Many thanks to Elisa Kreisinger for pointing me to this fascinating collection of anonymous testimonies detailing sexism and racism in Hollywood (also via The Hathor Legacy).

The whole project is really interesting. It’s got all the intrigue of a gossip-page blind item, with the added bonus of real social import! But I wanted to single out one story in particular, from a female producer who remains nameless. This producer can’t get people to listen to her great ideas . . . until they’re voiced by a man.

Read More “Men Who Steal Women’s Ideas Right In Front Of Their Faces” »

“If I can get cereal easy, why can’t I get condoms like that?”

The D.C. Council’s Committee on Health recently completed a survey of about 250 District high school students’ thoughts on sex ed. The results reveal some interesting rifts between the male and female sex ed experience. Below, differing perspectives on sex ed—from condom use to LGBT acceptance—from the District’s young men and women. (You can read the full study here [PDF]).

Read More “The Sex Ed Gender Divide” »

Last week on the Sexist, my examination of street harassment through honking turned into a BATTLE OF THE SEXES. Do men get more harassing honks from straight guys than women do? Would you rather be constantly sexually harassed or pay for dinner? And how many women can a 5′9″ guy bed in one night in South Beach, Fla.? Your burning questions, answered:

DirkJohanson writes:

Amanda, it appears to want to find bad deeds by guys targeted at women everywhere, but its not just all about gender. Guys are targets of The Douche Bag Who Honks, too.

I’m a guy that can in no way be visually mistaken for a woman, and very straight-looking males, often in pickup trucks, have honked at me on numerous occasions, often in combination with screaming out the window. They always do this when my back is turned to them, so as to startle me. It has nothing to do with gender, other than, in my experience, the gender of the offender has almost always been male.

That having been said, I am going to try to bring some truth to your post. I am sending out an alert on my blog, The Balls Monologues, asking my readership to stop honking at guys. After all, if guys are going to falsely accused of targeting women for misdeeds, a good deterrent to the false accusations is to actually start targeting the very misdeeds dreamt up about us. Hopefully the douche bags who honk will listen.

Read More “Sexist Comments of the Week: Honking Harassment Edition” »

Street harassment in Washington D.C. is both extremely common and readily ignored. Women who speak out about street harassment have been accused of arrogance and ungratefulness. Believe me when I tell you that women who catch street harassment don’t have to be hot shit. Most of the time, the only requirement is that they be women.

The real discomfort with reporting street harassment is that it requires us to call out the harassers. And some people are still more comfortable ignoring victims than they are admitting that their significant others, relatives, and neighbors routinely verbally harass people based on their gender. But hey, I’m not one of those people. Welcome to Profiles of Street Harassers! Up next: The Guy Who Honks.

Read More “Profiles of Street Harassers: The Guy Who Honks” »

As of Aug. 15, flight safety regulations require airlines to secure the middle initial, date of birth, and gender  of every passenger on a domestic flight. The regulations, courtesy of the Transportation Security Administration’s new “Secure Flight” initiative, seek to “reduce the number of times passengers are misidentified as possible terrorists.” The initiative may also make air travel more difficult for transgender passengers.

Since a transgender person’s gender identity is often at odds with the one marked on their official IDs—and the gender transition process itself can require extensive domestic travel—checking “male” or “female” in the airport can be a complicated procedure.

Read More “New Security Measures May Complicate Transgender Travel” »

Last year, the Sexist launched Man Madness, a tournament that rated the manliness of 64 local workplaces based on the gender make-up of upper-management. How did a workplace prove manliness? Employ the most men in top jobs (and the fewest women higher-ups).  It was, shall we say, a dubious honor.

Anyway, Georgetown University proved itself almost perfectly manly in the contest, with nine out of ten of the institution’s top staffers men. But a new report from campus blog Vox Populi reveals that—say it ain’t so!—the Man Madness tournament was perhaps less-than-thorough.

Read More “Georgetown University Not So Manly After All” »

When Omar Miskinyar opened 14th Street NW nightlife spot Policy earlier this year, he invested in the unexpected. Inside the sprawling restaurant, bar, and lounge, ornate chandeliers hang below exposed pipes and ducts. Graffiti by artist Andrew Funk blazes across the tasteful taupe walls. Cherry-red patent-leather booths ring a bar with a wall of flat-screen televisions. And rather than pants vs. triangle, “ladies” vs. “gents,” or “Barbie” vs. “Ken,” the doors to the restrooms are marked with a pair of swirled Plexiglas exclamation points. One is blue, the other is pink. They’re the size of human beings.

Human beings, however, do not always fit the color scheme. That raises something of a grammatical problem for Miskinyar: Policy’s subtly gendered punctuation may be inconsistent with a little-known provision of D.C. human rights law.
Read More “D.C. Bathroom Signs: Ignored By Many, Hated By Some, Expensive, and Possibly Illegal” »

Tucker Carlson, man, is upset that some textbooks are replacing male-centric terms like “Founding Fathers” and “caveman” with sissy gender-neutral designations, like “Founders” and “cavepeople.” Who else is prepared to fight for the linguistic supremacy of our nation’s long-dead men and pre-men? Stephen Colbert , who has a helpful suggestion: replace lady-words with newly coined man-words! “And how about mother-fucker? Sorry, ladies. From now on, Tucker Carlson is a father-fucker.”

[Via Jezebel]

Planes, change, and automobiles: Suzanne Clayton is going the distance.

Suzanne Clayton, like many transgender women, finds the “journey” metaphor helpful in talking about her gender transition. Clayton lived 37 years as a man before coming out as female two years ago. Since then, Clayton’s gender transition has required a good deal of internal navigation, but it has also resulted in more classic expenses: about $5,000 for travel and lodging.

Last week, she returned from her sixth excursion to Carrollton, Texas, where she receives electrolysis treatments on her face and body. She’s traveled to Philadelphia four times in relation to her sex reassignment surgery. After nearly four decades of self-suppression, Clayton has amassed enough savings to make the procedures, and their travel budgets, possible.
Read More “When Gender Transition Requires a Long, Strange Trip” »

Yesterday, I arrived at Café Saint-Ex, a self-described “charming restaurant and lounge.” After waiting at the bar with my male companion, the host seated us and informed us that our waiter would be by shortly. The waiter approached from behind. “Hey guys,” he said, wheeling around to face us. “Oh, God, uhh, wrong choice of words,” the waiter said, nervously darting his eyes at my face. “I saw the short hair and—I just assumed,” he continued. He apologized, asked for our drink order, and took leave of us.

Read More “Note to Saint-Ex: “You Guys” Is Gender-Neutral” »