Last week, a brief history of racism among participants in the Washington Post Magazine Date Lab inspired some spirited defenses of racial preferences in the boudoir—and some polite rejections of the idea that one's blind date is merely acceptable "for an Asian guy." Let's take a look!:

Kim Chi Ha says it's about preference, not ethnicity. (I say it's about preference for ethnicity! But I digress):

I really think it’s a matter of preference and not a matter of ethnicity. You’re attracted to who you’re attracted to. Some people prefer blondes, others prefer brunettes. It’s not discrimination. You can’t help what features you’re attracted to. Some people are attracted to Asians, some are attracted to whites, some are attracted to them all. Just because you have a preference on the basis of someone’s ethnicity, doesn’t make you racist. It’s like having a preference for someone who’s tall versus someone who’s short. If you’re going to prefer an Asian over someone who’s white, it’s probably because of the culmination of looks that tend to occur more among Asians.

Why does everything have to come down to being about racism?

Katie says it's not natural:

you can’t help who you’re attracted to, but you can help making blanket statements about entire races of people that are probably based on stereotypes and subconscious or overt racial discrimination (you being used generally here). We have to at least be willing to consider what informs our attitudes and ideals of what makes a person “attractive.” It’s not just genetics.

Kit-Kat says the daters are doing it wrong:

If it was really just about looks, that might be one thing–we’re attracted to what we’re attracted to. If I have a thing for dark skin, or blond hair, or green eyes, then I’m likely to find myself attracted to people from ethnic or racial groups in which those features are more common.

But (1) not all people in the same ethnic group look the same. There is a *huge* amount of variation in terms of hair color, skin color, facial features, etc. among Caucasians, Hispanics, African-Americans, Indians, Asians, etc., which makes a statement like “I don’t find Indians attractive” just stupid.

And (2) not all of these daters are speaking purely in terms of looks. Some of them are pretty open about their prejudices. Plus, to not even really give someone a chance because of their race is discrimination.

. . . My real objection though, is that it’s stupid dating behavior. Sometimes a good match for you is someone you are not initially head-over-heels for, or who doesn’t match your superficial checklist. Sometimes attraction grows over time, as you get to know someone. Sometimes looks become less important as deeper connections develop. Even if it’s not racist, it’s pretty shallow and self-limiting.

chris sets some ground rules:

Litmus test for whether something you’re saying is racist or not: Would you be willing to say it face-to-face to someone of the race/ethnicity you’re talking about? If not, it’s probably racist. If so, it might still be racist and you might be a colossal asshole. . . . protip: Saying “All x people always/never do y” is not really helping you look not-racist.

upk on the effects of bedroom racism:

. . . some people might be applying the idea that racism is a combination of prejudice and power. Even if they choose not to date a person because of his race, they are not depriving him of something he is legitimately entitled to (sex with them).

Matt is like, does being straight make me sexist? (In other news, commenter Matt is straight, everyone!):

Is it sexism if, as a heterosexual man, I don’t want to date a dude??? Give me a break!

Photo via George Eastman House

Click to enlarge.

Last month, the Marist Poll asked 1,004 U.S. residents: From which country did the United States win its independence? The results varied based on region, household income, race, age, and gender—while 81 percent of men responded that the U.S. won independence from Great Britain, only 67 percent of women could say the same. Twenty-eight percent of women were "unsure," compared to 12 percent of men. I'd love to see a study charting women's "unsure" levels across different categories [Via The Awl].

Geek Feminism Blog points to a really interesting exercise that has "seventh-graders  draw and describe their image of scientists before and after a visit to Fermilab." Several of the students modified the gender of their illustrated scientists after a visit to the lab. Others, uh, didn't. Here's the blog's breakdown of the gender results: "Among girls (14 in total), 36% portrayed a female scientist in the 'before' drawing, and 57% portrayed a female scientist in the 'after' drawing. Among boys (17 in total), 100% portrayed a male scientist in the 'before' drawing, and 100% portrayed a male scientist in the 'after' drawing." More cute drawings of scientists at the link.

Worried that tomorrow's Capital Pride Parade won't be enough sex-and-gender related activity for one day? Pass the time before and after with an ad-hoc sexuality conference by day, and gay balloon dinos on stilts by night:

BEFORE: Kink-For-All Washington D.C. 2, an "unconference" "about the intersection of sexuality with the rest of life." The first D.C. Kink-For-All sailed on Nov. 21, 2009 (you can watch videos of some of the sessions here); the next iteration will be held throughout the day tomorrow. The conference is free for all to attend, but there are rules. Oh: and RSVP here.

Kink-For-All Washington D.C. 2
Saturday, June 12, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The DC Center
1810 14th Street NW
Free

AFTER:

"Homo Erectus: The Evolution of Pride," a BYT-sponsored, caveperson-themed, Capital-Pride-ending party featuring an eight-foot T-Rex Ice Luge. Need I say more? OK: There's also a balloon dinosaur outfit on stilts. And an erupting DJ volcano booth. 21+ RSVP here.

Homo Erectus: The Evolution of Pride
Saturday, June 12 at 9 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Ave. NW
$25 (pre-sale)

* Racialicious on the "flip side of racial profiling," as evidenced by this PostSecret submission: "those who do not carry the stigmatized features aren’t simply treated fairly, they’re given a benefit of the doubt that allows them to get away with the very thing that others are suspected of doing."

* Fannie's Room on "manly products with secret lady features. Namely, the 2010 Chevy Equinox's "woman-friendly modifications" that Time describes as "so subtle that men may not even notice them." Writes Fannie:

Here, the implication is that a company should not modify its products unless the changes are so subtle as to go unnoticeable by its regular (that is, male) customers. Reading between the lines, there is also an assumption that if men knew that a product had lady features, they would not buy that product, hence the need for "subtle" modifications.

Many products are designed for men and/or those who do not wear the costume of femininity like, say, high heels, thus posing a functional problem for many. Yet, when products are designed with the male consumer (or non-high-heeled lady, but really, the male consumer) in mind, there is no need for subtlety. It is, after all, the default. Invisible in plain sight.

Also, if the modifications are so subtle as to go unnoticed, how much an improvement will they really be for women drivers?

* At Bitch, Andrea Plaid on sex-and-age-isms in  the Twitter response to the Al and Tipper Gore split:

Some of the tweetizenry also argued back and forth about the break-up, with some folks on my timeline rubbing their figurative hands (and thighs) in lust  . . . after the former vice-president. Hell, I even rubbed my thighs in horny glee that the man is on the market again. (Yeah, I felt sort of bad about it—it’s too soon to lust, it’s tacky to get all fast in the panties when the man’s mourning the ending of his life-partnership. But, I’d be lying if I said that those reasons didn’t curb my hotness for the Oscar and Nobel Peace Prize winner.)

Then I started pinpointing where my discomfort rested: though people—including me—sexualized Al Gore (on Twitter, at least) either as object of lust or of sexual derision, rarely did I hear anyone say the same either way about Tipper. At most, someone said the “hottest thing about Al was Tipper.” (Sincere praise or backhanded compliment?) The worst was that someone wanted to put a parent advisory sticker on her. (No explanation beyond that was given.)

Also, ew.

* Clarisse Thorn worries that deconstructing gender may destroy "what’s beautiful, surprising, and hot" about the binary:

I mean, don’t get me wrong: I think it would be awesome if gender stereotypes stopped negatively influencing the way we hire people, make friends, treat lovers, and so on. But it’s also kind of awesome when, for example, drag queens dress way more femininely than I do. I love that kind of display; I love almost all subversive, or sexual, or just plain playful deliberate usage of gender ideas. I would be kind of sad if all gendered associations disappeared from the universe. I would be kind of sad if we so thoroughly encouraged gender-bending and gender evolution that gender distinctions blurred out of existence.I’m not saying that my sadness is an argument against the destruction of gender. I understand and acknowledge that, sometimes, nostalgia is the enemy of necessary progress. I recognize that saying, “Well, drag queens are awesome and so maybe we shouldn’t try to destroy gender distinctions” could be as blind and flawed an argument as, say, the women who argued against women’s right to vote because “I like to convince my husband to vote the way I want him to.” I recognize that I could be making an argument similar to one that I’ve deconstructed about BDSM — an argument I hate that goes, “Let’s not destigmatize BDSM sexuality because I think it’s hot for S&M to be transgressive.” The fact that we can work within — and even enjoy — The System does not mean that The System is not fucked up.

Still …. I’d like to believe that we can hold on to what’s beautiful, surprising, and hot about The System. Can we keep the stereotypes and have justice too?

One Thursday last month, during the lunch hour at H.D. Woodson Senior High School, half a dozen teenage boys have gathered to eat pizza and talk about hollering at women. “From where I come from, you holler at a girl,” one student tells the group. “A girl can’t be too upset when a guy is paying attention to her.” “It depends on the type of girl and whether she has respect for herself,” another says. “Some girls will say, stop. But they like it, for real.” “If she’s wearing short shorts, booty shorts, short skirt, with the thong showing, she wants it,” another guy says. “Can’t blame it on the boy. She knows what she’s doing.”

“But what if it’s hot out?” This is Kedrick Griffin. He’s here to play the 37-year-old devil’s advocate on a subject that’s generally considered normal behavior for a teenage boy in the District of Columbia.

“What if all her other shorts are dirty? What if it’s 2 a.m. in a dark alley? What if it’s your girlfriend who’s wearing the short shorts?” Along with the targeted line of questioning, Griffin has also brought three boxes of Pizza Boli’s and an 18-pack of Sierra Mist. These Woodson students have been eating Griffin’s pizza since September. By now, they know full well that it’s wrong to blame a woman for rape based on what she’s wearing—now, they’re just struggling through the street harassment piece. This exercise has come almost at the end of a year-long District program called the “Men of Strength” club—MOST Club, for short. The same pattern is repeated with groups of boys in public middle and high schools across the District: Come for the pizza, stay for the deconstructions of masculinity.

