In this Bloggingheads conversation between BeliefNet’s Steven Waldman and Slate’s William Saletan, two dudes demonstrate why two dudes should not film themselves talking off-the-cuff about abortion for an hour. They call the segment “Two Men, No Uteruses.” Waldman and Saletan putting their headsets together to figure out how to convince women not to be so aborty? I call it torture.

Broadsheet’s Amy Benfer sums up the low point of the dialogue, which begins around the 26-minute mark:

The topic, once again, is abortion reduction, a topic dear to both men’s hearts. This time, Waldman brings it back to wondering why women with an unplanned pregnancy aren’t cool with adoption. He starts off with a very good point: Most adoption policy focuses on incentives to adoptive couples, while virtually ignoring the women who will actually be carrying those children to term. He concedes that, “It’s an awfully big thing to ask the mother to carry a baby to term so that someone else can raise it.” Yep, glad we can all agree on that. But then he veers into outright lunacy. “I know this dangerous territory,” he says, “but I’ll just throw it out there.” OK, Steve, just throw it out there.

Waldman’s modest proposal goes like this: “Someone is three months pregnant, we say, ‘Just go another six months.’” Right. Just go ahead and go through that whole thing called pregnancy, with that thing called childbirth at the end. Hey, you can’t even get an associate degree in six months! Why not spend that time incubating another person’s child as a womb-for-rent? But, he acknowledges, there are problems: “You might have to drop out of school, drop out of a job, as well as taking a huge health risk.”

. . . And how much does he think that woman’s time is worth? “Maybe we should pay her, say, a thousand dollars. I don’t know what the right number is, because you don’t want to create a financial incentive for babies.” Because that would be baby-selling. Also, if we learned anything from the Reagan years, it’s that poor women will pop out children for cash given any opportunity. (Even if that incentive works out to a little more than $100 per month of pregnancy.)

This is too much, it seems, even for Saletan, who seems floored. (And for the record, though I’ve disagreed with him in the past, in this instance, he doesn’t really deserve to get tarred for Waldman’s display of pure idiocy). He points out, rightly, that Waldman’s proposal isn’t so far off from a kind of “national surrogacy policy.” But then he says, “It feels a little bit icky to me.”

Waldman agrees, “As the words are coming out of my mouth, they taste a little funny.”

Watching conversations like this probably won’t dissuade any women from choosing abortion. But it might just help those women realize that the people who claim to care most about what comes out of your uterus have no fucking idea what’s going on in there before the thing pops out.

One woman recalls her post-20 week abortion:

The baby had contracted a virus and you could see on the MRI that its organs were all messed up. It looked like there were bubbles in them, instead of solid masses like they were supposed to be. Then they figured out that the baby had been exposed to Fifth disease. All sorts of researchers contacted us, because they wanted to study it.

That was at about 20 weeks. I got a blood transfusion and I thought everything was cool. We went on vacation. But then we came back, and the doctor realized everything wasn’t cool. His brain had a hemorrhage. The MRI reminded me of my other son’s. He’s autistic, and when he was three he’d had an MRI that also showed abnormalities. At a minimum, they said the baby would have developmental delays. But the doctor also used the words: “This child could not make it into childhood.” I was six months along then, and I was already showing. But we couldn’t handle having another special needs kid. Psychically, we just couldn’t handle it.

. . . I cry all the time, and that will be for the rest of my life. Because I really, really wanted that baby.

And from another patient of Dr. Tiller’s

In July 1993, my husband and I received the worst news about our son’s impending birth: He suffered from multiple, severe fetal anomalies, both internal and external, thought to be the result of a rare blood disorder. If he could survive his early birth at 24 weeks he most likely would not survive his blood cancer beyond the age of 9.

. . . While still reeling from the shock, we were told we could take our chances and let the baby be born, but that the state would be forced to intervene if we did not then take every measure to keep our son alive. Or, we could consider two late-term abortion clinics—one in Wichita, Kan., the other in Holland! Our initial thoughts were “how could we be in a major NYC hospital in the United States and be told these are our only choices?” To say it was surreal is an understatement.

Feminism: Oooooooooover it.

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady of Tiger Beatdown and myself of the Sexist talk of DoubleX, Slate’s new online magazine for women—it’s just like us, except we’re the problem! Also, people who don’t report their own rapes. It is mostly them (and not, saaaay, rapists) who are the problem.

Oh, problems. They create so many pageviews, which, in turn, solve our main problem ($$$). I think it’s about time for Sady and I to CASH IN: What’s the problem with DoubleX, anyway?

SADY: hello! are you ready to speak? or are you too busy KILLING FEMINISM?

AMANDA: i actually just thew up a blog post, which, as you shall see, is what i actually think is “killing” “feminism.” let me start with the Bust quote on DoubleX’s dead feminism obsession, though: “We don’t know about you, but we’re disappointed. (And we also need to figure out the best way to fight off this new undead feminism before it eats our brains.)”

SADY: yeah. I mean: any new publication that focuses on lady issues is exciting! And, Katha Pollitt! Latoya Peterson! That is super exciting!

AMANDA: did you follow XX Factor religiously (or, subscribed to the RSS) like i did?

SADY: Yes, I did! Every single day! So this new DoubleX thing, with its lead off of

7 reasons why feminism is boring/stupid/dead/anti-feminist” is kind of puzzling to me. the quote of the day on the first day was about hating feminism!

AMANDA: … april … fools

SADY: fortunately, today, it is about how dolphins are rapist babykillers. which is a slightly less controversial opinion. FUCKING DOLPHINS, man. they think they’re SO GREAT.

AMANDA: it’s just kind of bizarre, i think maybe the “conversation” format which worked so well for the blog hasn’t really panned out as a “magazine” yet

SADY: yeah, exactly. on XX factor you got to see people talking back and forth, which was exciting! this time around, it’s just weird and hard to navigate, because you don’t know who’s saying what or if anyone has yet spoken up to disagree with them.

