Yesterday, career Web guy James Chartrand admitted that "he" is a woman, actually. Chartrand said that after she adopted the male pseudonym several years ago—one that sounded like it "might command respect"—she did command respect, and began to ascend from struggling single-mom writer to respected male Web entrepreneur.

In light of the news that Chartrand is a lady, I am struck by some of the more masculine touches Chartrand inserted into her crowning achievement as James Chartland: The Web development team "Men With Pens."

But first, a bit of feminist review. Upon reading Chartrand's coming-out piece, The Frisky's Jessica Wakeman took issue with Chartrand's decision to obscure her gender to get ahead: "Honestly, there is something rather Uncle Tom-y about Chartrand hiding behind the opposite gender," she wrote. "By assuming the identity of a male writer, she skirted the discrimination against women entirely while doing nothing to change womens’ lot. She just left the glass ceiling standing there, rather than shattering it." Meanwhile, Broadsheet's Kate Harding saw Chartrand's pseudonym as a reminder that some old-school feminist battles have not been laid to rest: "I get furious when people insist that western women have achieved full equality," Harding wrote. "But even I've bought into the myth of meritocracy enough that my first thought upon learning a female writer massively increased her success by adopting a male pseudonym was, 'Wow, how retro! How Brontë, how Eliot, how Sand.' Certainly not 'how Rowling.'"

Whether you think Chartrand's choice to adopt a male name was anti-feminist or illuminating, you should know that adopting a male name is not all Chartrand did.

* She also adopted a male persona—her biography refers to her repeatedly as "he."

* She also named her company "Men With Pens."

* She also crafted a company logo (above) that looks like it was directed by Michael Bay.

* She also slipped this line into the bio of one of her employees, copywriter Taylor Lindstrom: "She’s the team’s rogue woman who wowed us until our desire for her talents exceeded our desire for a good ol’ boys club."

* She also introduced Lindstrom to the blog as "perky," "adorable," and capable of cooking and cleaning. (In introducing a male employee to the blog, Chartrand described their relationship as "bromantic," one in which the Men With Pens "could be laid back together, chink beers and not argue over the remote control").

* She also regularly used photos of naked women to illustrate her posts.

* She also occasionally essentialized women—"all the women" loved Jerry McGuire, Chartland wrote—while conveniently placing herself outside of the gender categories she set for them.

* She also used a photograph of a man silencing a woman with his hand as the logo for a "Men With Pens" role-playing game. When a few commenters noted that the photographed failed to create an "inviting community for women," Chartrand replied: "Photography is very subjective. You see a woman being terrorized. I see a man helping a woman stay quiet so he can save her life."

* She also penned this post—amazing, in hindsight!—which instructed "mommy bloggers" to stop "whin[ing] about being stereotyped" and begin welcoming male commenters in their spaces:

On the few occasions that I’ve risked my balls to post a comment on a mommy blog, I noticed my comments were skipped over as if they (I?) didn’t even exist. Sometimes my comments get a sharp, snappy, “piss off” kind of remark in reply. Sometimes I’m absolutely bashed, and I have a hard time figuring out why.

. . . I don’t understand making male readers and participants feel unwelcome. I know plenty of mothers who blog and who come off as. . . . well, bloggers who are mothers. They don’t perpetuate the stereotype of a frazzle Mom trying to work in a household of chaos. They don’t try to shave the balls of all males who dare to visit the blog. They don’t discount opinions from men. Everyone is equal. They blog, they work, and they raise their children.

So . . . Chartrand claims to have testicles in order to avoid being lumped in with all those whining, stereotypical mommy blogs, and then she has the nerve to insist all the lowly female bloggers let her into their club? Chartrand, of all people, knows that everyone is not equal on the Web. Chartrand herself pretended to have a pair of balls because she found her work perpetually discounted, insulted, and ignored by men. Men (and people who assume masculine identities) get to have the rest of the Internet. Women get their own tiny little part of it, where women's voices are actually valued. In those spaces, comments about how these women "wield their feminism like a spiked mace" from the one man valiant enough to "risk his balls" to wade into the comments are not welcome. Obviously.

* She also made some shit up! Unlike Brontë, Eliot, Sand, or Rowling, Chartrand didn't use a male pseudonym to get her works of fiction published—she parlayed her name into a successful blog which regularly touched on her life . . . except as a man. Every post that tried to recast Chartrand's personality into a male persona—like this one about how "he" learned to knit back when "little kids don’t know that boys shouldn’t do girl things"—is pretty much untruth. If the sexist blogging world made Chartrand change her name, did it also make her throw in some defensive gender posturing to explain why she—a man, of all people!—would ever take up the feminine pastime of knitting? This is where Chartrand's gender play goes beyond necessity and enters the realm of professional responsibility. Isn't a habit of spinning absurd white lies a bit of a liability for any professional writer?

