Yesterday, the c-word—chivalry—arose in the comments section of this blog, in the context of the outdated gender code's unfairness to men. Ah, chivalry: That old code of behavior that men must follow in order to protect the "honor" of women they know. Through chivalry, a woman's honor becomes a man's responsibility; her honor brings honor to him, and her shame brings him shame. Chivalry isn't just offensive because it forces men to protect women, but also because traditional ideas of what brings  "honor" and "shame" to women are often highly sexist. And so, chivalry also works to encourage women to internalize misogyny in order to preempt shame from befalling men.

Three recent events that provide an insight into chivalry, and how it functions:

1. In a recent post on Holla Back DC, a woman describes being harassed by a group of firemen while out celebrating her fiance's birthday. As her fiance stepped away to retrieve cash from an ATM, she stepped to the curb to look for a cab. She was "dressed up," but "did not look slutty," she says; the firemen disagreed:

As I was looking down the street at oncoming traffic, a fire engine drove by. It was not on its way to an emergency, as its lights and siren weren’t on and they were driving at a somewhat slow speed. However, they honked their loud siren at me and started cheering out of the window. This was of course just as my fiance was walking out of the ATM. He was offended that men in uniform would do that, and to tell you the truth, it made me feel like common street trash and that they treated me like a hooker. Even if my fiance was outside with me and it happened, nothing could really have been done. He may have yelled after the fire engine, but that wouldn’t have accomplished anything.

I was really embarrassed and am still embarrassed when I think about it. I even felt embarrassed on behalf of my fiance, as I thought others may have thought he was with a hooker. I don’t know if that’s rational or not. It makes me want to cover up more when I go out, but I shouldn’t have to. I was dressed quite nicely, yet I still was treated in this manner. It was disgusting.

For this anonymous Holla Back DC poster, being treated "like a hooker" was a stunning insult of her value as a woman, and therefore a great source of shame. (As far as traditional expectations of women go, being confused with a sex worker is, unfortunately, pretty low on the "honor" list). This woman's reaction may help to explain why some victims feel shame after being sexually harassed or assaulted. When women are treated as less-than-human, there are often two conflicting internal reactions: (a) anger at the harassers who devalued her based on her gender, and (b) being forced to consider the idea, however briefly, that she has no value.

Our writer presents a third reaction: A secondary source of shame, derived from the possibility that someone "may have thought [her fiance] was with a hooker." Since the woman's fiance is responsible for her shame as well, he may have a similarly conflicted reaction: (a) anger at the harassers who devalued her based on her gender, and (b) shame that he is associated with a woman who is considered by other men to be valueless. Chivalry encourages him to take personal offense to this, inciting one of two reactions: (a) engaging in a verbal or physical altercation with the harassers in order to compensate for the woman's shame with a display of manhood; and/or (b) chastising the woman for bringing shame upon him, i.e. "Don't embarrass me in front of other men"; "Don't go out looking like that"; "See what you made me do."

In this case, there's no indication that the fiance openly chastised this woman for dressing inappropriately (though he may have gone after the firemen had he had the opportunity). The actual display of chivalry isn't necessary to instill in this woman a sense of responsibility for her fiance's honor. The realization that a man may be shamed when she is harassed for being a woman makes her want to dress more conservatively in order to preempt any further shame on him in the future.

2. This weekend, I had a conversation with a guy visiting the District from Turkey. We got to talking about the evolving tradition of women wearing headscarves in his country. About half the women he knows wear headscarves, and half don't; his mom wears one, but his wife doesn't. In Turkey, he said, a woman who doesn't cover her head brings society's shaming not only upon herself, but also upon her husband. Insisting that a woman wear a headscarf is considered a man's responsibility, and a woman with her head uncovered can reflect a personal failure on the man assigned to enforce the rule. "If you follow all the rules of the religion, you get an A+ in being a Muslim," he explained. If your wife doesn't cover your head, you can still be a good Muslim, but your grade gets knocked down a few points.

Not all women wear the headscarf because their husbands or fathers or brothers tell them (or force them) to. Some choose to wear it for personal, cultural, and religious reasons. And some choose to wear it in order to preempt any possibility of shame being brought upon the men in their lives. They want their husbands to get an A+.

3. Today, WTOP reported that Vladimir Djordjevic has died after spending three years in the hospital attempting to recover from the extreme burns covering his body. Djordjevic, a manager at District strip club Good Guys, was "doused with gasoline and set on fire" on Nov. 4, 2007, after he ejected a patron for breaking a house rule—he took a cell-phone photo of a dancer's butt. The patron, trucker Vasile Graure, returned to the club with a gallon of gasoline and proceeded to light Djordjevic—and then the club—on fire. (You can read a complete account of the trial here; Graure was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which may be increased in light of Djordjevic's death).

So: Graure thought he had complete authority over the naked woman in front of him; Djordjevic informed him that he did not; Graure set Djordjevic on fire.

Djordjevic's death is an extreme example of how chivalry facilitates the transfer of misogyny from women to men. As Amanda Marcotte noted earlier this year,  "when it comes to the patriarchy, sexist men will enforce the rules not just on women, but on other men who seem insufficiently committed to the art of oppressing women," she writes. When Graure set Djordjevic on fire, he applied his misogynistic rage to the man who would not sit back and allow him to control women. You see the same kind of transfer of misogyny with guys who, thanks to chivalry, will "Never Hit A Woman"; instead, they'll hit the closest guy.

