As it turns out, that fawning defense of The Daily Show by its women employees illustrates exactly what's wrong with the show's hiring practices. They write:

Jon’s not just a guy in a suit reading a prompter. His voice and vision shape every aspect of the show from concept to execution. The idea that he would risk compromising his show’s quality by hiring or firing someone based on anything but ability, or by booking guests based on anything but subject matter, is simply ludicrous.

You see, The Daily Show hires only the best comedians; it books only the best guests. And if the best of the best are reliably, overwhelmingly male? Well: Perhaps men are just better than women.

But first, a quick recap of Jezebel reporter Irin Carmon's findings on the show's gender disparities: In the past seven years, only one woman, Olivia Munn, has been considered an able enough comedian to be hired as an on-air correspondent on The Daily Show (and she's still in try-out mode). Past employees have reported a boys' club mentality in hiring and firing. And this year alone, the show's roster of guests has featured 63 men, but only 13 women.

Here are a few possibilities for why this might be the case:

(a) Overt sexism. Jon Stewart, let's just suggest for the sake of argument, is a tyrannical sexist who deliberately keeps women off the air and out of his writer's room due to a deep hatred of the gender. This appears to be the argument the women of The Daily Show are dismissing as "simply ludicrous."

(b) Societal forces. Comedy is an overwhelmingly male industry, and The Daily Show is at the very top of the pyramid. As show co-creator Madeline Smithberg told Carmon, "The planet is sexist." She explains:

"I don't think Jon is sexist," she says. "I don't think that there is a double standard at the Daily Show. I do think that by the time it gets to the Daily Show it's already been through the horrible sexist double standard of the universe. You're not hiring someone right out of school. By the time they get to the candidates of the Daily Show, the herd has been thinned by the larger societal forces."

(c) Ingrained prejudices. The comedic culture naturally views men as comedians and women as audience members, regardless of "ability." And as Amanda Marcotte notes, this form of sexism is hardly overt:

Our culture does believe there is a female and a male sense of humor that differ. We tend to say that men have a sense of humor when they say funny things, and that women have a sense of humor when they know when best to laugh when men say funny things. This sense is so ingrained that I had a few occasions when I was younger where I'd say something funny, and get blank stares, only to find a man stealing my joke a half hour later and getting giant belly laughs for it.

(d) Ignorance. Stewart is not (a) a tyrannical sexist, but he does fail to take into account (b) societal forces and (c) ingrained prejudices when making hires and booking guests. He and his show operate in a culture that values men over women, both as comedians (his staff) and people (his guests). And he—according to every woman on his staff—believes that by hiring and booking the people (men) who reliably rise to the top in this sexist system, he's making decisions based on merit—and nothing else. Attempting to counteract the ingrained sexism of comedy by deliberately seeking out women performers and writers would "risk compromising his show’s quality."

Of  course, my guess is (d). I'm sure that the women employees of The Daily Show aren't lying when they describe Stewart as "the word that means the opposite of sexist." But it's not enough for him to be Jon Stewart, Really Swell Guy anymore—he's the head of a comedy institution, one with the power to either contribute to or counteract the overwhelming sexism of the field. In order to challenge structural inequalities and actually recruit the best people for the job, the men who run comedy—men like Stewart—will have to do more than just not be overtly discriminatory.

Here's an easy rule for any manager to live by: If you haven't considered the societal forces and ingrained prejudices that may contribute to gender disparities in your hiring practices, your hiring practices are probably sexist. And if you respond to suggestions that your hiring practices may be sexist with a letter signed by all the women on your staff dismissing these claims out of hand, then your hiring practices are almost certainly sexist. That, or men are just better than women.

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].

* Sociological Images takes a ride on the way-back machine to examine the men's magazines of yore . . . you know, back when men were men. Tip via Jess, who was particularly fond of Battle Cry (above).

* Emily Nagoski asked her readers how often they would get busy in their ideal sex lives—and instructed them to identify themselves by age and gender.

* Remember that douchey evo-psych take on menstruation from a while back? Elysia, a population and evolutionary geneticist, has written a fucking amazing take-down of it over at Shapely Prose:

Yes, it’s important to realize that cultural constructs influence the way biological events are experienced and recalled.  It’s important to link biological and cultural evolution, and to remember that we humans are animals.  And as a male ape, you are well within your rights to wonder how female apes differ from you; just please remember while you call elderly women apes that you are one, yourself.  More importantly, it’s great for you as a human man to want to understand the human woman’s experience, and I encourage you to reframe your language to make it clear that you understand that distinction. Because your personal discomfort with my menstruation – or my feminism – does not a sound scientific discussion make, and dismissing my humanity when you examine my biology ill befits a doctor of psychology.

* How to Have Sex in Texas on the possibilities for abortion via teleconference in her home state.

* From Austin to A&M beats down slut-shaming in Texas A&M's college paper.

* The Abortioneers on the new anti-abortion ads being targeted at black women in Georgia. First, they read "BLACK BABIES ARE AN ENDANGERED SPECIES." Now, it's "BLACK AND UNWANTED":

You know, "Black and Unwanted" is the kind of slogan that should accompany a campaign against employment discrimination, or racially-biased adoption practices. Do these valiant anti-racist crusaders really want to waste a good catchphrase on fallacious insinuations that black women have abortions because they don't want their children to be black? The claim is absurd.

Masculinity: Should we explode it? That's the question posed by Sexist commenters in last week's battle over the M-word and its place in the education of men and boys. So: Should we redefine masculinity to encourage boys to be manly-but-in-a-good-way, or should we blow the whole concept to smithereens in a strangely masculine display of destruction? Let's find out!

Sam wants to hear the positive side of masculinity:

Why does talking about gender and gender relations, particularly with younger/teenage boys, always, always seem to have to revolve around the notion of toxic masculinity?

I suppose this cuts back to the chivalry discussion from last week, but where’s the positive element of the concept here? What is positive masculinity today?

I mean, really, masculinity seems to be less defined these days by what it is, than what it is not supposed to be—not much of “do”s, but a whole lot of “don’t”s.

I want to talk about the dos, not just the don’ts.

Kit-Kat says that even positive traits coded as "masculine" are inherently limited:

Our view of men in this culture right now seems to be so narrow: men are defined by being not-women. To be manly, they must avoid anything that smacks of femininity. It’s so crippling, this warrior-view of manhood. I would love it if men were given more space to be themselves, if the arts and fashion and academics and the color pink and emotions other than anger were not seen to be the purview of women and gays.

Part of the problem in talking about positive masculinity is that there are a lot of traits that we might associate with being a good man, but they aren’t necessarily gender-specific. For example, if I had a son, I would want him to be honest and courageous. I would want him to stand up against injustice and look out for those who are not as strong as him. I would want him to have integrity, and to be willing to sacrifice himself for those he loved. I would want him to treat his romantic partners with respect and care for his children. But of course, I would want any daughter of mine to be the same. If he was interested in athletics or cars or whatever other stereotypical male interest, that’s fine, but not an essential part of being a man.

Maybe it would make sense to say that the problem with chivalry is not any specific behavior associated with it, but that it is predicated on the idea that one must treat women well because men are strong and women are weak. What if we had something like chivalry, a code of conduct towards others, but that was predicated on the idea that one must treat other people well because they are human? That honor is not about controlling others, but about standing up for what is right and sticking to one’s word? I think that might be a good start for talking about masculinity.