Of course, "Men With Pens" isn't all gender stereotypes and objectification—mostly, it's just straight-up professional advice for 'net writers. But in light of Chartrand's admission, the more sexist aspects of the Web site are hard to ignore. Are Chartrand's hyper-masculine touches in "Men With Pens" tongue-in-cheek inside jokes? Are they defense mechanisms meant to ward off suspicion that she wasn't really a man? Are they yet another way for Chartrand to use sexism for her own career advantage? Or is this just how Chartrand truly sees herself—as a "man with a pen" who enjoys jokingly categorizing her employees based off rigid gender norms, feels the need to bash mommies, and thinks that naked ladies best illustrate her points?

Chartrand thinks that adopting a male pen name was necessary to make her career. "Truth be told, if just a name and perception of gender creates such different levels of respect and income for a person, it says a lot more about the world and the people in it than it does about me," she wrote. But Chartrand's ruse went well beyond the public's mere "perception" of her gender. She named her company "Men With Pens," for Christ's sake. Are we really expected to believe that financial necessity forced Chartrand not only to take a man's name, but to actively define her career around the fact that she's a male with precious balls she's got to protect from vicious ladybloggers? Or that by doing so, Chartrand was in any way elevating her voice as a woman?

More likely, Chartrand owes her career to a willingness to play into the "boy's club" mentality, not only in the name but in the content of her work. Chartrand responded to Web sexism by becoming a bit of a male chauvinist herself. She created a male space that—while welcoming to female commenters and clients—is, let's be honest, more welcoming to men. That act may have been necessary when she was a single mom scraping by on welfare checks. But now that she's a Web presence of her own, complete with clients, employees, and substantial readership, does she really have to keep perpetuating the guy thing? After all, Chartrand has now managed to shore up more recognition as a woman than she ever could as a man.

Tampa's Creative Loafing Recruits More Bloggers from roblimo on Vimeo.

Last month, TampaBay.com posted this video of a blogger meet-up inside the Tampa Creative Loafing offices. Among the attendees at the City Paper parent-company shindig—I spy red solo cups—was Shawn Alff, CL Tampa's "Sex and Love Editor" —me, but more Florida-y. Alff, who has written on bothstrong vaginas, and huge penises—and I got all that just by searching "Shawn Alff vagina penis" on Google—appears around the one-minute mark. "What do I expect from the bloggers? I expect a lot of full frontal, to be honest," he says. "If they want to write for us, they basically have gotta go balls to the wall, have gotta show me what they're working with. It's really, it's part of the job description."

I guess that explains this?

(Having trouble with the video? Click the "HD" button).

[youtube:v=8C17yfGyJjM]

Meanwhile, back home, Jamie Foxx’s latest single, “Blame it (On the Alcohol),” is currently No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its video, featuring Ron Howard, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Samuel L. Jackson, enjoys a heavy rotation on U.S. MTV—despite an equally frothy date-rape theme. The song details Foxx’s pursuit of an increasingly drunk lady. The track also features T. Pain, who chimes through his hallmark vocoder: “Couple more shots you open up like a book.” The song is, essentially, an attempted date rape by a movie star and a dude who sounds like a robot:

[youtube:v=oQdwZm1kck0]

Who is allowed to make light of rape?

Foxx, an Academy Award–winning actor and recording artist, recently suggested that 16-year-old Miley Cyrus “make a sex tape and grow up.” Palmer, frontwoman for cabaret rock outfit the Dresden Dolls, explains on her blog that she has experienced both rape (at age 20) and abortion (at age 17). “[I] could try to win points by talking about [them],” Palmer writes, “but i actually DON’T believe those experiences should lend me any credibility.”

They don’t. Rape, along with infant death and the Holocaust, is one of comedy’s most taboo targets. Blogger and humorist Jon Wellington refers to rape as the comedian’s “Mordor.” Despite the stricture, popular culture will accept rape jokes when they’re delivered in the right context—and potential rapists are often granted more room to kid than potential (and actual) victims.

Threat level LOW: People Stereotypically Identified as Potential Date-Rapists
Includes: gangsta rappers, frat members

When A Tribe Called Quest released “The Infamous Date Rape,” in 1992, the New York Times decried the song as “just plain misogynistic.” Fifteen years of gangsta rap later, the track’s date-rape treatment has been reshelved as a smart dissection of misogyny itself. It’s also full of jokes. Shortly after the track condemns nonconsensual sex—“I don’t wanna bone you that much/That I would go for the unforbidden touch”—it presumes that the woman doesn’t want to bone only because she’s currently bleeding out of her vagina. “When you’re done with the pads can you come check me,” Q-Tip taunts.

[youtube:v=NThtPB-nEQc]

Asher Roth, a white rapper from Morrisville, Pa., also delivers a soft anti-rape blow, in his ode to undergraduate excess, “I Love College.” On its surface, “I Love College” condemns nonconsensual sex (“don’t have sex if she’s too gone”). So why would a commenter on a Village Voice article about Roth call his first album “nothing more than a soundtrack for date rape”?

