How condescending is this photo? It’s not the fabled (and fake) American-flag-wearin’, gun-totin’  bikini photo that surfaced on the Internet shortly after Palin reached national fame, but it’s about as close as Newsweek could get to the real thing.

I am generally in agreement with Palin supporters when they accuse the media of hurling sexism toward the former Governor. David Letterman’s joke about Palin’s underage daughter fucking Alex Rodriguez? Inappropriate. Ridiculing Bristol Palin for getting knocked up, while laughing it up with Levi? Sexist.

And I tend to agree with Palin’s response here, too: Yesterday, Palin took to Facebook to denounce the cover’s sexism. “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now,” she wrote. “If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention—even if out of context.”

Is the Newsweek cover sexist? Yes. But let’s put the photo back into context for a minute: Sarah Palin’s entire existence is sexist.

Let’s try to imagine, for a moment, the thought process that went into creating this Newsweek cover image : “We need to convey that Palin sucks really bad! Let’s take some photo of Palin lookin’ sexy, slap it on the cover of Newsweek, and then use her sexuality in attempt to draw attention to all the terrible things this woman has brought upon us.”

Hey! That sounds kind of like what John McCain did when he chose Palin as his VP: Found an attractive lady, slapped her on to his campaign, and used her image as a sexy lady in order to distract people from her scant qualifications, her total lack of concern for women’s issues, and her complete suckiness as a candidate.

Sarah Palin’s very existence as a national figure depends upon people being sexist. It’s not just the bad things that have happened to her that are a result of sexism—the mud-slinging about her daughters, the circulated upskirt photos, the intense scrutiny over her appearance and her clothes. But sexism tends to help individual women, too, and it has certainly helped Palin. Sexism allows women to earn insane amounts of money for simply taking their clothes off, and it allows women to earn an insane amount of political power for simply being a hot conservative lady with no particular skill at public speaking, reading comprehension, telling the truth, or articulating a single political view that makes any sense, ever.

At that point, can we really get bent out of shape every time we see the media reflecting the reality that Palin is a product of sexism in their coverage of her? We have crossed the Rubicon, people. Everything about Palin is sexist. When it comes to sexism, I’m a big advocate of hating the game, and not the player. But the game works both ways. And I am sick and tired of only having to care about it when that sexism means something bad for Sarah Palin.

“What do the ‘N’ word, the ‘W’ word and the ‘F’ word have in common?” asks Tim Bloedow of NoApologies.ca, a Web site dedicated to “punching a hole in political correctness.” According to Bloedow, refusing to use these racial, sexist, and homophobic slurs (the ‘F’ word isn’t fuck here) displays a “complete disregard for using God’s name in vain.”

Bloedow explains why refusing to invoke the “N” word, the “W” word, and the “F” word is insulting to the almighty. (Note: I won’t use those words here, because I’m an atheist, but be warned: Bloedow is a man of God, so he gleefully invokes the three slurs throughout the video):

“The Third Commandment says don’t take the name of a larger God in vain,” he says. “As Christians, we see the Lord’s name taken in vain everywhere—on the TV, in movies, in the news, in just about every area of life, as we walk down the street, among our colleagues. Constantly God’s name—’God,’ ‘Jesus Christ,’ are used as cuss words and nobody seems to blink an eye. Yet I’ve been very frustrated in the last couple of weeks as I’ve observed the self-censorship in our media over other areas of sensibility.”

To recap: White dude in a sweater and a mustache who records himself announcing racial slurs over the Internet? The work of God. Saying “Oh my God, that Tim Bloedow dude appears to be a huge racist”? Sacrilege.

Yesterday, Feminist Law Professors drew my attention to the Miami Daily Business Review’s “Rodent” column, a weekly anonymous rant written by various members of the legal community. The latest missive, “Lady Lawyers Should Dress the Part,” warns female attorneys that they may be sabotaging their careers with overly sexy business attire. Actually, I think it’s more likely that the conveniently anonymous Rodent, who spouts off platitudes like “women who dress like Barbie dolls get treated like Barbie dolls,” is the force that’s keeping women down in the workplace.

According to the Rodent, otherwise capable female lawyers are ruining their chances at being taken seriously by forgoing pantyhose, wearing heels, and revealing their cleavage:

Women who dress like Barbie dolls get treated like Barbie dolls. I know a lawyer who is in her mid-30s. She is stunning—tall, long blonde Lady Godiva hair and a body that would make a porn star jealous. This woman also happens to be a crackerjack lawyer. But she dresses to emphasize her looks, not her mind; as a result, her career seems to have stalled. Though she is an extremely bright woman, no one sees past the stilettos and low-cut blouses.

The vermin continues:

Clients tend not to hire women who look like hookers unless they hire them as hookers. Don’t show your “girls” at work unless you are looking for a one-night stand.

All right, let’s hear one more:

I knew an associate who wore shoes that looked like she was a bridesmaid. She was a good lawyer, but there was a real disconnect between those gold sandals and the notion that she wanted to go the distance as a lawyer. She didn’t, and the shoes were a tip-off.

The Rodent’s theories are convenient: The lawyer who looks like a porn star stumbled because her shoes are too high. The lawyer who looks like a bridesmaid is not serious about her job because her shoes are too strappy. The lawyer who looks like a hooker is not successful because her breasts are too prominent. Beyond the offensiveness of grouping female professionals into categories like Barbie, porn star, hooker, and bridesmaid, the Rodent appears to be going to great lengths to deny the obvious. Perhaps the lawyer who looks like a “porn star” is devalued because people think she’s too attractive to be smart, not because she dresses like a Barbie. The lawyer who wears anything other than a turtleneck is devalued because she’s got boobs, not because she dresses like a hooker. And the lawyer who looks like a bridesmaid, whose strappy shoes are a “tip-off” that she’s not a serious lawyer? That sounds like a pretty insane explanation for a career misstep to me.