Sam says that in masculinity and femininity, "overlap is something to be avoided":

but isn’t what you’re saying exactly the problem with masculinity these days? That there’s really nothing a good man should be/do that a good woman should not be/do?Of course (most) men define themselves by being not women, because, well, that’s what most women want—not women. So whenever one concept changes, the other one necessarily will, too. And if one concept’s range gets larger, the other one will necessarily get smaller if overlap is something to be avoided.

Of course, there’s the question of why men aren’t simply content with being good human beings and want to also be good “men.” Why we need something that only we can do, why we need to be needed. I think it’s because we don’t believe that we will be wanted, because I suppose there is a deeper level understanding that we have always been the expendable sex, and culturally, we really don’t understand why anyone would want men if they’re really as bad as they are said to be in this dialogue—and also, there’s human mating dynamics which almost necessarily involves so much more rejection for the average man than for the average woman.

. . . I think men need a positive discourse about masculinity, and I think feminism needs a positive discourse about masculinity, and—also—a positive discourse about male (heterosexual) sexuality.

kza says down with conformity:

Masculinity can’t really be defined, everyone has a different opinion. Anyone trying to conform to society’s opinion of what masculinity is supposed to be are idiots.

Jess is more into men than masculinity:

"I think it’s because we don’t believe that we will be wanted, because I suppose there is a deeper level understanding that we have always been the expendable sex."

I just can’t understand where this “men only act macho because inside they are scared little boys” narrative came from. You know, dude, a lot of people have low self-esteem—some of them because they are trained from birth to believe that they exist only for the sexual gratification of others (but not too gratifying, mind you!—but we manage not to deal with it via rape and violence. If the performance of masculinity is just a manifestation of male neurosis, maybe men should try, at the very least, a different neurosis for a while. (Try attempting to model your body after an ideal of beauty that is actually not humanly achievable! I hear that keeps you very busy.)

I think you’re actually confusing the problem with the cure. If men engage in male posturing because they are afraid of seeming weak and effeminate (that’s the only interpretation of “expendable” I can force to make any sense), that is because the Dominant Story of Masculinity, as Griffin excellently puts it, tells them that anyone who doesn’t engage in male posturing is weak and effeminate. We don’t address that by taking performed masculinity more seriously.

I’ll have as much positive discourse about men as you want—many men are great, I am even married to some of them (okay, only one). But I’ll pass on the positive discourse about masculinity. I think men deserve better.

MissA says BLOW IT TO HELL:

Further to Jess’s point:Like it or not, hegemonic masculinity (the phrase my profs used to refer to the Dominant Story of Masculinity) is one of the key conceptual devices used to enforce oppression and repression along gender lines. Hegemonic masculinity is what tells men that they are never good enough unless they are “alpha”, beating everybody else at the game of life. It shortens men’s lives by associating manliness with danger, perpetuating the notion that the disproportionate rate of men killed in service, at work, or through crime is to be expected, and not a reason for concern. Not to mention through suicide; because men must be better, they cannot show weakness, they cannot ask for help. And it requires the domination and devaluation of everyone who does not adhere to hegemonic masculinity.

A “positive discourse about masculinity” is like a positive discourse about white supremacy—it does not exist, because it is premised on the domination one group of people by another. Masculinity does not need to be “redefined” as something positive—for much of our history masculinity has had a monopoly on positive traits—it needs to be exploded (as does femininity).

Photo via The Library of Congress

Last week, this graph accompanied a Wall Street Journal story on "The Unemployable Man," which delivered the "arresting" news that one in five men aged 25 to 54 are currently unemployed. "Women have suffered less in this recession," WSJ says. "They were more likely to be in health care and other jobs that weren't hit as hard as construction and manufacturing. They are increasingly likely to have the education so often required to get or keep a good job these days." As long as we're turning the unemployment crisis into an epic battle of the sexes in which men and women jockey for position over Bureau of Labor Statistics turf: Doesn't it bear mentioning that women in the same age group are still significantly less employed than men are?

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.

None of our imaginary professors' names will ever beat the inherent manliness of real Male Studies scholar Lionel Tiger, but we can dream. Oh, can we dream. A selection of uber-masculine names submitted via Twitter hashtag #malestudiesprofessors so far:

Prof. Mann S. Plainer, Linguistics

Prof. Guy Chauvin, Bromance Languages

Dr. Big McLargeHuge, author of the bestselling " The Overcompensation Myth"

Uhgard De Rectum, Self-Defense

Tallywacker P. Smegmadorian, Asst. Professor of Hygiene

Dr. X. Boddyspray, Chemistry

Professor Slapass B. Tweenguyz, Dept. of Homosocial Bonding

Lapdance Feelcopper, Head of Security

Prof. Haught Bol O'Dicks, Culinary Arts

John Q. Buttslap, Athletic Director

Professor Ev Syke, Chair of Naturally Endowe

Beefwhiskey Quarterback, Ph.D.

Professor Grilling Q. Fetchmebeer

Join us.

Two important developments in the World of Men this week:

1. A group of scholars, led by a man with the almost suspiciously masculine name of Lionel Tiger, established a new discipline of gender studies: Male Studies. Male Studies differs from the already existing discipline of Men's Studies in that it is devoted to studying the "male as male," as opposed to the "male as Easter Bunny" or whatever Men's Studies is passing off as scholarly research nowadays. Also, Male Studies really fucking resents Women's Studies. Cage match, anyone?

2. Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, the preeminent scholar in the field of Lady Business Studies, invited some men to talk about their experiences for once. Sady's Visions of Manliness series (see A, B, and C) has addressed stuff like the simultaneous marginalization and privilege of trans men, ironically homophobic sports blogging, and how deeply Valentine's Day truly blows. Strangely, none of the posts are about how feminists have stolen their male identity, trampled upon their masculine phenomenon, and overall been super mean. In other words, this is total Men's Studies shit.

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady and I YELL ABOUT THESE THINGS AND ALSO bell hooks SO JOIN US!

SADY: hello, Fellow Lady Person!

AMANDA: Why hello! I am prepared to speak about the experiences of . . . Men People.

SADY: About which I know, I will tell you, not a whole lot! Like, I have known Men People throughout my lifetime. Sometimes in the sense that they are related to me! Or friends! Or I have known them BIBLICALLY! But also, like, pursuant to the Liz Lemonism critique of Times Past, I feel like I am privileged in 99% of the ways that people can be privileged on this our planet Earth. And it frustrates me — and has been a schism in The Feminist History — that, as a lady who is so very fucking privileged, I'm allowed to concentrate so much on my own Oppression By The Man and not notice that some of The Men are going through their own bullshit.

AMANDA: Right. In the Oppression Olympics, I would not qualify for the finals. I would be disqualified in the first heat. I also am really no good with sports metaphors!

SADY: Well, The Man has staked his claim in those. BASICALLY WE NEED TO TAKE THE QUARTERBACK OF DISCOURSE TO THE GOAL NET OF DISCUSSION TO SCORE A HOME RUN HAT TRICK OF ANTI-OPPRESSION THEORY! Is my understanding.

AMANDA: I plan on blaming all of my deficiencies in forming metaphors, drawing conclusions, and overall making sense on my Oppression today. For the record.

SADY: I intuitively understand you, due to my woman's intuition. But, like, this is a long-standing Beef within the feminist community, in fact. Like, bell hooks covered it along with approximately everybody else.

AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, a distinction must be made between men and The Man.

