On Thursday, Men Can Stop Rape will host the D.C. premiere of THE LINE, Nancy Schwartzman's documentary about sexual consent as filtered through her own experience with rape. I interviewed Schwartzman in April about confronting her rapist on camera for the film; she'll be on-hand at the event to "facilitate discussion on how to use the film as a teaching tool among advocates, prosecutors, and college men." Details after the jump.

Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 6 p.m.
Center for Education on Violence Against Women
801 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 375

Space is limited, and RSVP is required: Send full name and organization affiliation to nbates@ncjfcj.org by July 21.

Ever had a sexual experience? Then welcome to the magical world of "virginity," where a white wedding dress can restore a sexually-active 40-something's innocence, a set of pigtails can turn even the most experienced porn performer chaste, and a new hymen can be shipped from China for about 30 bucks. Documentary filmmaker Therese Shechter explores the culture of denouncing sex (even while you're doing it) in "How to Lose Your Virginity," a film about our cultural obsession with chastity— and the way its meaning shifts mysteriously depending upon the implement and the orifice.

Shechter has got nine days to raise a couple thousand dollars to finish the film; while she's waiting to seal the deal, she agreed to answer some questions about surrendering your precious chastity orb to that one special fella who will ensure its proper maintenance until death do you part:

SEXIST: What's it like making a movie about people not doing something?

TS: The definition of virginity is so subject to interpretation. A Mormon college student who considers herself a virgin did a post for my blog, The American Virgin, about how enthusiastically sexually active she was, even though she was waiting for her wedding night to have intercourse. In the film you get the whole spectrum of sexual activity, from Cindy, a very religious and abstinent 30-something screenwriter I met at the Sundance Film Festival, to former ‘abstinence poster girl’ Shelby Knox who now runs seminars called “Fucking While Feminist.” This is all pretty much North America I'm talking about, by the way. There's so much more to say about the rest of the world and I deal with a lot of that on the blog.

SEXIST: In your pursuit of understanding our culture's obsession with virginity, you've examined a variety of industries and subcultures that rely on our fascination with virginity for their own purposes—from "barely legal" porn producers to wedding dress retailers to religious abstainers. How have you seen the meaning of "virginity" shift to satisfy these different contexts?

TS: I think they’re remarkably similar in that they all work within the fantasy of female sexual purity as something to be fetishized. They have different props—the Big White Wedding Dress, porn’s white panties, and the purity ring—but all use a sort of ritualized process whereby a symbolically virginal female is offered up to a male for deflowering. I say symbolic because the porn actress is definitely not a virgin, we’re pretty certain that most modern brides aren’t either, and given our shaky definition of the V-word, we might not even consider some purity pledgers to be totally chaste. But it’s the fetishization of all three that really fascinates me. For whose benefit is it this being played out?

Interestingly, in shooting these scenes, I felt the most comfortable in the company of the pornographers. I don’t know what that says about me, but I’d sooner go back to Barely Legal Ranch than a bridal salon or an abstinence conference.

How does our culture's emphasis on virginity affect men and women differently?

TS: That’s kind of at the heart of it all, isn’t it?

There are the abstinence-until-marriage programs and purity balls that focus almost exclusively on female virginity, going as far as having young girls symbolically hand over their purity to their father for safekeeping until their wedding night when it gets transferred to the husbands. You know, we may cringe at this, but as I mentioned earlier, it’s just a more blatant version of the traditional wedding ceremony. That’s something I really get into in the film as I deal with my own wedding planning and all its chastity-based rituals.

In terms of more mainstream culture (and by that I mean teen sex comedies), I think it used to be that the guys had to be total horndogs and get rid of their virginity as quickly as possible, and the gals had to defend the castle for as long as possible. I feel like recently there’s been a cultural shift where the guys are still basically supposed to be horndogs but it’s now okay for gals to have pre-marital sex under the right conditions (i.e., sex with your perfect boyfriend in a romantic setting with scented candles, possibly after prom, after you’ve professed your love for each other). And by sex, I mean intercourse. I think the idea that a woman needs a penis in her vagina to turn her into a full-fledged sexual being is still pretty prevalent. In reality, young men and women do all sorts of things sexually that don’t fit these gender-based scripts at all, but then they run the risk of being judged, shamed or punished by their peers, media, religious authorities, what have you.

Something seems to change for women in college. Young women talk about this in the film: there’s this metaphysical dividing line between high school, where no one is talking about having sex, and college, where everyone is expected to be having sex. Except not too much. Because that would be slutty, or according to the media, soul-killing (see: Caitlin Flanagan’s article “Love, Actually” in The Atlantic Monthly). The flip side of all this is if you don’t feel ready for sex, you’re considered freakish or undesirable, so you end up either keeping that fact to yourself or doing a bunch of stuff you don’t really want to do.

What’s really interesting is how this plays out after college with people who haven’t yet had sex. Those earlier expectations—that ladies should only have sex when in love and guys should be getting some nightly—often continue past the college years. The women are usually still waiting for that ‘special someone,’ and the men are so totally humiliated by their lack of horndog experience that they just withdraw. I hear this so often—people just assume that not only is everyone but them having sex all the time, but that no one would want to have anything to do with someone who was sexually inexperienced. Again, I think it’s the script we think we should be following so we’re not honest about what’s really going on. I got into this film project because I was pissed off by how women were shamed for being sexual, but as I’ve looked deeper, I’ve found there’s a significant portion of people out there who feel shamed for being non-sexual. I was a post-college bloomer myself, so I can relate.

