Freddie Fackelmayer, a 2005 graduate of the George Washington University, wants everyone to know that he’s not a “womanizing jerk.” Fackelmayer just finished up a stint as fake boyfriend to reality television star Whitney Port on MTV’s “The City,” a fake show about Port’s real life working in the fashion industry, a career she secured by virtue of being a reality television star. Anyway, Fackelmayer recently granted an interview with the G.W. Hatchet about how his fake relationship with a reality television star was totally misrepresented on the T.V.!

“They can still make you look however they want,” Fackelmayer told the Hatchet. “They made me be this sort of womanizing jerk, which is not really who I am,” he said. How does that work? According to  Fackelmayer, MTV “never asked the cast to say or do anything, but the editing that followed skewed what actually happens.” He adds: “You know they cut it up [into] little bits and they pick what they want to make it as interesting as possible and it’s tough not to look like a jerk, I think.”

I want to believe Fackelmayer that he’s not the kind of jerk with a fake tan who summers in the Hamptons and cheats on his girlfriend for the purposes of a reality TV show, but how can we know for sure? Let’s check out the other facts about Fackelmayer revealed in the story:

- He was on a reality television show

- He majored in finance

- He still acts like a GW kid [Full disclosure: I went there]. “When I first saw him I thought he was a bit of an Adonis, tan, beautiful, he’s a real switch-up,” one GW student told the Hatchet. “At first I was shocked to hear he was a GW student, but after I heard him talk and watched him for a while, it made a lot of sense. I feel he fits into what a GW student would be.”

- He works for a commercial real estate company

- He was in a frat

- He recruited one of his frat friends to corroborate his story: “It’s just that you can’t really find out who someone is through like 17 minutes, or however long it is.”

- This: “Fackelmayer, who said he arrived to GW in his khakis and flip-flops from Connecticut, soon became accustomed to jeans, Georgetown and the lifestyle D.C. has to offer.”

- He’s writing a novel. “I’m speaking with agents, and that’s actually something that actually has been helpful, because agents, if you’re a first-time writer, its really difficult to get your foot in the door, but I sort of skipped those really difficult first steps because most of them had heard of me.”

Hmm. I don’t know. Womanizing jerk, or victim of the media? You be the judge.

For those of you who would rather do away with this whole marriage business instead of incorporating new groups into the institution, Canadian group Hidden Cameras have got your anthem: “Ban Marriage.” Recently, eight of them squeezed into the Rock and Roll Hotel to perform the song for The New Gay. The traditional-marriage-averse lyrics include references to fingering, “fag hags,” and drunk ministers. What, no shout-out to the patriarchy? Full lyrics are after the jump.

I was late getting to church on the morning of my ceremony

Ban marriage
Ban marriage
Ban marriage
Ban marriage
Ban marriage
Ban it all

J. Matt Barber, board member of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, has no problem with being gay. Being “gay,” on the other hand, is a serious cause for concern.

In a media alert released yesterday, Barber warned Christians about the impending threat of homosexual terrorism. As he described the activists at the heart of the anti-Christian movement, Barber repeatedly couched the term “gay” in scare quotes. Why go “gay”?

Parents of Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) is in the business of downplaying the immutability of sexual orientation—their whole shtick is that gays can turn themselves straight, and so placing “gay” in quotes helps to devalue the identity as real.

But Barber says that’s not the effect he was going for. “Gay used to mean happy, carefree—the original definition of gay,” explains Barber. “Now, homosexuals are trying to put a more positive face on their lifestyle. In an interesting and clever twist of semantics, homosexuals have co-opted the term. Gay is supposed to be something happy, something good.”

One section of the AP Stylebook seems to back up Barber’s usage. According to the Stylebook, it is acceptable to place real, actual words—like gay—in quotation marks in order to signify that the words are being “used in an ironical sense.” According to Barber, being “gay” is ironic indeed, as the homosexual lifestyle is far from gay. “Based on CDC statistics, there’s nothing gay about being ‘gay,’” Barber says.

Good news: Yesterday, a revised draft of the marriage bill was released that will retain domestic partnerships (for now, at least). Bad news: the revised bill also allows churches to refuse to make their facilities available for those same-sex couples who actually are into that whole “marriage” business.

The Washington Blade reports on the DP “tweaks”:

During the committee’s two days of hearings, Catania said he was open to removing language he placed in the bill that called for ending the city’s registration of new domestic partnerships after January 2010. Catania noted that he put the provision in the bill because most states that have legalized same-sex marriage have ended existing domestic partnership or civil unions programs on grounds that most same-sex couples prefer marriage.

But a number of witnesses, including officials with the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance and lesbian rights attorney and American University law professor Nancy Polikoff, urged the Council to remove the “sunset” clause for domestic partnerships from the marriage bill. These witnesses suggested that the Council take up the domestic partnerships issue at a later date and through separate legislation.

Right now, we’re focused on securing marriage equality, and that’s an extremely important step. But hopefully, by the time the council gets around to considering domestic partnerships, we’ll be able to look beyond marriage and consider our other options on their own merits. Even when same-sex marriages are recognized, we will still need to address how some marriage rights discriminate against those couples and singles who opt out of the institution. Right now, it may be true that “most same-sex couples prefer marriage,” but I believe that may begin to change as the institution evolves and more options are made socially acceptable. A lot of people just don’t want to get married, period, and they shouldn’t have to do so to get their rights.

On to the religious side:

On the religious exemption provision, Catania’s original bill noted that “a religious organization, association or society, or a nonprofit organization which is operated, supervised, or controlled by” a church or religious group “shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, facilities or goods” for the purpose of performing any marriage “unless the entity makes such services, accommodations, or goods available … to members of the general public.”

The revised bill removes the “unless the entity makes such services, accommodations, or goods available … to members of the general public” language.

Seeing as I would never be interested in getting married in one of these God-forsaken places anyway, this language is less important to me personally. But it’s extremely unsettling that the council’s bill includes an allowance for religious institutions to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation. The provision, at the very least, serves as a reminder that even when same-sex marriage is legal, marriage will still be fucked up in a lot of ways. Why not just opt out and go for a domestic partnership?

Debunked, after the jump:

- “Yes means yes” is dangerous in a world where “no means no”
- Women exploit rape laws to criminalize consensual sex they later regret
- Some rapes just happen on accident

By the by—if you’re in need of a primer, here’s the relevant reading material:

Verbal assault: The abuse and debasement of “rape”
Drunk girls deserve to get raped
Writer to rape victims: sometimes it’s too late to say no
On the difficulty of saying no

Now, on to the theories:

Not everybody accepts the “yes means yes” standard of consent, so we have to stick to “no means no” [Source].

I’ve heard this argument time and again: Telling people that consent ought to be based on “yes” instead of “no” is dangerous, because the nation’s sex partners (and courtrooms) just don’t agree with that standard. According to this theory, if a woman expects a man to respect her bodily autonomy implicitly, she’s gonna get raped and there’s nothing she can do about it.

Well: Of course not everyone agrees with it. That’s why feminists devote books and blogs and documentaries to critiquing current models of consent—necause we believe by changing attitudes and changing laws, we can make lives (not to mention sex!) better. That being said: “yes means yes” is actually consistent with the legal standard in many jurisdictions, and if rapists go around assuming that “no means no,” they may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

I’m most familiar with rape laws in Washington, D.C., so I’m going to stick to D.C. code here. In D.C., there is no crime called “rape”—instead, sexual assaults are categorized as various degrees of “sexual abuse.”

In D.C., you could be charged with first degree sexual abuse if you cause a person to submit to a sex act using any of the following tactics: by physically forcing them; by threatening them; by rendering them unconscious; or by drugging them. This crime can be punished with up to life in prison. You could be charged with second degree sexual abuse if you have sex with someone when you have reason to know that they are incapable of knowing what’s going on, incapable of saying no, or incapable of “communicating unwillingness” to have sex. This crime can be punished with up to 20 years in prison. In these crimes, the rapist is aware that their victim does not want to participate in the sex act, and does it anyway (”no means no”), or is aware that their victim cannot consent, and does it anyway (”passed out means no”).

Misdemeanor sexual abuse requires a less stringent standard of consent. Under D.C. law, the misdemeanor charge applies to “whoever engages in a sexual act or sexual contact with another person and who should have knowledge or reason to know that the act was committed without that other person’s permission.” This crime can be punished with up to six months in prison.

Here, the standard does not require force, threat, or incapacitation. It doesn’t even require penetration—it covers all “sexual contact.” The misdemeanor charge only requires the absence of consent. In this crime, the rapist is not aware that the victim is powerless to say no—he is only aware that the victim has not offered a “yes.” In D.C., you can go to prison for six months for having sex with someone without gaining their permission—even if the victim did not explicitly say “no.”

“Yes means yes” is more than just pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking of bloggers living in a feminist dreamworld. For everyone who engages in sex, not abiding by “yes means yes” can also mean very real jail time.

—

Rape laws are invalid because they’re based on how the victim “feels” the next morning. [Source].

Again, in D.C., the severity of a sex abuse charge depends entirely upon the actions of the perpetrator, and not at all on the feelings of the victim. The legal system does not care how traumatized the victim is, whether the victim has changed her mind about how she feels about her sexual assault since it happened, or whether the victim wants to press charges. Let’s recap: According to the law, the only things that matter are: (a) whether the perpetrator had reason to know that the victim did not consent, (b) whether the perpetrator had reason to know that the victim could not consent, and (c) whether the rapist used force. D.C. law is only concerned with the severity of the rapist’s actions—not whether the victim “secretly liked it,” “totally wanted it,” or “only regretted it later.”

If the story of Polanski’s victim has taught us anything, it’s that rape laws are not about the victim. They’re about the perpetrator. The American justice system has been continually criticized for failing to serve sexual assault victims. Rape trials don’t exist to make victims feel better—they exist to help prevent future rapes. And so, even though reporting rape, pressing charges, and enduring a trial is a notoriously difficult process for victims of sexual assault, victims are still encouraged to step forward in the hopes that others will not become victims.

From a legal perspective, it makes perfect sense that rape laws would be centered exclusively on the perpetrator’s actions and not at all on the victim’s feelings. If a person routinely has sex with people without their consent, he may catch a few victims who “secretly liked it.” That’s not the point. The point is that that behavior is reckless, dangerous to the public, and unacceptable.

That being said, locking someone up for a few months doesn’t strike me as a very effective rape avoidance tactic. It would be much more productive if we focused our efforts on prevent rapists from believing that behavior was acceptable in the first place.

—

Some rapes happen on accident [Source].

As Thomas notes on the Yes Means Yes! blog, the dominant analogy used to address rape likens it to a terrible and unpreventable disaster. 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.

Similarly, because many people are convinced that nothing can stop a rapist from raping, women are encouraged to conform to a series of disaster-avoidance behaviors: stay indoors, wear longer skirts, quit drinking, travel in packs, and avoid trusting men.

Of course, rapes have a pretty obvious culprit: rapists. Still, some people continue to cast date rape scenarios in particular as unavoidable accidents. Since acquaintance rapes are absent of any obvious malicious intent, they are considered a product of an unfortunate miscommunication. These rapists did not intend to rape anyone. In a way, they too are victims—victims of the problematic gray area of sexual consent.

This focus on some rapes as “accidents” suffers from a misapplication of the term “accident.” I often find analogies misleading in discussion of sexual assault (see: that hurricane bullshit), but I’m going to use an analogy in this instance because I think it may be helpful. What if we thought about rape in terms of another type of accident—a car accident?

In the United States, driving a car is a privilege. In order to be cleared to drive, you must pass tests, register your information with the government, have enough money to buy a vehicle, and secure insurance in case you get into a wreck. For some people, the privilege of stepping behind the wheel inspires a certain amount of hubris. These people believe that because they are driving a car, they can take certain liberties on the road—including cutting others off in order to save time, running red lights, shirking stop signs, and generally being a gigantic asshole. Their concern lies only in getting where they want to go as fast as they can, and not at all with all the other humans on the road they have an obligation to protect.

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend was hit by a car when he was in a crosswalk (he’s fine, thanks for asking). In D.C., of course, pedestrians legally hold the right of way in a crosswalk. But my boyfriend did not share the privilege of the driver—he was a pedestrian, and so he was forced to wait patiently at the very wide, very well-marked, very busy crosswalk until one of the big privileged cars deigned to stop for him. If a pedestrian decides to step out into the street as oncoming traffic approaches, he has to hope that his legal right to cross—not to mention his human life—outweighs the driver’s sense of privilege to keep on trucking. Asserting your rights, of course, comes with a certain amount of danger. But pedestrians have no choice but to cross busy streets. And sometimes, they get hit.

Now, the driver who hit him did not set out with the intention of running into a human with her car. She didn’t mean to hurt anybody. But she also knew full well that cars are required to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. She was simply so accustomed to her driving privilege that she never dreamed that this could actually happen—and that she would ever be held responsible for her habitual disregard for the law. After all, a lot of motorists act this way, and most pedestrians just stay out of their way. When a pedestrian is hit in a crosswalk, it’s not an accident. It’s the result of the motorist who has normalized her dangerous actions.

When rapists engage in sex acts without bothering to gain their sex partner’s consent, they are not “accidentally” raping someone. Rapes don’t come from miscommunication. They are not isolated, unpreventable incidents. They are a product of institutionalized, reinforced, life-long privilege. They are the symptoms of a flaw in the rapist’s entire worldview. They are the product of the way the rapist has habitually devalued women, laid claim to the bodies of others, pursued what he wants no matter what—and never thought anything of it because he has never been called on it. That’s not an accident. That’s a system.

Last week, Double X contributor Lauren Bans took a hard line on the term “douchebag.” According to Bans’ definition, “a douchebag is a very specific sub-segment of the asshole population . . . the douchebag label necessitates a middle-class or higher wealth level, a gross adherence to fratty mainstream tastes (think popped collars and bars in midtown Manhattan), and a rather pretentious pride in that specific way of life.”

One of the problems with crafting a reliable definition of “douchebag” is that the term is built from the outside. Nobody wants to identify as a douchebag. And so, each individual’s interpretation of the term will necessarily exclude characteristics which they share.

Not so with the term “bro.”

I happen to personally agree with Bans’ definition of “douchebag.” After all, Tucker Max, douchebag du jour, meets all of Bans’ criteria. But perhaps our agreement on “douchbag” is more than mere coincidence. After all, the Max standard of douchebaggery conveniently excludes snarky, frat-averse bloggers like Bans and myself from being thrown in with the douches. (For one: Under this definition, douches are all male).

As Bans notes, there are plenty of other words available to insult close relatives of douchebags: dumbshit, prick, tool, masturbatory elitist, hippie. (Me? I’d probably fall somewhere between the “dumbshit” and “masturbatory elitist” categories). But none of these terms is as fun to hurl as “douchebag” is. That word is satisfying. In practice, then, “douchebag” may actually be defined by the category of person the speaker reviles the most.

How might we come to a more objective definition of “douchebag”? Perhaps the key lies in studying the term’s closest relatives. Take “bro.” On UrbanDictionary.com, bro has been externally defined by the same characteristics as Bans’ douche: bros join fraternities, wear baseball caps, spike their hair, pop their collars, clutch red plastic cups, and are proud of it. But unlike “douchebag,” people actually call themselves “bros.” Is it possible that the term “bro” functions as a way for douchebags to reveal their “pretentious pride” in their fratty lifestyles without admitting how douchey it all is?

In one corner of the blogosphere, a community of self-identified bros has arisen to build an internal definition of “bro”—and distance themselves from “douchebag”. What maketh a bro? Even at “brocial networking” Web site BroBible.com, the line between “bro” and “douche” is a very fine one indeed. Some of the most hotly-contested bro criteria, below.

—

* Is hunting bro?

Point: “back before certain bro activities like sports were invented, alcohol being discovered (can u imagine?), and women shaving their legs was thought of (yes, our ancestral brethren had to put up with this for generations) you could argue that hunting was one of the only bro activities around at the time, and remains one of its purest forms.”

Counterpoint: “Hunting is not bro. Maybe it would be bro if the animals had a gun to defend themselves.”

—

* Is listening to Phish bro?

Point: “Phish shows=the ultimate chay. Drinking beers and puffing all day with other assorted party favors, grilling, in the sunshine is about as bro as it gets. The music is laid-back and chill, also bro, and incorporates elements of folk, funk, reggae, classic rock, and bluegrass, all bro in their own right. Phish dominates colleges, where every true bro learns the skills necessary for the rest of his life.”

Counterpoint: “Phish is only chill for a bro-raper. And bro-rape is definitely not chay.”

—

* Is ultimate frisbee bro?

Point: “Ultimate Frisbee totally is a bro sport. . . . those who hate oughtta see some real ultimate before they judge, not that bullshit the kid with the tyedie t-shirt trys to pull on your quad every spring. although, if you can huck a disk cross quad while whering a pastels, a lax pinni, turf dogs, mids and croakies with a sweet pair of shades, you’ll find its a wonderful way to meet women.”

Counterpoint: “ultimate frisbee is hobby for people who werent any good at regular sports, as well as pussys who are afraid of contact, not a bro sport.”

—

* Which lacrosse helmets are bro?

Point: “CPX with steel forever. Always tilted, never with a gay visor.”

Counterpoint: “I don’t know, an all black Pro7 with a gold face mask is pretty sick.”

—

* Can Mexicans be bros?

Point: “bros can originate from any culture. what makes us bros is our unquestionable love for brew (cerveza), babes (chicas), sports (deportes), and our dedication to these three pillars of strength.”

Counterpoint: “bros must fit the wasp mold.”

