On Aug. 1, The Washington Post Magazine’s weekly blind date feature, Date Lab, will print what has become a once-yearly ritual: The gay date.

Every Sunday, the magazine writes up the adventures of two single Washingtonians set up by the Post; after the date, both spill the night’s details to a reporter, judging their companions on everything from body weight to tolerance for “that’s what she said” jokes. Since launching in 2006, Date Lab has run nearly 200 heterosexual encounters. But it’s only managed to set up four same-sex couples in as many years—and one dater was a repeat.

The Aug. 1 item will be a milestone for Date Lab editor Amanda McGrath—her first same-sex write-up since assuming the feature in May 2009. “I heard stories from the previous editor about how difficult it was, and I thought, ‘This won’t be a problem for me. It will be so easy,” says McGrath. Nope: Date Lab’s last gay date hit newsstands on Jan. 20, 2008. It ended with “a little bit of an air hug.”

According to a recent survey, nearly 7 percent of D.C. residents identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Which you’d think would mean The Post wouldn’t go two years between gay dates. Apparently, in order to qualify as a same-sex match on Date Lab, being gay isn’t enough. Asked in an online chat in 2006 why Date Lab mostly experimented with straight romance, then-editor Sandy M. Fernandez said it was a matter of math: “We just need to get in enough applicants that it isn’t one of those soap opera dates, where if you see two gay or Latino or African American characters, they’re inevitably going to hook up.” Four years later, the feature’s applicants remain prohibitively hetero—and, according to The Post, that’s why the people who make it into print do, too.

“We honestly try with every couple we send out to make a good match, to find a pair that will hit it off,” says McGrath, 27. But “it’s really hard to find people who seem compatible when you have such a limited pool to work with.”
Obviously, in the grand scheme of injustices, the paucity of gay Date Labbers ranks pretty low. But the lack of diversity—in a feature that so clearly strives for it in other ways—does stand out. After all, plenty of heterosexual couples have been matched based on glancing similarities: “She roasts; he bakes”; “He paints, she pots”; “He’s tall; she’s tall”; “She’s tall; he’s very tall.” The paper has matched three pairs based on a shared interest in distance running (“Have these two marathoners run into romance?”; “Two runners finally cross paths. Can they go the distance?”; “Can two marathoners go the distance?”). Some daters don’t even have that much in common. Past unifying principles include “They Were Adopted And Keep Losing Debit Cards. Will They Hang Onto Each Other?” and “They Both Agree: She’s ‘Not Hideous.’” In 2008, a monkey from Rockville tried its hand at making a match. Both daters rated the date a “5.”

So with a track record like that, why not “He’s gay; he’s gay”?

The Post’s answer: Date Lab’s shallow same-sex pool. Of the 3,300 potential daters who have submitted applications since 2007, only 84 identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Fifty-one are men; 33 are women. Since Date Lab keeps potential lovebirds on file for years, some once-promising applicants wind up in committed relationships or rethink their interest in romantic exhibitionism—particularly if they’re not out to all their friends and family who may happen to pick up the Post. From there, start factoring in age (daters range from their 20s to their 60s), interests, personality, and appearance, and you’ve got a pretty skimpy selection of gay and lesbian Washingtonians.

On April 22, Chloe Rubenstein posted a note on her Facebook page.

“ATTENTION WOMEN,” she wrote, before identifying two American university students by name and calling them rapists. She went on: “we should all be aware! Stay away at all costs. They are predators and will show no remorse for anyone. If you have been effected by either one of these sickos please feel free to talk to me. With enough help we can take them down!”

Two months earlier, the American University sophomore and a group of her fellow students had gathered to pass the time during the snowstorm. As feet of snow blanketed the city, Rubenstein’s apartment filled with friends and one new acquaintance—a male AU student who lived in the same building. They drank cheap vodka and danced. At the end of the night, a female friend left the party and entered Rubenstein’s bedroom. Five minutes later, the new guy followed. Rubenstein noticed and followed him in.