This kind of misogyny transfer doesn't just result in the tragic deaths of guys like Djordjevic (who, as club security, had the unnerving professional task of protecting dancers from misogynistic patrons). It also helps to obscure the root of the violence, which is an extreme hatred of women. By placing a male intermediary between a misogynist and the intended recipient of his misogyny (a woman), the misogynist can walk away from a chivalry-induced fist-fight patting himself on the back for how much he "respects women." Meanwhile, some blame for said fist-fight can be conveniently transferred onto the woman for failing to take the punch herself. In order to avoid both the fist-fight and the self-blame, the woman has one line of defense—don't do whatever you think caused the misogynist to get so angry. Don't wear a short skirt. Don't protest when he takes your photo in a strip club. Don't get angry when he sexually harasses you.

"The lesson here is not that women should be more eager to be treated like subhumans," Marcotte writes. "The lesson is that sexual harassment is a dominance display, and the harassers will often resort to violence to maintain the dominance they desire. 'Never hit a woman' doesn’t really do much to address the underlying cause of violence against women, which is male dominance and misogyny."

Chivalry encourages a form of preemptive internalized misogyny that results in the policing of women, how they dress, where they go, how much hair they show, and whether they stand up for themselves when harassed or assaulted. In the future, the woman harassed by the firemen may dress more conservatively, or avoid standing on the street corner alone, in order to prevent her husband from ever being associated with someone who is confused for "a hooker". A woman may choose to wear a headscarf in order to preempt any shame being brought to her husband. And a woman who is victimized by a man may not speak out, in order to avoid the chivalrous man-next-door from starting a fist-fight—or criticizing her for somehow encouraging the harassment.

Chivalry works to unfairly displace misogyny onto men. But focusing solely on that particular failure of chivalry ignores the obvious truth—that misogyny is unfair for everyone. Women, too!

Photo via David Spender, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

* On Tiger Beatdown, things you can learn from a $10 lapdance: The perfect performance of femininity is priceless. And by priceless I mean almost worthless:

Later, as I cried my eyes out on the couch in my apartment and my boyfriend soothed me, I tried to make sense of it. Here was this incredibly beautiful woman, who did everything, everythingthat a woman was supposed to do to make herself appealing to men. She was thin, she was compliant, she was beautiful, she spent probably hours every day shaving and lotioning and applying makeup and picking out clothes and pouring what was surely substantial cashflow into maintaining her appearance. She was, in a word, perfect. And then, this perfect woman would go to work, and rub her impeccably maintained and beautiful body all over any patron, at his or her request, no matter whether she liked the person or not, for TEN FUCKING DOLLARS? I mean, TEN DOLLARS? Less than I would spend on a pair of shoes. Less than I would spend on a motherfucking hamburger.

* The Miss England pageant has discarded its swimsuit competition in favor of in athletic wear. Sexy, revealing athletic wear:

[The current Miss England] said getting rid of the bikini round would prove the contest was about "real women."

"In a world of size zero models it's not a particularly good image to give out to girls that you've got to be stick thin," she said. "Having done Miss England two years in a row myself, I met girls who were all dieting and worrying about the bikini round and I just thought it's not a good image for girls to have, so we should get rid of it."

So: Because unrealistic standards of beauty are damaging to young women, bikinis will be replaced by short-shorts and sports bras, and pageant waves will make way for cheeky flexing (with a feminine pointed toe). Next up: The cognitive dissonance interview portion.

* This year, Pride goes alternative: alt.dc.pride will be providing a roster of events outside the LGBT mainstream.

* Via Rap Genius, the five most explicit sex scenes in rap history. Songs were graded based on five categories, the most important of which was "wetness."

* from the Guttmacher Institute's newest study, on the demographics of women who seek abortions: "Almost half of all women obtaining abortion care live under the federal poverty line."

Photo via moaksey, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Introducing Stadium Club, the District's first foray into the world of upscale stripping. What turns a regular old strip club into a classy strip club? If Stadium Club's Web site is any indication, true class can be achieved by offering an array of bizarre amenities in addition to the requisite naked women. And so, when it opens in Ward 5 later this month, the strip club will offer "fine cigars," "complimentary limousine pick-up and drop-off" for VIP members,  a valet by the name of Elvis, and the promise to accommodate "the best of all the patrons’ wishes and demands."

But what do the dancers—dubbed "Stadium Girls"—get out of the classy stripping experience? The privilege of removing their clothing in front of "eye pleasing backgrounds." From the site:

Upon your first visit you will note the attention to the detail at every turn; whether it is the lights; the rich wood tones that are contrasted by soft pastel colors of pink, green and grey to provide eye pleasing backgrounds for both the patron and the dancer; the combination of stone and leather which provide texture and warmth; or how all of these aspects are rounded off by brushed steel and glass, you will understand that this clearly upscale venue is a one of a kind.

I've scoured the Stadium Club Web site, and the aforementioned background preparation is the sole indication that Stadium Club has the safety and comfort of its dancers in mind. Strippers must sure love walls! Or do they? I asked a local woman with about a year of stripping experience for her analysis of this particular feature.

