Freddie Fackelmayer, a 2005 graduate of the George Washington University, wants everyone to know that he’s not a “womanizing jerk.” Fackelmayer just finished up a stint as fake boyfriend to reality television star Whitney Port on MTV’s “The City,” a fake show about Port’s real life working in the fashion industry, a career she secured by virtue of being a reality television star. Anyway, Fackelmayer recently granted an interview with the G.W. Hatchet about how his fake relationship with a reality television star was totally misrepresented on the T.V.!

Read More “GW Grad Claims MTV Made Him A “Womanizing Jerk”” »

In a staff editorial, George Washington University newspaper the Hatchet reacted to two recent incidents of on-campus violence by calling for a “shared responsibility for safety.” In the first incident, a stranger approached a graduate student in the bathroom of an academic building and hit him in the head with a hammer. In the second, a stranger approached several sleeping women in a Freshman dorm and sexually assaulted them.

“Both of these incidents exemplify ways that GW can improve security on its campus,” the Hatchet editorial informed students. According to the camps paper, the bathroom hammering reveals how the university needs to “better expedite information in response to major security threats on campus.” The sexual assault, meanwhile, “shows that students have a responsibility to keep themselves safe.”

Perhaps it was not the best choice of words.

Read More “G.W. Paper Criticizes Sexual Assault Victims’ Lack of “Responsibility”” »

This week, the Nation’s Alex Dibranco provided a brief history of the “Student Sex Column Movement.” The college sex column, Dibranco argues, is “a radical progressive movement in the sense of pushing against traditional silence and the status quo,” she writes. “Challenges to the columns stem from a conservative mindset . . . Given that the Republican Party has become increasingly dominated by the religious right and the issues of the conservative culture wars, with sex smack at the forefront, these columns become politicized in a way the columnists themselves don’t necessarily intend. . . . the statement that ’sex is OK’ becomes even more politically charged when the sex in question is generally unmarried and occasionally queer.”

Criticisms of D.C.-area student sex columns, however, rarely take the form of the right-wing, anti-sex diatribe. At local colleges and universities, sex columnists are more likely to catch heat for furthering sex-negative sentiments, antiquated gender roles, or sloppy writing.

Read More “University Sex Columns, Reviewed” »

Last week, a group of George Washington University students gathered to protest a hateful White House appearance by noted homophobe Fred Phelps and his anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. The counter-protest used a time-tested anti-Phelps tactic: The “Phelps-A-Thon.” Writes G.W. Hatchet columnist Tom Braslavsky:

An initiative called Phelps-A-Thon, similar to that at my high school, donated about $12 per minute to Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence, an organization that works to counter all forms of hate-motivated violence. According to Phelps-A-Thon organizer Chris Mason, the event raised over $550. The group plans on sending a thank-you note to Phelps, telling him how much money he raised for LGBT equality.

I wonder how much money Phelps has raised so far for AIDS research, gay marriage, and hate crime awareness? This guy is a saint.

Notoriously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church came to town on Monday to protest homosexual sin, George Mason University’s gay male homecoming queen, and “the Anti-Christ” (President Obama). When the protest moved on from GMU and Embassy Row to land in front of the White House, Westboro members were met by dozens of George Washington Univeristy students who had come to protest the protest with a punishment reserved for only the most insufferable of bigots: College girls kissing each other.

The counter-protest was organized by Colin MacDonald and Ian Goldin, GW students who were joined by “between 80 and 100 people” in raising signs, chants, and face-locks against the church. At the height of the action, Freshmen Paige Medley and Lauren LaMonte kissed “to show their support for gay rights.” It looks like there might have been some tongue, but it’s too close to call.

For those also interested in, ahem, showing their solidarity, check out Hatchet photographer Marie McGrory’s shot of the kiss here.

According to the G.W. student newspaper the Hatchet, University Freshman Todd Belok was dismissed from the Navy ROTC program after his fellow midshipmen learned that he was gay. Belok didn’t explicitly inform the Navy that he was gay, but after he was observed kissing “another male” at a fraternity party, Belok was “officially dismissed from the program in December,” the Hatchet writes.

On September 13, 2008, Belok attended a party at Beta Theta Pi, a fraternity which he later pledged, when two other midshipmen [MIDN], Dave Perry and Squad Leader Nick Trimis, said they saw Belok kiss another male on the lips.

