The fight for ideological dominance of D.C.’s college sex column “movement” rages on. Are our local campus columnists on the forefront of radical sex writing, or are they bringing back the good old days of valiant male chivalry—only drunker? This week: G.W. student fucks Marine; UMD students are bitches, dicks, or pussies; American University issues a Very Special sex column. It must be sweeps week:

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY:

Sex Tips: In Layla's latest heterosexual female romp, G.W.'s resident sex columnist extols upon the virtues of fucking servicemen. She also floats a revised idea of traditional courtship: Men are still confined to the rules of chivalry, but everyone gets drunk and you can do it whenever you feel like it. "Leaning against the bar, I spotted Prince Charming, an incredibly sexy combination of chivalry and a hint of danger, walking down the stairs," she writes of a random Marine she spots while sitting alone, "double fisting" drinks at the bar. "Having stubbornly worn my three-inch heels, I literally stumbled into his arms and swooned at how valiantly and easily he caught me. In my opinion, there is nothing sexier than a man with an accent, especially if its southern and he happens to call me ma'am." They decide to get it on. "Prince Charming grinned and pulled out an umbrella, proving that even in the face of a certain hookup, chivalry is not dead."

Life Lesson: Layla insists there is "something scandalously orgasmic about making out with a marine in the middle of a bar to bad 80s music," proving that people are into some freaky shit. Side-note: Layla may needs to take some life lessons from the Buster Darkhole school of sex column euphemisms. Her target is called "Prince Charming." Her friend? "GI Jane."

Progressive Meter: I count six references to "Prince Charming," two to "chivalry," and one each to "swooned" and "valiantly." Layla's column describes a thoroughly modern tale—they meet at a bar and hook up—but the vocabulary is stuck in another century. Three.

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THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND:

Sex Tips: This time around in UMD senior Esti Frischling's regular advice column, she tackles the problem of a third-wheel friend who knows that one of the coupled-up friends is cheating on the other. Frischling's advice—don't snitch, but encourage them to break up, and if they don't, go ahead and fuck the one who's getting screwed over—isn't as memorable as the way she tells it:

- "You better not rat either way (bitch)."
- "I mean, he can’t possibly see her as marriage material if he’s having all this premarital sex with all the sluts, right?"
- "approach the guy and say something along the lines of (and feel free to quote me directly) 'Dude stop being such a dick — your girl is hot, lay off the adulterous pussy.'”
- "I say—and this is my final answer by the way—blow up his spot and f— his girl. Yeah."

Life Lesson: Apparently, bitches, sluts, dicks, and pussies are A-OK in the Diamondback. But in the end, all we get is a "f—."

Progressive Meter: While it's difficult to discern a political bent in decisions over snitching, I do find the emphasis on "marriage material," "premarital sex," and "sluts" a bit off-putting here. You're in college. Stop rating the validity of your relationships on whether or not you're planning to get hitched to the person you're currently doing. On the other hand, the advice that the advice-seeker "f— his girl"  seems to be applied with no concern as to whether the advice-seeker is male or female. Cool. Five.

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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY:

Sex Tips: This go-around, AU's trio of porn-named sex columnists—Amber Sparkles, Buster Darkhole, and Maxwell Hillcrest—have teamed up to deliver a Very Special sex column about personal responsibility. This conversation—how to avoid unwanted pregnancies, STIs, abuse, and disappointment—is important. But Sparkles, Darkhole, and Hillcrest may be biting off more than they can chew here. The column is a little bit about pleasure: "Many people enjoy sex without condoms—scratch that, nearly everyone enjoys the sensations of sex more without condoms." A little bit about shame: "it is your life. It is not the life of the girl who might yell 'slut' at you when you walk home from a fantastic evening." And a little bit about dying of AIDS: "imagine two boys at Apex going home together. They may have amazing sex, but if it is unprotected, the consequences can be fatal."

Life Lesson: Sex undertaken without "planning ahead" can lead to babies, disease, and unhappiness.

Progressive Meter: The column is titled "Planning ahead helps ease worries in bed," but the three-author treatment focuses entirely on sexual anxieties, and not on the peace of mind that can come with entering into sex fully prepared and ready to go. The intended take-away here—when you're having sex, you should be concerned with satisfying your personal needs and taking care of yourself, not conforming to societal expectations—is a fine one. Unfortunately, the message gets lost in a sea of downers about the possible outcomes of doin' it: campus shaming, misogyny, blood tests, abortion, and death. Four.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

When Phase 1 opened up in Capitol Hill in 1970, it chose an unlikely spot for the District's first lesbian bar: a windowless joint half a block from the historic Marine Corps barracks at 8th and I Streets SE. Now the "nation's oldest lesbian bar," Phase 1's longevity in Marine territory may be attributed to its peculiar door policy: No unaccompanied men are allowed to enter the bar without a female escort.

Bar management is tight-lipped on the unwritten rule, not returning the Sexist's requests for comment. Perhaps that's because the policy isn't exactly consistent with the D.C. Human Rights Act's prohibition of sex discrimination in public accommodations.

Leave it to a patron to out the policy. Last year, Meaghan O'Malley wrote in a blog post on local Web site the New Gay: "The policy is not 'no men allowed' or 'men pay more' or 'men will be heckled relentlessly if they dare to come in,'" O'Malley wrote. "The policy is, 'if you look like an asshole, or a Marine from down the street, or insist that it is your God-given right to come into a lesbian bar, or screech about how it's discrimination,' you probably won't get in."