SADY: Right. We oversimplify. And a ton of feminists have needed to clarify that "when we say 'men,' we mean the Platonic ideal of 'men!' The way 'men' are encouraged to behave and act and such!" And as a person who types the words 'dudes' and 'men' a lot, I am sympathetic. Because we DO need a word to denote all that junk. But, to revisit bell hooks for JUST A SECOND, here is how that works out in practice: Some white feminist ladies walk up to some ladies of color, and are like "join the cause, sister!" And the ladies of color are like, "sure, I've experienced sexism, let's go. On the way, can we talk about how you white ladies are enacting some bullshit that hurts me and also the men in my community?" And then the white ladies are like, "YOU ARE SO MALE-IDENTIFIED. WHY CAN'T YOU JOIN OUR GLORIOUS SISTERHOOD AND IDENTIFY AS A WOMAN FIRST."

AMANDA: Allow me to flip that dynamic around for a second, as I think the distinction between "Men's Studies" and the totally brand new discipline of "Male Studies" helps to illustrate that point. So, "Male Studies" just had its first conference on Wednesday, to declare "Male Studies" a thing, even though "Men's Studies" already exists and is welcoming of all who study men and masculinity. And the reason "Male Studies" has decided to branch off from "Men's Studies" is that Men's studies thinks too much about Women's Studies.

SADY: Oh, dear.

AMANDA: When there is just no reason to segregate these two studies, of course.

SADY: Well, unless you want to teach an entire seminar on barbecue grilling!

AMANDA: And I think feminism suffers from the impulse to segregate the experiences of people and treat our cultural systems (patriarchy, masculinity, femininity, race, class) as separate fields, and I think my work often suffers from that distinction, actually.

SADY: Well, I mean, to be honest, mine does, too. Mostly due to my vast narcissism, and the fact that I write mostly about my own experiences!

AMANDA: Right.

SADY: You could run over my foot with a shopping cart at the Costco, and I'd write this very ideological post that was like, "SHOPPING CART PRIVILEGE: Does It Lead You To Run Over My Foot, and Are You A Monster? Yes."

AMANDA: But it's a very tricky thing to attempt to write about the experiences of others, and that's why your masculinity series is so great! TIGER BEATDOWN PLUG!

SADY: Which is why I try to bring other people into the discussion.

AMANDA: But what about, in addition to bringing in these voices, also writing about issues that don't directly affect us and which we can't talk about from personal experience? I think it's important to do that too, but I think it's a lot trickier.

SADY: Right. And also, you have to be open to getting yelled at! Is my experience!

AMANDA: Agreed!

SADY: Because there's a big difference between "speaking about these things that do not affect me directly" and "speaking FOR these people who are having these experiences because I am A GENIUS and get your experience way better than you do." But, like, it is easy to cross the line?

AMANDA: Yeah. It is. And that's where the productive yelling comes in.

SADY: So you have to be a good listener, ESPECIALLY when people are yelling.

AMANDA: But, so, then I also sometimes get yelled at if I write about how something affects men? I get the "O but what about the menz!!!!!" comments. I don't know why it's written like an Internet cat is saying it, but it is. Even though I write about women a whole lot!

SADY: They are all basically internet cats, those dudes, though. Like, if you write a post about Vajazzling, to use a totally fictional example, and people are like, "did you know some dudes get CIRCUMSIZED??? Monstrous! Your vagina post has inspired me to talk about the ill fates of penises, instead, and at length!' Like, at a certain point, the "WHAT ABOUT ME" posts from dudes are just blatantly obnoxious, and blatantly intended to keep women from writing about their OWN experiences of manliness, ill or well.

AMANDA: Yeah. I have a good friend who is hurt that I don't write on the expectations on men to move furniture for girls.

SADY: OH MY GOD. OPPRESSION! I too am disappointed that you have not covered this topic Amanda! Also: Being asked to open pickle jars. WORSE THAN DEATH???

AMANDA: Well I'm waiting to roll out my big investigative series. On the possible lingering lower back problems.

SADY: "Once I Had To Carry Your Books Up Some Stairs: A Post About Traumatic Experiences, By A Dude."

AMANDA: But, I write about a lot of really minor shit that women are expected to do and about how these very little things are reminders of society's expectations of men and women. And a lot of times men get really pissed when I do that, too! For it is annoying to be forced to think about.

SADY: Right. I mean, here's the thing: I'm a lady who gets called out on my privilege. A lot. As I see it, my job description is: Write about lady stuff, try to remember not all ladies have exactly the same life as I do, listen when ladies with different lives are like "uh, you missed something." So the plague of dudes on the Internet who are like, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN LADIES EXPERIENCE THINGS DIFFERENTLY THAN I DO, SOMETIMES NOT WELL?!???!" Like: I try to listen to people EVERY SINGLE DAY, dude, and I haven't actually had an aneurysm and died yet, so maybe it's not actually that fucking hard. You know? The Internet is not a thousand little knives stabbing you in the face. The Internet is some people talking. In conclusion, calm down.

AMANDA: Yeah. And that's when things get tough, for me, when we start talking about the experiences of men like that. Because it's so obvious how our culture is constructed to make guys like that never have to—and to actually avoid—listening to a woman's experience, just as it's constructed to help white people avoid listening to anyone else, and straight people, and cis people, &c.

SADY: Yeah. But then you have things like "Male Studies," where "The male as male will be permitted to appear in all his complexity as new values are being forged and traditional values that have proven the test of time are affirmed."

SADY: And I get the feeling those traditional values that have proven the test of time kind of involve OPPRESSING THE VAST MAJORITY OF MALES???

AMANDA: Yes. And that traditional man has always been permitted to appear. It's all the other men who haven't. But Male Studies cuts them out of the picture when it devotes itself to "males as males," as if we're only talking about one very clearly defined and biologically determined type of person.

SADY: Right. Because "the male as male" means cisgendered. It means straight. It means white. It means, like, a lot of shit! Actually! As it is commonly employed! Everybody else, if they can even get recognized as dudes, is treated in the discourse as, "well, okay, you're a dude. But a SUBSET of dude. We have trouble imagining you as a character on 'Mad Men,' so, like, clearly you're not a part of the glorious history of The Male As Male to the same extent." But here's the thing. The ominous thing that I always phrase in a manner that brings to mind, like, the James Cameron movie 'Aliens.'

AMANDA: Okay.

SADY: All of those dudes excluded from the discourse of Traditional Old-Fashioned-Swilling Wife-Cheating-On Empowered Non-Chest-Waxing Masculinity? And all of the ladies? Add it up. THERE ARE MORE OF US than there are of anyone else. Which is why we need to start fucking talking to each other more.

AMANDA: This reminds me more of that Beyonce song than Aliens, but I see what you're getting at.

SADY: Like, if we start looking at "masculinity" as this very exclusive concept that has all of these other concepts and privileges packed into it, then we get to my I Went To Liberal Arts College And Have Simplistic Ideas Place where, like... we can create a discourse without you, substantially, Ultimately Privileged People. If we can get over our own bullshit and have each others' backs, we can do a lot. And maybe this conversation needs to take place on THOSE terms. Provided you're okay with getting yelled at when you fuck it up. Also, I have had three beers, because it's hot. THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE SOBER!

AMANDA: NO IT WILL NOT. And I will fight to the death for men to gain the right to drink as much as women do without being labeled irresponsible sluts who deserve whatever is coming to them.

SADY: Yes! Also, that person who ran over my foot in the Costco: A MONSTER. I think we need to centralize this issue. Because that hurt.

