* Porn performer Aurora Snow is also filing updates from the Stagliano obscenity trial. Her take: The prosecution hates fun:

Opening arguments began yesterday, and as a performer I was stunned by the prosecution’s description of what made the material obscene. From my point of view, the prosecution’s lack of contact and knowledge of what we do in adult entertainment seemed laughable. Oh no, there are close-up shots of pussy? Oh, the horror! If this were not such a serious matter, it would be a pure farce of cardboard bad guys picking on others for having more fun than them in life.

* Feminist running tally: Score one for Playboy, Chloe Angyal says.

* Remember that "conscience rule" the Bush administration squeezed through in its lame-duck period, allowing workers in federally-funded facilities to refuse to provide services they found morally objectionable? Yeah, Megan Carpentier noticed that Obama never repealed that.

* Silvana at Tiger Beatdown on the fun and frivolity of fashion! Unless you're fat:

For fat women, clothes are supposed to be about making people forget that you’re fat. “Hiding” “flaws.” “Smoothing out” your “shape” (i.e. your fat). “Emphasizing” your “assets” (at least you have big boobs, fatty). “Defining” your waist (because, hey, at least you can make one part of you look smaller than the other parts). It’s all code for: Don’t look fat. The advice isn’t too different for thin or average women. You also want—surprise, surprise!—to not look fat. And for a long, long time, I bought into that. I bought the idea that my body wasn’t acceptable and I had to use clothing as best I could to try to make it acceptable.

* The D.C. Attorney General's Office has dropped all charges against Lt. Dan Choi in relation to his "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" protests outside the White House last Spring.

Photo via walid.hassenein, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Sure, we want high-profile women to be allies to other women—and it stings extra hard when sexism is perpetuated through their public personas, instead of exclusively by dudes. But behind one Olivia Munn is a producer instructing Munn to "take it off reeeeeeally slow," and a network president "standing on a speaker in the back, leaning over to get pictures," and a team of photographers vying to catch an unauthorized glimpse of Munn's nipple, and a male co-host who insists that he "violate [her] from behind" despite her protestations, and a whole audience full of fanboys screaming at Munn to put her mouth on something. Behind her is an entire industry making sure this happens.

"Olivia Munn is not the one running this show," Sady Doyle writes. "If she weren’t willing to play this role, she wouldn’t have her job; if she didn’t have her job, someone else would. . . . Olivia Munn embodies geek-misogynist expectations and desires for women, in this one specific job she does, but those expectations and desires are what make girls’ lives hard, not the women who are paid to fulfill them."

Another expectation making girls' lives hard? The equally sexist demand that women take full responsibility for these sexist expectations by always refusing to fulfill them. By faulting Munn for "flaunting it"—instead of taking a look at the demand side of the Hot Girl equation—we're not only accusing Munn of being a bad feminist, but also a poor gatekeeper of sexism. An entertainment industry that's built on arousing men by wearing women down until they acquiesce? That, we take for granted. Women, who have little power in this structure, are nevertheless expected to keep the industry's libido under control—just as they're expected to hold off sex, keep a sufficient amount of clothes on so as not to tempt men, and never "put themselves in situations" where sexual assailants may strike.

It's unreasonable, of course, for us to expect any one woman to hold off a whole culture's misogyny. In fact, we expect all women to do it—not just high-profile women like Olivia Munn, but our peers and ourselves. In this world, when a woman is subjected to sexist treatment over and over again—like Munn has been, in magazines and on television—it's not evidence of systemic sexism. It's evidence that we should be "skeptical" of the woman herself who failed to adequately shake it off—and once again turn our attentions away from that big industry behind the girl.

In Jennifer Senior's New York Magazine piece on recent research into the joylessness of parenting, Senior recalls a time when her beloved 2-year-old son dismantled a wooden garage then proceeded to chuck the wooden planks at her head, leading Senior to turn to booze. But does it make her happy?

Signs point to no! According to Senior, "a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so." Duh, right? While joyless parenting may constitute a newfangled field of research, that whole joyless motherhood thing has been racking up its share of anecdotal evidence for quite some time. In the Atlantic, Sady Doyle recounts 60 years of its horrors: Simone de Beauvoir's observation that "the child is merely harassing and bothersome"; Adrienne Rich's assertion that children cause "the most exquisite suffering"; Mary McCarthy's fictional mother feeling that, "to her shame, [the baby] was a piece of hospital property that had been dumped on her and abandoned—they would never come to take him away."

Feeling soulless yet? What this edition of Sexist Beatdown needs is a couple of fancy-free non-parents who have not yet been trampled by the misery of child-rearing! So join Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I as we discuss the Stockholm syndrome of baby-making, the luxuries of upper-class depression, and the quiet despair we are told we will forever regret not having!

SADY: Hello, fellow non-parent! Enjoying your non-parental non-miserable lifestyle yet? Because I sure am!

AMANDA: God, I am too. I plan on enjoying it until I have children too late in life, at which point memories of my blissful childless years will only contribute to my ultimate unhappiness.

SADY: If only we were all having children immediately after leaving our parents' homes! Surely this would alleviate our misery. Also, it would help if we were not so rich and successful. This makes it harder for us, unlike the lower classes and immigrants, who simply take these bodily matters of procreation in stride. POOR PEOPLE: Not at all subject to undue stress in the matter of having kids!

AMANDA: Indeed. It is so very taxing to have the time to dote over our own happiness.

SADY: The thing is, I don't think that the news that raising children can be stressful IS NEWS. Like 74% of second-wave feminists were talking about how grueling it is to raise children, and/or to have that as your primary responsibility.

AMANDA: Haha. And now that it's shared, people are suddenly all like, "Should we even be doing this?"

SADY: Right? Like, "wow. It turns out this is HARD. Who knew?

AMANDA: "Who" indeed! I do find these studies of happiness interesting, but I find it strange that people are looking for some sort of definitive answer from them: Like, Everyone procreate! Or, Condoms!

SADY: Right. I mean: "Happiness Studies," in and of itself, which I hear is actually a growing field, is strange. We can measure what makes people happy or unhappy, but ultimately I guess I'm with Senior on this point: Are we questioning what role "happiness" plays in our life choices? I mean, I have recently come to feel that I might not want kids, but this has to do with the fact that I am (a) poor, and (b) high-strung. I can't get a dog without Googling care instructions obsessively and researching what sort of terrible ailments might wind up killing it. But was "happiness" what people had children for, ever, anyway? Maybe the issue isn't that "parenting has changed"—because it seems to have changed most fundamentally in terms of who has to do it—but that we EXPECT "happiness" from popping one out in a way we didn't use to.

AMANDA: Right. I think the happiness part is some new-agey conception of raising children. It's important to remember that joy aside, the fact is that now a lot of people get to choose whether they have children or not, and if so, when. And so it becomes much more of a quality-of-life question than a biological-necessity one. And so I think it's fair to expect that you do the thing that you think will make you the happiest. But there's also a lot of fear-mongering about that, because of that whole ovary-loss thing. So people are like, "If you don't have kids now, you will never be happy and you'll regret it for the rest of your life!" And people on the other end are like, "Once you pop it out, there's no turning back! Life-ruiner!" When, actually, I bet that a lot of people could find meaningful, happy lives doing either of those things.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, women are so, so frequently scared out of, like, LIVING, or doing anything other than having children ASAP, because they're told that their fertility is evaporating and they'll be unhappy forever if they don't have babies. And I think it's worth noting that a ton of the parents interviewed, who were speaking most directly about being unhappy and frustrated, were women. Men in that article were mostly "experts," even if they were also fathers.

AMANDA: Right, I think there is some stat in there that women are on the whole less happy. Which, you know, probably has something to do with that whole "shared parenting" thing not being completely shared, and the general added expectations placed on mothers. One of my favorite parts of the story was the suggestion that you "always regret the things you didn't do, not the things you did do." Like, why does the "thing I do" have to be having babies? There are plenty of things I won't be doing if I end up having kids.

SADY: Haha, yeah. "I will never regret not having children, when I die because my child threw boards at me and one of them had a nail in it and it punctured my skull and killed me." But I'm also wondering if being told that children are the KEY TO HAPPINESS (if you are a woman) has to do with the disappointment (among women) that children don't auto-fulfill you? I mean, Simone de Beauvoir talked about this. Her whole deal was that women are told having children will fulfill them, and then it doesn't, and then they hate their children. Her solution: Make something else in your life more important than getting pregnant?

AMANDA: But there's nothing more important than hating your kids! If you never do that, you will regret it for the rest of your life!

SADY: It's true. You'll never regret hating your kids as much as you'll regret not hating them. It is fun to think about fathers in all this, though. I mean, I like to imagine they're at least MARGINALLY more involved in dealing with the poop and the breaking things and the eighteen years of college prep these kids are all being put through now.

AMANDA: Right. The story did mention that the most unhappy parents of all were those who were the non-custodial parent (mostly fathers). So having a kid and not raising it? Depressed for life. Having a kid and raising it too much? Also depressed—single parents and moms in general were less happy. Solution: Move to Norway?

SADY: Right. I, predictably, DID enjoy the part where they were all like, "maybe if we had state-sponsored child care?" "Also, longer maternity leave helps?" Like: All of these things that feminists are advocating FOR WOMEN would actually make parents' lives easier, in the long run. OR, you could just live a life of heedless wanton non-impregnated self-satisfaction. Until you die, and there is no-one who will visit you at the nursing home. Except for that one robot seal thing.

AMANDA: Right. I mean, is that the whole point of it? That someone will be there to care when I die? That seems to be the last-ditch explanation when I press people on why this is necessary. I'm guessing it's more like a Stockholm syndrome thing.

SADY: Yeah. Probably. We love our tiny oppressors!

AMANDA: The baby captors stole our happiness! Join us!

Photo via Smithsonian Institution

* Nancy Schwartzman talks about having her rape debated on camera for a potential new "feminist" series:

I was told that the 30 second trailer of my film would be used to “kick off” the conversation and we’d go around one by one, with some guidance from the moderator, and discuss the multidimensional and complicated topic of rape. We’d use smart, snarky analysis of a real—not imagined, not whined about, not exaggerated, not falsely claimed—problem.

Instead, egged on by the producer, participants—not the moderators—were encouraged to take what they saw in the trailer and the one sentence synopsis of my rape (she consented to vaginal sex, and then was raped anally) and debate. It didn’t occur to me that a producer would structure a conversation around my film when no one had seen it, nor was it ever articulated that my body parts and my rape would be at the center of this debate.

* Want more on Olivia Munn and What She All Means? Sady's got it.

* BuzzFeed unearths Rachel Maddow's yearbook photo, where she appears with long blond hair, pearls, and no glasses. Maddow can now rest easy knowing that some dude on the Internet would "tap that!"

* D.C. attorney Bruce Stovell is suing LeBron James and James' mother Gloria "seeking to prove that he is the father" of the NBA player. Stovell claims he impregnated Gloria at a D.C. bar in 1984, then urged her to ensure that the fetus "plays basketball." He's also looking for $4 million in damages.

* New vaginal gel may help combat HIV.

Mel Gibson was condemned for (allegedly) threatening to burn down his house and force his ex, Oksana Grigorieva, to blow him (presumably after he saved her from being raped by a group he describes with his usual Gibsonian eloquence).

Gibson allegedly said this: "I am going to come and burn the f–king house down . . . but you will blow me first." He added that Grigorieva looks like a "fucking pig in heat" whose clothes will get her "raped by a pack of [racial slur too horrible to repeat]."

This is how the threat of an uncommon form of sexual assault—stranger gang rape—is used to facilitate the more common form of abuse—acquaintance rape. So next time you start to warn someone in your life against wearing "suggestive" clothing outside the house? Keep in mind that this is a tactic rapists use, and that you are actually statistically more likely than any of the lurking strangers out there to commit this offense.

SADY: HI. THIS IS NOT A LATENESS THAT IS MY OWN FAULT. IT IS THAT OF MY COMPUTERIZED CHAT SYSTEM.

AMANDA: I'm just going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you were not too busy feeding your Internet pornography surfing addiction to join me here for this very important Internet pornography discussion.

SADY: It's true! I was... not at all indulging in my shameful addiction to Internet pornography! Because if I were (indulging in my Internet pornography addiction) I would be rendered incapable of interacting with you, a woman! “Are you waiting for a pizza to be delivered?" I would ask. "Or, perhaps, for someone to fix your plumbing? That is the only reason I can conceive of for you not to be having titillating adventures at this moment!"

AMANDA: Well that's too bad! For if you truly were suffering from an Internet porn surfing addiction, I could get you a great gig speaking to groups of conservative audiences about your Internet porn surfing addiction in glorious detail. My very favorite part of the "Porn Harms" briefing I attended last month was right after Shelley Lubben—ex-porn performer, current anti-porn activist—finished her spiel, and one of the old white men running the briefing stood up and informed everyone that he was addicted to porn for 25 years.

SADY: These two storylines connect, I am thinking! It is all very LOST!

AMANDA: Everyone clapped!

SADY: Awwwwww. I mean, I have no doubt — NONE NONE NONE — that there are women in the porn industry who are abused, for whom working in porn was sexually traumatic, for whom being an anti-porn activist seems like the best and most necessary course of action, given what they've been through. It's that whole prayer-meeting aspect to it, though, that freaks me out. Like, a lot of these speakers are clearly people who have spent a LOT of time looking for porn, and specifically for the most transgressive porn they can find! And then they describe the porn, in porn-like terms! In order to demonstrate the evils of porn! Like, the "I once was lost but now have found gagfactory.com, AND AM WILLING TO REGISTER MY DISTASTE" aspect is a little weird. Like a ritual purification, rather than a discussion.

AMANDA: Yeah. I mean, one of the most frustrating parts of the debate around porn is how difficult it is to punch through the dichotomy of Porn v. Anti-Porn. It's often framed as a fight between the "Keep Your Fascist Government Off My Boner" camp vs. the "Bring All the Poor Abused Women to Jesus" camp. And if you're someone who is approaching this from a feminist perspective (and there are a LOT of feminist perspectives on porn, pro and anti and in-between) you're sometimes forced to align with one or the other. Boners v. Jesus, if you will.

SADY: Right. And, I mean, I think it's symptomatic of people seeing that institutions are troubled, and then assuming that the institutions THEMSELVES are the problem, which sort of bars off a more nuanced discourse. Or bars you off from encouraging yourself to take a more nuanced standpoint. But I like to think that we're slowly getting past that. I mean, we're maybe getting to a point where people can acknowledge that porn can express pretty vile attitudes toward The Ladies (and anyone else it sets its sights on) and that those vile attitudes can be expressed on set in ways that hurt people, without having to describe ourselves as "anti-all-porn-everywhere-ever."

AMANDA: Right. And also that porn isn't some big monolithic hate-fuck. It can be a lot of things. And as much as the strange explicit purging of the anti-porn activists freaks me out a bit, pro-porn people who aren't interested in dissecting it at all scare me more.

SADY: Yeah, definitely. I mean, a commitment to not looking at the potential problems in porn is probably way worse, in the long run, than TIRELESSLY AND VIGILANTLY WATCHING A TON OF PORN so that you can point out the problems.

AMANDA: Yeah. And the reluctance to engage isn't something I've seen in the more feminist pro-porn circles, but it's definitely something I've seen in the Get-Your-Fascist-Government-Off-My-Boner circles. Any industry that provides boners can't possibly be problematic!

SADY: Boners are our nation's most valued resource! It's just that it seems to me that the people most qualified to write or speak about porn's effect on women are . . . women who've been in porn? Rather than women who've seen some of it, or read what someone else wrote about seeing it?

AMANDA: Yeah.

SADY: But I worry that, with the Defend the Boners league pressing for those stupid sluts to keep their mouths shut when they're not giving blow-jobs, and the Burn the Tapes crew pressing for the elimination of any non-anti-porn discourse, sex workers who express complicated feelings about porn are being sort of shut out. Not that those folks aren't having conversations and building communities of their own.

AMANDA: Right. And then you have Sasha Grey on Tyra talking about her job and life, as Tyra shakes her head slowly and announces on television that she refuses to believe that Sasha Grey is not a victim of childhood abuse.

SADY: Haha, yeah. Or the cases in which porn stars DO (like a lot of women) have incidences of being sexually abused or assaulted, and everyone is like, "don't you SEEEE? Don't you see that this has clearly driven you MAD? And any of your feelings about the job you do are now INVALID?????" Whereas no-one is saying that to the accountant who was sexually abused growing up. Clearly no-one is like, "the pain and shame of your assault warped you so that you had no other choice but to fall into a life of TAX FORMS!"

AMANDA: Yeah, I mean what sexual assault victims really need is for more people to take away their agency and reduce their options in life, and then to shame them based on their sexual expression, right?

SADY: EXACTLY! I mean, I think a lot of porn discourse—and people who are fervent watchers of porn, and would fight to the death your right to take away their cinema boners, are just as willing to say that people (particularly women) who do porn are sad and deluded and damaged—depends on the assumption that, if it looks gross and un-sexy to me, it must be gross and un-sexy. And anyone who does it has to be stopped or "saved." See: BDSM, and the vast misunderstandings around that. Whereas, if I look at the kink conference you covered, well, I will be honest with you: There were a lot of videos you posted that I was just like, "nope! Not gonna open that one!" There were a lot of things that I consider gross and un-sexy going on there, such as: homemade Harry Potter erotica.

AMANDA: Haha. Right? But crusading to wipe it clean of this Earth, citing The Children, is another position entirely.

SADY: But who am I to come between you and the turgid purple manhood of Severus Snape?

AMANDA: Gah.

SADY: You know? Like: I can say, "I will not jack off to this, and would prefer not to discuss the levels of arousal it produces in you," without singlehandedly trying to ban it.

AMANDA: Yeah. Dan Savage gives some pretty good advice in his column this week to a guy who has been indulging his wife in her daddy fetish. The husband writes in wondering if the fetish is a sign that his wife was abused as a child, and Savage basically says: Maybe, and that's something you should talk about, but it doesn't mean that she now has to deny her safe exploration of that fetish because her sex life has been informed in the past by horrible experiences. It's your sex life. And past abuse doesn't make your safe and consensual adult sex life invalid.

SADY: Right. I mean, I guess the other side, the argument against mainstream porn is that (a) it influences expectations of what sex "should be like," or what good sex is supposed to look like, and (b) it has to use real bodies in order to do so. Which, I feel like we've dealt with (b). Terrible things happen in porn, but that's a reason to look at the terrible things, not ban porn. Terrible things happen in houses, but that's a reason to look at the terrible things, not to ban houses. But (a) still does trouble me, I'll admit. It is a fact that stuff that happens in porn—your anal sex, your spitting on crotches, your facial shots or bald vaginas, what have you—can be kind of uncomfortably enthused over by people who watch a lot of porn. And have picked up, can I tell you, just the WRONG MOVES for accomplishing it.

AMANDA: Right. Like, I've heard a lot written about how younger men and women absolutely expect hairless vaginas. But again, what are we supposed to do about that? (a) Ban porn; (b) talk about how expectations in porn do and don’t translate into real life; (c) make more diverse porn, maybe? Because (a), beyond being dumb, is also impossible. So we have to start thinking about how to accomplish (b) and (c).

SADY: Yeah. I mean, I think the option is actually to become a little more relaxed and less shameful about porn. Rather than, like, watching it on your own, and then expecting your sex life to match up to it, and then responding to efforts to talk about your porn feelings with "lalala, can't hear you, it's DIRTY!" There are a lot of people who are absolutely cool with sex for the 20 minutes they spend doing it, and then feel weirded out and shameful about it immediately after the fact. And I think porn takes a lot of the bullets, when it comes to those folks and their freaked-out feelings. But, if they're talking AGAINST porn, they can be as graphic as they please! I think, is the message here. That all of us should express our desires to our sex partners in terms of lengthy, Old-Testament-style inveighing against sexual acts we were ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED BY when we saw them last.

AMANDA: I think if Ayn Rand taught us anything, it's that absolutely no thought or discussion needs to go into our darkest dominant sexual fantasies. Just Do It!

SADY: And/or build an entire social order around it!

AMANDA: Right. Or people could just, like, talk about it. What porn needs is more dialogue!

SADY: Can you imagine how much easier porn would be to deal with if it actually included scenes of the date and well-adjusted people undergoing sexual negotiation with each other in a kind and realistic way? "I consent to this," Miranda panted, erotically, "but not the other thing which you mentioned earlier this evening, which is never as much fun as you'd think."

AMANDA: You are seriously crushing some dude's boner right now. But possibly arousing some other dude! So: Even.

SADY: "Your consent gives me such a boner," cried Hans, "which is made but firmer and more sexy by my respect for your stated boundaries!"

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, politely open a Bud Light Lime with your teeth. Then, join Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I as we discuss the man that is Stanley McChrystal, the machismo that would be his downfall, and his enthusiastic endorsement of an almost suspiciously terrible beer.

BUT FIRST: Wondering how your workplace machismo measures up to McChrystal's? Take this handy quiz to find out!

Read each of the following statements. Circle each one that describes you:

1. I have wondered aloud how I got screwed into this meeting.

2. I have employed the middle finger in the course of my professional duties.

3. My work reputation is so macho that even drinking Bud Light Lime cannot mar it.

4. I have publicly complained about being forced to hang out in Paris.

5. My gaze can destroy a subordinate's soul without the need for me to raise my voice.

6. I routinely announce that I am superior to my superior.

7. That superior is the Vice President of the United States.

8. I own a custom-made set of nunchucks.

9. I have participated in the "rat-fucking" of my co-workers.

If you circled between one and eight of the statements above, SISSY. If you circled all nine of them—with an emphasis on the "rat-fucking"—congratulations! You're McChrystal-level macho. Do not stare directly into my eyes!

—

AMANDA: Why hello!

SADY: Are you wondering, perchance, how you got screwed into this chat? The answer is that it is scheduled! It comes with the position! Feel free to wave a middle finger and utter a popular middle-school joke in my direction!

AMANDA: That's gay! Or something!

SADY: Dear Lord. This McChrystal profile: I cannot get over it! Like, four pages in, it starts becoming more generous. Which is kind of startling, because on page one it kind of presents McChrystal as this overgrown eighteen-year-old drinking Bud Light Lime and playing World of (Actual) Warcraft (In Which People Die) with his buddies. Bud Light Lime. BUD LIGHT LIME! The reputation-killer!

AMANDA: Right. And also strangely (and earnestly?) appropriating light satirical commentaries on American patriotism, like Team America and Talladega Nights. Maybe he drinks Bud Light Lime and attends Irish bars in Paris ironically? I can't tell.

SADY: I just don't know. But it seems to me that this whole article is profiling McChrystal as like this sad doomed exemplar of a certain kind of machismo. The kind that doesn't overthink, doesn't do things that are "fucking gay" like attend restaurants with candles or drink wine or respect the President, and is dead set on getting its way no matter what the consequences of getting your way when you're resolutely opposed to thinking about stuff or opening your mind at all might actually be. Like, he's this lone soldier who's gonna make everyone see it his way and share his favorite Bruce Lee quotes with everybody and get called a "Jedi" (!!) and it does... not work out well. At all.

AMANDA: The lack of self-awareness is the main thing. I'm amazed that no one had their guard up around Hastings—or better, that this is what they look like with their guard up. I mean, looking at the hilarious photographs accompanying the story of Hastings in hipster jacket and beard and sunglasses hanging out with all these dudes in uniform, you have to wonder what they were thinking.

SADY: Right. Like, that's what's kind of alarming. That not only are they being frat-house homophobic and hostile to diplomacy — although part of their job is supposedly understanding this culture that they're trying to singlehandedly break down and reconstruct — but that they're being quoted as talking smack about everybody in the administration. They're all identified mostly by their positions, not names, but does being anonymous really help with the impression that this entire operation is just Out Of Control?

AMANDA: And insulting the administration in the laziest way possible. Biden? More like Bite Me! France: Gay! Beer: Good! Us: America! THAT BEING SAID. I have employed the middle finger in a professional capacity more than once. I'm not saying I should be appointed Overlord of Afghanistan or anything, but the juvenile culture didn't come as much of a shock to me.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, the sort of cult of macho in the military has been pointed out or critiqued by a lot of people more skilled and nuanced than I. The whole thing, though, about this very specific, juvenile, macho thing is that it prizes the Rugged Individualist who Gets His no matter what and Shows 'Em All... that's also apparently been the downfall of McChrystal, as a dude. Much as I enjoyed the flashbacks to his early days of "rat fucking" (stripping dudes and covering them with shaving cream? Or something?) and taking his wife to Jack in the Box in formal-wear for their erotic date liaisons, it's easy to see that this military culture sort of made him the man he is, and positioned that man for a fall in some very big ways.

AMANDA: Rat-fucking has predicted many a man's downfall.

SADY: Indeed! Rarely has the phrase "enjoys a spirited round of rat fucking" been attached to the resume of a stellar man! Although "he carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy" is slightly more promising. A custom! Made! Set! Of nunchucks!

AMANDA: When mass-produced nunchucks just won't do.

SADY: Also, this quote, which I just love so much: "The fucking lads love Stan McChrystal,” says a British officer who serves in Kabul. ‘You'd be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like 'Who the fuck is that?' And it's fucking Stan McChrystal.” That fucking quote, man. I'm like, what the fuck is up with that quote? And it's a quote by a British fucking officer, is what it is. And he's fucking like, "let's use the fuck word some more, mate! Pip fucking pip! Fucking cheerio!"

AMANDA: And it's essentially about how McChrystal is like fucking God of Iraq. Which, you know: That guy who thinks he can do anything he wants with an entire region without either respecting the opinions of his superiors or appearing to take any actual interest in understanding how that region works and what it needs (Bud Lite Lime) — he's gone now, but how did he get this far?