I think it’s interesting that if you’re queer, you don’t really have a cultural script to follow, because among other things your sex life isn’t about penis-in-vagina sex. Maybe that’s good because you can create your own script when it comes to sexual initiation. I love the Marshall character in “The United States of Tara,” and I’m hoping the writers are building up to some kind of interestingly complex virginity loss scenario. I haven’t seen all of season 2 yet, so if it happens in Episode 11, don’t tell me about it.

In your work on the issue, have you come to find any healthy, inclusive, and non-judgmental conceptions of what "virginity" could mean? Or should we just call the whole "virginity" thing off?

TS: I don’t think we can call the ‘virginity’ thing off. Even though it’s socially constructed, impossible to really define (there isn’t even a medical definition), and often employed as a tool of the patriarchy, virginity still matters. For most of us, sex is important, and the first time you have a significant intimate moment, it’s a milestone (maybe not the best one, but a milestone nonetheless). But it’s hopefully just the first of many milestones in our sexual lives.

So, I don’t necessarily have a problem with the word ‘virgin,’ just the values we attach to it. Virginity is already imprinted with so many meanings, depending on who you’re listening to. It would be nice to be able to create our own personal language of sexuality, and dis-engage it from religious dogma, double standards, the fantasy porn sex you just downloaded or last night’s episode of Gossip Girl.

We spent a whole day talking about all this at the “Rethinking Virginity” conference where I was a panelist, and in the end it came down to this: Do whatever you want with whomever you want as long as it’s consensual and safe. Go forth and shag. Or don’t. That’s fine too.

Your film is called "How to Lose Your Virginity." Any tips?

TS: Unfortunately, no. I’m hoping that by the time you’re done watching the film, you think that phrase is absurd. There’s no right way, we’re not losing anything, and virginity is ultimately an ephemeral and elusive concept. So maybe you’ll be mindfucked, but you’ll still technically be a virgin.

The annual documentary film festival Silverdocs hits D.C. again this week. For the City Paper's coverage of this year's Nordic-heavy offerings, I reviewed Regretters, a documentary which unfolds as a long talk between two men who underwent sex-change operations to become female only to immediately regret the loss of their penises. Its accusatory title aside, the film is less about the tragic indecisiveness of a couple of transgender people than it is about the desperation of homophobia and misogyny, the complexity of gender, and all the social expectations that come with a set of genitalia. Read the rest of the review here.

It's time again for Filmfest DC,the District's annual international film festival. This year—the festival's 24th—I reviewed three films that center on getting hitched. There's White Wedding, a film about wedding planning and post-Apartheid politics, in that order, from South Africa; Will You Marry Us?, a love affair between believably attractive but commitment-phobic aging indie rockers, out of Switzerland; and Silent Wedding, a magical-realist anti-communist romp by way of Romania. Romanian films are, apparently, a theme this year! (Click through for the full list of CP reviews).

THE LINE — It Was Cooperative from Nancy Schwartzman on Vimeo.

In 2004, Nancy Schwartzman flew back to Jerusalem to confront the man who raped her. Three years earlier, Schwartzman was living in Jerusalem by way of New York City, working at a cultural institution, and getting plenty of film footage on the side. Then, a co-worker raped her after a night out. Schwartzman quit her job, flew back home, and slowly processed what had happened. When she finally returned to Israel to sit down with her rapist, she had a hidden camera and microphone in tow.

The result of that videotaped conversation is "THE LINE," Schwartzman's 24-minute documentary about the way we process all the forms of sexual assault that don't adhere to the model of the stranger jumping out of the bushes. After completing THE LINE, Schwartzman launched an international sexual assault awareness campaign by the same name, which asks young people how they define their own "line" in terms of sexual consent.

I interviewed Schwartzman about the experience of confronting her rapist, her advice for survivors who want a face-to-face, and how a hidden camera can make all the difference.

SEXIST: What went into your decision to confront the man who raped you?

NS: I started reading Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery, this really amazing survival book. It talks a lot about post-traumatic stress and how natural it is to want to have a face-to-face with the person who caused you harm. I started videotaping and interviewing a lot of survivors, and I would ask them questions for hours and hours. What did you feel like you lost? What changed for you? But then I had these questions that no one else could answer but him. Why did it happen? Why did you do it? Did I do something to indicate that I wanted this? It was all sort of caught up in the miasma of self-blame. These survivors were not going to be able to tell me why he did it. I started doing a lot of homework on restorative justice and transitional justice. I researched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, where many victims of human rights violations actually met their offenders. For some people, it was really useful. And for some, it was completely re-traumatizing. I did about 6 to 8 months of research and preparation for this meeting before I went.

How did you set up the meeting? What did you tell him you wanted to talk about?

NS: He and I worked together at this really wonderful cultural institution in Jerusalem. I had a close friend who was still here. I would be in contact back and forth with her, and she would tell me, ‘Yes, he’s still here. He still works here.’ I got his e-mail. I sent him a letter just saying, 'I’m coming back to Jerusalem, and I’d like to see you and talk to you.' It was just super general and open.

Before you confronted him, had you spoken to him about the assault at all?

