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.

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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!” »

The Sexist will be out for the holiday weekend tomorrow, so I leave you with last week’s greatest hits. What better way to celebrate America’s birthday than reading a bunch of random shit about sex on the Internet?

1. This Week in Sexist History: Girls, Girls, Girls Edition, an indulgence in olde-tyme sports writing. I say it’s sexist! Commenter says it isn’t! Steve Silver says it’s “interesting how it has to be explained to some readers 100 years later that an article published 100 years ago describing women purely as objects for men’s pleasure is sexist.”

2. Teen Sex Scandal!, in which I put the feminist linkbait-and-switch theory to work.

3. Big Penis Site Reveals Inches Before First Date, in which 7orbetter.com has more longevity than I gave it credit for.

4. Disney’s Closeted Gay Agenda, in which High School Musical debunks all theories about Disney promoting heterosexuality.

5. Sex Tips From Drunk People, in which I pledge to do more research in this area over the holiday, and I encourage you to do the same! E-mail your drunk sex insights to ahess@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Photo by Misserion

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” »

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 men weren’t helpless, girls were pretty enough not to need institutionalized power, and the Speaker of the House was a super-creep with a cigar fetish.

This Week In Sexist History:

Good Old Day: June 23, 1909

Dateline: Washington, D.C.

Keywords: Joseph Gurney Cannon; pretty girls; rolling a cigar reminisciently in one’s mouth; smiling indulgently; women’s suffrage.

Read More “This Week In Sexist History: Women’s Suffrage Edition” »