SADY: Yeah. And that's the thing: He participated in cover-ups, he found himself in the middle of scandals, but he endeared himself to the previous administration by embodying the sort of soldier they wanted — one who would do what "had to be done," whether or not it was, like, actually permissible. And now he's carrying that same mind-set forward. It's hubris, I think. At some point, in some administration, Stan McChrystal's sense of entitlement or potential was probably proportionate to his actual mandate or talents. Now, at this point in his life, that seems to be clearly not the case. But what kills me is the part where Dude tries to adopt a more nuanced way of moving forward, and the troops aren't buying it, and it looks like the plan once advanced by... Joe Biden. BITE ME BIDEN. HE'S BECOME THE THING HE HATED. WHICH IS APPARENTLY THE VICE-PRESIDENT.

AMANDA: Except only one of these men is not unlike an older version of Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn! This makes his military strategy instantly more relevant.

SADY: True. Indeed, comparisons to Christian Bale always inspire me with trust in the professionalism and stability of the man being compared. Maybe he actually IS Christian Bale. In his most method role yet!

AMANDA: Where does a hotshot uber-American Bud-Light-Drinking Frenchman-hating black ops military genius go from here?

SADY: I'd kind of like to see him host a cooking show? Or — better! — a new and improved Loveline. "DID YOU TRY TAKING HER TO JACK-IN-THE-BOX? THAT'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM RIGHT THERE, PUSSY.” These are flippant answers, but I honestly don't know. Dude's been disgraced. I somehow don't see him comfortably taking on consultancy roles. Although Lord knows he just may.

AMANDA: I SEE MY WIFE 30 DAYS A YEAR. YES I'M RETIRED NOW BUT THIS IS THE OPTIMAL RATIO OF DAYS TO SEE YOUR WIFE FOR MAINTENANCE OF A ROGUE MASCULINE PERSONA. OK, so I just think he's just going to type in all caps all the time, on the Internet. Maybe he could write for Tiger Beatdown? I'd like to see him attempt feminist blog comment moderation.

SADY: Ah, the true insurgency! WE'VE GOT TO UNDERSTAND THEIR CULTURE. SOMEBODY GET ON 4-CHAN, NOW NOW NOW! SEND IN THE CHOPPER, AN AYN RAND SITE LINKED US! ARRRRGH!

AMANDA: I mean at the very least he could point us to his custom nunchuck tailor. I've been looking for an upgrade. Also, I'm tired of taking the effort to actually insert fruit into my beer. Surely there's an easier way!

SADY: Have you considered — PRE-FRUITENING? The fruit invades the beer, then assimilates into it! It re-structures the beer to better fit its own juicy flavor! Maybe he could just think of new things to flavor with limes, disgustingly. That's an ongoing market.

AMANDA: Nevermind, it sounds French.

* Via BLOgT: Even ex-gays are allowed to wear fabulous scarves.

* Feministing points to a Brightest Young Things piece on how some LGBT folks define queer virginity.

* At Tiger Beatdown, Silvana reacts to a piece in the Washington Post about a victim of trauma who built an anti-terrorism career out of her fascination with "evil and violence":

Ironically enough, reading an article about someone else’s fascination with terror caused me to feel a little terror of my own. What if this explained it all? What if my fascination with detention and corrections, and compulsion to fight for people who are locked up, was all a complicated outgrowth of my history of trauma? I was harassed almost every day as a teenager, groped, assaulted, and in my late teens and early twenties raped repeatedly by a boyfriend. I was surrounded by people who had done bad things to me. But instead of being repulsed by criminals, rapists, terrorists, I identify with them. Because, just like women are the sex class, to be the recipient, the dumping-ground for male aggression, men of color and especially mentally ill men of color are the dumping ground for white male authoritarian state-sanctioned violence.

* At Jezebel, Irin Carmon interviews former staffers about The Daily Show's boys club. Head to the comments to read a deluge of defenses of this "progressive" product with a gender problem.

* Tracy Clark-Flory on a man who allegedly hacked into over 100 computers in search of private sex tapes and photos (44 of the victims were underage):

When we come across stories about violations of people's sexual privacy, whether on the news or in our personal lives, there's a tendency to go, Oh, well, that was stupid of them — they shouldn't have filmed that, they shouldn't have taken that photo, etc. And then you feel a bit safer, thanks to your superior wisdom, which tells you that you should not let your boyfriend keep a copy of your homemade sex tape and that you should decline that guy's request for a sexy photo (and maybe you even follow this advice, most of the time). The reality, though, is that precautions—no matter how sensible, no matter how self-righteously we trumpet them—are no match for someone set on exploitation.

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's 1,000 page allegorical novel about why people who read Atlas Shrugged are superior beings who "welcome" rapes from other superior beings, for that is what all superior beings find sexy, is slated to hit the big screen next year. Directing and starring as the most superior "welcomed" rapist of all, John Galt, will be Paul Johansson of One Tree Hill fame. Johansson will also direct. Eroticized fascism has never looked so gauche!

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, join Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I as we discuss  the class concerns of objectivist rape fantasy, the inherent horniness of soft-core steel production, and whether Atlas Shrugged: The Paul Johansson Story can possibly be worse than the 1949 film adaptation of the Fountainhead (trailer above, tl;dr version below):

[youtube:v=x8fkdBz2bds]

SADY: AYN RAND! AYN RAND AYN RAND.

AMANDA: Enough! I am overcome by the urge to be sexually conquered by the small group of captains of industry who I believe to be my intellectual superiors!

SADY: A superior woman, I see! Unlike the puling mewling soft-featured panderers of compassion and mooching! And, like, school lunches! Wicked inferior greed-children, feeding on the lunches of the elite!

AMANDA: It takes a special woman indeed to earn a hate fuck from that guy from One Tree Hill.

SADY: This was always my favorite part of Ayn Rand: There's always ONE WOMAN who is, like, super-smart and super-competent and super-skilled at all this industry stuff that everyone else sucks at because they're socialists. (Also, this woman is always thin and "angular." "Angular" is the key defining visual attribute of Virtue, in the Rand lexicography.) She is, explicitly, better at this than every man in the entire world. EXCEPT FOR HER BOYFRIEND! He chooses her to smack around or rape or whatever (AND SHE LOVES IT) because that is how very superior she is. Like, I'd really rather NOT be superior if it means getting slapped all the time?

AMANDA: But from whence will you experience the natural eroticism derived from the physical and intellectual imbalance between the masculine and the feminine?

SADY: I dunno. Professional wrestling?

AMANDA: Ayn Rand loves gender equality, to a point—the point where she personally thinks it's really not sexy, at which point the greatest man in the world rapes the greatest woman in the world, who he knows will just love it. Because that’s how great she is. Are inferior beings allowed to rape people in Ayn Rand novels? Or is middle-class intimate partner violence not as glamorous?

SADY: Eh. I think a lot of the rough sex derives from the sort of romanticized fascism of the novels. It's all about the right of the strong to fuck over the weak. There's not a lot of structural engagement — any attempt at it is met with some sort of "YOUR BOOTSTRAPS! PULL ON THEM" lalala-I-can't-hear-you thing — but whatever. So the right of, say, multimillionaire industrialists to pay their factory workers one cent a day is the same as the right of that multimillionaire factory worker to beat up his girlfriend. The girlfriend gets to play the role of Good Inferior Person, in that she totally loves it and is honored by it. Unlike those mewling puling mooching factory workers who want to raise the minimum wage enough to buy food with it, or whatever.

AMANDA: Totally not a turn on! I have to admit that I would have loved to see a big-budget Atlas Shrugged cast with immaculately angular captains of Hollywood. But I'm pretty sure Ayn wouldn't be too pleased that some more round-faced television actors are pinching pennies in order to realize her greatest work. You know, maybe they're going to make this amazing recession-era Atlas Shrugged that puts an ironic spin on her glorification of wealth, but I think probably it's just going to be a half-assed dud that doesn't even capture the ridiculous grandeur of her stupid book.

SADY: Haha, yeah. I myself am greatly looking forward to the movie. Because the whole point of it — superior people make superior products and earn superior money because they're superior! — is going to be really complemented by the spectacle of this broke-assed movie made with former WB stars for like five cents. I mean, this is an expensive movie, on the face of it. There are like gleaming teal sci-fi train tracks and uberbridges and megaweapons that can explode a goat and the whole thing ends in a postapocalyptic landscape with the death of civilization and everyone in it. (SPOILER.) How are they going to pull that off, Claymation? Or are they just going to film the speeches? The seventy-seven page speeches? Which, I guess, is the real draw. Ayn Rand writes the stupidest things you've ever heard, but she wraps it up in this package that says you have to be A GENIUS to agree with her, so you make your way through the seventy-seven page speech and you're like, "I DO agree! Plus I done gone and read me some philosophy! I ARE a genius, Ayn!"

AMANDA: Right, I mean, I bet the crack team behind this production can find a way to paraphrase the whole thing. Like: "Not only am I a genius, but I'm also one of the hottest people alive. Also, I hate women just the appropriate amount, a position that isn't sexist in the least, because a woman wrote this book, and anyone who disagrees is simply irrational." KABLOOEY! Or something.

SADY: Yeah. Poor Paul Johansson. I mean, I may personally feel that the best way to embody boyish blonde sexually irresistible Everydude John Galt is NOT to hire a dude who looks like the scarier variety of nightclub bouncer, but he's not only playing this iconic poor-hater: He's directing the thing. Quite possibly because they couldn't find anyone else.

AMANDA: How could you put a film like this in anyone else's hands but the most superior person available for every position involved, Paul Johansson of One Tree Hill? The positive here is that if Ayn Rand's novel is any indication, they won't need to hire an editor.

SADY: Maybe he'll apply lessons learned in his previous erotic straight-to-video thriller "Bitch Hunter 2: Night of the Evils" and EDIT IT AS WELL. A true capitalist can do ANYTHING! With no training! It is like the Matrix! What excites me is that they might be splitting it up into a trilogy. As with the Harry Potter and the Lords of the Rings and so on and so forth. Because, in the first part of this book, LITERALLY NOTHING HAPPENS. Dagny rides trains and Hank buys her a necklace and hates his wife. People will be leaving the theater like, "so... trains, then?"

AMANDA: There will, of course, be plenty of soft-core shots of steel tracks and shit. I for one expect to be extremely aroused.

SADY: The history of Ayn Rand is that people are super-persuaded by her books until those books are filmed. "The Fountainhead," written by Rand herself, is notoriously bad, mainly because Rand insisted they keep in the speeches. People were super-turned-on by the edgy rape scenes and the One Man Takes A Stand Against Society bullshit, and then they started filming it and were like... "wait a second! No-one actually talks like this! And they're arguing over buildings the whole way through! This shit is SUPER-BORING, oh noes!" So, in a way, the "Atlas Shrugged" movie is the best thing that could possibly happen. Provided you hate "Atlas Shrugged."

AMANDA: I think enough people hate "Atlas Shrugged" that this movie actually has a fighting chance at the box office.

HANK REARDON, MULTI-MILLIONAIRE INDUSTRIALIST: Who is John Galt?

DAGNY TAGGART, MULTI-MILLIONAIRE INDUSTRIALIST/LADY: I would also like to know the answer to that question!

HANK REARDON: (Slaps DAGNY.)

DAGNY TAGGART: Ohhhh, so sexy!

* Georgetown Girl endeavors to answer the question, "What's a feminist?" She's compiling answers from "students and recently graduated students," "adults," and "female politicians and celebrities." If you're a student, recently graduated student, adult, female politician, or celebrity, e-mail her to participate!

* Molly Ren on the latest in macabre sex toy technology: the sex coffin. "I don’t think I’d react . . . well to being shut inside the coffin. The lid is so heavy it takes both hands to lift, and the act of shutting my friend away “forever” was a powerful visual. I’d struggle and scream inside the coffin if someone shut me inside it—and the opportunity to really struggle and scream against a much larger dom is what excites me about it."

* On Broadsheet, Scientology gets even creepier: coerced abortions, via "intimidation, isolation and forced manual labor for pregnant women who decided to continue their pregnancies."

* And check out Fannie's Room for another reason religion sucks.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Role-playing time! Let's say you're having sex, with a partner, in whatever manner that you both enjoy. And let's say that toward the end of your time together, your partner asks, "Hey, would you mind if I brought several million of our closest friends in here, just to observe this?" And you're like, "Oh, please, no. I would not prefer that." And then your sex partner invites millions of people into the room anyway, instructing each of them that you would really prefer they not come in. This excites them! They are willing to pay $10 a pop to observe what you do not want them to see.

So: What does this experience say about you, as a person? Let's take a representative sample of public responses to people who once privately videotaped themselves during sex many years ago, and then later saw that videotape disseminated to millions of people without their consent:

* You don't deserve reproduce, or ever succeed at any job: "[to] all the little girls and boys out there who one day hope to be famous/have a family/have an awesome career. Don't make a sex tape."

* You're either a calculating liar, or too dumb to fuck: "Spare us the outrage at how you feel sooooo betrayed, how you have no idea how this could have fallen into the wrong hands. . . . if you are actually dumb enough to make a sex tape and think it won’t get leaked, you are too dumb to ever have sex again."

* If you express discomfort at having your sex tape disseminated without your consent, you're a whiner: "Forgive us if we don't feel too sorry for Paris, given that the sex tape helped transform her from a two-bit reality TV star and wannabe to an internationally famous tabloid darling and blonde icon."

* And on the off-chance that you are not embarrassed by the tape's release? Well, you're a whore: "Like any mentally unstable famewhore, she's speaking out about the entire debacle."

Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I disagree with these sentiments! Join us in this edition of Sexist Beatdown as we chat consent with girls on film, until the conversation devolves into a demonstration of OUR FEMINIST HULK RAGE:

SADY: Well, good morning! Who wants to discuss... THE EROTICIZATION OF NON-CONSENT????

AMANDA: Oh me! Me! Wait ... I believe I am meant to feign disinterest in this discussion, in order to make it hotter. THE CHAT THEY DIDN'T WANT YOU TO READ.

SADY: Perhaps you should hire a lawyer to stop me from chatting with you, so that I might go ahead and continue chatting anyway!

AMANDA: For that is the consequence of having a Gmail account.

SADY: EXACTLY. And we all know that, however many verbal and/or legal refusals a woman may utter, she SECRETLY WANTS YOU to do whatever the hell you want and/or will profit from, anyway. If she didn't WANT you to release her sex tape, why did she make a sex tape? If she didn't WANT you to penetrate her vagina, why did she have a vagina? And so on! And so forth!

AMANDA: Right? So, the whole wink-wink "taboo" behind the "leaked"-but-not-actually-leaked sex tape doesn't bother me so much – I know that some people get off on the idea of watching people have sex on tape who don't normally have sex on tape. . . as long as all parties are actually just playing the "leak" card for its erotic potential. The problem is that the people who are selling, downloading, and writing about these things don't appear interested in differentiating between "leaked" sex tapes and. . . leaked sex tapes.

SADY: Right. That's the thing. And the assumption, among people I've talked to, is that these things ARE leaked purposefully. Thus making their subjects total sluts! But when one brings up the idea that maybe, JUST MAYBE, someone like Kendra Wilkinson may be repeatedly saying that she doesn't want people to sell or view her sex tape because SHE DOESN'T WANT PEOPLE TO SELL OR VIEW HER SEX TAPE, then the reply that comes back is, all too often, "well, then she's just stupid." Stupid for making the sex tape, stupid for not thinking strangers would jerk off to it without her consent. Which MAKES the non-consent involved in your jerk-off time... okay? Because you think she's not smart? How does that work? As far as I can tell, we value consent no matter who it comes from. It's not like you have to pass the SAT in order to decide whether or not you want a certain sexual experience. You just want it or you don't, and if you clearly don't, it's not okay for anyone else to proceed with that against your will.

AMANDA: Right. I am also confused as to why some people assume that people who fight the release of their sex tape in court are simply doing it for publicity purposes? Because I have been involved in a civil court proceeding like one time on a relatively minor matter and it was hugely inconvenient and horrible! And I imagine that when a video of you having sex is involved in evidence collection it is even more unpleasant!

SADY: Right. And the fact is, even when we all assume the release of the tape was fully consensual — instigated by both or all of the people in it — the idea of it not being consensual IS kind of eroticized, by the people selling it. That, I am actually NOT okay with — the way there were, according to Tracy Clark-Flory, mocking speech bubbles over Kim Kardashian's face on the packaging of her own sex tape, reading like, "OMG!" or "PWNED" or whatever. The idea that you're dominating this specific woman — er, excuse me, stupid fauxlebrity bitch, I believe, is the term we for some reason think is appropriate when discussing her — and doing something sexual to her against her will IS CAPITALIZED UPON. As is the idea that legal court proceedings are just cute little gestures of resistance so you won't think she's a slut. That, to me, is exactly what rape culture looks like.

AMANDA: It is. And it's also this really weird phenomenon where even people who are OK with other people having consensual sex the way they want to get all confused once that sex is transferred onto videotape and commence with the slut-shaming again. Like, one of the biggest arguments I've heard against people who make sex tapes and then don't want them released for strangers to jack off to them, is that they don't understand the "consequences" of sex. REALLY? Because while I understand the practical concerns involved here, and think everyone should be educated about the risks of sexual intercourse, people who trump up "personal responsibility" while doing no fucking work to help make bad "consequences" of sex any better just essentially think people who have sex OUGHT TO BE punished for it. These are the same arguments against abortion, the same arguments against working to stop HIV, the same arguments against working to stop rape.

SADY: Right. It's the "well, she's stupid, so she deserves it" argument. And people can make sexual tapes or photos or whatever for a lot of reasons, aside from being stupid. They can be young, they can be drunk, they can be getting off on it, they can be trying to get their partner off better, they can have trusted their partner's multiple protestations that he'll never in a million years show it to anyone and in fact he'll erase it once he gets home HE SWEARS and... whoops, your partner lied. As far as I can tell, "you trusted your partner and then he lied to you and hurt you" isn't a "consequence" of sex. It's a "consequence" of your partner being abusive. And we're placing the onus of guilt on the victim.

AMANDA: Exactly. And I just want to give a shout out to Amanda Marcotte and Lena Chen here, who have written about this stuff a lot, and I really wouldn't understand any of the dynamics at play here if not for their work.

SADY: Yeah, Lena Chen really clarified a lot of this in her own writing, as far as my reading goes. Because she's experienced this form of assault first-hand. And the shaming that goes along with it.

AMANDA: One of the things Lena spoke to me about in an interview I did with her is that at Harvard, where she blogged about sex, she would get so much slut-shaming from other college students who were also having sex, and also probably had taken some photos during sex at some point, but who a) didn't write about it publicly, and b) didn't have some douchey ex leak those photos on a blog. The assumption being made by all of the people shaming people who make sex tapes is that it would never happen to them because they're not idiots. When really, it probably won't happen to them because they're not targets. Lena was a target because she talked about sex; Kim Kardashian was a target because she has a name that could sell copies. If random Internet Commenter makes a sex tape, they will likely never see the "consequences" of having sex on tape, because no one is particularly interested in watching random Internet Commenter do it, and yet they glean some sort of moral superiority out of that.

SADY: Right. Another thing that crops up, in these discussions, is the idea that if the woman ALREADY has expressed some of her sexuality in public, ALL of her sexuality belongs to the public. Like, Megan Fox is shooting a nude scene in a movie — where she probably has a carefully worked-out deal about how much is going to show up on screen and how it will look, or whatever — and that's assumed consent for some random douche to take a photo of her for the Internet. Lena Chen blogs about sex, so that's assumed consent for people to leak and/or look at sexual photos of her. Kendra Wilkinson has made porn, so therefore anything she does on film can be distributed as porn. Whereas the reality is, if someone as comfortable with being naked on-screen as KENDRA FREAKING WILKINSON is saying "no, I don't like this, this is hard for me, don't sell or watch my tape," I think that REALLY, REALLY SUPER-DUPER MEANS that she doesn't want you to do those things.

AMANDA: Exactly. Christ. It's that really awful anti-sex impulse rearing its head again. Like, you're allowed to make a sex tape – as long as you stay married to the other person in the sex tape forever and ever and never betray each other until you go to Heaven. Or you can make a sex tape – as long as you keep your head down and never make a name for yourself, because people who reach some level of success deserve to be shamed for having sex.

SADY: Exactly. They're successful, and they're often already "impermissibly" sexual, so the whole "humiliation" — we can see your cleavage! We think you're skanky! You belong to US now, whether you give consent or not — is really just about scaring women out of being sexual. Again.

AMANDA: And people who give the "skank" treatment to celebrity women? They're actually talking about all women, everywhere, but they use the fame as a convenient excuse. We all hear these messages.

SADY: Exactly. No matter how comfortable you are with your own sexuality, no matter how well you think you can set your own boundaries, you don't belong to you: You belong to the people looking at you. They decide what to do with your sexuality, not you. So don't flirt at the bar. Don't wear that short skirt. Don't go to the bar. Don't go out. And when you're in the house, don't make a sex tape. Because we'll find it if we want to. I mean, so many people don't even watch this stuff to get off: They watch it to mock. To feel superior. They watch it, pretty bluntly, to shame.

AMANDA: It's just really sad to me that when it comes to "sex tapes," we can't even reach the level of common courtesy of your standard Girls Gone Wild shoot, where at least the women being videotaped expect what it's being used for, and are generally forced to sign a contract stating as much. Like, that's a really really low bar.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, there's basically no responsibility at a GGW shoot. Girls are young and girls are WASTED. GGW goes over the line of consent pretty continually. BUT AT LEAST THERE IS THE ILLUSION OF CONSENT, you know what I'm saying? When we, the American public, hold ourselves to a lower standard than Joe "Alleged Rapist" Francis, things have gone pretty far in the direction of Hell.

AMANDA: Yeah I'm pretty depressed about this whole human enterprise right now. Thank Christ for Lena Chen.

SADY: Dear Lord. Woman is sharp and woman is strong. She has dignity like I will never in a million years have. Although, right now, I am also developing a real affection for Kendra W.

AMANDA: For real.

SADY: In conclusion: YAY for the survivors. Especially the ones who keep telling us that this is fucked up even though occasionally real live grown adults keep finding reasons not to listen.

AMANDA: I know. I am seriously proud of them for being brave enough to speak out about this. Even though they know people will turn around their honest commentary about how fucked-up this situation is in order to accuse them of trying to make money off not consenting. UGH. I'M LOSING IT AGAIN.

SADY: "SURELY YOU ARE NO ORDINARY SLUT! SURELY YOU ARE A MONEY-HUNGRY SLUT AS WELL!" "You only want your rapist to go to jail because you support the prison-industrial complex!"

AMANDA: URRGGGG

SADY: "Something something! No legal recourse for slatterns! Something something word barf!"

AMANDA: Someone get FEMINIST HULK on this.

SADY: FEMINIST HULK NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT HOW TO APPROXIMATE NOT-HULK TALK. FEMINIST HULK STILL PROBABLY UNDERSTAND WORD "NO."

Photo via ed.ward, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

* The New York Times profiles Eve Tushnet, a "celibate, gay, conservative, Catholic writer" opposed to same-sex marriage:

Marriage should be reserved for heterosexuals, whose “relationships can be either uniquely dangerous or uniquely fruitful,” she explained in an e-mail message. “Thus it makes sense to have an institution dedicated to structuring and channeling them.”

But same-sex marriage, she wrote in The New York Post in 2007, “can bring one of three outcomes: A two-tiered marriage culture, where heterosexual couples are asked to do the hard things (sex only within marriage, marriage for life in most circumstances) and homosexual couples work out their own marriage norms; reshape marriage into an optional, individualized institution, ignoring the creative and destructive potentials of ‘straight’ sex; or encourage all couples to restrict sex to marriage and marry for life, and hope that gay couples accept norms designed to meet heterosexual needs.”

* The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association calls Tushnet "a prime example of the kind of sources mainstream journalists should be talking to when they want to 'balance' a story about same-sex marriage. Rather than dialing up a homophobic talking head from some religious-right-wing group to peddle junk scientific claims or just wildly ignorant statements lacking in any bases of fact, there are sources out there to quote who won’t just spew more anti-gay hate speech."

Really? Because she sounds like standard-issue wingnut to me, floating a wacky essentialist conception about gays and straights and then concluding that only straight marriage "makes sense." What differentiates Tushnet's views from "junk scientific claims or just wildly ignorant statements lacking in any bases of fact"? Is it that she's also gay?

* Heather Corrina addresses the myth that all rape survivors compulsively pursue sex.

* Carnal Nation on the sexual politics of vanity plates: An ecologist's attempt to pay tribute to the "pine genus" on his license plate has been knocked down by Michigan officials who say the word "PINUS" "might carry a connotation offensive to good taste and decency as judged by the Department of State." In other words, it looks too much like the word "PENIS."

* Tiger Beatdown on sexism, Lynn Hirschberg and MIA:

M.I.A. is a fake, the article more or less says; no matter what she says or writes or records about global capitalism being a bad thing, no matter how fiercely she would seem to defend marginalized people, she’s just a shallow, narcissistic, bossy, stupid woman who only wants your attention, only wants to be famous, only wants to be a star. And did you hear that she was having contractions when she sang “Paper Planes” at the Grammys? Shocking! Provocative! Fame-whorey! Regular-whorey! Unfeminine! Selfish! Bad mother!

Recently, Sady Doyle discerned the social issue that would define our generation:

The chicks today, they get to do so many things! Why, they can vote, and attend colleges, and even drink and smoke in public! These chicks: An alarming number of them have jobs! And, like, financial autonomy, from the jobs, and hence a socially assured position of power from which to negotiate the terms of their relationships and lives, thereby making them not entirely dependent on the funding and/or goodwill of men for their continued survival and status, and so they’re all able to make decisions and expect fair treatment and … dude, it’s a mess, I tell you. Because it turns out, after like fifty-some years of this business, none of these chicks is impressed enough by your penis!

