary weenie away, just places an unrealistic power in the hands of Feminism. We can’t have done this all by ourselves! We’re still working to get people settled on the “Ladies should be able to have abortions” thing!

AMANDA: Right. It’s pretty hilarious that Katie Roiphe actually believes that the feminist position is more celebrated than that of the Great Male Novelists, or that our oppressive “feminist” anti-sex culture is to blame for churning out somebody like Dave Eggers. I refuse to take responsibility for that one.

Photo via flickr Commons

Currently, The Sexist has no comments policy. You write a comment that isn’t trying to sell me penis-enlargement pills, and your words will likely appear in the illustrious forum of the Sexist comments field. Even if your great insight consists only of a racial slur written in all-caps.

This lax approach to comment moderation has, at times, provided a window into the darkest reaches of the Sexist reader’s mind. Take this comment for example, submitted in a discussion of the phrase “no homo”:

Love thy Brother. NOT TO LOVE THY BROTHER! What is the misconception here? YOU’RE GAY, FAGGOT, BITCH ASS, GUNK, FUCKBOY…WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM WITH EVERYBODY ELSE, MR./MISS/MRS. THANG? The general public is fed up with you ass, lip and dick hunting problems. Lets move on!

Or this one, from a user calling him- or herself “Fatties,” on a discussion of Tucker Max’s feature film:

Stop whining, dykes.

Or how about this one, replying to a story about a transgender sorority member:

I would tell you to bite me, but you might be a fucking “DRAG Queen” I am strictly pussy and I don’t do dicks. For the record, I only date white women, because too many black women are angry as hell. Why are most black women angry? Is this why so many of them are Dykes?

Now, how about this one, weighing in on a Real World cast member’s sexual assault cartoons:

You can have an opinion about what is a “threat” and what isn’t. But those are “fightin’ words” in a court of law. Just like you may think that someone is a bitch or a whore or a nigger, but you actually say that and you’re opening a can of worms that may never go back to where it was when you said it. That’s the world that we live in today, and we live in that world because women think that it’s necessary and there are, unfortunately, certain men who are PW’ed enough to support them. I’m not saying that there aren’t legitimate “threats” but surely we all have different opinions about what they are.

The horror, the horror, etc. And so, in the grand tradition of this comment thread over at City Paper’s news blog City Desk, I ask you: Should this blog moderate comments? If so, what standards should we use to determine which comments fly and which ones don’t? If you comment here—and especially if you don’t!—I’d be interested to hear any insights you have into the Sexist commenting experience.

Photo via the Library of Congress

This week on the Real World D.C., Mike got a little bit too gay for Ashley’s taste, a housemate is intrigued by Andrew’s rape cartoons, and Andrew lures an apparently drunk woman into the hot tub. (Refresh yourself with the first episode’s sex recap here). The top 10 sex-ish moments of the second episode—including cast member Ashley’s slow descent into crippling homophobia—after the jump.

10. ASHLEY ATTEMPTS TO COME TO TERMS WITH MIKE’S BISEXUALITY

“He’s … bisexual,” Ashley tells a friend over the phone about her house crush, Mike. “But then he’s got like these green eyes and tan skin and athletic build and stuff.” Later, she feigns interest in meeting Mike’s long-distance boyfriend. “So when’s the BF coming? . . . I’m excited to meet him. . . . Is he a nerdy guy or like a jocky guy?”

9. ASHLEY COMES TO TERMS WITH MIKE’S BISEXUALITY. THEY HOOK UP:

“We, like, full-on tongue-kissed,” Ashley reports. The other housemates go wild.

8. THE HOUSEMATES REALIZE THAT THEY HAVE THE POWER TO SUMMON RANDOM HOT PEOPLE ON COMMAND:

After Ty sees crush Emily dancing with another man in a club, he resolves to “find a hotter girl to talk to.” (By “talk,” he means “allow her to place her ass near my hands”). He succeeds instantly.

7. THIS RULE EVEN APPLIES TO ANDREW:

“Okay, I’m going to go find a girl,” Andrew says. “I’m just gonna, like, tackle her. Gazelle: lion.”

6. THE HOUSEMATES DISCOVER ANOTHER USE FOR RANDOMS: FORCING THEM TO LISTEN TO THEIR PERSONAL PROBLEMS.

Emily can’t believe she kissed Ty, random lady at the bar! He’s so gross! Right?

Among them: Punching, hitting, kicking, slamming kids into walls, holding kids down, death threats, graphic plans to carry out gun violence, threats to stab another kid in the eye with a pencil, and forming a “kill a classmate club.” At school. In the second grade. According to the MCPS parent, the abuse was also sexual: “there was genital groping and there were unwanted sexual nicknames,” she told WTOP.

The mother told WTOP that she reported the abuse to College Gardens staff, but says her concerns were shrugged off:

She went to officials at College Gardens Elementary School with her concerns.

“We were brushed off. They met with the boy that was accused. He denied it, and it went away. They said it didn’t happen.”

But she contacted other parents.

“And I simply said to them, ‘Did your child report anything unusual on this date?’ And I got back a fistful of responses.”

Sound familiar? This is what many adult women—women who graduated the second grade decades ago—experience on a regular basis. They are sexually assaulted; they say something; the accusation is denied; it goes away.

Of course, this second-grade alleged offender—likely a 7- or 8-year-old boy—can’t be held solely responsible for groping another child’s genitals. No: That boy has been raised in a system where this is okay. When the groper is a second-grader, he is, indeed, “too young to know better.” But that impulse to excuse away the groper’s actions doesn’t stop with second-grade offenders.

No one could argue that a second-grade girl was “asking” to getting groped. But as groping victims get older, commentators get more and more comfortable shifting the responsibility for preventing sexual assault to the victim—telling her that she shouldn’t have gotten drunk, shouldn’t have stood in the pit at a concert, shouldn’t have worn a skirt, or shouldn’t have gone to a bar and sat facing the bar like any normal patron. When groping incidents occur in bars and rock shows and workplaces, the implicit message is that women don’t belong in these traditionally male spaces, and they deserve what’s coming to them if they enter them.

In this latest case, it looks like these messages are being sent to girls as young as 7 for having the gall to show up to elementary school. The good news is that some media outlets and law enforcement agencies are taking this seriously, even if the school  allegedly failed to act on the complaint—the concerned mother ultimately secured a restraining order against the offending second-grader.