Read More ““Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Fails GW Navy ROTC Member” »

George Washington University student Andew Clark wrote an opinion piece in campus newspaper The Hatchet this week explaining why he voted for California’s Prop 8 on Nov. 4 (full disclosure: I wrote for the Hatchet as a student). Yesterday, Travis Helwig of G.W. blog The Colonialist published a rebuttal to the piece, calling Clark’s argument “very, very dumb.” In formulating his response, Helwig noted that he would not “attack [Clark's] grammar.” I, on the other hand, am not opposed to assessing Clark’s argument based solely on style points. After all, Clark is a political communications major.

After the jump, I tally the argumentative stylings of this Prop 8 manifesto:

Read More “GW Student Supports Prop 8, Bad Analogies Tamales” »

The G.W. Hatchet (the paper for which I wrote anonymous bar reviews in my own college years) has a nice narrated slide show about one senior’s experience suiting up for the Dupont Circle High Heel Race. Hatchet reporter Marisa Kabas gives the profile treatment to Paul Rozenberg, who put on the big heels on Tuesday night.

“I don’t think that is my calling, to be a drag queen,” said Rozenberg, who is currently applying to law schools where he plans to study international financial law next fall.

Drag-queen-until graduation Rozenberg will be shedding a lot of ruffles, come law school: he’s also a director and performer for G.W.’s annual production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Our daily roundup of sex and gender in the District and beyond.

* Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville says a cat’s place is in the cleavage:

this morning, after [the cat had] been driving me bananas for about an hour with this new routine, I tucked the bottom of the tanktop I was wearing up under my boobs to create a little pouch, then stuck her inside, where she promptly fell asleep for about three hours.

And yes, there is a photo.

* Over at The New Gay: A David Foster Wallace obit, from the perspective of someone who’s never read a book by David Foster Wallace.

* The District cracks down on clubs that have different age requirements for men and women, the G.W. Hatchet reported last week. Metro News Editor Alexa Millinger writes that it’s “not uncommon for bars and clubs to advertise events with a minimum entrance age of 18 for females and 21 for males,” and writes that ABRA community resource officer Cynthia Woodruff-Simms “said she knows of a few places in Adams Morgan, U Street and the Southeast Waterfront that use these practices”—all of which seems unnecessarily vague. Can we get the skinny on the effect on those “few places”?

* Via Feministing via Boing Boing: Sexist men make more money. Writes Vanessa:

Most of my friends who make a lot of cheese (finance, technology – all male-dominated fields mind you) seem to have experienced or witnessed more sexism than others. (The corporate world alone is enough to make one nauseous.) And what is there to be said for women who believe in traditional gender roles making less money than women who don’t?

* Via Slate: How the “Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood” made the case that “Bratz” dolls—along with “explicit music,” “rap videos,” and M&M flavored “lip gloss,” contribute to “eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression and poor sexual health.”

* Larry Craig is back: The Idaho senator has started a legal defense fund to aid in his attempt to overturn his guilty plea from a June 2007 “misdemeanor disorderly conduct” charge, the Idaho Statesman reports. Last February, the Senate Ethics Committee admonished Craig for spending over $200,000 of unused campaign funds to try to reverse the plea; now, he’s accepting donations after the fund, dubbed “The Fund for Justice,” was OK’d by the Ethics Committee.

* Larry Craig extra: While perusing the Senator’s Web site, I came across this page, wherein Larry Craig debunks common Internet rumors for his constituents. The page features a totally creepy photo of Craig who, through some feat of dark magick, appears to be balancing a man-sized Fabergé egg in his palm. My favorite of Craig’s “fact or fiction” crusades for truth, filed under “Tax on email“:

Some folks have contacted me about a possible five-cent tax on email. This is a hoax that began circulating on the Internet several years ago. An email message warns people that “House Bill 602P” will levy a five-cent surcharge on every email sent. It goes on to say that the bill is sponsored by Congressman Tony Schnell, and the funds would go to the U.S. Postal Service. Further, it refers to an “editorial” in the “March 6 issue” of The Washingtonian supporting the tax. . . . Let me assure you, there is no Bill 602P. There is no Member of Congress by the name of Tony Schnell, and the United States Postal Service has nothing to do with delivering email. The Washingtonian is a monthly magazine, and does not even have a “March 6″ issue. It is highly unlikely that a measure like this will ever come to the Senate floor for debate.

Glaring omission: That pesky Larry Craig gay rumor.