NS: He tried to talk to me after the assault a few times. He was unsettled with how we left things. He wanted to keep telling me, and himself, that everything was fine. The day after he raped me, he came up to me in front of a group of people and pulled me aside. Literally the next day. I didn’t even want to get within ten feet of him. He said, ‘About last night. We were really drunk.’ He was already covering his ass the next day. I said, ‘Don’t talk to me in front of anyone. We’re at our place of work. Don’t talk to me at all. Last night you raped me, and I don’t want to talk to you ever again.’ Ten days later, he tried again. I think he was feeling uncomfortable that I was hanging out and talking to other people and avoiding him; we were still working together for 6 weeks after the assault. He was feeling left out. He knew I was very upset. He wanted to regain some control over our social situation.

Why was it important for you to go back and confront him again a few years later?

NS: Time had passed, and your mind really, really plays tricks on you after an assault. I was still confused as to what happened and why it happened. I said, ‘OK, you raped me,’ and he looked stunned, and then three years go by. I needed to know what happened and why it happened, on a political level. Politically, what’s going on? Why are these rules not clear to him? Maybe I have a different set of cultural norms than he does. I went into analytical mode and filmmaker mode, and I started thinking about capturing this potentially fascinating conversation to use in a larger piece of media. He could apologize. He could accuse me. He could take responsibility. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I wanted to give him one more chance to give me some reason.

What did it feel like to sit down with him?

NS: I had so many feelings going through my head at that moment. It was really powerful to see this guy who I thought was a monster. I was so terrified of him, so scared to look him in the eye again. When I saw him again, I just saw him as a person. He’s a person that I’m making really uncomfortable. And I liked that, you know? I was super confused throughout the process, because I witnessed his humanity. I realized that he’s not a monster. There were times when he tried to convince me of what a great guy he is. I was not convinced, but part of me felt torn, so it was disturbing, too.

Did the hidden camera change the way you felt about the confrontation?

NS: I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the camera. What had happened the night of my assault was between us—there were no witnesses. It was just me and him. He could just negate what I considered my truth and my reality, and he did try and negate it many times after the assault. So the camera was coming in for me as my witness. I knew that it was going to tell the truth. The camera is objective. It was going to record what I said and what he said. I felt much safer with that camera. I didn’t feel alone. I also had a goal—go in, say what you need to say, give him a chance to speak, see how he behaves, and then decide how you’re going to use that footage. I felt so much safer that he couldn’t manipulate me, and if he had—look, it’s on my camera.

What was it like to go back and watch the footage?

NS: I absolutely fell in love with the footage. I had this very tangible thing in hand, and it made me feel like I had purpose. I felt so dedicated to doing something with it. It was such a unique piece of evidence. I loved how the images were breaking up in the wireless receiver, I saw it as a metaphor for the disconnection between us. I feel like it’s pretty inconclusive conversation, but I have that visual representation of his body language, his visual discomfort, and I can edit it and use it however I want. I was so convinced proof was in the pudding that now, no one is ever going to doubt that he raped me and knew that he was doing. But after I shot it, I spoke to a friend who was like, “yeah, I think he just doesn’t get it, it must just be cultural differences.” That plummeted me. I couldn’t get out of that rut for like a day. It was such a roller coaster. Even when you have someone on tape, people are still telling you he didn’t get it. It’s cultural. That’s why. People will still find reasons to doubt.

Last year, Ask Amy answered a letter from a reader who wasn't sure if she was raped, and Amy instructed her to go ask her rapist what happened. I thought, 'That's a really bad idea!'

NS: It took me three years after my assault to make the decision to go back. I spent one year completely in denial about what happened to me. I spent a year writing non-stop about what happened to me. And then I spent a year interviewing and researching. I did so much work determining all the possible things that could happen if I went back. I said, these are the 20 things that could happen: He could yell at me, he could cry, he could beg forgiveness. I did role-playing. I went through so many scenarios in my head. I walked in there saying, what if he apologizes? What if he’s really truly sorry? Was I prepared to forgive him? Would I go back on my righteous desire not to forgive him? He did not apologize, so that was not a problem. . . . But had I gone to him soon after the assault and said, ‘What happened?’ He would have said, ‘Nothing. You were great in bed and it was really fun.’ Seriously, he said that three years later. I did a shitload of work to prepare for this. You need to be so clear about your story, and you can’t go to him to have him tell you what happened. I went to him to find out, well: What the fuck is his version of events? What is his script? What has he been telling himself for the past three years?

What advice do you have for people who are thinking about confronting?

NS: . . . In the New York state justice system, there is a mediation program for victims and perpetrators. I spoke to a man there for a really long time while researching options for a subject in my film, who was assaulted in New York City by a stranger. And he told me that he was always really clear about the kinds of people he says 'yes' to and those he says 'no' to. The desire to meet always has to come from the victim. Sometimes rapists, in prison, will say, ‘I want to talk to the victim. I want to tell her why I did what I did.’ No—it has to always come from the victim. Then, he does a lengthy assessment of the perpetrator to determine if they’re willing to take responsibility, to see if the conversation is going to be re-traumatizing or productive. I think that’s a very important thing to think hard about. Is this a person who is going to listen? I would start by writing—write lists of how you remember your story. What that story was, what your grievances are, what you lost. I left my job that I really loved because I couldn’t be in the same room with him. I lost the opportunity to be in Jerusalem. I paid for that ticket home, I paid for therapy. All of these things that that instant does to you. I went through the process as if I was going to have an official victim offender meeting with a mediator that I didn’t have. There’s so much preparation that goes into it. Will he be a willing partner in a dialogue? What do I want from this experience? Do you want someone to come with you? You have to be super clear about your goals or expectations.