The Rodent, of course, is attempting to explain away a more offensive aspect of the legal profession: women are consistently partnered and paid less than men are. A commenter on Feminist Law Professors draws the obvious comparison between devaluing a woman’s work based on her attire to outright sexual harassment. She writes that men have informed her of the harassment rule: “If she’s going to dress like trash, then she’s going to get treated like trash.”

Blaming a woman’s clothing choices for her professional failure is simply a strategy for selectively discounting women without being called on your sexism. All you have to do is project your biases on to “her choices,” and you can discriminate away.

This becomes clear when the Rodent gets specific about what aspects of a woman’s appearance are unacceptable. Interestingly, several of the Rodent’s tips are not specific to female lawyers. “A tattoo that shows is NEVER appropriate when you are a female attorney,” the Rodent writes—as if face tattoos are generally accepted among lady litigators’ male co-workers. The Rodent then offers up a weak defense for focusing on lady ink—women sag. “I promise you that once you are a woman of a certain age, your skin will lose elasticity, and that cute Asian saying . . . simply won’t look good when it’s sagging.”

Many of the Rodent’s recommendations are inconsistent. According to the Rodent, “Frumpy is the opposite end of the spectrum, and I see a lot of that these days, too. Looking like an unmade bed—wrinkled clothes, no makeup, dirty hair—doesn’t inspire much confidence either.” Apparently, femininity-enhancing attire like heels are unacceptable, but makeup is required. The anonymous ranter also points to Condoleezza Rice as an acceptable style icon, even though Rice hardly shied away from figure-hugging, sexy-heeled outfits in her tenure as Secretary of State.

The lesson we can learn from this is that the standards regulating female appearance are largely arbitrary, and are designed that way to keep the door open for criticism. Men may either be labeled “sloppy” or “professional,” but women must also navigate between being “frumpy,” “professional,” and “overly attractive.” And since the “too sexy” meter can often be set off by simply looking like a woman, not dressing like one—having breasts, hips, legs, and a waist—hitting the right note can be a lot more difficult than learning to knot a neck-tie.

Feminist Law Professors’ Bridget Crawford concurs with the Rodent on some points:

I myself am on record against visible toes in the office, so I am inclined to agree with the Rodent on this topic. . . . Displays of exaggerated female sexuality (cleavage, heels, etc.) are tools that some women attempt to use to their benefit. Kathleen Bergin explains this in her article Sexualized Advocacy and the Ascendant Feminist Backlash Against Female Lawyers . . . the Rodent reminds us that the same tools can be used against women, too.

I agree that this double standard—be attractive, but not too sexy—is used against women in the workplace. But I disagree with the Rodent’s conclusion that the solution to workplace sexism is for women to modify their behavior by buttoning up and trashing the sandals. Apparently, no matter what a lady lawyer wears, there will be some vermin waiting on the sidelines to tell her it’s not appropriate.

Photo by markusram, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

According to fraternal historian ­Nicholas Syrett, America’s fraternity culture has thrived on a fear of homosexuality since the 1920’s. All-male fraternal organizations, Syrett writes, “compensate for what might be perceived by outsiders as either feminine or gay behavior by enacting a masculinity [of] aggressive heterosexuality.” In order to preempt homosexual interpretations of the fraternal bond, the brothers employ ritualistic paddling, frat house sex, and homophobic epithets to fight their way back to straight.

The Syrettian fraternal tradition poses some pre-professional problems for the young men on the campus of George Washington University.

After all, GW’s fraternity brothers are the nation’s future congressmen, investment bankers, and CEOs. They won’t reach those positions if their Google profiles turn up associations with homophobic and misogynistic fraternities. So GW’s frat boys—and don’t call them that!—are straining to undo the legacy of “aggressive heterosexuality” and gay-bashing forged by their predecessors. It’s an effort that involves a good deal of re-education, some new alliances, and a compensatory vice or two.

RUSHING. Each September, GW’s potential pledges navigate a monthlong schedule of university-sanctioned rush events. The activities provide a brief introduction to each fraternity’s social reputation. Will the future fraternity brother enjoy s’mores at Kappa Sigma’s “acoustic jam” or feast upon Kappa Alpha Order’s steamed Maryland crabs? Will he chat up Sigma Chi’s favorite sorority ladies or help Sigma Nu launch a frozen turkey down a Slip ’N Slide? Will he scarf Lambda Chi Alpha’s Chipotle burritos or watch the brothers of TKE take a sledgehammer to a car?

This year, Beta Theta Pi decided to trade the food porn and the masculine displays of destruction for a more meaningful approach. “The events that I rushed into initially were food-focused,” says Stephen Molldrem, the fraternity’s vice president. “This year, we’re trying something completely different. Other fraternities will pick men who share their values out of the ones who show up for the Maryland blue crabs. We attract men of values, and we then just happen to serve them Maryland blue crabs when they show up.”

Beta Theta Pi Vice President Stephen Molldrem

That formula—values first, crabs later—helps weed out the homophobes with the hungry. In Beta Theta Pi’s first rush event this year, titled “Frat Versus Fraternity: Myths Debunked,” Molldrem and his brothers discussed popular misconceptions about “frat boys” with potential pledges.