Four years earlier, as a high school junior in Massachusetts, Rubenstein found herself alone with a classmate she barely knew, a football star she described as “100 percent muscle.” Rubenstein was 16. She didn’t tell anyone what happened for four months. Even after she moved to D.C. and entered college, she wasn’t comfortable calling the incident by its name. But when she walked into her own bedroom the night of the snowstorm, she recognized what was happening. “It was re-traumatizing for me. I was trying to wrap my head around it for a month,” says Rubenstein, now 20. “It was the same weird feeling I had had a month after I was raped.”

Weeks after the snow had melted, Rubenstein called her friend to see how she was doing. She refused to take Rubenstein’s calls, but a mutual friend informed Rubenstein that the woman was still reeling from the events of the party. “I started slowly trying to figure out what I was going to do about that,” Rubenstein says. Around the same time, another friend informed her that she had recently been raped by another AU student in an unrelated incident. Then, Rubenstein did something she couldn’t do in high school: She attempted to tell as many people as possible what happened.

Rubenstein posted the note without consulting anyone on strategy. “I just did it,” Rubenstein says. “I followed what I believed was right to do at the time.” The accusations were disseminated to 968 of her online friends. A dozen people clicked a box indicating that they “liked” the announcement.

Two female AU students sent Rubenstein private messages claiming that one of the alleged rapists had “done some really screwed-up things to them, too,” Rubenstein says. When she would see him in her building or on campus, Rubenstein says that the accused would run in the opposite direction.

Others were more confrontational. On campus, Rubenstein says that supporters of the accused started to walk “in circles around me, trying to intimidate me.” She received several anonymous phone calls at odd hours. When she picked up the phone, from a private number, a male voice repeated the phrase, “I’m a police officer and I have a few questions I need to ask you,” growing sterner with each iteration. Friends warned Rubenstein of the legal implications of making a rape accusation without absolute proof.

“You’re playing with fire when you throw people’s names out,” admits Rubenstein. “I was aware of the dangers of that. I knew it was a bold move,” she says. “But when I told people that I was fully aware of what I was doing, it made them feel a little more fearless. After that, I started getting a lot more support from people.”

It’s been a banner year for controversial rape announcements on the American University campus. Added encouragement for Rubenstein’s activism came from an unlikely source: Alex Knepper, a sophomore columnist for school newspaper the Eagle, who devoted a great deal of column inches this year to complaining about AU’s “campus of victims.” On March 28, Knepper published a column explaining how women who have been drinking can’t really be raped: “Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI [fraternity] party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry ‘date rape’ after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.”

On the day the column was published, an anonymous group of campus activists removed the papers from their stands, returned them to the paper’s offices, and hung posters printed with the words "NO ROOM FOR RAPE APOLOGY" around campus. Rubenstein participated in the stunt, albeit halfheartedly. “I took some of the copies and moved them around,” she says. “The article was insulting to every woman who has ever been sexually assaulted on campus. So it was an effective action in the sense that it got people to talk, but it was sort of an immature way to do it,” she says. But Knepper’s column shifted something else for Rubenstein. “I wasn’t able to comfortably talk about rape until that article came out,” she says. “Now, I can say, ‘I am a victim of rape and I’m not afraid to say it.’ But this time last year, I wasn’t saying that. This time three months ago, I wasn’t saying that.”

On April 13, two weeks after the column dropped, Rubenstein attended AU’s “Take Back the Night” rally, an annual demonstration against sexual violence. It was the first time Rubenstein openly referred to her experience in high school as a rape. A week later, she wrote her Facebook note. Rubenstein says she posted it for all the women on AU’s campus who might find themselves drunk at parties around the accused. “At first, I wasn’t thinking that this was going to help my friends. I felt like I needed to warn everyone else about these guys,” Rubenstein says. After leaving the message up for a few days, Rubenstein removed it. “I don’t clear my status because I’m scared,” she wrote on Facebook. “I clear it for legal reasons and because my message reached 968 people. If you or someone you know has been raped or sexually assaulted and needs a safe place to talk about how they feel or what can be done, please contact me. No Fear. No Secrets. 2010.”