Photo by Unhindered by Talent, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

(a) stilettos
(b) pantyhose
(c) cleavage
(d) eyeliner

According to one lawyer, two will ruin a female attoyney’s career, while two will send her on the partner track. Are career women held to a higher standard of dress than are men? Is business attire absurd all around? Or is the corporate uniform a valuable tool to help boys and girls get ahead? Reader theories—and the answers to your quiz—are after the jump:

whet moser says that the focus on low-cut blouses and too-high heels obscures the fact that in lawyerin’, class issues cut both ways:

This week on the Sexist, we heard about a bunch of bumbling frat boys who didn’t want their student newspaper to talk about date rape. We made up for it by talking about date rape a bunch!

1. Fraternity Accused of Stealing 10,000 Newspapers to Cover Up Date Rape Story, in which the enormous pile of drugging victim testimony ate their homework.

2. Writer to Rape Victims: Sometimes, It’s “Too Late to Say No”, in which it’s not! Ever!

3. On the Difficulty of “Saying No”, in which, all the same: “yes” ought to be the standard, really.

4. Drunk Girls Deserve to Get Raped, in which Internet trolls respond to a gang-rape by blaming the victim.

5. Ashley Madison’s Conservative Values, in which a cheating Web site denounced by moral conservatives profits off their traditional values.

Photo via the Library of Congress

The AARP has finally figured out a way to deter all those crazy tweens from sexting their chastity away: Inform them that a bunch of totally old people are doing it, too. In the November issue Online at AARP.org, reporter Jessica Leshnoff interviews a handful of first-name-only seniors who admit to sending photos of their boobs to other old people through text messages.

There’s Roger, the 59-year-old divorcé who need only tell a date that she has “amazing breasts” to be rewarded with an unsolicited photo of them. There’s Jill, 50, who suggests sexting dirty thoughts while “sitting in a restaurant waiting for your food . . . and no one knows what you’re doing.” And then there’s sexting-skeptical Richard, 66, who received a sext while “with a group of colleagues after hours at a restaurant,” and “surprised himself by being less than thrilled.”

These aging sexters have got a good half-century on the subjects of most sexting paranoia pieces, but their story is the same. The “old people are sexting” trend story operates under the same premise as the teenage sexting story. Find a group the public doesn’t enjoy considering being sexually active (minors, the elderly). Reveal that they are sexually active. Then, add technology—the second-scariest topic next to sex— and voilà—something else for David Brooks devotees to clutch their pearls over.

The AARP isn’t slut-shaming the elderly here, but it does insert a good deal of skepticism into the piece. After all, it wouldn’t be a “sexting” article without a degree of alarm. Elder sexting can’t be policed through the traditional avenues—you can’t ground them, and you can’t threaten to slap them with absurd child pornography charges. But surely, there must be some way to convince old people that sending dick photos may not be the way to spend their lunch hour? “But beware, the experts warn,” Leshnoff writes. “Sexting has its dangers, too, especially when it comes to people in the dating world.”

Those dangers? “False advertising.” “Too much, too soon.” “Not everyone likes receiving a sexually charged text.” Someone could steal them and put them on the Internet. And in a sick twist of fate: “the possibility of your teenage kids innocently flipping through your texts.” The article ends on a downer, via Richard: After actually receiving the money shot, “It was like the fun kind of went out of it,” he says.

But despite the pitfalls, the AARP has recognized that old people will probably send photos of their genitals anyway, so we may as well help them sext safely. Their tips: Slowly transition from “I still want to go to the prom with you” to “Forget chocolate, I am craving the taste of you!” Take care to periodically delete nude texts every once in a while. And always remember to “keep expectations based on sexting in check.”

I really like that. Our culture has a tendency to infantilize men and women “of a certain age,” and that includes treating their sex lives as either an unspoken taboo or an inflated cause for concern. I get it: My parents get AARP magazine, and I don’t want to think about them giving these sexting tips a text ride, either (except for the part where they delete the evidence). And the idea of my grandmother sending a perfectly chaste text message is hilarious to me. That being said, aging can present some pretty specific challenges to a person’s sex life—and, like with teens, the worst we can do is refuse to talk about it.

Photo via Ethan Prater, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Hey, ladies. It’s time for another edition of Sexist Beatdown. Up for discussion this morning are girls who hate on other girls when a man gets in the way, and then write pop songs about it. As always, your hosts are that bitchy, popular ho Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, and the adorably geeky woman of your dreams—me! Join us: We promise to pretend to be your friends while we try to fuck your boyfriend and ridicule your skanky dye job.

Sady has already done the groundwork on the “girl-on-girl sexism” phenomenon. In this special genre of pop music, the protagonist ridicules another woman who is either a) involved with “her man,” or b) involved with a man the singer wishes were “her man.” The protagonist typically cites purely aesthetic arguments—But she’s a cheerleader! But she has bleached hair! But she just sucks!—for hating that other bitch and attempting to convince the “man” that he belongs with her. Sady notes that this trend most recently surfaced in Taylor Swift’s beloved hit single, “You Belong With Me”:

It put my hair thoroughly on end, with Taylor pleading over and over again for a boy to just go ahead and dump a girl (who apparently has goals in life outside of obsessively working to please this one dude), in favor of Taylor (who doesn’t). I mean, I know we’re supposed to be rooting for Taylor, because GLASSES, but this whole thing whereby girls who do not conceive of themselves as traditionally attractive deal with this by hating on girls who they think are prettier is just really repulsive to me, and I can’t stand it, especially when it’s framed as “empowering” rather than just insecure and gross. You have a problem with how limiting the mainstream beauty standard is? Fine. TALK ABOUT THAT. I will agree with you. But slamming “ugly” girls and slamming “pretty” girls both amount to slamming girls. So, you know. Less of that, please.

Meanwhile, Notes on Popular Culture has already provided the counterpoint for Team Taylor: “Sady calls the comparison between the two girls ‘girl-on-girl sexism.’ What Sady forgets is that this is what people do. That is what girls do, that is what teenage girls do, this is what girls do when another girl has they guy they like. It’s tame, and pretty damn fair.”

Or is it?

SADY:: let’s talk about ladies who don’t like other ladies! through the universal language of SONG! (the ladies who hate other ladies. not me, or, i would imagine you. let us conduct this discussion instead through the universal language of Gchat.)

AMANDA: agreed!

SADY: first of all, i think we need to separate the lady-disliking-lady song from the you-cheated-on-me-song (as sung by a lady). because both are venerable pop conventions. but one is pretty specifically about disliking a lady, and the other is more about being upset with somebody who cheated on you and referring to the co-cheater as a “tramp” or whatever.

AMANDA: so, you’re saying there is a difference between your unnecessary “I Hate That Bitch” song and your Jolene rip-off?

SADY: i would argue, yes! although… maybe not? (BEHOLD, as i introduce and then disagree with my own points!) because, like, in “before he cheats,” by carrie underwood, she mentions that there is “probably” a “bleached-blond tramp” in this dude’s life before introducing some truly epic automotive destruction on the possible-tramp-liker.

AMANDA: oh … “probably.” see, this is where it gets interesting. because doesn’t carrie underwood appear to have bleached blond hair?

SADY: haha, and the hypothetical tramp sings “fake Shania karaoke” at one point. PROJECTION!

Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats”
Woman: bleach-blond, wavy-haired Carrie Underwood
Other Woman: bleach-blond, straight-haired Carrie Underwood look-alike

AMANDA: and isn’t it innocent-glasses TAYLOR SWIFT HERSELF, ladies and gentleman of the jury, and not bitchy-brunette Taylor Swift, that is the “other woman” in “You Belong With Me”?

SADY: RIGHT! or in “girlfriend,” by avril lavigne, which is basically the same song: “hey hey you you i don’t like your girlfriend hey hey you you i could be your girlfriend why can’t you see you belong with me?” they sort of blur together into an identical message point in my head. also that “don’t you wish your girlfriend were the pussycat dolls” song. there are a LOT of these songs!

Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”
Woman: Redhead glasses-wearing Avril Lavigne, who is “like, so whatever.”
Other Woman: Brunette punk-rocker Avril Lavigne, who is a “mother-fuckin’ princess”

AMANDA: practically the same song, except avril subs in “punky arm-warmers” for glasses. But let’s go back to Jolene for a moment, shall we?

SADY: let’s!

AMANDA: so, instead of trashy bleached-blond hair (or trashy brunette-died hair, depending on the version), jolene has got a smile like a breath of spring, or whatever.

SADY: right. there’s a lot of lavishly detailed jolene-sexiness, which makes the song weirdly kind of ladyrotic, all about the power of another woman’s sexuality.
AMANDA: right … and it raises an interesting point about how these “other women” are romanticized and demonized in song. the “other woman” song is an interesting thing to talk about from a feminist perspective I think. for example, when Dolly Parton is begging Jolene not to take “her man,” she exerts ownership over another human being and even attempts to control another human (jolene) in order to keep that ownership. instead of being like, “fuck it,” which maybe would not have made for a very compelling song, i guess. and so, perhaps you could give a feminist reading to “Girlfriend” and “You Belong With Me” in that these are women reminding other humans that they aren’t property.

Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”
Woman: Can’t compete.
Other Woman: Flaming locks of auburn hair, ivory skin, eyes of emerald green, smile like breath of spring, voice soft like summer rain.

SADY: welllllll… possibly? i think both are actually ABOUT competition over territory (territory = actual human dude). in one case you are trying to lure a dude away, and in another, you are trying to keep hold of him. but, weirdly, i don’t think that is so feminist? because what a lot of these songs do is sort of make the dudes not responsible for who they cheat on you with / who they date, in order to transfer all of the animus onto another woman. women are always sort of the villains, even if it’s a dude who is making the choices you disagree with. compare this to one of my favorite dude-finds-out-his-lady-cheated songs, “take a letter, maria,” in which a dude rolls into the office, tells his secretary his wife’s been sleeping with another dude. then, asks her to draft a divorce letter. then, tells her she’s his girlfriend now. like, the dude just kind of keeps rolling on. the lady is STILL the villain, even in songs about cheating ladies sung from dudes’ perspectives. not the guy his wife slept with.

AMANDA: so … does any dude actually choose his girlfriend based on who writes the best song about why he should be their girlfriend?

SADY: i kind of wish they did!

AMANDA: i dont! i such at that shit!

SADY: well, i think the vast majority of dudes would get a case of The Creeps if we were all under their windows performing dance-offs about them. which DOES kind of make the whole “you belong to me” genre weirdly feminist: it’s women being suitors, not desired objects. granted, it’s in some kind of wacky “i could totally fulfill all your needs better than she can” way, but WHATEVS.

AMANDA: right, and weirdly enough, the guys are hardly humanized.

SADY: exactly. like, it’s not about how dreamy they are or whatever. they’re not singing the dude’s praises. they’re just like, “WANT DUDE! DUDE MINE!”

AMANDA: it’s possible that these “empowering” other-woman songs are just co-opting the worst aspects of traditional male courting behavior. one of the things that irks me about both You Belong with Me and Girlfriend is the assumption that, well, the guy belongs with them.

SADY: yeah! exactly! like, Dude can’t choose who he wants to date? MAYBE THE FACT THAT YOU ARE ALWAYS IN THE WINDOW MAKING MOONEYES AT HIM HAS CREEPED HIM OUT, Taylor Glasses!

AMANDA: it’s the same old shit where a dude feels entitled to harass a woman because that’s what is supposed to happen when you like a girl, no matter what she says about you—like, “no thanks,” or “just friends”

Pussycat Dolls, “Dontcha”
Woman: Not hot like her.
Other Woman: Hot.

SADY: yeah, exactly. like, the whole “Nice Guy (TM)” bit of jargon we’ve coined to describe dudes who whine about how they’re so awesome and girls STILL won’t go out with them and the fact is that they’re just kind of chasing the wrong girls around? that seems, weirdly, to be present in some gender-flipped form in “You Belong With Me.” Taylor Swift is a Nice Girl (TM) and it is freaking me out a little.

AMANDA: or pretending to be friends when they’re really trying to get a boner. full disclosure, I find that song catchy and I listen to it whenever it’s on the radio, which is all the time, which is why I know enough about this song to have this weird reservation about one of the lyrics. you pointed this out, as well, but when Swift says that evil bitchy girlfriend “doesn’t get his humor” and freaks out when he says certain things, it always seems obvious to me that the guy is saying something so monumentally douchey, and Taylor Swift is just lining up to be like, “I won’t call you out on being a douche.”

SADY: yeah, exactly. like, i have seen girls do this. the whole “i get boys” thing, that in practice always seems to be about siding with boys when girls call them out on being sexist and/or douches. and i don’t know what it is – being known as a “guy’s girl” can give you some power, or an illusion of power, in certain circles – but to me I always get post-traumatic Tucker Max flashbacks to when he’s like, “but some of my FRIENDS are women! some of my FANS!” and, yeah, but maybe those girls are just biting the bullet and/or deluded enough to think that your douchiness will never affect them unless they laugh along. basically, i think “You Belong With Me” is a song about how Taylor Swift wants to date Seth McFarlane. that is what i think it is. i will never apologize.

AMANDA: maybe they would be cute!

SADY: he could talk to her in the voice of a mean-spirited british baby and/or laconic dog.

AMANDA: that other bitch just doesn’t GET that like she does.

SADY: EXACTLY. you know, though, i have been forced to come to the conclusion that everyone in the whole entire world likes taylor swift a little bit more than i do. like, my over-the-top dislike of taylor swift may in fact be wrongheaded and the result of being hit in the head with a skipper doll as a small child or something. people in general don’t dislike taylor swift as much as i do, so there is maybe something wrong with me. and i would like to apologize to taylor swift, for whatever i have written about her in the past, using a girl-hating-(i think?)-another-girl-song lyric. from destiny’s child. it reads: “you know i’m not gonna diss you on the internet / cause my mama told me better than that.”

AMANDA: i heard that song on the radio the other day. taylor swift has, essentially, said the opposite about her career: she’s said that all her songs are about dissing people who have wronged her in some way.

SADY: OH GOD. SHOULD I BE WORRIED?

AMANDA: (Yes). But i can’t help but thinking that—with all her deliberate high-school-band-geek-goofy-glasses image—taylor swift maybe has underestimated how much people were going to Totally Fall In Love With Her. she’s the most successful artist right now, and smoking hot, and she’s writing a bunch of diss songs, which probably won’t play for very long. just a bit of career advice. because i know a lot about the music business. so … you’re doing her a favor, is what i’m saying, and i can’t wait to see what wig taylor swift wears in order to play you in her upcoming single, “I Didn’t Know He Had A Nazi Shirt On, You Bitch.”

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 romance born out of  aggressive homophobia?

This week: pro-life gay man worries that if he could have children, his pro-choice boyfriend might kill them; how to talk to a girl without being a creep; your boyfriend is cheating on you to avoid rumors he’s on the down low.

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

Sex Tips: In this edition of the AU Eagle’s triple-threat sex column, Buster Darkhole, Maxwell Hillcrest, and Amber Sparkles take on the issue of  . . . ideological rifts in on-campus relationships. How apropos!

The inspiration: A pro-life man writes in to ask if his crush on a pro-choice man is too immoral to pursue. “While he and I can’t have children, it’s more the idea that if we had children he would be OK with killing them,” he writes. “Is this enough to kill a relationship?” I bet you weren’t expecting Buster Darkhole’s response: “let me just say that it is a relief to find another pro-life gay on this campus.”

Life Lesson: The American University community contains at least two pro-life gay men.

Progressive Meter: Sorry, my brain just exploded attempting to accurately gauge the progressiveness of this situation. I think we’ll split the odds and go for a 5.

—

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

Sex Tips: The Diamondback’s latest advice column schools undergrads on how to “start up a conversation without seeming creepy.” Columnist Esti Frischling’s suggestion: ” The rule is this: Any guy can get any girl. . . .  If you approach this situation knowing without a doubt that you are going to get some serious ass, your actual chances improve drastically,” she writes. “Seeing as you already know you’re going to get with this girl in the near future, you can certainly start to relax around her. Suddenly, imagining her naked in class changes from awkward and creepy to fun and clairvoyant. . . . Keep in mind: You are the man.”

Life Lesson: She wants to fuck you.

Progressive Meter: Assuming that a strange woman wants to have sex with you whenever you like will inevitably lead to complications. As one commenter notes, it ain’t the first time she’s doled out this advice. So much for the “without seeming creepy” part. Zero.

—

HOWARD UNIVERSITY

Sex Tips: In this Howard University Hilltop opinion piece, Morgan Winbush attempts to get to the bottom of Howard’s “dating double standard.” She writes: “in a man’s world; you have to be on top of everything including your woman and your relationships. . . . Messing around with other women feed into the need for a man to feel as if he is needed. The more women who ‘need’ him the more he is solidified as a man possessing the qualities that are ‘manly’ and thusly proving himself to be the leader of the pack when it comes to female dependency. ‘Is he gay?’ ‘Is he on the DL?’ — the more female partners a man has the less likely these labels will be placed on him.” But aggressively proving one’s heterosexuality ain’t just for men any more: “times have progressed and women want just as much ego rubbing as their counterparts.”

Life Lesson: Your boyfriend is cheating on you so that nobody thinks he’s gay. At least now you can get in on the homophobic fun, too.

Progressive Meter: Winbush makes a good-faith effort to encourage fellow students to embrace female promiscuity alongside the traditional male version. In the meantime, she raises the specter of the guy on the “down low” without even giving a positive shout-out to the campus LGBT contingent. Three.