Getting teenage boys to engage in gender theory can require a soft approach. The vague title of the clubs—“Men of Strength”—dodges the activist implications of the D.C.-based organization that runs them: Men Can Stop Rape. At the beginning of each school year, MOST facilitators arrive on campus and lure in participants. “Last year, we were hanging out outside school, and some people were like, ‘we need some males over here to eat some free pizza,’” says Eugene, a 16-year-old junior at Foggy Bottom’s School Without Walls. At that first MOST meeting, Eugene and a dozen other guys were fed pizza and offered free movie tickets; over the next school year, they came back each Tuesday for the pizza, and gradually advancing conversations on gender. Now, “I kind of like to keep the MOST club secret from other dudes,” says Eugene. “We all have this strong connection with each other . . . But also, if you bring more people in, then there are fewer slices.”

Griffin facilitates two MOST club meetings a day at nine different DCPS schools. Every week, he spends less than an hour with each group. But that’s enough time, he hopes, to challenge traditional masculinity and push his young charges to respect their female peers.

Thus Griffin has become accustomed to addressing thorny concepts in abbreviated time frames. At one middle school MOST club, he says he knocked out a discussion on prison rape in the time it takes to travel between classes. “One of the guys said, ‘When you go to jail . . . you get raped and when you come out you’re gay,’” Griffin says. “I said, ‘Oh really? Well, I’ve got ten minutes. That’s enough time for me.’” So he moderated a discussion with seventh and eighth grade boys about why a man’s sexual orientation and history with sexual assault make society see him as less of a man. “I wasn’t prepared for that discussion. It wasn’t even on my radar,” says Griffin. “But if a young person brings up a topic for discussion, I can’t just ignore it.”

Griffin doesn’t just stroll into D.C. public schools with a pizza and start engaging boys on topics like rape. Each MOST meeting begins with a slow wind-up: a weekly “check-in” in which each student updates the group on his recent life developments. Stuff like how he can’t find a ride to football practice, or how he only slept in one class today, or how he’s starting to look at colleges, or how he put his rap video on YouTube but then he took it down. These personal conversations are meant to transition into headier discussion topics like understanding rape culture and questioning the patriarchy. As a short-cut, MOST has chosen a phrase that Griffin employs more than once in each meeting: “The Dominant Story of Masculinity.”

In order to illustrate what that means, Griffin performs an exercise he calls “The Real Man.” Griffin shows students photographs of male celebrities—from Lebron James to Barack Obama to 50 Cent to Johnny Depp—and asks students to comment on “who they think society says is a real man and why.” The exercise is meant to reveal how society’s idea of ‘manhood’ is threaded with negative attributes. While it’s reasonable to want to be president and dunk a basketball, do you really want to get shot nine times in order to prove you’re a man? “When we talk about what a ‘real man’ is, we think of stuff like: Strong. Lifts weights. Spike TV. Prison. Explosions,” explains Eugene. “When we start talking about men in our lives and what we want from them, we think: Nice. Fun. Cares about us. Respects his family.”

By the time the exercise is finished, a few students at each D.C. public school have at least a taste of looking at gender expectations from a different perspective. When they leave the club, the theory goes, the students will tell their friends, and gender relations in the District will slowly begin shifting. Woodrow Wilson Senior High’s MOST club, facilitator Nate Cole says, averages from between two to eight students every meeting—but five are members of the school’s basketball team. In “the hierarchy or food chain of high school, they’re at the top,” says Cole, 23. “When they start challenging their friends and the people they come in contact with, that has a huge effect on the school.” But even with these high-status students, an hour is not always enough time to tease out all the complexities of gender relations.

At a recent Woodson MOST meeting, Griffin starts off the discussion by raising the murder of University of Virginia lacrosse student Yeardley Love. “She got killed, she was on the lacrosse team. I think they said her boyfriend did it,” one student says. Griffin explains that the man charged with her murder is George Huguely, a male lacrosse player who allegedly sent Love death threats—and then violently beat her head against the wall—when she tried to break up with him. “Remember, in the dominant story of masculinity, the only emotions we are taught to show are anger and rage,” says Griffin. They nod. “If a girl broke up with me, I’m like alright. Oh well,” says one student. “You can be mad but you don’t have to kill somebody.”

Time to move on: In the last ten minutes, Griffin mounts a quick discussion of the murder of D.C. principal Brian Betts, who was allegedly targeted on a gay chat line. In order to illustrate the social dynamics behind the killing, Griffin constructs a social ladder with his hands. “If a heterosexual man is on this level,” he says, raising his hand to his nose —“and a woman is at this level”—his hand descends to his chin—“then a homosexual man is on this level”—his hand drops down to his chest. “No, no, women are at the top,” one student says. “Fags. They got the most money,” another suggests. As time runs out, Griffin discards the gender discussion and tries a more accessible approach: Don’t kill a guy, steal his credit card, and get locked up. Stay in school.

Photo via Darrow Montgomery

From Austin to A&M points us to this amazing survey on gender variation in the naming of colors. In an effort to determine whether men and women identify colors differently, Randall Munroe had users name over five million colors across "222,500 user sessions." The result? "Basically, women were slightly more liberal with the modifiers, but otherwise they generally agreed." That is, until the color "penis" came in to play.

"Men and women tended on average to call colors the same names," Munroe found. Here's a visual representation of Munroe's data:

"So I was feeling pretty good about equality," he concludes. But: "Then I decided to calculate the ‘most masculine’ and ‘most feminine’ colors. I was looking for the color names most disproportionately popular among each group; that is, the names that the most women came up with compared to the fewest men (or vice versa)."

Here's what he found:

Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among women:

Dusty Teal
Blush Pink
Dusty Lavender
Butter Yellow
Dusky Rose

Okay, pretty flowery, certainly. Kind of an incense-bomb-set-off-in-a-Bed-Bath-&-Beyond vibe. Well, let’s take a look at the other list.

Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men:

Penis
Gay
WTF
Dunno
Baige

I … that’s not my typo in #5—the only actual color in the list really is a misspelling of “beige”. And keep in mind, this is based on the number of unique people who answered the color, not the number of times they typed it. This isn’t just the effect of a couple spammers. In fact, this is after the spamfilter.

Munroe doesn't specify which colors were identified as "penis." Questions of hue aside, Munroe has also kicked off a lengthy discussion on the potentially problematic way he chose to classify responders by sex.

Photo via Team Dalog, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Dr. Val Lambros is five years into a 20-year study of how the face ages. Every five years, Lambros sits a group of study participants in front of a 3-D camera, maps out their faces, and then painstakingly aligns the images to see what time has wreaked upon their pores, wrinkles, and facial structures. Lambros’ “Longitudinal Facial Aging Project” culls its subjects from those who will most benefit from its results—aesthetic surgeons. “Plastic surgeons reliably show up to meetings every year throughout their careers,” Lambros explains. At the annual American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) conference, held last weekend in National Harbor, Md., surgeons dutifully filed into Lambros’ exhibit booth to face the camera.

Lambros’ sample, while reliable, has one major limitation. “I need beautiful women!” Lambros called out to one female surgeon passing by his ASAPS booth, who agreed to get mapped. “The problem is, the vast majority of them are men,” says Lambros, who estimates that less than ten percent of his aging faces are female. “It’s a guy-dominated field. And men don’t age in the same way that women do,” he says. Lambros chalks that partly up to cultural perception, partly up to biology. “Society will see a 60-year-old guy as looking better than a 60-year-old woman,” says Lambros. “But women’s skin is thinner, too.” And Lambros’ female sample is not necessarily aging naturally: “Typically, female plastic surgeons will do fillers on themselves—the Botox and stuff,” he says. “You’ll be able to see that in the photographs, and it will invalidate some of the findings, but not all of them."

Over 90 percent of plastic surgeons are men; over 90 percent of their patients are women. Aesthetic plastic surgeons do not seem overly concerned with why that is. Despite the recession, the business model is strong—cosmetic procedures only decreased by 2 percent from 2008 to 2009. The demographics are shifting slightly—last year, women’s procedures were down 3 percent, while men’s were up 8—but the industry remains focused on the ladies. At the kick-off of the ASAPS annual conference, four male plastic surgeons convened at the head of a large, U-shaped table to announce the launch of “Project Beauty,” ASAPS’ new editorial arm focused on the way women look. After airing a few sample video testimonials from women—“I wanted to look more feminine in my clothes, and have more self-confidence!” one breast augmentation patient claimed before breezing down the street in a revealing top—the men took questions from the crowd.

When asked why the vast majority of plastic surgery patients are still female, there was an extended pause, followed by a collective shrugging of shoulders. Robert Singer, a short, balding surgeon who greeted everyone with a kiss on each cheek, took a stab at it: “There are a variety of reasons. Men don’t want to give up control. They can’t put aside the time. They have a resistance to change. They’re not like women, who change their hair all the time.” At least one consumer found fault with the idea of a bunch of men dictating beauty standards to a bunch of women. Joan Kron, an octogenarian Allure columnist who writes an aesthetic surgery column for the beauty magazine—and whose smoothed face reveals a personal interest in the industry—assessed the project from behind a pair of oversize sunglasses. “I would trust your opinion on plastic surgery,” she told the men. “I wouldn’t trust your opinion on beauty. And I certainly wouldn’t trust your opinion on fashion.”

The ASAPS conference was teeming with gatherings like this one—male surgeons discussing how best to fix women’s bodies. During the conference, a panel of male surgeons convened to discuss the importance of jowl management, illustrated by a collection of middle-aged female jaws; a panel of male surgeons demonstrated how best to mark up a (female) face before a face-lift procedure; a male surgeon clicked through a series of photographs of the lower halves of women’s bodies—all dressed in identical white thongs—and recommended the number of joules he’d apply to each one.

But on the exhibit floor, where the surgeons are inundated with new products and procedures to help augment their practice, women were everywhere. The floor was bursting with photographs of them—their faces wrapped in the latest in post-operative garment technology; their eyelashes fluttering from the effects of artificial lash-grower Latisse; their heads thrown back in ecstasy as their augmented breasts faced the camera. Across the floor, dozens of silicone breast implants were served up on platters, ready for prodding and squeezing; videos of their bloody insertion into women’s bodies abounded. A couple of live ones in bikinis and wedge sandals were splayed out on exam chairs as a non-invasive body-contouring machine canvassed their asses and thighs. They were not the only pieces of meat in attendance: In the corner of the exhibit hall, a sweating slab of pork stood in for human flesh; a couple of Megadyne reps sliced away at it with an electrosurgical pencil.