After removing the note, Rubenstein finally heard from the woman she had followed into the bedroom. “That’s the most beautiful thing that came out of all this,” says Rubenstein. “She called me and asked me why I took my status down…She said that if the other victims decide they
want to do something, that she might want to be there to do something too,” she says. On Facebook, 968 people can be warned of potential predators in an instant; reaching actual victims of sexual assault is more difficult. “When it had happened to me in high school, I did nothing about it,” Rubenstein says. “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about that. I promised myself that I would do whatever I possibly could when this happened to people I know. I just didn’t expect it to happen to so many of them.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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

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

SADY: Why hello!

AMANDA: Hello, m'lady

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMANDA: Oh my goodness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

"Last week, I was over at a friend's house, and he showed me a picture on Facebook of a girl I used to" date, Thomas said.

Woah! Isn't it interesting how expertly Shapira snipped that quote juuuust before Thomas was about to describe, in his own words, what he "used to" do with that girl on Facebook?

Sure, Thomas didn't necessarily employ an R-rated term for his former fling. He could have thrown out a euphemism for dating that didn't really translate in copy: "a girl I used to hang out with"; "a girl I used to see"; "a girl I used to know." Maybe Shapira was simply correcting for Thomas' loquaciousness: "a girl I used to kinda, like, take out or whatever, sometimes." Perhaps Shapira and Thomas are so close, they just finish one another's sentences!

But when Shapira steps in to insert a Post-approved relationship term in an otherwise full quote, it sure makes it look like Thomas had filled in the blank with "a girl I used to bone," "a girl I used to bang," or "a girl I used to fuck." If Thomas' terminology hadn't raised a red flag, why bother butchering the quote right in the middle of the verb?

I have an e-mail out to Shapira asking whether Thomas' description of his relationship was too hot for the Post's standards of decency. I'm trying to hunt down Thomas, but dude's not on Facebook, so if you're one of those friends who acts as his personal Internet secretary, let him know I'd like a word. Preferably a naughty one!

It would be difficult for any advertising campaign to convince me to drink a Bacardi Breezer anywhere—much less in a shopping mall. Unfortunately, Bacardi's "Get An Ugly Girlfriend" campaign has managed to produce the same feeling of nausea in me, but without the 4 percent alcoholic buzz!

Jezebel has already remarked on how the campaign misfires by attempting to target typically misogynystic alcohol advertising at women instead of the usual target (men). But the "Get An Ugly Girlfriend" campaign got another thing wrong, too: the Internet.

The Bacardi campaign, launched in Tel Aviv, is all set up to make online waves. On the Web site, you can fill out a form to receive a free Bacardi Breezer (though I'm not convinced Get An Ugly Girlfriend will look any better when we're drunk). You can add write in with your own comments about each of Bacardi's ugly girlfriends: Sally, the fat one; Daisy, the hippie (and probably the feminist) one; Wendy, the kinda gothy one; and Lucy, another fat one. And you can "friend" each of the girls on Facebook—a feature which sends you over to the campaign's Facebook page. It's so interactive!

Well, it was until this morning. When I logged onto the Facebook group yesterday afternoon, the campaign had about 100 followers—and dozens of negative comments applying a variety of critiques to Bacardi's ad men. The comments ranged from feminist attacks on Bacardi's misogynystic disregard of its potential customers to more aesthetic criticisms ridiculing Bacardi for passing off a grade-school insult as innovation.

But when I attempted to log onto the Facebook page again this morning—what can I say, I'm a fan—the whole interactive feature had mysteriously disappeared. That's the downside of "going viral" when you're trying to sell booze, not pageviews. Personally, I don't mind a spike in visitors when a lot of people are pissed off at whatever I have to say. But if you actually need your online visitors to buy what you're selling, it doesn't help that everyone coming to your site would never buy this misogynystic crap—much less an actual Bacardi Breezer.