William Zelenty, the fraternity’s rush coordinator, says the strategy had helped establish Beta Theta Pi as an organization of principle. “In the past, the fraternity was about upholding the status quo and letting the sexist and homophobic stuff fly,” he says. “Now, we’re dealing with it. If you’re the kind of person who goes around and says that kind of stuff, you’re not the kind of person I want involved in our chapter. Not everyone is perfect, but if any homophobic comments arise in a meeting or on the Listserv, I can tell you right now that it’s quelled immediately.”

Also not welcome at Beta Theta Pi: stereotypical comments about sexist and homophobic “frat boys.” “It’s just patently offensive,” says Molldrem, who is gay. “Even using the words ‘frat boy’ together can connote a bias.”

Beta Theta Pi rush coordinator Will Zelenty

HAZING. When one GW sophomore pledged an off-campus fraternity last year, he was relieved that the hazing process did not involve the “grotesque display of homosexual actions and physical pain” he had heard rumors of back home in Alabama. But what the hazing lacked in homophobia, it made up for in Kentucky Gentleman.

The night he officially pledged the fraternity, the student and his pledge class assembled in the frat house. “A trash can was brought out and put into the middle of the floor, and we were told to stand around the trash can,” he says. “We were then asked to drop our pants, but to leave our underwear on,” he says. The light homoeroticism—and the trash can—proved red herrings for the main event. Once the pants were dropped, the student says, “a bottle of Kentucky Gentleman bourbon was introduced to the circle, opened, and passed around among the circle of pledges.

As the pledges drank, the brothers sang. “You would have to drink until they stopped singing,” he says. “The first time, it was not that bad—they didn’t sing for that long,” he says. “The second time, they sang for maybe 10 to 12 seconds—an extremely long time.” When the bottle was finished, the pledge pulled up his pants as a newly minted member of the fraternity. “Shortly after that, I blacked out,” he says.

The student awoke in Georgetown University hospital to learn that he had left the post-pledging party, entered another student’s dorm room, and urinated all over his possessions. The student called the University Police Department, which administered the pledge a breathalyzer test. He blew a .24.

All hazing activities—from “paddling” to “scaveneger hunts”—are banned on the GW campus, and many fraternities honor school rules. When GW frats do haze, the activities—low on the homoerotic domination, high on the blood alcohol content—comport with the campus’ progressive nature. When fraternity brothers don’t fear associations with homosexuality, they’re a lot less likely to turn their hangups into a good paddling. But chugging alcohol is universal. Stereotypically, “frat boys are thought of as sexist and homophobic, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really heard that at GW,” says Josh Brown, rush coordinator of Zeta Beta Tau. Brown, who doesn’t drink, says that even GW’s wildest frat parties involve only “drinking to prove yourself,” not “drinking to get a girl drunk.”

PARTYING. Todd Belok, a GW sophomore, was a member of the school’s Naval ROTC program when he decided to pledge Beta Theta Pi. Belok wanted to make sure his potential brothers “didn’t hate who I am,” so he casually informed a couple of brothers of his sexual orientation over the course of the pledge process. “I was taking a course with one of the brothers who happened to be in my class,” says Belok. “I asked if I could bring my boyfriend to [a fraternity] party, and he said that would be completely fine.” Later, inside the Beta Theta Pi house, another brother “pulled me over and told me it was totally OK, and they didn’t have a problem with it here.”

Beta Theta Pi brother Todd Belok

The fraternity house quickly became a safe haven for Belok. A few weeks later, Belok was again partying with his boyfriend in the Beta house when a couple of Belok’s fellow NROTC midshipmen saw the couple kissing and reported the infraction to their superiors. “I had seen the guys at the party, and I was a little bit concerned,” says Belok. “But I thought it was really wrong to keep on hiding.”

The incident, which led to Belok’s dismissal from NROTC under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” revealed a growing rift between two of the nation’s most masculine traditions—fraternity life, which embraced Belok’s sexual orientation, and military life, which rejected it. Belok’s dismissal hasn’t prompted Beta Theta Pi to take a more discriminating approach to its guest policy. “What are you going to do? Stop everyone at the door and ask them about their thoughts on various social subjects?” says Belok. But it has renewed the house’s commitment to its idea of fraternity culture. “A lot of the brothers were really angry that it happened,” says Belok. “And they were really angry that it happened here.”

Photos by Darrow Mongtomery

Tucker Max’s message board has launched a Photoshop competition for the best reimagined protest signs from the “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” protests. Creative Max devotees are working off images from the film tour’s photostream in order to ridicule students from the NC State women’s center, which staged a Raleigh protest of the film. Predictably, the submissions are sexist (above). Since this is a contest to ridicule people who care about rape, sexism is to be expected. So why are the submissions so racist?

You can view all of the submissions here. I agree with some of Max’s defenders that “Tucker Max culture” encourages a hatred of pretty much everyone—not just women, fat women, or black people, but also white men who Max considers douchey. I don’t agree, however, that it hates everyone equally.

Some of Max’s fans have championed his committment to women’s rights because he believes that “women should be able to make their own choices.” Yes—Max believes that women should be allowed to choose just as much crazy drunken sex as he does. Except that when those women choose that path, they are publicly embarrassed, reduced to the size of their vaginas, and literally vomited upon for doing so, while Tucker Max is held up as a hero (albeit a hero who admits, jokingly or not, to hate himself).

But at least thin, white, able-bodied women are allowed that one choice: They can choose not to have sex, and be ignored; or they can choose to have as much sex as they want, and be labeled a “whore”. As the Photoshop contest shows, fat women and black men and women aren’t afforded that privilege among Max’s fans: their size and race is reason enough to bring on the hate.