Photo by Ollie Crafoord, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Yesterday, Feminist Law Professors drew my attention to the Miami Daily Business Review’s “Rodent” column, a weekly anonymous rant written by various members of the legal community. The latest missive, “Lady Lawyers Should Dress the Part,” warns female attorneys that they may be sabotaging their careers with overly sexy business attire. Actually, I think it’s more likely that the conveniently anonymous Rodent, who spouts off platitudes like “women who dress like Barbie dolls get treated like Barbie dolls,” is the force that’s keeping women down in the workplace.

According to the Rodent, otherwise capable female lawyers are ruining their chances at being taken seriously by forgoing pantyhose, wearing heels, and revealing their cleavage:

Women who dress like Barbie dolls get treated like Barbie dolls. I know a lawyer who is in her mid-30s. She is stunning—tall, long blonde Lady Godiva hair and a body that would make a porn star jealous. This woman also happens to be a crackerjack lawyer. But she dresses to emphasize her looks, not her mind; as a result, her career seems to have stalled. Though she is an extremely bright woman, no one sees past the stilettos and low-cut blouses.

The vermin continues:

Clients tend not to hire women who look like hookers unless they hire them as hookers. Don’t show your “girls” at work unless you are looking for a one-night stand.

All right, let’s hear one more:

I knew an associate who wore shoes that looked like she was a bridesmaid. She was a good lawyer, but there was a real disconnect between those gold sandals and the notion that she wanted to go the distance as a lawyer. She didn’t, and the shoes were a tip-off.

The Rodent’s theories are convenient: The lawyer who looks like a porn star stumbled because her shoes are too high. The lawyer who looks like a bridesmaid is not serious about her job because her shoes are too strappy. The lawyer who looks like a hooker is not successful because her breasts are too prominent. Beyond the offensiveness of grouping female professionals into categories like Barbie, porn star, hooker, and bridesmaid, the Rodent appears to be going to great lengths to deny the obvious. Perhaps the lawyer who looks like a “porn star” is devalued because people think she’s too attractive to be smart, not because she dresses like a Barbie. The lawyer who wears anything other than a turtleneck is devalued because she’s got boobs, not because she dresses like a hooker. And the lawyer who looks like a bridesmaid, whose strappy shoes are a “tip-off” that she’s not a serious lawyer? That sounds like a pretty insane explanation for a career misstep to me.

The Rodent, of course, is attempting to explain away a more offensive aspect of the legal profession: women are consistently partnered and paid less than men are. A commenter on Feminist Law Professors draws the obvious comparison between devaluing a woman’s work based on her attire to outright sexual harassment. She writes that men have informed her of the harassment rule: “If she’s going to dress like trash, then she’s going to get treated like trash.”

Blaming a woman’s clothing choices for her professional failure is simply a strategy for selectively discounting women without being called on your sexism. All you have to do is project your biases on to “her choices,” and you can discriminate away.

This becomes clear when the Rodent gets specific about what aspects of a woman’s appearance are unacceptable. Interestingly, several of the Rodent’s tips are not specific to female lawyers. “A tattoo that shows is NEVER appropriate when you are a female attorney,” the Rodent writes—as if face tattoos are generally accepted among lady litigators’ male co-workers. The Rodent then offers up a weak defense for focusing on lady ink—women sag. “I promise you that once you are a woman of a certain age, your skin will lose elasticity, and that cute Asian saying . . . simply won’t look good when it’s sagging.”

Many of the Rodent’s recommendations are inconsistent. According to the Rodent, “Frumpy is the opposite end of the spectrum, and I see a lot of that these days, too. Looking like an unmade bed—wrinkled clothes, no makeup, dirty hair—doesn’t inspire much confidence either.” Apparently, femininity-enhancing attire like heels are unacceptable, but makeup is required. The anonymous ranter also points to Condoleezza Rice as an acceptable style icon, even though Rice hardly shied away from figure-hugging, sexy-heeled outfits in her tenure as Secretary of State.

The lesson we can learn from this is that the standards regulating female appearance are largely arbitrary, and are designed that way to keep the door open for criticism. Men may either be labeled “sloppy” or “professional,” but women must also navigate between being “frumpy,” “professional,” and “overly attractive.” And since the “too sexy” meter can often be set off by simply looking like a woman, not dressing like one—having breasts, hips, legs, and a waist—hitting the right note can be a lot more difficult than learning to knot a neck-tie.

Feminist Law Professors’ Bridget Crawford concurs with the Rodent on some points:

I myself am on record against visible toes in the office, so I am inclined to agree with the Rodent on this topic. . . . Displays of exaggerated female sexuality (cleavage, heels, etc.) are tools that some women attempt to use to their benefit. Kathleen Bergin explains this in her article Sexualized Advocacy and the Ascendant Feminist Backlash Against Female Lawyers . . . the Rodent reminds us that the same tools can be used against women, too.

I agree that this double standard—be attractive, but not too sexy—is used against women in the workplace. But I disagree with the Rodent’s conclusion that the solution to workplace sexism is for women to modify their behavior by buttoning up and trashing the sandals. Apparently, no matter what a lady lawyer wears, there will be some vermin waiting on the sidelines to tell her it’s not appropriate.

Photo by markusram, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

As it turns out, I’m not the only one hoping that the widespread media coverage of date rape drugging will die down a bit. A fraternity on the University of Arizona campus has been accused of sabotaging 10,000 campus newspapers in order to cover up a small item in which a woman alleged having been drugged and possibly sexually assaulted at one of the frat’s parties.

The copies of the Arizona Daily Wildcat containing the offending “Police Beat” item were apparently removed from their racks and strewn on the outskirts of campus shortly after publication on Oct. 8. The Daily Wildcat pinned the sabotage on the fraternity named in the piece, Phi Kappa Psi, after the Spanish homework of members Alex Cornell and Nick Kovaleski surfaced at the site of the discarded newspapers—a revelation the Phoenix New Times astutely notes mirrors a plot point from the 1998 film The Big Lebowski. The New Times phoned Phi Kappa Psi President Keith Peters “to find out if two ‘pledges’ were really dumb enough to steal 10,000 free newspapers and then leave their homework with the stolen stash.” Peters declined to comment.

The student paper later received less hilarious evidence linking Phi Kappa Psi to the crime—e-mails from friends and relatives of fraternity members confirming that the theft was engineered “under the orders of fraternity leadership.” Despite the paper’s leads, the University of Arizona Police Department closed the case “without questioning any Phi Psi members.”

Nevertheless, the prank has directed significant campus attention to the original item, a modest 250-word crime brief. It’s clear that Phi Kappa Psi severely miscalculated their damage control over the drugging accusations. Even on a college campus, a straight item on an attempted date rape will hardly cause a stir. An item on a fraternity’s elaborate—and absurdly botched—plan to keep that attempted date rape item hush-hush, on the other hand? People actually care about that.

But let’s get back to the reason this 10,000 paper cover-up is so offensive in the first place: Apparently, the fraternity really, really, really didn’t want people to know that its parties may feature date rape drugs. Below is the original crime report that Phi Kappa Psi was so afraid of getting out there. (Heads up for the future, boys: Newspapers are on the Internet these days). According to the alleged victim’s testimony, she experienced symptoms of GHB after attending a Phi Kappa Psi party in September:

The woman claimed that on arrival, a fraternity member she knew gave her a drink. Later, an unidentified man gave her another drink. The woman told police she had assumed both drinks contained vodka, as they were both colorless. The woman reported that at approximately 11:30 p.m., she had begun feeling “overly flirtatious.” The woman also claimed to have experienced a loss of both hearing and bladder control. The woman told officers that her friend had walked her back to her residence at the Arizona-Sonora Residence Hall at approximately 1 a.m. on Sept. 27, at which point she vomited. The woman’s friends later told her that between the hours of 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 26 and 1 a.m. on Sept. 27, she had made out with three different men at the party. The next day, the woman looked up GHB online and believed she had experience its symptoms. She also told police that she had attempted to contact the fraternity president and had left several messages at the fraternity, but had received no replies. She told officers she was reporting the incident to document the event in the hopes of preventing any future sexual assaults.

Photo by kenlund, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

When Laura Ingraham covered hosting duties for Bill O’Reilly on the O’Reilly Factor last week, she sought out to answer the age-old question: Why do feminists hate Sarah Palin so much? Hmm—I can think of a few reasons. The resulting discussion between Ingraham, Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn, and Republican pollster KellyAnne Conway produced some pretty interesting theories. Let’s check them out:

Theory #1: We hate her because we’re childless spinsters.

CONWAY: I think of some of the spinster childless columnists who have attacked this woman for her right to choose . . .

INGRAHAM: Can you name names?

CONWAY: . . . and have five children. There are too many to name and then it would make them relevant on such a great show.

INGRAHAM: Spinster columnists, OK.

—

Theory #2: We hate her because Todd is cute.

CONWAY: . . . I think she makes some women feel inadequate because she has five children, no household help. Not only is she not anti-man, but she has, as we could tell, a supportive husband and father.

INGRAHAM: And cute, too. He’s real cute.

CONWAY: . . . the extended family. He’s cute to go.

—

Theory #3: We hate her because Palin lost weight after having the 5th baby we never had because we were too busy being childless spinster abortionists without cute husbands:

CONWAY: . . . And look, she lost all her baby weight. It makes some women crazy. They’ve got 1.3 children and a Pilates schedule they have to keep, and it makes some of them crazy.

QUINN: . . . Well, let me just say first that she has a point about people being jealous about her losing her baby weight. I have to say.

NGRAHAM: OK, we’ve gotten that out of the way.

CONWAY: But you did too, Sally.

INGRAHAM: I got that.

QUINN: No, I’m crazed about that.

INGRAHAM: Right.

QUINN: And I have to admit it right here.

INGRAHAM: You’ve always been fit.

QUINN: Yeah.

INGRAHAM: So we’re not going to hear that from you.

—

Theory #4: We hate her because she’s a woman:

CONWAY: And look, I just want to say this, that with Palin, she looks so feminine. She acts like a woman, but governed like a man.

—

Theory #5: We hate her because we’re jealous that she’s pro-life:

INGRAHAM: Admit it right now. Palin is hot. She is pro-life. She shoots. She hunts. She has a big family. And all these feminists are like just seething with jealousy about it.

—

Theory #6: We hate her because she is against everything that we stand for:

QUINN: . . . I have to say that of all the people I know, I don’t know a single person who feels jealous about her. I think that most of the people I know who are not Sarah Palin fans just don’t like what she has to say.

Photo by lifeisaprayer, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

A friend* pointed me to an interesting divide in the Maine election results: While only 47 percent of Maine voters opted to keep same-sex marriage legal, a full 59 percent voted to legalize medicinal marijuana. By my expert analysis, that means that a significant percentage of Maine’s voters are raging potheads who hate gay people.

Here are the latest election results:

Overturn same-sex marriage:

Yes: 53 percent

No: 47 percent

Legalize Medicinal Marijuana:

Yes: 59 percent

No: 41 percent

So, which residents of Maine are fighting for their right to get high while expressing their disregard for the civil rights of gay people? My friend floats a theory: Frat guys?

* In order for me to steal his idea, he insisted that he be described as “sexy.”

Photo by wstryder, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Last we checked in with Dr. Ruth Jacobs, president of the Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government, she was explaining why transgender women should not be allowed in her bathroom: “If somebody with an opposite body part is allowed in to a ladies’ restroom—a guy who has a penis, who could put his penis inside my vagina—what am I to do?” Jacobs said. “We need to be able to retain the right to speak up about men in our bathrooms without being labeled bigots.”

Okay! Well, now Dr. Jacobs is back to apply her anatomical expertise to the issue of gay marriage. Let’s see what she has to say!

Thanks to Metro Weekly for getting this all on tape. Here are the money quotes:

* “An anus was designed for exit, not entrance.”

* “Who will protect the children?”

* “Once it becomes law, you cannot opt out . . . students are terrified to be taken out of sex ed. They get on their knees and beg to their parents to be included. Because, to be outside is to be labeled the conservative. To go to the library while everyone else is in class having sex ed, means that you then—when you refuse to go to sex ed, you then become the group that is discriminated against.”

* “46 percent of black men . . . are HIV positive” (No).

* Marriage and the vagina and the penis are designed to go together, and the penis and the anus do not.”

* And a dose of reality courtesy of Councilmember David Catania: “If your testimony is that you’re only eligible to marry if your population has a low HIV rate, the first in line . . . are lesbians. So based on your testimony, we could only marry lesbians.”

First up: “A Milli,” a track off Tha Carter III:

Relevant Lyrics: “The Bible told us every girl was sour / Don’t play in her garden and don’t smell her flower / Call me Mr. Carter or Mr. Lawnmower”

Feminist: Weezy’s lawnmower is here to destroy all those antiquated ideas about female sexuality.

Misogynist: A man’s lawnmower chopping up a woman’s flower is not exactly the most sex-positive imagery.

—

“Mrs. Officer,” a song about a sexy cop.

Relevant Lyrics: “Doin a buck in the latest drop/ I got stopped by a lady cop/ She got me thinking I can date a cop/ Cause her uniform pants are so tight . . . And I know she the law, and she know I’m the boss / And she know I can hide above the law / And she know I’m raw, she know it from the street / And all she want me to do is fuck the police.”

Feminist: He’s attracted to women in positions of power!

Misogynist: . . . as long as their pants are tight, and he can neutralize their authority by pulling out his wang.

—

“We Like Her,” a song about wanting to fuck every girl in the world. Every single one!

Relevant Lyrics: “Open up her legs then filet mignon that pussy / I’m a get in and on that pussy / If she let me in I’m a own that pussy / Go’n throw it back and bust it open like you ‘posed to / Girl I got that dope dick / Now come here let me dope you / You gon’ be a dope fiend / Your friends should call you dopey”

Feminist: Every woman is beautiful.

Misogynist: Just beautiful enough for Wayne to declare ownership of her genitals and describe their courtship in sexual assault terms.

—

“Lollipop,” a song about oral sex.

Relevant Lyrics: “I get her on top / She drop it like it’s hot / And when I’m at the bottom / She Hilary Rodham.”

Feminist: He just name-checked Hilary Rodham. In a positive way! And without the Clinton, even!

Misogynist: I’m not sure that riding Weezy is exactly the type of women’s liberation Hil is working for.

—

“Prostitute Flange,” a song about not caring if your lady previously turned tricks.

Relevant Lyrics: I wouldn’t care if you were prostitutin’ / That you hit every man that you ever knew / See it wouldn’t make a difference / If that was way before me and you girl.

Feminist: An anti-slut-shaming anthem: Her sexual history is not an issue, even if she had sex with every man she has ever met. That’s pretty progressive!

Misogynist: Well, the history is unimportant as long as it’s ancient—”way before me and you”—and as long as she’s now only his forever: “Three letters: I do.”

—

“Project Bitch,” a track from Lil Wayne’s Hot Boys days.

Relevant Lyrics: Wayne’s contribution to this track is devoted to the ladies who ” be puttin’ they mouth on it / and they suck everything out of it / and they catch it and swallow it. . . . When I come through in a Rolls Royce / I leave them with no choice / but to hop up in it an just let me make they throat moist.”

Feminist: Hmm.

Misogynist: Yeah.

This week, anti-abortion activists staged an eBay auction to help raise a legal defense fund for Scott Roeder, who was charged with murdering abortion provider George Tiller back in May. With the auction, anti-abortion activists were hoping to capitalize on Roeder’s newfound notoriety by selling off a series of his signed, pro-life memorabilia.

But before the items could hit the virtual auction block, eBay announced that the memorabilia would be removed from the Web site. In a statement, the company said that it would “not allow listings that promote or glorify violence, hate, racial or religious intolerance, or items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.”

St. Louis cartoonist Gary McCoy had a more personal beef with the auction: It totally ripped off his work.

Among the offending items listed for auction: A cartoon presumably penned by one of Roeder’s fellow inmates and kindred spirits, Jason Dubrowski. The cartoon depicts a newspaper clipping that reads, “Late-term abortion provider killed. Pres. Obama ’shocked and outraged.’” Beyond the paper is the cartoon’s ironic payoff: rows of graves, each marked “Aborted Baby.” It’s signed: To all you prolifers, thanks for your support. Scott Roeder.

McCoy, a conservative cartoonist who regularly addresses abortion in his work, published that very same image back on June 1—minus the alleged murderer’s salutation. Today, Cagle Cartoons, which syndicates McCoy’s work, recognized Roeder and Dubrowski’s cartoon as a near replica of McCoy’s effort, and called the incarcerated duo out for their plagiarism. As the syndicate’s blog notes, Roeder “seems to admit” the theft in the cartoon’s eBay listing: “His name is Jason Dubrowski and is one of the best artists I’ve seen in here . . . The drawing of the field of babies tombstones with the newspaper headline comments of Obama was done after a Christian newsletter printed this illustration which a lady in Valley Center sent to me.”

McCoy was not impressed with the tribute from “one of the best artists” in prison. “I was extremely upset to learn that my cartoon was being plagiarized in order to defend Scott Roeder,” says McCoy, who was alerted to the misappropriation this morning by friends, colleagues, and even Roeder’s estranged wife, Lindsey. Lindsey called McCoy to inform him that Roeder had previously sent both her and her son a copy of McCoy’s original cartoon from prison. Clearly, Roeder was a fan.

McCoy claims he only intended the cartoon to condemn abortion, not support murder. “It was merely my attempt to comment on the contrast between Obama being outraged over Dr. Tiller’s murder, and his lack of action on abortion,” says McCoy. “Look, I’m pro-life. But I don’t condone the killing of abortion doctors. Most legitimate pro-lifers condemn that action. Only the fanatical fringe do that sort of thing, and it really upsets us.”