AMANDA: Kumbayah!

Photo via George Eastman House

This week, after a serious bitch session on the topic of replacing female pubic hair with space crystals, I asked the Sexist's male readers how they managed their own body hair. You did not disappoint!

How do male Sexist readers' grooming habits stack up against the ladies'? Your hair maintenance includes plucking your nipple hair, shaping your eyebrows, and Nair-ing your shoulders. But let's focus on the pubes, shall we?

Surprisingly, none of you have jumped on the Pubazzling bandwagon yet. You're not even prepped to Pubazzle! No respondents professed to eliminating all of their pubic hair through waxing; the Full Elimination appears to be a pubic beauty standard peculiarly applied to women for the time being (though one reader admits to "depilating my butt about once a month"). Some of you do nothing with your pubic hair. Most trim it. One shaves. Another will never shave again. Take it away, boys:

- "I use clippers to keep my pits & pubes in the .5″-1″ range."

- "I’ve shaved my pubes once and it itched a lot . . . like A LOT . . . I just cut it when my girlfriend asks."

- "I trim my pubes down, including the undercarraige. In addition, I shave my shaft and balls bi-weekly, or if I’m expecting a lot of attention in that area."

- "As for 'down there' I usually use scissors to keep it nice and trimmed (no one wants a jungle) and use a razor to keep away the happy trail, so it all looks nice and fairly well groomed on that rare occasion that another person is in the position to see."

- "I trim my pubic area every month or so. And I do try and remember to always wear my glasses into the shower when I’m going to do that."

- "I used to trim my pubes, but stopped bothering when I realised that I didn’t much care."

- "I’d actually really like to try trimming everything down some time, but my current partner is a fan of hair and I have chosen to leave everything intact for her enjoyment."

- "For many years I’ve used clippers roughly once a week to trim back the hair under my arms. Starting maybe five years ago, every second time I’ve done that I’ve also trimmed back my pubes, plus depilating my butt about once a month. About a year ago — coinciding with getting better clippers — I’ve been trimming everything back."

- "My current girlfriend of about 2 years was slight[ly] surprised when she recently realized that I don’t trim my pubic hair, but because I don’t enjoy fellatio she’s never down there for it to affect her one way or the other. . . . I’ve thought about keeping my body hair a bit neater, but with no pressure from the people who actually see it, I have no real motivation to do so."

- "Every few weeks I take a couple bottles of Nair and get rid of back, shoulder, and chest hair, trim my underarm hair, trim my pubes, and trim/pluck my eyebrows slightly. . . . For the record, I think vajazzling is fucking ridiculous."

Photo via [mosoni], Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0. You know it's a good shot when someone asks you to join the "Men's Navels" group.

City Paper contributor Trey Graham subscribes to Living Social, a Web site that alerts him to daily deals in the D.C. area. Today—the first day that gay couples in D.C. can legally be married—LivingSocial offered Graham a very special discount at Too Hotties Haircuts, an Alexandria-based salon for "manly men" who aren't into all that gay shit. The ad:

We know: You manly men are a little sick of the froufrou salons. All you want is a good hair cut, not a pink-haired Angel razoring your locks and slicking them with 80-dollar "molding cream." So, how about this? $20 for $50 worth of high-class barbershop services from Too Hotties Haircuts—a man-centric salon with massage chairs, an Xbox 360, and plenty of HDTVs. Each haircut ($25) comes with shampoo, cut, style, hot-lather razor neck shave, second shampoo (to get rid of those itchy clippings), and a scalp massage. Also available: a classic shave ($25) with hot towels, citrus mint facial cleanser, shaving oils, and that decadent hot lather; or a haircolor for men ($25), using a "Camo" color that blends away gray in 10 minutes. Lest you ladies feel left out, Too Hotties offers a full line of services for women as well. Our thought: A good deal to double up on. While your highlights are processing, Mr. Perfect can get his shoe's shined ($5), then play a game of pool (free).

Sexist Translation:

THIS SALON IS NOT A GAY SALON. It is a "manly" salon. It is a "man-centric" salon. It is stocked with an X-Box and "plenty" of HDTVs. We can't even count them they're so plentiful! The only thing this salon does not have is some pink-haired dude touching your neck hairs, because that would be gay.

And we're not gay! We're just a couple of dudes, hanging out, applying some decadent hot lather to each other. Don't be shy. Slap on some "haircolor for men"—it's  "Camo" colored. Relax with our totally un-homosexual citrus mint facial cleanser. It's manly because there's an X-Box in the room—kind of like how a perfectly straight dude can get together with another dude and "feel the other man’s penis bump up against his own," as long as there's a vaginal wall between them, neutralizing the gayness.

Bring your girlfriends.

Graham, who is gay, was understandably disconcerted by this auspicious gay marriage day greeting, and called LivingSocial to tell them so. Something tells me that today's happy same-sex couples won't be getting their pre-wedding pamper at Too Hotties.

By adding booze, topping them with "decorative chocolate discs" in "camo" print, and describing them in the voice of an oversexed but sophisticatedly palated baseball announcer. Ex. "This peanut butter cake with banana bavarian cream & crumbled bacon is more fun than getting to third base"; "Get your motor running with this brandy-soaked lemon cake featuring an orange & white chocolate ganache filling"; "Our rum-soaked lime cake with mint white-chocolate ganache is sure to whet your thirst." Titling one of your cupcakes "Big Papi" doesn't hurt, either.

Butch Bakery's "MAN-ifesto" [ugh] inspires more questions than answers. Do men naturally bake manly cupcakes? Do men really own the word "butch" anymore? Is "whetting your thirst" a guy thing? How does one whet one's thirst with a cupcake, anyway? In order to get to the bottom of this, I decided to consult City Paper's resident male cupcake baker, Will Atwood Mitchell:

CP: Since you are a man, do you naturally bake manly cupcakes?

WAM: Until today I thought I was just baking personly cupcakes. OOPS, MY MISTAKE.

CP: Please describe the taste of your cupcakes, making sure to employ at least 3 of the 4 following terms: "get your motor running"; "whet your thirst"; "knock your ball out of the park"' and "more fun than getting to third base."

WAM: So I was DMing with a colleague at the Chicago Reader on twitter the other day [@whet] about the things that make life worthwhile: softball, vespas, drinking smoothies. And we totally agreed that there are times in your life when you just really want to enjoy a cupcake. Little cakes! They're the perfect way to celebrate life's minor victories.

Say you're playing coed softball on a sunny afternoon, and you get that perfect pitch, and just about knock your ball out of the park. Cupcake time! Way more fun than getting to third base. Or maybe you're running late for work on a rainy day, and your vespa decides to conk out. Bummer! But when you finally get your motor running? Have a cupcake. My colleague was saying that occasionally he prefers to celebrate with a fruity beverage, especially on hot days. I said, "Whet, your thirst for smoothies is totally cool, but I'll go with a cupcake any day." Wresting alligators, MMA.

CP: Have you ever heard from men who wanted to consume a cupcake, but were afraid it might infringe upon their masculinity?

WAM: No joke? Yes. On DCist, two years ago. [A man reportedly said this while passing in front of the line outside of Georgetown Cupcake: "If I'm gonna stand in line for a cupcake, it better make my dick hard"].

CP: As a baker, describe how one might "butch up" a cupcake.