Ronadró, a 75-year-old artist specializing in surgical art, has spent two decades casting the aesthetic surgery gender divide into bronze. On the exhibit floor, Ronadró displayed a dozen original sculptures specifically crafted for aesthetic surgeons. In New Dawn, a surgeon’s gloved hands peel away a woman’s wrinkled face, revealing a new, youthful visage. In Renaissance, a naked woman admires herself in a mirror as her discarded, old face piles on the floor with her robes. Art of Aesthetic Surgery depicts the aesthetic surgeon as an artist, creating a beautiful woman from a paintbrush; Magic Hands depicts him as a genie, conjuring a naked woman from a magic lamp. Ronadró’s masterpiece, In His Hands, situates the surgeon as God; in it, Jesus places his hand on a surgeon’s shoulder as the surgeon reaches out to touch the hand of his patient. “This piece was inspired by the Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, where God is almost touching Adam’s hand,” Ronadró says. All of Ronadró’s surgeons on display in his ASAPS booth were men; all but one of the patients were women.

Dr. Laurie Casas, a Chicago-area aesthetic surgeon, was one of the few female surgeons who had a visible role in the conference leadership this year. Casas, who is president of the Aesthetic Surgery Education and Research Foundation, says the gender divide in ASAPS is easily explainable. “The number of women in surgery is low. The number of women in plastic surgery is low. The number of female plastic surgeons who can meet the rigorous requirements to be a member of ASAPS is even lower.” Why an estimated 94 percent of Casas’ surgery patients are female requires a more complicated explanation. “It’s not that men aren’t interested in looking good—they wear nice clothes, they groom their hair. But unlike women, they’re not conditioned into thinking about making a significant change. They don’t even think of surgery as an option for altering an aging sign like excess eyelid skin or hanging neck skin,” says Casas. “For women, over the years, we’ve watched other women have plastic surgery. We’ve seen other women go through major changes in the way they look. It’s on our radar as an option. For men, I don’t think there’s a lot of open discussion about this. I think sometimes men are uncomfortable even thinking about the topic.”

Women, too, have suffered from a culture of silence surrounding their aesthetic surgical procedures. In the ASAPS exhibit hall, a representative for Innogyn hawked a laser employed in a form of aesthetic surgery that has finally hit the mainstream: “designer laser vaginoplasty.” “This has been going on for 80 years, behind closed doors,” says the rep, who declined to provide his name. “A woman would come in after childbirth and say, hey, doctor, while you’re down there, could you do a little tuck or a pull or a cut? Before, people thought that vaginoplasty was just for the Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous set, and strippers. Only now is it finally out in the open.” The representative referred to this development as “empowering.”

Finally, women are free to talk about our vaginas and what’s wrong with them. Someday, men, too, will be empowered like us.

Most of the time, too many wives just get lazy and self-centered about taking care of their romantic and sexual lives . . . Women’s sexuality requires “priming,” while guys are just about always “ready to roll.” A lot of that priming has to happen in her head:  thinking affectionately about sensual things, bathing, primping and flirting—the kinds of things wives tend to leave at the altar or in the birthing room.

To Dr. Laura, a woman's work includes bathing, primping, flirting, buying pretty outfits, doing her hair, and painting her nails. But it also requires a woman to devote some of her brain space to "thinking affectionately about sensual things," just in case her husband is horny when he gets home from work. Interestingly, Dr. Laura doesn't admonish women as "lazy and self-centered" for literally refusing sex to their husbands—she calls them selfish for failing to perform the inner work of actually feeling sexy when they do have sex.

Laura's sex advice reminded me of Amanda Marcotte's observations on the conflicting theories of traditional gender roles in the conservative movement. Social conservatives, Marcotte notes, alternately argue that gender roles are innate, and that they are learned. To these folks, acting "like a man" or "like a woman" is the "natural" thing to do, but it also takes a whole lot of work to achieve proper masculine or feminine performance. As more social spaces open up for people to be freely gay, bisexual, butch, unmarried, gender non-conforming, or anything else that defies the idea that traditional gender roles are in fact "natural," I'd argue that the performance model becomes more crucial to maintaining the conservative social order. So instead of working to dismiss gender non-conformists as "unnatural" freaks of nature, conservatives have just decided to paint them as lazy, bad people who aren't working hard enough to fulfill their constructed roles.

Now that conservatives have openly acknowledged that masculinity, femininity, and heterosexuality actually take a lot of work to maintain, they have to work doubly hard to attempt to normalize this performance. So, good people work hard to fulfill their gender roles, but better people don't whine about having to perform that work. And the best people really, truly, actually love to perform their roles—or at least appear to love it. Hence Dr. Laura's insistence that women not only perform sex for their husbands, but also internalize that performance in their own minds—a feat that is so unnatural that women may even need to buy Dr. Laura's book, "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands," in order to do it right.

Under this model, it doesn't really matter if gender performance is "natural," as long as it's sufficiently difficult. Take the openly gay social conservative who argues that sex between two men can still satisfy the requirement of fulfilling proper gender roles as long as one of the men agrees to wear a dress and properly submit. Or the ex-gay activists who argue that same-sex sexual attraction is naturally occurring, but that the Christian thing to do is to resist it through intensive (and sometimes expensive) "therapy". Or the deeply religious woman who received breast augmentation surgery before her fiancee (or any man, for that matter) had ever seen her naked, because unnaturally augmenting the body that God gave you is actually a sign of ultimate love and devotion, as long as you hand that body directly over to your husband.

The "unnatural" aspect of Breast Implants for Jesus doesn't concern me—it's the completely bizarre attempt to justify plastic surgery through scripture that sets my bullshit meter off. Not because I'm interested in upholding the sanctity of the Christian church, but because Breast Implants for Jesus reminds me a whole lot of a bullshit justification closer to my heart—Breast Implants for Feminism. While social conservatives are latching onto the performance model of gender, post-feminists (some of whom just call themselves "feminists") are taking the opposite tactic—arguing that our performances of masculinity and femininity are a matter of individual choices and preferences. So whenever a woman "chooses her choice" that happens to fulfill these gender roles—even if it involves painful and invasive surgery of the boob—her choice is necessarily an empowering move that can't possibly inspire a larger feminist critique of the culture that informs that choice. I Blame the Patriarchy calls this justification-happy post-feminist the "empowerful woman":

Today’s woman isn’t a feminist. She doesn’t need to be, because she’s empowered. She may only earn 3/4 of what a man earns, but she damn well has the empower to look sexy doing it in her cheapcrap push-up bra from Victoria’s Secret. She has the empower to demand pink products from manufacturers. She has the empower to cry out ‘I did it for me!’ when she gets her boob job; maybe she even has the empower to believe it. The empowerful woman is saucy, yet feminine. Clever, yet feminine. In her early thirties, yet feminine. Heterosexual, yet feminine. Stays in shape eating Lean Cuisine and sweating blue Gatorade while kickboxing in slow motion, yet feminine. Yes, the empowerful woman is many things. Too bad powerful isn’t one of them. That’s because feminine is all of them.

The way I see it, the difference between Dr. Laura's traditional wife and post-feminism's "empowerful woman" is that the empowerful woman doesn't admit that her performance of femininity is in the service of pleasing a specific man. The empowerful woman doesn't perform femininity to please her man—she performs femininity "for herself." And so while Dr. Laura openly admonishes women for not feeling feminine for themselves for their husbands, the empowerful woman conveniently fends off any arguments that feeling feminine "for herself" actually has a lot to do with how our larger social structure feels about women. I'm afraid that the real difference emerging between Breast Implants for Jesus and Breast Implants for Feminism is that the latter is just less honest than the former. The cult of Dr. Laura at least recognizes that a woman's work often really sucks.

That's not to say that feminism should shame the woman who is traditionally feminine, or who gets breast implants, or who spends her days thinking sexual thoughts in order to steel herself for her husband's penis. Feminism should, though, work to encourage that woman to:

(a) stop feeling that her gender and sexuality requires a lot of unnecessary work in order to please people like Dr. Laura;

(b) realize that gender performance is highly valued in our culture, and to stop feeling like she has to justify her gender performance as a completely independent choice;

(c) understand that living in the patriarchy while refusing to justify it is going to require a whole lot of cognitive dissonance, but hey, it's better than lying to yourself;

and (d) just consider the possibility that you're really getting Breast Implants for the Patriarchy.

The City Paper's Best Of D.C. issue hits stands today. Pick it up! On a personal note, the yearly Best Of issue gives me some wiggle room to write on my non-Sexist-related interests. (Yes, I do have them, but they largely involve drinking). Check out my entries for Best Coffee Shop, Best Dive Bar, and Best Bar Game. But even when I'm not writing about sex and gender, I'm writing about sex and gender, and two of my Bests picks are of particular Sexist concern.

The first is on the three fine bloggers behind BYGays, who took the honors for D.C.'s Best New Nightlife Blog. Bradley Portnoy, Deb Greenspan, and John Marble, the ringleaders of BrightestYoungThings' new gay contingent, were nice enough to talk to me about heterosexuality in gay nightlife:

Introducing the newest addition to gay nightlife: straight people. “I like a party that’s about 40 percent gay,” says Bradley Portnoy, one of the founders of Brightest Young Things’ new LGBT nightlife contingent, BYGays—a site aimed at adding a queer twist to BYT’s party promotion and scene coverage. “To get gay people to your party, you have to show them that there’s a potential for them to get laid that night,” explains  Portnoy, 23. “When it’s 30 or 40 percent gay, you can identify where the gay people are and approach them and hit on them. If you don’t have that, the gays aren’t going to show up. But once you get to about 50 percent gay, the straight people start to feel alienated.”

The heterosexual discomfort, Portnoy says, has an innocent partying explanation. “It’s not homophobia,” he says. “I think everyone wants to make sure they can get laid without too much of a hassle.” But since when have gay nightlife promoters been concerned with getting straight people laid? [Read the rest here].

The second is Best Newlyweds, shared among the hundreds of same-sex couples who lined up for recognition at D.C. Superior Court this month.