URGENT MEETING OF THE BACK IN THE GOOD-OLD-DAYS CLUB. In order to combat the disturbing trend of the traditionally masculine heterosexual man not always being the default human in every circumstance anymore, this suddenly marginalized group must band together to . . . create poorly-designed websites and write hack trend pieces on the Internet! Interested? Here's how to fight the good fight. For manliness!

* First order of business: Study the "Retrosexual Code," a hyper-mascline gender identity largely defined by Some Dude's oddly personal hang-ups! (Seriously! Read the code! It is oddly personal!)

* Next up: Stage a "Menaissance," wherein men who are "tired of bending over backward and getting kicked in the balls by a spiked heel" by the "equal rights" movement (Seriously! They put "equal rights" in scare-quotes!) stand up for their rights to turn back the clock to a time when Men were Men . . . back to a Superbowl beer commercial aired just last February, apparently!

* Finally: Sit back, relax, and go out there and play some basketball with the guys! Yeah! Wait, what the fuck? This is what dudes today are fighting for? Be our guest, dudes! You can have pick-up basketball! In the meantime, in this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I talk about how to learn to solve our problems by DEALING WITH IT like real men do—unless of course the "IT" in question is feminism, in which case DEALING WITH IT involves a whole lot of self-conscious posturing. Join us!

Exhibit B: These Men don't watch TV shows with "Queer" in the title.

SADY: HELLO Let us travel back in time! Retrosexually!

AMANDA: Oh lets! I am excited to kill animals (and also possibly humans! I guess!) in the service of Retrosexualism. But not overly excited, for feelings are for women.

SADY: The Retrosexuals, they don't have feelings! I will tell you what they have, however: A very detailed and complicated system for figuring out who should give up their seat to whom on a public bus. Also, some gender-based insecurities! Lots of those! And a fuzzy and somewhat inaccurate understanding of how awesome things were For The Dudes, back in some unspecified but distinctively non-feminist time period!

AMANDA: Indeed! It seems that in the olden days, even horrific natural disasters couldn't stop the manliest citizens. They just DEALT WITH IT. Not like all those present-day sissies in like, New Orleans? And Haiti? Being a thoroughly modern . . . sexual, I am understandably a bit confused on the finer points of this theory.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, the whole "Retrosexual" thing is just... These are young dudes, I'm thinking. At least, younger than Don Draper would currently be, which is like nine hundred and seventeen years old, or maybe seventy, I am bad at math.

AMANDA: I like the game of predicting the Dude behind the Retrosexual Code!

SADY: They haven't actually experienced the time periods they're romanticizing, is what I'm saying. They don't know what it's like to be told that you need to get married and have kids before you're thirty or everyone will think that you're emotionally disturbed or gay. They don't know what it's like to live in a world where a two-income household isn't really a feasible possibility.

AMANDA: Yeah. And that's why being a Retrosexual takes aim at topics as diverse as the inherent emasculation of marriage and ... Hot Topic. HOT TOPIC! It has been feminizing our nation's men for too long!

SADY: The Retrosexual Code is, like... I agree with you. I want to know WHO THIS DUDE IS, because some of this stuff is just bizarre. Like, there's some predictable shitty homophobia: "A Retrosexual watches no TV show with 'Queer' in the title." I expected that. But also: "A Retrosexual will have at least one outfit in his wardrobe designed to conceal himself from prey." Did Dwight Schrute write this list? I think Dwight Schrute wrote it. "A Retrosexual knows that owning a gun is not a sign that your are riddled with fear." "A Retrosexual should have at least one good wound he can brag about getting." A Retrosexual owns a beet farm. A Retrosexual knows karate. A Retrosexual wishes he could menstruate, because he wouldn't need a calendar. It all follows.

AMANDA: I am frankly confused by anyone interested in recruiting other people into conforming to whatever gender presentation they have chosen for themselves.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, that's how gender policing works: It's not enough for you to be the Butchest Butch Dude Who Has Ever Butched A Butch, you have to make sure that everyone ELSE does it, because otherwise people will pick up that butchness, like everything else, is performative.

AMANDA: But that's the strangest part of the Retrosexual movement—and the "Menaissance" in general (ugh). They appear to be fighting against the women who have forced them to "conform" to an emasculating version of manhood by ... setting up codes for being a proper Retrosexual? Offering step-by-step guides for learning to become a real man, again?

SADY: Yeah. I mean, if you have to buy a book subtitled "How To Be A Real Man," doesn't that point to... not-realness? Of your manlihood?

Exhibit C: These Men know how to tie a Windsor knot—and only a Windsor knot.

AMANDA: It's the same old thing with gender-policing conservatives, which Amanda Marcotte in particular has pointed out many times before: On the one hand, they want you to think that a certain version of "manhood" is natural, and on the other, they emphasize that it takes a lot of work to learn to be a “natural” man. I will admit that it keeps the AskMen creative juices flowing.

SADY: Ha, yes. I mean, on the one hand, I imagine that dudes seek this stuff out for the same reason that ladies read "He's Just Not That Into You," or whatever: It's confusing to be a person, and frequently painful, and everyone wants to believe there's some secret set of rules that they can follow to make sure things turn out well, or at least to make sure that they know what's going on. And they don't notice that "He's Just Not That Into You" is pages upon pages of basically emotional abuse, telling you that it was your fault for loving some dude and thinking your relationship could work out and it's your fault it didn't. And they don't notice that all of these "STOP BEING SUCH A MOTHERFUCKING PUSSY AND OWN A GUN" dude manuals are the same kind of emotional abuse, just basically berating you for not being male enough. They think it's helping.

AMANDA: I just feel sorry for whoever AskMen is speaking to. If you can identify with the Regular Guy writing these columns—if you see your girlfriend as a whining, gold-digging harpy who wants to bleed you emotionally and financially, and think the world is out to get you because you don't apologize for enjoying drinking beer and "shooting hoops"— you have some problems that even AskMen cannot solve. I imagine the entire point of that website is to convince men that they're being persecuted for enjoying extremely normal and in fact boring activities? Like "watching the game" and "throwing back a few beers." Which everyone does and no one particularly minds. It's the weird "everyday hero" thing that I guess keeps selling a certain beer brand over another.

SADY: Yeah. That's the thing. I mean, the not-so-secret ace in the hole for continuing to be sexist has long been, "I can't help it! I'm made this way!" Like, the "dudes are inherently vulgar and stupid and hump everything and just basically are like dogs who can talk, be glad they're not chewing on the furniture and pissing on the carpet" card, which I don't understand why men keep playing. Men say TERRIBLE SHIT about themselves all the time, frequently on ladysites where they are The One Dude Who Tells Everyone What All Dudes Are Like, but they don't seem to recognize how much they downplay their own abilities. Or they do, but it's an excuse. Like, embracing a shitty version of manhood is a way to defend yourself when someone points out that you, specifically, are being a shitty person.

AMANDA: Yeah. And then also: When it is suggested that men maybe don’t have to conform to the idea of lowest common denominator masculinity quite so much, the response is: "women are trying to change us from our real-manliness!” But interestingly, also: “IT'S WORKING! so we must fight this by desperately teaching other men how to do that lowest common denominator masculinity shit again!"

SADY: The idea is that feminism is working, and women have power now, and there's all of this built-up resentment at the idea that the women of the world are dictating at least some of the terms of social engagement. So you just sit there and go, "I AM A MAN! I HAVE AN ENTIRE WEBSITE ABOUT IT! I WON'T BUDGE FROM THE PRINCIPLES OUTLINED ON THE CRAPPILY DESIGNED WEBSITE WHERE YOU CAN FIND OUT ABOUT MY MANHOOD!"

Exhibit D: This Man practiced hammering nails in secret so that he not be rightfully ridiculed as a "wuss"

AMANDA: It just seems a little desperate, I guess. I just don't know who is furthering the Important Feminist Cause of making sure men don't have camouflage outfits in their closets, or forcing dudes to watch gay television shows. The problem instead appears to be that some men choose not to wear camo and some like gay TV. Like some gay men for example. And those men are not real and that’s bad. Who hates men now, men?

SADY: I don't know. I mean, I guess in a way I am strangely encouraged by the "Menaissance?" Because people don't get defensive unless they think they are actually losing something. Like, if this whole "feminism" thing were actually completely ineffectual, men would still have unmitigated privilege, and they wouldn't basically be having aneurysms and throwing tantrums about all these powerful women and the ability they have to influence societal expectations of gender.

AMANDA: Right, and it is also funny, kind of? Because a conservative screed published on a website that looks like it's from 1993 is always ripe for mockery. Particularly when the New Masculinity goes by the name "Retrosexual." Come on, dude.

SADY: SERIOUSLY. I mean, what's amazing is that it's also showing up in real, non-idiot-focused publications. Never underestimate the power of totally wackadoo male heterosexual insecurity to change the course of events! In fact, it is the only thing that ever has! Except for feminism, which is winning. So, in conclusion, maybe these dudes should just... DEAL WITH IT?????? I hear it is what A Real Man does, after all!

AMANDA: Haha. I mean, I'm the last person to begrudge some guys from dressing up and playing Mad Men, not that that activity sounds particularly masculine to my ears. The only part of the Menaissance I quibble with are the parts where men are forced to wear dumb fedoras and/or camo pants, depending on your flavor of Retrosexuality, and also the part where everything is the fault of women and GOD MOM they are the worst. But! I've heard that a very Retrosexual way of DEALING WITH MY PROBLEMS is to go online and make a website about it, and that's essentially what we're doing here, so perhaps we are all not so different!

SADY: Right. I mean, if dudes are into wearing handsome suits and knowing about scotch, more power to them! I enjoy both a good scotch AND suity dudes! I just wish dudes could recognize that a decent palate and good fashion sense are... pretty girly? As is running a website entirely about your gender and how persecuted it is?

AMANDA: Exactly.

SADY: I think they just all want to be feminist bloggers basically. They want to be us. And who wouldn't?

Exhibit E: This Man knows how to sharpen his own kitchen utensils.

Photos via the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the State Library of New South Wales,

* On Tiger Beatdown, The Rejectionist writes about attempting to evade misogyny by adopting acceptably "masculine" interests. (This tactic works for both men and women!) Namely: Drinking too much, and reading "manfiction":

When I was younger I did that thing that some of us ladies do, the thing of working very hard to be The Girl Who Was Cool Enough to Hang Out With the Boys. Being that girl was an exhausting job, fraught with peril; it involved drinking a whole bunch, not talking much, constantly making sure the boys knew how much more down I was than other girls, and carrying around at all times one of the following three novels: All the Pretty Horses ,On the Road, or Junky (even at the highest pinnacle of my internalized misogyny, I never made it through Henry Miller). It was an unforgivable sign of weakness to read books about (let alone by) women, who sat around in kitchens popping out babies, harping on their menfolk, and doing the dishes. Women were boring! They were gross! Passive! Or just plain mean! They didn’t think much! They couldn’t possibly do exciting things, like drive cars across the country or drive spaceships to the moon, kiss girls, duke it out with their fathers in a sudden eruption of years’ worth of Repressed Sentiment, pursue villains craftily, or survive the streets of turn-of-the-century London as cunning and wily orphans. A professed affinity for Manfiction was a central tenet of this precarious Cool Girl identity; a Cool Girl was always ready to support the literary analysis presented by the dudes, even after consuming a fifth of bourbon at three in the morning.

* Hysteria! introduces us to man candles, or as I like to call them, "mandles." One of them is "fart" scented:

There’s not much analysis to be had here, other than to point out that anytime a company or marketing department attempts to define “masculinity” via something like a scented candle, hilarious results ensue.  Some of the candles come in scents that you’d pretty much expect – baseball, football, golf course.  Oh, and of course “fart.”  Because no man is leading a complete life if he isn’t entirely surrounded by fart jokes.  Then, of course, there are the strange selection of apparently manly food items: pot roast, pizza, popcorn (?), bacon.  They can be paired with manly drinks, which consist solely of “cup o’ joe” and beer.

What really gets me, though, are the weird concept scents that they create once they run out of obvious objects that seem “masculine.”  The line offers not only a “garage” scent (which smells of oil and rubber) and a “fishing dock” scent (which we do not carry, thankfully), but also a candle called, simply, “FREEDOM.”  Apparently, Freedom smells like cinnamon and candle wax.  Who knew?

* In the fall, the Supreme Court will hear arguments concerning the right of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church to picket military funerals"

A sampling of the signs carried at [Iraq veteran Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder's] 2006 funeral at St. John's Catholic Church in Westminster, Md., included "God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11," "Semper Fi Fags," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "Priests Rape Boys." The demonstrators abided by the law and stayed away from the funeral itself.

* Dr. George Tiller was murdered one year ago yesterday.

* Bitch Magazine writes on the recent barroom assault of Kat Stacks, a woman known for kissing-and-telling about sleeping with celebrities. Apparently, Stacks made some unkind comments about rapper Bow Wow; in retaliation, a man hit Stacks and demanded an apology on Bow Wow's behalf in a videotaped assault. Bitch's Andrea Plaid is wondering where the feminist outcry is:

When I read about the assault on Twitter, I found only one group who passionately spoke out against the men who perpetrated the violence against Stacks and those (men and women) who defended the assailants: mostly black feminist-minded people—and it was mostly black women at that. . . .  Everyone else was deafeningly silent. . . . Kat Stacks’ assault evoked no reaction from any other group of people. If all the feminist rhetoric about violence against women—that we should stand up and speak out wherever we see it—is true, then the violence committed against Kat Stacks is indeed a feminist issue and, honestly, I’d half-expected a bigger outcry from other people down with ending such violence.

However, it is such selective victim-choosing that cements the cynicism of feminism really being about and for certain people.

Photo via marek.krzystkiewicz, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Hey! Looks like Megan Fox is due for her six-month Sexist Beatdown check-up. According to Transformers director and noted Hot Girl inspector Michael Bay, Fox has apparently grown "pale," "underweight" and "unhealthy," allowing her Hot Girl essence to whither away into a sickly frame that's utterly beneath the lingering gaze of Bay's signature camera-boner.

Meanwhile, Fox is also apparently still suffering from mouthiness on the issue of Michael Bay being a gigantic asshole who verbally abuses his employees for failing to meet his unattainable camera-boner standards!

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Join Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I as we dissect the latest installment in Bay v. Fox: Which will make an incomprehensible robot alien blockbuster for the third time, and which will emerge as a budding feminist hero? Let's find out!

But first, a recap:

TEAM BAY: "'It’s never a good idea to speak negatively about a director you work with—it’s a small community,' said Hollywood producer Nathan Folks. 'Actors sometimes think they can get away with anything, the egos some possess are out of control. When they stop getting work, they will learn.'”

TEAM FOX: “'If Megan was indeed verbally abused, and pulls back the curtain on what is really going on in Hollywood,  and tells her story to the right person like Oprah, she could reach icon status,' said Associated Press  pop culture reporter Natalie Rotman. 'There has been a long history of tyrant male directors in Hollywood. If Bay really did verbally abuse Fox and she is the first to speak up to a bully director, it could make her a pioneer.'”

TEAM BAY: "Megan Fox is an ungrateful bitch."

TEAM FOX: "Imagine a really, really bitchy grandmother on the set, and that's what Michael Bay is like."

—

SADY: Why, hello! I come to you today in a great spirit of mourning. For an icon has fallen.

AMANDA: In the great battle of Bay v. Fox v. Robo Alien Monster Truck?

SADY: YES. The battle that shall define our times! Sort of! Basically, I'm kind of sad and kind of happy that I called this. Back when Megan Fox was mouthing off about Bay, everyone was like, "she's only doing this because it helps her career." And it's just, like... How often does a woman speaking her not-entirely-complimentary mind about a much more powerful man HELP her career? We wanted to punish her then, and I'm getting a vibe of distinct celebration because we can SEE her getting punished now. By, um, being dropped from "Transformers." Surely the worst of all fates!

AMANDA: Haha, right? Allow me to reproduce this quote from the FOXNews take on the kerfuffle: “If Megan was indeed verbally abused, and pulls back the curtain on what is really going on in Hollywood, and tells her story to the right person like Oprah, she could reach icon status,” said Associated Press pop culture reporter Natalie Rotman. "There has been a long history of tyrant male directors in Hollywood. If Bay really did verbally abuse Fox and she is the first to speak up to a bully director, it could make her a pioneer.” So, the choices for women in Hollywood are: Star in the third installment in a really really really really awful alien robot blockbuster series, or become an icon ... by rejecting the idea that you, MEGAN FOX, are a sickly pale excuse for a Hot Girl.

SADY: Ha, yeah. Fair enough!

AMANDA: I love that Megan Fox is speaking out against Michael Bay, who legitimately sounds like an abusive douchebag. But I am also amused that Megan Fox could be a pioneer in the important feminist cause of "Actually, I Am Hot." But I pretty much love everything about Megan Fox, largely because I know a lot of people hate everything about Megan Fox? To the point that there is actual cultural commentary from news sources speculating that Megan Fox not being in the third Transformers movie could hurt her career. How does that work?

SADY: Right. I mean, I do wonder, because she has been affiliated with that franchise ABOVE ALL OTHERS! Mostly because she has not ever stopped talking about how hideous working with Michael Bay is. Most of her other stuff has died an inglorious, potentially Diablo-Cody-related death.

AMANDA: Even though she got her start dancing under a waterfall in an American flag bikini for him. How could this relationship ever sour?

SADY: Right? I really did think that those two kids could work it out! But I think it's interesting that she has this new second life as a Feminist Pioneer thanks to the fact that we can see her statements actually have negative consequences for her. Because before, when she was saying all this, the official party line was, "Megan Fox seems like such an asshole!" It's like, the second we could identify her as a victim, we started listening to stuff she'd been saying for years. Because now she could be officially embraced as an underdog.

AMANDA: Right. I remember when she was complaining about Michael Bay making her go look at all the Egyptian pyramids. And everyone was like "What a bitch!" But deep down I know that a trip to the pyramids with Michael Bay was probably teeming with his authoritative douchery. You just know it was!

SADY: And then there was that "mystery" blog post or whatever about what a bitch Megan Fox was for not enjoying the pyramid trip, which plenty of people speculated was written by Bay himself. I mean, I doubt that Megan Fox has suffered more than anyone else on the planet. I just genuinely think she's a girl who can't stop herself from complaining when she suffers. Which, you know, as a whiner and occasional asshole myself, I found myself deeply in sympathy with that response. And I think that what she's talking about probably isn't unusual, for Hot Girls; she's just whiny enough to talk about it.

AMANDA: Yes... And all the complaining about Fox "mouthing off" about directors was always actually about how moviegoers think Megan Fox is hot and talentless, and therefore she is only allowed to provide masturbation material, and no personal commentary on what it's like to be professional masturbation material. And now Michael Bay comes out and says, "You are only useful as masturbation material, and also, you are a few shades too pale and a couple sizes too small to be good enough masturbation material for me, at the current juncture."

SADY: Right. "There are other women to whom I and the American public would prefer to masturbate! More unfamiliar, and potentially younger, and more inexperienced women! BRING FORTH THE AUDITION BIKINI! We will meet at the Audition Waterfall to discover America's next great boner!"

AMANDA: Yeah, and it really makes you wonder what these people expect of Fox as an acting talent. Her role in Transformers, most specifically was her gyrating on alien robot cars for a couple of hours and gratuitously bending over in front of Shia LaBeouf some. And people are like, "Sheeee's teeeerrrrrrriiiibbbbllleee!"

SADY: RIGHT? Like, when was she asked to be anything other than terrible? Was there like a point in “Transformers 3” where she would be required to recite a soliloquy from "Hamlet?" Is that why they cut her?

AMANDA: I really think that criticizing her acting skills is a way to weasel out of the truth of the situation, which is that people demand female characters that actually aren't characters, but rather bodies. And when an actress like Fox embodies this expectation perfectly, they blame it on her lack of skill, not on their fucked up desires.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, I have seen her act, and she IS really, really bad at it. But it's not like she was playing Margaret Thatcher, you know? And, like: Fox seemed pretty aware of that throughout. She was never (or rarely) like, "I would like to become a Serious Actress, and take on Oscar-worthy roles of massive cultural importance in tomorrow's film classics!" She was just like, "yep. I'm a Hot Girl. Being Hot isn't always necessarily something that I'm into! But it's my job! And I hate it sometimes, just as you hate the data processing that you do." She seemed so self-aware of the whole thing, being an object with a date of expiration. And now her genius is that she's been loud enough for the date of her expiration to be announced all over as if it weren't happening every day to every other Hot Girl in the business.

AMANDA: Yeah, and I wonder what people are actually looking for actresses to do with the Hot Girl role. Do they want them to act their way out of the Hot Girl paper bag and turn a deliberately 2-dimensional character into an actually compelling performance that makes the Hot Girl actually seem like a real person, even if she's not supposed to be one? That sounds unreasonable. I think I've figured it out, actually. I think they want a Hot Girl who could also go put on a fake nose and play fucking Thatcher or whatever and win that Oscar, but also sometimes want to play dumb and sexy for the movies, because they like it. The Hot Girl transition does not appear to be in the cards for Megan Fox anytime soon though. I have perused her future projects on IMDB, and they are predictably hilarious. But also probably not as bad as Transformers 3.

SADY: PROBABLY. She has apparently done a voice-over for "Pokemon!" So when the live-action motion picture experience comes to a theater near you, I guess we know who that one Hot Lady Villain with the blue-haired sidekick will be.

AMANDA: Like, in one movie the plot is described as this: "An angel under the thumb of a ruthless gangster is saved by a trumpet player down on his luck."

SADY: "The U.S. military makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth." Is Megan Fox the scarred bounty hunter? Or Hell?

AMANDA: I WISH. In that one, she plays an olde-tyme strumpet love interest of an old western bounty hunter seeking revenge on John Malkovich for burning his face off (OR SOMETHING). I really hope they have scenes together. Fox and Malkovich.

SADY: Oh, God. The strange facial decisions! I cannot even imagine! She does shoot a gun, sexily, in the previews, if I recall correctly. But there are no olden-tymey motorcycles for her to hump/fix whilst the camera lingers lovingly on her ass, one would imagine.

AMANDA: Haha. I'm sure the camera will find something to dwell on, with that whole olde-tyme strumpet business and all.

SADY: I mean, that's the thing. People have been calling Megan Fox "ungrateful" since forever. And I can't figure out what she's supposed to be grateful for. Being in the worst-reviewed film franchise of recent years? Having her ass used as a plot point and/or focus of interest for sweaty dudes who have, FOR WHATEVER BIZARRE REASON, a really strong interest in "Transformers?" Knowing the role she plays in the fantasies of said sweaty dudes, and/or professional film critics, who write her ass up as one of the view interesting points in said film franchise? Money? Sure, money. I'd be fine with money. But I get creeped out when a dude looks down my shirt on the street. Megan Fox has been, since high school, a professional Shirt down which to Look. People are just so bitter that she's not into it! She's not even NOT into it; she does it all the time. But she's not like, "ohhhh, I just sit at home in my lacy underthings thinking about all you sweaty dudes and the hot things I'm going to do with your action figures when we meet."

AMANDA: Amazing. I recently read another account of her "complaining": In said "angel under the thumb of a ruthless gangster is saved by a trumpet player down on his luck" movie someone on set took a camera photo of her while she was standing naked in some sort of glass circus cage? For some plotline? And they sent the photo around the Internets, and she was rightfully pissed about it She was basically like, "You're taking a picture of me naked while I'm working. I'm trying to work over here and you're being an asshole." And that's the thing—people want to pretend that this sort of thing isn't "work." That it's the easiest thing in the world to be what Megan Fox is, and that she is just a lazy ungrateful bitch because she makes it clear that it is work and not her personal sexy fun time.

SADY: Right. Because this "plotline" (!) that "required" her to be naked also probably "required" her to be, like, at the very least conscious of how she was standing and moving and etc. etc. etc. And it was a controlled environment, and this and that and the other. And then some dude is like, "oh, great, you're naked! Clearly this is consent for me to send my iPhone picture of the event to the entire Internet!" Like, what was she supposed to do? Wait, don't tell me: Be quiet and autograph something for him.

AMANDA: Like his penis.

SADY: "Megan, I have a pitch for you! It's about a down-on-his-luck iPhone camera user and a starlet imprisoned in a glass cage who can only escape through utilizing her secret superpower. Her secret superpower is giving blowjobs. Also. Anyway, we're auditioning for the part later, if you're interested! If you are not interested, I will tell the Internet what a bitch you are, also. That is another part of my movie. For which I am casting. Right now."

AMANDA: "Also in this movie the cure for ungrateful bitchiness is handjobs."

SADY: Wow. I really think this could be Megan's comeback!

* Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown welcomes summer, and all the irrational fighting it brings. Kicking off fighting season for Doyle: Tequila-fueled feminist infighting!

Oh, the shouting! Oh, the insults! Oh, the many and various accusations, most of which, in recollection, make no sense whatsoever! I said she had internalized misogyny and cared more about protecting liberal party lines than about human decency; she said I had internalized classism and behaved “like a character from the movie Mean Girls;” I made fun of her for the Mean Girls reference, which didn’t help, and at some point, long after the conversation had transcended the bounds of sense-making, she said that she wanted to talk about how terrible I was with my boyfriend, at which point I got out my phone and started yelling, “Let's call him! Let's call everyone I've ever fucked! Let's ask them how much I hate poor people!” And I would have called them, too (“So, we dated from December of 2007 to February of 2010. During that time, to the best of your recollection, how many hobos did I set on fire for kicks? WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S FOUR IN THE MORNING. THIS IS EXACTLY WHY WE DID NOT WORK OUT”) but then I started crying, and the whole thing just went completely off the rails.