What have you heard from other survivors who have considered confronting their attackers?

NS: I don’t want the film to be a call to confront, like ‘Go do it! It’s going to make you feel better!’ This is absolutely my personal experience. . . . I’ve heard from survivors who have said, ‘I met with my father who abused me, and it was horrible.’ I’ve heard from survivors who said, ‘I spoke to the guy who raped me and he laughed in my face and walked away.’ They were completely re-traumatized by the experience. It’s confusing, because if you were assaulted by someone who is very manipulative, they will attempt to manipulate you when you meet with them. And it’s not always as productive as they want it to be.  What it comes down to is: How do we confront people who do us wrong? How do we do it safely? How do we take the burden off our own shoulders? How do we let them know this was absolutely wrong?

Nobody separates Best Director from Best Directress (directrix?), or Best Editor from Best Editress, so why Best Actor and Best Actress? Combine them, and let the best "performer" win.

Seriously. Colin Firth vs. George Clooney isn't half as intriguing a matchup as the brawl-of-the-drawls you'd get if The Blind Side's Sandra Bullock were allowed to compete with Crazy Heart's Jeff Bridges. Imagine Meryl Streep's Julia Child going up against Morgan Freeman's Nelson Mandela—now that'd be a contest.

It seems a bit odd that Mondello's solution for eliminating sexism in the Academy would be to cut one of the few Oscar categories that reliably awards women for their achievements in film. The Academy has never separated Best Director from Best Directrix—and in 82 years, a woman has never won in that category. But Mondello anticipated this criticism:

Yeah, yeah, I can just hear the objections to combining categories: Men get all the roles; they're higher paid; their pictures have bigger budgets. Well, let me concede most of that, but also let me note that these are new developments.

The academy's original logic for separating the acting awards by gender was probably that if they hadn't done so in Oscar's early years—the 1920s and '30s—the men would've watched as Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo walked off with all the trophies.

That's a fun fact: The olde tyme Oscars were so scared that men might not sweep every single category that they made a special one just for the women, thereby situating female actors as complements instead of competitors. And despite the sex-based segregation, from Mondello's view, women are still on top of the acting game:

. . . Yes, of course the game has changed since then, but it's changed in a way that could actually work against men at Oscar time. The blockbusters and crime dramas that men have dominated since the studios' heyday rarely win acting awards any more. Performers wanting to place that neutered gold statue on their mantels these days have to play in something more touchy-feely—what used to be called, um, women's pictures.

Except that a real "women's picture"—like, one directed by a woman—has never won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The films Mondello is talking about are, for the most part, films written by men, directed by men, and produced by men; real "women's pictures" have been consistently boxed out of Oscar, and all the money that comes with it. Only four women have ever been nominated for Best Director, including this year's great female hope, Kathryn Bigelow; several more women have had their films nominated for Best Picture without a corresponding Best Director nod for the woman at the helm. Men have dominated every type of film since forever—especially the type of films adored by the Academy—so the idea that male actors have to confine themselves to a feminine filmmaking tradition in order to score a Best Actor nod is bunk.

Still, it's worth examining Mondello's central argument, which is that if the sex-segregated acting categories were combined, women would reliably kick some ass:

I mean no disrespect to Matt Damon's rugby playing in Invictus, Woody Harrelson's crying in The Messenger, Christopher Plummer's erudite dithering in The Last Station, or the respective killing styles of Stanley Tucci in The Lovely Bones and Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. But would even one of those guys stand a chance in a gender-neutral supporting performer category, competing with the ferociously manipulative mom Mo'Nique plays in Precious?

I'm guessing no. The academy will almost certainly reward Mo'Nique on Oscar night — and that would be no less true if she were competing with the boys.

The Academy has, for almost a century now, specifically lent support to the work of women in that one category—acting. I suspect it is not entirely a coincidence that, given this historical support, women would continue to bring home the statuette even if they were forced to compete with male actors.

I can't say how deep an effect the existence of "Best Actress" and "Best Supporting Actress" categories has had on the film industry, but I know this: These categories reward filmmakers who write strong female characters. And even today, the existence of good stories about women can hardly be taken for granted in Hollywood. Like Mondello, I bristle at the unnecessarily sexist distinction between great male actors and great female actors. But as onerous as a "Best Female Director" category would be, I know that if that category had existed 80 years ago, Hollywood would have actually been forced to support real "women's pictures" all the way down the line, and today's great female filmmakers would not be staring down an 80-year legacy of being left out of the show.

Alyssa Rosenberg nails it on why today's romantic movies suck so bad: They're only about romance. The great romantic films of yore, Rosenberg notes, forced romantic love to duke it out with some other big force in the characters' lives—like Nazis:

[T]he reason older romantic movies were good is because they tended to be about something other than simply the romance. In It Happened One Night, Clark Gable's scoop is at risk. In His Girl Friday, it's Rosalind Russell's professional integrity. In the Thin Man, there's crime, in Casablanca, Nazis.