The D.C. Superior Court’s marriage bureau typically processes about 10 marriage applications a day. On March 3—the first day same-sex marriage applications were accepted—151 couples waited in line; in the next five days, 315 more couples had waded through the process of getting hitched, all but a few of them gay [Read the rest here].

For more sex & gender-related stuff, check out the Reader's Poll which gauges local opinion on D.C.'s strip clubs, sex shops, drag queens, and gay bars.

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

We most recently revisited the issue yesterday, after a study showed that women who observe public acts of sexism—like sexual harassment against other women—tend to direct more anger at men in general. The study demonstrates (among other things) that when men sexually harass women, they also hurt men who are not harassers. Pointing out ways that sexism affects men can provide men with a valuable access-point to feminist issues. It can also be seen as an invitation to throw a pity party for male victimhood.

As one commenter on the story wrote, "Here we go again. The poor menz! They have to experience the suspicion/scrutiny of women who have been put down, kept down, abused emotionally, fiscally, professionally, sometimes physically, yadayadayada." I don't think this is about feeling sorry for men; I think it's about recognizing that men can be valuable allies in working against women being put down, kept down, harassed, and abused. Is it fair that women have to first show men how sexism affects them in order to get them to care about how it affects us? No. But it sure is helpful.

So without any further ado, I'd like to introduce the first installment in a new Sexist feature: Interviews with experts on the subjects that most vex us around here. First up: Thomas MacAulay Millar, my favorite feminist writer who is also a man. Millar, which is not his real name, is a New-York based attorney and feminist writer. You may remember him for his essay condemning the comodification of sexuality, "Toward a Performance Model of Sex," which appeared in the Yes Means Yes! anthology last year, or from his work on the wonderful Yes Means Yes! blog. Below, Millar on the beginnings of a feminist man, how to find feminist access-points for boys, and what it's like to be a feminist with male privilege.

What personal experiences in your life contributed to your identification as a feminist?

TMM: My mom was a feminist, and raised me to understand that the world was unfair in big, structural ways, so I was in large part raised with it. She wasn’t an overtly ideological parent. She just believed in telling me how things really were, and I drew a lot of my own conclusions. I remember her telling me that my cousin (who was an evangelical), terminated two pregnancies. She was a clinic protester. But when it was her life, she thought it was different. Another cousin was molested, and when she wouldn't stop complaining, she was sent away to live in another state. (Eventually, she sued her abuser and got some justice.) My mother would tell me the parts of the stories in real life that people try to hide from children. I can't possibly thank her enough for that. I mean I literally can’t, because she died a decade ago. I thanked her a lot for being a great mom, but never enough.

As I got into high school, I started seeing issues like sex education and reproductive freedom through lenses heavily influenced by my women friends. I took my first women's studies class in high school, read some Steinem and some other feminist writing in high school. My mother had a bunch of feminist writing around the house that I read. And I started to see GLB issues through the prism of my friends' lives, and to see sexuality and sex education as my friends and I developed.

In my teens, too, I began a long process of growing into BDSM and figuring out what that meant for identity, and one of the early things I figured out what that there was a sort of mainstream position that wasn't overtly anti-sex in my area, but that was sort of very pro-partriarchally constrained models of sexuality, and that I was necessarily a dissident to that, and that I was therefore a natural ally to anyone else who didn't feel the official model fit them. So, in my mind, the idea especially around sexuality and gender expression that dissenters and dissidents should be in solidarity with each other developed early. So it was a pretty direct line from there to being active in college on choice and GLBT issues and doing my first minor in women’s studies. And also, people telling me when I said stupid things and learning from that, rinse, repeat.

I think most importantly, I began to hear one story after another about how women — mostly my women friends, and also some relatives — were molested and groped and raped (some men, too, but I didn't become aware of that until later). Women friends told me they had been raped, and not infrequently they had never told anyone else. The thing that stuck with me then and still does is how little space they had to safely process and heal. They felt that they couldn't say what had happened, let alone talk about how they felt, without being judged and shamed. And I think they were right about that, sad to say. They couldn't tell people. The reactions they would have gotten from parents and peers would have done damage. So they stayed silent, which is a very hard way to deal with trauma. Unfortunately, that's not something I see changing. Women I know are still telling me that they were raped, or that something happened that was rape but that they can't label, and that they have not or cannot talk about to anyone else. And I have a daughter and that scares the shit out of me.

How can we get more men and boys interested in the feminist movement?

TMM: Well, we can bullshit them and tell them that it's all upside, and that fighting for their relative privilege in an awful system that's no good for them doesn't have any benefits. But they'll quickly realize that's not true. And we can tell them that there are no downsides to participating in a movement where they have to confront their privilege and change how they do things. But they’d quickly find that that isn’t true.

You can’t sell a movement to cure structural unfairness to the beneficiaries of the unfairness unless there’s already a point of access. That means they have to really have a grievance against the way things are, for themselves or for people they love. But there are a lot of those. There are a lot of guys whose sister has needed an abortion, or whose wife was raped, or whose brother is transitioning, or who feel that the masculinity imposed on them is crushing them. If someone who knows that guy finds that point of access, like a pinhole in the patriarchal curtain, and starts pulling at it, eventually the hole gets so big that they accept that it’s not a matter of stitching the hole, it’s a whole panel or whole curtain that needs to be replaced. (And roman shades would look better in this room. Also, this paint is kinda tired. Let’s see how far I can stretch this metaphor ….*snap* Oops.)

. . . Or we can get them young and try to build into them a sense of fairness that is actually fair, and not one based on a set of artificially assigned roles based on two categories. I’m working on that. I’ll let you know how I did in about twenty years.

How does male privilege affect the way you approach feminist issues?

TMM: First, it means I don’t know everything and my personal leanings and experiences are not a trustworthy guide. I just have to accept that I’m going to be wrong and mess things up, and be gracious when people tell me what a schmuck I am. Because I am.

Second, it means forever keeping one eye on the dynamics of speaking for. In some ways it’s easier, as an affluent educated able bodied cis het white man, because I don’t have to think about the relative issues of when I’m privileged and when I’m not. I’m virtually always in the advantaged side of the structural issue, so I can keep the “I have an unfair advantage” light permanently on.

It’s something I talk about with friends a fair amount. In writing, a lot of what I do is talk about what something means for men, how men should read or deal with something, what it means as a parent, etc., where I’m interpreting my own experience and the experiences I have a better handle on, in light of the dynamics I’m talking about.

But I don’t do that with everything. Some of what I write is overarching theorizing, like Toward A Performance Model of Sex. I realize I don’t have any kind of omniscience, and my privilege informs what I write. I think there are three things I can do about it. I can decide that my understanding is so constrained by the limits of my experience and the dictates of my privilege that I should just shut up (some posts have ended their lives in the delete folder for that reason); I can try to learn and educate myself and improve and beat back my own privilege, which I’m forever trying to do and never fast enough; and I can put what I can out there and try to be as humble as I can about the limitations of it and then not get defensive when people move the discussion forward by pointing out the flaws in what I’ve done. I’ve edited a lot of posts to say, “I messed up, see comments.”

Do you think there are some feminist issues that are more readily accessible to men and boys than others?

TMM: There are things that should be feminist issues that are more the province of men and boys. Masculinity and manhood are becoming contested terrain, and that’s important. The most common discourse on masculinity reads to me like this: “I don’t know what it should look like. What we have is terrible in the following ways, and we should fix it. But I don’t know what it looks like when it gets fixed.” I have both so much and so little to say about that. Masculinity isn’t just “what men do,” but it is bound up with manhood. So we need women in that conversation, both those interested in masculinity and those that in some ways perform it. And we need people who reject binary identifications like “man” to weigh in. But mostly, whether cis- or trans-, the folks we need to help define masculinity are the people who perform it most, and that’s people who identify as men.

Also, there are angles and spaces that men have on feminist issues, where their understanding may be deeply limited by privilege, but where their position in the structural distribution of power is such that they can do more to make change. Men can do feminist work, even if they don’t apply the label to it, if they use what’s at their disposal to do the fair thing. Just as one example, George Tiller was a great hero for reproductive self-determination, not because he freed himself from male privilege, but because he was a doctor who would do that work, under the most terrifying circumstances. I know a guy who says the most awful shit, often to wind me up. But he also once physically intervened to prevent several men from raping a woman who was so intoxicated she didn’t know who she was with or what was going on. Security wouldn’t act, so he just started throwing punches. It worked, at significant cost to him which I won’t describe. That’s not a guy who self-identifies as feminist, but it was a deeply feminist act.

Less dramatically, just calling out rape jokes and rape-apology is something where guys’ views can influence other men a great deal. A guy who mentors younger women colleagues and makes sure their work is considered on its merits may not identify as feminist, or may have a very poor ability to check his own privilege, but that guy can to a lot of good with what he has, where he is.

So I guess I’d say that we need men to be situational allies where they can be, even if they are not (yet) able to make broader connections. Getting them to understand and see the unfairness of a specific situation or act is the first stage. If that creates the gateway for that guy to see those kinds of dynamics as pervasive, and pervasively unfair, great. If not, one person doing the right thing in one situation is better than not.

Are men in the position to play any unique roles in the feminist movement?

TMM: Leaving aside doing what we can with what we have where we are, because I don’t think that’s what the question calls for, I think the primary area where men have something specific and important to bring to feminism is in defining men and masculinity.

Those issues ripple through a lot. To take a particular class-specific issue, for example, take an opposite-sex couple with the same degree, working, say, as lawyers. They may have met in law school, gotten BigLaw jobs, proceeded on parallel tracks through the associate years, and then … that world is not perfect on treating women equally, but I see the social dynamics as the real hold-back. It’s very difficult for both partners to be driven professionals. They can pay for childcare solutions that leave them both free to work long and irregular hours and to travel, but many folks don’t want to do that for a lot of good reasons. Usually, someone takes a step back in professional responsibilities to parent. It’s almost always the woman. Some folks will tell you it has to do with women’s innate desire to mother, but I’m very skeptical of those explanations. Some people want to parent more than others, but I’m not going to accept anyone’s glib generalization that because it’s true for them, it’s an innate sex difference. Instead, I think it has a great deal to do with men’s unwillingness to take that step back. How men see their selves and role, and how their female partners will see them, and how they think their female partners will see them, is all about masculinity.

