Newspaper stories from the good old days say the darndest things. This time on journalism’s way-back machine: an 1870’s defense attorney argues that a man can’t be held responsible for killing his estranged wife’s lover—because, let’s be honest, she was kind of a ho.

This Week In Sexist History:

Read More “This Week In Sexist History: I Killed Your Boyfriend Because You’re A Ho Edition” »

There’s not much of a silver lining to Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino’s recent legal troubles. Quick recap: in 2003, the married father-of-five met a woman at a restaurant, had sex with her (there), and paid for her abortion; the woman then attempted to extort him for millions of dollars. But buried inside the ESPN report on the saga is this unlikely meet-cute story:

Read More “So, How Did You Two Meet?” »

In a private Papal conference today, Pope Benedict met with President Barack Obama for about 40 minutes, then gifted him “a booklet explaining Vatican opposition to practices such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research” and informed Obama he would pray for him:

Read More “Obama Meets With My Grandmother Pope” »

I have a confession to make: I love Dude Comedies. Any film where Two to Five Douchey Guys Shirk Their Societal Obligations to Embark on a Night They’ll Never Forget can probably coax ten bucks out of me. I’ll even watch the Dude Comedies where all female characters are relegated to the Fun-Hating-Wife or Slutty-Sex-Object category, as long as it allows for maximum high jinks. Superbad: Loved it! Old School: Great! 40 Year Old Virgin: Totally convinced me to overlook the whole chastity message! Talladega Nights: Watched it!

I understand these movies are literred with sexism and homophobia and penises; I am simply immune to it. My condition has become so severe that this is looking pretty good to me, honestly.

But no Dude Comedy can draw me in as douchily as the Judd Apatow Dude Comedy. I am powerless to it. I have a theory: Paul Rudd is often one of the dudes. But even a Clueless pedigree can’t justify my apparent obsession with man-children, marijuana-fueled Lord of the Rings fantasies, and underlying date-rape themes.

Help me.

In this week’s Sexist Beatdown, Sady of Tiger Beatdown tries. We laughed, we cried, we had a shmashmortion.

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Ladies Love Dude Comedies Edition” »

DoubleX is collecting memories of women who received abortions from Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered in his Witchita, Kan. church on Sunday morning. The stories provide a good deal of insight into why women receive late-term abortions, and why Tiller’s work was so important. Tiller’s clinic was one of only three to provide late-term abortions in the United States.

One woman recalls her post-20 week abortion:

The baby had contracted a virus and you could see on the MRI that its organs were all messed up. It looked like there were bubbles in them, instead of solid masses like they were supposed to be. Then they figured out that the baby had been exposed to Fifth disease. All sorts of researchers contacted us, because they wanted to study it.

Read More “Memories of Late-Term Abortions” »

“The Belly Project” has been hailed as “sad, beautiful, empowering, overwhelming.” I’ll add another: problematic.

The product of sex educator Karen Rayne and midwife Christy Tashjian, the blog records user-submitted photos of women’s disembodied bellies, accompanied by the belly’s age and reproductive history. The point of the blog, the creators write, is to “put our bellies in perspective,” as bellies are “intimately related our sexuality and to our reproductive lives. It’s a complicated interaction, that confluence of sex and babies.”

A typical submission looks something like this:

It is complicated, that “confluence of sex and babies.” My midsection’s ability to create proto-humans is something I have to fight against every fucking day. Getting a birth control prescription. Paying for it. Taking it every day. Wondering if I’m pregnant. Buying pregnancy tests. Defending why I don’t want children. Swallowing painkillers for my ovaries. Bleeding out of my vagina. Dealing with CVS while bleeding out of my vagina.

Being able to make babies sucks. But I do a lot of other things with my belly, too. I fill it with tacos. I lay on it. I put beer in it. I do the odd sit-up. I bend it over when I bike to work. Most of the time, though, it just sits above my legs and under my boobs as I type on the computer all day, and I never think about the thing.

This is not a perspective on the belly supported by the Belly Project:

Read More “My Body Is Not Defined By Pregnancy” »

In preparation for President Obama’s controversial commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, where he will no doubt speak at length about the virtues of killing newborns, anti-abortion protesters have converged on the University of Notre Dame campus. Some of them are simply rolling around vacant strollers (representing the never-born) or crafting signs reading “I Regret My Abortion”—bush league.

Only one dude is shaming our abortionist president the right way: with a small plane that tows “a banner depicting the remains of an aborted fetus and the words ‘10 Week Abortion.’”

Pwned.

Catholic Universities: respecting the lives of women since probably never.

Photo by Fated to Pretend

For this edition of “Sexist Beatdown,” Sady (of Tiger Beatdown) and myself (of the Sexist) would like to extend a warm invitation to all men, children, good mothers, and bad mothers (abortionists will be tolerated, but the childless will be ignored).

This week, up for discussion is Ayelet Waldman: wife to Michael Chabon, mother to four, author of “Bad Mother,” in that order! Waldman made women hate her in 2005 after announcing, in the New York Times, that she values her husband over her children. We don’t really give a shit about that. What we want to know is: Does Waldman value husbands over children over good mothers over bad mothers over abortionists over the childless?

Let’s sort of find out!

SADY: hello! are you ready to talk about how some lady HATES and/or does not maniacally worship her children?

AMANDA: I can barely begin to think about it because i HATE this woman so much!
Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Bad Mother > Abortionist > Childless Edition” »

If only! Ann Coulter voices her support of an investigator’s right to choose to waterboard.

I think I’m arriving at some sort of unified theory of Coulterism:

abortion IS WORSE THAN terrorism IS WORSE THAN waterboarding

terrorists DESERVE TO BE waterboarded

abortionists DESERVE TO BE terrorized

Joy Behar DESERVES TO BE aborted

This one’s a two-fer, in response to my post on the omnipresent anti-abortion Metro ads, “Metro Swathed in Anti-Abortion Shame.”

Craig Howell writes:

Um, there’s a First Amendment issue here, folks. As a government agency, Metro cannot indulge in viewpoint discrimination. This matter was settled 30 years ago when the courts told Metro it could not refuse to run bus ads sponsored by the Gay Activists Alliance. I have been a member of what is now the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance since 1973, and this victory remains one of our signature achievements.

Lisa responds:

Read More “Sexist Comment of the Week” »