. . . In American romances, and particularly romantic comedies, today, there is no problem that's not directly related to the main characters' ability, or lack thereof, to love. It doesn't matter if it's jobs, parents, a precocious niece, or the end of the world. It's all about the love affair. Finding love will help all those characters find fulfilling employment, forgive their mothers, embrace their siblings, overcome low self-esteem, whatever. It's an incredibly limiting plot-assumption, not to mention a guarantee that characters will be hopelessly self-centered. And that self-centeredness is just exhausting and diminishing and requires completely predictable endings. Characters must find love if they're to find redemption or success in any other area. It's too bad. Sometimes in the past, people walked away for the greater good. There was heartbreak that was real, and not intended to be fixed by the opening credits.

As Rosenberg notes, this syndrome particularly affects romantic comedies. These plotless wonders have reached crisis level. I'm convinced that resolving this particular plot point would alleviate most of my complaints with the romantic comedy's persistent representation of women as uptight bitches who are just in need a good fuck, and men as flavorless cyphers who have volunteered to do the fucking.

Let's review the major conflicts in a small (but representative!) sample of romantic comedies from the past 20 years:

Bridget Jones' Diary:

Conflict: Woman who is traditionally unlucky in love unexpectedly acquires two romantic suitors. One is a jerk; the other has a possible girlfriend.

Resolution: Suitors duke it out. Jerk is revealed to be even larger jerk; other guy unexpectedly leaves possible girlfriend. Romance is preserved.

The Wedding Planner:

Conflict: Wedding planner falls in love with charming doctor. The romance is interrupted when the planner discovers that she is planning the man's wedding—to another woman! Wedding planner decides to marry some other dude instead.

Resolution: The doctor calls off his wedding with the other lady. Wedding planner calls of her wedding with the other dude. Romance is preserved.

Leap Year:

Conflict: A woman cannot propose to the man she wants to marry, for it is uncouth for women to propose to men. She travels to Dublin, where it is acceptable on one day every four years for a woman to propose to a man. There, her boyfriend proposes to her, preserving romance momentarily. However, it is later revealed that her boyfriend is a jerk, and she calls the wedding off.

Resolution: After that, some random dude she met in Dublin proposes to her. Romance is preserved (BONUS: no woman was forced to propose to a man).

Sleepless In Seattle:

Conflict: Woman from Baltimore is engaged to a nice but unimpressive fiancee. Man in Seattle's wife is dead.

Resolution: Man's son convinces him to declare his widowhood over the radio. Woman writes him a letter. Man's son, impersonating his father, tells woman to meet him on the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day. Woman travels to Seattle to secretly stalk man. Later, she returns to New York to be with her real boyfriend. Man's son sneaks away and flies to New York by himself in an attempt to meet woman. Boy's father chases him. Woman breaks up with her fiancee for some reason.

Resolution: The man, his son, and the woman meet on top of the Empire State Building. Romance is preserved.

The central plot resolution device in any of these stories is to push any potential romantic rivals out of the picture long enough for our two main characters, whom the filmmaker has randomly assigned to be destined to be together, to manage to slip a ring on each others' fingers before the credits roll.

Rosenberg is right: Filmmakers need to wise up and realize that competing romances are not the only sources for conflict in a film about romance. I'm not saying that The Wedding Planner would have been better if there were Nazis in it, but wouldn't the Wedding Planner have been better if there were something like Nazis in it? Surely, romantic comedy writers can come up with some external force to engage with our heroes' romantic pursuits that is more compelling than a stand-in fiancee or a roguish Irishman.

We all know why women identify with the protagonists in romantic comedies: We are all pathetic, overworked, wedding-obsessed spinsters with romantic lives so complicated they could only truly be expressed through the peculiar talents of Jennifer Lopez.

But what of the romantic comedy's leading man? Who is he? Why is he nothing more than a cipher of himself? Furthermore, how does Matthew McConaughey's boner always manage to steal us from our boyfriends and high-powered careers in order to make us his wife in the space of approximately two weeks?

Your questions, answered, in this week's edition of Sexist Beatdown, featuring: The incomparable Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown. Sady has become somewhat of a connoisseur of Matthew McConaughey's boner as of late, as she's recently taken in to a steady diet of rom-coms—a purely professional endeavor, I am assured! (check out Sady's eerily fascinating examination of Billy Zane's work in Titanic for proof). But enough exposition: On to us using the word "boner" too many times!

SADY: well, good morning, my friend!

AMANDA: is it time to talk about cute boys??

SADY: indeed! boys who are cute AND dreamy! and also enormous jerks whom you will hate with a fiery passionate rage until you figure out that they are actually dreamy and in love with you and then everything will more or less work itself out. i saw "bridget jones' diary" for the first time this week. were you aware of this?

AMANDA: i believe i saw that movie in the theater, with my mother.

SADY: oh, good! did it make you want TO DIE?

AMANDA: if not that one, then the second one. i have seen both of them!

SADY: oh, my!

AMANDA: sadly, NO. i was more interested in how dreamy modern Mr. Darcy was. but then again, i was 16, i think.

SADY: really! i found him extremely boring! but then, i was instilled with deep hostility against bridget jones. because – i have to share this with you – there are these constant fat jokes? like, bridget is fat and unlovable and fat and a chain-smoker and unlovable and omg, SO FAT, bridget jones! and then they show her weight at one point? and she weighs four pounds less than i do. and smokes fewer cigarettes. and, probably, drinks less. it was a sobering moment which i reacted to by throwing something at the screen.