AMANDA: yeah. did you read breslin’s piece about how DoubleX is an entity “beyond” feminism after its death? her point is, basically, “let’s shut up and just do it.” But isn’t the point of writing in general to “not do anything and just talk about it”? or more positively, “do something BY talking about it”?

SADY: oh, susannah. i’m happy that she writes in-depth stuff about porn and all, and i like what she writes, but every once in a while she’s just like “feminism! I hate it! I ran it over with my truck! Now it is dead! You are all victims!” And it’s just like, huh. I like your reading of it, though. That makes more sense than mine. And, you’/Susannah are right, it does make more sense for folks of this generation to LIVE their feminism, given that we have more opportunities to do that than elsewhere.

AMANDA: i don’t mind the “death of feminism” so much—hell, i’ve written a eulogy for feminism before, mostly because it’s kind of fun and pretty easy—but the way it’s weirdly tied in with rape victims is unsettling.

SADY: yeah, and that “Jezebel is hurting women” piece – it made no sense at all, or rather, made sense on a level I really can’t get down with, which was: (a) Megan Carpentier has taken exception to my stuff before, so I will write about how she is a bad rape survivor who makes ladies get raped, or something, and (b) what is a way to get traffic for our feminist blog? Attack another feminist blog in a way that is certain to cause controversy!

AMANDA: rape + Jezebel = $$$$$$$$

SADY: it’s odd. i am the first lady in the world to say that feminist (or “post-feminist,” whatevs) disagreements are enlightening and good and awesome. HOWEVER. It seems weird to me to lead off your (initially marketed as feminist) site with all of this stuff that is, basically, contrarian for the sake of contrarianism.

AMANDA: and i think that’s a problem that affects the blog/commentary world in general: what’s around, and how can we be different—let’s find something to criticize about something else. i do it all the time, you do it all the time — we just choose different targets. and if they think feminism is boring, i think that’s okay! but it’s more interesting than talking about why feminism is boring. i’d rather they talked about the dolphins.

SADY: RIGHT? we have got to end this mindless social acceptance of dolphins. and, you know, it’s fun to make fun, or to criticize, and sometimes it’s easier to define yourself in opposition to something else. like, “see, this is what I DON’T believe, so now I can talk about what i DO.”

AMANDA: i think they should have gone meta and asked their contributors what the problem is with DoubleX instead of what the problem is with “feminism”

SADY: yeah. and, you know, probably all of this “AUGGGH DOUBLE X LAUNCH” is going to open up conversations that we can use. at some point. i have a story with a moral about snarky blogging. can i tell you my story?

AMANDA: yes.

SADY: okay. so, a million years ago, when i was a tiny little blog person with a blog that was read by 3.5 people in the whole world, i wrote a very snarky post about john devore from the frisky. and this morning, when i opened my e-mail, there was a message! from john devore of the frisky! telling me he liked my blog! and i was like, “ha ha, um… THANKS?!?!” but the moral of the story is that this dude i wrote a cranky post to make fun of turned out to be a totally reasonable dude who writes very nice e-mails. and this established for me some of the things that you DON’T know when you sit down to write a weinery post about somebody else on the Internet. and, yeah, i like the fact that double x is committed to writing stuff that can be snarky (MUST STOP WRITING THIS WORD) or harsh or controversial. still. maybe peeing all over feminism’s bloody corpse is not the best tactic, given the fact that the people who are going to read your new lady blog are likely to be… you know. feminist, and stuff.

AMANDA: definitely. and maybe we should think about why it’s almost a guarantee that people who write mean blogs also write really nice emails. ALWAYS TRUE. So i usually just write the blog stuff off as a big game that we’re all trying to win, but isn’t personal—but that gets complicated when you write about personal stuff (rape experience) and a writer takes that personal life (not reporting your rape) and turns it into snarky commentary. in short, bloggers are people too. people who need pageviews.

SADY: ha. yes, we do. which is why my latest story, “How Linda Hirshman Is Hurting Women, and Me Specifically, Because She Made Dolphins Give Me an Abortion” is going to be SOLID INTERNET GOLD.

… But thats not all! DoubleX is doing even more to encourage you to fill out a comment form. In an e-mail last month, the magazine’s editors informed loyal readers that they’re “going to start having cocktail meetups and other fun events for our core commenters in New York and D.C.”

So if having your voice heard ain’t enough—drink specials?

Holy shit, China. How did you manage to lose all these little girls?! Prepare to send out the biggest fucking Amber alert of all time!

Oh wait, this is Saletan we’re talking about—the reluctant pro-choice columnist of our time. That unbelievable lede that refers to real humans is actually about fetuses, right?

Yeah, yeah: We found ‘em. Those sixteen million “girls” were actually, Saletan figures, fetuses terminated by Chinese parents who are only allowed one kid, but can have as many sex-specific abortions as they want. Don’t get me wrong—I think it’s terrible that some parents, in all cultures, still value boys over girls. But the distinction between “girls” and “aborted fetuses” is an important one.

If Saletan wants to frame the question around live humans, he could just as easily have asserted that “there are too many actual human boys in China,” since it’s the sex disparity that’s ultimately causing the country problems. That’s a lot different than what he did say, which is, essentially: “There are too many female ghost fetuses in China.” The construction not only dips into far-right pro-life rhetoric—counting the number of “murdered” children that could be our friends and neighbors today—it isn’t totally accurate, either. After all, Chinese girls “disappear” through adoption, too. Boys go missing, too: Even without sex-selective abortion, the one-child-only rule will still necessitate the procedure.

Post-lede, Saletan’s piece actually handles the intricacies of China’s one-child policy, sex-selective abortion, and the boy surplus admirably. Saletan even rejoices in the fact that China has recognized that it is in the country’s own self-interest to limit sexist abortion—though Saletan still “wishes this turnaround were being driven by a better motive.”