WAM: Instead of standard cupcake liners, use a flat top grill. Follow your cupcake recipe as usual, but replace all the ingredients with five whole pounds of sizzling ground beef and twenty slices of American Cheese. Consume it in front of a cheering crowd in an Atlanta diner while saying things like "This is one serious cupcake!" The secret to this technique is that men only eat meat, while women are vegetarians or vegans. They won't teach you that in baking school.

• 32 of the dead are female.
• 21 of the dead are male.

Last year, in other words, 40 percent of people who died in Maryland as a result of domestic violence were male. Right about now, men's rights activists are surely waiting in the wings, ready to pounce on this statistic as irrefutable evidence that men are victimized by domestic violence at nearly the same rate as women. The truth is much more complicated.

Let's look at the numbers on the female side first (courtesy of the MNADV's extensive research).

Of the 32 females who died as a result of domestic violence last year:

• 3 were children.
• 29 were adult women.

Of the 29 adult women:

• 28 were victims of domestic violence.
• The one remaining woman was a domestic violence aggressor who committed suicide. She is the sole occupier of the category of "females who killed themselves or were killed after committing murder/attempting to commit murder."

Of the 28 adult female victims:

• 10 were wives or ex-wives of the offender.
• 17 were girlfriends or ex-girlfriends of the offender.
• One was a domestic violence victim who committed suicide.

And on the male side of things:

Of the 21 males who died as a result of domestic violence last year:

• 2 were children.
• 19 were adult men.

Of the 19 adult men:

• 9 were victims.
• 10 were domestic violence aggressors who died as a result of their own domestic violence—"males who killed themselves or were killed after committing murder/attempting to commit murder."

Of the nine male victims:

• 2 were husbands or ex-husbands of the offender.
• 3 were boyfriends or ex-boyfriends of the offender.
• 3 were killed by their current partner's ex.
• 1 was killed by his ex's current partner.

Of the ten men who killed themselves or were killed after committing murder or attempting to commit murder:

• 1 man was killed by the police.
• 3 were killed by their partners in self-defense.
• 6 committed suicide.

Of the 53 total dead:

• 27 were killed by gun or rifle.
• 12 were killed by knife.
• 5 were killed by strangulation.
• 4 were killed by vehicle.
• 2 were killed by "physical force/hands."
• 2 were killed by burning
• 1 cause of death was unknown.

Domestic violence kills in many ways. When it comes to male deaths by domestic violence, men are more likely to be killed as a result of attempting to murder their own partners than as a result of their partner's aggression. Men who are victims of domestic violence are almost as likely to be killed by a partner's ex than by their partners themselves. "Domestic violence is not as simple and straightforward as people think," says Michele Cohen, MNADV's Executive Director. "The work that we do attempts to capture the full picture of all the individuals who die as a result of domestic violence—both victims and offenders."

Tonight, the MNADV will hold its 22nd Annual Memorial Service for all the "women, men, and children" who died over the past year from domestic violence. Find more information about the Annapolis, Md. service here [PDF].

The women's poll asked questions like these: Have you ever been groped? How did you react? Did you report the incident? The men's poll, on the other hand, asked questions like these: Have you ever groped a woman? Do you think groping is morally wrong? Do you think it's inappropriate to furtively sniff a woman's hair?

The gender-specific polling left us with a significant information gap. How many men are victims of groping, anyway? Do male groping victims call the police? How do they process the experience? Do they scream, hit, freeze, or quietly escape? And how many women have reached out and touched a man without his consent?

Below, four stories from D.C.'s male groping victims —and the testimony of one female groper.

"[I] could barely look myself in the mirror."

A couple of years ago, a local law student was sitting on a crowded Red line train when his seat-mate decided to make it a bumpy ride. "As the train started moving . . . I felt some motion from the man next to me—his body was kind of moving slightly up and down against my side," says the student, who was busy studying a casebook for class. "At first, I thought this was due to the natural movement of the Metro train, but it soon became clear that the movement was not from the train, but from the man."

As the train continued down the track, the guy's movements advanced beyond the realm of "natural movement." "As the train moved on, the movements got more intense to the point where the man was grinding his side and back, half his ass, and part of his leg up against me," the student says. When the student attempted to edge his body away and focus on the reading, his assailant stepped up his activity. "My efforts to get away from him seemed to only embolden him more, and at one point he even reached back to lift up his shirt so the skin of his back was rubbing up against my arm, leg, and side," he says.

The escalating rubbing left the student "horrified and disgusted." But as the train approached the student's station, another response hit—"extremely frightened." The assailant was trapping him in the seat, and he'd have to confront him to get out. At the last minute, the confrontation was avoided—one station before the student's stop, the man abruptly exited the train. The student hadn't uttered a word. "I got home to my apartment that night and could barely look myself in the mirror," he says. "I was scared, disgusted, felt violated, and also was pissed off at myself for not doing anything."

The crowded, enclosed train isn't the only breeding ground for D.C. public transport groping; gropers have been known to stage their assaults in all corners of the Metrorail system. Another of the District's male groping victims got grabbed while ascending from the Foggy Bottom station on an escalator. The man "felt someone drag their hand along the bottom of my ass and then give it a squeeze," he says. "I looked back and it was a 20-something woman . . . She just gave me this 'dare you' smile back."

As he stepped off the escalator, the woman commented about "loving a good ass," then walked away. The victim, who said nothing at the time, says he had mixed feelings on the event: "I was kind of stunned and torn between outrage—how dare you grab—and flattery—hey, she likes my ass. And then wondering what the hell was wrong with me for feeling flattered."

Later, the man was groped again on the Foggy Bottom stop's escalator—this time, going down. As he descended into the station, "someone behind me slipped their hand into my back pocket," he says. "I turned around and it was a lady in her 40s or 50s. She just smiled and told me I should be careful leaving my back pockets unbuttoned," he says. "I was just . . . flabbergasted. . . . I never had a response for either of them, vocally or otherwise, other than stepping away. I'm not sure why."

—
"I was too stunned to punch him."

City Paper: Deez Nuts. What does the title of the piece mean?

John Johnson: "Deez Nuts" is just like, D.C. . . . I’m sure everywhere people say "Deez Nuts," but when I was in high school, it was like a refrain. "Guess what? Deeeeez nuuuuuts!" It was more of a chant or a cadence. People are familiar with it, you know what I mean? And it refers to a dude’s testicles. So it's a witty title for a show that talks about men’s experiences.

CP: Was Deez Nuts inspired by the Vagina Monologues?

JJ: The show was inspired by talking to men in the community, but the Vagina Monologues is a good reference point for the audience. . . . The world is familiar with the Vagina Monologues, so we used the name to make people understand what it is. This is an all-male spin on that concept, with a real local D.C. flavor. It's a perspective on everything from love to war to having children, being fathers. But unlike the Vagina Monologues, where the women talk a lot about their parts—you know, about hair on the vagina and having periods—Deez Nuts doesn't focus on the male parts so much. It definitely talks about sex and relationships, but it's more about all the things that affect these nuts, instead of the actual nuts.

CP: How have women responded to the show?

JJ: All of the women want to see how men think. That’s been the positive feedback from the show. But on the flip-side, they want to see the female version. They don’t want to see the Vagina Monologues. They want to see the female version of Deez Nuts. . . . The difference would be that it would focus on local, D.C. women. Some women have been brainstorming a name for it. Some suggested "The Honey Pot." It's got to be something clever that refers to women and whatever their nuts would be. Like "Deez Ovaries."

CP: What men did you interview in creating the monologues?

