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.

Read More “Feminists Hate Sarah Palin Because She Lost Her Baby Weight” »

Lil Wayne has emerged as an interesting figure for feminist critique. As a rapper, Wayne peppers his lyrics with “pussy” and “no homo.” As a public figure, he has reluctantly helped to raise awareness about sexual assault against males and growing up with an absent father. And Wayne’s lyrics, as misogynist as they are, are also playful enough to usher in a few rare feminist hints. Let’s play the Weezy lyrics game: feminist or misogynist?

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

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Rihanna’s new song, “Russian Roulette,” was released two days ago, and it’s already been deemed too shocking for the sensitive ears of America’s youth. “What message do think it sends to the millions of girls who admire Rihanna as an artist?” asks Deborah Reber of Rihanna’s barbed-wire cover pic. Anna North of Jezebel wrote that “the song isn’t one I’d want my kids singing in the car, if I had kids or a car.” Despite the pearl-clutching, the main party that’s been offended by Rihanna’s dark relationship ballad is not The Children—the real concern is that Rihanna has somehow slighted the fully-grown feminist movement. How did a 21-year-old pop star get lifted to a place where she could let feminism down in the first place?

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I’m not much of an expert in feminist economics—I count on my fingers—but I can appreciate a visually interesting, sufficiently dumbed-down lady-graph when it comes my way. This week, my foray into quantitative analysis of feminist issues left me kinda down. Behold, graphical representations of Bad News in abortion and stripping:

Depressing Feminist Graph #1:

Read More “Depressing Feminist Economics Lessons: Unsafe Abortions and Underpaid Strippers” »

The Republican Governor’s Association has launched a new attack ad against Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Governor of Virginia. The ad catches Deeds fending off a female reporter’s line of questioning about proposed tax increases by telling her, “I think I’ve made myself clear, young lady.”

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Kids today are taking more sexual cues from Internet porn, GQ reports. Parents are frightened because their teenagers are gang-banging and ejaculating on each others’ faces. GQ is disappointed because its aged readership can’t get in on the fun. Personally, I’m pretty freaked out that “Travis and Cody, typical 21-year-old college students in Florida,” find female pubic hair “disgusting.” But more than pornography’s peculiar sexual obsessions—group sex, mandatory facials, and “porn-star trim” vaginas—I’m worried about what mainstream Internet porn almost never features: scenes of consent.

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Last month, Tucker Max’s cross-country movie premiere tour hit Raleigh, where students from the North Carolina State Women’s Center were on hand to protest the screening. Max’s people, predictably, had some anti-feminist fun with it, and posted the video online. In the video, Max sends out his minion to interview the protesters while masquerading as a gay Duke student writing a thesis on “the linguistics of rape culture.” Of course, anyone actually interested in the linguistics of rape culture need only watch “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” to figure out what it sounds like. Basically, there are a lot of references to “cum dumpsters.”

Read More “The Rapiest Quotes From “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell”” »

In the wake of the fallout from his inane masters thesis degrading women and homosexuals, it’s nice to see Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell offering something just for the ladies: A handsome magenta bumper-sticker, yours for only $0.99.

Alas, there is not yet any conciliatory  “Gay for McDonnell” campaign merch to speak of. The McDonnell for Governor online store does, however, offer up a host of campaign materials for McDonnell supporters of every other conceivable interest group—including hunters, paramedics, and babies. All of which, I’m betting, are much more likely to feel McDonnell’s message than are the ladies.

There’s Hunters for McDonnell:

Read More “Bob McDonnell Campaign Courts the Ladies, Not the Gays” »

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell delivered a speech to George Washington University College Republicans last night, the G.W. Hatchet reports. McDonnell didn’t explicitly mention his recently unearthed masters thesis which denigrated working women, homosexuals, and people who have sex. But he did make a nod to his commitment to right his past statements:

My wife has convinced me when I’m elected governor we’re going to have a working mom government simplicity task force so all the smart women in Virginia can help tell me how to run Virginia,” McDonnell said. “[They will] help cut down some of that bureaucracy, I think that would be a good idea.”

Any government program tentatively named the “Working Mom Government Simplicity Task Force” which aims to include the perspectives “all the smart women in Virginia” is sure to cut down on bureaucracy! Oh, and in case you were wondering: he got that idea before all the smart women in Virginia turned against him:

When asked by a member of the media after the speech, McDonnell said he proposed that idea to his team before his thesis was brought to light.

Last week, The Frisky writer Jessica Wakeman stood up in defense of the facial. Wakeman argued that the old porn standby—whereby a man ejaculates onto a woman’s face—isn’t inherently demeaning, as long the woman wants it. “In some porn films, the facial is played up to emphasize his humiliation of and domination of her, but in other porn flicks, the money shot is just something the actors do,” she wrote. “In real life, I suspect facials happen more for pleasure than for humiliation, seeing as women have a little thing called self-respect.”

But Wakeman errs in her either/or assumption about the sex act: that facials are either grounded in mutual respect, and elicit pleasure, or are grounded in degradation, and elicit humiliation. In fact, facials can imply all of these things, though we rarely analyze it all in the moment. Plenty of sex acts made popular in mainstream pornography, like facials, are based on achieving male pleasure. Under this model, the female’s pleasure is derived by successfully pleasing the male—and in the process, allowing herself to be degraded. As Amanda Marcotte writes, “our culture constructs sex as something women do for men, and men do for fun.” That model of sexuality is undoubtedly objectifying for women. But it nevertheless—voilà!—conjures up an idea of “pleasure” for both sex partners.

Read More “Semen Facials Are Like Weddings” »