As I argued in last month’s Saletan-flavored Sexist Beatdown, I find Saletan’s forays into the fringes of the abortion debate interesting—I just wish we didn’t always have to endure the dreaded “Saletan Curveball” in order to get to the good stuff.

Why do women stay in abusive relationships? That’s the question Slate’s Linda Hirshman poses in her review of the new abuse memoir Crazy Love. Hirshman thinks the question is a “terribly important one” to ask women, and that it is a “mark of respect” to do so.

And yet, Hirshman’s question remains a rhetorical in her review of Leslie Morgan Steiner’s book—because Hirshman never attempts to answer it. She writes:

In the press kit for Crazy Love, Steiner says it’s easy to see why she married someone who choked her on a regular basis. She was, she says, “kind, insecure and desperate for intimacy. … It is not difficult to understand why anyone … could become trapped in an intimate manipulative relationship.”

. . . Steiner is wrong: It is difficult to understand why she stayed in this awful relationship, given that she was not risking starvation and had no children with her abuser.

Hirshman’s theory isn’t an attempt at understanding why a woman would stay. In fact, Hirshman argues, it is that very attempt at understanding that is to blame for the perpetuation of abusive relationships. Hirshman calls this “the soft bigotry of low feminism”—when we try to understand why women stay with their abusers, we stop focusing on empowering women to get out.

Hirshman has a point here. Women are not helpless. They have agency. They can make choices. There are escape routes from abusive relationships, and women can take them. Acknowledging this is not the same as blaming the victim—-it is, however, often the only way to make the abuse stop.

But listen to how Hirshman now rephrases the question. It’s not “Why do women stay in abusive relationships?”—it’s “Why do women’s self-destructive fantasies drown out the warnings that years of old-style feminism have alerted us to?”

Yep, after ticking off the only reasons Hirshman deems rational for staying—it’s not money, and it’s not kids—she decides to rationalize it for herself in perhaps the most offensive way possible:

The victim stays with the abuser because she likes it! She is living out her fantasy. What’s more, she just doesn’t listen to those who know better—why, old feminists, of course. What a crazy, stupid victim.

It’s telling that Hirshman points only to physical reasons for staying with an abuser (money and children), because throughout, she fails to address that abusive relationships are rarely solely physical affairs. She doesn’t mention that abusers employ emotional manipulation and social pressure deliberately and constantly to make sure their victims don’t leave. Instead, she points to an 11-year-old girl “who got wind of her impending genital circumcision and walked 25 miles through the Kenyan bush at night to reach a Girls Rescue Center”—a daring physical escape, to be sure.

The escape routes for emotional and psychological abuse are often more difficult to discern. And when you fail to address that, asking a woman why she stays in an abusive relationship isn’t a “mark of respect”—it’s a mark of condescension.

So, Hirshman reads a book intimately detailing Leslie Morgan Steiner’s four-year abusive relationship, puts it down, and writes an essay asking, “What was this woman thinking?” I haven’t read Crazy Love, but I assume that’s the point—understanding the victim’s perspective. Why don’t we listen to her?

Welcome back to “Sexist Beatdown,” the weekly event wherein Sady, of New York ladyblog “Tiger Beatdown,” and myself, of D.C. ladyblog “The Sexist” carry on evolved conversation on such topics as abnormal boners. This week, we discuss William Saletan, the Slate contributor obsessed with what Sady and I have, but what he does not: wombs (and the fetuses that sometimes develop in them).

Saletan is the king of the Ethical Ladypart Curveball, searching out freaky weird situations involving reproductive rights, in order to blow his fucking mind and encourage him to completely rethink the ethical rules involving abortion. Observe:

“If you stop paying a surrogate mother, what happens to the fetus?”

“Would you abort a fetus just because it wasn’t yours?”

Hey, we’re cool with “lady’s choice.” Not Saletan—it can never be that easy for Saletan. Is this awesome, or awesomely offensive? We decide, after the jump.

SADY: good morning! are you ready for SALETAN?

AMANDA: rarely am i afforded the pleasure of discussing a topic of such immediate ethical consequence!

SADY: indeed! i have now read the preface to SALETAN’s book! on! abortion! It is entitled “Bearing Right,” and it is about how conservatives have “won” the “abortion war” by changing the terms in which we talk about it, by, for example, not making it about a person’s right to choose what happens in her own body. i have also read several columns by saletan in which he refuses to frame abortion as a question of a person’s right to control what happens in her own body! so, he’s learned well, one supposes.

AMANDA: and this, i suppose, is why saletan continually frames the abortion debate around pregnancies that do not happen inside a woman’s body, but rather inside … another woman’s body.

SADY: exactly, or the IVF thing, which he hammers on constantly. he keeps talking about how, in the course of IVF, non-viable or extra embryos are produced and discarded. selecting embryos really pushes his buttons.

AMANDA: yes, i think it’s very problematic. he thinks that when a pre-baby is in a petrie dish, it is therefore out of the realm of concern for a woman’s body. but, look, it’s got to go in some woman’s body sometime. if saletan wants to implant all the frozen embryos in the world into his body to try to nurture them into little league, he’s free to do so. BUT i am here to defend saletan!

SADY: oh ho! an unexpected position! what, pray tell, is your defense? i am probably way too hard on him, i will tell you that much for free. i mean, a lot of his positions – contraception being the best way to avoid abortion, for example – are completely sensible. however, i feel he pushes for some weird policy of shaming people to make them better. even in a 100% perfect educated world, people will miss a pill or get drunk and forget their condoms. it’s not great, but it happens.