As I stood up and walked outside for a cigarette, at this point visibly sobbing, she called out, “I look forward to reading about this on wherever it is you blog.”

Fun fact: I witnessed this summer-opening fight! I was slumped into a booth of some swanky Brooklyn lounge thingy, drinking my millionth beer and attempting to keep it together while some guy explained scuba diving to me. Summer is here!

* Zack Rosen of The New Gay hates lube, and unrealistic, lube-less television fucking:

In season 6 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which I am currently watching, a lot of the previously high school-aged characters have a lot of very spontaneous sex. Two people are talking or fighting or waiting for the bus when suddenly, Bam! They are fucking. The show can’t be too explicit about it, so they just show undulating bodies from the waist up, fully clothed, standing against a wall or lying on a table, miming all the faces and sounds of intercourse. As a gay man, I can’t get over this. It just seems so easy. You have the interest in having sex and then you do it. Just like that. No muss, no fuss, no lube.If Buffy wanted to show a realistic depiction of, say, Angel and Spike fucking it would not be so easy. They would fight for a while and then suddenly Angel’s legs would be locked around Spike’s waist while they kissed. Spike would pantomime trying to slip his dry dick in, and then Angel would yell “OW! Spike, are you fucking kidding me?” He might even turn into Angelus from pain and frustration while Spike went tearing around his crypt, looking for a 6 month-old packet of lube that he thinks he picked up at a gay bar and left in the pocket of his other black t-shirt. Angel/Angelus would look at his watch for a while and wonder what kind of sodomite vampire doesn’t keep lube around, for chrissakes. Spike would suggest things like conditioner or spit, and then give up and resign himself to a mutual undead hand job. (And by the way, you can all thank me for not casting Giles and The Master in the above imagination exercise.)

* Megan Fox won't be returning for the third Transformers movie, presumably because notorious asshole director Michael Bay treated her like a huge asshole. Women & Hollywood's take:

Her side told The Wrap that said she walked away because director Michael Bay was “verbally abusive” and had just had enough of his crap.  She’s also talked about how he made her tan so much for the film that’s she’s nervous about getting skin cancer.  Bay is known to be an ass to his female actors, and the article goes on to say that another of the female actors in Transformers 2 Isabel Lucas wouldn’t do publicity for the film because of Bay.But he gets away with this shit over and over because no one has the power—or the guts—to hold this man accountable.  He could never get away acting like this in an office environment.  It’s also probably true that the if the executives who hire Bay and tolerate his behavior acted like he did, they would be in court up on charges.

Photo via The Library of Congress.

"Think of the children" is an argument consistently used to justify adult insecurities. Hate gay marriage? Just argue that it erodes a "child's sense of innocence." Disgusted by sex workers walking the streets in "broad daylight"? Argue that a child could see them. Uncomfortable with people openly discussing alternate sexualities? A child could hear them. Explicit rock music? Think of the children.

The concern for kids here is disingenuous—"think of the children" is a convenient way for adults to protest stuff they just don't like. But let's step away from those earmuffs we've got permanently attached to our kids' ears for a moment and think about "thinking of the children." When can thinking of the children help to reveal aspects of adult society that are problematic for people of all ages?

Take, for example, the public reaction to the above video, which shows a group of young girls dancing to Beyonce's song "Single Ladies"—while imitating a very adult version of female sexuality.

Tiger Beatdown contributor Silvana has this to say of the display:

The performance has been roundly criticized, including some commenters saying that it is so bad that the adults in question shouldn’t have even allowed their daughters to participate. The way these little girls move their bodies is a surprisingly good imitation of how adult women who are performing “sexy” dance, and people DO. NOT. LIKE. THIS. Even worse, their outfits are supposedly more scandalous than the dance moves themselves. This is despite the plain that that they’re not particularly revealing and don’t show much more skin than a ballet leotard would. The discomfort isn’t because what the outfits reveal, but what they allude to. The lace, the stockings, the corset lacing on the “bodice” are, it seems, too much like what adult women wear when they are trying to evoke maximum sexiness. Doing this dance and wearing these clothes is, in our cultural estimation, firmly in the territory of not appropriate.

She concludes: "I think it’s pretty telling that when femininity is performed by non-standard actors, we either get really uncomfortable or laugh our asses off."

The general reaction to the above video is that these girls are growing up far too fast. But as Silvana points out—if we can stop thinking exclusively of the children for a moment—they're also growing up into a version of female adulthood that's marked by an absurdly hyperfeminine sexual performance. We know that little girls performing femininity is disturbing. About a decade down the road, though, this type of performance will be absolutely expected of these women, as Beyonce's latest video helps to reveal:

[youtube:v=FKqIgqJEH-o]

Kids are our second chances. They give us an opportunity to reassess what is means to be a man or a woman, and to try to change the bad parts before it's too late. It's not fair to focus our cultural insecurities on our kids, but it is easier. Let's take another example: Makeup. Last month, Douglas Quenqua delivered a New York Times trend piece on pre-teen makeup use:

It began for Alyssa Pometta, as these habits so often do, with the soft stuff. We are talking, of course, about lip gloss.

She began wearing it in fourth grade—Bonne Bell’s Lip Smackers, a girl’s rite of passage—after years of wearing ChapStick and pretending it was Revlon. But the thrill of flavored lip gloss was fleeting, and in January, 11-year-old Alyssa asked her mother, Phyllis Pometta, if she could graduate to the hard stuff: lipstick, eyeliner and mascara.

When the piece dropped, Salon's Margaret Eby accused the Gray Lady of "hand-wringing" and alarmism, writing:

The idea that painting your face leads to wanton acts of harlotry is downright Victorian. . . . The most popular birthday party activity for my fifth-grade class was visiting Priscilla's Beauty School, where I would inevitably come out with crimped hair and electric blue eyeshadow, looking like some sort of miniature '80s-inspired clown. Did I then fall down the slippery slope to TV-anchor levels of makeup? Not exactly."

Eby has accused Quenqua of Thinking of the Children in the most disingenuous way.  But if you read Quenqua's piece, he never intimates that experimenting with eyeliner will send girls down the road to olde-tyme prostitution. He doesn't say that Bonne Bell is a gateway drug to whorishness, or even to clownishness. When Eby sarcastically accuses Quenqua of a "slippery slope" argument, she misses the point, which is: When girls start wearing makeup, they will keep wearing makeup-–probably for the rest of their lives.

Of course, young girls don't deserve any extra scrutiny for applying concealers and colors to their faces—most women do this, and tweens don't need more eyes focusing on the way they look. Nevertheless, focusing on the cosmetic industry's point of entry—for American girls, around the tweens—is still a convenient way for us to reassess the expectation that women of all ages paint their faces. When girls stumble into the awkward tween years, they're introduced to a world of extreme body consciousness, vanity, and yes, beauty industry allegiance.

The point of entry is also the point when women's makeup use is at its most visible. When girls go from plain-faced to painted, we notice the change. Just as some sexy lingerie on a 7-year-old girl will show you immediately how ridiculous sexy lingerie is, a young girl with a full face of makeup can really make you think about lipstick, and why we put it on. One parent Quenqua interviewed said that makeup makes her daughter "look too old. It immediately ages her." But it's not just that tweens are entering the adult world of makeup application; it's also that they're not terribly good at it yet. They may be inexperienced in matching colors, blending blushes, or applying eyeliner without poking their eyes out. They may, like Eby did, emerge from a slumber party "looking like some sort of miniature '80s-inspired clown."

In short, girls are not very good at doing what adult women are trained expertly to do: Applying makeup, and then immediately obscuring the fact that they are wearing makeup at all. This is where Eby's critique really falls apart. For her, problematic makeup—the kind of makeup parents might really be concerned about—comes down to a question of gaudiness. Teenage makeup use is only a potential problem if it encourages women to perpetually paint their faces like olde-tyme harlots, or clowns, or TV anchors. Actually, the biggest danger of becoming a life-long consumer of the cosmetics industry is that women will learn to hide their beauty industry investment at all costs, to refuse to tip their hand and reveal that it's all an act.

When young women engage in overt feminine performance, we think of the children, but deep down, we're thinking about women, too. As these girls enter into adulthood, how do we deal with our discomfort at the version of womanhood they're taking on? We tell them to keep performing femininity, but by God, to just keep it to themselves. Makeup is to be worn "naturally," never garishly; sex is something to perform for men behind closed doors, never to be spoken aloud; plastic surgery is tacky, unless it's good plastic surgery, which is still better than looking old; extreme diets are to be kept private, in favor of of "I just keep in shape by running after my kids"; and feminine performance is in all cases an entirely personal choice, never a culturally-informed one. When we Think of the Children, we're not disturbed that girls are beginning to adopt feminine performance—we want them to do that. We're disturbed because they've forced us to to notice how ridiculous it is.

* 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

* Feminists With Sexual Dysfunction photographs her awesome family collection of antique prophylactics. Among them: Vintage versions of the awesomely bad brand Contempo Condoms, which still employs the following catchphrase: "Unleash the man you truly are and do it YOUR way with the ultra sensual range of lubricated Contempo Condoms." Perfect for the guy with masculinity issues who is unconcerned with his partner's pleasure!

* Tiger Beatdown speculates as to the many reasons why you may not love Beyonce:

2. A STRONG BELIEF THAT ROSIE THE RIVETER WOULD NOT WEAR HOT PANTS. It is true: Beyonce does in fact dress as the iconic proto-feminist industrial worker when she has a particularly tough mechanical project to attend to. And she is, in fact, wearing hot pants! However, I think Beyonce’s connection to the history of women in the workplace ought to be applauded. And, for those who take issue with the accuracy of her costume, remember: We only ever saw Rosie the Riveter from the waist up. We don’t know what kind of pants she was wearing. Rosie the Riveter may not have worn pants at all.

[youtube:v=TA-QMT2P-9I]

* And Sociological Images comments on the subversive twist of Beyonce playing the stereotypical "perfect housewife":

And that twist is very political.  Consider this: In American politics today, the “perfect” mother is one who does not work and stays home with her children.  Unless she’s poor.  Poor women who want to stay home with their children are called lazy, welfare cheats.  If you’re poor, you can only be a good mother by working.

* MAN SALE.

* Via Sexuality & Society: Jesuit institution Marquette University has withdrawn a job offer to sociologist Jodi O’Brien because the university "found some strongly negative statements about marriage and family" among her works. Marquette said that its decision related to the school's "Catholic mission and identity." O'Brien—who has taught at another Jesuit institution, Seattle University, since 1995—is an out lesbian who has written extensively on religion and sexuality.

Photo courtesy of K at Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction

* Human centipede: It's a thing. A horrible, horrible thing.

* "Pretty women pose health risks." Burn them. Buuuurn them! Wait, actually, they just stress out heterosexual guys who are trying to finish a really important game of Sudoku.

* Brown University is being sued by a former student who claims he wasn't afforded a proper investigation after being accused of rape. SAFER Campus on why schools must strictly adhere to their own sexual assault policies, for the benefit of both victim and accused:

I have no idea why in this particular case Brown decided to disregard their procedure (the article suggests perhaps because the complainant’s father was a Brown alum and donor) but they did a serious disservice to all their students in doing so. While we usually focus on the rights of the survivor, it’s also imperative to uphold the rights of the accused, both because it’s absolutely important to protect individual students and because when you disregard the rights of the accused to add fuel to the fire of those who want to paint campus rape hearings as unfair witch hunts.

* On Femocracy: Why the media gets rape wrong—legal concerns, boys clubs, and a lack of training.

* Scarleteen launches a series for queer teens of color.

* On Tiger Beatdown, Sady Doyle conducts a Mother's Day chat with her mom, who is a super awesome feminist lady who was put on a "death list" by the Klan:

SADY: . . . OK: Can you tell me some awesome Journalism Stories, please? Because I always tell people that you home-schooled me as a teen (WHICH YOU DID) and now you are home-J-schooling me as an adult. But mostly I just like the stories! So let us revisit a time in the swinging ’70s, when the smooth sounds of folk-rock were everywhere, and you were listening to a LOT OF STEVIE NICKS and also a journalist. Go!

KAREN: Mississippi was still a mess. And every day felt important when you were a liberal white journalist in rural Mississippi. The Klan began a small resurgence about the time that Mississippi began to reinstitute compulsory education. (When the federal government ordered the schools integrated, Mississippi revoked all mandatory education laws so the white kids wouldn’t “have” to go to school with black children. This was getting fixed when I was there.) The Klan members wanted to be interviewed with their hoods on, and I refused to do so. They supposedly put me on a “death list,” but they did take off their hoods. It turned out they were all just factory workers that no one knew. And then the Klan treasurer stole all their money, and the Klan dissolved.

Miley Cyrus' new video features avian headware, backup dancer eye-fucking, tortured visual imagery representing puberty, and copious Auto-Tune. Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I respond.

AMANDA: Hello!

SADY: Why hello! I have worn my bird cage hat of Serious Analysis to this meeting. My Serious Analysis is: The children! Are they getting too sexy? Specifically the beloved starlet children who live as normal tweens by day, international pop stars by night?

AMANDA: Allow me to answer that question with a prediction: In about two years, Justin Bieber will announce his grownupedness by appearing in a video surrounded by women dressed as sexy aardvarks, or something.

SADY: PROBABLY. I think that's the next big step for the Beebs. That or allowing leaked photos of his very first armpit hair to appear on TMZ. But dudes don't have to, like, "grow up" by announcing how sexy they are now. Not the way ladies do.

AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, it seems that the sign of grownupedness is ladies without pants, and so if you're a lady, take off your pants, and if you're a man, get some ladies and take off their pants. Lady Gaga has of course complicated this equation by making sexiness also about dressing like bizarre animals. Which is hilarious, because now when you have parents clutching their pearls over this, they also necessarily have to be like "And what's with the kids these days with the bird costumes?"

[youtube:v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4]
Not A Girl: A modified Catholic schoolgirl outfit provided ample fodder for creepy adult fantasy, while Britney Spears' stated virginity insulated her from the accompanied slut-shaming.

[youtube:v=I4a8DY7SiMU]
Not Yet A Woman: "Britney, are you sure you're mature enough to take responsibility for that sensual albino python?"

SADY: Right? Not only do they have to worry about the teens doing the sexy dances, they also have to worry that their wholesome sons and daughters are going to slaughter everybody in the IHOP and get sent to Bitch Prison. I mean, it's interesting to me, though, like the whole transition from "innocent" (or "not that innocent" in one notable case) to "I am wearing a thigh-high boot, spinning around a pole, and letting backup dancers lick my face" that so many women who grow up in the public eye have to undergo. Like the ONLY OPTION is publicly performing "virgin" or publicly performing "SEX SEX LOOK AT ME IT'S POSSIBLE I MIGHT BE HAVING SEX." For ladies. Dudes are just allowed to grow up gracefully, more often. And there's nothing wrong with being licked! Or spinning around a pole, if you want to do that! It's just like... she HAS to announce adulthood with these very public, very overt signifiers of sexuality.

AMANDA: I know, I was wracking my brain for young pop stars who have not gone through the Not Wearing Pants phase, and the only ones I can think of are a) Kelly Clarkson, who wrote a song about how she doesn't hook up and how she can clean up the mess your ex-girlfriend made who probably does hook up because all the kids are doing it, and b) Taylor Swift, who, well WE KNOW. WE KNOW ABOUT THAT ONE. For the record, I'm not a pop star, and I've attended several parties where I haven't worn pants the whole time at those parties. IT HAPPENS. But the dichotomy is really frustrating.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, me and pants have a troubled history. There was a time, Amanda! A time when I was convinced leggings were, in fact, pants! A time when I was TERRIBLY WRONG. And I enjoy taking my pants off in certain conducive contexts, of course, as we all do. Nobody wants to wear pants permanently! Except for Tobias Funke!

AMANDA: Haha Indeed. But so, I was thinking about Thinking of the Children the other day. And how Think of the Children is almost always used as a really transparent cover that adults use to condemn something they're extremely uncomfortable with at all ages, and then claim that they're only protecting The Children from it, instead of themselves.

SADY: Yeah. And Thinking Of The Children often seems to involve... not a lot of thinking about how The Children actually tend to behave? Like: My shameful secret is that I actually ENJOY THE HELL out of this video. Not because it's "empowering," or because I take ANY of its messages at face value, but because — like Miley herself — it's so goofy and embarrassing in precisely the ways that 17-year-old-girl rebellion is goofy and embarrassing.

AMANDA: It's pretty much the Twilight of videos. Except less virginy.

SADY: Haha, yeah. I mean, it's so high school! Like: She is in a CAGE! A CAGE of your JUDGING HER! But she is a bird that Cannot, as the saying goes, be Tamed! or Blamed! She will do what she wants! GET OUT OF HER ROOM, MOMMMMMMM. SHE'LL WEAR WHATEVER SHE WANTS TO WEAR OH MY GOD STOP MAKING SUCH A BIG DEAL OUT OF IT I WANT TO DIE I HATE YOU I HATE YOU. And then the door slams. And the video's over.

AMANDA: And then she gives this interview where she Explains, like, what the video is about. It's about being an adult now, GOD.

SADY: Right! I mean: We talk about growing up in public. But Miley Cyrus, despite (DON'T READ THIS PART, MILEY CYRUS) having released some of my least favorite songs EVER, actually seems to be, like... growing up. In public. With all the associated awkwardness. But that's the thing, about Thinking About the Children: We have this very idealized normative concept of how a "good" teen behaves and it's just not in line with these realities. At all! And honestly it is, as you said, just about shoving aside what makes us uncomfortable.

[youtube:v=kIDWgqDBNXA]
Not a Girl: In Christina Aguilera's first hit single, she waited for someone to release her from the confines of bare midriffed virginity.

[youtube:v=Kaej4Wjkj1Q]
Not Yet A Woman: In 2002, assless chaps were considered a strong indicator of adulthood.

AMANDA: Yeah, and why the fuck are we acting like all our insecurities can be resolved by Miley Cyrus not doing some weird shit in a music video? I'll also add that Miley's actually doing pretty fucking awesome at navigating all this stuff. In February, she said this: "My job isn’t to tell your kids how to act or how not to act because I’m still figuring that out for myself. To take that away from me is a bit selfish . . . Your kids are going to make mistakes whether I do or not. That’s just life.” Coming from someone who was EVISCERATED for appearing in a magazine with her back visible, that point is well-taken.

SADY: WHOA. Miley seems really together! In that quote! Sorry, Miley! I mean, yeah: I think the fact that our cultural insecurities CAN be raised by just such a video is pretty telling. Like that not-really-pole-dancing she did that one time, or the Liebowitz shot: A lot of it was just grown men (and women) being all, "I'm afraid this might turn me on! And I'm scared!" And, yeah, you ought notta be eroticizing the teenagers. But constantly monitoring this one specific female teenager to determine whether she's inappropriately sexy is, like... Not that much less creepy? I think young women's sexuality is often put in that place of overtly well-meaning, covertly creepy monitoring. Like, we're SO OBSESSED with young women not being sexual (which they really usually are) that we constantly evaluate how sexual they are. And then there's all the teen-eroticizing that takes place ANYWAY, because it's so taboo. And the result is Britney, America's #1 Virgin, dancing in a Catholic schoolgirl outfit, and later sort of cracking under the weight of how VERY many contradictions she was expected to represent.

AMANDA: Right. I'll take the bird costume. And the adult hand-ringing: It is extremely creepy, and it's directly related to people being freaked out about their own interest in Miley Cyrus. But like, for 17 year old boys and ladies, a crush on Miley is extremely reasonable? And Miley is, as I read in a recent story, 17 AND A HALF. A half! She's almost 18. Let her wear not-pants!

SADY: Yeah, exactly. Like: I think it's totally fine for teens to be sexual, WITH EACH OTHER. Provided they're educated enough to not take stupid risks and hurt themselves or others. Even if I was like, "it's not okay! Stop doing that, teens! STOP IT RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I SAID SO," they would do it anyway. But there's no safe space in this culture for a young woman to sort of grow into her sexuality, because it's fetishized and demonized and the fetishization and the demonization are directly connected. So people want you and they hate you and they hate you because they want you and they want you because they hate you and it is basically a wonder any of us gets through it even semi-intact.

[youtube:v=9MkstZ3n4G8]
Not a Girl: As a Cheetah Girl, Kiely Williams sang about doing her best and following her heart.

[youtube:v=J96ujGstSUw]
Not Yet A Woman: As a young adult, Williams' heart led her to eroticize passed-out sex.

AMANDA: Right. It's just important to make the distinction between OH MY DISNEY GIRL SEXY AVIAN COSTUME WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO OUR CHILDREN! and saying, Hey, it must be hard to be a Girl, Not Yet A Woman in the spotlight and be criticized no matter how you want to grow into adulthood. I will say that the song kind of sucks, in a not-criticizing-her-burgeoning-sexuality kind of way.

SADY: Oh, yeah. I mean, I am not going to the "Miley, your expensive silver corset denotes your Brainwashing By The Patriarchy" place. Not in my lifetime! And I hope I'm not saying that I think she's stupid or anything — just in a really awkward place, and I kind of find the very awkwardness of the place charming, because I have so been there. Also her Auto-Tune makes her sound like a cartoon animal, though. Which is not a criticism of her sexuality or body, just of the fact that it like squeaks and she reminds me of a Forest Friend offering helpful advice. "You can't be blamed either Sady! Come with me to my land of mystical enchantments! We'll have a tea party with all the other bunny rabbits!" EEK.

AMANDA: I can't wait until Auto-Tune is recognized as a feminist issue.

SADY: WHY MUST WE DEFORM OUR SISTERS' NATURAL TUNELESSNESS TO APPEASE THE MEN?

AMANDA: Yes, but on the other hand, Auto-Tune helps to equalize a patriarchal music industry standard which prefers women with naturally pleasant singing voices.

SADY: That's so last-wave-of-Auto-Tune politics! I prize the sound of ALL voices! Howsoever sucky!

On Monday, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown will speak at Harvard's "Rethinking Virginity" conference, a summit on the state of sexual purity.

But before she Rethinks virginity, Sady must first Think it! Accordingly, I have volunteered to help Sady pop the proverbial cherry of Virginity Thinkin', a rite of passage every ladyblogger must endure, and which readers of this blog must endure as well!  It is awkward! It is sometimes painful! And it goes on far too long! In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, join Sady and I as we recall That Time It Almost Went In, mourn the loss of the Precious Treasures, and devolve into a fit of terrible sexual puns.

SADY: LADY! I think it is time for me to lose my Having This Particular Chat Virginity! As opposed to my Oral Sex (Receiving) Virginity, my Oral Sex (Delivering) Virginity, my Various Other Stuff Virginity, and my Virginity Virginity. All of which are gone already. I HAVE SQUANDERED MY PRECIOUS TREASURE!

AMANDA: Oh wonderful! Well I'm personally excited to commence Rethinking Virginity ... out of existence! For it has never really worked for me.

SADY: Oh, no? Please do detail the manner in which it failed to work!

AMANDA: "Failed to work" may actually be the operative term here? Because if someone were to ask me When I Lost My Virginity, they would then be subjected to a series of stories about Those Times It Almost Went In, But Didn't. I tried REALLY HARD to lose my virginity! I was like, Out, Out, Damned Virginity! But it just ... it just didn't work. Physically. For a long time. And now I don't fucking know/remember when it happened. It was late.

SADY: Right. The definitive moment at which you become an Anti-Virgin is hard to peg! In fact! And, honestly, gives too much credit to the first person to definitively Stick It In. Like, it's not like no-one has visited these territories before! Those dudes are like Christopher Columbus. They, like, Claim This Land for Spain, but fail to notice all the people who were already there. Uh. Sort of.

AMANDA: RIGHT. (?) And everyone pretends it's this really objective moment that's defined from the outside, but I've found for most people you just have to Decide when it is, and pretend that that time syncs up with whatever everyone else is talking about. I count myself as lucky to not have a very intimate relationship with Virginity and Non-Virginity, though. Fuck that noise.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, I myself was at one point one of those girls who went around telling everybody that I was totally not going to sex it up until I met the dude I was going to marry. And people would laugh at me, and I would be like, "WHY MUST YOU DEVALUE MY MORAL CHOICES?" But then something magical happened, which was that I went to college. And there were like three dudes with whom it could very plausibly have happened, and I was just so tired of trying to figure out which one was going to be my husband (HINT: None) that I had sex with the WORST ONE just to get it over with. Which is also not a choice I recommend!

AMANDA: Haha! STRATEGY. I waited a long time to (try) to have sex, and it wasn't for some sort of sense of morality. I was never surrounded by any religious influences or anything like that growing up. But I did feel really, really, really, really uncomfortable with the idea of having sex, and a lot of that had to do with stuff imposed on me on the outside about how sex was bad. Like I was worried about getting AIDS if my boyfriend's penis got too close to me.

SADY: Yeah. That is also part of it. Like, there are so many risks to sex — AIDS, all the other terrifying illnesses, etc — that delaying sex can feel, really, like the best of all possible options. And also, there are other risks of sex If You Are A Lady, which include: Getting Knocked Up (I would basically consider this to be a terrible illness, in my current circumstance) and Getting Called a Slut. But here is the magic thing: All of these things can happen to you EVEN if you are not a virgin! And I feel like the emphasis on virginity, or the lack thereof, encourages everyone to place the emphasis on this ONE sexual encounter, your FIRST (and hopefully not last), instead of being like: Sex! You're going to be doing this eventually! Here's a realistic risk evaluation!