Of course, it’s more often the case that by the time a middle-class opposite sex couple decide to have kids, they are already in different careers with different compensation, and whoever makes less money becomes the parent with less professional responsibilities. And that has everything to do with the social construction or gender and work roles, tracking of women, conflation of some work identities with masculinity and femininity, etc.

All that is a narrow and class-bound analysis that leaves a lot out; a full treatment of just that example is a book topic. But that’s just one of many ways that construction of masculinity flows through work and distributional issues and other things that seem far removed from the direct performance of gender. I don’t think we can fully understand how much about masculinity is assumed until men start trying to take it apart, examine it and refashion it. And it’s principally men’s job to do that.

E-mail interview has been condensed. . . . a tiny bit.

A recent Craigslist advertisement for a vacant Mount Pleasant bedroom—“$770 1 Bedroom in a 6Br, 3 story Bro Palace-America”—has been making its way around the Internets. The ad, which was posted earlier this month (it's since been removed), seeks a "bro of epic broportions" to join a couple an unknown quantity of bros who "like to party hard and bang chicks even harder" in taking up residence in this "Temple to Broseidon."

In honor of my former colleague and housing guru Ruth Samuelson, I thought I'd detail all the possible ways this self-described "brahacracy" could be violating fair housing laws, which require that no roommate-seeker show “a limitation to the ordinary reader." In other words, broheim can't reveal a preference based on age, gender, sexual orientation, race, or education level. How does this ad discriminate? Let me count the ways:

Gender: 3,856 Urban Dictionary users agree: The term "bro" refers exclusively to men. Those who don't qualify as the most bro-y of bros (or "a complete brohemouth") are instructed to not even proceed in reading the ad:

WARNING: If you are not a complete Brohemouth, do not read this ad. The awesome of this house will make your face melt like Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Sexual orientation: The bro in question must be down to "bang chicks"—and hard!

The bros in this house like to party hard and bang chicks even harder.

Nationality: The ad expresses distaste for both Russian and Chinese culture:

If you hate China and Russia winning any Olympic medal and shed a bro-tear when Phelps won his 8th gold medal, join the club.

. . . and a preference for American:

RamBros love America.

Age:  While bros of every generation could have "recently banged a chick born in the 90’s," the ad implies a preference for bros who routinely couple with women of this age group:

Having recently banged a chick born in the 90’s is a plus. If it was doggy and you didn’t call her ever again…BRO-FIVE!

Surely, there must be many more facets of bro discrimination hidden in this bad boy. Submit your finds in the comments.

Photo via JoelZimmer, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

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.

She explains:

I remember when I produced my very first movie. I was sitting in a room with a very famous director and his development staff. I was the only female in the room, and I kept making suggestions to cut different scenes, [like] one too many funerals. And I was completely ignored. Cut to this very famous director. He would say the same exact thing that I had said, not even a minute after I said it. And everyone at the meeting would be like, ‘Oh, yes. Good idea. That’s what we should do!’ It was like I never said it. I was invisible. I don’t know if that was sexism, but it sure felt like it. My opinion didn’t matter. Why was I talking?

The strange phenomenon of men stealing our ideas right in front of our faces has been discussed on the Sexist before. It's difficult to believe, because the practice is so blatant, so bold, so offensive, but trust me—and Jennifer Kesler will back me up here—this happens all the time. A woman says something. And then a man says the exact same thing. And then that thing is hailed as the most prescient! Hilarious! Insightful! Idea! Of all time!

This is not a privilege limited to the super-famous, well-respected Hollywood directors among us. Believe me when I tell you that far less illustrious specimens have stolen my ideas. My points, punchlines, and opinions have been lifted—directly after I publicly voiced them at a reasonable volume—by college boys my own age who held no particular institutional power beyond knowing a dude who had weed.

What I want to know is this: Does the crowd going wild over this Great Man's Great Idea even realize that the idea was just stolen from a woman? Does the idea-stealer even realize it? Do they even hear her talk? Or do they willfully ignore that she ever said it in the first place?

I know that in plenty of instances, this silencing is deliberate—one of the piece's anonymous stories came from a black film writer whose entire screenplay was deliberately lifted by a white man—but this silencing is so public, so obvious, that I wonder if everyone who does it has some sort of permanent mind meld that allows them to process and appropriate the ideas of women (or whatever other group of humans they happen to devalue) without fully realizing their theft. Thoughts?

Photo by Sorn, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

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]).

According to the study, young women expressed a greater interest—and perhaps difficulty—in speaking openly about personal sexual issues:

[Y]outh asked for information about how to engage a partner in a discussion about his or her sexual history. Some female participants also want to be able to discuss more personal issues with health educators and used the focus groups to ask questions such as, "What do you do when sometimes when you're having sex and it hurts, but at the same time, you know what I mean—it feels good?"

Young women also voiced an increased difficulty in speaking with their parents about sex:

Youth reported speaking to their parents about sex, but many said the experience was uncomfortable—though male participants reported an easier time talking about sex with their parents than the female participants. Youth also believe that their parents "may not know what to say."

Additionally, the girls in the study were more likely to desire an increased visibility for GLBTQ issues in the sex ed curriculum:

Many youth also admit that GLBTQ youth face greater ridicule in school and in the community, especially from heterosexual males. When asked why, many youth simply responded, "they just do." Some believed that heterosexual males view male-to-male relationships as a threat to one's manhood. There did not, however, seem to be the same feelings among young heterosexual women. Overall, heterosexual female focus groups participants expressed a greater acceptance of GLBTQ youth. Several young women stated that "[gay males] are good friends because they're less catty than women."

The girls who participated in the study expressed shame in carrying condoms:

Youth participants reported that while both males and females should be responsible for having condoms, social mores can make women feel uncomfortable with carrying condoms. One youth expressed, "If I see a condom in my boyfriend's wallet that is fine, but if I see my sister with one then it's a problem . . . I am aware this is a double standard but that's how society has branded her."

Another young female explained, "I don't carry a condom and don't plan to because for one I don't hvae anywhere to put it. I sometimes don't take a puse and I don't want to be at the store pulling cash out my pocklet and a condom out at the same time." Young women are afraid that they will be judged as promiscuous by others or misunderstood by their partenr if they carry condoms. To avoid misperception, some female focus groups participants reported leaving the responsibility to their boyfriends.

While locked drugstore condoms produced shame and frustration in both male and female respondents:

Many youth also reported feeling uneasy when purchasing condoms, citing store employees as a primary source of their discomfort, embarrassment, or shame. Focus group participants discussed being uncomfortable when going into a store and having to ask for condoms from an employee, or having to retrieve them from inconvenient locations such as a click box or closed glass case with a "red button that makes a loud noise." They described this experience as "annoying" and that it alerts everyone to their "business." One youth stated, "the CVS machine to get condoms is loud and difficult to get condoms—if I can get cereal easy, why can't I get condoms like that?"

Obviously, the absence of condoms affects young women differently than it does men:

While all youth reported having knowledge about how condoms can protect against STIs and pregnancy, some reported knowing several peers who do not use condoms because either "it feels better without a condom" or "slip ups happen in the moment." For example, one young woman described her experience with a slip-up, saying, "it only took a few minutes to forget—30 seconds and now I have kids."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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.

Victor writes:

I honestly don’t understand this at all.

I’m completely baffled. Why bother performing this action, which one would assume is instigated by a guy’s desire for the woman in question, when you just drive off in the end? I mean, even on the off chance that the woman was just standing there, thinking to herself “I’m gonna have sex with the next guy who honks at me”, he’s driven off by the time he’s finished honking.

My only conclusion is that the honkers are actually gay, and in fact do NOT want to have sex with women. The honk is just an attempt at making those around them assume they are straight. Guys that actually want to have sex would at least harrass women in person, where there’s that imaginary chance of success. Its only polite.

DirkJohanson writes:

Women aren’t the only ones targeted in public because of their gender. Just last Sunday, I was repeatedly harassed on Ocean Drive in South Beach as a result of my gender. As I passed virtually each restaurant, one hot chick after another stuck an advertcard practically in my face and verbally tried to coerce me into eating at the restaurants they were hostessing for. The cards were stuck in my face, not my date’s face. She wasn’t approached by a single one. The hostesses probably assumed, correctly, that I was the one paying, and also probably assumed, incorrectly in this instance(my date is very bi and had just shared two other women with me the night before), that I would be more swayed by being approached by a hot chick.

I was approached and harassed before I ate, and I was approached and harassed after I ate. I even thought that next time I go down there, I am going to wear a sticker or carry a sign that says, “I already ate.”

In fact, of course, a sign that says, “I already ate” is really the same thing as a woman wearing a wedding or engagement ring – it, in effect, says, “your time and energy is better expended elsewhere.”

As far as what to do about guys waving at you from construction sites – why does that bother you so much, anyway?

Magnetic Crow writes:

Yup, you guys keep whining about how unfair the world is to you. Meanwhile, those of us who have to experience this kind of crap almost every time we go out in a public space will continue to discuss it constructively.

Victor writes:

I don’t think the world is unfair to me. I’m tall, white and male with an upper-tier education. I think I was very lucky.

But that doesn’t give others free license to make illogical assertions. Dirk seems to like to whine, with an interspersal of “look at me” statements. His constant whining about paying for stuff can get very tiring, I agree. You don’t want to pay, don’t ask a girl out. To ask a girl out and whine about paying is a passive aggressive move which no one with any self-esteem would put up with for any length of time. Hell, I can barely stand it. The statement “grow a set” comes to mind.

DirkJohanson writes:

Victor, growing a set isn’t the issue – at least not for me, since I’m not the one trying to deflect criticism to another guy.

That having been said, growing tall is definitely an issue – a huge issue. If you’re not tall – and I’m not – most women these days expect you to pay for their virtually every move. There was an excellent study reported by the New York Times a year or two ago which found that, on average, a woman willing to be with a guy 6′ tall making $65K would require a guy 5′9″ to make over $200K to compensate.