When I first learned of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ new “Save the Sea Kittens” ad campaign, I was confused—and not because re-branding one species of animal (fish) as another (kittens) doesn’t make any fucking sense. No, I was confused because PETA’s campaign just doesn’t seem overtly sexist enough! There are no Playboy models, lettuce bikinis, or shrink-wrapped naked ladies to objectify in this campaign—just some cute fish you can dress up in costumes in an attempt to humanize them.

I know. I was suspicious, too.

Thankfully, PETA supporters accustomed to sneaking a bit of lasciviousness into their animal rights advocacy can dress their cute fish in a variety of super sexy fish costumes. Ta-da:

This is my sexy sea-kitten, complete with string bikini, pageant tiara, fetish-y cat whiskers, and porno lips.

Your BDSM sea kitten can sport a pink studded collar, or opt for a more traditionally sexy ruffled tube top. The truly kinky sea-kitten, though, ties on a bonnet.

On the accessories side, choose from bloated sex-doll lips or a tray of kitty litter (if your sexy fish is into the whole scat thing).

Umm . . . for the sea-kitten into furries?

Of course, as we’ve seen from PETA’s other sexy ad campaigns, dressing up your spokesmodels in sexy outfits actually tends to dehumanize them instead of the other way around. Oh, well. At least it keeps dudes interested.

Aww, I miss the ’80s, when the media pumped a veritable sea of licentiousness into American ears through the radio waves instead of this half-assed T-Pain shit. Also: He’s talking about Prince, right?

Anyway, Georgetown University proved itself almost perfectly manly in the contest, with nine out of ten of the institution’s top staffers men. But a new report from campus blog Vox Populi reveals that—say it ain’t so!—the Man Madness tournament was perhaps less-than-thorough.

Vox Pop looked “beyond the top ten” to find that Georgetown’s leadership is actually surprisingly balanced, gender-wise.  Juliana Brint found that “women hold a majority of positions in the administration of the College, the SFS and the NHS, and also constitute a majority of academic department leaders in NHS and in the College’s humanities programs“—though the school’s science departments, administrators, and school of business are still male-heavy. Brint’s most intriguing finding concerned the contrast between the gender-make up of staffs managed by men versus staffs managed by women:

Interestingly, areas that are mostly female-run tend to be more equally divided, with between 48 and 37 percent of the positions filled by men; male-dominated areas are more polarized, with only 30 percent or less of the positions filled by women.

But don’t take my word for it—they’ve got graphs!

This week, I cornered people on the street, pushed a camera into their faces, and asked them if they’ve ever experienced sex discrimination in their lifetimes. Most of them had at least been called a “sissy” once. Above, D.C.’s men and women tell their tales of low-cut T-shirts, unwelcome sexual fantasy, and one too many Zoolander jokes.

Sexual discrimination in the office has come a long way. Once predictable—spurning male secretaries and sexually harassing female underlings—on-the-job sexism has since tackled more subtle arts, from cutting strategic holes in female bartenders’ uniforms to mocking the diet of male models. A recent hunt for sexism on the streets of D.C. revealed an evolution of sexism, from its golden age to its next frontier.

THE DISTANT PAST.

When Vernon Moore, 74, entered the workforce half a century ago, only women typed. “We, as young people, were told that women did clerical work,” says Moore. “I went to Cardozo Business High School, where they said that typing was for sissies.”

When Moore went out in search of a secretarial position, he found himself surrendering job opportunities to employees traditionally assigned to “sissy” work—women. When Moore did land a clerical job, he was pushed out of sight. “I was not put in an office, as an administrative aide would expect,” he says. “I was assigned to the shops. And in the shop section, you know, you’re basically right in the middle of the paint shop,” he says.

Even the backroom position proved too visible for a black man. “At the end of my year as a temporary employee, they let me go,” he says. “When I did go back [to the shops], there was a white female in that job. So it was definitely discrimination.”

THE RECENT PAST.

Mary Lou Walen, 68, can recall two instances of sexual harassment in her medical career. In the mid-’70s, Walen had been working at “a very large prestigious institution” for four-and-a-half months before the head of the pathology department thought she was ready for a private conference.

The doctor called her into his office at around 5:15, after the rest of the workplace had cleared out for the day. “He sat across from me at the desk and said, ‘First of all, I want you to know that what I’m going to say you’re not going to be able to repeat, because nobody will believe you—you’re a new employee, and I’m the head of the department.’” Walen repeats. “Then he said, ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. I have sex with my wife and I see your face. I think about you all the time.’ And then he propositioned me.” Walen thanked him and immediately left the office. “He didn’t bother me again,” Walen says, likely because she kept up her side of the deal: “I didn’t say anything.”

Years later, Walen experienced some harassment she couldn’t stand to keep quiet. “I got chased around the desk once,” she says. This time, the male higher-up who beckoned Walen into his office got a little bit more physical. “As soon as I got into the office, he said…‘I find you incredibly attractive’—or something like that—‘and I just can’t hold it back anymore,’” says Walen. “He came around the desk with his arms out to grab me and kiss me, and I just started running,” she says. “I said, ‘Doctor!…Don’t! Stop!’ He said, ‘No, I can’t!’”

This time, Walen talked: “I told the CEO. We just laughed,” she says. “There was nothing more to it.”

THE PRESENT.