AMANDA: Exactly. And the emphasis on virginity didn't really help what I was going through either. The message was, "Don't have sex! And if you do, just wear a condom!" Which didn't speak to any of the issues I had with sex, or how to decide how to do it and when and with whom and why. Like, I am very much anti-abstinence-only education – and in high school, having sex was NOT going to be a productive option for me, in the place that I was. I was a VIRGIN and wanted to stay one, for a while. And still the emphasis on the virginity stuff really did not help me.

SADY: Right! And, like, a while ago, there was this headline all over the place, which was "Abstinence Only Education: Totally Works!" And what it actually WORKED at, apparently, was delaying vagina-to-weiner intercourse for a few years among the preteens. Good job! But also, this magically effective abstinence-only education program taught abstinence this way: Don't have sex until you are totally comfortable with having sex and know how to make good sexual decisions for you. This program that worked? NOT TEACHING ABSTINENCE, actually. What it was teaching was SEXUAL CONSENT. Like, "Hey, when you decide to have sex, your decision should probably be full and informed!" Uh, OK. But feminists have been teaching this for approximately FOREVER? I guess we never thought to call it "abstinence." I guess that's why we don't get the credit for our revolutionary sex-education technology!

AMANDA: Exactly. SEX ED EDUCATORS: PLEASE TEACH CONSENT. Because honestly, I've been having sex for a while now, and it took me a long time to be "totally comfortable" with it. A lot of that had to do with body-image stuff and all the connotations that went along with not being a virgin anymore, and so being a slut, but some of it had to do with people not respecting my right to make decisions about when I have sex and when I don't.

SADY: Right. I mean, I think my thing is: My first few sex experiences were kind of HORRIBLE, which I think had a lot to do with choosing the worst of all possible contenders so that I wouldn't have to think about being a virgin or not being a virgin any more. Because when I say "the worst," I mean we were at TWILIGHT LEVELS OF AWFUL. But also, I think they would have been awful anyway, because I had been taught "don't have sex," and I had been taught about the importance of putting a little rubber outfit on his apparatus if I ever DID have sex. But what I had NEVER been taught, apparently, was how to respect what I wanted, and to ask for it, and how to say "no" if I did NOT want something he wanted. I mean, I didn't even know how to say "ow" or "yikes." My impression was that one could Have Sex or Not Have Sex, and so my first few experiences were like, "oh, so apparently sex is AWFUL? It seems weird that people are so into it! But, OK! I am Having Sex!"

AMANDA: EXACTLY. GOD. I very much had the experience of something like, happening to me—-"Having" "Sex"—not participating or enjoying something, but like, enduring it. And part of that was necessary to come to a time when I would figure out how to like it, and assert myself, and that stuff. But surely, we can do better about the way we talk about things and prepare people for them, and how to know when Bad Sex is not bad sex and when it's Rape. We don't do enough of that.

SADY: Right. And I think it goes back to what we were talking about before, which is: Sex being defined as this very heterosexual experience of having a Penile Apparatus stuck into our Vaginal Apparatus in an Act That Could Potentially Produce Offspring (if you don't make his weiner wear an outfit, or whatever). Like, OK: There are a lot of things that are pretty darn sexual, which this description of Sex does not cover! And I am struggling to say this without sounding like some kind of creepy Tantric sex instructor, but: If you're like, "OK. So somebody is going to stick that into the other thing, and then you will Have Had Sex," you're missing out on (a) much of what makes sex fun or enjoyable, (b) much of the potential complications, and (c) the fact that sex, ideally, should not be some sort of terrifying Bene Gesserit test of fortitude? Like, that thing where they stick Kyle McLachlan's hand in the box and are like, "WITHSTAND THE PAIN OR DIE" so he can't take his hand out or the space nun will kill him instantly: Sex should, ideally, have little or nothing in common with this experience. Why can't we all just enjoy ourselves? By, like, respecting what feels good and what doesn't?

AMANDA: Right! And I'll add that making the definition of "sex" "Penile Apparatus stuck into our Vaginal Apparatus in an Act That Could Potentially Produce Offspring" also includes "rape" as a thing that is "sex," and so perhaps we should move toward a definition that includes shit that people want to do, and also expels the word Virginity from existence, because it doesn't mean anything and it's stupid.

SADY: RIGHT? Okay, so: Here's another reason why making "virginity" important is scary. There was, some time ago, an Ohio-based abstinence education group, and they had this little online "game" for students. This game, it was kind of a downer! In that it was about deciding whether a lady had been raped or not! So, lady SAYS she's raped. And, as we all know, rape accusations are totally fun to make for kicks! So you have to evaluate the testimonies of the people she knows, about her character. And one of them — A GIRL CHARACTER! IN THE GAME! I BELIEVE! — mentions that she's had sex before, and is thus probably a liar. Guess which conclusion you are supposed to draw?

AMANDA: UM. That she's a liar?

SADY: YES. Like, the idea that you can either want NONE of the penises or ALL of the penises: That is an idea that is taught! By "education" "groups!" They had to take the game down. But we can't take it out of the equation, when we look at the cultural ideals around virginity.

AMANDA: Well I know that there's a direct correlation between how much sex I'm having and how much I lie about everything!

SADY: LIAR. I mean, I would classify several of my experiences, especially early experiences, in the "consensual but not okay" zone of sexual activity. Not to make this a big downer of a chat. But, the idea of Sex or Not Sex means that sometimes you don't say "no" because you don't totally have it in your mind that you CAN say "no," because you don't have any idea in your mind that Sex is not just one big package that you are either OK or not OK with. So, like: You go along with it, and you even say “yes,” so there is consent although it's not enthusiastic, but that is in large part because Boundaries are not really a part of the understanding you have of Sex. Or maybe that is just me! Maybe I am just a people-pleaser! But I don't think I am! Because I please very few people, really, on a daily basis.

AMANDA: Yeah, well, you either want to Have Sex (slut) or you want to Not Have Sex (virgin), and so if you decide to have sex, then—"SEX"! Sometimes, you don't really know all the possibilities of what that could mean, but you do know that you've consented to It, Sex, and that's as far as the conversation goes.

SADY: Right. And I think a lot of girls struggle with it. Like: My frequent yelling about slut-shaming and my frequent yelling about rape culture are actually the same yelling. Because the devaluation of female sexuality devalues female pleasure which in turn devalues your ability to say, "I don't like this, but I do like something else, can we do that instead?"

AMANDA: And some people who have had sex many, many times, when confronted with the opportunity to pass judgment in a rape case, still believe that. Even though it's plainly obvious that sex is not all or nothing.

SADY: Right. Exactly. That's where it gets really kind of scary. And, I mean, if I look at my various virginities: Every time you do something new for the first time, you are basically a virgin at it. You have no idea how anything works and you are probably kind of bad at it and you just sort of muddle through. Like this chat! Which for some reason I am terrible at expressing any ideas within!

AMANDA: We are virgins at rethinking virginity! It's OK! But now we're rethinking virginity sluts. And there was much rejoicing.

SADY: Yes. Next time I do this, hopefully I will know more about what is happening, and be able to contribute! Or something!

AMANDA: Instead of being like, Ow! You are inserting your opinions into mine quite vigorously, and in a way I am unprepared to respond to! Can we try this on e-mail!

SADY: I am just sort of lying here. I am like, "okay, you take it from here, I'm just going to scope out the whole operation." I didn't mean for this to end in a really inappropriate sex metaphor between two heterosexual ladies with dudepartners, Amanda. IT IS JUST PART OF THE PROCESS!

AMANDA: And I'm like, ouch, my position ... on virginity is beginning to form a cramp, in my brainparts. OK! I have finished! After dragging this on for far too long, after you have grown bored with it!

SADY: Yeah. I think we're done. And now, to go on and have Rethinking Virginity Chats... WITH MANY OTHERS! Truly, after doing this one-on-one, the only other option is to do it with four other people. Simultaneously! In public! And possibly on film! THEY WERE RIGHT! THEY WERE RIGHT ABOUT THE ABSTINENCE! THE DAM HAS BROKEN, THERE IS NO TURNING BACK NOW.

Photo via MRBECK, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

So, I've been pretty hard on breast implantation lately. First there was this screed against justifying breast augmentation as empowering. And then there was this dissection of the plastic surgery industry in general. And then C.L. Minou, a writer I admire very much, sent me an e-mail basically saying, "Hey! I am a woman who actually has breast implants. Want to talk to me about it?"

And good thing, that! For behold the product of that missive: This lovely interview with Minou about the ways in which the feminine beauty ideal intersects with trans identity and feminist identity and the work of just living our lives and being comfortable in our bodies. But first: Minou blogs at The Second Awakening, a blog about feminism, post-gender-transition; she is also a regular contributor to Below the Belt and Tiger Beatdown; soon you'll see her work over at Change.Org, too. Onward:

SEXIST: What was your decision-making process like in deciding to undergo breast augmentation, and how do you feel about the whole thing now?

CLM: As I say over at The Second Awakening, my experience of privilege has left me an opponent of it in all its forms—because I'm quite familiar with the gradient. And it's not even as simple as male privilege vs female subordination—as a crossdresser, I was a lower status male back in the days people thought I was male. I was a feminist before I transitioned, but I'm a much more ardent feminist since I transitioned.

But there's definitely the possibility of my feminism being dismissed for a lot of reasons. The one you cite is certainly one of them—that I'm only a feminist because I'm a woman now, or to express it more bluntly, that I'm trying to recapture my male privilege. (Of course, some people would accuse me of still having it, or acting like I do). The whole question of my former male privilege is pretty complex and delicate–I've never denied that my career (outside my writing life, I'm a programmer) was certainly made much easier because at the time I wasn't a woman. But is that balanced by the lack of status I have as not just a woman, but a trans woman, one who often loses status even among women? Because there's also a trend to automatically discount my feminism or feelings about a feminist topic because I don't share the background that most cis women share. (In its most extreme form you get the attitude of Lu's Pharmacy in Vancouver, a woman-only store that refused service to trans women because we've never bled.

At the same time, as someone who identifies and is usually identified by other people as a woman, I've certainly become more confident in expressing myself in feminist ways. Obviously my words have greater impact when I speak as a woman, rather than as a feminist-identified man. It's not that I deny there's any self-interest in my feminist viewpoint—it's just that it's not the ONLY reason.

This week, disabled feminist blogger Annaham wrote a piece about dealing with Internet harassment of the international, televised, celebrity-sanctioned, horrible-death-threat variety.

And Salon writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote a piece about dealing with Internet harassment of the if-you-experienced-PTSD-after-a-traumatic-childbirth-then-you-sound-like-a-bitch-who-just-shouldn't-ever-reproduce variety.

And recently, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown wrote a piece about dealing with Internet harassment by loudly and publicly eviscerating the harasser, and then replacing all of their comments with the word "[BONERS]."

And also Awl writer Maura Johnston wrote a piece about dealing with Internet harassment by developing a "thick skin" because the Internet is "pretty much as mean as all of us," no more, no less.

And all of these people are women. And so, in this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady and I get to talking about Internet harassment of the you-women-ought-to-employ-your-mouths-for-dick-sucking-and-not-opinionating variety. Come troll, come all, and join us for a conversation which, oddly, does not conclude with Sady and I shutting up and performing blow jobs!

SADY: Hello! And, in related news, I hate you! Because we are on the Internet. Where ladies are hated abundantly!

AMANDA: With much vigor and from many angles! I really, really identified with Annaham's post, mostly about how shit on the Internet does affect me, but I'm not allowed to talk about it because "it's the Internet." But there. I said it, it does.

SADY: INDEED IT DOES! I once spoke to someone who was like, "all you ever talk about is who hates you on the Internet today. And why are you letting it get under your skin?" And I was like, "Because they hate me! I don't care where they are! Being on the Internet makes it WORSE, because I can SEE them hating me, FROM MY BEDROOM!" "I have a phone with e-mail on it! I can see people hating me WHEREVER I AM IN THE WORLD!"

AMANDA: Yeah, or from my office? For my career is located on the Internet.

SADY: PRECISELY. And, I mean, I really identified with Annaham's piece too. It said stuff I had been struggling to say, for like the LONGEST time, but in an actually sensical way that could potentially persuade people. Rather than me being like, "AND ALSO, in the SUBWAY, people are mean!"

AMANDA: For me, it wasn't so much that I couldn't figure out how to say it—though she said it very, very well—but that I didn't want to, because I don't want to tip my hand toward awful, anonymous commenters, or show any weakness, or risk being eviscerated for acting like a victim. It's not that I feel that I've been victimized. I just want to be able to talk about this shit, basically, and there's no space for that. So she's very brave, is what I'm saying.

SADY: Exactly. Because, the thing is, when you talk about Dicks On The Internet Getting You Down—or, worse, snap at one of them—people think you are just hypersensitive, and a whiner, and petty, and whatever. They think it's a personal problem. Whereas, me, I've talked to a lot of ladies who are on the Internet. I'm really into building Internet Lady Community, because it's not so easy. And here is the one way I have learned that you can start a passionate conversation with a lady who works on the Internet: MENTION MEAN COMMENTERS. Because we all get it! In super-intense ways! And at high volume! Every single lady on the Internet gets this thing!

AMANDA: Oh yeah. None of us is immune. And it's not subtle, either. It's obviously—just obviously—targeted at shutting us up.

SADY: Yes. It is not personal, it affects ladies qua ladies, it hurts and saddens, and I believe in ye olden tymes we would refer to this as a "Really Fucking Obvious Feminist Issue."

AMANDA: I know you recently quit the Internet for a weekend, and who can blame you? Because the real world is pleasant? But actually, people who aim personal attacks at us know that it makes us turn away and shut up, even for a little bit.

SADY: Exactly! And you can tell, because it tends to get more intense the larger one's audience is. I feel like I, full disclosure, have been relatively privileged insofar as I do NOT get mean commenters all that often, largely because they can tell I am WAY MEANER than they are. I have developed this Massively Uninhibited Bitch Who Will Cut You Persona. And as much as that might alienate people, I feel like it was a smart decision. Because when posters OTHER than me are at my blog, they DON'T have a rep as someone who will cut off your balls and feed them to you, perhaps in a delicate white wine sauce, and the assholes feel a lot safer.

AMANDA: Well, I know a lot of women who fucking love that persona of yours because we sort of live vicariously through it. But we shouldn't all have to adopt extremely defensive strategies in order to just ... speak.

SADY: Right. You should be able to post a picture of your new hat on the Internet without having to have built up 9,000,000 defensive strategies for when someone calls you ugly. Because they will call you ugly! They just will! Or a slut, if they can't call you that. "WHY ARE YOU SHOWING OFF YOUR PROVOCATIVE TORSO IN THIS FASHION?"

AMANDA: Because can I tell you? This woman on my blog the other day posted a comment about how the arguments that I make are less valid because of how my voice sounds. Because of how words sound when they leave my mouth. And because it sounds kind of like how a lady sounds.

SADY: Hahaha. So, she is just LITERALLY TELLING YOU not to speak. "When you speak, I can't help but notice that you are speaking," is what she says, "and that makes it harder for me to pay attention when you speak."

AMANDA: Right. Like could you perhaps get a surrogate voice, a more manly and patronizing one? Perhaps then my voice (but not my voice) can truly be heard.

SADY: Right. I mean: I think that, when people talk about blogs, they talk about the democratization of voice, and how it allows everyone to be heard. But what they don't talk about, so often, is how (a) We also re-iterate the same structures of rewarding or punishing voices that you see in Actual Real Life Not On The Internet, and (b) How the possibility that ladies might be TAKING to the Internet, and thus might have finally found a forum in which you literally CANNOT SHUT THEM UP by refusing to publish them or listen to them at your party or allow them into your fancy organizations or whatever, scares the shit out of dudes, and thus amps up the harassment to a truly scary degree. Like: I get harassed on the street, told to smile, have my tits pointed out to me, whatever. But on the street I don't TYPICALLY get told that someone should rape me to death. Thanks to the Internet, I can in fact have just such an experience!

AMANDA: Oh agreed. And I certainly don't get the degree of vitriol that some other people get, who are not cis, and not white, and not straight. But good golly do I still get a lot of it! There is just so much vitriol to go around!

SADY: That is the thing! And I feel like, you know: We can talk about the New Niceness, and whether it is a thing (it is probably not a thing) or "Internet harassment" in general, but looking at it: I've written so much that is mean about ladies in the pop culture! But I have NEVER gotten it as hard as Annaham has. And I have to think that it is because she has not one, but TWO marks against her in the Things I Can Dismiss A Person For column. She's a feminist lady, and she's a lady with a disability. And making fun of "feminists" is a time-honored Internet Pastime, but "disabled feminists?" Boy howdy, is that ever an excellent punchline for Amanda Palmer and her delightful comedy routines!

AMANDA: Oh God, I know. International televised harassment for ... what? Not particularly enjoying the way a particular musician she likes is appropriating disability?

SADY: Right. And then, the Internet Douches, well-accustomed to not listening to ladies, ESPECIALLY not listening to feminist ladies, and ESPECIALLY not listening to people who talk about disabled folks getting the short end of the stick, are like: YES. TARGET ACQUIRED.

AMANDA: One of your commenters (you have some really great commenters, along with the bad ones) made a really good point about the difference between criticism and harassment, and how Amanda Palmer and her legion of defenders have failed to recognize the difference. And I feel like that's a common trait of all trolls—just flat out refusing to engage in any kind of subtlety or empathy.

SADY: Exactly. I mean, I did not read the Male Studies Scholar Conference that happened on Sexist Beatdown two weeks ago IN ITS ENTIRETY, but I do vividly remember the gentleman who requested that, next time we spoke, the other one suck his personal dick, that he might be able to tolerate our lady jabber. That is not, "I think the political underpinnings of your work are flawed." That is not, "Okay, good post, but here's the line I have an issue with."

AMANDA: Oh, well I live for this man to tolerate me!

SADY: I forget. Is it your turn to fellate this gentleman? Or mine?

AMANDA: It is what feminism has been striving for all these years. Tell Gloria Steinem that it was just as easy as a blow job.

SADY: I mean, it's so easy to dismiss everyone who criticizes you as a hater or a bad person. So easy! But I've been CRITICIZED, from a lot of different angles, by a lot of people. And it might irritate me. But none of it is people just flat out saying, "fuck or walk, bitches." And that's what the Internet is, for women, a WHOLE STINKING LOT OF THE TIME. Like, maybe if they are Gawker commenters they might wrap it up in some clever allusion to a Baumbach movie, or whatever. But you can still feel it seething, a lot of the time.

AMANDA: Yes. And this is one of the reasons why I love, love, love Feministe's Next Top Troll series.

SADY: Is it not the best?

AMANDA: Because the comments? They never change. It doesn't matter what woman is talking or what she's talking about or what the tone of her argument is. The vitriol is across the board just exactly the same as what I get. And it's fucking hilarious, and I take comfort in it.

SADY: Exactly. In summary, for Troll SEO Purposes: Male studies. Male studies, male studies, male studies. Women tell the truth sometimes about rape. Circumcision! DIVORCE. There. That ought to get them started! Oh, and also: I dislike prog rock, and dudes who make prog rock, sometimes. WHAT DO YOU GOT, INTERNET? WHAT. DO. YOU. GOT.

AMANDA: I can't wait to hear the troll perspective on this. Oh please! Yes. Explain the various ways that voluntarily reading and commenting on my blog oppresses you! Go on! Or perhaps you'd like to argue as to why you are doing me a service, and why I ought to be praising you for your volunteer work in the comments section? I am interested in considering all of these possibilities.

SADY: "One time I was on the Internet, and someone disagreed with me! I politely explained why she was a stupid little girl, and then, she YELLED at me. My oppression, it is intense at times. And yet, I soldier on!" — A Commenter.

AMANDA: In conclusion, BONERS.

SADY: It is a regular BONER PARTY, out there on the Internet. And it makes my lady boners wither away in despair. Though not really! Because also, I keep blogging. At this point, mainly just to piss them off. Do you hear that, Feminist-Blog-Hating Internet? YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR FEMINIST BLOGGING!

AMANDA: The world will never shrink this feminist boner!

Photo via EraPhernalia Vintage, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

This week, Tiger Beatdown presents "LADYPALOOZA: The Tiger Beatdown Lilith Fair Experience, But If Lilith Fair Didn't Suck, And Also Were a Blog." In other words, it's ladybloggers talking music, both listening-to (check out this rumination on the "Cuomo/Phair conundrum") and playing it (find out why being in a band with capital-D Dudes can turn you into a man-hating feminist!) In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle and I exact revenge on the boys with Kurt Cobain haircuts, wonder why Ren Faires are always located within walking distance of the Train to Gropetown, and discuss how smokin' hot St. Vincent is, am I right fellas? Plus, a bonus gallery of male-dominated subcultures!

SADY: Well, good morning! Are you prepared... TO ROCK??? I myself am underprepared to rock. But, for those about to rock: I do, in fact, salute them!

AMANDA: Same here! I have to admit that I'm perhaps not the best lady to be standing up for the rights of ladies to rock, because I actually really suck at playing music. The question is whether this is on account of my being a lady or not? Discuss.

SADY: Well: Here is the thing. When I was a wee young pre-blogger, of about the age of eleven or twelve, I discovered a variety of music! Such as the Juliana Hatfield (DON'T YOU JUDGE ME) and the PJ Harvey. And I was like, "ladies who are in bands get to yell about things that are personally offensive or troubling for them! A lot! Surely, this is my career path."

AMANDA: Hahah. Almost!

SADY: Yes! So I got a guitar, and I told all of the boys in school with Kurt Cobain haircuts that if they wanted to help me learn this "guitar," we could be in a band together.

AMANDA: Sounds reasonable.

SADY: And then one of them, the cutest one, the one that I liked best, told me why I was not getting any positive responses. He sat me down, and he said: "The thing is, we don't play girl music." And now I am a blogger, and still cannot play guitar, although my brother can, because I gave it to him, THE END. So, like: The question of ladies in music is one I like to think about, because (a) FUCK YOU TYLER FUCK YOU RIGHT IN THE KURT COBAIN HAIRCUT YOU WEREN'T THAT CUTE, and (b) I feel like, as a venue for angry or self-obsessed or confrontational expression, people have a VESTED INTEREST in barring ladies from the field of rock music, really!

AMANDA: I see the same sad sexism in a lot of different subcultures, and I think women are often drawn to these spaces because they're outside of the mainstream – because the mainstream marginalizes them, but perhaps in a different way than it does sensitive rocking Kurt Cobain haircut boys.

SADY: Agreed!

AMANDA: So on the one hand, you'd think the subculture would be totally interested in accepting women – how rejecting of mainstream values is that! – but on the other hand, the subculture is also about building a culture around the primacy of the sensitive rocking Kurt Cobain haircut boy's particular flavor of marginalization, and when women come in with some other shit to talk about it tends to threaten that dynamic.

SADY: Right. I mean, not to re-iterate an old cliche, but: The guitar is a tried-and-true way, not only for Wussy Guy to become Charismatically Sensitive Guy, but for men to sort of build hierarchies outside of the gym class where they are all getting wedgies. And I think women are drawn to rock or indie rock or whatever the kids with the cool haircuts are doing these days – and I'm not even trying to exclude other genres, this is just the genre in which I have the most experience – because, they think, "a-ha! Outsiders! As a lady, I am kind of BY DEFAULT an outsider, in that I am not a dude!" But the dudes are like, "you don't get it. We WERE outsiders. But we built a WHOLE NEW INSIDE, for us specifically, so that we wouldn't have to be outsiders any more. And now you are not invited."

Male-Dominated Subculture B: Weed.

AMANDA: Exactly. But the same thing happens time and time again, which is that women are used in a very mainstream way in these subcultures, as a) prizes to show just how powerful the subculture has become, because these weird boys fuck all the hot girls now, b) uncool people that must be excluded in order to maintain the outsider vibe or c) tokens.

SADY: Right. I mean, who doesn't like St. Vincent? Or Neko Case? Or that girl from Rilo Kiley who was in the Fred Savage video game movie?

AMANDA: Well, if you don't like them, at least you think they are hot.

SADY: Yes! For also, who has not visited a publication of review for music, and seen the reviewer dedicate a substantial amount of time that could have been spent talking about music to, instead, talking about the lady's sexual charisma and appearance, and/or the comment section devolving into a mass vote as to whether or not the male commentariat would Hit It? But when it is time to talk about these women musically, folks get shifty and bored and start derailing the conversation so that they can get into a conversation about folks who are doing this "better" and also happen to be dudes.

AMANDA: Yeah, it's sad. And it's not in any way confined to the world of music. You can find the same patterns with pot, and with comics, and with goth, and sometimes in the gay community (D.C. has like one lesbian bar and a jillion gay bars, and gay men are much more visible, perhaps because they don't even require the girlfriends), and can I tell you about the awful things I've heard about what happens to some women who are into Ren Faire stuff? GROPE-CENTRAL, for when the male and female nerds congregate for their yearly olde-tyme fantasy shindig, the misogyny, it is also olde-tyme.

Male-Dominated Subculture C: Nerd.

SADY: Oh, man! And, yes: I think we even did a Ye Olde Sexist Beatdowne, about this, in Oldyn Tymes! My experience of lady-nerds is that they tend to be huge and fairly hardcore feminists. And I was like, "that's funny, I never thought of feminism as a particularly nerdy thing," but then I realized (a) I was on the Internet, and (b) male nerd subculture tends to be like INTENSE in its misogyny! Lady-nerds seriously grab on to feminism like it is a buoy and they are drowning, because it is! And they sort of are! And women in music sometimes do the same thing, see: Riot Grrrl, duh. Formed in reaction to dudes with floppy Kurt Cobain haircuts, at least one of whom was ACTUALLY KURT COBAIN. (Though he was a huge feminist, God bless.)