"I have NO idea what the lighting or the eye-pleasing background shit is about," she writes. "I can tell you, not only do the dancers not care about that, but the patrons don't either. The patrons want: 1) Naked girls; 2) To be able to harass/sexually assault those girls to their hearts' content. That's it."

"OK, they maybe also want to be able to get drunk," she adds. "But like . . . brushed steel and glass? Have you ever been to a strip club? It is DARK in there. The only well-lit places are the stage and the bar. Guys don't want to be able to see the goddamn brushed steel, because that would mean someone could see them. And they want it to be as dark as possible so that they can ogle and grope to their hearts' content—and not have anyone say 'Hey, isn't that my congressman?'"

Instead of comforting its dancers with shades of soft pastel, our expert suggests Stadium Club focus on ensuring the safety of its employees. "As for the dancers, what they want is to make a lot of money and preferably not get raped. Or jerked off on. . . . The biggest thing a club can do to ensure the happiness of its dancers is to enforce the laws about not touching them," she writes. "I guess it's better to work at a classy strip club than a non-classy one? If that's even a distinction that exists? But again, I think that distinction would be most evident in how the dancers are treated, by the club and by its patrons (and, of course, the former has a nontrivial amount of control over the latter)."

—wait a second, are we talking strippers? Shake it! Sh-sh-sh-shake it! To hear WaPo's Paul Schwartzman tell Thompson's tale, the real news here is that exotic dancers exist, and it is super easy to make jokes about them. Let's start with the lede:

To hear Quansa Thompson talk of her life as an exotic dancer, to listen to her describe how men offer cash as she sashays, gyrates and jiggles the night away, is to evoke a thousand titillating thoughts, not a single one having anything to do with the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Paul Schwartzman, you are speaking my language. Because I'm the kind of guy who likes to scan the Washington Post for a little bit of jiggly-jiggly, you know what I'm saying? Hey, you know what really gets me off? A bunch of dudes crowding around a lady and throwing some cash at her while she "jiggles." But you already knew that, since you've decided to frame stripping as a universally titllating experience, sure to overload the brain of any reader who might happen to pick up this newspaper. Man, woman, child—we all believe this to be sexy. But less talk more jiggling:

That is, until Thompson brings up the Depression-era law, which she discovered last summer after being fired by her then-employer, the House, a den of prurient entertainment on Georgia Avenue NW. Thompson is suing the House in U.S. District Court, alleging that the club pays dancers no wages, but ought to under the law. The club has denied the charge.

All this legal speak is harshing my boner. This stripper wants a fair wage, you say? I'll show her a fair wage . . . if she shows me her jiggly, am I right? High five!

By her own account, Thompson — or "Love" as she calls herself onstage — had to overcome a good deal of self-doubt six years ago, when she started dancing alongside a veritable conga line of statuesque beauties with show biz names such as "Wild Cherry," "French Kiss" and "Wet."

She learned to feel the music, to move her hips just so, to smile with enough mystery that men in her audience leaned forward, hands extended, fingers offering up $20 bills, fifties, hundreds. The high-rollers, the "ballers," as she called them, "would make it rain," literally showering her with fistfuls of dollars.

Fact-check time: One has to wonder how much time Schwartzmen spent observing the House technique. I understand it involves more than smiling. But I digress:

Yet Thompson said that aspects of the stripping life bothered her. The House paid her and the other dancers $20 for showing up each day, with the understanding that they could keep their tips after they paid the management a couple of fees: $20 to the DJ, $20 to the bartender. If a dancer was late to the stage, Thompson said, the club charged a $10 penalty. The fine for missing a shift was $80, even if it was because of an illness, which is what Thompson claimed when she didn't show up for work one night last year.

And here we have the Obligatory Discussion Of Issues Not Directly Related To Jiggling. You know what this story needs? More stripper jokes.

Thompson found a lawyer, Philip Zipin, who, after some research, concluded that the House, like a preponderance of strip clubs nationwide, classified their dancers as "independent contractors," as if they were plumbers, only without the tool belt (not to mention the shirt, pants and underwear).

Yeah! Stripper joke!

Yet there are strippers who don't want full-time gigs, who prefer the freedom of floating from club to club. "There are advantages — the write-offs, for one," said Lia Scholl, founder of the now-defunct Star Light Ministries, which counseled exotic dancers. "You can write off breast augmentation. You can write off mileage. They can determine their own schedules and be their own bosses."

The disadvantages of being an independent contractor include being responsible for one's own Social Security taxes and not being entitled to workman's compensation. "If you fall off the pole," Scholl said, "there's no safety net."

Wooooo stripper joke!

She'd be more than willing to return to the stage full time, if she were treated like a full-fledged member of the labor force, albeit one who awakes each day to get undressed for work. "It would be the best job," she said. "People would have more respect for it."

. . . aaaaaand really terrible stripper joke ("what's the difference between a real worker and a stripper? Strippers get undressed for work!") . . . followed the inevitable "But Seriously, Folks" moment. Even though it's obvious from the entire tenor of this piece that the writer does not respect women who are employed in the sex industry, why not finish with a plea for everyone else to get serious about this issue? Because when it comes down to it, strippers are people, too, and—ooooh. Jiggly.

