* Wow! Creepiest ending to a Craigslist personals ad in recent memory: “There is a unique kind of yoga I’ve been doing…when I’m not at the gym”

* Womenstake’s Melanie Ross Levin describes the scene at the signing of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. “Surrounded by a “who’s who” from the women’s movement, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the significance of this occasion,” she writes. “As a newbie to the White House signing ceremony world, I ran around the room trying to capture the moment by taking as many photos and talking to as many people as possible.” Ha ha, n00b!

* Gender Goggles reviews “Violet,” an “interactive fiction game in which you are a graduate student attempting to finish your dissertation”—and in which you can make your protagonist a lesbian by choosing the “heteronormativity off” option.

* Lisa Schiffren of the National Review is unsurprisingly nonsensical, this time about the Obamas hiring a new White House chef, like every other Presidential family has done from the beginning of time ever. She writes: “But today, news comes that the Obamas will not run a national Top Chef competition—because they are bringing their own, private chef from Chicago to the White House. Well, isn’t that nice?”

Short answer: It is not nice, it is terrible in every way except that it now allows Schiffren to smugly dangle in front of us all this incontroversial evidence of what Michelle Obama has been all along—an elitist servant-driver and a shitty mom. “I believed all that stuff about how Michelle was an overburdened modern working mother, rushing from school dropoff to her high-paying, demanding work at the hospital, to dress fittings, to whatever it was she needed to do to support her husband’s political aspirations, back home to take care of her daughters,” writes Schiffren. “Call me naive, but that model usually includes making dinner.” It gets better—later, Schiffren evokes Sarah Palin!

Photo by migraine chick

* Metro Weekly opines on 25 years of Mid-Atlantic Leather weekend.

* Tyra Banks finds the one woman who has never heard of Sarah Palin.

* Tiger Beatdown tells you who’s faring better this week—chicks or dudes—based on evidence culled from extensive personal experience crack reporting a Google alert she’s set up for “women than men”. But take heed: ” When it comes to the Dreaded Crotch Rot, no one wins.”

* Gender Goggles gives a refresher course on feminist theory.

* Melinda Hennebeger at Slate’s XX Factor calls bullshit on this whole virgin auction thing:

So does that gal attempting to auction off her virginity to the highest bidder remind anyone else of the young woman at Yale who was supposedly documenting her multiple self-induced miscarriages as a senior art project a while back? Not that I have any trouble believing that lots of people would cash that check. Yet something about the whole enterprise seems fishy to me. And I dunno about those “housewives” either; are they for real, or just hideously conforming to expectations?

Photo by trialsanderrors.

* Reproductive Health Reality Check details the Democratic response to Bush’s “conscience rule” for medical providers. Party leaders have said they want to reverse it. What they haven’t said is how.

* Wonkette discovers the FOX News Twitter feed hacked by a hillllaaaarious 12-year-old. The tweet? “Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay”

* Gender Goggles collects blogs from male feminist allies.

* According to W, life as aGossip Girl extra is . . . vaguely depressing:

I was inspecting the buffet options when I noticed someone wave at me. I quickly realized the guy summoning me was sitting next to none other than Nate and Chuck! Immediately all the blood in my body rushed to my face and my hands started trembling uncontrollably. The man introduced himself and said they had just been discussing how “rad” my headphones were. To be honest, Nate and Chuck didn’t seem particularly impressed, not even making eye contact with me. Nonetheless, it took me an hour to recover from just standing that close to them.

* This Sunday, BeBar will host an 18-and-over benefit for gay marriage in D.C.

Photo via trialsanderrors

* Chelsea Schilling of WorldNetDaily—which appears to be some sort of Ann Coulter-9/11-Real America news outfit—reports on former Washington City Paper staffer John Cloud’s condemnation of Barack Obama as a “bigot” and a “problem for gays” following Obama’s Rick Warren nod. A “homosexual” reporter versus our terrorist communist Leader? This is like some sort of fantasy WND morality play! How will it end?

WND sides for Obama! Schilling places scare quotes around the word “homosexual” in her headline, as in “‘Homosexual’ Time reporter: Obama is a ‘bigot,’” then pepper her report on Cloud’s smack-down with this description of Cloud’s work for CP:

In his earlier days as a reporter for the Washington City Paper, Cloud described his first-hand experience and arousal at a Washington, D.C., group-sex party for homosexuals in 1997. His report was sexually graphic and filled with expletives.

Bravo, Schilling, but you left out the link! Read up on Cloud’s arousal here.

* Gender Goggles rants on the use of the term “failure of feminism” to describe shit that happens that’s not great for women. Don’t call it a failure of feminism when you mean “a failure of mainstream society to embrace feminism fully.”

* Great conversations going on at Slate’s XX Factor: Eve Fairbanks on claims that the media turned sexist in 2008; Melinda Henneberger asks, “are traditional Christians necessarily haters?” (Short answer: Mmmm, no).

* Some dude has started a blog of photographs his three-year-old child took with his digital camera that provide “a window into the perspective of a child.” Are we’re supposed to glean from this that a child has the perspective of a lazy, indiscriminate photographer?

* McCain Blogette is back! Meghan McCain jumps back into the blogosphere to wish us a happy new year and update on her post-election “emotional rollercoaster.” This is just a hunch, but I have a feeling there’s a third-wave feminist blogger in Meghan just waiting to rise from the ashes of her aging parents’ cold, political marital agreement (just look at those sassy red shoes!). Come, young Padawan. I will guide you to shed your earnestness and adopt left-leaning positions on women’s health!

Photo via trialsanderrors.

Today I thought I’d just cut to the chase and find out what ladies on the Internets think is sexist today. Modern sexism, reveal yourself!

* Gender Goggles reviews Yoko Ono’s feminist video project Cut Pieces, thinks jokes are sexist, but not as sexist as sexual assault: “You might argue that there is a world of difference between laughing at a sexist joke and committing mass sexual assault in Central Park, and while this is obviously true it’s also all of a piece. They are on the same continuum of subjugation of women.”

Also sexist, according to the Goggles: some newfangled “Ladder Theory” of relationships.

* Jezebel thinks Bukakke-esque advertising isn’t as sexy as it is sexist.

* Shakesville’s Melissa McEwan thinks cartoon e-mail forwards are sexist, except when they contain visual poo jokes: “we started emailing each other any dumbass forwards we got, especially ones with ‘hilarious; sexist jokes and cartoons, with intros like ‘This is the best email forward you’ll ever receive!’ We also send each other good email forwards, too, like the one I sent her of a guy wearing see-through plastic pants and crapping himself, which is a classic.”

* Tiger Beatdown thinks that maybe she herself is sexist, but also right, for writing this tirade about rom-coms:

I can hear your cries of shock and denial! But es one hundred percent verdad, ladies: people who watch—and consider themselves fans of—such high quality cinematic entertainments as “Runaway Bride,” “Maid in Manhattan,” and “The Wedding Planner” do, in fact, tend to have crappy relationships, due to the fact that they believe in “predestined love,” immediate commitment, and the idea that “if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them.”

Photo via trialsanderrors.