All of them are my artist friends, and they run the gambit from musicians to poets to actors. The majority were men in the arts community, so they can convey a message. They've been practicing that for years. Putting all of their stories under the umbrella of Deez Nuts wasn’t a difficult task to do.

CP: The Vagina Monologues is considered a feminist project, because it discussed issues affecting women that hadn't been addressed so publicly before . . . . Do you think Deez Nuts does a similar service for issues affecting men?

JJ: Ultimately, men and women are compliments complements. So if there’s any type of inequality on either side, it affects both of us. If women are oppressed, so are men, because we’re not enjoying the full potential of our compliment. So it's not against feminism at all . . . This show has all African-American men in it, which is a unique angle. The Vagina Monologues came from a very different vantage point. Deez Nuts is about Chocolate City. All the performers happen to be black men—not that it was initially constructed that way—but their stories definitely reflect that part of D.C.

Responses have been condensed.

Yesterday, career Web guy James Chartrand admitted that "he" is a woman, actually. Chartrand said that after she adopted the male pseudonym several years ago—one that sounded like it "might command respect"—she did command respect, and began to ascend from struggling single-mom writer to respected male Web entrepreneur.

In light of the news that Chartrand is a lady, I am struck by some of the more masculine touches Chartrand inserted into her crowning achievement as James Chartland: The Web development team "Men With Pens."

But first, a bit of feminist review. Upon reading Chartrand's coming-out piece, The Frisky's Jessica Wakeman took issue with Chartrand's decision to obscure her gender to get ahead: "Honestly, there is something rather Uncle Tom-y about Chartrand hiding behind the opposite gender," she wrote. "By assuming the identity of a male writer, she skirted the discrimination against women entirely while doing nothing to change womens’ lot. She just left the glass ceiling standing there, rather than shattering it." Meanwhile, Broadsheet's Kate Harding saw Chartrand's pseudonym as a reminder that some old-school feminist battles have not been laid to rest: "I get furious when people insist that western women have achieved full equality," Harding wrote. "But even I've bought into the myth of meritocracy enough that my first thought upon learning a female writer massively increased her success by adopting a male pseudonym was, 'Wow, how retro! How Brontë, how Eliot, how Sand.' Certainly not 'how Rowling.'"

Whether you think Chartrand's choice to adopt a male name was anti-feminist or illuminating, you should know that adopting a male name is not all Chartrand did.

* She also adopted a male persona—her biography refers to her repeatedly as "he."

* She also named her company "Men With Pens."

* She also crafted a company logo (above) that looks like it was directed by Michael Bay.

* She also slipped this line into the bio of one of her employees, copywriter Taylor Lindstrom: "She’s the team’s rogue woman who wowed us until our desire for her talents exceeded our desire for a good ol’ boys club."

* She also introduced Lindstrom to the blog as "perky," "adorable," and capable of cooking and cleaning. (In introducing a male employee to the blog, Chartrand described their relationship as "bromantic," one in which the Men With Pens "could be laid back together, chink beers and not argue over the remote control").

* She also regularly used photos of naked women to illustrate her posts.

* She also occasionally essentialized women—"all the women" loved Jerry McGuire, Chartland wrote—while conveniently placing herself outside of the gender categories she set for them.

* She also used a photograph of a man silencing a woman with his hand as the logo for a "Men With Pens" role-playing game. When a few commenters noted that the photographed failed to create an "inviting community for women," Chartrand replied: "Photography is very subjective. You see a woman being terrorized. I see a man helping a woman stay quiet so he can save her life."

* She also penned this post—amazing, in hindsight!—which instructed "mommy bloggers" to stop "whin[ing] about being stereotyped" and begin welcoming male commenters in their spaces:

On the few occasions that I’ve risked my balls to post a comment on a mommy blog, I noticed my comments were skipped over as if they (I?) didn’t even exist. Sometimes my comments get a sharp, snappy, “piss off” kind of remark in reply. Sometimes I’m absolutely bashed, and I have a hard time figuring out why.

. . . I don’t understand making male readers and participants feel unwelcome. I know plenty of mothers who blog and who come off as. . . . well, bloggers who are mothers. They don’t perpetuate the stereotype of a frazzle Mom trying to work in a household of chaos. They don’t try to shave the balls of all males who dare to visit the blog. They don’t discount opinions from men. Everyone is equal. They blog, they work, and they raise their children.

So . . . Chartrand claims to have testicles in order to avoid being lumped in with all those whining, stereotypical mommy blogs, and then she has the nerve to insist all the lowly female bloggers let her into their club? Chartrand, of all people, knows that everyone is not equal on the Web. Chartrand herself pretended to have a pair of balls because she found her work perpetually discounted, insulted, and ignored by men. Men (and people who assume masculine identities) get to have the rest of the Internet. Women get their own tiny little part of it, where women's voices are actually valued. In those spaces, comments about how these women "wield their feminism like a spiked mace" from the one man valiant enough to "risk his balls" to wade into the comments are not welcome. Obviously.

* She also made some shit up! Unlike Brontë, Eliot, Sand, or Rowling, Chartrand didn't use a male pseudonym to get her works of fiction published—she parlayed her name into a successful blog which regularly touched on her life . . . except as a man. Every post that tried to recast Chartrand's personality into a male persona—like this one about how "he" learned to knit back when "little kids don’t know that boys shouldn’t do girl things"—is pretty much untruth. If the sexist blogging world made Chartrand change her name, did it also make her throw in some defensive gender posturing to explain why she—a man, of all people!—would ever take up the feminine pastime of knitting? This is where Chartrand's gender play goes beyond necessity and enters the realm of professional responsibility. Isn't a habit of spinning absurd white lies a bit of a liability for any professional writer?

Of course, "Men With Pens" isn't all gender stereotypes and objectification—mostly, it's just straight-up professional advice for 'net writers. But in light of Chartrand's admission, the more sexist aspects of the Web site are hard to ignore. Are Chartrand's hyper-masculine touches in "Men With Pens" tongue-in-cheek inside jokes? Are they defense mechanisms meant to ward off suspicion that she wasn't really a man? Are they yet another way for Chartrand to use sexism for her own career advantage? Or is this just how Chartrand truly sees herself—as a "man with a pen" who enjoys jokingly categorizing her employees based off rigid gender norms, feels the need to bash mommies, and thinks that naked ladies best illustrate her points?

Chartrand thinks that adopting a male pen name was necessary to make her career. "Truth be told, if just a name and perception of gender creates such different levels of respect and income for a person, it says a lot more about the world and the people in it than it does about me," she wrote. But Chartrand's ruse went well beyond the public's mere "perception" of her gender. She named her company "Men With Pens," for Christ's sake. Are we really expected to believe that financial necessity forced Chartrand not only to take a man's name, but to actively define her career around the fact that she's a male with precious balls she's got to protect from vicious ladybloggers? Or that by doing so, Chartrand was in any way elevating her voice as a woman?

More likely, Chartrand owes her career to a willingness to play into the "boy's club" mentality, not only in the name but in the content of her work. Chartrand responded to Web sexism by becoming a bit of a male chauvinist herself. She created a male space that—while welcoming to female commenters and clients—is, let's be honest, more welcoming to men. That act may have been necessary when she was a single mom scraping by on welfare checks. But now that she's a Web presence of her own, complete with clients, employees, and substantial readership, does she really have to keep perpetuating the guy thing? After all, Chartrand has now managed to shore up more recognition as a woman than she ever could as a man.

First up: THE "SEXY FOOTBALL PLAYER":

Ready, set, manpris!