AMANDA: Yeah. It's not that I don't appreciate and understand men who are alternative in appearance or interest or values or whatever needing a space that's outside the mainstream that's their own.

SADY: Maybe they could all become Male Studies Majors?

Male-Dominated Subculture D: Male Studies.

AMANDA: BUT. I wonder if some of the disconnect here is in these guys thinking that their asymmetrical haircut or interest in Magic: The Gathering is like the most intensely othering experience that a human can have? And are unaware that there are some other people around who may have that experience of being othered no matter which subculture they attempt to access.

SADY: Right. Exactly. And, on that note, I think we've been talking about how women are viewed as Objects of the Male Gaze, or how they try to fit in to male-dominated subcultures. BUT, I think we should also note that women in rock music have been some of the most enduring models for female rebellion? Like, as in many cases, I find that the solution for not liking the scene you are in is to (a) make your own scene, which is (b) comprised of girls. Which is why we keep talking about Riot Grrrl in 2010. Or ladies who were never really IN a scene, like PJ, or Liz Phair, who wrote an entire album about how sick she was of the dudes in her scene, or Tori Amos, who was like, "well, I can't play your fancy guitars, gentlemen, but I did take some piano lessons!" And the extent to which the ethos of Tiger Beatdown is informed by the PJ Harvey song "50 Foot Queenie" is NOT TO BE UNDERESTIMATED. Hey: I'm the king of the world. You wanna hear my song?

AMANDA: Haha. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.

SADY: Yes, no matter what PJ Harvey had to get through to become PJ Harvey, she did in fact record the sound of herself playing guitar really loud and screaming the phrase "YOU BEND OVAH, CASANOVA" and thus, I think, became a model for A Certain Variety of Conflict Management for many a lady person.

Emo shot by xJasonRogersx; sexy stormtroopers by RyanWelshPhotography.com; both Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

I noted Tiger Beatdown's "Visions of Manliness" series in today's Sexist Beatdown, but I wanted to highlight a particular post in the series because (a) "Visions of Manliness"? How can I say no? and (b) VOM guest-blogger B. Michael Payne made a really interesting point about who qualifies as a homophobe in our culture and who doesn't.

Payne focuses his critique on Deadspin sportswriter Drew Magary, the kind of guy who can write a post bemoaning the fact that America will never see an out, gay major sports star anytime soon—and then end the post with an ironically homophobic sentiment like "Also, Jimmy Clausen eats cock."

Margary, as he'll tell you, isn't a homophobe. He knows this because he used to be one. Payne highlights this interesting autobiographical admission in Margary's work:

I’ll go ahead and freely admit now that, when I was in high school, I could easily be characterized as a homophobe. I used the word faggot all the time (even more than I do now!). I adored Dice Clay. I didn’t think gays deserved rights or anything else other than ridicule. I didn’t LIKE gays. At all. And not for any sort of bullshit moral reason. No, I was that way because I enjoyed it, and I suspect many other homophobes also hate gays simply because they like to hate them. I could blame youth or growing up in the ’80s for how I felt, but that’s a bullshit excuse. It’s embarrassing and shameful and I wish I’d never felt that way.

It's great that Margary is getting his historical hatred of gay people out of his system, but note the language up top there. When Margary was in high school, when he used the word "faggot" all the time, when he believed that gays did not deserve equal rights, when he hated gay people because hating them gave him pleasure, he could "easily be characterized as a homophobe." Not that he was a homophobe—that he could have been characterized that way. "I’ve emphasized Magary’s characterization of his homophobia as being ‘characterizable as’ rather than being a full-blown case of hating the gays," Payne writes. "But then he goes on to say that… he liked to hate gays."

Margary doesn't then go on to insist that this "characterization" of his hatred of gay people was an unfair characterization; instead, he sincerely apologizes for being a homophobe. Payne notes that it's "really difficult to start out a paragraph by saying ‘I was a homophobe’"; it's a lot easier to avoid the label, admit to the substance of the accusation, and emerge as a good person who happens to have thought some bad thoughts and said some bad words. Unfortunately, homophobes don't allow gay people the same opportunity to define their own nuanced, subjective experiences. In this word, "faggot" is a bad word, but "homophobe" is downright oppressive.

Most humans who don't hate gay people have come to a consensus that being a "homophobe" is a bad thing. What we can't seem to agree on is that almost everyone helps perpetuate homophobia in some way, intentionally or not. And in fact, one way this whole thing is perpetuated is by pinning homophobia on distinct, identifiable "homophobes" (who are certainly not us) while justifying the behavior of us remaining not-homophobes as necessarily not-homophobic. Margary performs this trick on himself when he admits that he still employs the word "faggot" and makes jokes about gay shit, but that he's not a homophobe like his former self because he no longer takes pleasure in hating gay people. One has to wonder what the true distinction between making homophobic jokes and taking pleasure in hating gay people is; but one also wouldn't want to mistakenly characterize a smart writer and seemingly good guy like Margary as a homphobe.

Payne writes:

Magary’s beliefs are like the beliefs of basically everyone about basically everything. There’s a supposed law of logic called the Law of the Excluded Middle, which says briefly that it’s impossible for a thing to be a thing and not be that same thing, simultaneously. You can’t be alive and dead at the same time. Of course, we know that that’s not true at all in practice. What about the person in a coma? The patient etherized on the table? The cubicle drone? People all over the world are simultaneously alive and dead. In the same way, Magary (and us, very likely) are simultaneously homophobic and not homophobic. Most of our friends who say things like, ‘That shit’s so gay’ are not the same people who would beat the living hell out of a homosexual. But the sedimented notions of sexuality perform a subtle alchemy on our day-to-day lives that leads imperceptibly but inevitably to casual rape culture, misogyny, hate crimes—all the ugly shit no one owns up to but everyone contributes to.

Photo via George Eastman House.

Two important developments in the World of Men this week:

1. A group of scholars, led by a man with the almost suspiciously masculine name of Lionel Tiger, established a new discipline of gender studies: Male Studies. Male Studies differs from the already existing discipline of Men's Studies in that it is devoted to studying the "male as male," as opposed to the "male as Easter Bunny" or whatever Men's Studies is passing off as scholarly research nowadays. Also, Male Studies really fucking resents Women's Studies. Cage match, anyone?

2. Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, the preeminent scholar in the field of Lady Business Studies, invited some men to talk about their experiences for once. Sady's Visions of Manliness series (see A, B, and C) has addressed stuff like the simultaneous marginalization and privilege of trans men, ironically homophobic sports blogging, and how deeply Valentine's Day truly blows. Strangely, none of the posts are about how feminists have stolen their male identity, trampled upon their masculine phenomenon, and overall been super mean. In other words, this is total Men's Studies shit.

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady and I YELL ABOUT THESE THINGS AND ALSO bell hooks SO JOIN US!

SADY: hello, Fellow Lady Person!

AMANDA: Why hello! I am prepared to speak about the experiences of . . . Men People.

SADY: About which I know, I will tell you, not a whole lot! Like, I have known Men People throughout my lifetime. Sometimes in the sense that they are related to me! Or friends! Or I have known them BIBLICALLY! But also, like, pursuant to the Liz Lemonism critique of Times Past, I feel like I am privileged in 99% of the ways that people can be privileged on this our planet Earth. And it frustrates me — and has been a schism in The Feminist History — that, as a lady who is so very fucking privileged, I'm allowed to concentrate so much on my own Oppression By The Man and not notice that some of The Men are going through their own bullshit.

AMANDA: Right. In the Oppression Olympics, I would not qualify for the finals. I would be disqualified in the first heat. I also am really no good with sports metaphors!

SADY: Well, The Man has staked his claim in those. BASICALLY WE NEED TO TAKE THE QUARTERBACK OF DISCOURSE TO THE GOAL NET OF DISCUSSION TO SCORE A HOME RUN HAT TRICK OF ANTI-OPPRESSION THEORY! Is my understanding.

AMANDA: I plan on blaming all of my deficiencies in forming metaphors, drawing conclusions, and overall making sense on my Oppression today. For the record.

SADY: I intuitively understand you, due to my woman's intuition. But, like, this is a long-standing Beef within the feminist community, in fact. Like, bell hooks covered it along with approximately everybody else.

AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, a distinction must be made between men and The Man.

SADY: Right. We oversimplify. And a ton of feminists have needed to clarify that "when we say 'men,' we mean the Platonic ideal of 'men!' The way 'men' are encouraged to behave and act and such!" And as a person who types the words 'dudes' and 'men' a lot, I am sympathetic. Because we DO need a word to denote all that junk. But, to revisit bell hooks for JUST A SECOND, here is how that works out in practice: Some white feminist ladies walk up to some ladies of color, and are like "join the cause, sister!" And the ladies of color are like, "sure, I've experienced sexism, let's go. On the way, can we talk about how you white ladies are enacting some bullshit that hurts me and also the men in my community?" And then the white ladies are like, "YOU ARE SO MALE-IDENTIFIED. WHY CAN'T YOU JOIN OUR GLORIOUS SISTERHOOD AND IDENTIFY AS A WOMAN FIRST."

AMANDA: Allow me to flip that dynamic around for a second, as I think the distinction between "Men's Studies" and the totally brand new discipline of "Male Studies" helps to illustrate that point. So, "Male Studies" just had its first conference on Wednesday, to declare "Male Studies" a thing, even though "Men's Studies" already exists and is welcoming of all who study men and masculinity. And the reason "Male Studies" has decided to branch off from "Men's Studies" is that Men's studies thinks too much about Women's Studies.

SADY: Oh, dear.

AMANDA: When there is just no reason to segregate these two studies, of course.

SADY: Well, unless you want to teach an entire seminar on barbecue grilling!

AMANDA: And I think feminism suffers from the impulse to segregate the experiences of people and treat our cultural systems (patriarchy, masculinity, femininity, race, class) as separate fields, and I think my work often suffers from that distinction, actually.

SADY: Well, I mean, to be honest, mine does, too. Mostly due to my vast narcissism, and the fact that I write mostly about my own experiences!

AMANDA: Right.

SADY: You could run over my foot with a shopping cart at the Costco, and I'd write this very ideological post that was like, "SHOPPING CART PRIVILEGE: Does It Lead You To Run Over My Foot, and Are You A Monster? Yes."

AMANDA: But it's a very tricky thing to attempt to write about the experiences of others, and that's why your masculinity series is so great! TIGER BEATDOWN PLUG!

SADY: Which is why I try to bring other people into the discussion.

AMANDA: But what about, in addition to bringing in these voices, also writing about issues that don't directly affect us and which we can't talk about from personal experience? I think it's important to do that too, but I think it's a lot trickier.

SADY: Right. And also, you have to be open to getting yelled at! Is my experience!

AMANDA: Agreed!

SADY: Because there's a big difference between "speaking about these things that do not affect me directly" and "speaking FOR these people who are having these experiences because I am A GENIUS and get your experience way better than you do." But, like, it is easy to cross the line?

AMANDA: Yeah. It is. And that's where the productive yelling comes in.

SADY: So you have to be a good listener, ESPECIALLY when people are yelling.

AMANDA: But, so, then I also sometimes get yelled at if I write about how something affects men? I get the "O but what about the menz!!!!!" comments. I don't know why it's written like an Internet cat is saying it, but it is. Even though I write about women a whole lot!

SADY: They are all basically internet cats, those dudes, though. Like, if you write a post about Vajazzling, to use a totally fictional example, and people are like, "did you know some dudes get CIRCUMSIZED??? Monstrous! Your vagina post has inspired me to talk about the ill fates of penises, instead, and at length!' Like, at a certain point, the "WHAT ABOUT ME" posts from dudes are just blatantly obnoxious, and blatantly intended to keep women from writing about their OWN experiences of manliness, ill or well.

AMANDA: Yeah. I have a good friend who is hurt that I don't write on the expectations on men to move furniture for girls.

SADY: OH MY GOD. OPPRESSION! I too am disappointed that you have not covered this topic Amanda! Also: Being asked to open pickle jars. WORSE THAN DEATH???

AMANDA: Well I'm waiting to roll out my big investigative series. On the possible lingering lower back problems.

SADY: "Once I Had To Carry Your Books Up Some Stairs: A Post About Traumatic Experiences, By A Dude."

AMANDA: But, I write about a lot of really minor shit that women are expected to do and about how these very little things are reminders of society's expectations of men and women. And a lot of times men get really pissed when I do that, too! For it is annoying to be forced to think about.

SADY: Right. I mean, here's the thing: I'm a lady who gets called out on my privilege. A lot. As I see it, my job description is: Write about lady stuff, try to remember not all ladies have exactly the same life as I do, listen when ladies with different lives are like "uh, you missed something." So the plague of dudes on the Internet who are like, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN LADIES EXPERIENCE THINGS DIFFERENTLY THAN I DO, SOMETIMES NOT WELL?!???!" Like: I try to listen to people EVERY SINGLE DAY, dude, and I haven't actually had an aneurysm and died yet, so maybe it's not actually that fucking hard. You know? The Internet is not a thousand little knives stabbing you in the face. The Internet is some people talking. In conclusion, calm down.

AMANDA: Yeah. And that's when things get tough, for me, when we start talking about the experiences of men like that. Because it's so obvious how our culture is constructed to make guys like that never have to—and to actually avoid—listening to a woman's experience, just as it's constructed to help white people avoid listening to anyone else, and straight people, and cis people, &c.

SADY: Yeah. But then you have things like "Male Studies," where "The male as male will be permitted to appear in all his complexity as new values are being forged and traditional values that have proven the test of time are affirmed."

SADY: And I get the feeling those traditional values that have proven the test of time kind of involve OPPRESSING THE VAST MAJORITY OF MALES???

AMANDA: Yes. And that traditional man has always been permitted to appear. It's all the other men who haven't. But Male Studies cuts them out of the picture when it devotes itself to "males as males," as if we're only talking about one very clearly defined and biologically determined type of person.

SADY: Right. Because "the male as male" means cisgendered. It means straight. It means white. It means, like, a lot of shit! Actually! As it is commonly employed! Everybody else, if they can even get recognized as dudes, is treated in the discourse as, "well, okay, you're a dude. But a SUBSET of dude. We have trouble imagining you as a character on 'Mad Men,' so, like, clearly you're not a part of the glorious history of The Male As Male to the same extent." But here's the thing. The ominous thing that I always phrase in a manner that brings to mind, like, the James Cameron movie 'Aliens.'

AMANDA: Okay.

SADY: All of those dudes excluded from the discourse of Traditional Old-Fashioned-Swilling Wife-Cheating-On Empowered Non-Chest-Waxing Masculinity? And all of the ladies? Add it up. THERE ARE MORE OF US than there are of anyone else. Which is why we need to start fucking talking to each other more.

AMANDA: This reminds me more of that Beyonce song than Aliens, but I see what you're getting at.

SADY: Like, if we start looking at "masculinity" as this very exclusive concept that has all of these other concepts and privileges packed into it, then we get to my I Went To Liberal Arts College And Have Simplistic Ideas Place where, like... we can create a discourse without you, substantially, Ultimately Privileged People. If we can get over our own bullshit and have each others' backs, we can do a lot. And maybe this conversation needs to take place on THOSE terms. Provided you're okay with getting yelled at when you fuck it up. Also, I have had three beers, because it's hot. THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE SOBER!

AMANDA: NO IT WILL NOT. And I will fight to the death for men to gain the right to drink as much as women do without being labeled irresponsible sluts who deserve whatever is coming to them.

SADY: Yes! Also, that person who ran over my foot in the Costco: A MONSTER. I think we need to centralize this issue. Because that hurt.

AMANDA: Kumbayah!

Photo via George Eastman House

In this edition of Feminist Dream Phone Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I help all the hetero feminist ladies out there find a man! There's been some very Serious Feminist Literature written on the subject of Feminist Dating as of late, covering such important topics as establishing a feminist litmus test and learning to sarcastically accommodate man-children. What is this discussion missing, besides more hamburgers? Personal information about Sady and I, apparently!

Important Note: This Sexist Beatdown will make a lot more sense if you imagine Sady and I throwing sassy hand signals (such as "the hand") at various points throughout the dialogue, inserting the word ". . . girl" before and after each of our sentences, and exiting to the enthusiastic applause of hundreds of single women at the discussion's conclusion. Thank you.

AMANDA: Hellooo.

SADY: Why, hello! First, allow me to extend a brief litmus test to you, to determine whether we may chat.

AMANDA: OK.

SADY: My litmus test is: Rape Culture! Are you a fan?

AMANDA: Fuck, I know this one. I know this. I'm going to go with "not a fan"?

SADY: A-ha! We may proceed!

AMANDA: Great! Can I also request that we make this a speed Sexist Beatdown, because I reeeaaaally need to go eat this hamburger pretty soon?

SADY: Sure! The thing is, my own Litmus Test (which is not so much a Litmus Test as a Litmus GRE, I must admit) is not that much more subtle.

AMANDA: OK cool. So do you have an actual, like, question you will ask a potential boyfriend?

SADY: Personally, I just talk about feminism all the damn time. There are no questions! There are only answers! Answers provided by ME!

AMANDA: Right. Yes. That tends to be pretty effective in weeding out a whole lot of people.

SADY: I find myself a little unbearable. But I, like, hit on a guy and then transition into talking about Dworkin's thoughts on the Tolstoy marriage in “Intercourse” (ACTUALLY HAPPENED; TRUE STORY TIME) and if their genitalia withers at the mention of the name of Andrea D, well, that's when I find out!

AMANDA: And did it? Wither?

SADY: We are dating now! This man and I!

AMANDA: The genitalia doth not wither! I actually haven't been on the market since I became insufferably outspoken on the issue of ye olde rape culture, so I haven't been able to have that really fun experience yet.

SADY: Ha, yeah. Can I tell you it will be TERRIFYING? (Not that you are going to break up with your boyfriend. But! I am going to talk about me now, because that is my area of expertise and interest!) It is the worst part of breaking up. You are like, "but I can't break up with you! I became a FEMINIST BLOGGER! Now I'm NEVER going to get laid EVER AGAIN!”

AMANDA: I have heard, "You talk about rape all the time," from the significant other, who tolerates it. And he's not wrong. I feel like there are feminists, and then there are professional feminists, and if you are lucky enough to get within genital-withering distance of a professional feminist, then you're going to have to listen to a lot of theories about rape. But I imagine it's kind of like a lot of things? For example, I often have to silently log government acronyms in my brain that I will never understand, and it is something that I generally tolerate. But I feel like it's made out to be scarier or more annoying when the shop talk that is boring you to tears on your first date is of the Feminist persuasion.

SADY: Right. Because you have to navigate it. It actually has to be a topic of conversation, like: "Look. Look at me. This lady right here? Feminist. We can't avoid that. Let's talk about how I won't genitally mutilate you over a disagreement, as you may have heard The Feminists enjoy doing from time to time." But when you are not a Professional Feminist, when you are just Regular Feministing It Up, I feel like it is almost harder.

AMANDA: Because it's not necessarily the first thing that a potential partner knows about you?

SADY: Yeah. And because you can't be like, "but actually I know my shit on this topic, enough to get paid for knowing it from time to time." You are just a wacky lady with a cute little hobby of thinking she's a person and stuff, and people don't treat it with the same level of respect.

AMANDA: Oh word. God getting laid is so hard.

SADY: It really is! It amazes me that people ever manage it! And (FOR ME!) I didn't have the same level of confidence, Back in The Day, so I'd try to slip it in there on like the ninety-seventh date and in a very quiet way, whereas now I am like, "oh. Right. I got this."

AMANDA: The only thing I truly remember addressing in previous relationships is the pro-choice thing, which has direct and immediate application to having sex with a person.

SADY: Ha, right. I was very up-front about birth control. Still am! Still talk about it! Because, that is my own personal body we are discussing! But also I would go to ninety-seven Judd Apatow feature films with you and sort of quietly stew and not tell you what was wrong. You know what I recommend though? Is, like, looking around for dudes who do the feminism.

AMANDA: But where?

SADY: Uhhhhh... the Internet? I think a lot of feminist ladies who blog on the Internet date or have dated or are currently dating feminist or political dudes who blog on the Internet. Seriously like three separate feminist ladies I have talked to have been like, "and we met through work." Or, "and we met because of The Blogs." And I totally recommend that! Actually! Because like more or less all your junk is out there already, and that is easier than doing your Missionary Work (ZING PUN BLAM) and trying to convert anybody. So, Step 1: Start feminist blog. Step 2: Meet dude who runs feministish blog. Step 3: Scientifically determine dude is awesome. Step 4: PROFIT??? IN THE ROMANTIC ARENA????

AMANDA: I have this hilarious image of a single lady like walking into a Men Can Stop Rape meeting and being like, "well HELLO feminist allies," all sexy like. Kind of like That Guy who shows up at a pro-choice rally in a "This Is What A Feminist Looks Like" t-shirt in an attempt to get some ass.

SADY: Oh, dude. If they figured it out, it would be OVER. It would be like the weird guy who walked up to you after Women's Studies classes to say you'd Opened His Eyes, creepily, times a thousand.

AMANDA: I think I'm still at a stage in my Comfort With Internet where when I am going out with a person I met over the Internet, I'm really self-conscious about it. Like, "Oh, I'm going to get a drink with someone. YES WITH MY INTERNET FRIEND. WITH MY INTERNET FRIEND OKAY." But I'm realizing that the Internet is becoming more like Real Life now so it's not so tortured. And why not cultivate sex partners that way, I guess! I just wonder if being a feminist and dating requires more of a premeditated campaign than having some other particular hangups and dating... I mean, I think it can just happen naturally, like anything else. Not that the Internet is unnatural! Oh god! Oh GOD.

SADY: JUDGER. Yeah. I mean, I always want to meet people From The Internet if I work with them, to REMOVE that creepy "it's like a friendship, but on the Internet" feeling. Then it's just a friendship. But maybe there should be like a feminist J-Date! Oh, my God, I just became an online dating entrepremillionaire. Just by typing that sentence.

AMANDA: F-Date. F-Fuck.com. There are possibilities.

SADY: YES. GOOD. MARK THE DOMAIN NOW.

AMANDA: It is shockingly unclaimed!

SADY: NO TIME FOR CHATTING! GOT TO ESTABLISH ONLINE FEMINIST-EXPLOITING CAREER!

AMANDA: I only date other professional exploiters of feminism, personally.

SADY: And at last, we discover the true purpose of both feminism and the human desire for companionship: To Make Us Money.

AMANDA: Excellent! So now that we've solved the Feminist Dating Dilemma, I guess I can go eat a burger now?

SADY: You eat that burger, my friend. And I myself will be making some pasta and cashing in harder than you've ever seen. The next time you see me, I will be eating a burger made from a cow cloned for me personally. Because that's how feminism works.

According to Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown's ex-boyfriends, Sady Doyle bears a striking resemblance to 30 Rock anti-heroine Liz Lemon. "The popular television sitcom 30 Rock premiered in the year 2006," Doyle writes. "Since that time, each man that I have dated has made a point of saying how much I remind him of the main character on that show, Liz Lemon. They said this, in each case, while we were breaking up."

Doyle goes on to catalog all the ways in which the two have been compared: Being born to parents who enjoy gifting flavored popcorn; displaying marked difficulty in putting on clothes correctly; being a "shortish, thinnish, smartish brunette woman who writes, has fairly stylish glasses, and is a bit high-strung"; feminism. It's that last bit that inspires Doyle to "both hate and love Liz Lemon"—for Lemon's particular form of feminism, which Doyle coins "Liz Lemonism," works to awkwardly reflect back all the horrific failures of the feminist movement.

And so! In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, join Sady Doyle and myself as we discuss Liz Lemon's insufferable and endearing flaws; the perceived space between Tracy Morgan and Tracy Jordan; and the other women of 30 Rock—delusional Jenna Maroney, ditzy Cherie Xerox, and the perpetually absent Girl Writer.

AMANDA: Hi, Liz.

SADY: Why, hello, Fellow Liz! I have forgotten to ask you: Do you too suffer from Liz Lemon Identification Syndrome? It is a pervasive illness!

AMANDA: I look nothing like Liz Lemon. However, I do have some similar personality traits. For example, I am an annoying white lady who talks about feminism. And I'm really bad at eating without getting food everywhere.

SADY: Ah, yes. Such are the symptoms! I would say that you remind me, in face yet not in personality, of the other On-Screen Blogger Surrogate Of Our Times, Amy Adams. BUT THAT IS A DIFFERENT STORY!

AMANDA: I talk to my cat! (I don't have a cat). But I would talk to it. To my fantasy cat.

Exhibit B: White lady blogger Amanda Hess, with glass boot; white lady blogger Julie Powell, with lobster. I don't see it, but seriously, doesn't Sady look a lot like Liz Lemon? It's uncanny!

SADY: I think talking to an imaginary cat is even more Jane Sadwoman, as an experience, than talking to an actual cat that you own. So I would say this qualifies. Okay, SO. I have been watching 30 Rock a lot while I answer my e-mails this afternoon. And I was particularly fond of the recent episode "Anna Howard Shaw Day," which for me summarized the Lemonist problems really, really neatly. Because, like, Liz is all talking feminism and making up separate feminist holidays which coincide with The V, simply so that she will not have to deal with the fact that she does not have an—oh noes!—Boyfriend Who Loves Her. So that's one example of a pretty common form of feminist narcissism I fall prey to.

AMANDA: That episode was brilliant. I'm of the opinion that Liz Lemon is the best TV feminist hero that we could ask for, because she is just so awful in all the ways that feminism is awful.

SADY: Haha, EXACTLY. And there's a moment where she's talking to a receptionist, who's like a Caribbean black woman, and she calls her "sister." And then is like, "not in a black way! Or, in a black way because I'm also black! OH FUCK NO I'M NOT!" And, like, on the one level that's a really neat puncturing of well-meaning white lady racism. And on the other hand, LIZ FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

AMANDA: Yeah, but the amazing thing is that they manage to make her likable.