As an example from my life, my date tonight, who I went out with once, has been flat-out asking me to wire money for days now. I can blow her off, and face the exact same thing from another broad soon enough, so what’s the difference? I’m not 6′ tall, have never done felony time, I like hot chicks, and I don’t have a job where I’m the boss and can fuck women in my office, so I am going to pay for it one way or another – that’s not whining, just reality.

. . .If speaking truth to female empowerment is considered whining, I’m happy to say I’m whining my balls off – even when I’m not. You should, too, before you retreat by dumping on fellow guys after you make good points merely because some whiney woman describes your good points as whining.

Victor writes:

Dirk – Drawing attention to an action = whining. You’re acting like some poor stereotype of a jewish mother listing off all the things she’s done for her son. You are short… and as such probably don’t deserve to date. But that’s another issue… The issue at hand is that you have created an exchange with some women which works for you. To assume that this exchange is the same deal all of us guys work out, is silly. And to keep drawing attention to the “poor deal” you got, is whining. I don’t see anyone else constantly bringing up the various concessions they may have to make in their relationships.

jules writes:

UGH, stop making comments that are more than 5 lines long! No one wants to read that shit!

DirkJohanson writes:

Victor, As patently clear from my post, I make no such assumptions – I, myself, went out with a girl less than half my age last year who insisted on spending more money on me than vice versa. I do, however, deal in dominant trends.

And, for the record, I’m not short – I’m just not tall – I’m 69″, which is one inch shorter than the average American guy.

Victor writes:

Dirk… Less than 6′ is too short for a male. You’re 3 full inches short of that. That means you’re short and you whine.

(how’s that Jules?)

DirkJohanson writes:

Victor, The night before the harassment incidents on South Beach I mentioned in one of my posts above I had sex with four women. How many were you with that night?

Victor writes:

Ah Dirk… First, even if I were inclined to believe you (and through the years, I’ve learned to only believe about 1/4 of what short guys say… so that makes, maybe one woman)… all that does is make you a short guy who had sex with 4 women that night. See how that doesn’t change your height at all? You’re not going to drag me into any “how many, where, how much” competition. I was a tall bartender in a popular dance club for a few years. I had my fun. I have no problem with you having fun too, I don’t even have any problem with you paying for it (as you’ve admitted in the past)… I just find your incessant whining tiresome.

Freaking short guys.

Christina writes:

I understand the frustration of non-male harrasers feeling accused but unless you’ve walked/biked around as a woman in this city you’re not really going emotionally understand the point of all these harrasers blog entries. I’m basing this statement off the responses I’m seeing.

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.

THE GUY WHO HONKS (noun).

Weapon of choice: Automobile.

Defining characteristics: Guy Who Honks moves at an advanced a speed, making anticipation, avoidance, and examination difficult. Even balls on a truck are not a reliable indicator that a harasser is inside.

Tactics: The Guy Who Honks is a most vexatious class of street harasser. This Guy subsists on the abuse of a device generally reserved for emergencies and expressions of extreme rage. Unlike reasonable drivers, Guy Who Honks liberally palms the horn in order to make his presence known to nearby females. The traditionally negative associations of the sound ensure that the honked-at experiences a brief sensation of panic before realizing that the honk signals not a road emergency, but rather a passing douchebag.

Targets: Women Who Walk, Women Who Bike, and Women Who Wait for the Bus. Guy Who Honks thrives on an an elevated sense of importance derived from sitting in a fucking car. Women Who Bike are especially vulnerable to Guys Who Honk, as honks meant to flatter and offend can provide a dangerous obstacle on the road.

Appropriate Response: Guy Who Honks provides little recourse for his targets. Sneers, expressions of disgust, and even pointed refusals to respond have little effect on Guy Who Honks, who is already breezing down the block in search of his next victim. While erratically waved middle fingers may be spied through the rear window, they tend to leave the target with a lingering feeling of embarrassment, and unrealized dreams of duct taping a bullhorn to her bicycle handlebars.

Fantasy Punishment: A forced biking across D.C. in rush hour. In a skirt.

Previously in Profiles of Street Harassers: The Smile, Baby Guy; the Subway Sandwich Guy.

Photo by beeep.

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.

The National Center for Transgender Equality has prepared an FAQ to help transgender passengers navigate the new process. According to the NCTE, the new rules could cause a variety of hiccups. I've summarized the four main problems that passengers might encounter below.

1. When your ID and gender expression doesn't match up, you must choose one or the other. And either may confuse airline officials:

"This potentially becomes difficult if you have transitioned but your identity documents reflect an old gender marker. In this case, you may choose to submit the gender marker consistent with your gender identity so that the ticket agent is less likely to notice an inconsistency between your submitted gender and your perceived gender expression. Alternatively, you may choose to submit the gender marker indicated on your identity documents to avoid inconsistencies. We are unsure how Secure Flight will be implemented, and we therefore recommend that you carefully consider the options and submit the information that you are most comfortable with."

2.  A gender inconsistent with your gender identity could be listed on your ticket. This could lead to additional confusion—or embarrassment—at security and at the gate.

"The information you give to the airline should not appear on your ticket because the ticket format is uniform both nationally and internationally. In practice, however, airlines may use the information for any purpose they desire, and may be able to find other ways to include gender information (such as adding the title “Mr.,” “Ms.,” or “Mrs.”) on the ticket. Please let us know if this is happening to you so we can work with the airline to resolve the problem."

3. Your gender identity may not be kept confidential.

"TSA requires that the booking agents, airlines, travel agents, or any other person handling travel data for flight passengers collect full legal name, date of birth, and gender for each passenger. TSA does not collect this information directly. While TSA has strict federal procedures for the handling of private information once that information is provided
to TSA there is no restriction on third-party use of collected data. As such, airlines, travel agents, and other trip organizers may use the information as they desire. They may choose to simply disregard the information, save it in a database, or make use of it in some way. This will make it harder for anyone who flies pre-transition or during transition to keep their transgender identity private in the future."

4. When booking a flight, airline officials may not explicitly ask for the gender listed on your ID—and choose the wrong one.

"Also, gender information may be incorrectly categorized in the first place, leaving potential documentation inconsistencies and hassles at the airport. This is especially true in any instance in which the passenger does not fill out the documentation themselves (such as when they are booking a flight in person or though a travel agent). In these situations, the non-passenger booking the flight on behalf of the passenger is unlikely to actually ask which gender marker should be placed on the form. Instead, they are likely to make an independent assessment of the appropriate gender marker based on their own perception of the passenger’s gender expression, name, or voice. Some airlines will also retain information you’ve input in the past and auto-fill certain categories when booking flights (such as through a frequent flyer account), which may then auto-fill incorrect information. Frequent flyer program participation may be impacted if the name on your program enrollment differs from the information you use to book your tickets. If possible, book your flights yourself so that you may input your own full legal name, date of birth, and gender information, or work with a trusted travel agent to ensure that the information is communicated correctly."

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.

Vox Pop looked "beyond the top ten" to find that Georgetown's leadership is actually surprisingly balanced, gender-wise.  Juliana Brint found that "women hold a majority of positions in the administration of the College, the SFS and the NHS, and also constitute a majority of academic department leaders in NHS and in the College’s humanities programs"—though the school's science departments, administrators, and school of business are still male-heavy. Brint's most intriguing finding concerned the contrast between the gender-make up of staffs managed by men versus staffs managed by women:

Interestingly, areas that are mostly female-run tend to be more equally divided, with between 48 and 37 percent of the positions filled by men; male-dominated areas are more polarized, with only 30 percent or less of the positions filled by women.

But don't take my word for it—they've got graphs!

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.

Since 2006, the D.C. Human Rights Act has protected transgender men and women from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations—including restrooms. Since public bathrooms are traditionally gender-specific, gender nonconforming clientele have faced harassment, attack, and even arrest for picking the “wrong” gendered stall. Restaurants with multi-stall bathrooms segregated by gender can work to eliminate discrimination by ensuring that even when rooms are marked for ladies or gentlemen, they’re free of harassment for the spot’s gender-variant pissers.

Miskinyar says he would be happy to open his pink and blue doors to a unisex flow. “We’re in a predominantly gay neighborhood, so why not?” he says. “When it gets busy, the restrooms are effectively unisex anyway—everyone just goes straight to the first open stall.” But restaurants equipped with single-stall restrooms, like Policy, are required to go a bit further in ending discrimination—they must eliminate the gendered bathroom sign entirely. According to the regulations, “All entities covered under the Act with single-occupancy restroom facilities shall use gender-neutral signage for those facilities (for example, by replacing signs that indicate ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ with signs that say ‘Restroom’).”

That solution wouldn’t be painless for Miskinyar—his four gender-specific bathroom doors came at $3,000 a pop. But Miskinyar’s exclamation marks aren’t out the door yet—a suggestive color scheme may not be explicit enough to count as discrimination. “I wouldn’t think we’d have to change the doors,” says Miskinyar. “The color is all in how you perceive it.” Since this is the first year that D.C.’s Office of Human Rights has attempted to enforce the rule, agency reps say that subtly gendered signs—like Policy’s—may fall into a legal gray area.

While local business owners and the OHR may disagree over forced redecoration, the unisex single stall is a welcome fixture for two groups that have clashed over toilet turf: transgender activists, and the people who refuse to share a restroom with them.
Last month, the D.C. Trans Coalition launched its “Pee in Peace” campaign to raise awareness about the three-year-old restroom requirements in local accommodations. For the DCTC, “Peeing in Peace” means navigating the bathroom line “without having to worry whether someone is going to assault or arrest us for using the ‘wrong’ one.”

Campaign member Sadie Baker says that Policy isn’t alone in its gender-specific display. The campaign is compiling a list of locations that are currently non-compliant with the single-stall requirement but could easily follow the law by changing a few signs; OHR plans to contact each to ensure they get in line. DCTC found a number of repeat offenders in national chain toilets—your Starbucks, your Chipotles, your Caribou Coffees. Independent discriminators include local fixtures like Asylum, Marvin, the Wonderland Ballroom, and Café Asia. “The problem, I believe, is that no one knows about it,” says Baker. “Our campaign is first focused on nicely reminding people of the law. Then, if they refuse to comply within 30 60 days, we’ll look into filing a discrimination complaint,” she says.