Women in the booze-pouring profession experience so many advances from across the counter that they can become numbed to harassment from the back of the house. When asked if she’s ever experienced sex discrimination, Chantal, 26, is initially noncommittal. “I think so, but I can’t think of a specific example,” she says. Once she delves a bit in her employment history, however, the anecdotal evidence mounts. “I used to be a bartender,” she recalls.

At the bar, Chantal’s male manager often required some last-minute wardrobe changes for the female staffers. “He would cut my shirts—my T-shirts,” Chantal says, miming a pair of shears tearing into her chest area. Chantal’s girlfriend, Bre, chimes in to fill out the remainder of the uniform, which required no modification to achieve objectification. “You had to wear high heels and short skirts,” Bre reminds her. “Yeah,” Chantal says. “It was a requirement.”

At the bar, lucrative shifts were awarded to competent male employees—and flirtatious female ones. “For guys, it was the guys who could sell the most, the ones who were the good bartenders,” says Chantal. For women? “How much you flirt with the manager.”

THE FUTURE.

Once brazen sexual advances and modifying fellow employees’ clothes go out of style, workplace sexists may have to settle on more outlandish exercises—like ridiculing male models for eating cake. Jason Cooper, 23, and Rabon Hutcherson, 25, may very well be on the cutting edge of sexism. The male models are regularly subjected to the type of sex discrimination usually reserved for women.

There’s the wage gap: “It’s almost a female-driven industry, with the Heidi Klums and the Naomi Campbells,” says Hutcherson. “And in general they’re paid more—a lot more—than the male models.”

There’s the stereotyping: “When you’re a model, your goal is to sell something, whether it’s a product, a look, or a message,” says Cooper. “Most of those products are geared toward females.” Even products geared toward men—like alcohol and cigarettes—often require a female hire. “Sex sells,” says Hutcherson. That leaves Cooper and Hutcherson shilling for “the things that men are stereotypically better at,” says Cooper. In the advertising world, men are good for wearing suits, working out, and grilling.

And there’s the sex-based harassment: “All of my friends that don’t model or act have a real hard time dealing with it,” says Cooper. “It gets old. Dropping a Zoolander line is not funny,” says Cooper. “They’re not the first person to do it; I hear it all the time. If you’re going to be annoying about it, at least be funny and original.” Hutcherson says that ribbing from male friends can border on the obsessive. “If they see you eating a piece of cake, it’s like a news flash,” he says. “Oh he’s eating cake; let’s take a picture of this; what are you doing; you can’t eat that,” he says. “I still do eat cake.”

The would-be first Latina justice faced a committee with only two women members in order to get confirmed by a Senate with only 17 women for a seat on a court with only one woman. And yet Sotomayor had to prove that she wasn’t biased: “Men and women [are] equally capable of being wise and fair judges.”

Behold a common argument deployed by modern sexists:

1. Establish your concern for the women’s movement by admitting that things used to be pretty bad for chicks, back in the olden days when institutionalized sexism dictated that women couldn’t vote or hold jobs out of the home.

2. Your feminist prowress now established, assert that since women are now legally freed to pursue activities beyond babymakin’, all sexism has miraculously disappeared in the workplace, in inter-personal relationships, and in entertainment.

3. Declare anyone who says otherwise a sexist.

This sexist argument—that sexism used to exist, but no more—tends to collapse whenever vintage sexism rears its ugly head. Modern sexists, like moths drawn dangerously close to the flame, can’t help but defend the olde-tyme sexism. You know, the kind that was par for the course back when women couldn’t vote or work or take birth control or avoid being legally raped by their husbands.

I learned this lesson personally when I began posting the “Sexist History” feature, which mines the New York Times archives for the hilariously overt degradation of women in vintage journalism. Whether the vintage sexism is objectifying hordes of women, asserting that female ignorance is cute, or blatantly rejecting the idea of women’s suffrage, there is, without fail, at least one modern defender of the sexist NYT reporter, may he rest in peace.

Take this commenter’s response to a 1909 sports reporter’s rhapsodic, objectifying, and paragraphs-long detailing of all girls in the audience. It’s an account which has apparently aged well over the past 100 years:

How on earth is that sexist? I don’t see one comment that is disparaging of women. He’s simply admiring the abundance of women at the event, and his writing is actually fantastic, much better than most of the BS that’s out there today.

Or another commenter’s response to a 1900 New York Times piece which admonished female Cuban exchange students for taking too many sexual liberties in America, posted on IvyGate’s coverage of the story:

Heh. So now it’s sexist to notice pretty girls?

More vitriollic defenses of olde-tyme sexism can be found everywhere vintage sexism is on display. YouTube, of course, is an infamous repository of bigotry. Check out the commonts on this YouTube clip from the 1963 movie, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, which posed the question about the following dialogue: “The Most Sexist Line in Movie History?”

“The man who will love me on equal terms. That old saying, ‘behind every man is a woman’—that’s not for me. I want to stand right alongside. Is that asking too much?”

“Well, now I think you’re going to have to be satisfied with the vote right now,” TK responds. “I don’t think that will ever become a national movement.”

The modern sexism was swift and barely intelligible:

From MysteryManoLove:

You are DUMB, feminism has it’s good points as Nazi Germany did too, thonly parallel is that feminists are taking the rights away from every one. They arn’t making more “rights” anymore, it’s all privilige, affirmative action, Title ix education amendment, ect.

From LovelyYTRocks:

Women? Equal to man? Lololol. I remember in P.E., not so long ago: A 15-year-old girl needs to cover 3 kilometres in 16 minutes to receive 10/10. A 15-year-old boy needs to cover 3 kilometres in 12 minutes to receive 10/10. 0 girls has completed this task so far, and nearly all boys has completed this challenge (except the really fat ones).