AMANDA: i think my only defense is a journalistic one. yeah. i dont think saletan and i agree on abortion, but i do share his interest in the fringe cases. the construction of his that you make fun of, an introduction, followed by a crazy ethical question like, “but, would you abort your medically unsafe pregnancy if there were a one percent chance your baby was the son of god?” i mean, i kind of LOVE those. i’m sure you take some sort of sick pleasure in them also

SADY: yes, it’s true, the Saletan Curveball is strong.

AMANDA: but the point i guess is that these very uncommon cases that may never actually happen are where all the interesting debate comes in. i do often disagree with the results he draws from them though. the one where the women aborted the fetus that was possibly not hers—saletan basically says she and the biological mom should talk it out. like he’s advising women who may go through this in the future—essentially, no one

SADY: exactly. i guess one of my main issues with the way he constructs these incredibly rare and weird scenarios is that i feel manipulated, as a reader. the second person that recurs – what if YOU, dear Reader, had YOUR fetus implanted in another lady’s uterus? what if YOU loved YOUR fetus? wouldn’t YOU be sad? – just sort of (a) runs right over these individual people and their individual perspectives, and (b) doesn’t seek to allow you any empathy or identification with anyone else in the story. i feel like he’s trying to back me into a corner, whereas, having a uterus, i could be either lady in some ridiculous implausible scenario. but i’m not either one! and i don’t know their positions in the matter, because saletan doesn’t tell me!

AMANDA: yeah. he essentially says that the person who cares more about fetuses should be able to make the decision

SADY: i say we do it biblically. cut that fetus in half! this is my King Solomon jurisprudence.

AMANDA: and in his mind, a woman who pays 100,000 for a surrogate womb cares about her fetus. the woman raking in the cash is just punching the clock. i looked at where the money goes, when you pay a company to find you a surrogate womb. one interesting tidbit: you have to pay the woman carrying the fetus $2,000 if you choose to abort it

SADY: oh, yowza.

AMANDA: so the assumption is that the bother or emotional stress of having to become pregnant and then abort it is worth 2,000 dollars. i say, if those women have to spend more than that on their pregnancies of these alien fetuses, that is when they are clear to abort without saletan’s concern. think about it—their abortion grief is established to be worth only 2,000 bucks to the people who donated the embryo. spending more than that on not aborting the baby is charity, in my opinion. i wish saletan would get even deeper into his arguments, is what i’m saying. the columns are just too short. i need more what ifs!!

SADY: exactly, yet when he raised the issue of surrogates terminating the pregnancies due to lack of funds, he POSTED A DUDE’S CONTACT INFORMATION so that people could contact him to stop it. without checking with the dude to see whether any surrogates actually sought to do so! and my understanding is, one did, then changed her mind, so there are Zero Aborting Broke Surrogates in the picture. yet that dude got a whole lot of e-mails, unexpectedly, probably some from 100% certified crazy-pantses. and saletan didn’t check on this? he has the dude’s contact information! yet did not use it!this is what i mean when i say that he has no concern for the people in the picture.

AMANDA: yeah, and he did then say—well, i mean, these women are working for free and they deserve the money anyway. but why is this different from any other sort of breach of contract? you get the money LATER, in court. not from saletan.

SADY: hah, yeah, maybe he should just set up a paypal link on the page!

AMANDA: i guess he feels like the “pregnancy” and the “women” are so delicate that they need the money now, or a terrible ethical situation will rise again. but i applaud saletan for bringing all this weird lady part shit to my attention, because i think it’s fascinating

SADY: oh, yeah, and i agree with you. more complexity = longer columns = better saletan. MORE SALETAN, is what we need! and, yes, i would never have learned as much as i have about weird pregnancy issues without him. so: thanks, guy.

AMANDA: i have a lot of unanswered questions. for example: if the woman implanted with the other lady’s embryo did not abort the fetus would saletan ask her to give the baby to the other woman? or does she get to keep it? this could possibly be MORE traumatic for the other woman.

SADY: well, considering that he referred to it as THAT LADY’s baby throughout, and talked about how she might never get another chance, i think he’s asking her to be a surrogate.

AMANDA: shit, i would keep it. the one thing that i have to ask, personally, about all this stuff is: why is this even happening? the lengths people will go. just buy one! i think it’s cheaper

SADY: exactly! i have an ethical question: is it wrong for me to sell my babies on the black market? what if they’re REALLY CUTE? but, yeah, for all the every-sperm-is-sacred thing we’re hearing, adoption never even enters the picture.

AMANDA: yeah. every sperm and egg are sacred, as long as they are mine. the other ones you have to birth, too, i just don’t have any insight into what the hell you do with them once they’re not fetuses anymore

SADY: well, you know. at that point the ETHICAL QUANDARIES become far less fascinating, i suppose.

AMANDA: yeah, then it’s just kind of a bummer

SADY: until the ex-fetus grows up, and becomes a lady, and somehow gets pregnant with a toaster! how did THAT get in there? what do we do with the embryonic toasters? don’t they deserve a chance to toast? i guess what i am saying is, there are many odd fringe cases left unexplored.

AMANDA: yeah, but the point is, we already have a mechanism by which to deal with those. the woman decides, the end. but saletan can certainly write an overture to her which she may or may not consider. what i want to know is—how do i get saletan to set up a paypal account for me? i’m currently not considering aborting anything

SADY: hah, yeah, we were all once fetuses. we deserve the right to live, and in my case, cable, which i can’t afford. how do i get saletan to extend his noble efforts to my cable bill?

AMANDA: what about the fetuses without cable?

SADY: um, can they download stuff from itunes, maybe?

AMANDA: kids, they can do anything

SADY: just don’t put an iphone in there, or your fetus will sext!

AMANDA: by william saletan

In his Slate column this week, William Saletan discussed what happens when biological parents stop paying the surrogates who are carrying their fetuses. SurroGenesis is a California surrogacy service that sets up infertile couples with willing replacement mamas, and facilitates payments between the two parties—well, it used to. It recently announced that its bank account is empty, along with $2 million in payments infertile families had intended for the keepers of their growing fetuses. Dozens of women currently undergoing the arduous and expensive task of carrying another couple’s child are now left without a paycheck.