AMANDA: I KNOW

SADY: but back to modern-age mr. darcy! because he symptomizes, for me, a major problem of the romantic comedy version of Your Boyfriend, which is: he is boring as hell.

AMANDA: i think i remember being a thin 16 year old ... and seeing that weight show up on the screen ... and thinking, WTF, I am fat? actually, I do remember thinking that! my extreme discomfort with this movie is breaking through my residual attraction to Colin Firth! but ANYWAY. back to him. don't remember much about his character, actually. i suppose that's the point.

[youtube:v=2cpd4py3GuY]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is simply a recycled version of the love interest in a Jane Austen novel, played by the actor who played said love interest in the BBC miniseries.

SADY: right. i mean, i know we are talking here about Masculinity in Pop Culture, particularly through the lens of romantic fantasies For The Ladies, but as someone who has seen a lot of these fantasies recently, one thing that bothers me is that they never do manage to create a believable human dude at any point. like, the versions of men presented for our delectation are either completely vague and dull and personality-free yet handsome (your Mr. Darcys, your Hugh Grant in early-period films, etc.) or charming and handsome assholes (your Edward Cullens, your Hugh Grant in this film, etc). Colin Firth in particular has built a career of playing these ciphers.

[youtube:v=nXVf2hAWRQM]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend mopes, over you.

AMANDA: Yes, and romantic comedies in general are sort of build on the idea of the Suspension of Unbelievable Dudes. consider any romantic comedy that is based around cheating and/or, for the lack of the better term, "homewrecking."

SADY: ah, yes. i invite you to consider these for me!

AMANDA: consider: the Wedding Planner, with the totally chemistry-less rom-com dream team of Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey, about a wedding planner falling in love and hooking up with the groom in a wedding she is, of course, planning. which makes both characters, in real life, scumbags. but on screen, they are magically transformed into ... simply boring.

[youtube:v=AkAwO5I-Tuk]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is Matthew McConaughey's boner.

SADY: oh, my goodness, yes. sleepless in seattle, same deal. it is basically about a lady with a boyfriend who instead decides to stalk a dude whose emotional vulnerability she heard about on the radio one time... and her boyfriend/fiance just goes for it! in the scene where she's like, "sorry, yo, got to go meet up with this dude i been stalking," Boyfriend (who is the spectacularly vanilla-pudding-like Bill Pullman) is just like, "too bad for me, good luck!" i watched this with my mother, who commended Bill Pullman for doing the right thing.

[youtube:v=L4KQsPnz8Tw]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is an anonymous yet sexily depressed radio voice.

AMANDA: Yeah, romantic comedies set up this weird alternate universe where cheating isn't bad, and is in fact encouraged, as long as you are hopelessly in love with Other Person whom you met about 2 days ago.

SADY: well, and also it provides... CONFLICT!!! like, there is always supposed to be this other dude in the background who is totally wrong for you but of course you don't know that yet. and that dude alwaaaaaays gets shafted. perhaps because he is basically a ken doll. he is there to distract you from realizing that you are Totally In Love with this other person until it is nearly too late! at which point you put him back in the box.

AMANDA: Right. And then, all of a sudden, totally after the fact, you realize that Other Dude is a jerk, or also cheating, or boring, or dumb, and this justifies the affair you have already embarked upon.

SADY: indeed.

AMANDA: Which brings us to the Other Other Dude in romantic comedies: the fancy "career" of the protagonist who is married-to-her-work! ... until a really boring hot dude drops into her life, which makes her realize that life is not all about planning weddings. it is also about having others plan weddings for you.

SADY: yes. often, in fact, she meets this gentleman through her career! consider, my friend, "failure to launch," which is about a lady whose job is to give apatovian losers boners and hence inspire them to better their lives. which is an odd job. but whatever. because one of the man-children she is hired to date is TOTALLY HOT! and he believes she must LOOSEN UP! and she does. or "how to lose a guy in 10 days," or... shit, this is all matthew mcconaughey. he is basically the dude who makes you hate your job with his boner. in every movie. I FIGURED IT OUT!

[youtube:v=5y28R-ZWP9A]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is Matthew McConaughey's boner, again.

AMANDA: I guess I like my job too much to let Matthew McConaughey's boner convince me that my boyfriend is a jerk? "Women are so complicated!"

SADY: we are! it's true! but if there's one thing we've learned, as a gender, it's that wanting something for your life other than a superdreamy boyfriend is misguided, and you need to Get Your Priorities Straight ASAP. with boning. illicit cheater boning. which is what women want, the end, i have solved everything.

AMANDA: but why is the cheater boning dude always so boring? Have you seen Made of Honor? I've heard that it is My Best Friend's Wedding but with a hilarious role-reversal. Is that dude boring, as well?

[youtube:v=jBQ1NG34cdg]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend falls down repeatedly, because he loves you

SADY: um. he's that dude with the super-boring face? and i never saw the movie, because his face in the poster was so boring. so that might answer some questions. for all i know there's a third-act twist where he's a bungee-jumping heroin-dealing bad boy, but his face would still probably put you to sleep before you figured that out.

AMANDA: so ... yes. but it's not as if the women in these movies are terribly compelling, either.