From Nickyrinkydinky:

To Lowfuellevel and the rest of the whining sexist bitches.

1. My father is a HOUSE-HUSBAND and looks after my sisters and brothers WHILST going to work during the day time. On top of that MANY men i know DO have 2 jobs in order to support their families.

2. There is literally little/no sexism today. You complain just for the sake of it. Ive been brought up well by my mother and i respect women. Yet all i see is sexist comments from “feminists” nowdays.

Yahoo! Answers—and its fellow community-based advice sites—may be the most frustrating forum for even the most innocuous feminist sentiments. After user Lindseylillian asked other Yahoo! users for examples of sexism in film, the resounding response was: No films are sexist. Lindseylillian is the only one who is sexist:

Oh great another feminist taking pure entertainment and making it into something so complicated and offensive. You know what YOUR sexist, because nobody even thought of that before you, people all saw people, you saw woman being held back….you sexist.

I used to enjoy a good laugh at vintage sexism, partly because it demonstrated how far we’ve come. Now I know that while the films and newspapers may have aged, there’s nothing “vintage” about the sexist sentiment behind them.

Photo by late night movie

The Huffington Post has finally discovered the porthole through which its sexist entertainment content can jump off of the Entertainment page and onto more explicitly political verticals. What is this valuable new discovery which suddenly makes sexy naked women so politically relevant? It starts with a P, ends with an Eople For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and it has been pulling this liberal sexist bullshit for years.

Well, PETA and HuffPo are together at last, with two super-sexy animal protection stories making their way onto the site’s “Green” page this week. After the photo-accompanied “Lydia Guevarra, Che’s Daughter, Poses Semi-Nude for PETA” made a semi-nude splash in the Web site’s Popular Stories last week, HuffPo cashed in on the theme with the full slide-show: “The Sexiest PETA Ads of All Time.” Click on it for the environment!

To HuffPo—and PETA’s—credit, the collection of PETA’s notoriously naked ads includes its share of topless dudes alongside the unclothed women. But as the interactive poll feature demonstrates, Huffington Post readers are not so down with this nudity-for-all tactic.

Readers are allowed to rate each PETA rep’s naked ad on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 signifying “Rather have meat” and 10 “Pass the produce!” Here are the current rankings, from hottest to not-est:

Charlotte Ross 8
Alicia Silverstone 7.6
Annalise Braakensiek 7.6
Sophie Monk & Maggie Q 7
Dita Von Teese 6.9
Jenna Jameson 6.7
Pam Anderson 4.7
Kathy Najimy 3.7
Jamie Bamber 3.7
Two male models making out 3.4
Tommy Lee 2.2

Let’s take a look at the hierarchy here. The nine women on the list all score higher than the four men. The women lose points as they get closer to the porn spectrum, with the exception of Kathy Najimy, who is un-young and un-skinny enough to rank just above the men. At the bottom, we have the four guys: The dude from Battlestar Gallactica ranks above the overt display of male homosexuality, but the kissing guys still beat out the universally reviled Tommy Lee. In my opinion, Tommy Lee’s low-ranked bare chest alone is enough to debunk HuffPo’s “sometimes a nipple is just a nipple” theory. Nobody wants to see that shit.

The Huffington Post brushes off the idea that the female nudity focus on its Entertainment page has any impact on its progressive political cred. In passing off interactive nude slide-shows as environmentalism, however, HuffPo wades into explicitly political sexist territory. PETA paved the way here by exploiting women in the hopes of ending the exploitation of animals. HuffPo joins the fray not by presenting a counterpoint to PETA’s sexist tactics, but by reveling in it—asking its readers to rank the “hottest print promotions.”

I have to wonder if PETA’s T&A has ever convinced a soft-core porn enthusiast to stop eating beef. I bet the naked stuff is actually used more of a peace offering to the general public—they may be annoyed by PETA’s radical vegetarianism, but at least there are naked chicks.

But unlike PETA, the Huffington Post is not a one-issue newspaper. PETA objectifies women in order to save the lives of the poor, helpless bunny rabbits, but it never professed to care about women. HuffPo objectifies women in order to save its entire politically progressive business model. Why not pull a fast one on PETA and stick to objectifying wallabies instead?

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Huffington Post’s Vice President for Communications, Mario Ruiz, responded to my inquiry by copy-pasting Kurtz’ column into an e-mail, adding: “There’s nothing much we can add to what she already emailed Howie.”

Huffington to Kurtz:

Huffington dismisses this argument by e-mail, calling it “silly and highly limiting to assume that all progressives can’t wait to get to the orgy and all conservatives have a chastity belt in their drawer. . . . As the Washington City Paper’s blogger herself points out, we have a wide range of news and opinion on all our sections — including our Entertainment section.

“Looking for hidden political agendas in every article and every photo on HuffPost will lead to some very convoluted conclusions. As Freud said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’ — and a nipple slip is just a nipple slip.”

Huffington misses the point here. This isn’t about valuing promiscuity or chastity. It’s not about whether liberals or conservatives should or shouldn’t like sex. This is about objectifying women by reducing them to their nipples, which is, in my opinion, anti-feminist. And personally, I would hope that progressives would make very basic women’s issues like this a priority.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a woman is just a nipple.