Roeder and Dubrowski aren’t the only ones who have insulted McCoy’s work this week. eBay’s response to the auction “kind of irked me as well,” says McCoy. “They say they don’t allow listings that promote or glorify violence, and it kind of bothers me that they thought my cartoon promoted violence. I’m glad they took the cartoon down, of course, but I wish they had made it clear that they removed it because it was a plagiarized cartoon, and not because my cartoon was violent.”

Kathryn Holmquist’s little piece of horrific sex advice—sometimes, girls, it’s “too late to say no”—has evolved into a more advanced discussion on this blog. The question: Why should women be required to say “no” in the first place?

The “no means no” mantra that Holmquist is railing against is itself pretty old-school. “No means no” operates on the outdated assumption that men are the “scorers,” women are the “gatekeepers,” and the goal of every sexual encounter is for men to sneak past a woman’s line of defense and get her to not say no. In this model, the default setting of women’s bodies is “available.” Only by verbalizing a “no” can a woman signal that her body is not up for grabs. In recent years, that bullshit has been replaced by more progressive models which focus on raising the consent bar from “absence of no” to “enthusiastic yes.”

On the other hand, “no” is still a really helpful tool for women to use when they must quite urgently communicate to a person that, actually, he does not own her body. Mrs. D lays it out:

“no” should be said, clearly, when the first unwanted interaction occurs. A guy starts to get handsy, you push his hand away, and say “no, stop it.” You’re making out with a guy, and he wants more, you stop what you’re doing and verbally make it clear you’re not interested in more. Most women won’t do this…they’ll do a fully choreographed routine to get away from him without directly telling him no. That is social conditioning imposed on women that needs to change.

She makes a good point: Because women are consistently told that their bodies are public property, it can be a pretty transgressive, frightening, and even dangerous move to tell a man “no.” Saying “no” communicates to a man that he does not own you, and if you’re dealing with a rapist, he may not take too kindly to that suggestion. This power gives “no” its effectiveness, but it also makes the word sometimes difficult to verbalize. (At this point, I’d like to stop and administer another big fuck-you to Kathryn Holmquist for making saying “no” even harder).

When is it difficult to say “no”? Obviously, if a person is passed out drunk, it can be impossible to verbalize a no. It can also be difficult to say “no” when there is a physical and social power dynamic encouraging you to stay silent—when your sex partner is stronger than you, older than you, more respected than you, more confident than you, 0r simply maler than you (remember the part about everyone just assuming that men have a claim on a woman’s body?) In other words, it can be difficult to say “no” when you find yourself in a rape scenario.

But acquaintance rapes present a peculiar barrier to saying “no.” In an acquaintance rape, the power dynamic is a little bit different—you may be hanging out with someone who is bigger, stronger, and maler than you are, but you know them and you trust them. You’re friends. That implicit power imbalance doesn’t even enter your brain. A couple of comments left on a Daily Kos piece on rape discuss how that sense of security can make “no” a lot more difficult:

Yesterday, City Lights Editor Mike Riggs revealed that he dressed as “Trailer Trash Zombie” for Halloween this year, a costume he claimed was “not even a little bit” sexy—“unless short denim shorts, suspenders, a camo ball cap, a black sabbath tee with no sleeves, and really upsetting face paint is your idea of sexy.” Now, we have the photo evidence to judge for ourselves. Is Trailer Park Zombie sexy? Is it just offensive? Or is it one of the rare offensively sexy costumes?

Keep this tidbit in mind, courtesy of Riggs: “also, the shorts progressively shortened through the night as I (a) ripped pieces of them off and (b) pulled them up over my gut.”

AshleyMadison.com, an online dating site that facilitates extramarital affairs, has never been too popular among moral conservatives. Earlier this year, Deroy Murdock argued on Human Events that Ashley Madison has edged out gay marriage as the number one threat to traditional matrimony. Now, cluck-clucking conservatives won’t have to choose between the cheaters and the gays: Ashley Madison has begun marketing itself as a place where the married can pursue their same-sex attractions, too.

Ashley Madison’s gay (and bi-curious) population is modest, but growing. Worldwide, the agency hosts 4.7 million members seeking extramarital affairs. Of those, only 143,427 are seeking some same-sex action. About two-thirds of Ashley Madison’s same-sex seekers are women looking for women; one-third are men seeking men. Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison’s CEO (married, two kids), says that his service provides a necessary sexual outlet for gay men and women who are trapped within the confines of traditional marriage. “There are men and women who, for whatever reason, might have been motivated to pursue a traditional marriage because they did want to build a family,” Biderman says. “Unfortunately, in our culture, their sexuality is still at odds with that arrangement.”

In an age when marriage equality is gaining serious steam, helping closeted gays escape their repressive straight marriages seems downright altruistic. But Ashley Madison isn’t so progressive as to encourage gay men to marry each other. “They’re not looking to leave their families,” Biderman says of the same-sex contingent. “They’re looking to have this on the side.” Ashley Madison is not here to release gays from the closet—it’s here to offer them a peek outside before returning them safely to nuclear family life. Meanwhile, it invests in the repression. “I don’t want to call it ironic, because people who find this ironic assume that we’re a home-wrecking service,” Biderman says. “We’re not. We are a marriage preservation service.”

Nobody relies on the preservation of traditional marriage like Ashley Madison. Ashley Madison’s motto, “when divorce isn’t an option,” seems strange in a country where no-fault divorce makes it easy to reset one’s relationship status to single. But Ashley Madison is not designed for folks willing to ruin their home lives so transparently. The service relies entirely on secrecy and discretion—what skeptics might call “lying” and “self-delusion.” “This is not a service for people in open marriages,” says Biderman. “There are sites out there for the courageous ones—the swinger couples who have found the courage to say, ‘I love you, but I need to do something different in the bedroom,’” he says. Ashley Madison, on the other hand, is for people who “can’t voice their sexual concerns to their spouses, because they are terrified of the repercussions,” he says. “There’s this notion that people who engage in infidelity are lying and deceitful,” he says. “But people wouldn’t have to lie if these more realistic sexual options were socially acceptable.”

As soon as those “realistic sexual options” are accepted, though, Ashley Madison goes kaput. The service wouldn’t be making any money if people weren’t terrified of communicating with their spouses. Besides, secrets are hot. Ashley Madison’s branding centers around the service as a sexy, hush-hush taboo. Ashley Madison may have built an empire out of facilitating transgressions, but its continued success lies in reinforcing the traditional. Biderman’s business will only remain viable so long as its members continue to invest in conservative, heterosexual marriages which reinforce monogamy. “People have told me, ‘Oh, you should open Ashley Madison in France,’” says Biderman. “I tell them, ‘You know, I don’t think they need me.’”

To date, Ashley Madison has only identified a need in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. In order for the service to expand, Biderman has got to locate other cultures that are currently struggling between the repressive and the progressive. “Places like Brazil offer an interesting dynamic, where infidelity among men is extremely high and among women it’s much lower,” he says. “There’s no reason to believe you can’t be wildly successful there. There is an incredible opportunity for a global phenomenon.”

Biderman’s latest campaign to make this an Ashley Madison world has, so far, failed to reach its full potential. “We always thought there would be a marketplace for same-sex affairs, but it’s been difficult to cultivate it,” says Biderman. “We could probably stretch those legs further, but there are so many obstacles to advertising our brand. We have enough difficulty advertising infidelity—think about the problems we’d have marketing to same-sex infidelity. I cant even tell you one avenue where I could effectively market that.”

Ashley Madison’s target demographic —people who lead conservative lifestyles but secretly yearn for a transgressive kick—is difficult to target. Social conservatives, remember, are obligated to respond to businesses like Ashley Madison with concern, outrage, and calls for banning. Ashley Madison claims to support the institution of marriage. Other American institutions have proven less than supportive of Ashley Madison. Recently, police kicked a tanker truck advertising Ashley Madison affairs out of the city of Philadelphia. Earlier this year, an Ashley Madison commercial was deemed too hot for the Superbowl. “We’ve got the Parent Television Council saying these ads are reprehensible,” says Biderman of the Web site’s conservative backlash. “There’s this huge fear to have any sort of conversation about sex.”

As a result, Ashley Madison’s marketing strategy has attempted to awkwardly straddle the divide between the conservative and the progressive. In one television spot, targeted toward women, Ashley Madison is offered as an alternative to a life married to a sexist pig. This husband arrives to an anniversary dinner late, leaves early, and in the meantime, ogles other women and implies that his wife is fat. Cheating on this guy practically constitutes a feminist act. The ad targeted at men contains no such progressive bent. In this version, the poor man’s wife isn’t a jerk—but she’s fat, and she snores, too! This man is encouraged to cheat on his wife for more, shall we say, traditional reasons: he just wants to fuck someone else behind her back. And there’s nothing progressive about dudes doing that.

Ashley Madison’s new PR push advertising same-sex affairs may further alienate the conservative base it requires to stay relevant. Then again, perhaps the gay element is just what Ashley Madison needs to keep conservatives abreast of its services—and curious about exploring its taboos. Every time a religious conservative declares a sexual practice an affront to human decency, a new conservative kink is born.

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

When the action moves to the uncontrolled environment of a car, a park or a private home, the rules blur. When a boy goes “too far”, this is date rape. It can be devastating, with the girl feeling betrayed and no longer trusting her own instincts. She may live with the emotional pain of it for years. And all because she believed that it’s never too late to say no.

Well, that’s an interesting approach. Personally, I would think that telling boys and girls that they must respect their sex partners’ stated boundaries, no matter what, would help us all avoid rapes. Remember: Rape is sex without a person’s consent. A reasonable person would argue that the problem here is the person who forces a non-consenting person into sex. According to Holmquist, the real problem is the person who refuses to consent to the raping:

The worst advice you could possibly give would be to tell her that she can always say no, even when she is no longer in control. Girls, just like boys, need to be told about the likely consequences of their actions.

To Holmquist, telling girls that they can’t say no after they’ve crossed an arbitrary purity line—after they’ve gotten into the car, kissed too deeply, wore too short of a skirt, had one too many drinks—will encourage girls to remain completely chaste until they’re ready to go all the way. While this theory would do absolutely nothing to prevent rape, it would help reduce reported rapes: If we adopt Holmquist’s logic, girls who are sexually violated will no longer recognize their experience as rape, because they’ve been told that even the most modest of sexual activities—kissing!!—implies consent to the kitchen sink.

Holmquist continues:

This is not to say that “ladies” don’t get date-raped. Nor am I saying that girls who behave in a certain way deserve what they get. What I am saying is that girls, if they want to act like boys—getting drunk and being sexually predatory—have to understand that a boy, if he is that way inclined, may take advantage. And boys, for their own protection, need to understand that a drunk girl who he thinks wants sex, may turn around the next day and accuse him of rape. Both are responsible for this tragedy.

Actually, boys can get a valuable heads-up on that rape accusation a lot earlier if “drunk girls” are simply allowed to verbalize their lack of consent before the rape happens. And girls are a lot more likely to escape from an unwanted sexual situation if they’re not robbed of the only recourse they’ve got. As LiveJournal user nacbrie points out, saying “no” is often the only way that victims can “opt out” of a given sexual scenario, on account of the physical and cultural power imbalances that are generally at play in rape. So as long as we’re holding girls responsible for their own rapes, can Kathryn Holmquist be held accountable for some tragedy, as well? Because anyone who thinks that the best strategy for reducing rape statistics is to make young girls complicit in their own rapes is a tragic figure indeed.

According to media reports, this Halloween was gearing up to be the sexiest, most infantilizing, super sexiest, most racially insensitive, nipple-suspender-y Halloween ever! So, how sexy was it? I surveyed the staff of the Washington City Paper to find out.

Account Executive Nikki Caporale, who dressed as Domo from Yo Gaba Gaba Japan, Target, and 7-Eleven, says her sexiness was not hindered by the body-engulfing cardboard. “It was sexy in the mysterious kind of way,” she writes. “Lots of people wanted to know what was inside the box, wanted to get in my box. . . . I met a really cute French Bevis and we made out while I was wearing the box. I later took it off so I could dance/make out with Bevis some more.”

Andrew Beaujon, Managing Editor, appeared as himself. Beaujon didn’t opt for a costume this year, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t sexy: “The bar is pretty low in Del Ray. I wasn’t wearing polar fleece and did not have a cellular telephone clipped to my belt, so yes, compared to the other dads, I was exquisitely Sexy.” Later, Beaujon found some competition: “There was a grown woman who came to our door in a witch costume at about 4:30, which was just weird, not Sexy. Later I saw her walking on a different street in just her bra, or maybe she’d switched to a belly-dancer costume? Looked like a bra. Does that count?”

Terri Holtz, Senior Account Executive, dressed as the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She says the costume’s full-body coverage, including requisite head-covering, was “closer to nun’s clothing”—ironic, perhaps, for a character who tempts the virginal Snow White with the poison apple of sin:

The other cartoon characters at Holtz’s party, however, were less than modest. Like the guy who dressed as Sexy Dr. Manhattan. As far as I know, the dimensions of Manhattan’s junk were never revealed in Watchmen, so this guy decided to improvise with a semi-erect rod and a couple of Christmas ornaments:

Speaking of Sexy Cartoon Characters: I went as the cat that Pepe Le Pew thinks is a skunk, a costume I thought to be fairly innocuous until I stumbled upon one very Not Safe for Halloween anime porn rendering of the minor Looney Toons character, to which I will not be linking. (OK: Just Google image search “Penelope Pussycat” with Safe Search off, and she’ll be on the first page):

More from the no-picture-attached crowd: Receptionist Alicia Merritt dressed as Janis Joplin, which she says included a “little cleavage,” but mostly “sloppiness.” Staff Writer Ruth Samuelson dressed as Lady Gaga dressed as Minnie Mouse, a costume that was sexy only “IN THEORY. BUT CHEAP WIGS ARE NEVER SEXY. I HAD ON A REALLY CHEAP WIG, AND THE PLASTIC HAIRS KEPT STICKING ON MY LIPS. I THREW IT IN THE GARBAGE AROUND 12:30.” (I don’t know why she’s yelling). City Lights Editor Mike Riggs dressed as “Trailer Park Zombie.” Was it sexy? “Not even a little bit,” he writes—”unless short denim shorts, suspenders, a camo ball cap, a black sabbath tee with no sleeves, and really upsetting face paint is your idea of sexy.” (It is).

Account Executive Nick DiBlasio went as “Scary no eyeballs guy,” a costume he claims was not sexy. I think he’s just being modest (second from the right):

Web Programmer Will Mitchell went as a pizza. It wasn’t sexy.

Leave it to the Atlanta contingent to sex up City Paper’s Halloween. Brooke Hatfield, Art Director based out of Creative Loafing HQ, redeems us all with her Sexy Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

Last week, I wrote about some disturbing Internet comments posted in the wake of the Richmond gang rape that blamed the victim for drinking alcohol. The post inspired some really positive responses . . . and more disturbing Internet comments.

Alex makes the case for victim-blaming—at least girls will now know “the possible consequences of decisions.” Decide to have a beer, maybe you’ll get gang-raped: A valuable lesson for young girls:

In all fairness, just pointing out that she did not act in the most intelligent manner is NOT the same as saying she deserved it. You’re right, no one deserves to get raped, however, there IS the lesson here which is to be aware of your surroundings and of the possible consequences of decisions you make. Why SHOULDN’T this be used as a lesson. If one less girl decides maybe she shouldn’t have another drink or walk home alone because of this story, then at least we have gotten something out of this awful situation.

Joe commends Alex for his bravery, and agrees that one high school gang-rape ought to inspire women everywhere to stop drinking and never walk alone:

Yeah, I agree with the one brave person who pointed out that there is a difference between excusing criminals and blaming victims, on the one hand, and pointing out how to be safe, on the other. And you are not required to view everyone who comments as either feminist enough for you, or a hateful victim-blaming rapist-defender. Where is real life in this? In real life, unfortunately, we can’t just rail against the bad things people do and hope they will stop, we also have to conform our conduct to our knowledge that people do those bad things and are probably not going to stop. It is not excusing muggers to suggest someone stay out of the alley at 3 a.m. It is not excusing abusive cops to suggest someone cooperate with the police even when they have done nothing wrong. And it is not excusing rapists to suggest someone behave according to their knowledge that there are rapists.

Watch as BakinCookies inserts enough qualifying phrases to attempt to slide his or her victim-blaming past the censors:

Men need to learn how to respect Women better and with that said, Women also need to learn how to have respect for themselves and their bodies! This applies to this article in so many ways, im doubting it was consensual because she was beaten and robbed Therefore men should respect women more! But she could have been Flirting a little and tempting the men to force themselves on her. Either way someone or all of them were lacking respect in some way which totally sucks for the girl. But we will never know the whole truth cause people fabricate stories to fit their needs. Im not makin excuses for the boys im just sayin, Ladies respect yourselves And maybe men will respect you too.
Either way rape is rape and its not right!!

Jane, for one, doesn’t see the difference between blaming the victim and blaming the perpetrators. Also, something about racism?

It’s funny how all the people who chide those who opportunistically use this terrible misfortune to lecture women on how to ‘behave’ themselves don’t hesitate to use this terrible misfortune to lecture others on how to raise boys, respect another gender, etc.

However, maybe this event had little to do with gender and respect for women. Maybe it had more to do with race. Maybe the attackers saw the victim mostly as a white person upon which to vent their hatred of whites. Likewise, maybe all of the people who walked by without care for the girl did so because they had no affinity with nor sympathy for a white person.

