* Irish academic Dylan Evans has been accused of sexual harassment after discussing a paper on bat fellatio with a female colleague. Seems like a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation to me; at the same time, I'm not entirely convinced that this guy wasn't discussing bat fellatio in the creepiest way possible. The New Scientist report is vague:

It seems there was more to the grievance between Evans and the complainant than the fellatio paper incident, but an independent investigation found that Evans was not guilty of sexual harassment. The investigation stated that it was reasonable for the colleague to have been offended and that showing the paper was a joke with a sexual innuendo, but that it was not Evans' intention to cause offence.

Evans was censured by the University, which he says "may" prevent him from securing tenure. So what sort of behavior was Evans involved in beyond the bat fellatio incident? Here's an excerpt from his colleague's complaint:

Since he arrived at the school last year, Dr Evans has often come to my office, generally early in the morning and always uninvited, to talk mainly about himself.

On many occasions he used unwelcome patting, hugging, kissing on the cheeks and touching behaviour with me; he also used to make compliments on my beauty or the way I was dressed.

I told him that I do not appreciate compliments as they do not mean anything to me.

Some high-profile academics—like Tufts' Daniel Dennett and Harvard's Steven Pinker—have come to Evans' defense:

Dennett calls the punishment "an outrageous violation of academic freedom" and Pinker says the "absurd and shameful" judgment "runs contrary to the principle of intellectual freedom and freedom of speech, to say nothing of common sense."

Ah, the freedom to unwelcome-pat. Look: There are hundreds of contexts in which one can discuss a bat fellatio paper with a colleague. We should probably consider that before concluding that sexual harassment policies are killing our freedoms.

* The newly-crowned Miss USA, Rima Fakih, is "the first Arab-American and Muslim to win the title." Is this a sign of the widening of traditional American beauty standards, or an Islamofascist conspiracy?

* Meanwhile, some guy at the Huffington Post has called her a whore.

* Glenn Beck and the performance of femininity through fake tears.

Photo via Wikipedia Commons

Via Feministing: Glenn Beck has slapped down rumors of a Palin-Beck presidential ticket in 2012. Why? Because Glenn Beck would be an even worse Vice Presidential pick than Sarah Palin was is really sexist!

"I was just thinking, what, I'm going to take a back seat to a chick?" Beck said, before resorting to the most clichéd remark ever:

I'm just saying, Beck-Palin, I'll consider. But Palin-Beck—can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? She'd be yapping or something, I'd say, 'I'm sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I'm not in the kitchen.'

So . . . Glenn Beck is too sexist to consider being vice president. Everybody wins!

The ads, which are running on Glenn Beck's delightfully incomprehensible Web site, refrain from denigrating women, Mexicans, and the disabled in order to ridicule the religious right. Now that's a deliberately offensive marketing campaign that I can get behind (still not into the movie, though). The ads, which pair nicely with Becks' series of incoherent ramblings, are after the jump.

Last week on the Sexist:

1. How Sarah Palin Confuses Liberals Into Arguing About Feminism in which Sarah Palin is wrong, but still manages to drag us all down with her.

2. Huffington Post: Liberal Politics, Sexist Entertainment in which a commenter argues for Arianna-approved "testicle slips."

3. Don't Blame Glenn Beck's Hot Mormon Wife in which Tanya's insistence upon Mormonism "grounds" him.

4. Teen Sex Scandal! in which all the people searching Google for "teen sex" and "teensex" are sorely disappointed.

5. The 10 Creepiest Paul Rudd Stalking Tweets in which I, too, do my part.

I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I just received this little gift in my inbox courtesy of Ayn Rand philosophy emporium / Objectivist dating site "The Atlasphere." It's called "Who Is Glenn Beck?," and it's written by John Stossel.

Usually, the photograph of Stossel's sensuous mustache would be enough to make me click through to an Atlasphere column. Here, we've got an even sweeter prize, however. Glenn Beck's sexism: explained!

Stossel notes that he's not the first to tackle the "Who Is Glenn Beck" question. Kieth Olbermann, Whoopie Goldberg, and Jon Stewart have all claimed to have figured the guy out, concluding that Beck is "the worst person in the world," a "lying sack of dog mess," and "a guy who says what people who aren’t thinking are thinking," respectively.

But Stossel may be the first to get to the deep psychological core of "Who Is Glenn Beck." After ticking off his parents' divorce, his mother's alcoholism, and her eventual suicide, Stossel lands on the woman behind the sexist: Beck's hot Mormon wife.

When Stossel asked Beck why he decided to become a Mormon, Beck replied:

"I apologize, but guys will understand this. My wife is, like, hot, and she wouldn’t have sex with me until we got married. And she wouldn’t marry me unless we had a religion."

Beck's wife, Tania, confirmed it to Stossel: "He’s not joking."

So far, "Who Is Glenn Beck" is providing more questions than answers. Why would you marry someone to have sex with them? Why would you become a Mormon to marry someone to have sex with them? Does making a man become a Mormon before having sex with him actually make you hotter? Which "guys" will understand this?

Still, Stossel thinks he's hit on something with the hot Mormon wife thing:

Now Beck says that Mormonism has grounded him, so he’s grateful to his wife.

Whatever grounded him, I’m glad something did. Because it’s good to have a super-successful cable-TV host arguing that life would be better if government—Democrats and Republicans—just left Americans alone.

Listen, I'm not going to blame Tania Beck for Glenn Beck's idea of limited government, or for convincing anyone else that Glenn Beck is "grounded." Still, Glenn Beck's assertion that marrying a no-sex-until-Mormon babe is the thing that really leveled his head may have affected Beck's perspective on women in general:

* On Nancy Pelosi: "Girl, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself!"

* "Cindy Sheehan is a tragedy slut."

* On Gloria Steinem: "You self-centered self-righteous socialist out of control dangerous man-hating bitch. Shut your mouth. We might have bought into this crap in the 1960s because too many people were doing LSD. We're not on LSD anymore—we need to start making sense."