Last year, the Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government launched its own awareness campaign over transgender bathroom use: the “Not My Shower” initiative. Ruth Jacobs, the group’s president, says the campaign is meant to publicize the flip-side of transgender rights—privacy infringement for “normal people.” “If somebody with an opposite body part is allowed in to a ladies’ restroom—a guy who has a penis, who could put his penis inside my vagina—what am I to do?” says Jacobs. “We need to be able to retain the right to speak up about men in our bathrooms without being labeled bigots.” Jacobs does, however, approve of the gender-neutral single-stall. “That sounds like a reasonable compromise that doesn’t cause any problems for anybody, and that’s a fine thing to do,” she says.

Most restroom users aren’t as concerned with the genitalia of their stall-mates, but many are still skittish about going unisex. Forget accepting a transgender person—local diners are rarely tolerant of a non-gender-specific room.

One online reviewer found Muse Lounge’s unisex stall “creepy”: “The club itself is grimey, small and the oh-so-creepy unisex bathrooms. Yuck. I think every time I went to the restroom there was a couple in there fighting,” they wrote. Another blamed Sticky Rice’s unisex setup for a lack of cleanliness: “This place evidence #452982 why unisex bathrooms do not work,” the reviewer wrote. “There are 2 here to share. They were both a mess. Paper towels on the dirty, fluid ridden floor, along with what I can only assume came out of someone’s nose in one of the sinks.” And the unisex single-stall at U Street NW gay bar Nellie’s squeezed some homophobia out of one female bathroom-goer: “there is no girls bathroom vs boys bathroom. Everyone shares,” she wrote. “Which kind of sucks waiting in line with a bunch of divas.”

And though Café Asia subtly marks its line of men’s and women’s single stalls with gendered figures, one reviewer was so put off by the proximity of the sexes that he experienced performance anxiety: “I was stuck, lost and very confused when I went to the bathroom and this lady followed me back there and when into the stall next to me.…to the point where I couldn’t even use the bathroom. So upon leaving this very disturbing bathroom experience, I[t] was explained by my waiter that it was a unisex bathroom. WOW.”

At divier destinations with single stalls, a unisex switch won’t do much to lower the esteem of an already low-grade rest stop. Swankier locales, however, have more invested in their delineation between his-and-hers. At Busboys and Poets, a couple of whimsical tiled mosaics mark off the bathrooms. At the 9:30 Club, a toy mermaid and merman stand guard outside their respective johns. As trivial as it seems, a well-executed gendered bathroom sign can still carry cultural cachet—why else spend $3,000 on a giant exclamation mark?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

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]

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.

With dozens of top-notch cosmetic surgeons in the D.C. area, Clayton’s surgical needs should be as close as a cab ride away. But while Clayton’s procedures are more urgent than your average lipo—she’s got plenty of documentation to prove them medically necessary—D.C. doctors are more equipped to administer the elective nips and tucks. It’s not known how many sex reassignment surgeries are performed yearly in the United States, but millions of biological women seek out physical treatments each year to help feel comfortable in their own bodies. Last year, 355,671 Americans underwent breast augmentation surgery; 341,144 received liposuction; more than two million were injected with Botox.

Jessica McKinnon, a local transgender advocate, says that plastic surgery specific to the transgender community has become a highly specialized field. “The surgeons who do the much more specialized work—like the genital surgery and the facial feminization—often decide to really focus on that line of work,” says McKinnon. “There’s such a great demand…those surgeons tend to be flooded and ultimately end up treating mainly transgender patients.”

Online trans resource TS Roadmap lists only 19 surgeons known to perform vaginoplasty in the United States. Those trans women who choose to undergo physical surgeries are often forced to take their journeys cross-country.

Electrolysis: 2,600 miles

The removal of facial and body hair through electrolysis is one of the most common nonsurgical cosmetic procedures performed in the United States. That hasn’t made the procedure more accessible for transgender women. “I used to have a fairly thick beard, and it’s been difficult to permanently get rid of,” says Clayton. For months, she slowly thinned her facial hair in one-hour electrolysis treatments at Alexandria’s Alternative Health Associates. But the painful sessions were too short to adequately clear Clayton’s face—and more extensive zapping sessions require some special accessories. The key to heavy-duty electrolysis is access to lidocaine—if you’re going to endure the currents for over an hour, you need the drug to numb the pain.

Clayton’s local electrolysis source wouldn’t administer lidocaine in the office but suggested that she might hop over to a dentist down the street to numb up between sessions. Since Clayton’s extended electrolysis sessions would require several doses of the stuff, she decided to really hit the road.

For the past year, Clayton has traveled to the Carrollton, Texas, Electrology 3000 center every two months in an attempt to permanently eliminate her facial hair. E3000 is “very well-known in the transgender community,” says Clayton—but E3000’s community points result from its extensive services, not its inclusiveness. “They’re just geared toward handling the very difficult electrolysis,” she says.

Clayton’s first visit was a marathon 20 hours of face-clearing. Now, Clayton’s E3000 treatments in Texas leave her face bruised and burned for several days after the procedure. Clayton, at least, was happy to ditch one complication: the constant shuttle between electrolysis and dentist chairs.

Breast Augmentation: 40 miles

Clayton didn’t opt to have breast-augmentation surgery, another very common procedure that nevertheless raises specific concerns for transgender patients. “Many trans women look to have breast-augmentation surgery, and that’s something that is extremely common among natal women as well,” McKinnon says. “But a lot of the surgeons that practice these procedures are only doing them on natal women, so they don’t necessarily have the same experience working on a slightly different frame.”

Tailoring the most common cosmetic procedure in the United States to trans patients requires some small but significant changes in procedure—including working with a wider rib cage, a larger gap between the breasts, and differences in tissue growth. “Even within the surgeons that do operate on a lot of male-to-female trans women, it’s hard to find surgeons that actually take those sorts of things into account,” says McKinnon. “That’s really why a lot of people do a lot of shopping around.”

This time, D.C.-area trans women are in luck: The Austin-Weston Center for Cosmetic Surgery in Reston, Va. provides a popular trans-friendly option.

Sex-Reassignment Surgery: 300 miles

Sex-reassignment surgery is referred to alternately as vaginoplasty, SRS, or simply “the operation.” But it’s unlikely that any of these descriptors will appear on the menu of your local surgeon, cosmetic or otherwise. Beyond the relatively low demand for sex-reassignment surgery, the procedure nearly always causes a health care headache: It’s rarely covered under standard health insurance plans. For the uninsured, the lack of coverage for the procedure may have one advantage: You can get it done way, way out of network. Clayton considered three surgeons in the United States, one in Canada, and another in Thailand. She settled on the most local expert: Dr. Christine McGinn in Philadelphia. “I didn’t care how far I had to travel for the surgery,” she says. “I just wanted the best result possible. I ended up going to the closest doctor, but proximity wasn’t the biggest factor for me—I just wanted it to go smoothly. You only get one shot.”

Facial Feminization Surgery: 4,800 miles

Most cosmetic surgeons modify the features of both male and female faces—a rhinoplasty here, an eye lift there. Feminizing a male face, however, comes with its peculiar challenges. A full facial feminization package includes: hairline correction, forehead recontouring, lip lift, brow lift, cheek implant, jaw recontouring, and tracheal shave. While a local doc may excel in one or two of the procedures, the whole shebang is mostly left up to specialists like Dr. Douglas Ousterhout, whose San Francisco clinic is still considered one of the best.

Though Clayton considered many of these procedures at the outset of her transition, she later found that hormones alone helped to feminize her features in lieu of surgery. With her electrolysis program nearly finished, Clayton is weighing one final procedure—rhinoplasty. This time, the line between “medically necessary” and “elective” is becoming more blurred for Clayton. “I don’t want it to be the case where I’m always looking for the next procedure to feel more complete—to be the person I should be. I want to get to the point where I’m happy with myself,” she says. “This is not a phenomenon that’s just isolated to transgender women—it’s all women.”

If Clayton does decide on the nose job, the procedure, at least, would come a little bit closer to home. “If I could find somebody local for that one, I wouldn’t mind that,” she says. “I would not mind that at all.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

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.

It wasn't the first time a stranger had confused me for a dude—the short hair, etc.—and I'm not often unsettled by a slip-up. In this case, however, the sheer awkwardness of the encounter was stunning: The waiter, after mistaking me for a man, had apologized for referring to us with an entirely gender-neutral greeting. When he returned to read off the daily specials, we both stared at him with open jaws.

"What the fuck?" we asked each other, when the waiter had left again. Was he so freaked out by mistaking my gender that he couldn't even use a gender-neutral term to describe me? And why did it feel so fucking weird? The waiter studiously avoided us for the rest of the meal, only dropping by our table when necessary. But we couldn't shake the encounter.

"I'm going to go to the bathroom," I said, at one point.

"Which one?" my companion asked.

At the end of the meal, we split the check. The waiter took care to lay out the receipts according to our genders, returning the female credit card to me, and the male credit card to the man. But I won't soon forget what he had said after our initial encounter. In a sweep of the room, he noticed our glasses were half-empty: "I'll get you guys some more water," he told us.

What the fuck?

Photo by Daquella manera

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.

I remember spending a lot of time in my high school Spanish IV class arguing with my classmates as to whether or not the gendered grammatical structure was oppressive to women, men, humanity, whatever. Our teacher told us that, like a lot of things, it's just arbitrary, it doesn't matter, and we were all seriously cutting into our homework time.

Pwned, Señora! Writes Boroditsky:

Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make Russian speakers think of chairs as being more like men and beds as more like women in some way? . . . It turns out that it does. In one study, we asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender.

So, the grammatical gender of a signifier informs whether we think of the signified object as having traditionally masculine or feminine qualities. Could that also mean that Germans associate human femininity with bridge-like characteristics, or masculinity with the characteristics of keys? And how can we yield this power for good, not evil?

Kelly McEvers, who wrote a great series for Slate about her attempts—and failures—at finding pirates in the Strait of Malacca, chatted online today at the Washington Post about her experience getting the story. She had an interesting comment about the gender politics of reporting from the sea. Who has the advantage in locating swashbucklers—men or women?