Mistresses! Whenever a public figure takes one as a secret lover, Society at Large is obligated to publicly shame this woman for her untoward behavior. But just how much shame shall we pile on a woman accused of having sex with a man who has pledged to only have sex with one other lady? Use this handy guide to determine how much irrational hatred she deserves:

a) if she is a mysterious and beautiful Argentinian mother of two, leak romantic e-mails.

b) if she is a fertile campaign videographer, proceed with light mockery over musical tastes.

c) if she is a cocktail waitress, insinuate that she is actually a sex worker.

d) if she works in a strip club, lose all ability to refer to her as anything other than "stripper."

e) if she is a porn performer, release grainy video stills of her shaking her boobs in front of a fire truck.

f) if she is literally the Devil, insinuate that she is actually a sex worker.

In this week's edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I discuss why mistresses receive the brunt of all our projected self-hatred, wonder why the term "Mistress" has no male counterpart (I nominate "Mrstress"), and respectfully request that Tiger Woods set his Facebook statuses to private.

SADY: Mistresses!

AMANDA: Indeed. I have heard many sordid tales of their existence as of late.

SADY: sometimes, mistresses talk about being mistresses. At other times, they do not talk. In either case, it is fine to talk about them! For they are MISTRESSES, scourge of the "I am married to a cheater" world.

AMANDA: Can we talk for a second about this "mistress" business? Is there a word for the "mister" of a married woman? like a "Mrster"? Or something?

SADY: I prefer the term "Mister Mistress." Which is also the name of my new glam-metal band, in case you were looking for an update on that.

AMANDA: I think that was also a Hulk Hogan movie.

SADY: But really, we know that the appropriate word for "man mistress" is "totally rocking dude."

AMANDA: The only other term I can think of that is dismissive (dismistress!) in the same way is "pool boy."

SADY: Yeah. Basically, the only words we have for dudes who are being cruelly exploited for sex on the side by lady types are class (and often race) based.

AMANDA: Yeah. "Mistresses" (ugh) on the other hand, have to be cornered into this odd cultural Other Wife space, even though they are not married to this guy, and they actually have plenty of their own shit going on as well. They are still defined solely by this relationship.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, we have this strangely romantic Victorian version of the mistress, STILL. It is not just "I hooked up with a dude, he is married, sometimes I make bad decisions in my personal life," it is this strange thing where we still think of them as dissolute Women of Leisure who are sexfully attending to their patron's sexful needs while draped in diamonds which of course are the whole point. And I think, weirdly, though I definitely GET that intimacy and all of that are scary, and the fact that you could love someone and they could love hooking up with other people is really unsettling for just about anyone, our need to drag mistresses into the light and be like, "mistress! Behold ye alle this Creature, captured in thee most Wanton Abandon!" Well, it's people working out personal anxieties, sure. We WANT to hate them because then the people who are cheating on us are clearly choosing people lesser than ourselves. But also: it's a way of deciding which women are all right. A way of deciding what makes a good woman (being cheated on!) and a bad one (being cheated with!) if that makes sense.

AMANDA: Yeah, and I have found that to be a really weird part of the Sanford / Edwards ladies' narratives, where there is an attempt to make some sort of Character Coup out of being cheated on.

SADY: Well, but also, that excerpt from "Game Change," about the affair, went to great lengths to portray Elizabeth Edwards as a screaming, controlling harpy who clearly deserved to be cheated on.

AMANDA: But the thing that really disturbs me when people get to talkin' about cheating, is that we know that about 50 percent of married men and women (and men I think do it at higher rates than women, but not significantly higher) will cheat on their spouses at some point. And so all of this faux outrage tends to worry me, because either these people are just ignoring their own realities, or they are attempting to work out their personal issues by piling their hatred onto these women.

SADY: Right! And it is like: I would prefer people not to cheat on me. I am not a fan of cheating in general. I think it is a thing you should not do. And yet, affairs are such a commonplace part of human life that they form the basis of: much literature, much television, "Mad Men" specifically for like three seasons, many movies, music, and now apparently our salacious news headlines that are going on when also there is a huge recession which I find sort of important. So, when a marriage is found to contain cheating, and everyone panics gets all, "this is the worst thing! The worst thing that could happen! Ever! For marriage is a sacred covenant, united by God's holy tears of joy over the entwined bodies of lovers!" Well: but you know it happens all over, right? People just want to be clear that they are in the OTHER FIFTY PERCENT, maybe. Even right now, I am worrying that people are going to think I am a cheater because I am inappropriately freaked out by mistresses, strangely.

AMANDA: Cheater! Cheater! I think it's that people have always wanted to hold their public figures and role models to a higher standard than themselves, and that makes sense to me. But they also, now, want to bring them down to our level. Which is really easy! Because they have never been morally superior to us in the first place, and the news of their private lives has just been more strictly controlled. I think at some point we are going to have to just stop giving a shit, I guess? Because it is getting boring, to me. I don't think our 24-hour news cycle can endure the weight of all the revelations of cheating that will occur among the huge number of suddenly newsworthy people we're reporting on now. For example: I recently read a very large-fonted Huffington Post headling about Matthew Fox possibly cheating on his wife with a "stripper" (the most reviled form of Mistress!) How long can people keep clicking on that? Tell me it's not forever.