UPDATE: Ruiz has written back with an expanded version of Huffington’s statement:

At The Huffington Post we feel that trying to analyze everything in life by looking through a right vs left political prism — including Entertainment and celebrity coverage — will lead to a very distorted view of the world. In fact, we feel that looking at politics in that tired way will lead to a distorted view of the world (compare Dick Cheney’s view on gay marriage to Barack Obama’s and get back to me about right vs left). It is silly and highly limiting to assume that all progressives can’t wait to get to the orgy and all conservatives have a chastity belt in their drawer. History has proven otherwise again and again and again.

[As you pointed out last week], we have a wide range of news and opinion on all our secctions — including our Entertainment section. Looking for hidden political agendas in every article and photo on HuffPost will lead to some very convoluted arguments. As Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” – and a nipple slip is just a nipple slip.

Right on, Siskind. I’m right with you on that one!

Let’s see what popular story HuffPo invites you to go clicky-clicky on right next to Siskind’s post:

Sexism on a liberal Web site is still sexism.

I have a confession to make: I love Dude Comedies. Any film where Two to Five Douchey Guys Shirk Their Societal Obligations to Embark on a Night They’ll Never Forget can probably coax ten bucks out of me. I’ll even watch the Dude Comedies where all female characters are relegated to the Fun-Hating-Wife or Slutty-Sex-Object category, as long as it allows for maximum high jinks. Superbad: Loved it! Old School: Great! 40 Year Old Virgin: Totally convinced me to overlook the whole chastity message! Talladega Nights: Watched it!

I understand these movies are literred with sexism and homophobia and penises; I am simply immune to it. My condition has become so severe that this is looking pretty good to me, honestly.

But no Dude Comedy can draw me in as douchily as the Judd Apatow Dude Comedy. I am powerless to it. I have a theory: Paul Rudd is often one of the dudes. But even a Clueless pedigree can’t justify my apparent obsession with man-children, marijuana-fueled Lord of the Rings fantasies, and underlying date-rape themes.

Help me.

In this week’s Sexist Beatdown, Sady of Tiger Beatdown tries. We laughed, we cried, we had a shmashmortion.

SADY: hello there lady. are you prepared – prepared, that is, to debate the fine points of dude comedy?

AMANDA: i can’t say i’m as prepared as you are, sady. but i am willing to confess: i believe that i enjoyed nearly all the films you profiled in your apatow series. when i saw them. in the theater.

SADY: yes, it’s true: apatow has become my great white whale. he is basically all i think about these days. i dream in Apatowvision. well: i enjoyed some of them too! (shhhhhh.) I enjoyed “Knocked Up” immensely, for example.

AMANDA: i CRIED at the end of knocked up. i was on a really bad date, which may have had something to do with it.

SADY: OH GOD. YOU SHARE MY TERRIBLE SECRET. i cried too. also, broke up with the dude i saw it with?

AMANDA: same. well i’m glad we’ve cleared the air.

Judd Apatow craftily inserted this song into the film’s end credits in order to make me cry.

SADY: yeah. my reactions to “knocked up” kind of define my relationship to the Apatow canon. I was totally digging Leslie Mann’s character – oh, that poor lady! She is totally at the end of her rope! – and then left the theater, and discussed it with people, and realized that YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE ROOTING FOR PAUL RUDD. In that particular sub-plot.

AMANDA: i think i had the same reaction as you did, honestly. i thought she was sympathetic, but totally pathetic. all of apatow’s male characters are pathetic, too, but they seem to ease out of that gracefully without having to think about it too much.

SADY: right – plus, they are pathetic in a totally fun way! they get to hang out and do bong hits and fart on each others’ pillows and such! so, by the end, where it’s like, “sadly, we realize that procreative monogamy with one of these strange ‘woman’ creatures is necessary to maturation” you kind of get their sadness at giving up the pillow farts and lightbub battles. whereas women are just grown-ass-adults by the time they hit puberty, apparently. or at least they’re scripted that way.

AMANDA: yeah, so the women are just haggard at the end. one thing your reviews always touch on are these coiteries of man-children that apatow scripts. and you mention the rejoinder from defenders of the movie that ‘you’re not supposed to LIKE or IDENTIFY with them.’ and i do think that you are supposed to like these characters, and even like them for (and not despite of) their date rape punch-lines. but they’re still in a context, i think, where they’re there to provide a contrast to the hero of the story. their douchiness must be overcome, basically.

SADY: yeah, exactly. they’re given such loving attention, and their little world of date-rape jokes and vague bromosocial lady-avoidance is presented as so much fun. so you forgive them for being immature in order to forgive your own immaturity, like, “well, my wife may be at home sobbing but i can’t help it! i’m a regular bro!” and then you get a Valuable Life Lesson that sticks for maybe ten to fifteen minutes.

AMANDA: … but they’re funny!

SADY: it’s true! sometimes they really really are! I subconsciously repeat Jonah Hill’s pronunciation of “abortion” as “shmushmortion” at least once a week! and then i realize it’s a joke about making a lady have an abortion because obviously her fetus is YOUR decision!

AMANDA: yeah. and apatow’s versions of women i cannot excuse. they are either bitches or whores. but caricatures of douchebags, even lovable ones, i cannot resist. see: paul rudd in wet hot american summer. i think it’s just possible to love the character and not the character if they were a real person / your boyfriend.

SADY: exactly. question: where the lady douchebags at? where are the stoned ladies that can’t get it together to have an actual apartment, and get jobs that require nothing of them because they’re afraid real jobs would be too much of a commitment, and pretend to be gandalf or some business when no-one’s looking? the ladies who would rather watch “the muppet show,” again, than do anything useful with their lives? WHERE ARE THOSE LADIES? Because I want movies about them! They exist! So I am told in a way that has nothing to do with my own personal life, at all.

