In researching for this week’s This Week In Sexist History, I came across this female vigilante justice gem from the July 11, 1865 edition of the New York Times. The media’s obsession with a good cat fight dates back at least 144 years, when imprisoned philanderer and saloon owner Dan Sullivan and rumored home-wrecker “Mrs. Hawley” experience a shit-storm of flying bricks and stones courtesy of Sullivan’s wife—and 1,000 of her closest friends. Police removed Hawley from the home early on, then stayed to watch the mob of women destroy two buildings. Meow, indeed.

Read More “The 1865 New York Times Loves A Cat Fight” »

Newspaper stories from the good old days say the darndest things. So every week on the Sexist, let’s take a ride on journalism’s way-back machine, to a time when Hispanic redheads qualified as news, boys didn’t count, and sexy Caribbean ladies landed in the pages of the New York Times for being adorably ignorant, not for attempting to ruin the United States Supreme Court and shit like that.

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: July 7, 1900

Dateline: Boston, MA

Subject: Turn-of-the-century Cuban exchange students take Harvard by storm. The New York Times reports on Crimsons charmed by the girls’ exotic beauty, helpless pleas of “no understand,” and severely limited “powers of locomotion” (boys don’t count).

Read More “This Week In Sexist History: Sexy Cuban Girls “No Understand” Edition!” »

Newspaper stories from the good old days say the darndest things. So every week on the Sexist, let’s take a ride on journalism’s way-back machine, to a time when descriptors like the following—”big girls and little girls, blonde girls and brunettes, dark-haired blondes, sunset blondes, Rhinegold blonde—blondes of all kind save the prescription pattern”—qualified as college baseball commentary.

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: June 23, 1909

Dateline: New York, NY

Subject: Reporter at Yale-Harvard rivalry baseball game fluffs up his flowery play-by-play with a rhapsodic account of the glorious array of girls in attendance. Collect one in every ethnicity!

Read More “This Week In Sexist History: Girls, Girls, Girls Edition” »

The recession is now in full swing, which means that journalists everywhere have a new excuse to write about the same shit they always wrote about, but now everything is worse.

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:

Read More “Recession Makes Bitches Bitchier” »

Now together in the big sassy retirement community in the sky.

Bea Arthur, television feminist icon, died on Saturday at the age of 86. When Bruce Weber’s New York Times obit was emailed to subscribers, the headline read, “Bea Arthur, TV Battle-Ax, Dies at 86.”

Someone at the NYT must have thought better of sending Arthur off with a “cautionary/derogatory label for a formidable & forbidding woman.” Now, the obit’s title reads “Bea Arthur, Star of Two TV Comedies, Dies at 86.”

I’m glad Bea is still intimidating them all, even in her death.

No. NO Not again. Not another “Mr Mom” reference!

Maybe this shit could fly in 1983. I wouldn’t know, because at that point, my own Mr. Mom and my regular female Mom hadn’t gotten together to shared-parent me yet. But at this point, New York Times—-stop. JUST STOP.

You’ve informed us that despite the “Mr. Mom” idea you have helped to propagate, “Dads” still outnumber Mr. Moms (”Mr. Mom Aside, Dads at Work Are Still the Norm“).

You’ve asked the eternal question: “But Can Mr. Mom Tie a Ponytail?”

You’ve even called the guy who wrote in to debunk the idea that only women can be proper parents a “Mr. Mom” (”Mr. Mom Fights Back“)! I can’t believe you did that, you fucking jerks!

Thankfully, we already have a suitable replacement word for “Mr. Mom.” It’s called “Dad.”

* Great, women claim even more power over Children. The New York Times reports on scientists who have discovered “a surprising new mechanism by which women train their fetuses’ budding immune systems: the mother’s cells slip across the placenta, enter the fetus’s body and teach it to treat these cells as its own.”

* Strapped for cash? Birth 14 babies through science [via The Frisky].

Read More “The Morning After: Poor Me, Born Sexy Edition” »

Two male views of women’s sexuality:

(a) It is predictable, unchanging, easily conquerable once you’ve cracked their code. Favored by: “Pick-up artists” whose livelihood depends on purporting to know the code. See: Roissy in D.C., Roosh V.

(b) It is mysterious, unknowable, a foreign “Other” never to be understood. Favored by: Scientists, journalists whose theses depend upon sustaining the mystery. See: The New York Times’ Magazine’s “What Do Women Want?“

—

Daniel Bergner’s “What Do Women Want?” opens with the results of a study conducted by Queen’s University psychologist Meredith Chivers, which presented gay and straight males and females with different types of pornography and tested their physiological reactions to the scenes against their self-reported levels of arousal. Chivers’ results are summarized as follows:

Read More “The New York Times Doesn’t Understand Understanding Women” »

* The new Hillary Clinton, New York Senator-to-be Kirsten Gillibrand, already has jealous Congressional wolves circling her freshly appointed carcass in the hopes of gaining the seat that is not yet officially hers, in 2010 [via Newsday].

* The New gay tells President Obama what to do. TNG was also nice enough to profile the Sexist in last week’s featured blog spot. Thanks!

* Slate reviews Daniel Bergner’s The Other Side of Desire:

He selects four areas: foot fetishism, sadomasochism, pedophilia, and an obsession for amputees. In each case, he finds and follows a devotee. In the process, Bergner does what science cannot: He illuminates peculiar longings. His method is at first descriptive and finally poetic. The message of the book is in the interplay among personal narratives that prove alternately bizarre and mundane.

* The New York Times Magazine piece suggests that a “generation of postfeminist sexologists” are beginning to unlock the mysterious sexual desires of women. But who will unlock the mystery of what a “postfeminist sexologist” is?

Photo by trialsanderrors.

Frank Rich’s column in Saturday’s New York Times was an indictment of Barack Obama’s mixed message on gay rights in light of the Rick Warren pick (side-note: totally over this). But the headline’s funnier out of context:

You’re Likable Enough, Gay People

The title is a nod to Obama’s primary season declaration that “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” But next to Rich’s smug head shot, it looks more like this.