How much is the going rate for a womb rental, anyway? Check out SurroGenesis’ surrogacy fees—including $2,000 for “termination” (not guaranteed) and $5,000 for “Loss of Reproductive Organs (very rare)”—after the jump.

Surrogates Compensation Fee (Experienced Surrogates may require a higher fee): $18,000 and up

Multiples Fee (Payable at 13 weeks of gestation): $5,000

Legal Fees: $5,000 approx.

Psychological Profile Fees: $500 approx.

Maternity Clothing: $750

Mileage reimbursed at 50.5 cents per mile when using personal vehicle

Invasive Procedures Including but not limited to: amniocentesis, cerclage, CVS, DNC, FUS: $500 approx.

Transfer fee (for gestational surrogates only): $750

Insemination fee (for traditional surrogates only):$500

Selective Reduction*: $2,000

Termination**: $2,000

C-Section: $1,500

Canceled cycle fee: $350

Mock cycle fee: $350

Bedrest weekly cap (covering childcare, housekeeping etal): $375 – $1000

Housekeeping (if *NOT* collecting bedrest monies): $120 per month

Loss of Reproductive Organs (very rare): $5,000

Lost wages per surrogate’s paystub/paycheck not paid for by disability insurance: per paycheck stub

Lost wages for surrogate spouse or partner limited to 8 days of a given pregnancy process: per paycheck stub

Medical insurance monthly: Actual cost

Life insurance face value $300,000: $400/yr approx.

Nutritional counseling professional charges (if recommended by ob/gyn): Actual cost

Agency fee for Surrogacy: $12,000

International client surcharge: $1,000

* Please note that not all surrogates will agree to do selective reduction
** Please note not all surrogates will agree to termination

The above is a list of surrogacy fee. This does not include costs associated with IVF, IUI or AI for surrogate.

Photo by davhor.

This week, Slate’s Ad Report Card attempted to explain the unexplainable: The commercial for the “6 Hour Power” energy drink, which ad-grader Seth Stevenson suggests is possibly “the most sexually explicit ad ever.”

Watch the commercial here, please.

After counting down 6 Hour Power’s explicit ways (”You rarely see skirts this short or cleavage this prominent outside the confines of soft-core porn”; “At the height of his excitement, leaning back in his chair, the boss flips his necktie over his shoulder”), Stevenson lights on a more pressing concern: This ad does not make any fucking sense:

Presumably the kinetic, desk-shaking segment is a metaphor for the energy boost taking hold. But by the time the guy at last stands up and says he’s “ready,” he looks completely spent. Drained. Post-coital, if you will. To me, the arc of arousal and then satisfaction suggests the sluggish stupor that might arrive when the energy shot’s effects have worn off. Didn’t the announcer specifically tell us there’s “no crash”? Seems like a confused message. . . . Still, the ad works.

The ad doesn’t work, and here’s why: It refuses to work its sexual imagery into a visual double entendre for the product it’s selling. The point of super-sexual ads such as this one is to make the viewer think they know what’s going on—explicit office sex!—but then reveal it’s actually completely innocent—consuming awesome 6 Hour Power! But the boss in the commercial couldn’t possibly be shaking from his consumption of the energy drink: You can see his face throughout, and he ain’t the one drinking something.

I can think of two scenarios by which the boss’s convulsions would actually result directly from the effects of 6 Hour Power:

1. He’s shooting 6 Hour Power intravenously beneath his desk.
2. He’s getting a contact high from the 6 Hour Power through his secretary’s mouth.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the 6 Hour Power minds were that clever. I think he’s just getting a straight blow job, which is a total waste of “the most sexually explicit ad ever.”

* Slate intrudes on the Sexist beat, telling you how to donate a kidney through your vagina (”Good news: You can now get a kidney from a vagina. . . . The kidney doesn’t start in the vagina, of course”), and asking whether sharing a bed with your baby is a good idea (Answer: No).

* Progress! DC Nearlyweds refers to “bridesmaids” as “bridesmaids,” not as an acronym shared by “Bowel Movement”!

*Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis goes wild, evades taxes, gets arrested. Say hi to Daschle for us! [via Feministing].

* A 26-year-old Montgomory County couple was indicted for prostituting minors in Gaithersburg and Washington: “U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein says the two created a sex-trafficking scheme where the three girls were drugged using cocaine, PCP, and marijuana or alcohol before having sex in Montgomery County or D.C.”Lloyd Royal and Angela Bentolila are also accused of forcing the girls to sell cocaine, forcing them to have sex with Royal, and using their home and car for prostitution.

* Photo by Trevor Blake.

* 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.

Generally, I’m a big Prudie fan. And admittedly, this is a tough nut to crack. But this time, while Prudie’s overall advice—tell Dad, verrrryyy caaarrrefully—is on the mark, her specifics get into victim-blaming territory. Quoth Prudie:

Tell your father you have been living with a sickening, shameful secret that has been a blot on your life. Give as brief an account as possible and emphasize that you were a minor when she seduced you. (It would help if you were also a virgin.)

Prudie’s advice plays into an age-old rape excuse: Just replace “but she was a slut” with “but he was a horny 17-year-old boy.” Virgin or no, the 17-year-old was certainly taken advantage of—and yes, raped—by his much-older stepmother. That rape resulted in a pattern of fucked-up-edness with a clearly exploitive woman that the man was only recently able to end. Even now, it will almost certainly ruin his relationship with his father. Prudie would do best not to add insult to injury by insinuating the man could only have been coerced into having sex with this woman if he was an entirely inexperienced teen.