SADY: well, yeah, but they're meant to be Us. ALL OF US. personalities get in the way of mass identification. and, to be fair, not all movie boyfriends are boring! some are also hateful and borderline-abusive. such as gerard butler, in "the ugly truth," where the entire point is that gerard butler hates women like poison and fire and snakes all combined, and he takes it on himself to teach katherine heigl how awful women are so she can date, and then you learn that he broke up with a girl once so it's all okay.

[youtube:v=yUMMdLiDJSc]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is a jerk who causes your panties to vibrate unexpectedly at dinner in front of representatives from your corporate office, causing you to orgasm.

AMANDA: and he's in his mid-30s? isn't that supposed to happen in college?

SADY: NOT FOR GERARD BUTLER. the wounds of gerard butler do not heal easily.

AMANDA: he has nice abs!

SADY: he also has a face like a pork shoulder. which is mean, but also bridget jones gave me bad body image this week so i will excuse myself there. okay, MAYBE I WON'T. sorry, gerard butler. but anyway, i think we've learned a lot about what women want from men this week. it is (a) boredom, (b) an excuse to quit their fancy jobs that they love with all the passion they should be reserving for matthew mcconaughey, (c) grace under being-cheated-on, and (d) ????

AMANDA: Um ... have you ever seen a romantic comedy that does not do this?

SADY: "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" is a romantic comedy! and i liked it so, so much! but it's never mentioned in our recaps of the genre. because if a movie is GOOD, it avoids the "romantic comedy" label-of-death. also if it is focused on a dude, which a lot of them are these days. and then the ladies get to have no personality! equality! GIRL POWER!

AMANDA: yes, in the world of film, even women can be brainless objects. this is truly progress.

SADY: well, i'm just going to go and bask in the glow of How Far We've Come, if you don't mind.

AMANDA: I'm going to go watch What Women Want. I am told the answers to all of our questions lie within that film.

[youtube:v=99-8-9az2To]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is psychic Mel Gibson OH GOD

SADY: ah, what is the point of chatting when mel gibson could be shaving his legs or something right in front of your own personal face? good luck to you.

AMANDA: it is what I want, apparently!

Behold a common argument deployed by modern sexists:

1. Establish your concern for the women's movement by admitting that things used to be pretty bad for chicks, back in the olden days when institutionalized sexism dictated that women couldn't vote or hold jobs out of the home.

2. Your feminist prowress now established, assert that since women are now legally freed to pursue activities beyond babymakin', all sexism has miraculously disappeared in the workplace, in inter-personal relationships, and in entertainment.

3. Declare anyone who says otherwise a sexist.

This sexist argument—that sexism used to exist, but no more—tends to collapse whenever vintage sexism rears its ugly head. Modern sexists, like moths drawn dangerously close to the flame, can't help but defend the olde-tyme sexism. You know, the kind that was par for the course back when women couldn't vote or work or take birth control or avoid being legally raped by their husbands.

I learned this lesson personally when I began posting the "Sexist History" feature, which mines the New York Times archives for the hilariously overt degradation of women in vintage journalism. Whether the vintage sexism is objectifying hordes of women, asserting that female ignorance is cute, or blatantly rejecting the idea of women's suffrage, there is, without fail, at least one modern defender of the sexist NYT reporter, may he rest in peace.

Take this commenter's response to a 1909 sports reporter's rhapsodic, objectifying, and paragraphs-long detailing of all girls in the audience. It's an account which has apparently aged well over the past 100 years:

How on earth is that sexist? I don’t see one comment that is disparaging of women. He’s simply admiring the abundance of women at the event, and his writing is actually fantastic, much better than most of the BS that’s out there today.

Or another commenter's response to a 1900 New York Times piece which admonished female Cuban exchange students for taking too many sexual liberties in America, posted on IvyGate's coverage of the story:

Heh. So now it’s sexist to notice pretty girls?

More vitriollic defenses of olde-tyme sexism can be found everywhere vintage sexism is on display. YouTube, of course, is an infamous repository of bigotry. Check out the commonts on this YouTube clip from the 1963 movie, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, which posed the question about the following dialogue: "The Most Sexist Line in Movie History?"

[youtube:v=eVLKArzODO4]

"The man who will love me on equal terms. That old saying, 'behind every man is a woman'—that's not for me. I want to stand right alongside. Is that asking too much?"

"Well, now I think you're going to have to be satisfied with the vote right now," TK responds. "I don't think that will ever become a national movement."

The modern sexism was swift and barely intelligible:

From MysteryManoLove:

You are DUMB, feminism has it's good points as Nazi Germany did too, thonly parallel is that feminists are taking the rights away from every one. They arn't making more "rights" anymore, it's all privilige, affirmative action, Title ix education amendment, ect.

From LovelyYTRocks:

Women? Equal to man? Lololol. I remember in P.E., not so long ago: A 15-year-old girl needs to cover 3 kilometres in 16 minutes to receive 10/10. A 15-year-old boy needs to cover 3 kilometres in 12 minutes to receive 10/10. 0 girls has completed this task so far, and nearly all boys has completed this challenge (except the really fat ones).

From Nickyrinkydinky:

To Lowfuellevel and the rest of the whining sexist bitches.

1. My father is a HOUSE-HUSBAND and looks after my sisters and brothers WHILST going to work during the day time. On top of that MANY men i know DO have 2 jobs in order to support their families.

