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” »

Sociological Images accuses Facebook of sexism and ethnocentricsm for using a “white and male” image as its default avatar to represent a typical user, while opting for “orange avatars of both sexes” to represent its “global connection” capabilities.

So why does this shadowy male figure look just like me?

Read More “Is the Facebook Avatar a Dude?” »

As local blogger Tim at the 42 reported yesterday, the 2323 18th St NW spot formerly occupied by Nolan’s will open again this Saturday. The replacement, “The Town Tavern,” has some gender-specific rules for entrance, and they’re not benefiting Adams Morgan’s storied dude population.

Here are some specifics: Women 21 and over can enter, but men must be 23. “No unaccompanied groups of males” are allowed. Most of the dress code applies to both genders (No Hats, No Visors, No Do-Rags, No Tank Tops, No Cut-Offs, No Sleeveless Shirts, No Jerseys, No Sneakers, No Combat Boots), but one rule is men only: they’ve gotta wear collared shirts.

These rules appear to be condescending toward the neighborhood’s men, but really, I think they’re more offensive to women. The collared shirts, the older men, the anti-friends-groups rule; they’re all made assuming that this is what women want, and that ladies will be falling over themselves to line-up to experience these perfectly calibrated hook-up conditions.

Whether Town Tavern can convince Adams Morgan to abandon its free-for-all clusterfuck hook-up culture for a more refined, collared experience remains to be seen. Drink up Town Tavern’s full set of rules, after the jump:

Read More “New Adams Morgan Bar Loves the Ladies; Dudes, Not So Much” »

As a non-man who is nevertheless quite interested in the pursuit of manliness, I was interested to try the Genderanalyzer—which “uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman.” Last time I plugged the Sexist into the Genderanalyzer, it told me I wrote like a dude. I basked for several seconds in the news, believing that I had fooled this widget through my progressive, gender-bending style of blogging. Then I plugged Danielle Steele into the analyzer. Turns out she writes like a dude, too.

Now, it looks like this ye olde online gender identity crystal ball is beginning to get rather specific. The analyzer—which I’m not convinced isn’t entirely bogus—can now determine the dudeliness of your blog down to the percentage point. Just how manly am I?

Read More “I Am Seventy Percent Man” »

* Slate is all over the sex & gender beat this week! First, Jack Shafer debunks the New York Times Sunday Styles “dudes love cats” trend piece:

How to write a bogus trend story: Start with something you wish were on the rise. State that rise as a fact. Allow that there are no facts, surveys, or test results to support such a fact. Use and reuse the word seems. Collect anecdotes and sprinkle liberally. Drift from your original point as far as you can to collect other data points. Add liberally. Finish with an upbeat quotation like “My cat takes priority over the new relationship. Realistically, unless there’s something absolutely amazing about [the woman I'm dating], he wins.”

* Then, Explainer explains how to tell whether your 13-year-old kid actually wants a circumcision—or whether you could be pressuring him to have one. Is it so wrong to ask kid owners to err on the side of “foreskin intact”?

* And the XX Factor’s Melinda Henneberger probably doesn’t want your flowers. Henneberger lays out the rules for flora-purchasing significant others:

- A dozen for no reason: You shouldn’t have!
- A bouquet on an actual occasion: No, really, you shouldn’t have.

Speaking from my estimable position as “local blogger who sleeps on a mattress on the floor of a group house flanked by two squatter-occupied abandoned properties and counts among her possessions a bunch of old newspapers stacked in milk-crates recovered from darkened alleyways”—I, too, may never understand women.

Photo by Robyn Gallagher