SADY: God. Okay, can we talk about this? Sex worker mistresses? One of Tiger Woods' mistresses was apparently a porn performer, and there is a lawsuit going on have been vague threats of a lawsuit which I don't clearly understand, but which has to do with her quitting porn for Tiger, and thinking she was his only girlfriend, and etc.

AMANDA: (I also don't understand the legal precedent here).

SADY: I think it is lost income? Because she stopped working due to their relationship? It does seem like a frivolous and fairly transparently mercenary deal, from all I can understand. And taking a dude to court over your failed relationship is a bit over-the-top. But also, people are just shocked, SHOCKED AND APPALLED, that a person who made PORNOGRAPHY could DARE to express hurt in public! Like: it is that, not the nature of the debate here, that is getting some I think unfair focus.

AMANDA: It ... has feelings?

SADY: She made PORNOGRAPHY Amanda! I do not understand it! I thought the pornography cameras stole your soul!

AMANDA: That is the rumor.

SADY: Like: that's the thing. Mistresses are always slutty, trashy, tacky, la la la. I think it is bad form to date a married dude, not least because what is the best-case scenario for YOU, Mistress, in this relationship? Dating a dude who hurts ladies' feelings? No. But when they are also sex workers—and there is always, if not a specifically Matthew-Fox-centric version of this rumor, a version of this rumor floating around— then they are basically the devil. Women get to be like, "and also, my husband cheated on me, and it was with Satan."

AMANDA: I think that the intensified shaming of the porn actress goes back to the idea of the Mistress as well being this woman who is committed to the married man, even though he is married. Tiger Woods has like a million "Mistresses" at this point, who are really just women he's seen at some point or another, and who were obviously not under any obligation to only have sex with Tiger Woods. But we are somehow encouraged to see them that way, because if you have sex with a married man, the only way to come out looking a tiny bit better in the public eye is if you were just so totally and hopelessly in love with him that you were sexually committed only to him, and all 12 of you thought he was the real deal, or whatever. Which is gross. Tiger Woods himself actually did get a little sensitive about his "Mistresses" seeing other dudes, from the literature I've read on the topic. So even Tiger couldn’t find a reasonable perspective on cheating with someone he was cheating on his wife with.

SADY: Right. Some mistresses get to be like, "well, but my heart and feelings were involved." And it helps if we can see them as not-at-all sexual outside of this relationship. But when a lady clearly engages in sexual activity elsewhere, people are like, "wait a minute! This is about FUCKING, isn't it? Gross!"

AMANDA: Right. Because if you're a porn star ... well, then, many other dudes who are not Tiger Woods have seen you, like, naked and stuff! Bad mistress! We grade Mistresses now.

SADY: Heart and feelings involved: A+

He really was getting divorced though and now also you have his baby: B+

Clearly having had sex with people not your Mistressifier: F. For Failure.

AMANDA: Being married to a guy who cheats on you with a woman who does porn: Priceless, or something.

SADY: Yeah. I feel for that lady. TO THE MAX. In conclusion, can we all just agree that sometimes DUDES who cheat are really the ones who Destroyed This Marriage, though?

AMANDA: Sure, but can we also agree that unless the dude in question is like a noted marriage advocate or some shit, I don't particularly want to see him stand on a podium and cry about it? Just go deal with your own business.

SADY: Yeah. Seriously. We are not Facebook friends, your Relationship Status Updates are not really my personal concern. TIGER WOODS IS IT'S COMPLICATED.

Image via Wikipedia Commons

The Washington City Paper's Best Of D.C. reader's poll debuts today, and we're inviting District residents to file their favorites in the worlds of food, drink, shopping—and, of course, the commercialized end of sex. Need some inspiration? Let's revisit some ghosts of Sexist past for possible nominees in the poll's sex-related categories, from Best Strip Club to Best Local Scandal:* Best Strip Club: If you're not into strip clubs, but are interested in delivering a pity vote, try Good Guys. In 2007, convicted arsonist Vasile Graure set fire to Glover Park's Good Guys strip club after being ejected for snapping a cell-phone photo of one of the dancers. The incident sparked a lengthy trial in which many of the club's dancers were forced to testify about being forced to run, unclothed, out of the flaming building. These women deserve your most generous tips.

* Best Gay Bar/Club: If you'd like to support gay bars that reach out to a wider audience, pick Cobalt. Recently, the club made an effort to move past the traditional GaGa/Madonna/Cher house mix by hosting alterna gay night SHIFT. And last year, Cobalt made a good-faith peace offering to District women when it retired its longstanding anti-high-heels policy.

* Best Local Scandal: Councilmember Marion Barry put a woman out in Denver 'cause she wouldn't suck his dick.

* Best Adult Novelty Shop: Want to support a return to extravagance in the novelty shop world? Pick The Leather Rack. Due to the recession, the District's go-to joint for BDSM and leather gear has experienced a slight downturn in sales for the most elaborate of its fetish ensembles. Customers in the Dupont shop, a manager told me last year, have been trending toward the more demure items. Going balls-out just isn't practical in the current economic climate. "Let's say you buy a whole Army uniform. That's all you can wear," he said. Here's to hoping the Leather Rack's days of subtlety are soon ended.