2. There is literally little/no sexism today. You complain just for the sake of it. Ive been brought up well by my mother and i respect women. Yet all i see is sexist comments from "feminists" nowdays.

Yahoo! Answers—and its fellow community-based advice sites—may be the most frustrating forum for even the most innocuous feminist sentiments. After user Lindseylillian asked other Yahoo! users for examples of sexism in film, the resounding response was: No films are sexist. Lindseylillian is the only one who is sexist:

Oh great another feminist taking pure entertainment and making it into something so complicated and offensive. You know what YOUR sexist, because nobody even thought of that before you, people all saw people, you saw woman being held back....you sexist.

I used to enjoy a good laugh at vintage sexism, partly because it demonstrated how far we've come. Now I know that while the films and newspapers may have aged, there's nothing "vintage" about the sexist sentiment behind them.

Photo by late night movie

Speaking of creepy things to do: Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, and Reese Witherspoon are reportedly filming in Adams Morgan today until 1:30. I don't have time to go stalk Paul Rudd, so instead I'm stalking people stalking Paul Rudd on twitter. And repeatedly watching this Paul Rudd dancing compilation (above).

The top ten creepiest Paul Rudd in D.C. tweets—including one from a CP staffer—after the jump!

10. Can't argue with this one:

adefran Wow, Paul Rudd's dreamy.

9. At least she didn't pee ON him:

theresamac Holy crap. I was just 5 feet from Paul Rudd. We smiled at each other. Then I had to keep walking, lest he see me pee my pants.

8. The CP Tweet!

cernest: I wonder if I'll be able to see Paul Rudd from my office window: http://tinyurl.com/ljqdha

7. "Mark my words" is never creepy!

MereDitty Paul Rudd/Reese/Owen Wilson were filming yesterday 3 blocks from my office and I missed them! I will see them by summers end, mark my words

6. Just "considering" at this point:

necsortenecfato Film crew on Columbia. Word on the street Paul Rudd is in the movie. Considering my stalking options.

5. What's creepier than kissing Paul Rudd until he calls the cops?

XrisThomas @theresamac i would have kissed paul rudd had i saw him. on the lips. until he called the cops.

4. . . . referring to kissing as "putting my mouth on his mouth"

CMCrawley @necsortenecfato Let me know if you need some company stalking Paul Rudd. I want to put my mouth on his mouth.

3. Paul Rudd, a PERSON?

ejhonsa Saw Paul Rudd today on the street by Archives. It was like running into a classmate whose name you've forgotten. He looked like a person.

2. Ah, yes: It's the famous and successful actor who is truly "terribly alone":

molluskbrigade Paul Rudd passed by me on the street. He looked at me. He looked terribly alone. This is something that happened to me.

1. And the creepiest Paul Rudd tweet goes to:

rileykim Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd..

Welcome to the City Paper's guide to the 18th Reel Affirmations, D.C.'s annual GLBT film festival. Tonight, the fest kicks off with an opening night film and after-party. The film, Breakfast With Scot, is a 2008 feature directed by Laurie Lynde and starring Tom Cavanagh and Ben Shenkman. Read the City Paper's entire Reel Affirmations coverage here, and stay tuned tomorrow on The Sexist for the highs and lows of the film fest's weekend slate.

CP's own Tricia Olszewski reviews the film; how the party goes is up to you.

If ever a Reel Affirmations selection seemed destined for the Disney Channel, it’s Breakfast With Scot. The fest’s opening-night film is about two manly gay men whose machismo is threatened when they become guardians of the World’s Feyest Boy. Based on a novel by Michael Downing, Laurie Lynde’s adaptation offers a sanitized, broad, and inevitably gooey portrait of gay life­but it’s still more watchable than many of the festival’s softcore-with-a-side-of-story features. Tom Cavanagh stars as Eric, a former Toronto Maple Leaf turned sports anchor who lives with his partner, Sam (Ben Shenkman) but remains closeted in professional circles. A contrivance of events involving Sam’s no-good brother leaves the couple with temporary custody of Scot (Noah Bernett), an 11-year-old with a penchant for boas, Christmas carols, and gardenia-scented hand cream. Eric and Sam, meanwhile, are anti-PDA­—they share only one peck on the lips during the entire film—­with Eric in particular horrified at Scot’s every swishy move. His strategy? Get the figure-skating boy playing hockey. Breakfast With Scot is NHL-approved (it’s reportedly the first gay-themed movie to get permission to use a professional sports league’s logos) and occasionally funny, mostly due to Cavanagh’s way with a quip. But the oh-please moments pile on as Eric’s and Scot’s personalities become more exaggerated and the story turns trite. (Spoiler alert: In parenting Scot, Eric learns something about himself.) Worse is the line that marks their official bonding moment, with Eric responding to Scot’s worry that a friend will think he’s a sissy: “We’re all a little sissy around here.” -TO

Catch the film at 7 p.m. tonight at the Lincoln Theatre, 1215 U St. NW. Directly following the film, night owls can head to Town Danceboutique for the Reel Affirmations opening night party at 2009 8th St. NW. Breakfast With Scot is $20; the film and party together cost $40.

Reel Affirmations runs from Thursday, Oct. 16, to Saturday, Oct. 25, at multiple venues. Head to the Reel Affirmations Web site for a full film schedule.