THE "SEXY PIRATE" COSTUME:

Arg! Manpris!

THE "SEXY COP" COSTUME:

I love how they saved all the manpris costumes to the same male model. Work it!

THE "ANOTHER SEXY COP" OUTFIT:

I can tell by the two-day stubble and suggestive shoulder straps that this cop is meant to be sexy, but he's not wearing manpris, so I'm not really buying it.

THE OBLIGATORY "SEXY RACIALLY INSENSITIVE COSTUME" [OK: "SEXY RACIST"]:

GAH. NO. (Buy one in every gender!)

THE "SEXY PENIS JOKE" COSTUME:

Equal parts gleaming muscles and dick joke, it's the ultimate male Halloween costume!

The first time I heard Usher's new gender-bending single, "Trading Places," the D.J. introduced it as a "backseat jam"—a track that's very conducive to fucking. "Trading Places," which follows Usher and his lady-friend as they trade gender roles in the bedroom for an evening, presents gender transgression as a one-off sexual novelty. It's also not very sexy (in one verse, Usher's girlfriend orders Chinese food and demands that Usher not wash his hands before they do it. Thrilling). Needless to say, it wasn't really a jam I was willing to climb into the backseat for—and that was before I knew that the song is also a stealth anal sex anthem!

Let's analyze the male/female dichotomy through the lens of Usher, shall we?

Now we gonna do this thing a lil different tonight
You gonna come over and pick me up in your ride
You gon knock and then you gon wait
Ooo you gon take me on a date
You gonna open my door and I'ma reach over and open yours
Gon pay for dinner take me to see a movie
And whisper in my ear I bet you really wanna do me
Girl now take me home and get up in my Benz
Pour me up a shot and force me to the bed

Things men do: drive cars, take people on dates, open doors, pay for dinner, pay for a movie, voice their desire for sex, pour liquor, force people into bed.

Things women do: ride in cars, go on dates, eat dinner, watch movies, get propositioned, drink liquor, go to bed.

I'm always on the top tonight I'm on the bottom
Cause we trading places
When I cant take no more, tell me you ain't stopping
Cause we trading places
Now put it on me baby till I say "oooo weee"
And tell me to shut up before the neighbors hear me
This is how it feels when you do it like me
We trading places

Things men do: Be on top, not stop, put it on people, tell people to shut up.

Things women do: Be on the bottom, not be able to take things anymore, be loud.

I'll be waking you up to a cup of Folgers
Pancakes and eggs I owe ya breakfast in bed, oh baby
And your orange juice sitting on the coaster
Toast on the side baby strawberry and grape jelly
You finished let me get that drink,
Pull the curtain from the window
Time to get up baby let me make this bed up
Today we going shopping blow 30 on me
Make it 60, spend it like u really love me
Skip dinner and we gon rent a movie
You order chinese food right before u do me
You coming on strong baby let me wash me hands
She said hurry up then get your ass to bed

Things men do: Drink coffee, eat pancakes, drink orange juice, eat toast, get out of bed, spend money, rent movies, order Chinese food, do people, come on strong, tell people to hurry up.

Things women do: Make coffee, make pancakes, pour orange juice, butter toast, make the bed, receive gifts, wash their hands, go to bed.

(yeah) Wash the car
(yeah) I'm gonna walk the dog
(yeah) Take out the trash
(yeah) With nothing but your t-shirt on
(yeah) I'm gonna press your shirt
(yeah) I'm gonna wrinkle mines up
(yeah) In the kitchen girl we crazy we don't give a—
Where you want me?

Things men do: Wash cars.

Things women do: Walk dogs, empty the trash, press shirts, do it wherever they want.

Stay tuned for part two
You been me, I been you
But we gon switch this thing back
I'ma put it on your ass.

Things men do: Force their girlfriends to play out comical male stereotypes while assuming the role of the subservient female. Then, in order to reclaim their masculinity, threaten to insert their dicks into their girlfriends' anuses.

Things women do: Play along with the gender stereotype game at the request of their boyfriends. Prepare hard, phallic objects to force it into their boyfriends' anuses at the height of the gender-bending sex. It's what men do!

This time around: cat fights!

New York Times columnist Mickey Meece (seriously) is here to explain why the recession has resulted in a frightening "workplace bullying" epidemic that threatens to destroy all working women. Why are working girls bitchier than ever to each other? Let me count the ways:

Because "workplace researchers say":

During this downturn, as stress levels rise, workplace researchers say, bullies are likely to sharpen their elbows and ratchet up their attacks.

Because even though most bullies are male, the female bullies are bitchier (or, cat fights are more interesting than regular old boy office politics):

It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.

Because even when you have a career, you still have to be the mother:

Women don’t like to talk about it because it is “so antithetical to the way that we are supposed to behave to other women,” Ms. Klaus said. “We are supposed to be the nurturers and the supporters.”

Because pretending there are "magical keys" to correct female behavior in the workplace makes it easier to market "executive leadership coaches" to women:

“Women are trying to figure out the magical keys to the kingdom,” said Laura Steck, president of the Growth and Leadership Center in Sunnyvale, Calif., and an executive leadership coach.

Women feel they have to be aggressive to be promoted, she said, and then they keep it up. Then, suddenly, they see the need to be collegial and collaborative instead of competitive.

Because men have nothing to do with this:

“As we get into the corporate world,” Ms. Cirocco added, “we’re taught or we’re led to believe that we don’t get ahead because of men. But, we really don’t get ahead because of ourselves. Instead of building each other up and showcasing each other, we’re constantly tearing each other down.”

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.

Combos brand snacks has released a study (stay with me here) ranking the 50 manliest cities in the United States. Washington, D.C. ranks a pathetic 45, proving manlier than only Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.

The criteria for maniness appeared to be but a thinly veiled count of how mant Combos brand snacks each city consumes per capita:

Each metro area received a manliness rating between 0 and 100 based on how well it performed in each of the study's manly categories. Factors used to determine the manliest city rankings included the number of U.S.-made cars driven in the city, number of sports bars and BBQ restaurants, number of home improvement and hardware stores as well as manly salty snacks consumption.

Here's the full list of manliest cities. Coincidentally, it also appears to be a ranking of cities in which I most do not want to live.

1. Nashville, Tenn.
2. Charlotte, N.C.
3. Oklahoma City, Okla.
4. Cincinnati, Ohio
5. Denver, Colo.
6. St. Louis, Mo.
7. Columbus, Ohio
8. Kansas City, Mo.
9. Indianapolis, Ind.
10. Toledo, Ohio
11. Memphis, Tenn.
12. Richmond, Va.
13. Columbia, S.C.
14. Orlando, Fla.
15. Dayton, Ohio
16. Salt Lake City, Utah
17. Milwaukee, Wis.
18. Minneapolis, Minn.
19. Cleveland, Ohio
20. Detroit, Mich.
21. Jacksonville, Fla.
22. Phoenix, Ariz.
23. Birmingham, Ala.
24. Grand Rapids, Mich.
25. Tampa, Fla.
26. Harrisburg, Pa.
27. New Orleans, La.
28. Las Vegas, Nev.
29. Pittsburgh, Pa.
30. Philadelphia, Pa.
31. Louisville, Ky.
32. Atlanta, Ga.
33. Providence, R.I.
34. Dallas, Texas
35. Buffalo, N.Y.
36. Rochester, N.Y.
37. Baltimore, Md.
38. Boston, Mass.
39. Houston, Texas
40. Seattle, Wash.
41. Sacramento, Calif.
42. Miami, Fla.
43. San Diego, Calif.
44. Oakland, Calif.
45. Washington, District of Columbia
46. Chicago, Ill.
47. Portland, Ore.
48. San Francisco, Calif.
49. Los Angeles, Calif.
50. New York, N.Y.