* Best Drag Queen: Last year, local drag queen Charles McWilliams, a.k.a. Ophelia Bottoms, surrendered all his drag secrets to the Sexist in an hour-long display of falsies, ponytail bumpers and drawn-on diva brows. How can you argue with that face:

Your turn! Get over there and submit your picks.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The federal government may still be reeling from Saturday's 16-inch snowfall, but the dancers at Virginia strip club Crystal City Restaurant have been stripping all the way through the snowstorm.

A tipster sent in this photo of the CCR on Saturday, which was very much open-for-business despite the weekend weather, which left most other local businesses in shut-down mode. (You can't make it out, but the pink sign on the door reads "yes, we're open").

Personally, I'm hoping the restaurant's famed "CCR girls"—on, Elvira, Kiki, Sheena, and Sparkles!—received some sort of special commendation (and some hefty tips) for stripping down to their G-strings on a day when the remainder of the D.C. metro area refused to leave their homes in full-on snow gear.

Depressing Feminist Graph #1:

According to the Economist, safe abortions worldwide decreased markedly between 1995 and 2003. Unsafe abortions, though—holding strong as ever! The good—and totally obvious—news is that banning and restricting abortion does not decrease abortions, so you might as well just make them legal and safe. In fact, in places where abortions are legal and safe, women have fewer safe abortions, too, probably because the contraception is flowin' freely there as well. [Depressing Feminist Graph hat tip to Pukeimmediately].

Depressing Feminist Graph #2:

Unfortunately, when that contraception flows all the way into the strip club, it can have some negative economic effects for exotic dancers. The second depressing feminist graph comes courtesy of Julie Sunday, who notes a recent study which found that "women on the pill are attracted to more 'boyish' features in men." The feminist blogs are all over the study's more widely reported findings. But Sunday read, like, the whole fucking thing, and mined this interesting economic tidbit:

Strippers who are not taking the pill report an increase in lapdance revenue around ovulation whereas pill-taking strippers (who are thus not ovulating) do not see a spike in their revenue and earn less throughout the cycle. No, really.

Dotted line: strippers on the pill; solid line: strippers not on the pill.

Damn, girl. That's a 50-dollar-per-shift difference during the menstrual cycle, and a full 200-dollar-per-shift-difference at the stripper's most fertile. Somebody should do this study on women in other professions and see what they can shell up. Julie Sunday suggests that strippers looking for safety in the bedroom and success in the workplace ought to just go hormone-free, but not every type of contraception works for every woman. Would you change your method of contraception to get more tips?

 Whatever the reason, my $5.99 New York strip steak dinner appeared in short order. Sure, I did have to ask the waitress to break my $10 bill, so I could have a steady supply of singles. CCR has a rather aggressive dancer schedule. No stripper shakes it longer than the length of a single jukebox song. That means they get up there, quickly strip down to pasties and a G-string, perform a number of limber exercises designed to expose the naughty parts of their anatomy, and get the hell off the stage.

And then they come right to your table, where protocol says  you give them at least a buck for wiggling their butt cheeks in rhythm. I felt obligated to pass out dollars even as I was stuffing my face with beef. I felt like Dad at the dinner table passing out money to his daughters.

OK, the food: The plate arrived looking like a snapshot from my own private eating hell as a child. I grew up in Omaha, beef capital of America, and yet my family couldn't cook a steak to save their souls. I remember chewing and chewing and chewing at some overcooked, underseasoned piece of meat — until I would give up and just spit the nasty wad out in my napkin. Or just hold it in my cheek, like a chipmunk, until I could spit it out in the toilet.

CCR's gray slab of beef brought back all those memories. It didn't help that the New York strip was about as thick as a book of poetry. Its sides didn't inspire much hope either: a stack of extra-wide steak fries that looked barely cooked and a bowl of sliced green beans, previously frozen or canned if I were a betting man.

The meat's thinness, in fact, reminded me more of skirt steak than strip, even though it clearly was the latter. There also wasn't a char mark within a mile of that steak, which means the protein likely never came in contact with a grill. I was not looking forward to my first bite.

Now, I don't want to oversell this, but let me say this about the first bite: It was far better than anything I could have imagined, particularly at that price, particularly  with its underwhelming appearance. The steak was well-seasoned, the salt and pepper bringing out the meager flavor of that thin cut. The seasoning, in fact, was the make-or-break element of the meat. Those bites not sprinkled with enough S&P were lifeless.

I have absolutely nothing kind to say about the sides, other than the fact they were less embarrassing to stare at than the women on stage.

Crystal City Restaurant

The place looks rather harmless from the street. It features a brick-and-tile facade that gives little indication, save for the silhouette of two mammothly endowed women, of the nude acrobatics going on inside. Unlike at Camelot Show Bar, where I ate lunch today, you have to seat yourself, which is sort of a pyschological test to measure your perv and shame levels.

I decided that if I'm going to do this thing right, I'm going to sit right up front, by God. I claimed a four-top booth near the stage and plopped myself down. I promptly ignored the dancer about eight feet away and checked my e-mail accounts, typed out an e-mail to a source, checked facebook,  looked for comments on my previous postings, logged on to Twitter, and generally acted like I was at the office for about 10 minutes.