Downtown DC: Hi Kelly, Interesting assignment—I love how you capture both the boredom and the rush of being on an assignment like this. Sure, I am curious why the chat is before the final segment of the story, but I guess everyone else is too. Ready for Part 5, I guess.

Sounds to me that based on your experience, a male (western) journalist wouldn't have a chance of meeting these contacts (at least in Malaysia/Indonesia). How scared were you, really, when taken into the hold with all these guys? I am assuming it would have been different if they were in their 20s and not 50s...

Kelly McEvers: I'm not so sure that a male journalist would have had problems. See Peter Gwin's recent piece in National Geographic about the same subject, in the same region. The pirate I eventually met was younger—not in his 50s.

But the gender question is an interesting one: I admit that being a woman makes it easier to my job sometimes. But other times it makes it hard. Especially in Muslim countries.

Arrr—it's, a tie?

Photo by Oakley Originals.

14 men in the top positions? Looks like Dell would be killing it in the Manliest Workplace Competition!

Ever since "bro" crept out of the frat house basement and into the mainstream, the now-ubiquitous term has suffered a backlash. Consider the dominant definition of "bro" on urbandictionary.com: "Stupid white trash guys . . . with lifted trucks, wife beaters, shitty music . . . ugly girlfriends, ugly hair, mouths constantly open, retarded as all get up, have no common sense . . . Fags."

Also indicative of the term's current status: Even the founder of forthcoming online community BroBible.com —the world's first online "brocial network"—hesitates to self-identify as "bro." “The word bro has a negative connotation to some,” admits Doug Banker, the bro behind Bro Bible. "I'm definitely a bro in certain aspects," he adds. "But I consider myself a well-rounded bro."

But to Banker, 23, the term "bro" means something different. "We see it in the playful way . . . Really, a bro is just someone who likes to go out and have a good time, who likes to stay connected to their group of friends while expanding their horizons," he says. "It’s not one of our goals to make the word 'bro' more positive," adds banker. “But yes, hopefully, that will happen.”

Banker, who graduated this year from the University of Richmond with a B.A. in “Leadership Studies," hopes that BroBible.com will give a voice to what he views as a sorely underrepresented demographic. The Web site, tag-lined "Every bro has a story," will debut its mix of social networking, open forums, and bro-generated content on Oct. 15. “This is one of the first sites that’s tailored specifically to the needs and interests of the bro,” says Banker. “Finally, there will be an outlet on the Internet where [bros] can truly express themselves."

The nationwide site aims to connect a diverse network of bros around the country. “The actual type of bro varies, but there are bros everywhere,” explains Banker. “You’ve got the Southern bro, enjoys being outside; the Colorado ski bro; the California surf bro; the Texas down-South bro; the Northeastern preppy lacrosse bro. There are all different types of bros, but they share common attributes.”

Banker hopes to court the bros of the District of Columbia specifically. “A lot of my friends at Georgetown are huge bros, and they really enjoy the nightlife scene there,” he says. “In the bars, you can find a great deal of bros. Any sporting event, a lot of bros. I would imagine that D.C is full of them,” he says. Banker says he is planning to take his promotional bro tour to Washington, D.C. within the next month.

Other types of bros, however, are less welcome in the online community. “It’s not the 'yo, bro' type of thing,” says Banker, “We’re not trying to get a guy who’s going to drink ten beers and crash them over his head. . . . The site is not going to be glorifying male conquest and championing their exploits.”

Still, Banker says he hopes to promote an "open forum" where bros "can share all types of stories and not feel embarrassed to get that information out," he says. "And if that includes beer and hooking up, then so be it."

Though the bro is typically defined as male, Banker says that female bros—and women close to bros—are also encouraged to check out the site. "I think it’s going to be very popular with women," Banker says. "Women are really going to enjoy the site. They'll be able to gain insight into the male ego, the male bravado, how the male mind works. At the very least, they’re going to want to know why their boyfriend is spending so much time on the site."

Banker is hopeful that, with the help of the online bro community, a new term for a female bro will soon be coined. "I’ve been looking for one. I can’t think of one off the top of my head," says Banker. "Trust me, I’ve been wracking my brain for a long time.”

Photo by Tavallai.

* For Slate, The Abstinence Teacher author Tom Perrotta explains the political appeal of Sarah Palin's "Sexy Puritan" archetype:

I'm only trying to locate her within the context of the great American culture war, which she seems to have single-handedly reignited during an election season that was supposed to have been dominated by other issues (and may well be again, now that Wall Street has imploded). With the selection of Palin, McCain succeeded not only in thrilling the Christian right but in scrambling the categories of the campaign. It used to be perfectly clear which ticket represented youth and change, which seemed old and boring, and which had more appeal to women voters. For a moment, at least, Palin seems to have turned these certainties into open questions.

* Also in Slate: How the financial crisis is good for the high-end prostitute business:

Sex workers of the past waited on street corners, outside bars, and around parks, and their transactions were fleeting and usually for a few dollars. Today's high-end sex workers see themselves as therapists, part of a vast metropolitan wellness industry that includes private chefs and yoga teachers. Many have regular clients who visit them several times per month, paying them not only for sex but also for comfort and affirmation.

Ahh, but what of the comfort and affirmation of your local alt-weekly?

* Stuff Hipsters Don't Like: Hipsters. Thinking about the economy. Pregnancy:

Hipsters are very torn about pregnancy. On the one hand, they don’t have any problem with abortion seeing as they got their BA in post-structuralist conceptual astrology and have endured hundreds of hours of NPR, Ira Glass’ infanticidal socialist drone lingering in their subconscious. On the other hand, being pregnant is kind of cool. It gives them some sort of purpose in an otherwise directionless post-graduate existence. In fact, some hipster girls dream of having a traditional nuclear family. They fantasize about their husband handsomely dressed in wool flannel and Ray-Bans returning home from his long shift at the record store and coddling their infant son decked out in a vintage neon Morrissey romper.

That said, most of the time they just get an abortion.

* Women dumb! Men lazy! Unfabulouz.com shows "the difference between men and women" in this recovered gender cartoon.

* Guess what's the only supreme court case Sarah Palin can name! Yeah, that one.

Photo by dreamsjung

For the discerning dater, daily picks from Craigslist's litter.

Misc. Romance: Discreet Married Guy Seeks Older Woman

A: 59
S: m4w
L: Northern Virginia

First Impression: Actually, no. "Did you think your sex life was over?"

Has Priorities: In that order: "I'm retired, educated, sane, attractive, virile, tall, slender, extremely well endowed."

Heart to Heart: Excuse the scare quotes. "My fantasy is to bring a 'senior' woman to orgasm."

Missed Connections: Big Black Man Exercising Downtown

A: Unreported
S: no, just "exercise."
L: D.C.

First Impression: Let's recap. "You were the BIG Black Man exercising under the pavillion in the old convention center parking lot."

I.S.O.: An activity partner. "If you have any interest in 'working out' with a muscular masculine rugger-built white guy, hit me up..."

Heart to Heart: Love at first squat. "When you started doing your leg lunges/stretches–WOW!!!"

—

Women Seeking Men: looking for christian guy

A: 22
S: w4m
L: Stafford, Virg.

First Impression: Flammable. "Iam look for man who is funny doesn't mind stay home and watch TV or just talking . . . will help his girl stay on fire for god ."

Age Range: Young soul. "iam a very out doors kind of person . I love to watch christian show and movies that for teens ."

Heart to Heart: Old Yeller off-limits. "I love to play with my dogs . I love to read books about people ."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Judging local takes on sex and gender.

What a week to launch a new sex and gender blog. Since Sunday, The Washington Post's Style Section has been going balls out on its trad. values coverage with "Wedding Week 2008." Whether you've feasted from the Post's Wedding Week buffet or merely dipped your finger in its room-temperature hollandaise sauce, The Sexist has your guide to what coverage catches the bouquet and what pieces are so homely they might never find a man who could ever love them.

Naughty: Rachel Beckman's "One Ring Circus." This piece is your typical girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, girl spends several years waiting for boy to ask her to love him until they die, girl converts her workplace into an "Engagement Watch" bitching den until she finally wears boy down enough to propose to her type of story. In other words, a success!

Beckman, a former City Paper writer, spends the piece struggling to align her "feminist" side with her "princess" side. "I was caught in a Catch-22," writes Beckman. "I could be hands-off and leave it all to him (feminist Rachel says no), or I could be hands-on and get what I want (princess Rachel says no)."

Let me make it easy for you, Beckman: You're a pretty, pretty princess.

For the sake of the story, though, let's imagine that, by virtue of picking up Bust Magazine a few times in college, Beckman is, like, a totally liberated woman beneath that frilly exterior. Beckman's idea of compromise between the feminist and the princess is to coerce her boyfriend to propose to her how she wants it, when she wants it, and with the appropriate cut of diamond—but to maintain the artifice that he is running this entire show in order to preserve what she calls the "purity" of the engagement.

Years ago, these sort of behind-the-scenes marriage machinations might have been seen as clever tricks for women to transcend patriarchal control in order to get what they want. But this is Wedding Week 2008, Beckman!

If a "pure" union requires a woman to kill herself in order to make it appear as if her "man" is making all the decisions and that she agrees to every one of them, consider me the piss stain in the freshly fallen snow of modern marriage.

Nice: After that, Caitlin Gibson and Rachel Manteuffel's "The Anti-Wedding" reads positively radical. Gibson and Manteuffel's piece—their attempt to deliver a "Fuck You" to the marriage industry by planning the nuptials of a wedding-averse alterna-couple—is largely a pleasant romp through the tedious wedding-making machine. Still, I can't help but see this piece as token "Other" coverage in an entire week of features that pander to the wedding industry. Just how Anti-Wedding is this wedding anyway?

Nontraditional:
- wedding occurs not in church but in street
- bride wears red summer dress
- service marred by miserable, miserable rain
- guests brandish signs reading "'Til Debt Do Us Part" and "Money Can't Buy Me Love"
- no rings exchanged
- in place of champagne and cake, beer and pizza consumed

Traditional:
- requires two wedding planners
- union between man and woman
- photo shoot printed in national newspaper
- couple still fucking getting married

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.