Photo by kimberlyfaye

Welcome back to The Sexist's Manliest Workplace in D.C. tournament, our ongoing unscientific investigation into the male/female ratios of local employers' org charts. Last week, we sewed up the Media Bracket, in which the Washington Times crushed the competition with an impressive 94.5 percent manly factor. Now, we move on to an even more high-fallutin' category of D.C. workplace: "Culture." Check out the entire 64-workplace bracket here; today, the one-seed Washington Redskins take on eight-seed National Museum of Women in the Arts. May the manliest cultural institution win!

WASHINGTON REDSKINS: These hometown heroes may have the manliest profession this side of the American Presidency, but do they have the manly goods where it counts—the execs? Let's check out the team's ownership and coaching staff [PDF]:

Owner Dan Snyder (Male, 10 points)
Ownership Group Member Arlette Snyder (Female, ZERO)
Ownership Group Member Michele Snyder (Female, ZERO)
Ownership Group Member Robert Rothman (Male, 7 points)
Ownership Group Member Dwight Schar (Male, 6 points)
Ownership Group Member Frederick W. Smith (Male, 5 points)
Executive VP Vinny Cerrato (Male, 4 points)
Head Coach Jim Zorn (Male, 3 points)
Assistant Coach Greg Blanche (Male, 2 points)
Assistant Coach Sherman Smith (Male, 1 point)

With only 38 points out of a possible 55, or 69% manliness, first-seed contenders the Washington Redskins prove to be even worse at manliness than they are at football (75% wins this season). No amount of sis-boom-bah-ing from scantily-clad 'Skins cheerleaders can mediate this stunning blow, which was decided early in the contest when Dan incubated himself with a pair of female Snyders in his ownership group. Consolation prize: Homosocial ass-slap rate in organization remains high.

—

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS: Oh, man. This does not look promising. But even though this contender stumbles by having "Women" in its very name, an upset against the sorta-manly Redskins is possible. Because NMWA qualifies as a traditionally female workplace, it stands to reap in some free manly points under the Sexist's affirmative action clause. Accordingly, NMWA will receive a 10-point jump after its index is calculated. Let's get to the goods:

Director Susan Fisher Sterling (Female, ZERO)
Deputy Director Ilene Gutman (Female, ZERO)
Deputy Director Pam Ayres (Female, ZERO)
Chief Curator Jordana Pomeroy (Female, ZERO)
Director of Library Jason Stieber (Male, 5)
Media Relations Manager Michelle Cragle (Female, ZERO)
Exhibitions Coordinator Rebecca Price (Female, ZERO)
Chief Preparator Greg Abgelone (Male, 2)
Director of Special Events Lori Brubaker (Female, ZERO)
Director of Retail Operations Lynda Marks (Female, ZERO)

Ouch. Even with the free 10-pointer, NMWA scores a weak 17/55 on the manly index, or just over 30 percent manliness. The National Museum of Women in the Arts is so hopelessly unmanly I'll save them excessive man-punning in this roundup. But check out their new exhibition, "Role Models: Feminine Identity in Contemporary American Photograph," which I hear is delightful!

Tune in tomorrow for a pan-religious bro-off, when the National Cathedral takes on the Founding Church of Scientology!

Photo by smata2.

The American workplace's storied glass ceiling is in pretty bad shape. Female workers are on the fast track to conquering the upper echelons of all sectors of industry, including the nation's highest office. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton invoked the ceiling in her June concession speech: "Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it," Clinton said, adding, "the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time." With Clinton's defeat, the glass-crushing spread across the political aisle. As Republican vice presidential candidate and self-described "feminist" Sarah Palin confirms, "Women certainly today have every opportunity to succeed."

But what about that unsung other half of our nation's workforce: men? As more and more women enter the workplace and climb to its highest ranks, they do so to the detriment of a group that has comfortably occupied high-level positions in our nation's capital for centuries. At risk of extinction are D.C.'s manliest institutions: its unions, newspapers, and government agencies. In 2008, what workplaces may truly call themselves manly?

The Sexist is pleased to announce D.C.'s Manliest Workplace Competition. Beginning next week, The Sexist will run 64 D.C. workplaces in eight industries through a highly unsophisticated algorithm to assess each organization's manliness. In order to determine manliness, the Sexist will take the top 10 positions in each organization, ascertain which positions are staffed by men, then assign a point value to each male staffer. A man in the highest-ranking position (i.e., president, CEO, publisher) will earn 10 points; one in the 10th-most-powerful spot will receive one point. The manliest workplace—one that employs all men, all the time, in the most powerful and well-paid positions—can score as high as 55 on the Manly Index. The least manly workplace—one that employs no men, none of the time, in any position—will receive a zero.

The Manly Index
0-10: Non-manly
11-30: Mannish
31-50: Manly
50-55: Manliest

Note: The Sexist reserves right to base assumptions on hasty once-over of workplace's org chart. If a workplace's chart does not have clearly ranked positions, the Sexist will arbitrarily assign rank. If a workplace employs fewer than 10 people in total, the Sexist will improvise.

Example: Washington City Paper

Publisher Amy Austin (Female, 0 points)
Editor Erik Wemple (Male, 9 points)
Ad Sales Director David J. Walker (Male, 8 points)
New Media Director Joshua Lieb (Male, 7 points)
Business Devel. Manager Sheila Alexander-Reid (Female, 0 points)
Information Technology Director Jim Gumm (Male, 6 points)
Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon (Male, 5 points)
Classified Sales Manager Heather McAndrews (Female, 0 points)
Assistant Managing Editor Jule Banville (Female, 0 points)
Senior Writer Jason Cherkis (Male, 1 point)

Note: The Washington City Paper scores a 36 on the Manly Index, indicating that the paper is barely even manly.

The Sexist recognizes the need for affirmative action in the pursuit of manliness. Historically non-manly organizations face several obstacles to becoming manly. These workplaces deal in traditionally non-manly pursuits, such as domestic violence protection and book lending. Additionally, they lack a male base, making recruiting of even manlier employees challenging. In order to level the playing field, the Sexist will add a full point to the manly index of workplaces that traditionally employ women. This progressive affirmative action policy will help lift historically non-manly organizations from the depths of femininity, while ensuring the Sexist Cinderella-story material throughout contest coverage.

Remember, this is a numbers game. No matter how macho the corporate culture at your environmental nonprofit, if it can't show the men, it will fall hard and fast.

Factors the Manliest Workplace Tournament will not take into consideration (among others): Presidential Fitness Award honorees employed; history of sexual harassment suits filed against workplace; importance of tool belt to employee uniform; homosocial ass-slapping traditions. While these factors certainly add to the "heart" of a manly workplace, the Manliest Workplace competition looks only at the true test of an organization's manliness: How many men the workplace employs, and how high on the org chart it employs them. (Additional manly factors may be considered in the event of a tie).

Think you know manly from mannish? Fill out the bracket with your picks for D.C.'s manliest workplaces. Find a paper bracket on page 46 of this week's newspaper, or complete our handy on-line bracket.

Send your paper brackets to:

Amanda Hess
Washington City Paper
2390 Champlain St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

The winner wins something!

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