Maybe the lesson here isn’t how women should behave, or how boys should behave, but how minority groups (including whites among predominately black and latino persons) should be wary of those who aren’t their kind—because it’s all too for majority gangs to treat minorities as sub-humans unworthy of the most basic consideration and respect.

Of course, unlike the other moral instructions people are retrofitting to this event, one of race consciousness and caution isn’t a particularly trendy sermon to preach. So people instead will preach the sermons that will get them gold stars pasted on the foreheads by either their right-wing cohorts or their women’s studies professors.

Sarah suggests that rape can be solved with more rape:

I don’t know about anyone else, but at 15 I was drinking (mind you, at home, with my gal pals and my parents around). I don’t see anything wrong on her behalf. If these men (or were they her age?) get away with this, there is something seriously wrong with society and the judicial system. I hope (since I don’t pray) that she gets the best of mental health care to overcome this. And I hope those guys are anally raped by huge 12 inchers in prison thrice a day (:

B thinks the victim wanted it:

Rape is a crime, but girls are getting wild and boys will be boys no matter what. I know by fact that is part of the deal to be raped by all the gang member before you can get in!. Girls are playing strong games and now someone got hurt very bad and the news are not working with real facts. LETS GET THE FACTS FIRST! IS SHE CAPABLE TO SPEAK OUT AND FIND OUT MORE IF SHE WAS GOING TO BE PART OF THE GANG!! Our society is allowing to much violent shows on Television and part of that is the imitation of tv in real life.

And Johnny is sick of all of you people:

Why do you guys comment on this stuff? Why write long paragraphs about your supporting or differing opinions? It doesn’t do anything, it’s just a waste of time.

Photo via stevechasmar, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

This week on the Sexist, we tackled sex, drugs, boobs, and racism. In no particular order.

1. The 10 Worst Sexy Halloween Costumes, in which this shit is almost over, I promise.

2. The Sex-Ed Gender Divide, in which sometimes, when a woman meets a man she loves very much, she still needs different out of her sex ed experience.

3. How to Inform a Friend Their Halloween Costume Is Racist, in which we attempt to dissuade a fellow trick-or-treater from her “Sexy Illegal Alien” get-up before someone kicks her ass.

4. WJLA’s Breast Cancer Report Won’t Blur Boobs, in which an educational breast-baring is hailed as exploitative

5. The Date Rape Drug Is An Urban Myth. Let’s Put it to Rest, in which the conversation on acquaintance rape needs to change.

Photo via the George Eastman House

ABC News has picked up the story of local ABC affiliate WJLA’s series on breast cancer detection. WJLA has courted national media attention for its decision to televise a local woman’s self breast exam, un-draped, un-blurred, and unedited. ABC News, for one, remains committed to blurring the boobs: “for our purposes, we are showing it without any full nudity,” the segment explains.

Just so you’re clear on that: WJLA’s news story on self breast exams will show the boobs, but ABC’s national news story on the WJLA news story that showed the boobs will not show the boobs.

I understand the reasoning here. WJLA showed the boobs for a very specific reason: To help women learn how to correctly perform their monthly self breast examination, a teaching moment that’s been made difficult by the news media’s reluctance to showing boobs on the teevee. ABC News’s story isn’t educational, so they don’t share WJLA’s rationale for filming breasts.

But ABC News’ choice to blur out the breasts raises a different problem for the network. ABC’s story is all about whether television stations should show naked breasts on television, or whether they ought to blur them out. “The move has been met with criticism from people who believe it’s inappropriate to show women’s bodies during the 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. news,” the story reads. “[C]ritics say the reports’ airing during a key ratings period suggests the station was exploiting women for gain.”

Too bad ABC News can’t take an objective look at this issue. It’s obvious where ABC News stands: They blurred them out!

They didn’t have to do that. They could have avoided the breast shots altogether. Instead, they replayed WJLA’s breast examination at length—and they blurred it out. And then they showed the (blurred) breasts again. And again. And again. They just kept playing the same shot of a woman examining her breast, accompanied by a large white box that shifted with the woman’s movements to make sure the nipples remained un-slipped.

WJLA showed a couple of breasts in order to help women avoid a terminal illness. ABC News, on the other hand, slapped a scare-tactic white box over the body of a woman who dared to help other women detect cancer. You know what that says to me? It says that protecting an outdated puritanical code against showing women’s bodies is more important than preventing women from dying. So, which network is exploiting women for gain?

Don’t believe me when I say that people actually think drunk girls deserve to get raped? Let’s take the case of the 15-year-old California girl who was brutally gang-raped at her homecoming dance for hours in front of dozens of onlookers. Apparently, the victim had been drinking. For some people, that turns her horrific rape into a valuable morality tale that will put the fear into our nation’s drunk girls. Helpful Comments points us to some not-atypical online reactions to the story:

Good news, criminals: As long as everyone in your general vicinity is sippin’ on a beer, you may rape, murder, and pillage at your leisure!

Group drinking. That says it all. Booze will bring out the best in people. (yea go have another one) Perhaps the boys are not all to blame. The young lady had one too many.

Blame it on the alcohal:

I’m a 15 year old girl in New York, and I’m sorry to say this, but isn’t it possible that witnesses saw her get drunk with alcohal and belived she willingly participated as an effect? I’m sorry, but she shouldn’t have drunk alcohal to begin with. I’m not saying she deserved it, but she should’ve been much, much wiser. Getting a ride from dad was intelligent, but she should’ve kept to herself and concentrated on meeting her destination instead of hitting the beer at such a late hour, away from the gym. Agian, I’m this girl’s age, and I asure you that while I do sympathsize with the victim, she also has made very unwise mistakes on her part.

It’s official: “I’m not sayin’ it’s her fault . . . ” is the new “I’m not racist, but . . . “

wait wait wait…..she was drinking prior to this? hmmm. im not sayin its her fault or she deserved this or anything but shes 15 and drinking outside on a bench by herself in a dress….as much as people want this to be a perfect world, its not. what she was doin in the first place was asking for trouble. if your not gunna be smart about the choices you make, im not gunna feel bad for what happens. it sucks she was raped and she will never forget this and it will hurt her for the rest of her life, but come on lets be smarter than that.

One commenter took the presence of alcohol as an opportunity to float this theory: Even though the girl was gang-raped, beaten, robbed, and hospitalized, maybe it was SHE who raped THEM:

These poor misdirect young men will all be exonerated by the court when they get a good lawyer. Young men that are only guilty of allowing a girl that was drinking to take advantage of them. The reason no one went to call the police was that she was a willing participant. No more then that, she was the one who instigated the sexual activity. Why else would so many fine young men in that community be involved in such a heinous deed.

How about #7, NOBODY DESERVES TO GET RAPED YOU STUDPID IDIOT:

#1 Its Richmond High.#2 Its dark.#3 Your a 15 year old girl.#4 You accept the invite to go off in a dark area of campus and consume a larg amount of booze with a low life crowd.#5 Geeeeee, I got raped!#6 Duuhhhhh!These guys are low life scum bags, your 15 and you want to get drunk with them!YOU STUDPID IDIOT

Photo via Trendhunter

Jessica Simpson never played Lilith Fair. Shame, really. Back when Simpson co-hosted the Nick and Jessica Variety Hour with then-husband Nick Lachey, the pair brought on Jewel to perform one of Simpson’s “favorite songs”: “Who Will Save Your Soul.” Seemingly unable to help herself, Simpson joins in to add her pouty bravado to the mix. I’m not too big of a fan of Jewel doing Jewel. But Jessica Simpson doing Jewel? Priceless.

Earlier this week, we looked at the popular fear of date rape drugs, and how that fear helps distract us from acquaintance rapes that involve willingly ingested substances, like beer. Beer, you say? In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I talk booze—the most common date-rape drug, the cause of a shit ton of other problems, and a pretty fun thing to drink, in moderation. After the jump: we bemoan the double standard of passing out, yearn for a consentalizer test, and check in on how our femininity is holding up—it’s tipsy, thanks for asking!

SADY: hello! good evening! it is time to discuss date rape drugging, or so i hear!

AMANDA: it is that allotted time!

SADY: first of all, i have to say that your take on the whole scenario was (AS USUAL!) highly impressive and nuanced.

AMANDA: well—some issues were perhaps underrepresented there. there are A LOT OF ISSUES. with this ISSUE.

SADY: well, this whole report – that date rapes involving date rape drugs are less rare than date rapes involving date drinking—is kind of set to be a highly polarizing thing. like, some people have been like, “see? the floozies are just out getting drunk! and making up accounts of druggedness!” and others are like, “there are, too, date rape drugs!” and what impressed me about your take was that you didn’t (a) minimize assault, or (b) discount that date rape drugs might in fact be less common than acquaintance rape without that factor involved.

AMANDA: I saw that Broadsheet had already written a pretty thought out post that discussed why some women might report being drugged when that was not necessarily the case—and obviously, i read the Daily Mail’s amazingly stupid take on it which suggested that women are big drunk liars—so i thought i’d focus on the media’s focus on date rape drugs. which is so interesting, because even calling them “date rape drugs” is misleading—the narrative really suggests that when this does happen, it’s mostly strangers swooping in with these drugs, and not “dates” per se.

SADY: yeah, exactly. and this is a terminology flaw which i myself have fallen victim to: using “date rape” to mean “rape that was not the stranger-jumps-from-bushes-with-gun” sort of rape, rather than “rape by one’s date,” which is what it should (and does) mean. i mean: i have to tell you. i don’t doubt that date rape drugs are used. a friend of mine just told me a story about how she suspects she may have been drugged, and although she was not assaulted, all the details line up.

AMANDA: oh yes! that is a point that i realized after i wrote my piece! it’s possible that druggings are more common than they appear in these studies, but they do not lead to assaults. and that can skew the data, and getting drugged is still an awful thing to have happen to you, even if it doesn’t end in assault. [Note: Marcella Chester has since counted the ways that the data on drink-spiking can go awry. Read it!].

SADY: right, it’s still a violation.

AMANDA: but the whole issue of rape is an issue of skewed data, because reports are so infrequent. but i would THINK—and i dont know this—that reports of drug-assisted rapes are higher than those that don’t involve drugs. because the media is pretty clear about reviling dudes who drug women, and less clear about reviling men who rape women who are drunk.

SADY: yeah. exactly. like, if you’re drunk, it just means you’re a big old mess and/or tramp anyway, and probably you were just drunk enough to “have sex” and “regret it” and etc.

AMANDA: and i think that “reporting” difference is true anecdotally as well—they may not even tell their friends or their boyfriends or what have you, or they will tell them and they’ll be discounted. Etc.

SADY: whereas if you were DRUGGED, you can clearly point to an outside agency in getting you to the point where you could not give informed consent.

AMANDA: right. there’s a degree of “proof” that society accepts with those rapes.

SADY: yeah, and, i mean, i have to tell you: i like to drink. i’m having a drink as we speak! and i am a lady who’s pretty smart about listening to my body, drinks-wise, and not having more than i can handle. but there have been occasions – whether i didn’t have enough sleep the night before, or forgot to eat lunch, or whatever – where A Normal Number of Drinks magically became, for that night, One Too Many Drinks, and i ended up in a messy state. and I was always surrounded by people who cared enough for me to point out that i was a mess, and call me a taxi, and whatever. but HOW SHITTY WOULD IT HAVE BEEN, STILL for someone to assault me in that state? i mean, why the fuck are Drinks considered an extra culpability on your part?

AMANDA: i too love drinking! and perhaps that should be disclosed whenever i defend ladies who like to drink against charges of flooziness! so, FULL DISCLOSURE, drinking! but so: the researchers note that drinking can be sometimes unpredictable, and if your diet or sleep or mood is different it can affect how alcohol affects you. so when, a couple weeks ago, my boyfriend told me he “felt like he had been drugged” because his level of hangover way outstripped the number of drinks he had, i thought it was kind of interesting. but i didn’t actually think he HAD BEEN DRUGGED. though i suppose that’s possible. but i feel like, perhaps, when women are unexpectedly slammed with alcohol—and particularly if they are assaulted while in this state—they may be told over and over again that these experiences are a result of being drugged. i’m not sure if that actually ever happens. but i DO know that if a woman was ever considered unreliable because she reported she was drugged and raped, and it turned out she wasn’t actually drugged, then that would be very sad.

SADY: yeah, exactly. and that’s the thing: while saying you were drugged can be pointed to as an example of how you didn’t exercise agency in the matter (which is important for rape survivors, because as we all know making Bad Decisions means you totally shouldn’t have the right to pursue a criminal sentence for someone who had sex with you against your will) it is also a wedge that can be used to destroy your credibility. which is why women i’ve known who came to the conclusion that there must have been some drugging involved in their assaults have been hesitant to come forward, because they’re afraid that would be used against them. which, in that case, what was your crime? having too many drinks? FALLING ASLEEP????? not to be a big old spoiler, but dudes get to have too many drinks and fall asleep all the time! i mean, a gentleman of my personal acquaintance had too many drinks and was wandering around and got – apparently – randomly beaten up by some dudes in his neighborhood, and as far as i know the police did not tsk-tsk him for wandering around all drunk and beatable.

AMANDA: i know. dudes get to have SO MUCH PASSING OUT without the consequences! and young dudes still binge drink a lot more than women do, not that you would realize that given the media attention given to the matter. male drinking tends to be a bit invisible, i think—it’s just something men do, so there’s no excessive fear about it. even though men are more likely to be victims of violent crime than women are. i mean, there are fears about men drinking, but they are fears about literally drinking too much and dying from drinking too much. not fears about drinking too much and getting raped, or even drinking too much and raping another person.

SADY: which maybe SHOULD be a fear. i think this is an important point: these studies which say women who have been raped frequently have also been drinking? they maybe miss the point that women have been drinking while in an environment where everyone – dudes included – is also drinking. and i genuinely think that, if ladies have these regimens over watching their ladyfriends’ drink consumption and making sure they are safe, dudes should also have people watching them to make sure that they don’t get to the point where they are legitimately too drunk to even get what consent MEANS.

AMANDA: yeah. and, i mean, it would help if kids knew what consent means before they knew what “body shots” means. i think it should be on the driving test, personally.

SADY: yeah. that’s a worrisome statement i just made, because it seems to remove some culpability from the rapist. but i suspect that (a) assholes who drink become bigger assholes, and (b) since we all recognize that a drunk asshole is liable to get in a bar fight or whatever, we should also recognize that a drunk asshole might be an asshole who is even more inclined to rape than he was previously.

AMANDA: yeah. it seems that while society’s prescriptions for female drinking include “drinking correctly”—covering your glass, going with friends—male drinking is just defined by “drinking more.” which—again—i like drinking. and if my drinking becomes a personal problem, that will be bad for me. but if my drinking becomes a problem for other people—like i end up raping women or hitting my kids when i’m drunk—then that’s something that REALLY needs to be addressed by society.

SADY: yeah, precisely. and the reason i think this relates to date rape drugs (ha, remember those? HI, date rape drugs!) is that, you know, they exist. and even if they exist less than rapes which occur while the rapist and/or the victim were drinking, that’s still a problem. one incident of someone drugging a person in order to rape them is too many, i would estimate. but the fact that rape occurs more often in proximity to alcohol – well: first of all, i can recall being pressured to drink A Bit Too Much by certain dates, so i think it’s reasonable to state that alcohol can also be an agent of coercion. and, (b) people drink. Specifically young people who want to socialize. As an extremely shy person who is far less shy after drinking, I get the reasons for this. And the fact is that if alcohol coincides with rape, this DOES NOT MAGICALLY REMOVE THE FACT THAT RAPE IS BAD from the equation!

AMANDA: exactly. and i think a lot of it comes down to ladies drinking, because drinking is a dude thing, and when ladies drink it means they’re, horror of horrors, ACTING LIKE MEN, or taking away dude-time, or revealing that drinking does not actually make you more masculine and / or awesome. but sorry, dudes, i’m not going to stop drinking!

SADY: yeah! i mean: i think the Horror of Drinking is the Horror of Unladylikeness, presented in vaguely medical terms. fact is: yep, when ladies drink a bit, they let down their various guards and DO NOT always behave in the manner in which society has accustomed us to expect from ladies. they get loud. they get a bit rude or wacky, at times. they EVEN make out with people that they would otherwise be constrained from making out with! (and oh, how I know that feeling.) BUT, with all the loud and wacky and unladylike behavior they are engaging in, GUESS WHAT? you still don’t get to assault them! because we are not in Ye Medieval Tymes any more, and rape is not just something that happens to Virtuous Women of Goode Renowne. it can happen to ladies who are acting up, too. and, miraculously, it is still a crime. just like you don’t get to rob somebody because you think he is a jerk.

AMANDA: yeah. ok, do you wanna break? i think i’m going to go buy some beer

SADY: do it, lady! ENJOY YOUR BEERS. YOUR BEERS OF FREEDOM.

Photo by jbcurio, Creative Commons Attribution License

Tonight and tomorrow, WJLA will air a four-part series on breast exams called “Touch of Life: The Guide to Breast Self Examination.” The series will show real women performing breast exams—and it’s not going to blur out their boobs.

The Washington Post notes that the full-frontal treatment is a departure of traditional television coverage of breast cancer screenings which feature “female breasts typically depicted only in X-rays or tastefully draped.” Which raises the question—how do you tastefully drape a boob? And what’s the point of filming a breast self-exam if you can’t see how to examine the breast? WJLA is attempting to resolve the second question: General manager Bill Lord told the Post that “the station consulted medical experts who said news reports on breast-cancer detection haven’t offered enough detail to teach people how to do an exam properly.”