WND sides for Obama! Schilling places scare quotes around the word “homosexual” in her headline, as in “‘Homosexual’ Time reporter: Obama is a ‘bigot,’” then pepper her report on Cloud’s smack-down with this description of Cloud’s work for CP:

In his earlier days as a reporter for the Washington City Paper, Cloud described his first-hand experience and arousal at a Washington, D.C., group-sex party for homosexuals in 1997. His report was sexually graphic and filled with expletives.

Bravo, Schilling, but you left out the link! Read up on Cloud’s arousal here.

* Gender Goggles rants on the use of the term “failure of feminism” to describe shit that happens that’s not great for women. Don’t call it a failure of feminism when you mean “a failure of mainstream society to embrace feminism fully.”

* Great conversations going on at Slate’s XX Factor: Eve Fairbanks on claims that the media turned sexist in 2008; Melinda Henneberger asks, “are traditional Christians necessarily haters?” (Short answer: Mmmm, no).

* Some dude has started a blog of photographs his three-year-old child took with his digital camera that provide “a window into the perspective of a child.” Are we’re supposed to glean from this that a child has the perspective of a lazy, indiscriminate photographer?

* McCain Blogette is back! Meghan McCain jumps back into the blogosphere to wish us a happy new year and update on her post-election “emotional rollercoaster.” This is just a hunch, but I have a feeling there’s a third-wave feminist blogger in Meghan just waiting to rise from the ashes of her aging parents’ cold, political marital agreement (just look at those sassy red shoes!). Come, young Padawan. I will guide you to shed your earnestness and adopt left-leaning positions on women’s health!

Photo via trialsanderrors.

Well, hello, there. Sorry if things have been sparse here as of late. I awoke yesterday with peculiarly large lymph nodes and  inner ears that seem to have gone scuba diving without my permission. But I’m hopping off to one ye olde urgent care center cold & flu mill this morning, where a medical doctor can hopefully inform me how I might go about not sounding like a classic movie nerd post-haste.

* Another guy claiming to be looking for a date to the inauguration is 52, loves “fresh seafood on the grill, roast chicken and fine wines,” looking to take you to “one of the department stores to purchase a gown or gowns—if you would like to attend more than one Gala with me.”

* Other Craigslisters, on the other hand, are advertising their interest in your inaugural gravy train, like this 40-year-old Kensington woman. She’s a charmer:

I have been in the DC/MD area for three years, and up until recently I was completely unimpressed, ney, disappointed with the “energy” of the area. However, like so many others, I have experienced the verve, excitement, and yes, the hope that permeates the air these past few weeks. . . . Therefore, I am very interested in attending the Ball!

* Via Slate: Barack Obama’s Presidency: kids ask, parents answer.

* Also in Slate, Christopher Hitchens completes his yearly curmudgeonly exercise of hating Christmas:

I have just flung aside my copy of the Weekly Standard, a magazine with a generally hardheaded and humorous approach to matters. It contains two seasonal articles that would probably not have made print were it not for the proximity to the said solstice. (To be fair, the same can be said of the article that you are reading, but I claim exemption under the terms of the “to hell with all that” amendment.)

* Evil Slutopia has a guide to how your holiday shopping can help women.

Photo via trialsanderrors.

* Daily Intel has some answers on why Alex Kuczynski’s New York Times spread on her experience with a surrogate mother made her out to be a “vain,” “self-centered” “Lady of the Manor” (really, check out the photo that ran with the story, it’s a doozy). From NYT Public Editor Clark Hoyt’s column:

Kuczynski, who said she disagreed with her editors over the photographs before publication, said she felt they were “incendiary” and distracted from the story. Hilling, clearly portrayed in the article as middle class, described the porch as “the ugliest part” of her renovated, 135-year-old home. She said she felt the photo of her was “contrived.” Gerald Marzorati, the editor of the magazine, acknowledged the “upstairs, downstairs” quality of the photos but said they were not set up to be that way.

So, did the NYT distort the situation, or can Kuczynski just not admit to her own insufferable personality?

* Feministe debuts a new feature: Blame feminism! This time, blame feminism for women drinking.

* Via Ars Technica: Everyone’s favorite cartoon siblings, Bart and Lisa, get exploited in a “child porn” scandal.

* Feministing highlights a douchy commercial

* Slate’s Bonnie Goldstein gives employers advice on how to spin holiday layoffs. Hey, Goldstein, don’t give them any ideas!

Photo via trialsanderrors.

Kelly McEvers, who wrote a great series for Slate about her attempts—and failures—at finding pirates in the Strait of Malacca, chatted online today at the Washington Post about her experience getting the story. She had an interesting comment about the gender politics of reporting from the sea. Who has the advantage in locating swashbucklers—men or women?

Downtown DC: Hi Kelly, Interesting assignment—I love how you capture both the boredom and the rush of being on an assignment like this. Sure, I am curious why the chat is before the final segment of the story, but I guess everyone else is too. Ready for Part 5, I guess.

Sounds to me that based on your experience, a male (western) journalist wouldn’t have a chance of meeting these contacts (at least in Malaysia/Indonesia). How scared were you, really, when taken into the hold with all these guys? I am assuming it would have been different if they were in their 20s and not 50s…

Kelly McEvers: I’m not so sure that a male journalist would have had problems. See Peter Gwin’s recent piece in National Geographic about the same subject, in the same region. The pirate I eventually met was younger—not in his 50s.

But the gender question is an interesting one: I admit that being a woman makes it easier to my job sometimes. But other times it makes it hard. Especially in Muslim countries.

Arrr—it’s, a tie?

Photo by Oakley Originals.

* The New Gay reveals an “an exciting new way to internalize homophobia“: It’s not gay, it’s g0y! G0ys (pictured) hate anal sex, femininity, and gay dudes, but love God and casually bro-ing out with other dudes and blowing them. And they spell their sexuality with a zero. Sign up here!

* Slate tapes an interview with a MILF.