I clearly need work on my strip-club etiquette.

The waitress here wasn't required to perform her job wearing lacy underwear. She wore a short skirt and a casual top, looking no different than, say, someone working the tables at an Eastern Shore crab shack or a sports bar in Bethesda. She handed me a menu and left me alone to review its many choices. 

I opted for the most dangerous entree: the New York strip steak dinner special, available on Wednesdays. The six-ounce strip (ugh!) comes (double ugh!) with your choice of potato, and a vegetable side. All this for the low, low price of $5.99.

I felt like I was in Las Vegas, back before all the celebrity chefs arrived and the only gustatory attractions were the all-you-can-eat buffets for $5.99 a head. The lines for those buffets could be longer than the queue to ride the Matterhorn at Disneyland. 

My memories of those buffets are not too kind — slices of roast beef that had been sitting under a heat lamp for hours, a broad and lifeless array of vegetables, and a chocolate cream pie for dessert. The shit was designed, I figured, to get you back to the gaming tables pronto.

I wasn't sure what the $5.99 New York strip steak dinner was designed to do, given the attraction of Crystal City, one presumes, has nothing to do with what's on the plate. But nonetheless, the management has one stipulation for its ultra-cheapo steak special:

Dine-in only.

But I have an overly developed sense of shame. I can't look at naked women and drink. So I tell the waitress that I want water.

"Sure, one bottled water," she says and immediately walks away before I can correct her. Still, sparkling, or tap are apparently not options offered at Camelot. It's bottled or nothing.

The bikini waitress drops off the smallest bottle of Evian I've ever seen, along with a tiny wine glass filled with ice and two straws. I can't tell exactly from the scribbles on my final bill how much I paid for the water, but it appears to be somewhere in the $6 to $7 neighborhood.

It's going to be a long lunch.

I've ordered the jerk chicken "chef's special" with the idea that, if I'm really going to judge a dish coming out of the Camelot kitchen, it might as well be something that the head cook at least claims to have developed himself. As a lark, I ordered a side of onion rings, fairly certain that they would be Sysco's finest.

My lunch took forever to reach me. I had sit through one stripper after another after another while the kitchen pretended they were busier than Ray's Hell Burgers on a Saturday night. This tactic, of course, has its desired effect: You feel compelled to do something while you sit there watching naked women climbing brass poles for your enjoyment. You either give them a buck here and there or wait for the dude sporting the oversized Polo shirt and nasty grimace to shake that fucking cash out of you himself.

I almost breathe a sigh of relief when the bikini girl brings my lunch. She tries to place the plates on the table without her boobs falling out of her skimpy green bra. Her technique has all the grace of a construction worker with a jackhammer.

The chicken is surrounded with sides: mashed potatoes (one step up from the boxed variety), wilted greens (bitter, a little spicy, and passable), and a large chunk of a hard, pasty baguette. The thick breast meat (of course!) is surprisingly juicy. I was expecting a hard, dry brick of overcooked chicken, but this breast is moist, even at its thickest sections. It also packs spice and heat, more than I thought the kitchen would serve the typically middle-aged clientele that waddles into the Camelot. The meat wasn't grilled, like genuine jerk chicken should be, but baked instead. No matter, I was pleased to savor something without feeling guilty.

Oh, and those rings? Totally from Sysco, or some other food-service giant.

Well, I was wrong. The hardest part came when the dancer bounded off the stage and launched into that standard social protocol of all strip clubs: hitting up the patrons for cash while pretending to give a shit about them. The stripper approached my table. I had already placed my order.

"Hi, how are you?" she asked.

The interior of the club was dark, illuminated only by the sickly yellow glow of these backlit transparent panels, designed faintly in the style of a family coat of arms. Despite the poor light, I could tell this dancer was very tan. She was also young, although she was trying hard to act more mature than someone who shows her crotch for a living.

"You having a little lunch?" she inquired.

"Yes, just stopped by for a bite," I lied.

"What are you having?" she wanted to know.

I started to fidget, wondering if the meter was running in this young woman's mind and what the charge would be for me.

"I got the jerk chicken." This was true. After carefully and deliberately scanning the menu (while a completely naked woman danced on stage, mind you, and other women wearing sexy underwear paraded around the narrow room), I decided that the only true test of the kitchen would be to order one of their specials, not a burger or a sandwich. Hence, the jerk chicken.

The dancer looked at me blankly for a second, then said, "Oh, that must be a special."

"It is a special," I reassured her.

"The chef is good here," she countered. "You wouldn't think so at a place like this, but the chef is really good."

"What do you usually get?" I asked.

"I usually get the burger," she responded.

I looked at her in her bikini underwear, guessing that she couldn't be 100 pounds, tops.

"But you're so skinny," I protested. "You must not eat that many burgers."

"I have a very high metabolism," she said. She went on to describe how much she sweats and how people worried that she couldn't put on any weight, which then lead to various medical tests.

"They tested me for tapeworms,  too" she noted. 

The next image that flashed in my mind was enough to ruin my appetite — and any sort of side dish of arousal that might come from eating lunch around women without a stitch of clothes on.