It looks like Bacardi has decided to cut its losses on this one and shut down the impromptu Bacardi bitching site (though the ad campaign is still up online). The "comments" feature, however, is still up on the Web site: It includes three generic positive comments supplied by Bacardi. The "Add Your Comment" button below the comments goes nowhere. Now, all that visitors to the Web site can do is shut up and fill out the form for a free Bacardi. That's more like it!

UPDATE: Oops, looks like the Web site has been taken down entirely. Feminist social networking FTW?

UPDATE: A Bacardi rep sent the following apology to Jezebel:

Thank you for taking the time to post your story on Bacardi Breezer.

The campaign you are referring to ran in 2008 for two months in Israel. Even though Bacardi Breezer is not sold or distributed in the United States, we immediately notified the appropriate Bacardi affiliate and had this website shut down.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Please do not hesitate to contact me at anytime should you have any questions.

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?

Sociological Images writes:

So when Facebook wants to represent global humanity, the avatars are orange and of mixed sex; when Facebook is charged with representing an individual, the avatar is white and male. This is not random or accidental. Globally, as Facebook, ironically, reminds us, people are not “white.” Representing people in this way centers men, Western countries, and whiteness (because there are non-white people in Western countries, too) and marginalizes women, non-Western countries, and non-whites (though one might argue that at least ALL of the avatars aren’t white and male).

What Sociological Images fails to note is that the Facebook avatar is only as exclusively "white" as a silhouette artist's subject is exclusively black (which is to say, not at all). Similarly, the avatar is only as exclusively "male" as its haircut—short hair with a funny cowlick. Nope, can't be a woman!:

All woman.

Facebook's "global" avatars don't represent users of both sexes—they represent users with both long and short hair. As far as a vague shadow drawing of human can ever have a gender, the avatars looks pretty gender-neutral to me. I identify more with the short-haired "dude" than the more substantially-coiffed orange "lady." It seems to me that the argument for a more "female" avatar is actually just an argument that the androgyn get a girlier haircut.

Perhaps Sociological Images should be asking why Facebook is so sexist and racist, but not sufficiently heteronormative? Why, Facebook, is your default avatar so vaguely androgynous for all users—male, female, gay, straight, cisgendered and trans? Shouldn't real men be able to choose a manlier avatar (the chin could be better-defined), and women one with a less queer-looking haircut?

I am outraged.

* Feministe reports on England's nonprescription birth control pilot program, which would allow Londoners to obtain contraception without a doctor's prescription. The program, however, would place more power over women's health decisions in the hands of the pharmacist:

Under the program, women seeking nonprescription oral contraception will undergo an interview with a qualified pharmacist. Strategic health authorities—which manage local health services under NHS—will be required to provide pharmacists with sets of instructions known as patient group directions, including special directions for girls younger than age 16.

* Via Daily Intel—deb balls, Arianna Huffington's daughter, thrive during a recession.

* Scarleteen will debate you against the "abortion debate." "Abort​ion:​​ for or again​st it? Who came up with this question, Eagle Forum? Perhaps the Heritage Foundation? Sarah Palin? It's a terrible way to frame the issue of abortion."

* As Slate's XX Factor debates the Herman Rosenblat manufactured Holocaust memoir flare-up, Noreen Malone asks, what about his wife's role in the lie?

* Elsewhere in Slate, Abby Collard informs would-be politicos how to avoid future embarrassment on Facebook. "Clearly, the safest way to protect yourself is not to have a Facebook account in the first place—or, alternatively, not to do stupid things. But neither of these pieces of advice is very practical. The whole point of being young, after all, is to do stupid things, and the whole point of Facebook is to record these acts for posterity."

Photo via trialsanderrors.

Topics discussed: William F. Buckley Jr., murder, Facebook relationship status, real Americans, exploitation, boredom.

Catch up on last week's podcast here.

* not actually five minutes