But some are wondering if the station is really showing the breasts in order to save lives, or rather save their ratings—by showing boobs! On the teevee! Skeptics have pointed out that (a) it’s sweeps week, and (b) the network sent out a press release announcing, in “bold, underlined type,” that “This unique television event will include a clinical demonstration of a breast self-exam without obscuring any of the breast area.”

The station won’t catch any of the FCC’s indecency flack for the program, as news reports are exempt from the rules. Lord says he’s hoping to quell the inevitable viewer outrage by prefacing the series with a “viewer discretion” warning. Any viewers who might object to WJLA’s breast display should probably reserve their criticisms until they hear the story of 28-year-old Lauren Albright, one of the women who agreed to have her exam filmed by the station. In the Post:

The station’s first report features a 28-year-old woman from Northern Virginia, Lauren Albright, who volunteered to be led through an on-camera self-exam by an oncologist. She is shown examining her bare torso in a mirror and on an examination table, in both close-up and medium shots. Reporter Gail Pennybacker says in a voice-over that Albright took the “extraordinary step of baring herself” to teach women how to do the exam.

Albright, a nurse who lives in Alexandria, said it was “empowering” to tell her story on camera. “I’m not looking to change the world,” she said, “but if one person benefits, I’m happy.” Albright said a breast self-exam helped her catch her cancer early. She underwent a bilateral mastectomy after the TV report was filmed in early October, and now faces four months of chemotherapy. She says her prognosis is good.

Photo by euthman, Creative Commons Attribution License.

Lilith Fair—everyone’s favorite all-female music festival of the late ’90s—is coming back next year, and it’s slated to make a stop in Washington, D.C. I am torn.

On the one hand, it was great to see so many successful female musicians all sharing one stage—the original 1997 line-up included Sarah McLachlan, Meredith Brooks, Paula Cole, Shawn Colvin, Natalie Merchant, Joan Osborne, and Jewel. On the other hand, who the fuck wants to listen to that shit?

Lilith Fair was never an event for people who happened to end up catching Sarah McLachlan in concert once—that can be excused. This was an event for people who wanted to shell out cash to listen to Sarah McLaughlin and thirty of her closest musical artists play for hours and hours and hours—sometimes simultaneously. On multiple stages. And the sheer intensity of the folk-rock therein is straining my ability to type without using italics.

To be fair: Lilith Fair also hosted some pretty fucking cool artists over the years—artists like Missy Elliot, Queen Latifah, Tegan and Sara, Liz Phair, and some group called Medieval Baebes, which has got to be awesome. The new tour has yet to announce any touring artists, but it’s likely that in 2010, Lilith Fair will go a bit lighter on the adult contemporary than it did ten years ago. I see that the new tour Web site is already revising history a bit to emphasize Lilith Fair artists who have retained popularity—like Christina Aguilera, who played just a couple of dates in Lilith Fair in 1999, but is now second on the list of the tour’s big-name alums. Personally, I’m really hoping that Lilith Fair will be able to pull this one out: It will recruit a bunch of awesome female artists, help some up-and-coming female musicians find an audience, and raise a ton of money for women’s charities.

But what if it doesn’t? What if Lilith Fair can’t recover from its reputation as a jasmine-scented, hippie-dippy folk-fest featuring Jewel? After all, Sarah McLachlan is still organizing this thing, and since she just put out a new album single titled “One Dream,” I’m not sure that her career has exactly evolved with the times. But the question isn’t whether Lilith Fair has got its pulse on 2010 musical tastes. The question is whether today’s most exciting female artists will even agree to play at Lilith Fair. Are we going to get Lady Gaga, or are we going to get Evanescence?

While we’re waiting to find out, I dare you to watch every single one of these videos from 1997 Lilith Fair contributors. If you want to get the real festival feel, put them all on and listen to them simultaneously.

Sarah McLachlan, “I Will Remember You”

Paula Cole, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone”

Meredith Brooks, “Bitch”

Jewel, “You Were Meant For Me”

Joan Osborne, “One of Us”

Shawn Colvin, “Sunny Came Home” (Actually a performance at 1997’s Lilith Fair!)

Natalie Merchant, “Carnival”

Photo by radiobread, Creative Commons License

The folks at Overturn Roe have put together an instructional video to help you burn your very own effigies of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid this Halloween, instead of engaging in normal human activity like dispensing candy to children. According to Overturn Roe’s set of “Marching Orders” [PDF], demonstrating that our Congressional leaders are going to burn in hell if they don’t repent for making us pay for child killing in the health care bill is not going to be easy. “Decide you are going to do this—no matter what—even if it is just you and 2 other people,” the orders read. “Do not ask permission; do not ask for peoples’ opinions as to whether or not you should do this.”

Alright then. Let’s get started!

1. Be sure to spend a lot of money on this. Pick up your corporate effigy at Kinkos and Home Depot: “Hi, I just sent you a PDF of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. I want that in full color, on paper, 3 foot by 5 foot.”

2. And time.

3. Even when it’s not burning, it should look like it’s burning.

4. Alienate your friends. When you invite people to your effigy burning, “Get a FIRM answer. ‘Maybe I’ll be there’ means ‘no.’ ‘I’ll try to be there’ means ‘no.’ Your heart will be grieved before this is over, because people who you thought would join you won’t. (Some people are terribly afraid that their reputation will be hurt.)”

5. Don’t tell your religious leaders. “If you have a pro-life Priest or Bishop, invite them to come. If they are not really pro-life, don’t waste your time. And if you are afraid of them trying to talk you out of it, do not ask them, unless you can ignore their bad counsel. (That is why I said in #1 to just decide that you are doing this no matter what.)”

6. You should probably also get these sunglasses.

7. Annoy the media. “If you do a great event, and a few hundred cars see you, this is good. If your local TV or Radio or Newspaper or Internet Papers cover you, you reach thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions. This is great. It is critical that you follow these instructions EXACTLY as we give them to you.”

8. Then, ignore them. “You are free to say the same thing, over and over, hammer your point. If you feel a reporter is trying to get you to say something you do not want to say, just ignore the question, and say your message. For example, you could say: ‘That’s not the point: The point is it’s immoral to perform abortions and distribute contraception’ and ‘Would Notre Dame honor Pilate after he condemned Christ to death?’”

9. Burn. “If you don’t know how to start a fire, ask a Boy Scout.” Or, just unload a shitload of lighter fluid into your backyard.

10. Buuuuuuuuurn. “We suggest you check what your local ordinances are on open flame.”

Yesterday, a reader wrote in with an interesting conundrum: How do you politely explain to a friend that their chosen Halloween costume could be racist? Commenter CA lays out the issue:

Obviously, there is a market for costumes that are based on racial discriminations. But I am guessing that the majority of people who purchase these types of costumes are not doing so out of blatant racism, but more out of ignorance that the costume is offensive, or that they are perpetuating a stereotype.

A good friend of mine’s Halloween costume is just one of these types of costumes. My question is—how do you tell someone, and not just tell them, but explain to them, why a costume like that is offensive? Not everyone has acquired this level of cultural understanding/sensitivity to latent racism (for lack of a better term?) (I know for me it was in college, in a race and media class, that these types of realizations came onto my radar. It was one of those “ah-ha” moments.)

So what is a simple, nonconfrontational and constructive way of telling someone “your costume is racist” or at the very least “your costume could be perceived as racially offensive by many people” ? Thoughts?

Your mission—sensitively informing a friend that their Halloween joy is a product of racial stereotype—is a valiant one. But given the high level of defensiveness surrounding accusations of racism, the conversation will likely turn tricky. I don’t have any personal experience with The Your Halloween Costume Is Racist Talk, but I have read some tips from other sources that might help you out.

* Don’t make it personal. Try starting a general conversation with your friend about a well-publicized racist Halloween costume—not hers—and comments you have read from people who have been offended by the costume. This “sexy illegal alien costume,” which was hopefully not your friend’s choice, would make for a pretty good jumping-off point to talk about two common issues in Halloween costumes: (1) visual jokes which imply that certain groups of people are not fully human, and (2) “sexy” costumes which tend to objectify racial minorities. Last month, meloukhia, the author of the wonderful blog this ain’t livin’, described how avoiding direct accusations can help people learn the error of their ways:

So, recently, I made a stupid comment on the Internet. I know, shocking. And someone else responded to the post I commented on, and pointed out that my comment was stupid without explicitly calling me out on it, simply by talking about the issues in the post. It was actually pretty sly, because I read that comment and was like “right on,” and then realized “oh, wait, this person is kind of talking about the fact that I AM AN ASS.” I thought it was a great correction, because it allowed me to respond honestly and without defensiveness.

Perhaps your friend will realize on her own that her costume is kinda racist, and start thinking of some other options.

* Realize that they will probably take it personally anyway. It’s likely that your trick-or-treat buddy is going to be pretty attached to her Halloween costume idea, especially if she’s already shelled out for her “sexy squaw” wig. A person’s investment in their chosen Halloween costume goes far beyond the price-tag. This shit can get emotional. Your friend has probably been imagining herself wearing her outfit for the past couple of weeks, and has definitely tried it on—maybe more than once. Nobody likes to be called on their racism, ever. But on Halloween, when a person’s unintentional racism is nevertheless put proudly on display—when it becomes their very identity for an evening—the possibility that your friend might react defensively is pretty high.

At this point, it might be to helpful to point out that members of the group that stand to be offended by your friend’s costume have to live with their marginalized identities 24/7. Your friend may think you’re trying to ruin her Halloween fun. But really, racist stereotypes ruin a lot of people’s fun every day of their lives, and delicately making that clear may convince your friend that changing up the costume isn’t too much of a sacrifice. Alternately, perhaps you can suggest how she might convert her costume elements into a less offensive final product?

* Ask your friend if she has any reservations about wearing the costume in public. Just straight up ask her if she’s worried about any indigenous Alaskans seeing her Sexy Eskimo Costume. Sometimes, offensive costume wearers don’t even consider the possibility that a person from the minority group they’ve dressed as will actually see them. Georgetown student Anna Bank realized this when she confronted a fellow student about his Halloween costume last year. The guy, who had dressed up as Georgetown sexual assault suspect the “Georgetown cuddler,” expressed to her that he “hoped that nobody who was a victim of the cuddling actually saw his costume, because he thought that that might be upsetting.” Sometimes, the simple realization that the people a racist costume is meant to lampoon actually exist— and will likely be at your Halloween party—is enough to make a costume-wearer reconsider.

* On the other hand, perhaps your friend likes the costume because it is racist. Some people do wear costumes because they find the absurd stereotypes hilarious . . . on an “ironic” level. The theory—I assume—is, “Oh! Look at that horribly racist costume targeted at women from the Middle East! I will wear it to point out how awful the costume industry has become!” Here, it is probably enough to point out that even though your friend does not intend to be racist, that strangers won’t be aware of her intentions just by looking at her.

If anyone knows any other helpful strategies, please file them in the comments. And if anyone ends up speaking with a friend about this issu —or simply plans to confront any racist-costumed strangers they spy on Halloween night—please let us know how it goes.

French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévi is back to explain why Roman Polanski ought to be released from prison already. Add this one to the long list of Polanski defenses: Polanski is a human!

Lévi writes for the Huffington Post:

Time is passing. And Roman Polanski is still in prison, goes to bed and wakes up in prison, sees his wife one hour a week in the visiting room of a prison—all while his 11 and 16-year-old children, when they have the courage to go to school, have to confront the gaze of friends who have heard at home that the dad of the little Polanskis, the man everyone fluttered around vicariously via their children, the parent of a student that they were exhilarated to recognize on TV the night of the Césars, was ultimately a criminal, a rapist, a sodomite, a pedophile.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/for-roman-polanksi_b_336126.html

Roman Polanski, the argument goes, is just like you and me. He has a life! A wife! Children! A César award! Okay—maybe Roman Polanski isn’t the ideal stand-in for the Rapist Everyman. But film accolades aside, Lévi’s point is that Polanski has been a very visible and productive member of society in both his professional and personal life. The implication is that happily married men can’t simultaneously be criminals, good fathers can’t also be rapists, and international award-winners can’t find the time to prey on children.

Our tendency to strictly separate the categories of “rapist” and “human” is something we’re going to have to deal with again and again once we really start dealing with sexual assaults and the people who commit most of them—people with lives, wives, and children, if not Polanski’s fame and fortune. It’s not going to be easy to expand our idea of “rapist” to encompass otherwise upstanding members of society, but I think the continued media attention on Polanski’s case will help us get there. If the public is willing to believe that one of the most celebrated film directors in the world is capable of rape, maybe they’ll also be willing to consider less sensationalized rape cases with an open mind.

Photo via Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary, Wikipedia Commons

Last night, The New Gay editor Zack Rosen set out to determine once and for all whether all those heteros who flock to the Dupont High Heel Race every year are there to support the gay community, or just mock all the queens in dresses. This year, the pre-Halloween drag queen race was pushed into the political arena by a little administrative switch: Instead of a parade permit, the race secured a First Amendment permit, shifting the balance a bit from party to protest. So, are people who love watching gay guys stumble around in stripper heels as enthusiastic about supporting marriage equality? According to Rosen’s findings: Kinda.

A sign on a nondescript building at the intersection of 14th and Corcoran Streets NW has no doubt caused its share of confusion. Here’s what it says: “‘D.C. Wrestling Club, Inc. remains open for business, however there will be no Men’s Parties until further notice.”

Passersby are now aware that the building has got wrestling, but no parties. What the hell does that mean?

As it turns out, only those steeped in the doings of the city’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) know what’s going on here. The cryptic sign fronts 1618 14th St. NW, the hosting address for something called “Men’s Parties,” a nightly anonymous-sex event that provided mattresses, glory holes, and snacks for a $14 “donation.” On Oct. 4, a reveler at one of those parties died after apparently falling down a set of stairs. The accident prompted the city to temporarily shut down the “Men’s Parties.”

For now, hard-up, often-closeted gay men are no longer slipping in and out of 1618 for no-questions-asked romps.

Quashing a clandestine sex club, however, doesn’t happen without some legal complications. For about 15 years, an organization called the D.C. Wrestling Club has served as the administrative front for Men’s Parties. At the time of the man’s death, the D.C. Wrestling Club was not open for business—its domestic nonprofit status had been revoked by the DCRA, a result of lapsed paperwork.

But in the meantime, the club refreshed its filing with the DCRA, reclaiming its (largely symbolic) corporation status. When the city secured its temporary restraining order against the D.C. Wrestling Club, it required club president David J. Butler to post that peculiar sign on the club’s front door.

The D.C. Wrestling Club has been restored, but it can no longer serve as a front for sexual activity. So what does a real “wrestling club” do?

According to the club’s 1994 articles of incorporation, the organization was meant to provide a “social club” for “sports enthusiasts, especially of collegiate wrestling.” An old online advertisement posted on a gay wrestling Web site expands on the club’s activities: “The DC Wrestling Club grapples Tuesdays from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Sundays from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.,” it reads. The advertisement boasts one amenity: “New mats.” According to the ad, “all skill levels welcome,” but members must be over the age of 18. The style of play “ranges from rulebook, to submission, to slower paced back and forth workout…whatever two guys want to do.”

The “rulebook” technique sounds traditional enough. And “submission,” despite its sexual connotations, is also a form of wrestling that requires the loser to signal his defeat, verbally or physically, in order to end the match. But given the sport’s homoerotic potential, it wouldn’t be difficult for a private wrestling match to lead to “whatever,” and that’s where the line between the D.C. Wrestling Club and “Men’s Parties” becomes unclear.

The advertisement appeared on the Web site of Metro Wrestling, which bills itself as a “gay-friendly freestyle wrestling club for adults” based in New York. Metro Wrestling is big on wrestling, low on the whatever. Like the D.C. Wrestling Club, Metro Wrestling advertises biweekly practices—enough to ready its members for competition in such international contests as the Gay Games and Outgames. Brent Minor, who heads up the District’s gay sports teams for an organization called “Team DC,” says the District’s gay wrestling scene lacks a competitive arm. Team DC coordinates gay rock-climbing, cheerleading, and water polo teams, but Minor says that the D.C. area has “no real wrestling team to speak of.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

I, for one, am celebrating. First: the research suggests that women aren’t regularly being drugged on their night out—wonderful news! But it also means that we may finally retire all the media scare-tactics, the girls-night-out drink protection strategies, and mercifully, every single absurd product that has arisen out of society’s inflated concern of drink spiking—and has dangerously distracted the rape conversation from addressing the real experiences of victims.

Confession: I have always been a roofie skeptic. This is not to say that I’m an all-out Date Rape Drug Denier: I do think that these drugs exist, and I do believe that some women have been drugged by men who intend to rape them. I just think that this happens about as often as the classic stranger-rapist-in-the-bushes scenario—in terms of real rape statistics, hardly ever. A 2006 study of 120 date rape cases in the United Kingdom revealed that 119 of the cases involved alcohol, but only two involved the date rape drug GHB. Of course, those two cases are not insignificant, and the experiences of women who have been drugged should not be discounted. That being said, these numbers just don’t support the widespread fear that girls’ nights out are being sabotaged by amateur druggists.

But despite my reservations about the actual risk of “date rape drugs,” I have completely assimilated to the behavior modifications required by the “date rape drug” myth. When I step away from my beer, I’ll tell a friend to watch over my glass. When I’m sitting at the bar, I’ll nurse my drink close to my body. I will go so far as to take my beverage along to the bathroom while I’m having a piss. And I’m not alone. According to a study in UK’s More magazine, “77 per cent of women claimed to keep hold of their drink even when they go to the toilet.”