* Fashion Fuel D.C. wonders if men will save us from recession, because “while women tend to shop out of frivolity, men tend to shop out of necessity.” But women shop for others, too.

* Bay Windows rates the LGBT friendliness of Obama appointments.

* From Feministing: New Zealand dude thinks abortions lead men to beat women, because their “maleness is under threat.” Kind of sweet and old-fashioned, no?

Photo from g0ys.org

In the spirit of post-election adventure, Slate is starting to work on a new web magazine: Double X. A magazine by women but not just for women, Double X will spin out from our XX Factor blog, where we’ve started a conversation among women—about politics, sex, and culture—that both men and women enjoy listening in on. The new site will do all this and more. It will take the Slate and XX Factor sensibility and apply it to sexual politics, fashion, parenting, health, science, sex, friendship, work-life balance, and anything else you might talk about with your friends over coffee. We’ll tackle subjects high and low with an approach that’s unabashedly intellectual but not dry or condescending. The blog will be at the heart of the site, but we’ll also publish essays, reporting, and other features.

Slate’s Bonnie Goldstein has an essay about the middle-aged career woman who’s financed her own life but still wishes that she could inherit a little somethin’ somethin’ from her fathers when he dies. I found the piece pretty alien for a few reasons:

- By wishing they would fork over the cash at their death bed, you essentially wish your poor, loving parents to a premature death. Not cool!

- Hasn’t the lack of sizable inheritance always been the fate of lower-to-middle-class individuals, female or otherwise? Is anyone really still holding out Dickensian-style for that olde tyme benefactor who will lift them above their lowly station*?

- While I generally like Slate’s female-specific stuff, I find the framing of this piece creepy. Goldstein may be speaking from experience when she hopes for her “daddy” to leave her the money he earned when he expires, but why the extension of the two gender roles, male bequeathing to female? This a) gives me the heebie jeebies, and b) totally cuts off a potential revenue stream: Mom.

* currently accepting applications

Photo by Jessica Shannon

* Slate asks you to break off your long-distance relationship for the sake of the environment. Advises Barron YoungSmith:

You’re sitting in the airport terminal, rolling your copy of the Economist into a sweaty tube and waiting to see a significant other who lives far away. You’re excited. You’re aroused. But there’s something else, a nagging feeling that gurgles in your stomach and won’t go away. Is it pangs of guilt? It should be: The planet is about to suffer for your love.

* Listen up, cynical ladies: Roissy in D.C. finds sarcasm sooo unfeminine:

Sarcasm is a leading indicator of low self esteem in a woman. It is a masculine manifestation driven by the ego that cannot coexist with the inner feminine driven by the heart. A girl who leans on the crutch of sarcasm to thrash her way through a conversation is hiding insecurities behind a phony facade of gritty toughness.

Yep, and we all just secretly want a dick. Your dick.

* Feministing and Jezebel sound off on Chantilly’s new pro-life pharmacy.

* Via Daily Intel: Upcoming Gossip Girl guest star Nastia Lukin hints at (maybe) GG’s next plot twist: threesome, anyone?

Photo by PetroleumJelliffe

* Advanced Style, a street-style blog for the older set. Adorable, inspirational, and regularly updated, this elderly fashion watch is curated by three respectful whippersnappers.

* Jezebel asks if being a successful woman means staying single:

maybe if a woman’s got guts and determination, she “intimidates” men. So she either doesn’t get attached to a guy, or finds one who is content to live in her shadow. Oprah doesn’t have a husband, per se, but when’s the last time we heard anything about that Stedman guy? Anna Wintour? Divorced. Condoleezza Rice? Not married. Tyra? Single and looking to mingle. Angela Merkel? Wikipedia says, “Her second husband is quantum chemist and professor Joachim Sauer. He remains out of the spotlight” . . . While many men have careers in which they shine and the wife is content to stay in the background, it seems that women who live an ambitious life in the limelight rarely have a “quiet” husband at home.

Jezebel’s expounding, of course, on Madonna’s just-announced divorce from filmmaker Guy Ritchie. I wouldn’t assume that the end of this seven-and-a-half year marriage is a result of Ritchie not being able to “handle” Madonna—you probably know what you’re getting into with Madonna. Similarly, I would suggest that Tyra Banks‘ relationship status might not be wholly attributed to her “success.” A lot of marriages fail, successful, famous, or not. Still, I fully intend to co-opt the Stars: They’re just like us! treatment here and assert that by virtue of being a single woman, I am successful. It’s that easy!

* In the wake of Joe Wurzelbacher-gate, Radar imagines the inevitable “Joe Plumber” porn spoof:

Layin’ Pipe will feature five hard-core scenes, including a threeway with other pander-worthy icons, namely Mother of Iraqi Solider Against the War and Teacher In Tennessee Who Can’t Afford Her Parents’ Nursing Home. Bob Schieffer will also be spoofed as the announcer who dishes the sex action that will take place during the film.

Yeah, well, as long as he isn’t portrayed by the lame, pathetically in-shape dude who hangs around the smoothie/tanning salon, I may be interested.

* Plus, what else might “Joe the Plumber” be hiding from the American People? Josh Levin for Slate has your non-pornographic predictions.

* Okay, one reason to have kids:

Photo from Advanced Style.

* Via Feminist Daily News: New Oklahoma lawsuit challenges mandatory ultrasound before abortion.

* Sarah Palin goes on offensive abortion offensive [via Time].

* Barack Obama is to Osama Bin Laden as Chairman of the Virginia Republican Party is to a majestic unicorn.

* Stereogum directs you to Sarah Silverman’s sad playlist—music to schlep to.