AMANDA: i know, which is why I desperately want Apatow to write a movie for them. partly because i think his brain might explode, but also because i think it would be funny.

SADY: exactly. like, writing a movie about a lady that is not a sexy/stupid harlot or a knife-tongued scold would be fantastic. because the closest we’ve got to an Apatowomany character, right now, is Juno. I DON’T WANT JUNO.

AMANDA: sometimes i look at popular culture and i think of the female characters who have had abortions and i get really sad that like carrie bradshaw is the only one i can think of. but that’s a tangent.

SADY: yes, well, my forthcoming feature movie film, “50 First Abortions,” will be an exciting new direction for film, i think.

AMANDA: indeed. I think we should start a letter campaign that mirrors the request of Pixar to make a film with a heroine who is not a princess.

SADY: but, you know? i think that women have all the same maturity/commitment/not-being-an-idiot problems that these dudes have. PLUS, what with all the work we have to do to make our bodies presentable, there are many more occasions for gross jokes about our inherent schlubbiness. HUMOROUS BIKINI WAXING SCENE? I think so!

Today I thought I’d just cut to the chase and find out what ladies on the Internets think is sexist today. Modern sexism, reveal yourself!

* Gender Goggles reviews Yoko Ono’s feminist video project Cut Pieces, thinks jokes are sexist, but not as sexist as sexual assault: “You might argue that there is a world of difference between laughing at a sexist joke and committing mass sexual assault in Central Park, and while this is obviously true it’s also all of a piece. They are on the same continuum of subjugation of women.”

Also sexist, according to the Goggles: some newfangled “Ladder Theory” of relationships.

* Jezebel thinks Bukakke-esque advertising isn’t as sexy as it is sexist.

* Shakesville’s Melissa McEwan thinks cartoon e-mail forwards are sexist, except when they contain visual poo jokes: “we started emailing each other any dumbass forwards we got, especially ones with ‘hilarious; sexist jokes and cartoons, with intros like ‘This is the best email forward you’ll ever receive!’ We also send each other good email forwards, too, like the one I sent her of a guy wearing see-through plastic pants and crapping himself, which is a classic.”

* Tiger Beatdown thinks that maybe she herself is sexist, but also right, for writing this tirade about rom-coms:

I can hear your cries of shock and denial! But es one hundred percent verdad, ladies: people who watch—and consider themselves fans of—such high quality cinematic entertainments as “Runaway Bride,” “Maid in Manhattan,” and “The Wedding Planner” do, in fact, tend to have crappy relationships, due to the fact that they believe in “predestined love,” immediate commitment, and the idea that “if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them.”

Photo via trialsanderrors.

The Manliest Workplace in D.C. tournament is live! Over the next several weeks, the Sexist will be rating 64 D.C. organizations to find the manliest local workplace—the one that employs the most men, all the time, and in the highest positions. Who’s manlier—the National Cathedral or the Founding Church of Scientology? The Supreme Court or the U.S. Postal Service? Only the Sexist’s unsophisticated and highly arbitrary ranking system knows for sure.

Stay tuned with The Sexist as the tournament continues to see which workplaces are manly enough to ignore all those pesky cracks in the glass ceiling. Also stay tuned for Crack Watch!—where we tally the number of women we find creeping into the org. charts of D.C. institutions.

Think you know manly from mannish? Fill out a bracket by Monday, Oct. 20, to be submitted in our contest. The entrant with the bracket that most closely resembles the Sexist’s findings will win a City Paper prize pack!

Ask The Sexist “is this sexist?” and she will whisper back softly, “maybe.” Contact The Sexist with your queries.

Dear Sexist,

What is a woman to do when sexist decor appears in one’s office? My government office uses art “on loan” from the artists. When we moved into the office two years ago, a bizarre picture of fat, smirking, hairy men was placed between the office doors of two “high feminist” workers. Bad enough. But now a new picture has appeared in the reception lobby. It is placed directly over the head of the receptionist. It has a bright yellow background. The object in the picture looks like a bright blue tattooed penis. The original title, “Welcome,” had been crossed out and changed to “Lady of the Lake.” An unusual nickname for one’s penis.

Upon exiting the elevator and looking up, a common response is “Whoa!” I find that this oppression is hurting my productivity and that of my fellow workers. I believe a guerilla incursion is required. Your thoughts?

—A Reader

Dear Reader,

Is a man’s penis implicitly sexist? It is not. Are fat, smirking, hairy men implicitly sexist? They are not. Is the placement of a collection of fat smirking hairy man penis art in your feminist work environment sexist? Maybe.

Typically, I will defend the right of any individual or institution to display any piece of art, anywhere, regardless of the art’s quality, the artist’s pedigree, or  the patent offensiveness of its subject. Nevertheless, seeing as you work for the government, I’m sure you can find some way to have the artwork removed through official channels. Perhaps former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft can direct you to the proper series of forms through which you may file a complaint.

But consider this: While your office’s art collection is quite possibly sexist, it is most certainly hilarious. The absurdity of this situation must be exploited for as long as the penis remains on your walls. The office lurker who revised the name of your government-sanctioned tattooed penis has set the precedent for tomfoolery in this case. I suggest that you and your feminist cohorts brainstorm a host of ridiculous names for the penis. Daily, cross out the former name of the artwork and write in the new title. You might begin mildly, with “Bright Blue Tattooed Penis,” then proceed with increasingly ridiculous titles, many of which will invoke the names and personal habits of your supervisors. Soon, your office will have no choice but to replace the artwork with a shoddy O’Keefe knock-off.

—The Sexist