I blame the date-rape-drug-industrial-complex for forcing me to squat over a dingy bar toilet with a pint in one hand and a wad of toilet paper in the other. According to the study, the constant reminder that date rape drugs are a real danger to women has significantly altered our behavior patterns, even though law enforcement sources have found that the drugs pose a “very limited threat.” As the researchers note, “routinized DFSA is improbable as a widespread crime; it involves a stranger extracting an individual from her social group unnoticed, administering a substance undetected, precisely controlling drug effect, and reliably erasing memory of the experience.”

Importantly, this “date rape drug” narrative does not describe a date rape; it describes another form of stranger rape. This time, the rapist isn’t jumping out of the bushes—he’s jumping out from below the bar-stool to sprinkle odorless powder in your drink before dragging you to an undisclosed location. As the study notes, “the media tend to represent drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) as a significant and widespread problem, to the extent that newspapers have appropriated the phrase ‘date rape’ to refer to this crime.” This is the most dangerous aspect of the frenzy over “date rape drugs”—the way the myth has managed to completely co-opt the conversation about acquaintance rape. Instead of concerning ourselves with the disconcerting fact that most rapists are known to the victim, the public has been told to turn its attentions to yet another outlandish crime scenario that does not pose a significant threat to women.

How has the “date rape drug” myth gained so much traction in the public consciousness? The study floats a theory: The worry over “date rape drugs” helps “give shape to otherwise nebulous threats,” in turn”allowing us to displace worry about other, less manageable threats.” We drum up concern over the risk of “date rape drugs”—then devise strategies for managing that risk—because it’s easier than actually doing the business of preventing rape. It’s easier to keep your thumb over your bottle than it is to stop your boyfriend from raping you. It’s easier to take your drink to the bathroom than to understand why a person you trust would assault you. It’s easier to tell grown women what to do than to teach our children not to grow up to be rapists. And it is a whole lot easier to avoid a crime that rarely happens than to prevent the type of sexual assaults that occur every single day.

This is why the “date rape drug” myth arose hand-in-hand with public awareness of acquaintance rape. While society has begun to recognize rapes against wives, girlfriends, friends, and co-workers as serious crimes, it has failed to embrace the idea that husbands, boyfriends, trusted friends, the guys in your office, and other seemingly normal men can be rapists. We’re still much more comfortable thinking of rapists as men who lurk in the shadows, guys who only emerge in polite society in order to secure another rape victim. The news that most rapists aren’t easily-identifiable as villains—men hunch-backed from crouching in the bushes, their hands caked with sedatives—has failed to inspire solutions aimed at preventing men from raping.

The public is similarly slow to accept that most victims don’t fit the storybook stereotype of a buttoned-up virgin sipping on hot cocoa. Thankfully, the requirement that victims be the model of chastity has eroded a bit in recent years. Now, society is ready to accept that a rape victim is still a rape victim if she goes out to a bar with her girlfriends and has a few drinks—as long as her intoxication is capped off with a surprise roofie. The more likely scenario—that a rape victim goes out to a bar with her girlfriends, willingly ingests alcohol, and then is raped—is more difficult for the public to swallow.

As the idea of “acquaintance rape” and the myth of the “date rape drug” rose, so did another trend society wasn’t ready for—women who drink like men. Female drinking has increased rapidly in recent years (though we’re still far outstripped by the boys)—in 2006, 15 percent of women engaged in binge-drinking, compared to 30 percent of males. As the study notes, society has failed to process its discomfort with girls who drink: “Despite greater gender equality when it comes to public drinking, there is no clear language through which the female experience can be discussed, let alone celebrated in the manner that remains central to masculinity. . . . female drinking is widely seen as challenging gender norms, either as a deviant subversion of ideals of femininity or as part of a broader project of female emancipation.”

The idea that women who drink are an affront to the “ideals of femininity” has contributed to the widespread perception that drunk women are less-than-perfect rape victims. The perception that female drinking is a conscious sexual subversion on the part of women is problematic on a number of levels. First, it tells women who drink that they’re asking for it; that if they are raped, they are somehow responsible for the crime committed against them; that it is their deviant decisions that caused them to be raped. Second, it tells rapists that women who drink are not valued by society; that they are considered “lesser” women; that everyone knows drunk girls are down for sex, and no one will believe they can be raped. In other words, it points out exactly who rapists ought to target in order to avoid the consequences of their crimes. This is how rapists have historically gotten away with raping their wives, and raping prostitutes, and raping fat women, and raping promiscuous women—because society has told them over and over again that these women cannot be raped.

I hope that our culture’s outlandish fears over “date rape drugs” go away for a very, very long time. And I hope we replace the fears over drink spiking with educational solutions aimed at teaching men and women how to recognize consent, respect each other’s bodies, and really, truly prevent rape. Consider the testimony of one inventor of “date rape drug” detectors: “I knew somebody who was date raped, and I couldn’t believe nobody had a product to stop it,” he told the press. The problem of date rape can’t be solved with roofie-sensitive drink coasters. It can only be remedied by changing attitudes.

Rep. Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida, was roundly criticized by fellow policymakers yesterday for directing a derogatory term at a colleague. On a radio program, Grayson called Linda Robinson, an adviser to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, a “K street whore.” Grayson’s camp has refused to backpedal from the term, instead releasing a statement urging the media to “be clear about the context.” According to a Grayson spokesperson, “The attack was on her professional career, not her personal life.”

Calling a person a “whore” in any context is derogatory, so insisting that “whore” be taken “in context” strikes me as a misguided exercise here. But let’s humor Grayson’s camp for a minute. According to them, the “K street” portion of the comment demonstrates that Grayson was, at least, confining the insult to Robinson’s professional reputation as a lobbyist, and not suggesting that Robinson bears any personal resemblance to a prostitute.

CBS News explains the context this way: “K street is where many Washington lobbyists work, and ‘K Street whore’ is a derogatory—though not uncommon—phrase used to describe them in the nation’s capital.”

As long as we’re being clear on context, we ought to note that it’s not just political “whores” populating the K street corridor. That street is also notorious in Washington for hosting prostitutes of the more traditional variety. Anyone who’s driven down K Street after sundown—around, oh, 6th Street or 11th Street NW—knows that tacking “K street” onto “whore” doesn’t clarify a damn thing. K street is a main conduit for sex work in D.C., and “K street whores” are as likely to be actual prostitutes as they are lobbyists. I wouldn’t be surprised if the high concentration of prostitutes and the lobbyist traffic went hand-in-hand.

Personally, I find casting lobbyists as “whores” offensive to sex workers. But if Grayson wants to continue to insist that the term was only meant to degrade the street’s for-hire politicos, he’d to best to find a “whore” modifier that doesn’t just double as another euphemism for “prostitute.”

Ever wondered exactly what you have to do with your penis to be charged with indecent exposure in Virginia? Need to know what sort of aperture you have to be looking through in order to be convicted of peeping? The Washington Post is here to help!

Last week, 29-year-old Eric Williamson was charged with indecent exposure after “a woman and her 7-year-old son walked by his Springfield house and saw him, through the window, naked.” The woman claims she was walking her son to school one morning when Williamson presented his naked body to her not once, but twice—first “standing nude in the doorway, ” and then “through a large window that appeared to have no drapes.” She called the police.

Williamson concedes that he was hanging out naked in his house, but denies that he intentionally exposed himself to the woman and the boy. The police response, Williams says, was extreme. “All of a sudden, I get woken up by police officers, and this guy has a Taser gun in my face,” he said. “I’m freaking out. Is this a movie? A horrible dream?” He called Fox News.

The incident has courted international attention to Virginia’s indecent exposure and peeping laws. In a Washington Post online chat yesterday, Fairfax attorney Atchuthan Sriskandarajah administered a quick legal lesson on the peculiarities of Virginia’s sex statutes. Can a person indecently expose themselves from the privacy of their own home? By the same token, can passersby who happen to spy a naked person through the window be charged with peeping?

According to Sriskandarajah, indecent exposure must require three elements:

* Exposure. Displaying your private parts (breast-feeding doesn’t count).

* Intent. The question that plagued the Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson Superbowl flap.

* Obscenity. The nudity must be accompanied by an obscene act to be considered “indecent.”

In Virginia, a person can be convicted of indecent exposure even if the exposure occurred inside their own home—as long as they got naked, deliberately revealed that nudity to passersby, and, like, grabbed their genitals or something.

Virginia’s “peeping” statute also contains three major elements:

* Secrecy. No matter where you’re peeping, the peep must be “secret or furtive”—the naked person can’t be aware you’re looking at him or her.

* Residential peeping. In order to prove you’ve peeped into someone’s home, you gotta peep through something. The statute lists windows, doors, apertures, holes, cracks, or any “other similar opening through which a person can see” as acceptable peepholes.

* Commercial peeping. If the peeping is occurring outside a residence—like in a “restroom, dressing room, locker room, hotel room, motel room, tanning bed, tanning booth, [or] bedroom”—you still gotta peep through cracks and holes. But this time, you gotta be seeing something naked. According to the statute, that includes “the purpose of viewing any nonconsenting person who is totally nude, clad in undergarments, or in a state of undress exposing the genitals, pubic area, buttocks or female breast.”

Photo by rick, Creative Commons License.

Now, a study in this month’s Journal of Contemporary Ethnography has attempted to decipher these sex codes for real for real. The study, conducted by researchers Kristie R. Blevins and Thomas J. Holt, examines the “argot,” or coded language, of the prostitution enthusiast’s “virtual subculture” in order to discern what these communication strategies indicate about the men who engage in—and report on—prostitution. Here’s what they discovered about the language of johns:

* First off: Don’t call them “johns.” On the online forums studied by Blevins and Holt, terms like “john” and “trick” were considered derogatory to prostitution enthusiasts. Online, johns prefer to refer to themselves as “mongers,” “trollers,” or “hobbyists.” According to the study:

For example, a user in the Inglewood forum described a successful night identifying and soliciting several prostitutes and closed by writing, “I cant wait to monger again like the sadistic one that I am.” Another Inglewood poster wrote, “Saturday morning, 10:30 am, and it was time for this dedicated hobbyist to pursue another adventure.” . . . Thus, the terms used to describe the customers of prostitutes reflect the notion that the customers find nothing wrong in paying for sex. It is simply an interest or pastime that they enjoy.

* “Pooner” is a good thing. If someone calls you a “pooner,” that means you’ve achieved online prostitution forum street cred. (Congratulations?):

Mongers who were very involved in discussion forums and review boards were often referred to as a pooner. This term was meant as a sign of respect and status and was used to identify those with clout in the forums. For example, jester from the Atlanta forum posted a question seeking information about escorts: “I was looking for recommendations about agencies from pooners who have used them . . . I don’t need to know details (if you are worried about LE), only about ones that are half-way reliable.” Asking for assistance from more senior or experienced members in this fashion could increase the likelihood of information sharing. Thus, active involvement in both the sex trade and online resources played an important role in indicating status among johns across the forums.

* “Mongers” tend to avoid offensive terms for prostitutes. According to the study, forum users shied away from calling sex workers “hookers,” “hos,” or even “prostitute.” Aww, how sweet. In place of derogatory terms for people, mongers used derogatory terms for objects, often referring to sex workers by their make, model, and build:

This language may be perceived as respectful and a way to neutralize the negative perspectives of their practices, mirroring their use of terms such as mongering or hobbying. At the same time, these terms treat sex workers as items, rather than individual human beings. For example, posters used the term streetwalker or SW to describe a prostitute who works the streets looking for clients. Posters would also use a letter to denote the race of the sex worker, including WSW for white; BSW for black; and LSW, HSW, or MSW for Hispanic.

* Other fun terms that treat people like objects: On the forums, skinny sex workers are “spinners”; older sex workers have got “mileage”:

For example, some johns used the term spinner to refer a petite female, [according to one forum user:] “a girl who is so tiny in proportion that you can put her on top of your bone and “spin” her like a top.”

. . . Specifically, johns would also use the term mileage to refer to women whose appearances reflected the physical and emotional toll that sex work takes on prostitutes. The use of a term like mileage that is typically used for automobiles is demonstrative of the perception that sex workers are offering a service.

* An “8″ on the “streetwalker scale” is a “6″ on the “normal” scale. Predictably, the way mongers rate sex workers is dehumanizing—they require a different scale than “normal” people:

In addition to the term mileage, johns also utilized a streetwalker scale to rate prostitutes’ appearances on a scale from 1 to 10. This ratings system was used to indicate the differences between prostitutes and women not involved in the sex trade, as in the following post from the Chicago forum: “This time I come across a very nice wsw [white street walker]. She would be a 6 on a normal scale, 8 on the sw [street walker] one.”

* These guys tend to beat the “sex workers are objects” theme into the ground. Online Web sites which many sex workers use to advertise are called “malls.” Photos are available for “window shopping”:

One of the most salient terms in the argot of johns that suggests sex work is a commodity is the use of the phrase mall. In this argot, a mall was a Web site devoted to advertising a variety of different online escorts and agencies. This was exemplified by a user in the Atlanta forum: “[A web-based service] is the best for finding upscale escorts or shall I say ones that charge 200 up. There are links to the escort ‘malls’ where window shopping is done.”

—

So, what does it all mean? Blevins and Holt don’t delve too far into the implications of the use of “mongers” and “mileage” in online prostitution forums. But the language they’ve uncovered does offer a few interesting insights into the men who solicit prostitutes (and talk about it).

First, many men who frequent prostitutes feel that their activities make them worthy of status and respect. These men don’t fit the convenient stereotype the public has created for johns: sad-sack guys who have to pay for sex because they can’t get girls to fuck them for free. They see themselves as connoisseurs, “hobbyists”—artists, even. They see paying for sex as a sport which can be won by frequenting the most and best sex workers for the least amount of money, hassle, and consequences.

Second—and most obvious—sex workers are seen as objects to be bought, not as humans. More often than not, sex workers are not portrayed as skilled workers who provide their customers with a service in exchange for a fee. Rather, they are things—to be perused, used, and dispensed of by the “hobbyist” who uses them to bolster his monger status. The sex worker herself is seen as the product. Again, the “hobbyist” is the thinking, creative, artistic being here, while the sex worker is denied her status as a worker, performer, or businessperson—a person capable of choosing if, when, and under what circumstances to offer a service. The idea that johns think of sex workers as objects is obvious. But it’s also important. It suggests, first, that johns believe that the bodies of sex workers are available for their use in any way they choose. But it also reveals that the ability to treat women as objects is part—or perhaps even all—of a john’s real interest in prostitution.

The fight for ideological dominance of D.C.’s college sex column “movement” rages on. Are our local campus columnists on the forefront of radical sex writing, or are they bringing back the good old days of valiant male chivalry—only drunker? This week: G.W. student fucks Marine; UMD students are bitches, dicks, or pussies; American University issues a Very Special sex column. It must be sweeps week:

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY:

Sex Tips: In Layla’s latest heterosexual female romp, G.W.’s resident sex columnist extols upon the virtues of fucking servicemen. She also floats a revised idea of traditional courtship: Men are still confined to the rules of chivalry, but everyone gets drunk and you can do it whenever you feel like it. “Leaning against the bar, I spotted Prince Charming, an incredibly sexy combination of chivalry and a hint of danger, walking down the stairs,” she writes of a random Marine she spots while sitting alone, “double fisting” drinks at the bar. “Having stubbornly worn my three-inch heels, I literally stumbled into his arms and swooned at how valiantly and easily he caught me. In my opinion, there is nothing sexier than a man with an accent, especially if its southern and he happens to call me ma’am.” They decide to get it on. “Prince Charming grinned and pulled out an umbrella, proving that even in the face of a certain hookup, chivalry is not dead.”

Life Lesson: Layla insists there is “something scandalously orgasmic about making out with a marine in the middle of a bar to bad 80s music,” proving that people are into some freaky shit. Side-note: Layla may needs to take some life lessons from the Buster Darkhole school of sex column euphemisms. Her target is called “Prince Charming.” Her friend? “GI Jane.”

Progressive Meter: I count six references to “Prince Charming,” two to “chivalry,” and one each to “swooned” and “valiantly.” Layla’s column describes a thoroughly modern tale—they meet at a bar and hook up—but the vocabulary is stuck in another century. Three.

—

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND:

Sex Tips: This time around in UMD senior Esti Frischling’s regular advice column, she tackles the problem of a third-wheel friend who knows that one of the coupled-up friends is cheating on the other. Frischling’s advice—don’t snitch, but encourage them to break up, and if they don’t, go ahead and fuck the one who’s getting screwed over—isn’t as memorable as the way she tells it:

- “You better not rat either way (bitch).”
- “I mean, he can’t possibly see her as marriage material if he’s having all this premarital sex with all the sluts, right?”
- “approach the guy and say something along the lines of (and feel free to quote me directly) ‘Dude stop being such a dick — your girl is hot, lay off the adulterous pussy.’”
- “I say—and this is my final answer by the way—blow up his spot and f— his girl. Yeah.”

Life Lesson: Apparently, bitches, sluts, dicks, and pussies are A-OK in the Diamondback. But in the end, all we get is a “f—.”

Progressive Meter: While it’s difficult to discern a political bent in decisions over snitching, I do find the emphasis on “marriage material,” “premarital sex,” and “sluts” a bit off-putting here. You’re in college. Stop rating the validity of your relationships on whether or not you’re planning to get hitched to the person you’re currently doing. On the other hand, the advice that the advice-seeker “f— his girl”  seems to be applied with no concern as to whether the advice-seeker is male or female. Cool. Five.

