Having recently written a story about the sex and repression at the Catholic University of America, I was interested to read Vox Populi’s interview with D.C.’s most infamous Catholic sex writer, Julia Allison. Allison graduated from Georgetown in 2004, where she wrote “Sex on the Hilltop,” the Hoya’s first sex column—and quite possibly the first sex column at a Catholic University, period.

Allison caused a good deal of controversy in her tenure at Georgetown University—dating a congressman, allegations of plagiarism, offers from Playboy—but few reports of Allison’s co-ed days have focused on the actual substance of her Hoya column. In the interview, Vox Pop’s Molly Redden digs past the personal fluff to find why even acknowledging that sex happens at Georgetown University was an up-the-Hilltop battle in the early part of the decade.

The whole Q-and-A is worth a read, but here’s the taboo Hoya topic that Allison says finally did her column in:

So, I wanted to talk about what do you do when you have a roommate and you wanna hookup? I mean, this is a question that every undergraduate has struggled with. And I said, “If you want to have sex, and you have a roommate, you need to do this.” And they said, “No no no no no no, we can’t write ’sex,’ let’s just say, ‘makeout.’”

And now, suddenly, a new tradition: Every Friday, the amazing Sady of the New York-based lady blog Tiger Beatdown and myself, of the Washington, D.C.-based blog you are reading now, will discuss the lady issues of the day.

In this episode, Sady and I dissect a Congressional morality play, in which President Barack Obama convinces Democrats to drop a $200 million family planning provision from the $825 billion economic stimulus bill in order to court Republican support, only to find that the Republicans don’t give a shit and none of them vote for it anyway.

AMANDA: first up, i hear via Wonkette tweet that Rod Blagojayavavovich is out.

SADY: is he now? i will be sad when he is gone and irrelevant, for he is such a hugely entertaining figure in American life.

AMANDA: he did a lot for women’s health in his state, and then said a lot about how he did a lot for women’s health in his state over and over again, in order to avoid talking about all the wire tapping business.

Read More “Introducing: Sexist Beatdown” »

You should too. I may look serious, but really I’m just coming down from a serious endorphin rush from voting for the first time in the District. Check out more voter and polling place photos at washingtoncitypaper.com. —Amanda

Boing Boing points us to a Gender Analyzer which asks the question, “Man or Woman: Who Is Writing That Blog?” The program is developed to use “Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman” using a “text classifier” that’s “been trained on 2000 blogs written by men and women.”

So, where does The Sexist’s writing fall on the gender spectrum?

Read More “I Write Like A Dude, Just Like Danielle Steel” »

* So, the vice presidential debate was last night. Read my live blog of the event here and post-debate response here.

* Quick recap on women’s and GLBT issues because there’s not much to say. The candidates (and moderator Gwen Ifill) were largely silent on women’s issues, beyond Biden name-dropping the Violence Against Women Act and Palin laughably veering the Straight Talk Express to give a brief shout out to “our respect for women’s rights.” Palin and Biden did find some troubling middle ground on gay marriage. Both said that they supported equal benefits for same sex couples, but announced in no uncertain terms that they oppose gay marriage. Palin announced that she was “tolerant” and again used her One Gay Friend as an example of her acceptance of the gay “choice.” Biden said marriage should be a “decision to be left up to the faiths.” Agreed,  Biden, but what the fuck do the “faiths” have to do with the legal definition of marriage?

* Slate explains how debate moderator Gwen Ifill is free to choose her own questions—ostensibly. Jason Cherkis has already said everything I want to say about Ifill: “Could she have bothered to press either candidate (but especially Palin) when they refused—sometimes openly refused—to answer her questions? Or how about a follow-up when Palin suggested expanding the veep’s authority? Or what about healthcare? Ifill couldn’t even press Palin after the candidate dodged a softball on the candidates’ weaknesses.” If anything, Ifill’s perceived “conflict of interest” made her uninterested in doing her job: Simply requiring the candidates to answer her questions instead of shooing them beneath the podium and (drill baby) drilling home their talking point.

* A quick note on personality: Biden’s had 35 years in the Senate to define his persona as an advocate for the middle class; Palin, by her own admission, has had five weeks on the national stage to do the same. Palin did her best to push through as the gosh-darn, winking, folksy Alaskan mama bear in the debate, dropping “Main Street” and “kitchen table” like nobody’s business—even mentioning the “soccer mom” along with the “hockey mom” to broaden her extracurricular-activity appeal. In the end, Biden finally just fucking explains why it’s ridiculous for them to spend the whole debate fighting about who’s more “real.” TPM has a video clip of the moment: