Hello, world. The illustrious Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I were all ready to administer another of our weekly smackdowns on a very important topic like pulling out, bitchy musicians, or Megan Fox’s fake boobies. But theeeeen, we both got the vapors in anticipation of the New Moon premiere!!!!! busy. So rest easy, people likely to piss us off—we’re calling a truce today. The cat-fighting will resume next week.

Photo by ansik, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Megan Fox, everyone’s least-favorite super-hot chick, gets the New York Times Magazine treatment this week. We all know Megan Fox as that hot sassy vixen who claims to be female-empowered (“I would eat Robert Pattinson”) as she poses in wet bikinis for men’s magazines. And we know that that combination, uh, usually doesn’t go over so well among feminists. But here’s where things get trippy, you guys: Like, is it all an act? And what does it all mean?

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Megan Fox’s Fake Boobies Find Their Voice” »

Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me”
Woman: Bitchy brunette cheerleader Taylor Swift
Other Woman: Geeky glasses-wearing Taylor Swift

Hey, ladies. It’s time for another edition of Sexist Beatdown. Up for discussion this morning are girls who hate on other girls when a man gets in the way, and then write pop songs about it. As always, your hosts are that bitchy, popular ho Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, and the adorably geeky woman of your dreams—me! Join us: We promise to pretend to be your friends while we try to fuck your boyfriend and ridicule your skanky dye job.

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Taylor Swift, Avril Lavigne, Jolene, and Music’s Other “Other Women”” »

Earlier this week, we looked at the popular fear of date rape drugs, and how that fear helps distract us from acquaintance rapes that involve willingly ingested substances, like beer. Beer, you say? In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I talk booze—the most common date-rape drug, the cause of a shit ton of other problems, and a pretty fun thing to drink, in moderation. After the jump: we bemoan the double standard of passing out, yearn for a consentalizer test, and check in on how our femininity is holding up—it’s tipsy, thanks for asking!

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Date Rape Drugs And A Couple of Beers” »

Say, ladies. A couple of economists—Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics—have unearthed a most satisfying and lucrative career option for us all: Prostitution! There’s only one problem: even though our two Steves are really brilliant economists, they just can’t figure out why most of us women don’t want to have sex for tons and tons of money. Why aren’t more women successful prostitutes?, Levitt and Dubner ask. Is it because:

a) They don’t like sex;
b) They hate men;
c) They’re kind of dumb;
d) All of the above.

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn’t Steven Levitt Suck Dick For a Living?” »

Was Kater Gordon fired following a gay lawnmower pee accident?

Last week, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner fired Emmy-winning writer Kater Gordon. The week before that, Late Night comedian David Letterman admitted to having sexual affairs with women on his staff. The week before that, film director Roman Polanski was finally detained after raping the 13-year-old model he had hired for a Vogue shoot. What do these incidents have in common? If you said “probably nothing,” you would be wrong!

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Mad Men, Child Rape, and the Problem With Sex Speculation” »

“Ill tell you what the backlash is: You were old enough to know better.”

MacKenzie Phillips, daughter of Mamas & the Papas scribe John Phillips, star of One Day at a Time, daughter of Alexandria, Va., appeared on Oprah this week to tell the world that her father raped her for a decade.

Let’s see how Wikipedia treats such a revelation, on MacKenzie Phillips’ page: “According to an article in People magazine, she alleges in the book that at the age of 19, on the night before her first wedding, she ‘woke up that night from a blackout to find [herself] having sex with [her] own father’; both reportedly were under the influence of drugs at the time. Afterwards an incestuous relationship developed, lasting ten years.”

And in John Phillips’ Wikipedia page: “In September 2009, John’s daughter Mackenzie Phillips alleged in a new memoir, High on Arrival, that she and her father had a consentual ten-year incestuous relationship. She stated that the relationship began when she was 19 years old in 1979, after Philips raped her while they were both under the influence of heavy narcotics on the eve of her first marriage.”

Woah woah woah! Did you see how they just dropped that “consensual” in there?

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: “Consensual Incest” And John Phillips Fanboys Edition” »

It’s a question every woman must ask herself when she comes in contact with a Sexist Douche: Will she endure his douchery, or will she conquer it? In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady of Tiger Beatdown joins me to discuss various coping strategies in a world littered with sexist douches.

Categories of douche discussed: Douches Who Explain Things To You; Douches Who Steal Your Ideas; Douches Who Assume the Woman Who Claimed Her Husband Was Trying to Kill Her Was Just A Crazy Liar; Douches Who Stalk You When You Don’t Show Them Your Tits; Douches Who Build Careers On Cartoon Rape Jokes.

But first, a douche coping primer:

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Coping With Douches Edition” »

Not the kind of people you want sitting in on your rape trial.

“No means yes”: It’s not just for Yale frat guys, celebrity defense attorneys, and the citizens of opposite land. Nope, that line of reasoning is also a pretty common one among old, privileged ladies, and other groups you may expect to find sitting on the jury of your rape trial!

Last month, Dan Kahan of Yale University Law School released a study examining the cultural factors at play in popular reactions to rape cases. Kahan’s research question was straightforward: If a person voices “repeated verbal objections” to a sex act, is it rape?

In other words, who among us thinks that “no” really means “no,” and who thinks that “no” is just a handy excuse for loose women? As it turns out, knowing that “no” means “no” has little to do with your gender, and a lot to do with what you think about gender.

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: “No” Means “Yes” Not Just For Frat Dudes Anymore” »

So … ejaculation. It turns out that where you do it can greatly affect a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant. Like: If you ejaculate straight up into her vagina, she’s more likely to become pregnant; if you ejaculate into a condom or anywhere else in the world, she’s less likely to conceive. Every 16-year-old boy knows this to be true, and now those 16-year-old boys have grown up to become the Guttmacher Institute’s Lead Pulling-Out Researcher, Rachel K. Jones. Jones published her findings in the June issue of Contraception magazine [via NYT]:

“If the male partner withdraws before ejaculation every time a couple has vaginal intercourse, about 4 percent of couples will become pregnant over the course of a year,” the authors write.

For condoms, used optimally, the rate is about 2 percent. But more significant, the authors say, are the rates for “typical use,” because people can’t be expected to use any contraception method perfectly every time. Typical use of withdrawal leads to pregnancy 18 percent of the time, they write; for typical use of condoms 17 percent of the time.

Hey, that’s information that helps us become better informed about our sex lives. Great, right? No. IT’S BAD, says the Daily Beast’s Tracy Quan, who calls the study’s results “folk wisdom” with a lack of “supporting evidence” and infers that the Guttmacher Institute is no longer “sane” for publishing this no good very bad information. Why? Because withdrawal is “caddish,” “insulting,” and it’s FOR BOYS, NOT GIRLS. And we all know we can’t trust boys to do anything. What else can’t we trust? Science, for one! And while we’re at it: We can’t trust grown women in mutually monogamous relationships to make this choice for themselves, either, even though it’s free, accessible, and feels better than a condom. THERE I SAID IT.

But enough about ejaculating outside of vaginas. Oh, wait, no: It’s time for Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I to discuss ejaculating outside of vaginas some more! Join us!

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Wherever to Ejaculate? Edition” »