—

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY:

Sex Tips: This go-around, AU’s trio of porn-named sex columnists—Amber Sparkles, Buster Darkhole, and Maxwell Hillcrest—have teamed up to deliver a Very Special sex column about personal responsibility. This conversation—how to avoid unwanted pregnancies, STIs, abuse, and disappointment—is important. But Sparkles, Darkhole, and Hillcrest may be biting off more than they can chew here. The column is a little bit about pleasure: “Many people enjoy sex without condoms—scratch that, nearly everyone enjoys the sensations of sex more without condoms.” A little bit about shame: “it is your life. It is not the life of the girl who might yell ’slut’ at you when you walk home from a fantastic evening.” And a little bit about dying of AIDS: “imagine two boys at Apex going home together. They may have amazing sex, but if it is unprotected, the consequences can be fatal.”

Life Lesson: Sex undertaken without “planning ahead” can lead to babies, disease, and unhappiness.

Progressive Meter: The column is titled “Planning ahead helps ease worries in bed,” but the three-author treatment focuses entirely on sexual anxieties, and not on the peace of mind that can come with entering into sex fully prepared and ready to go. The intended take-away here—when you’re having sex, you should be concerned with satisfying your personal needs and taking care of yourself, not conforming to societal expectations—is a fine one. Unfortunately, the message gets lost in a sea of downers about the possible outcomes of doin’ it: campus shaming, misogyny, blood tests, abortion, and death. Four.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Pin Up Girl Clothing, a leading advocate of Sexy Halloween, offers up this year’s must-have slutty accessory: The “Sexy Halloween Costume Hat.” What makes a hat sexy? Does a Sexy Hat reveal intimate portions of the wearer’s scalp? Does it function as a substitute for pants? And are we sure it’s not just the eye patch? According to Pin Up Girl’s gallery, a hat is only as sexy as the “fuck me” facial expression you’re making beneath it.

The “Brown Buccaneer Hat,” $12, is but a pirate-themed frame for your best blow-up-doll gaze:

The gold trim on this “Unisex Black Pirate Hat” isn’t enough to achieve gender-neutral sexiness. Better slacken your jaw and grit your teeth at the same time (at least, that’s how I think she achieved this. I can’t do it).

Alternately, tip your head up saucily, thereby saving this “Sexy Pirate Hat With Gold Lace Ribbon and Feather” from becoming another “ridiculous and asexual head-covering featuring bows”:

There! She’s doing the slack-jawed teeth-gritting thing again! And she’s wearing a hat!

Tomorrow, as per tradition, hundreds of drag queens will race down 17th Street between R and Church Streets NW. According to Metro Weekly, the 24th annual Dupont High Heel Race will see a couple of changes this year: One, you won’t be able to drink beer outside anymore. And two, it’s political this time.

Metro Weekly delivers the bad news: This go-around, the “traditional beer garden adjacent JR.’s” will be closed due to inclement weather. In place of beer, however, this year’s High Heel Race will provide racers and on-lookers with a sense of purpose! Will O’Bryan reports:

the event is now being run under a First Amendment permit rather than a parade permit, reflective of the event’s gay identity. That distinction clears the way for street closures and a police presence. Loosely speaking, it’s the difference between a political rally and a block party.

“Until we have complete equality and people want to show up at gay events, they need to realize we don’t have the same rights,” says [Dave]  Perruzza [vice president of JR.'s]. “The [volunteers'] shirts will probably say, ‘Equality for Everyone.’ It’s the High Heel March for Equality. It’s a gay event, put on by gay people.”

It’s unclear why the permit switcheroo was necessary—the parade has run for years with street closures and a police presence. Whatever the rationale, the designation may help drum up support for a pending bill that would recognize same-sex marriages in the District of Columbia. So, who’s running for domestic partnerships?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

In an editorial slide-show titled Lindsay Lohan: A Metamorphosis, the Washington Post’s Liz Kelly revisits the many looks the 23-year-old starlet has cultivates over the years. But this is no style retrospective treatment, a la Madonna’s chameleon-like fashion choices or Tyra’s wacky wigs. This slide-show is focused exclusively on each stage of Lohan’s career, and whether or not she looked ugly in it!

Let’s see how Kelly rates Lohan’s attractiveness over the past five years:

2004: “Channeling a bit of Britney Spears’s ‘little girl gone bad’ mojo.”

2005: “Bleach blond”; “rapidly shrinking frame”; “eating disorder”; “possible drug abuse.”

2006: “Apparently at a healthier weight”; “curvy, brunette.”

2007: “Healthy-ish.”

2009: “Bathing suit-clad”; “victim of her own Sevin Nyne brand tanning mist”; “a blond, haggard Lohan.”

Lohan is a celebrity, and part of being a celebrity is having your appearance intensely scrutinized by gossip columnists. Still, why is the Washington Post devoting editorial space on its front page that can be reduced to one catty Hollywood insult—Lohan looks “haggard”?

According to the slideshow’s introduction, the product was an exercise in edginess. It reads, “Lindsay Lohan has been, dare we say it, looking a bit rough of late. Maybe it’s the bleached hair or the fake tan, but it’s getting harder to remember that Lohan is only 23.” Apparently, publishing a fluffy celebrity slide-show filled with Perez Hilton-ready body-snarking now constitutes a “daring” editorial decision.

Actually, expressing that women look old, unattractive, unhealthy, too fat, too thin, or too blond is pretty much par for the course, as far as media coverage of women’s bodies are concerned. The Post’s celebrity sensibilities are actually beginning to wear a bit—dare I say it?—old.

According to the story, it wasn’t a father, an attempted murderer, or even a jeep that put Almaleki in the hospital: It was her “lifestyle.”

The lede of the story follows the same rhetorical device: It was Almaleki’s own actions that led her to be plowed down by a moving vehicle, not the actions of the person driving the car:

Noor Almaleki’s lifestyle would not strike many Americans as unusual.

The 20-year-old had pages on Facebook and MySpace. She had lots of friends. She posted details about her 5-foot-3 frame, along with an alluring photo, on a Web site for aspiring models and actresses. She lived with her boyfriend and his mother.

That lifestyle, police say, landed her in a Valley trauma center Tuesday afternoon, unconscious and bleeding, and sent her father, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, on the run. It may yet kill her.

I understand why the Arizona Republic wants to highlight the cultural aspects of this story. The fact that Almaleki’s Western “lifestyle”—living with her boyfriend and posting on Facebook—would supply a motive for killing in this case is, of course, horrific (and probably why the incident landed in the paper in the first place). But isn’t it possible to tell the larger story here without conceding to the narrative preferred by her father, who, let’s remember, probably tried to kill his own daughter?

Since most reasonable people would agree that running over a family member with your car is unacceptable behavior, the paper has decided to take the contrarian position: exploring the attempted murderer’s motives in order to gain a deeper appreciation of the cultural issues at play. But as the story attempts to forge some cultural understanding—the Almalekis are Iraqi—it ends up going a bit soft on the whole systemic-violence-against-women thing. After outlining the details of the case, the story turns over to the expertise of Tom Keil, a sociology professor at Arizona State University. Keil provides some background on traditional “honor killings.” According to Keil:

Living with a man out of wedlock would be high on the chain of disreputable behavior because the Iraqi culture prizes virginity, Keil said.

“It would take a great act of heroism on the father’s part to resist the shaming,” he said.

And:

For people who might be shocked by this behavior, Keil said that honor killings have a long history, here and abroad.

According to this narrative, Almaleki’s father isn’t a murderer, exactly—he’s simply not a hero. And if you’re one of those people who “might be shocked” that women’s fathers are still attempting to kill them in the suburbs of Phoenix, perhaps you need a bit of a history lesson.

In its rush to explain how Almaleki’s “lifestyle” brought shame to her family, the story also glosses over the fact that, in an attempt to kill his daughter, the suspect also ran over Amal Edan Khalaf, the mother of Almaleki’s boyfriend. Unlike Almaleki, Khalaf’s “condition was improving” at the paper’s latest check-in. But the fact that the Arizona Republic would overlook another woman’s life in order to explain away a familial dispute is probably a pretty good indication that its take on this crime has crossed the line from contrarian to irresponsible.

Last week, two stories on the Washington Post’s gender treatment for a couple of transgender shoplifting suspects (Washington Post Cross-Dressing Shoplifting Story Misfires; Transgender Shoplifting Story’s Absurd Corrections) inspired confusion, transphobia, and some helpful commentary!

The story: A couple of transgender women are caught shoplifting, and end up being shot by police after a botched getaway. In a medical examination, the suspects are revealed to have male genitalia. So: The Post first reported that the suspects were women, then reported that they were cross-dressing men, and finally issued a vague clarification that the suspects were still men dressed as women, but “were not in disguise.” Was the Post’s treatment insensitive? Incorrect? Or the lone crusader for truth in a PC world?

Carisa Cunningham appreciates the teaching moment:

I don’t think we can just expect mainstream journalists, even those with good intentions, to know what to do, how to look at this, the correct terminology to use, etc,about what to them is unfamiliar territory if we don’t take the responsibility to reach out to them. An event like this is an opportunity for GLAAD, for example, to connect with Mr. Weil about terminology and about transgender issues generally. I accept at face value his explanations and would approach him in the same good faith. The world doesn’t change otherwise.

While TJ wants an apology:

The first thing that I thought about the article was, “That’s nice that you cleared it up.” But then I had this question: was this supposed to be a retraction of some sort? I understand that these two women are criminals, but were they issued some sort of apology? Clearly they considered themselves female based on what Renee Bailey said. And with names like Renee Bailey and Kelly Bright, how in the world would the police or anyone else think that these are men? WTF!

And william thinks that people with “confused sexuality” will naturally confuse others:

While confused sexuality may not be mysterious to those who identify as transgender—it is highly confusing to many others, including police. Give them, and the media a break. I happen to have personally met one of these suspects and can tell you “she” is living as a woman but physically appears to be very, very male. I left the meeting pretty confused myself and would have to consult an expert to properly categorize this person.

Gregory A Butler writes:

Cut out the politically correct bullshit—these were men in dresses. They may have had a mental delusion that they were “women”—but they had penises, and testicles, and Y chromosomes, and that makes them MEN, no matter how many skirts or wigs they put on!

Julia writes:

Thank you for writing this. The distinction between sex and gender is one that far too few people recognize, but you’d hope that major media outlets would at least try to get it right (it doesn’t take much research to see that cross-dressing isn’t the same as being transgendered). If they don’t, they deserve to be called out on it. And the fact that they can get it wrong probably means that the general public doesn’t have a good grasp of the issue either, which makes your detailed explanation all the more important.

Much ado ’bout nothing thinks we should all understand “the news biz” (instead of transgender people):

Shoplifters get caught is not news. Shoplifters get shot IS news. And so, when the police identify the shoplifters as female, and they turn out to have penises, that’s something that “advances the story,” as they say in the news biz. Not a correction, but a new fresh lede for the story. That’s how the news biz works.

The news biz, Amanda. Learn about it. It can help you gain perspective.

Matt C is afraid that these transgender women are suffering from our gender stereotyping:

What defines a female? Is it the type of clothes a person wears? Is it the type of general interests a person has? Or is it even the choice in sexual partners one prefers?

If you answered No (like I do) to the above questions then it would stand to reason that a man could share these same characteristics and still be considered a man.

Why then do some feel the need to ignore fact and incorrectly label either themselves or others with a stereotypical “gender identity” that defines ones sex by the way they dress & behave rather than their biological fact.

I applaud the Washington Post for getting the facts correct on this story and not letting political correctness cloud the truth.

While Gregory A Butler is back to clarify one point: Transgender women must choose between being referred to as women, and getting shot—or being called men, and not getting shot. Makes sense!:

Also, the real issue here is being lost.

These guys (and that’s what they are – GUYS) were Shot For Stealing A Dress.

That’s the REAL issue here – not what pronouns the Washington Post’s crime reporter uses!

I’m sure if you called these men “he” but Didn’t Shoot Them, they would prefer that to being called “she” and being shot over a dress!

This is one of the main reasons why Political Correctness is so destructive!

Illustration by Bonnie Kennedy

Last week on the Sexist, Rihanna came back but stayed silent on domestic violence. The Freakonomics guys can come back once they’ve tried out prostituting themselves for a living. And we wish “No Homo” would just go away:

1. Why Is Rihanna Expected to Be a Feminist Icon?, or, according to commenter Genesis, “FEMINIST ICON MY ASS.”

2. Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn’t Steven Levitt Suck Dick for a Living?, in which we predict the next installment in Freakonomics: “WHY AREN’T LEVITT AND DUBNER JOINTLY FELLATING YOU RIGHT NOW: A FREAKONOMIC ANALYSIS.”

3. How Censoring “No Homo” Will Help Hip-Hop: by making everything a lot more gay.

4. D.C. Has Lowest Marriage Rate in Country, Largest Percentage of Same-Sex Couples, in which a quaint little post on the virtues of same-sex marriage inspired accusations of D.C. apartheid.

5. In Defense of D.C.’s Domestic Partnerships, in which same-sex marriage is great, but marriage still kinda sucks.

Photo by Powerhouse Museum Collection

The D.C. Council’s Committee on Health recently completed a survey of about 250 District high school students’ thoughts on sex ed. The results reveal some interesting rifts between the male and female sex ed experience. Below, differing perspectives on sex ed—from condom use to LGBT acceptance—from the District’s young men and women. (You can read the full study here [PDF]).

According to the study, young women expressed a greater interest—and perhaps difficulty—in speaking openly about personal sexual issues:

[Y]outh asked for information about how to engage a partner in a discussion about his or her sexual history. Some female participants also want to be able to discuss more personal issues with health educators and used the focus groups to ask questions such as, “What do you do when sometimes when you’re having sex and it hurts, but at the same time, you know what I mean—it feels good?”

Young women also voiced an increased difficulty in speaking with their parents about sex:

Youth reported speaking to their parents about sex, but many said the experience was uncomfortable—though male participants reported an easier time talking about sex with their parents than the female participants. Youth also believe that their parents “may not know what to say.”

Additionally, the girls in the study were more likely to desire an increased visibility for GLBTQ issues in the sex ed curriculum:

Many youth also admit that GLBTQ youth face greater ridicule in school and in the community, especially from heterosexual males. When asked why, many youth simply responded, “they just do.” Some believed that heterosexual males view male-to-male relationships as a threat to one’s manhood. There did not, however, seem to be the same feelings among young heterosexual women. Overall, heterosexual female focus groups participants expressed a greater acceptance of GLBTQ youth. Several young women stated that “[gay males] are good friends because they’re less catty than women.”

The girls who participated in the study expressed shame in carrying condoms:

Youth participants reported that while both males and females should be responsible for having condoms, social mores can make women feel uncomfortable with carrying condoms. One youth expressed, “If I see a condom in my boyfriend’s wallet that is fine, but if I see my sister with one then it’s a problem . . . I am aware this is a double standard but that’s how society has branded her.”

Another young female explained, “I don’t carry a condom and don’t plan to because for one I don’t hvae anywhere to put it. I sometimes don’t take a puse and I don’t want to be at the store pulling cash out my pocklet and a condom out at the same time.” Young women are afraid that they will be judged as promiscuous by others or misunderstood by their partenr if they carry condoms. To avoid misperception, some female focus groups participants reported leaving the responsibility to their boyfriends.

While locked drugstore condoms produced shame and frustration in both male and female respondents:

Many youth also reported feeling uneasy when purchasing condoms, citing store employees as a primary source of their discomfort, embarrassment, or shame. Focus group participants discussed being uncomfortable when going into a store and having to ask for condoms from an employee, or having to retrieve them from inconvenient locations such as a click box or closed glass case with a “red button that makes a loud noise.” They described this experience as “annoying” and that it alerts everyone to their “business.” One youth stated, “the CVS machine to get condoms is loud and difficult to get condoms—if I can get cereal easy, why can’t I get condoms like that?”

Obviously, the absence of condoms affects young women differently than it does men:

While all youth reported having knowledge about how condoms can protect against STIs and pregnancy, some reported knowing several peers who do not use condoms because either “it feels better without a condom” or “slip ups happen in the moment.” For example, one young woman described her experience with a slip-up, saying, “it only took a few minutes to forget—30 seconds and now I have kids.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Return to Sender: A press release for Stephanie Rockey’s new relationship book, Ladies Listen Up!, which aims to explain why today’s women are such unhappy failures.

Reasoning: The presser’s internal inconsistencies do little to recommend Rockey’s advice.

Exhibit A: Asking women an exhaustive 400 questions about their ideal love lives appears to have been little more than a convenient mechanism for accusing them of being “too picky.” “After asking hundreds of women 388 tailored questions to find out the precise reason why they were unlucky in love, relationship expert Stephanie Rockey, founder of the Washington D.C. based True Life Partners, found one common denominator among them all–each woman’s ‘perfect man’ perception was a far cry from reality.”

Exhibit B: Since a “perfect man,” a “perfect relationship,” and a “perfect life” are, by definition, not attainable in reality, this revelation is hardly a bold statement. “‘Someone has to say it—women live in a fantasy world,’ says Rockey. ‘Women create in their heads the perfect scenario of how they want their life to be—perfect man, perfect relationship, perfect life. Women set themselves up for failure from minute one. No man lives up to these expectations, and in turn, women aren’t happy with their men or their lives.’”

I Rest My Case: In order to ensure that reviews of the book wouldn’t be held up to a woman’s unattainable ideal of literary perfection, this press release appears to have targeted those reporters who aren’t currently “living in a fantasy world.” The e-mail release was originally addressed directly to the City Paper’s food writer, Tim Carman, who admits that he’s “never given the perfect man much thought.”