Roth, like Q-Tip, takes pains to establish his masculinity despite his distaste for passed-out sex. At the beginning of the song’s video, Roth awakens on a fraternity house couch with a half-naked girl passed out on his lap. He doesn’t date-rape her: He just pushes her off onto the floor and starts drinking again. Later, when the party is in full swing, Roth boasts that he drank the party house dry as he “danced my face off and had this one girl completely naked.” He doesn’t date-rape her: He just uses her naked body to boost his cred.

[youtube:v=43pkqeamXe8]

Roth’s song sets limits for consensual sex—don’t do her if “she’s too gone”—while simultaneously urging college students to push those limits by getting wasted and getting it on—when she’s juuuust gone enough. In a fraternity house full of people partying naked until all the booze is gone, “she’s too gone” might start to seem pretty relative.

Roth is allowed to joke because the standard for frat-boy discourse on rape—as with gangsta rap—is so low. Writes one commenter on feminist blog Feministe: “I honestly didn’t expect that much because date rape is usually so fucking hilarious to frat boys."

Threat level GUARDED: People Not Stereotypically Identified as Date-Rapists
Includes: Jamie Foxx, women

Foxx hasn’t received any congratulations from feminist commentators regarding “Blame It (On the Alcohol)”; the nonconsensual undertones of Foxx’s song have simply been ignored in favor of continuous radio rotation. Jody Hill, who wrote and directed the Seth Rogen mall-cop vehicle Observe and Report, wasn’t let off the hook so easily. While Foxx’s song justifies its date-rape-y tone by simply denying the woman’s protestations, Hill’s film goes one step further—justifying its date rape joke by reserving the punch line for the female victim.

In an interview, Rogen explained:

When we’re having sex and she’s unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the fuck are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I’m not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next thirty seconds? . . . And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay: “Why are you stopping, motherfucker?”

In the film, the victim not only consents—she consents hilariously, with a line that relieves the hero of the charge of “date rape” status and relieves the audience of its voyeuristic guilt with a big laugh (never mind that she was actually unconscious). Date rape jokes are more difficult to slip into mainstream films than they are in the context of rap, which is why Hill and Rogen took pains to brand their film as desperately “edgy.” Still, writers can get a pass when they write the jokes for women.

Threat Level ELEVATED:
Includes: Don Imus

Don Imus should never make a joke about date rape.

Threat level SEVERE: Actual Victims of Sexual Assault
Includes: Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer, former Jezebel blogger Moe Tkacik

It makes sense to be wary of women telling rape jokes written by men. But if rape jokes are considered so offensive because they run the risk of triggering the experience of an actual victim, how do we respond when the actual victim is telling the joke?

Last week, the Guardian shamed former Jezebel blogger Moe Tkacik for not reporting her college date rape to the police—and being sarcastic. “I had better things to do,” Tkacik once said of the assault. “Like drinking more.” When Tkacik first spoke out about her date rape on Jezebel, she also laced the experience with humor, writing: “When he, after about a half hour of fooling around, put on a condom I was like, ‘Whooooah, what are you doing?’ But I’d had two forties and I kept drifting in and out of consciousness—my tolerance, obviously, wasn’t what it is today—and I woke up to find him sticking it in.”

Never mind that a college sophomore may actually have better things to do than report a crime with little evidence and no witnesses, one that will enter her name and sexual experiences into the public record and possibly lead to a years-long legal battle: It was a joke. Critics—like women’s studies scholar Linda Hirshman and Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead—who didn’t find Tkacik’s joke funny argued that, as a victim of rape, she should know to speak responsibly on the issue of sexual assault. Feminism has criticized hip-hop, frat houses, and filmmakers for their own light treatment of rape, so it would make sense for the movement to shut out rape jokes from its own discourse, too. But the critics again fail to catch the context of the joke. Bloggers, like rappers, always have their tongues firmly in cheek. Feminist bloggers, then, are held to the highest standard—they must navigate between the sobriety of the women’s movement and the irony of the Internet.

Blogs have afforded individual women the opportunity to speak frankly and publicly about an issue too often relegated to fiction—their own sexual assaults. By holding sexual assault victims to a higher standard of seriousness, we’re doing something worse than blaming the victims: We’re stripping them of their right to contextualize their rape on their own terms. As Palmer wrote in defense of “Oasis,” (on her blog, naturally): “Humor is one of the strongest weapons that human beings have against suffering, death and fear.”

BONUS: A Hierarchy of Date Rape Jams (I made a chart!)

In the spirit of post-election adventure, Slate is starting to work on a new web magazine: Double X. A magazine by women but not just for women, Double X will spin out from our XX Factor blog, where we've started a conversation among women—about politics, sex, and culture—that both men and women enjoy listening in on. The new site will do all this and more. It will take the Slate and XX Factor sensibility and apply it to sexual politics, fashion, parenting, health, science, sex, friendship, work-life balance, and anything else you might talk about with your friends over coffee. We'll tackle subjects high and low with an approach that's unabashedly intellectual but not dry or condescending. The blog will be at the heart of the site, but we’ll also publish essays, reporting, and other features.