When I first compiled my top-ten sexual euphemisms from rap songs, a few listeners weren't convinced that all these mainstream rap ditties had such dirty double-meanings. "This is terribly researched," wrote commenter Hocus Focus, who took umbrage at my suggestion that there may be an underlying ejaculation message in the popular strip-club refrain "make it rain."

"'Make it Rain" is not a sexual euphemism," wrote Hocus Focus. No, no—it's just a stripping euphemism. The manufactured wetness, some argue, is nothing more than the innocent pasttime of "showering" strippers with cash—and certainly has nothing to do with semen.

Finally, I've found the missing link that will prove "make it rain" is as much about genital-fluid showers as it is lucrative pole-dancing: "Wetter," the hit summer single by Twista (and featuring Erika Shevon).

Follow the "Wetter" video along with me, and watch how "make it rain" transforms from its (still pretty sleazy!) cash-money context and into its (definitively sleazy!) cum-shower meaning.

First, "making it rain" can be interpreted as throwing cash:

0:15 — Thunderstorm sound effects
0:24 — Shevon asks Twista to come "make it rain" on her
0:25 — Twista mines "making it rain" with his fingers
1:09 — Twista informs Shevon that "when it come to makin' it rain," Twista could "get it wet"
1:14 — Twista tells Shevon that he will be her "weatherman"
1:18 — Twista hints that he sees "rain in the forecast"
1:25 — Twista details how much cash he's got (whew).
1:36 — Shevon again asks Twista to "come and make it rain down on" her
1:52 — and again.

But then, Twista begins to deviate from the cash-money context:

2:18 — Twista asks Shevon if she "want[s] me to get it wet in other ways."
2:29 — Twista clarifies that this time when he "makes it rain," he "ain't stoppin 'til you wet up the covers."
2:30 — But why, Twista? "Because I gotta keep on fuckin 'til I see a lot of white stuff."

Oh, God, he's talking about semen!:

2:49 — Twista creepily mines "making it rain" over Shevon's body.
3:34 — Buhhhhhh, again with the thunderstorm effects!

But no, "make it rain" is not a sexual euphemism. It's far too explicit to qualify as one of those.

Boy, is it hard to get a stripper to take your phone call. I've called a lot of strip clubs in my day, and it's always the same: You call. You get a grainy message listing off the names of the strippers you can see that evening. You're told to call another number to get actual information on the club. That number is a fax machine.

But it doesn't matter. Those grainy strip club messages, man—those are the whooooole reason I'm calling.

I'm sure a lot of guys dial those numbers and wait anxiously on the line to hear their favorite girl's name, to decide if the bodies present are compelling enough to make them slip out of the house. Not me. I don't have a favorite girl—I just like listening to somebody record a long and glorious list of ridiculous stripper names into the telephone, every day of the week.

I encourage everybody to call the clubs themselves—that way you get the extras, like the speaker pausing for a second as she turns the page on her stripper list, or the list of specials, like "prime rib, filet mignon, sandwiches." But for those who don't want the numbers saved in their cell phone histories, I give you: Tonight's entertainment!

—

Good Guys
2311 Wisconsin Ave NW
(202) 333-8128

Nearly completely incomprehensible today—yes!

Sandra
May
Ellen
Sexy
Russia
Patty
Desire
Saphire
Mya

—

Camelot
1823 M Street NW
(202) 887-5966

Day:

Amanda
Ashley
Ceci
Dakota
Jasmine
Jennifer
Kristin
Lindsey
Lura
Mia
Nadia
Natasha
Toni

Night:

"Amanda 2"
Audrey
Carli
Carmella
Felicia
Jasmine
Katia
Lynette
Marilyn
Sheena
Skyler
Stephanie
Tina Marie
Tanya
Vita

—

Archibald's
1520 K St NW
(202) 737-2662

Fuck, all they say is they have "75 beautiful women" on staff. The daily schedule's at the Web site:

Chase
Georgia
Hazel
Kitty
Layla
Lisa
Masumi
Natalie
Nature
Versai

—

The House
3530 Georgia Ave. NW
(202) 882-2014

Shit, a guy actually picks up the phone here. I panic and tell him I have the wrong number.

Photo by Alexander O'Neill.

The District's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs has consented to a raze order filed in October by the owners of Glover Park's gentlemen's dance venue, J.P.'s Night Club. In their 20 plus years in business, the long-running, family-owned business had continually faced critiques from neighbors in the upscale community over matters of crime, alcohol licensing and, well, that other thing.

Local adversaries finally got their wish in January 2008, when a conflagration led to a dramatic fire-and-rescue operation, when eager firemen rescued a (fully clad) employee from the roof as J.P.'s went up in flames. The building was soon boarded up (not hard, it had no windows) and has remained so ever since, even as new businesses have moved into adjoining storefronts.

According to an anonymous commenter, though, Glover Park's strip club strip may yet emerge from the ashes like a glorious, full-nude Phoenix. "Anonymous" writes, "A little birdie told me that a shiny new club will open on the JP's site in a new building in the not so distant future." Those Glover Park residents who like their strip clubs plagued by fire can still head to Good Guys, site of the fall 2007 arson that critically injured a bouncer and left many unclothed employees out in the cold.