George Phelps had been stationed at 8th and I for three weeks in 1995 when he finally received a night off. He and a friend decided to celebrate with a beer, so they walked across the street to the nearest bar: Phase 1. When they reached the door, a bouncer informed Phelps that the bar was ladies-only—and that the Marine buddies were not welcome. Phelps, who underwent an extensive background check in order to obtain a security clearance that allowed him to "carry a firearm on the White House lawn," found it ironic that he and his fellow Marines wouldn't be trusted to behave themselves in a gay bar. "Honestly, I just really needed a drink," says Phelps. "I'm open-minded. They're not going to recruit me, and I'm not going to try to hit on a woman who's gay. A beer's a beer."

Why is Phase 1 operating in fear of a full-on Marine assault? History, maybe: A once-hostile relationship between patrons and Marines has grown increasingly benign over the bar's 38 years on the block. In 1980, bar owner Pat Sullivan told the Washington Post that a Marine from the barracks "thew a tear-gas bomb" into the bar. In 1989, the paper reported on Phase 1's installation of a "wooden barrier" to protect against airborne "bottles and rocks." In 2006, Phase 1 manager Sarah Brasher told Washington City Paper, "We don't have any violence at all."

Now, Phase 1 can post videos of girl-on-girl Jello wrestling on its Web site without incident. Despite bunking within stumbling distance to a bar full of lesbians, men at 8th and I attest that they've largely kept to harassing more traditional Marine targets: straight women and gay men.

"I need to talk to you like a guy," explains Thom Niland, who was also stationed at the 8th and I barracks in the mid-'90s. "On 8th Street in Southeast? The only thing on my radar—and I can say the same for just about every other Marine there—was trying to hook up with girls and get laid," he says. "I had no idea this place existed, and I can probably say that 95 percent of the Marines there don't know about it. Frankly, why would we go there?"

The obvious answer—that Marines like to fuck with everybody—hasn't inspired enough 8th and I residents to cause a regular ruckus. Bryan Dallas, who was stationed at the barracks from 1990-94, can only "vaguely recall a lesbian bar" near the barracks—and he says that friction between lesbians and Marines was largely relegated to the world of fantasy. "As young, goofy fools, you'd always hope you'd see some girls making out on the street. That's about it," he says. "There might have been some goofballs thinking they were so macho that they could pick up a lesbian or something, but no one I knew in my four years there."

The barracks' other gay neighbor, cowboy-themed bar Remington's, hasn't hurt for Marine attention. Dallas recalls the bar vividly: "It was a gentlemen's club—gentlemen only, if you know what I mean," says Dallas. "It had a dark window out front. I remember a cowboy hat. Guys would be in the chaps. Buck rider. Cowboys," he says. After an incident with the bar—Dallas heard that a fellow Marine launched a trash can through that window—Dallas endured a barracks-wide lecture informing Marines not to be seen near the bar. Similar prohibitions have been repeated to barracks residents since the 1980 opening of the bar, then known as Equus, when a mob of Marines rushed the building and assaulted patrons and staff. Steve Sweigart, who lived in the barracks at the time of Equus' debut, explains that Marine harassment of gays generally swings one way: "I'd say the big difference between Equus and any lesbian bar would be that the one has male patrons and the other female," he says.

Now, the Marines at 8th and I are kept out of Phase 1 by a higher authority than the bar's managers: Commanding officers issue standing orders against patronizing certain local bars. One recent veteran of the barracks recalls being explicitly told not to enter several local establishments: Georgetown's Rhino Bar and Capitol Hill bars the Hawk 'N Dove, Remington's, and Phase 1. (An 8th and I rep says there are no "standing orders," but that commanding officers "orient and advise" Marines.)

For a time, the Hawk 'N Dove enforced its own "unaccompanied Marine" policy, requiring them to arrive either in uniform or with a date. Though Hawk 'N Dove didn't have the same "lesbian safety" rationale for its Marine exclusion, it did have one good reason to try to keep Marines out—it's a bar that Marines actually want to go to. The policy wilted last year after a highly publicized boycott by friends and family of servicemen. Remington's owner Steven Smith, who bought the bar in 1985, says he also retains no anti-Marine door policies. "We've had our instances with the Marines, but you let it go and you move on," he says. "We can't take the whole organization and blame it for the mistakes of a few. That's not right."

Even without a prohibition on a specific bar, it's in the Marine's best interest to keep his drinking hole heterosexual. "It just doesn't look good," says one Marine. "You know the policy on that."

Phase 1's policy does impact one group of males that actually wants to go to Phase 1—gay men. O'Malley's posting of the bar's rule ignited a rash of criticism from gay readers, upset that the rule was meant to keep out any gay person "without a vagina." Zack Rosen, one of the creators of the New Gay, explains his readership's position on the rule: "There were some men who kind of felt discriminated against," he says. "They were offended that they'd need an escort to get into Phase 1 when it was clear they were an ally." As with the Marines, gay men's objections to the Phase 1 rule are rarely presented in person. "[Gay men] have Cobalt, and J.R.'s, and Nellie's, and 20 other gay bars," says Rosen. "I can't imagine some guy sitting at home alone in his polo and his khakis, crying because he can't get into Phase 1 tonight."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.