SADY: You are so right: She shares the sins of a certain privileged feminist lady, and that is why we love her, and that is why we sometimes want to throw things at her. She just means so well and often knows so little. But she also really likes Batman, so.

AMANDA: I mean she's racist, she is devoted to Oprah, she is adopting a baby for no reason, she has had sex to get ahead in her job, she blames her problems on other people, and she's awesome. What I'm interested in, though, are the points in the show where there are racist and sexist tropes that aren't employed simply to show how flawed the heroes are ... that are just racist and sexist tropes Tina Fey uses to make funny jokes. You know?

SADY: Yeah. Like, I mean: We can talk about Tracy Jordan. Because my understanding is that Tracy Jordan, the character, is very much like Tracy Morgan, the comedian. But the way plots are structured around him, as a crazy irresponsible childlike black man who these white people have to look after and keep on track, are just kind of . . . uncomfortable-making. And you've got other characters of color, like Jonathan and Dot Com and Grizz and Twofer, who DON'T fit stereotypes, and often serve to point up the racism, BUT. Tracy is the guy who gets the most focus.

AMANDA: Right, and I wonder how much of Tracy Jordan is really Tracy Morgan, and how much of Liz Lemon is really Tina Fey, & c., and how much the characters exist to comment on and poke fun at the people behind the show. I mean, I feel like everyone is a lot more eager to be like, "Tracy Morgan is JUST LIKE HIS CHARACTER!" than they are to do that with Tina Fey, who everyone sort of recognizes is this amazing writer, actor, and businesswoman and totally beautiful lady who is self-consciously commenting on her own character through this incredibly flawed person. Because Liz Lemon is none of these things. I mean, she's a terrible writer.

SADY: Yeah, exactly. The whole "Tracy Jordan IS Tracy Morgan" thing kind of serves to strip the actor of any credit for this character he's created. The idea is just that he's SO WACKY and they somehow manage to capture his innate wackiness on film. Through... carefully worked-out scripts that go through several drafts and are shot in several takes and probably take lots of rehearsing? Like, it's not like everyone else has a script and then Tracy Morgan just comes in drunk at three in the afternoon and says some silly shit and leaves. That wouldn't be as funny as what he's actually doing.

AMANDA: Yeah.

SADY: I would buy that Alec Baldwin does that, though!

AMANDA: It's interesting, because I think 30 Rock's great innovation was taking the idea of the Generic Stand Up Comic Who Plays Himself In A Different Situation and subverting that, so that Tina Fey is playing herself, but this completely bizarro version of herself. That's why I can get with the constant jokes about Liz being ugly, because I feel like there's a self-consciousness there. Although it does go overboard sometimes. But with Tracy, I feel like it's the opposite, and people really get a thrill out of thinking he is the guy, which, who knows how much of him is in that character.

SADY: Yeah. And, I mean, the dichotomy you pointed out fascinates me: actual Tina Fey is this huge celebrity who's happily married and has a daughter and seems like a very fulfilled lady and everyone in the world knows her to be pretty. Liz Lemon is none of the above, and maybe wants to be, but feels completely unsuited for it; it's like she's that girl who lives in your head, your worst-case scenario version of yourself, and that's why so many people love her. But I keep getting really frustrated with the way they write Jenna. I used to love Jenna! Liz and Jenna! That was a friendship that I would buy!

AMANDA: I know. Jenna has lately descended into ridiculousness.

SADY: Right. First they didn't write anything for her, and now they write shit for her, and it's the most shrill misogynist stereotyping. Thanks, but NO THANKS.

AMANDA: She used to have this really interesting relationship with ridiculousness where she would always come back to being humanized after, like, skating around and singing about her muffin top.

SADY: Right! And you could tell that, like, she was the girl who'd hold you hostage at a party by singing to you because she was insecure about her job, or her friendship with Liz, or whatever, and it was a more human insecurity. And now it's just, like, she has exactly three qualities: 1. Kinda slutty, 2. Kinda whacked in the head, 3. Vain, and 4. Stupid. There are four qualities, apparently. THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!

AMANDA: I have to admit that I really like 30 Rock's other misogynist construction, Cerie.

SADY: Really? Do tell!

AMANDA: I don't know! She's just so pretty and nice and her last name is Xerox. I like her!

SADY: And I actually think the actress is funny, though it's hard to tell because the character isn't supposed to be. That very chill stoner voice she uses in every situation: It's great.

AMANDA: Yeah, I think a lot of the pleasure I get out of 30 Rock is more about the performance than anything else, and the space between the character and the actor, and I just really like her performance. The character, on the other hand ... not so awesome. I'm waiting for the episode where the stereotypes are upended a little bit for her, like when Frank becomes a lawyer.

SADY: Yes! That would be great. On the other hand, we got a show about Girl Writer, and that one... not so great. That's what really peeves me. We've gotten several good Frank episodes, good Twofer episodes although only in the early seasons, Lutz gets his jokes, there was even a JOSH episode, and then . . . It takes four years for the girl to get a speaking part and it ends with her getting date raped and Tracy not caring about it? YIIIIIIIKES.

AMANDA: Yeah. What was that?

SADY: And that's where the whole joke of Liz, "oh it's so hard to be a girl Making It in a room full of boys," falls apart. There's a girl! A girl right there! Trying to Make It also! And you two never talk?

AMANDA: Haha, no, she does not give a shit about that woman.

SADY: I have no idea. I actually think that 30 Rock makes some not-terrible, not pro-rape-culture rape jokes. Like saying that Elizabeth Banks was in MAXIM's "I'd Rape That 100," which: a) I'm always down for a joke at MAXIM's expense, and b) I think Tina Fey is too, because they had beef when MAXIM wrote about her not being pretty or funny or something a long time ago. But then it veers right into some weird shit. Like, I thought the "Jenna and her stalker" plot was funny, but I've know some ladies were just NOT. PLEASED.

AMANDA: Yeah, I wasn't offended by that, but I wasn't really committed to the entire thing. I thought it was OK funny-wise. I mean, whenever we turn to Jack's stories it's a lot of jokes at the expense of conservatives, and when we turn to Liz's stories it's a lot of jokes at the expense of liberals, and there's never too much controversy there. It's just funny. When we get into the other characters' storylines it's pretty much a toss-up because there's not a particular ideology we're supposed to be laughing at.

SADY: Right. Although, for me, the joy of 30 Rock is often in those side characters. Like, if I had thirty million dollars I would use it to fund a spin-off about Dot Com and Jonathan being roommates.

AMANDA: HAHA.

SADY: And Frank being their super.

It's all female condom all the time this week on the Sexist. Female condom in a rubber vagina! Female condom in the anus! But despite the exhaustive orifice coverage (do not insert the female condom into your mouth!), questions remain. Like, what does illustrious ladyblogger Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown think about putting the female condom into her vagina? And so on. In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, join Sady and I as we wipe off our female-condom-pre-lubed hands (pictured), prep our vaginas for FC2 landing, and get down to ladybusiness.

AMANDA: Sorry I'm late: I was inserting my female condom in anticipation of having sex up to eight hours from now.

SADY: Amanda, you know how much I value our friendship. Which is why I want you to understand something. PLEASE NEVER SAY THE PHRASE "I WAS INSERTING MY FEMALE CONDOM" EVER EVER AGAIN.

AMANDA: Deal. But the next 30 minutes of this female condom chat are going to be excruciating for me.

SADY: It's hard for me to think of "female condom chats" WITHOUT thinking "excruciating." I know I am judgey and a poor former condom merchant and/or safe sex advocate for feeling this way.

AMANDA: Hey Sady, we're just two ladies hanging out talking frankly about our vaginas. The most natural thing for two women to talk about! (Actually we have talked a lot about vaginas, I am realizing, in this series).

SADY: Well, I guess we... have them in common? Okay, let's talk about something that is NOT vaginas. Let's talk about dicks. Because here's how I feel about dicks.

AMANDA: I'm listening.

SADY: HERE'S HOW I FEEL ABOUT DICKS! Dicks don't get pregnant. Dicks don't get their periods. Dicks don't get ANYTHING except boners, and also occasionally hilarious Hits in the Crotch on old episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos.

AMANDA: Haha, yeah!

[youtube:v=0zGLas2q31E]

SADY: Dicks have like one responsibility in the world, which is to put condoms on themselves when they are having the penetrative intercourse. AND NOW THEY'VE PUT THAT ONE ON US TOO?

AMANDA: Yes they have! And women around the world are as skeptical as you are. The thing about the female condom is that it's really great for women who can't force their male partners / clients whatever to use the male condom, and so they need a first line of defense.

SADY: Yeah. Fair enough.

AMANDA: For women who don't have that very terrible problem, though, I'm not seeing it really catching on? However, I have this idea that I would like to sell to the female condom manufacturers, which is that they give a grant to porn manufacturers who will work to eroticize the female condom in their work. So then one day like 10 years from now, old people will be like, "what are these 'money shots' and 'bikini waxes' and 'female condoms' the young kids are using nowadays?" And then there will finally be gender equity in condom sales.

SADY: Wow. Porn truly does solve everything! But can we go back to that "you won't put on a condom and we need a barrier/STD-preventing method" thing?

AMANDA: Sure.

SADY: Because here's my theory: You, A Dude, want to sleep with me. I, A Lady, am not sure if we are monogamous and/or STD free. You are like, "but baby, why can't YOU put this bag up your bits?" I am like, "this is the quickest I have ever lost interest in a sexual encounter. See you later, dude!" Like: If you are not responsible enough to wear the condom, you're not responsible enough to be having sex with me, basically.

AMANDA: Yeah. I have never heard of a man who would prefer the lady coat her vagina with a bag? But I did speak to one man who has sex with men who has used the female condom, and he had this to say about it: "When I’ve been a top—the insertive partner—what I’ve liked about the bottom wearing the device is that my penis wasn’t wrapped in plastic.” So, there's that.

SADY: I mean, okay. Sure. I get that. Did your interview subject mention the fit issues? I mean, I hear it fits well, but the thing I have always admired about condoms — the skinny jeans of the birth control world — is that they are so specifically tailored. Does the female condom, according to your journalistic research, share this virtue?

AMANDA: OK, so I'm not going to repeat the phrase that must never be repeated.

SADY: OH JEEZ.

AMANDA: But I did shminshmert the shmemale shcondom the other day, when I was, you know, just hanging out and bein' a lady, and it does, like shconform to the insides of your shvagina.

[youtube:v=mnyC_v0-DQ4]
How to shminshmert the female condom

SADY: Okay, so here's the thing: you like put it in and then hang out, though? Like, actually that might be a virtue! Because you don't have to go through that "oh crap where are the condoms rummage rummage rummage HANG ON additional rummaging" deal.

AMANDA: Well, you don't have to hang out, but you can hang out. (Up to eight hours before intercourse!) I mean, personally, I never really stopped feeling it so I wouldn't exactly suggest it. But maybe you get used to it. The thing is, nobody like, actually prefers sex with a condom, but it's a necessity in a lot of sexual situations, and it's conceivable that some couples might prefer the female condom. I just think it's really difficult to get that trend to pick up enough speed that those specific people a) actually try the condom and b) feel comfortable using it.

SADY: Oh, sure. And let me respond to your very serious and useful and responsible point with this: I am one of those people who occasionally gets all "OH WHAT THE CRAP WHERE ARE MY GLASSES," and looks for them for about fifteen minutes, and then looks at A MIRROR, and is like, "oh." I have looked for my headphones whilst wearing my headphones. If I ever shminsmerted the shmemale shmondom, basically it would be in there for life, is what I'm saying. I would seriously forget about it.

AMANDA: Yeah, the other thing is, like, peeing? You will have to pee at some point.

SADY: Oh, yeah, THAT.

AMANDA: Because it's really a full-coverage device, so I imagine it would get some pee on it? Perhaps there is some sort of accessory you can buy that aids in that process.

SADY: God. Somehow this ends with people getting like a female condom and one of those Shenis things you pee through and vajazzling ALL OF IT and... So yeah, I think we've established that I am one of those backward ladies that is like, "a FEMALE condom? Never!" Although, yeah, new barrier methods are good. That's undeniably true. And now, based on my reactions, I can see what it would be like to be one of those "I hate condoms" dudes. I HAVE BECOME THE THING I HATED.

AMANDA: And now I know what it's like to walk around with a condom in my vagina. Minimum rustling, I must say!

SADY: Okay, like, I have to say... Nobody is making these dudes put the condoms on over their lunch breaks so that they can come and have sexy dates with us later.

AMANDA: That's the weirdest thing about the female condom promotion, to me: They say that because you can pre-insert it, it "doesn't interrupt lovemaking." But it interrupts, like, other shit? Like my lunch break, or my peeing schedule, or what have you.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, I think your idea for a line of Female Condom-Centric Porn is actually a good one. Because right now this is like the least erotic idea in the world. But... dude condoms weren't initially perceived as a great idea, EITHER?

AMANDA: Right.

SADY: Like, I read this old issue of I think Cosmo from the sixties or seventies once, for a feminist media project, and it had this "revolutionary" article about all the different kinds of birth control there were. And condoms were mentioned. And the article, AS I RECALL (I am not quoting) was like, "I know you think these are for prostitutes, but you can use them too," and also they interviewed a guy who had tried this Strange New Birth Control Method, and he was like, "OMG so unnatural! Like having sex with a garbage bag!" And now it's just like... condoms, you know? They're at Duane Reade, they're understood to be commonplace, and nobody wants to hear you whine about them. Like I said: The very NOTION of a condom that I myself might wear has somehow transformed me into a person who thinks like a gross-ish dude.

AMANDA: Yes. And either you'll look back on this moment 30 years from now and say, "That is the moment I officially became an old person who is resistant to change," or, "That is the moment I officially became an old person because I even know what a female condom is, and no young people have ever heard of that shit, in the Future." Time will tell!

SADY: Right. When we're all wearing our Holo-Helmets and having Virtual Sex on our Google Entire Fake Universe Dates, the female condom, and indeed the male one, will be unnecessary. I for one look forward to that day.

Vajazzling, the latest trend in Swarovski crystal vaginal bejewelment, debuted on the national vaginal stage this January. And somehow, it has not yet retreated to the dark recesses of minor celebrity Jennifer Love Hewitt's panties, from which it came. Vajazzling has reinvigorated Hewitt's celebrity ("It shined like a disco ball"). Vajazzle specialists are popping up everywhere ("Aww, c’mon, this is gonna be great by the time you’re all done Vajazzling!”). Vajazzling has even caused one man, who we will call Jason, to look directly at a vagina ("It’s mesmerizing . . . This is probably the longest I’ve ever stared at a vagina").

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I discuss the latest trends in Vajazzling (vajazzle your vagina in the shape of a vagina!), why some men who like putting their penises inside vaginas are adamantly opposed to any other aspect of vaginas, and vajazzling's inevitable male counterpart: Dickerating.

SADY: I have to tell you, to see you here today is as dazzling a sight as a gloriously bejeweled vagina!

AMANDA: Ah, yes. A butterfly bejeweled vagina or a kitten bejeweled vagina? For vaginas come in many forms of bejewelery.

SADY: I myself am having my vagina bejeweled with the face of Biggie Smalls.

AMANDA: From what I understand, the only shape in which you can not bejewel a vagina is the shape of a vagina, as I suspect the motivation of Vajazzling is to distract from the idea that the vagina is there, and it is in fact a vagina.

SADY: RIGHT? Like, I mean: I hate to be a jerk here, but if you need my vagina to dress up for this party, my suspicion is that it is not going to be much of a party. Not to be all second-wave, but the continuing impulse to make ladyparts look less like themselves and more like gifts you would get from your dingier variety of novelty shop, next to the lava lamps, bespeaks some ill to me.

AMANDA: The good news is that for the most part I think everyone believes this to be a ludicrous practice. Then again, I have not rolled with Jennifer Love Hewitt's posse, so I may not be aware of the full scope of opinions on how much a woman's vagina ought to look like the back of a 7th grade girl's cell phone.

[youtube:v=NnUloWnKjg4]

SADY: Right. I mean: I think "Vajazzling," much like Chat Roulette or the Sex & the City bus tour of New York, is one of those things that everybody writes about because no-one actually thinks it is a good idea. And yet... there are people on Chat Roulette? And I don't know, man. Like: I talk to girls about their Maintenance Routines, and it seems like there is always some new and trendy way to deal with what is going on there.

AMANDA: There are people who can write from experience: "Then we had sex, and none of the crystals fell off."

SADY: WHY SHOULD YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THAT AT SUCH A MOMENT????????

AMANDA: Yeah. And there's not a ton of self-reflection going on there. Even the most obvious of questions—like, Why am I bedazzling my vagina? And why has the dude I'm casually dating suddenly taken an interest in my genitalia?—are not being asked.

SADY: Right? Like, "Jason"—oh, Jason—is complimenting her with "this is the longest I've ever stared at a vagina." And given that Jason has grown up in our modern, pornographically-enabled age, I... doubt that this is the case, actually? But it might be the longest he's ever stared at HER vagina, and maybe that is the real issue here, you know?

AMANDA: Perhaps it is the closest he has gotten to like, putting his face close enough to maybe put his mouth on it?

SADY: "Sweetheart! I just noticed that there's something down there! Have you taken a look at this, because it's really wild!"

AMANDA: It is like people who bleach their assholes. How can you recover from an asshole-bleaching session and not wonder what the deal is with you requiring your asshole to be bleached?

SADY: Right. Like: I won't put bleach in my eye. FOR ANYONE. I don't care if you write me beautiful sonnets, if you are also like "and ah, the way you make me sigh / please stick some bleach into your eye," the answer is STILL NO. And I really don't think your asshole should be negotiable territory for bleaching EITHER. But what it reminds ME of, to take an even more extreme example, is that operation where you get your Business SURGICALLY CUT UP to be more attractive? "Labiaplasty!" It is a thing! And people do it! And then a year later their boyfriends or whatever STILL FEAR THE VAGINA so they have to make it look like a My Little Pony with vajazzling, I guess.

[youtube:v=25sW_f3Z_0k]

AMANDA: I just wonder why they still want to put their dicks in it? I mean, take the anal bleaching example—you're basically making your anus look less like an anus, so that your partner who enjoys placing their penis in your anus can do so without thinking about the fact that it's actually a real functioning asshole? Same with all these guys who claim to enjoy Tab-A-in-slot-B old fashioned heterosexual sex which includes sticking penises in vaginas, but who hate vaginas, actually, because they are icky. How do they rationalize those thoughts?

SADY: I have no idea. I mean: I do think it has got to be a fear thing. (JASON'S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: "Okay, champ, this is going great, but whatever you do just don't look down! If you see the vagina, you'll panic! Play it COOL, MAN.") But also we need to note that although there ARE cosmetic procedures for penises, of the more or less invasive variety... nobody's really requiring dudes (with penises) to invest in them, you know?

AMANDA: Yeah. My theory: Sexual repression + Capitalism + Sexism = Vajazzling

SADY: Right. It's this very basic deal, as expressed by the fact that the Washington Monument is not an ovoid hollow in the ground, whereby penises are super and vaginas, although necessary, are basically H.R. Giger shit that would freak any reasonable person out. So you have to make them... like, really, REALLY infantilized, like to the extent of making them pink and sparkly and Lisa Frank binder-looking, to signify that they are female in the "harmless" sense rather than the "oh my God aaaaiiiiieeeeeeee" sense.

AMANDA: I am interested to know what a penis would look like if men were instructed to groom their penises so as to make them look less like penises.

SADY: Top hats? Draw a smiley face on it? I don't know. I know you're not putting crystals on that business any time soon. But when I start my new Dickerating business we'll find out.

AMANDA: I understand the crystals may not adhere to the male penis for a sufficient period of time. But there are places where our genital situations are not so different. So ... why aren't men encouraged to wax off all of their pubic hair?

SADY: Well, some are! But I've known girls who have expressed the idea that for a man to do so would be a sign of His Secret Gayness, and thereby a dealbreaker. I mean, why aren't men expected to shave their armpits? Hair is manly. For MEN.

AMANDA: So I just Googled the phrase "manlier penis"

SADY: OH GOOD. I ALWAYS KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS.

AMANDA: And I came across a Web site which suggests that men who want to visually lengthen the penis might want to trim their pubic hair, in order to create an illusion of sorts.

SADY: Wow. It's like pulling a rabbit out of a hat!

AMANDA: HOWEVER, "the ladies may want a manlier penis ‘ so to speak ‘ and this comes with pubic hair." Someday, when we achieve full gender equality, washed up male actors will write books about illusory pubic hair techniques.

SADY: You know, I don't necessarily NEED to have that much information about Freddie Prinze, Jr.? And yet, like you, I look forward to that day!

Photo via Dawn Ashley, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Hooking up: We know it's all the rage among kids these days! But for us Elderly Folk who are, like, three years out of college, questions remain.

For example: Sex is great and all, but wouldn't girls be happier if they consumed several meals paid for by men who clearly only want to fuck them before they gave it up? Would girls be better off if they just stepped away from the blow job, twiddled their thumbs in their parent's house, and waited until a suitor deigned to call? Hold on a second—don't different girls want different things out of a relationship? But more importantly, will hooking up EAT THEIR BRAINS?

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, these questions—and more!—will remain pretty much unanswered. But Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I will talk a lot about blow jobs, and other academic topics encompassed by the new field of Hook-Up Studies. Join us!

AMANDA: Well hello!

SADY: Hello Amanda. Before we go any further, I should let you know that I am not too "committed" to this chat. This chat will not buy you dinner! This chat will not visit your many relatives in Phoenix, Arizona! This chat is a "no strings attached" form of chatting.

AMANDA: Is this why I overheard you silently weeping throughout your college years?

SADY: And AT THIS VERY MOMENT, yes. Actually, I feel like the least qualified person in the world to discuss Hookup Culture! Since I have always been a visitor to it from my own home town of Serial Monogamyville.

AMANDA: And as such I assume that you have never had any boy problems!

SADY: Well, it's interesting. Did you know that if someone calls himself your boyfriend, and you are in a relationship in which there is substantially more emotional vulnerability in play, this person is LEGALLY AND MORALLY OBLIGATED never to hurt your feelings? Like, ever! To be fair, though, I think that the Simmons piece—and I have always really liked Rachel Simmons' work, so maybe I am partial – did have SOME interesting points in play. As did the amazing [Kate] Harding response!

AMANDA: And Amanda Marcotte's, too.

SADY: Oh, yeah. That did lay open some of the structural issues, in terms of what needs men and women are even allowed to HAVE, much less express. So what I think Simmons is saying is that if we have a "dating culture" where the obligation is to act like things are casual even if one or more parties would not like them to be, and if this is particularly based on the idea that the males are skittish creatures who will basically shit themselves and die if you are too affectionate or make it clear that you consider them boyfriends or whatever, well: peoples' needs don't always get served in this culture.

AMANDA: True, and I think one of the problems with most of the critiques about the "hook-up culture" is that they look longingly back on the "good old days," instead of admitting that perhaps there is a third option beyond accepting the "hook-up culture" as-is or going back to the 50s. Or the 1850s. People talk about it like it's "freedom to have sex!" or "abstinence," and forget that there are a lot of ways to have sex and to talk about having sex.

SADY: Right! Because, basically, sometimes people really DO want to just have some sex and not get too involved. And in a monogamy-and-courting-centric dating culture, THOSE peoples' needs (particularly if they be lady people) are shamed and hard to fulfill. So, yeah: I think Simmons is interesting, but (maybe inevitably) not really taking the WHOLE ENTIRE picture into account. What about shy dudes who see sex as this really intimate thing and get crushes afterward? What about them? They are missing from this analysis! They might also not be served by The Hook-Up Culture!

AMANDA: I've been constantly disappointed by the reluctance of researchers in the field of Hook-Up Studies to talk to boys about this stuff. I mean, I knew many guys in college who wanted girlfriends badly, and who were dissatisfied with casual sex.

SADY: Yeah. I mean: I have to tell you, that is one reason I am at the very least more charitable to the Simmons piece than I am to the many anti-hook-up screeds which I have delighted in tearing to pieces. Because a lot of them go so far as to MAKE UP BRAIN CHEMISTRY REASONS why a person who is a lady can never have casual sex, ever, without crying all over the binder on which she is compelled to write the dude's name 9,000 times.

AMANDA: Along with rough sketches of wedding dresses.

SADY: And plans as to what you will name your first baby. So at least Simmons is not gender-essentializing TOO much in that regard. But dudes and their vulnerabilities – and the problems with the idea that dudes want sex, nothing but sex, all the time, and that sex is therefore a good which women must trade in exchange for a dude agreeing to Totally Be Your Boyfriend OMG—always kind of get left out of these conversations, which is interesting to me.

AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, they tend to just support stereotypes. The women who are interviewed are all miserable about it, and the men are all just basking in the blow jobs. The End. There are no women who are getting what they want, and if we actually interviewed those women—I don't know—maybe we would come to a better model of sex?

SADY: Right! Exactly! I mean, I feel like a lot of OH NO THE KIDS ARE HOOKING UP is, like, just this weird hysteria over what are pretty common dating experiences.

AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, mistakes must be made. There's no use of us Elderly Folk attempting to make kids get it right on the first person they fuck.

SADY: Yeah, exactly. And, I mean: when you first meet someone, or even for a few months after meeting someone, you might be unsure as to what they want, and there's the potential that you might not know them that well (in fact, a certainty that you don't) and they therefore might turn out to be a jerk in various exciting ways. Like 97% of Jane Austen novels are about that! Except that nowadays, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy would have been banging ever since that first party they attended together, so you might end up having sex with someone while getting to know them. OH NO!