Photo by freeparking

* Slate is all over the sex & gender beat this week! First, Jack Shafer debunks the New York Times Sunday Styles “dudes love cats” trend piece:

How to write a bogus trend story: Start with something you wish were on the rise. State that rise as a fact. Allow that there are no facts, surveys, or test results to support such a fact. Use and reuse the word seems. Collect anecdotes and sprinkle liberally. Drift from your original point as far as you can to collect other data points. Add liberally. Finish with an upbeat quotation like “My cat takes priority over the new relationship. Realistically, unless there’s something absolutely amazing about [the woman I'm dating], he wins.”

* Then, Explainer explains how to tell whether your 13-year-old kid actually wants a circumcision—or whether you could be pressuring him to have one. Is it so wrong to ask kid owners to err on the side of “foreskin intact”?

* And the XX Factor’s Melinda Henneberger probably doesn’t want your flowers. Henneberger lays out the rules for flora-purchasing significant others:

- A dozen for no reason: You shouldn’t have!
- A bouquet on an actual occasion: No, really, you shouldn’t have.

Speaking from my estimable position as “local blogger who sleeps on a mattress on the floor of a group house flanked by two squatter-occupied abandoned properties and counts among her possessions a bunch of old newspapers stacked in milk-crates recovered from darkened alleyways”—I, too, may never understand women.

Photo by Robyn Gallagher

* From New York Magazine: An awesome conversation between NY Mag, 35-year-old poet-filmmaker-activist Suheir Hammad, and 74-year-old greatest-living-feminist Gloria Steinem about how the lives of women have changed—and what they see as the future of feminism. “There is no ‘postfeminism,’” says Steinem. “That’s like saying post-democracy.”

* Feministing asks about the “generational differences . . . in how women experience sexism.” From a commenter:

If, for some Boomer women, Obama’s win over Hillary represents the guy they lost the promotion to, Palin’s selection plays the same role for Gen X women. We’ve seen it: first the incompetent yet babelicious woman is promoted over her head, then the boss orders the attention of the entire team/department/etc. to focus on ensuring that “we” shield her from “mistakes” (or worse, we get blamed for her mistakes). Palin reminds us of when we got screwed by this sort of bullshit. And it shows in voters’ response to her.

* Jezebel’s Traci “Slut Machine” Egan gets mad at Tyra guests for making her agree with Tyra. The culprit: straight women who make out with other women in bars to get attention, free drinks.

* Via BoingBoing: A child’s Superman pillow that’s more blow-up doll than Man-of-Steel. The tagline? “Turn Your Pillow Into The Biggest Toy Ever.”

* Sarah Palin’s words as poetry, compiled by Slate contributor Hart Seeley:

“On Reporters”

It’s funny that
A comment like that
Was kinda made to,
I don’t know,
You know …

Reporters.

Seeley’s even found a Palin AIG haiku! Now that’s what I call repurposing content!

Photo by Zach Klein

* 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

* Via Feministe: Taking your children to vote with you is adorable; homeless voters find obstacles at the polls.

* Slate’s Trey Patterson remembers MTV video countdown “Total Request Live”, set to take a “hiatus” this November:

TRL’s signature moment came to pass one Thursday in July of 2001, when pop diva Mariah Carey dropped in unexpectedly. She entered pushing a cart filled with ice-cream treats, wore a pair of shorts connoting assertive depravity, and gave voice to existential frustrations: “You’re my therapy session right now, Carson.” Her behavior was sufficiently erratic that the crowd couldn’t squeal for it with any real consistency.

* Meanwhile, Meghan McCain blogs her “Last Call with Carson Daly” experience on McCain Blogette.

* Elsewhere on Slate, Josh Patner recaps fashion week’s “re-envisioning” of the “American woman.

* Jezebel updates you on the aftermath of DJ AM and Travis Barker’s plane crash: exes Mandy Moore and Shanna Moakler at bedsides; Lindsey Lohan and Samantha Ronson blog; Jamie Kennedy, Lauren Conrad, and Kathy Griffin sound off.

* Via BYT via Gawker: Anderson Cooper’s (alleged) lovers: a primer.

* The New Gay CANNOT CONTROL THE VOLUME OF ITS VOICE.

* On Slate, Dahlia Lithwick serves Joe Biden with some rules on how to fight a girl. Lithwick, a former parliamentary debater (side-note: totally awesome), gives Biden a frank run-down on how not to lose the Veep debate to Governor Palin. Most of the advice is fine—don’t leer, don’t condescend, don’t stoop—until Lithwick slips from the particular Biden/Palin scenario to a generalization about all male/female match-ups.

When Lithwick writes that her “insanely successful college debate friend told me recently that the way he won against women was by always behaving like they were men,” the implication is that minus their feminine wiles—the lipstick on their pit bulls—women will lose. After a long explanation of why Biden shouldn’t respond to Palin with Palin tactics, Lithwick’s kicker—”My best advice to you for dealing with Gov. Palin? Fight like a man. She will.”—is both confusing and lame. Who’s the man what now?

* The Washington Post marches boldly on with their “Wedding Week” coverage. At 1 p.m. today, join the authors of The Bridal Wave: A Survival Guide to the Everyone-I-Know-Is-Getting-Married Years for a live online chat. Ask Erin Torneo and Valerie Cabrera Krause how people who desperately wish they were married manage to be more tragic than the people who actually publicly declare how they’re going to love each other forever in front of everyone they know. Including their parents.

* Wait, coverage of marriage issues that doesn’t include pandering to the wedding industry? The Blade tips you off to a panel discussion on marriage rights in California and Massachusetts, tonight at 6:30 at the University of California Washington Center. UCWC is located at 1608 Rhode Island Avenue NW.

* The New Gay chronicles the “hidden history” of the women behind the writings of Victorian author Michael Field.

* Via Wonkette: Michelle dances with Ellen. Possible next First Lady jam: Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music.” Last year, Barack got down to Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love.” Umm, I only watch Ellen when an Obama is on the show, does she make everyone do this?

Photo by NCinDC.