AMANDA: Oh, no. And it's not that I don't appreciate narratives about female sexual dissatisfaction. There are definitely a lot of structural ways that the dating culture values men's pleasure and devalues women's pleasure, and so if women aren't satisfied, I understand that! The problem is when you try to just stuff all women into another structure — well, maybe girls would be happier if they didn't give it up so fast — that also devalues them

SADY: Exactly. Like, that's the thing, and where I have to depart from "hook-up culture" critiques. If you, lady, will be sad if the guy you have sex with does not want to be Your Boyfriend, well... don't have sex with that guy? Like, conversations about consent and boundaries and why it is OK to have the needs you have without apologizing are a lot better, in my experience, than telling people to have sex or not have sex in these specific ways.

AMANDA: Right. The problem isn't with this "new trend" in sex, but that our sexual culture dutifully follows trends at all. I know this is not "cool" of me to say! But perhaps kids would be better off if we didn't crumple under the weight of hysteria over kids having sex and just emphasized that they should be having sex the way they want.

SADY: Exactly! And emphasized that you might want different things at different times, and with different people... like, it's not like I have never BENEFITED from The Hook-Up Culture. Sometimes you are just like, "okay, this dude and I are never going to run skipping through a field of daisies, but he is cute, though." And other times, you are like, "well, I don't necessarily want to be putting myself out there for someone unless I think that person and I have the potential to get along real well." And sometimes you are me! And you just don't care! Because you have one million other things to do!

AMANDA: Yeah. A recent study came out that said that abstinence-only education could be effective in delaying sex among young teens. And the headlines were like, "Abstinence-only education works!" I mean ... I guess it works if you think that the point of sex education is for people to just call the whole thing off because it's too hard? But really we should be focusing on what happens when kids DO decide to have sex—what that sex is like.

SADY: Yeah. And, I mean, that's where sex leaves the level of the biological and the health-related and the ideological and enters the realm of the personal. And, like... I don't think, no matter what "dating culture" we have, we are ever going to avoid the fact that girls are going to crush out on unavailable or unattainable dudes. Or dudes on the unattainable or unavailable ladies! I mean, we have basically explained the careers of Taylor Swift AND Megan Fox right here! But getting girls to the level where actual SEX is something they know they have options regarding and the right to say "no" or "yes" to depending on what is up at the moment... that probably should be the goal, yeah?

AMANDA: Right. Not just "sex" or "not sex," when you've heard that "sex" consist of "giving a guy who refuses to be your boyfriend a million blow jobs that are never reciprocated"

SADY: Haha, yeah. Let's just get to the point of "blow jobs should always be reciprocated." MAN, I have NO IDEA why I am not working in the public schools right now! "Ladies, blow jobs are fun... TO RECEIVE, THAT IS!!!!!" And that is the story of how Sady Doyle got sued by thirty sets of parents at the same time, the end.

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

After it was reported this week that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had used the phrase "fucking retarded" to refer to a group of Democrats, Sarah Palin took to Facebook to decry Emanuel's word-choice as a "slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities"—and to demand that Obama give him the ax. Prepare to get totally fucking deep into the philosophical import of a Sarah Palin Facebook update, everybody.

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I parse the new Republican PC strategy, examine Palin's record on disability (it ranges from condescending to damaging), and propose that Palin's adoption of a far-left feminist talking point is a sign of the coming apocalypse.

SADY: Why hello!

AMANDA: Hello, m'lady

SADY: What shall we discuss on this fine morning? In my newly adopted 19th-century-dandy idiom, apparently?

AMANDA: Indubitably! Or something! I dunno: How about Sarah Palin's Facebook updates?

SADY: OH GOOD. I ALWAYS KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS. Yeah: What strikes me about this Facebook update, aside from the obvious "Oh God I am reading Sarah Palin's opinions on Facebook" feeling, is that her call-out of Rahm Emanuel is continually framed as being "not about politics." And yet, she is calling for someone in the White House to be fired? And going all, "the President is responsible for this! Directly responsible! WHY haven't I heard from him about it, hmmmmmmmm?" And that seems... political.

AMANDA: Yeah. Of course it is. Although the thing that struck ME about her Facebook entry was that she used euphemisms for two words: "F—ing" and "N-Word" but not for the word she was concerned with everyone banding about in this case. And another thing! It’s also kind of funny that Sarah Palin thinks that the President of the United States firing a member of his staff is, like, a reasonable result of a Sarah Palin Facebook update.

SADY: Well, you know: it is the POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA! But I mean, I keep thinking that the reason she's all, "this isn't about politics, it's about God's children and a patriot in Somewheresville and decency because life is precious, and God, and the Bible," is that she's playing kind of a rhetorical con game. In that disability IS a political issue, but it's one on which Sarah Palin happens to be on kind of the wrong side. So it has to be apolitical in her framing – even though her means are political – so that, you know, we don't get to politicizing it and figuring out some basic stuff like universal healthcare keeps disabled people from dying on the fucking subway platform where they live, and so on and so forth.

AMANDA: Right. Palin's concerns are clearly entirely political, and not at all about securing actual rights for the disabled. But even so: words are important, and Palin has gotten 13,841 people who probably do not give a fuck about this stuff generally to agree that using that word is offensive. She also got Emanuel to apologize, which I think is a reasonable expectation (compared to forcing him out of the administration).

SADY: Yeah. And, I mean, people are having a conversation about the word. People aside from the left-of-the-left people I'm used to seeing discussing the word.

AMANDA: However, now we also have people who hate Sarah Palin (and there are a lot of them) using that word in spite. Like this commenter: "Give us a break Sarah, the people he was addressing were acting retarded and that group didn't contain a single person you are defending. We all know he was not referring in any way to children or any other mentally challenged individuals." So, the way that we talk about this stuff is important. Starting this discussion in order to score an absurd political point—and refusing to engage in issues of disability beyond politics—isn't helping anyone.

SADY: Yeah, exactly. What kills me is that in the comments, people who are anti-Palin are starting to get really amped up about making "retarded" jokes to prove that they don't like Sarah Palin. Like, one guy just wrote "your baby is fucking retarded." Or there's this example of point-missing: "Come to think of it I believe Rahm Emmanuel has a mental deficit that he and his president fail to recognize or adknowledge." FROM A SUPPORTER.

AMANDA: Oh my goodness.

SADY: But I guess she said "mental deficit?" Because if she'd just said "Rahm Emanuel is fucking retarded," THAT would have been wrong? And that's where these language games get tricky. Because it's true: the only people I'm used to seeing discussing this are the left-of-the-left disability activists, often disabled feminists because that is where I roll, discussion-wise. But when it makes it into a more mainstream discussion, especially when it's tied to something this obviously disingenuous . . . You have someone who's making an ableist comment but isn't able to recognize it as such because she's only identified the PEJORATIVE WORD as the problem, not the attitude. Or people who now construe using the word "retarded" as a pejorative as a bold political act.

AMANDA: It's a can of worms. I do find it interesting that Sarah Palin, Republican darling, has taken it upon herself to become the queen of "PC" now, even though complaining about liberals forcing political correctness on the world is a treasured Republican pastime. And I think Sarah Palin does represent the worst kind of "PC," which is to be only "politically" correct, and not correct in your social policies, or the way you live your life, or your expectations of all people, but "correct" only in a way that sticks it to people you don't like.

SADY: Right. It's the use of certain, I guess we can call them "PC," actions to boost your own status as a righteous person rather than to make any change. And obviously she's always been selective with her PC—one of the great triumphs of Sarah Palin in politics is that she kind of, if not pioneered, then perfected the use of typically left ideals to shut down the left. Like, "sexism!" Which means not challenging my candidacy, but sticks because there is actual sexism on the left. Or, "choice!" Which... actually, I don't even know how "choice" applies to anything Sarah Palin has ever stood for.

AMANDA: Being brave enough to make the choice to keep a baby and then making the choice to force all other women make the same choice? I mean, part of the reason that it does stick is because us liberals are, like, interested in this stuff. We're interested in dismantling sexism and ableism and racism (OK: Sarah Palin does not seem overly concerned with racism), and we're interested in doing it from all sides, but Palin is only interested in doing it from her side. The amazing thing, to me, is making it stick among conservatives.

SADY: Right. That's the thing: She's coming at the left in the places that they care about. She's found the Achilles heel, which is – you can call us Commie pinko bleeding-heart pussies from now until Doomsday, and we won't really care. But DON'T TELL US WE ARE INSUFFICIENTLY SENSITIVE. Because we care about that stuff, and are trying hard (uh, some of us) and aiming that accusation at us forces us to slow down and self-examine and meanwhile you are whipping a crowd of racists into a hardcore voting frenzy. Which is why I think she's so beloved by certain Republicans; this is good "politics" even if it's not good politics. Although, on the topic of Emanuel's supporters, I have to say: Some of them are not doing themselves (or myself) any favors here.

AMANDA: Yeah. Also, I mean, I don't doubt that there are many people among Palin's fan base who do care very deeply about these sorts of issues, because, like Palin herself, they were brought into caring about disability through a child or other family member. And now, tragically, I think, Sarah Palin is there to tell these families that they can do just fine raising their kids without any sort of government "interference," which is probably true of a certain person who just sold a billion copies of a book that certain person didn't have to write.

SADY: Yeah! Government interference is totally unnecessary, if you happen to be a rich lady! Which is why it is so weird that disabled people only ever belong to families that are super-rich. God has a Special Plan for us all, truly! Also true: All disabled people HAVE families. Private wealth, which all disabled people have access to, is always and totally sufficient to their needs. Like: WHAT. I have no doubt that Sarah Palin cares about her son, but if she cares about the ISSUE, she's either completely devoid of empathy or just really, really stupid.

AMANDA: Now the only thing left to be cleared up here is Rahm Emanuel's mouth!

SADY: Dear Rahm: Your usage is unbecoming. I like to swear, just like you, and also I like to rant at people in a kind of mean way over issues, as I am aware that you apparently do also. I am here to tell you that you can be a big swearing jackass without using the term "retarded." Love, Lady Who Yells On The Internet.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

In last week's Sexist Beatdown, Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I discussed the great social dilemma facing girls today. It concerns, of course, "The Fat Talk," a ritual that girls of every size practice in order to keep their self-esteem firmly in check. Behold, the "Fat Talk" Model of Female Friendship:

Girl 1: I am fat.

Girl 2: Me too.

So, girls: Do you cement your spot in the social hierarchy of girlhood by engaging in this self-destructive chatter about how fat, dumb, and ugly you are? Or do you risk being cast out of girlhood's good graces by holding yourself with confidence?

Commenters to the rescue!

Julia, too, is vexed by the incessant "fat talk" of women and girls:

Wait no! I need more practical tips on how to handle fat talk! It is absolutely RAMPANT among my friends, and I have no idea how to handle it in a constructive and healthy way. It doesn’t help matters that I’m thin, and so any objections I raise are usually met with “well you wouldn’t understand, anyway.” Actually, when I was younger that used to cut me deeply, because it felt like I was being ostracized for being thin, and I SO BADLY wanted to participate in fat talk with a level of authority. I don’t even want to think about how messed up that is… I was supposed to want to be thin, but then everyone [female] HATED me for being thin, so then I hated me for being thin, even though I supposedly possessed something praise-worthy. Which was/is confusing, to say the least.

Anyway! Point being, does anyone have ideas/stories about how they have successfully navigated the fat talk mine field? I for one freeze in fear every time the subject comes up. (Because even more than a decade later, it still signifies being left out, in my mind). How do I effectively communicate concern about body image issues without coming across as condescending or dismissive? I love my friends, I think they’re all beautiful, and I love that we don’t all look the same! Why does self-esteem have to be some sort of messed up self-sacrificial zero sum game?

Em suggests getting it all out over a couple of beers:

Julia, a friend and I successfully navigated this by just being honest. We were up late drinking one night and I honestly said what I thought for years, that I was really jealous of her 5′11, 120-pound frame. She laughed and said she had always been jealous of my curves! From then on out we’ve always discussed our INSECURITIES, not our supposedly awful, ugly bodies, knowing that we’re being ridiculous.

Of course, I only have this sort of candidness with one friend, so I don’t know if that’s a really group-wide solution. But for the girls you are really close to, I think it helps to think of the real reasons you engage in this kind of “fat contest” and then to be honest about it. It usually comes down to jealousy—I’ve had to explain to my boyfriend, men look at women to check them out, women look at women to compare. Constantly and exhuastively. If we talk about this pissing contest and we’re all aware of it, sometimes we can transcend above it.

Of course, this assumes the maturity of all parties. Ha.

b-bop notes how frighteningly pervasive the "fat talk" is:

I have a friend who is extremely gorgeous and always turns heads wherever she goes….she thinks her teeth are a major embarrassment because they’re “too pointy” and is sensitive about her age for some reason…

I have known girls who were size 0 and model height claim to be fat…

Affects everyone I suppose.

Frankie explains how "fat talk" works as a cover for all manner of "insufficient talk":

I have an awesome group of close female friends. I don’t think a single one of us is the same height, weight or shape and yet we’ve all engaged in this weird ‘fat talk’ thing, where by one of us gets to feel guilty for being the skinniest/lightest/curviest/tallest/shortest or whatever is deemed the most awesome trait of that five minutes whilst everyone else feels terrible for not winning the contest to be most beautiful right that second.

It’s ridiculous because there is no way that my gorgeous six foot tall friend should weigh the same as I do, or that my girlfriend should be both proud of and embarressed by her breasts because they are somehow both something to be envied and ashamed of at one and the same time. We all know this but still engage in this behaviour. So we’ve been trying something new, something my therapist suggested when I was being treated for Anorexia.

When any one of us says ‘I feel fat/ugly/whatever’ we do our best to make the time to sit down and talk about what is making us feel bad. It’s not ideal but it seems to be working, enough so that I’m more likely to get a call from a friend now saying she feels low and could do with a chat than I am to be asked to reassure her that she’s not hideous.

One thing we seem to have noticed is that nine times out of ten, something which is unrelated to looks is going on but our self esteem is so tied up in how we see our bodies that we translate feeling bad about anything into feeling bad about how we look. So for example, if I forget to do something important aswell as feeling terrible about forgetting I ALSO feel fat or ugly, even though there is no way the two have anything to do with each other. What’s more, I will feel so bad about feeling fat that I am more likely to mention that as the reason I am upset. I did used to think this was just because I had an eating disorder, but it turns out that the same is true to a greater or lesser degree for all my close female friends.

Photo by SantaRosa, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

This one's for the tweens. Say you're a typical seventh-grade girl. And so, as is typical for a girl your age, a good deal of your existence is devoted to self-loathing. You hate everything about yourself—your skin, your weight, your clothes, your hair, the way you eat, the way you talk, the way you walk, the way you look in a swimsuit, the way you look in shorts, the way you look in pants, the way you look to boys, the way you look to other girls.

Perhaps you are wondering when this hell on Earth is going to end? When you're going to gain a little bit of confidence in yourself? When you'll be able to do things humans do—eat, walk, talk, dress, swim—without hating yourself for it? Eight grade, maybe? Ho ho, not so fast, girl who doesn't want to hate herself anymore! As Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and I discover in this edition of Sexist Beatdown, insecurity is all part of the social hierarchy of girl culture. Sure, a little bit of confidence might help you live a full, human life—but it just might make all the other girls in school hate you.

Sady has already laid the groundwork on this pervasive negativity of girlhood, in which  a social order is built upon this delicate balance between feeling like shit and making other girls feel like shit, too. Fast fact: according to Rachel Simmons' Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, the no. 1 way to put yourself on the fast track to social hell is to be a confident girl. In order to avoid appearing too confident—while keeping other girls self-loathing as well!—passive-aggressive social strategies develop. Sady points to two particularly odious rituals of girl culture:

a. The Complinsult. Sady on the "complinsult":

Here’s one of the best I have ever received, which I keep close to my heart: “Your outfit is amazing! I think it’s so great that you can wear that out in public. I’d never have the nerve.” The words are saying “I suck and you are awesome,” and yet? That is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what it means.

b. The Fat Talk. Sady on the "Fat Talk":

For years, I thought this was some grody stereotype that you only found in male stand-up comedians’ routines about how women are awful. But then I met women who actually did it: the thing where, before ordering dinner at a restaurant, you all talk about how you should order this and you absolutely cannot order that, because you are so disgusting and you cannot stick to your diet and eating a cheeseburger will literally send you right straight to hell, and if you are the girl who straight-up says she wants some nachos so covered in cheese and guacamole and various meats that they might as well not even have any chips involved – just a big mess of meats and milk fat and squished-up avocados, that is the experience for which you are aiming, and also it would help if the entire thing had sour cream all over it – well, you just might have earned yourself a Complinsult about how brave you are with your dietary habits, young lady.

Any social order which denies girls the most delicious nachos of all simply cannot stand. So: How do we get out of this mess?

AMANDA: Before we begin this conversation, I should inform you that I am fat, and also that I think it's so great that you're the type of girl who could post a long, introspective essay on self-esteem and female relationships, because I would never have had the nerve to say such a thing in public.

SADY: I think it's really brave of you to admit that in public, Amanda, considering the sort of backlash you are likely to get from people who think it is stupid! Although I, myself, have a hard time concentrating on what you are saying, because mostly I am thinking about how ugly I am at the moment. Have we done the rounds yet? Do we need more backhanding?

AMANDA: I think we're fine for now. Until you start to get too confident! Then, I will commence with the outright shaming.

SADY: HA. This is something I have been thinking a lot about, the shaming! And it had two causes: one, the Clay Shirky piece I read [Quick plot overview: Dude thinks women just need to act more confident, and all the problems of women will be solved. -Ed.] and then used as a platform for my particular dive off the Deep End. And, two, the fact that I Googled myself.

AMANDA: Oh continue!

SADY: And the first thing I thought, after commencing the Googling, was—not that there weren't nice things and bad things and one bad thing from a guy who wrote a bad thing about me before and then had to list it in his top-trafficked blog posts of the year, I think because I read it 9,000 times—the FACT THAT I HAD A GOOGLE PRESENCE sent me into this weird shame spiral. I was like, "Oh, no! For every person that knows about me, there is ONE MORE CHANCE for someone to HATE MY ASS SEVERELY!" And this led a very strange series of reflections. Which I will not dominate the discussion with, because they are boring.

AMANDA: I'll reflect on something: I feel like for much of my adolescence, I was both repulsed by and unable to ignore the self-shaming hallmarks of female bonding. I hated myself, for sure, most furiously during the 7th-8th grade years, but I was also extremely uncomfortable with other girls expressing their own imaginary failures—the "I'm too fats" or the "I'm too uglies" or the "I'm too dumbs." I think I did realize at the time that this was an odd form of bonding that had to be engaged with in order to prove your friendship to the other person—"you're not fat! you're not ugly!"—but I never felt comfortable engaging in those kinds of proclamations.

SADY: Right. And I think this is something that I actually ran up against when I started to engage with other feminists: like, people would point out that I apologized for something trivial ninety thousand times over the course of the discussion, or couldn't have a conversation without being like, "By the way, have I pointed out that my outfit is horrible?" But it was very hard to get over, even though I could notice it when other women did it and provide support for them in that respect. And I think that it's interesting, in that those things can become social currency among girls—you have to apologize for taking up whatever space you take up—and is pretty clearly part of the Patriarchy deal which is that women aren't supposed to take up space. But it gathers a new level of nuance. Like, somehow, we're so caught up in this that it exists even when no dudes are present in the room, and we self-lacerate and lacerate each other to the same degree.

AMANDA: I agree, and now thinking back on it, I think part of me, as a kid, just wanted my friends to deal with all that horrible shit silently. I didn't want to talk about that stuff, so when my friend in the 8th grade who was stick-thin repeatedly complained about how fat she was, I got annoyed at her, instead of understanding what a fucked-up situation she was in and talking about THAT. I didn't have that kind of awareness then however, and I wonder where those kinds of conversations would have situated me in the female social group I was in.

SADY: Right. Like, allow me to present you with two ways I have handled this conversation in the past: "What are you talking about?! YOU WEIGH LESS THAN I DO." Which amounts to, basically: shut up, your body insecurities are not worth my time. Or: "What are you talking about?! THAT IS SO SELF-LOATHING." Which, while engaged in with a slightly purer intent, still translated to: shut up, your bodily insecurities are not worth my time. Like, instead of engaging women on their insecurities, I would try to shut them down. Which is clearly super feminist, right?

AMANDA: Right? I think the way that I handled those situations was to, again, put it in the perspective of this hierarchy where a) someone skinnier than me was saying she was fat, which b) implied that i was fat, which c) made me lash out at this person in some way. It's certainly interesting to see how boys in our culture at least have defined their social hierarchies by boasting, while girls have done it by passive-aggressively cutting themselves down in order to lift themselves up in another way.

SADY: Right. And I think that this is where "Odd Girl Out," the book I have been reading that I think everyone should read, and also the "Trashing" essay from forever ago [Quick plot overview: This shit that little girls do? Grown feminist women do it, too. -Ed.] comes into play. Because, the thing is, we are dealing with this excessively complex hierarchy wherein (A) Women aren't supposed to value themselves over and above the people around them, (B) Women, to demonstrate how not-selfish they are, are supposed to be nice all the time, and (C) Women find it easier to lash out at OTHER WOMEN for violating these tenets than to examine the fucked-up rules in the first place, but (D) You still have to win the Nicest Person in America trophy, so you can never express the lashing-out in a direct way. It has to look like something else.

AMANDA: The trick for me has always been staying out of that horrific, horrific structure without shunning other women.

SADY: Yeah, exactly. Like, shaming women for DOING this isn't exactly breaking away from the overall structure of women-shaming, you know?

AMANDA: that's one of the main complaints about the Rant About Women, which that it explicitly tells women that the way out of this trap is just to act like dudes. When the point is that we don't get to choose, actually. The pull-yourself-out-of-your-gender-by-your-own-bootstraps argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

SADY: Right. And I think we can agree that this is perhaps overly simplistic.

AMANDA: this is where we come up with a better solution. :-/

SADY: HA! Um, carousel rides for everyone? Overthrow the capitalist system? For me, I guess I'm situated at a weird place with this argument, which is the place I always wind up in with structure/agency arguments. Which is: YOU, by yourself, cannot singlehandedly escape the system. Your bootstraps are NOT THAT POWERFUL. However, you cannot say that there is no way to RESIST the system, in your own personal life. Like, even if I acknowledge that registering www.sadydoyleisthebestever.com will have more negative consequences than positive ones, being freaked out and self-sabotaging and constantly downplaying everything are ALSO not likely to have the most positive consequences. Does that make sense? Am I point-missing, here?

AMANDA: That makes sense to me. But I mean, I also haven't had significant issues with the typically feminine self-esteem stuff since I left high school, so maybe I'm one of the lucky ones. [OK, actually, in retrospect, this is totally not true! I think what has actually happened is that I have become so accustomed to the casual and absurd self-loathing that women experience (i.e. "I'm fat") that I don't even recognize it anymore, I just consider it a constant fixture of my life. Fuck! -Ed.]

SADY: I am building an escape pod from this whole deal where I basically surround myself with ladies who tell each other how great they are all the time, and are cool about ladies! That's what I'm doing. JOIN THE LADIES ARE GREAT PARTY, EVERYONE. That's my shitty little personal solution that doesn't fix everything! YAY LADIES WOOOOO.

AMANDA: Maybe we can all pitch in for a cruise ship or something.

SADY: HA! If there are any super-rich ladies, maybe they can help us build Self-Esteem Island. That seems like a solution! Yes, I think we've just fixed it. ALL BY OURSELVES. RIGHT HERE. YOU SAW IT HAPPEN.

AMANDA: well great! I'm going to have a nap then.

SADY: Okay! I'm eating a cheeseburger. Like, THREE of them. RIGHT NOW.

AMANDA: Oh shit I forgot. I REALLY want those nachos you spoke of.

SADY: Extra guacamole is a feminist act, dude. Enjoy!

Photo by bugeaters, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The death of feminism ain't news. Feminism has died a thousand deaths by this point. But wait a second: Today, someone is killing feminism in a totally new way, and this time it involves something called a "diamanté phone cover," whatever the fuck that is. This, according to Nina Power in her book "One Dimensional Woman." Power writes:

Stripped of any internationalist and political quality, feminism becomes about as radical as a diamanté phone cover. [Jessica Valenti] ‘truly believes’ that feminism is necessary for women ‘to live happy fulfilled lives’. Slipping down as easily as a friendly-bacteria yoghurt drink, Valenti’s version of feminism, with its total lack of structural analysis, genuine outrage, or collective demand, believes it has to compliment capitalism in order to effectively sell its product. When she claims that ‘ladies, we have to take individual action’, what she really means is that it’s every woman for herself and if it is the Feminist™ woman who gets the nicest shoes and the chocolatiest sex, then that’s just too bad for you, sister.

That's right, everybody. You know that sparkly, fun-loving, chocolate-coated feminism that's so popular among capitalists nowadays? Not familiar? Well: It is killing feminism! And how: By making it accessible to more women. Wait, what?

Valenti herself has already responded to Power's critiques on behalf of non-humorless-feminists everywhere, and her points are quite reasonable, particularly when you consider the fact that she's responding to a person who has just compared her to a yoghurt drink. "First of all," Valenti writes, "why anyone wouldn’t want feminism to be the latest must-have accessory is beyond me—because that would be awesome." Agreed.

Join Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown as we draft an application for inclusion in the Real Feminists Club, bedazzle our feminist credentials, and attempt to get to the bottom of this feminist yoghurt drink analogy once and for all. I'll tell you one thing: There better be some fruit at the bottom of this sucker.

SADY: Hello! I have chosen to make myself accessible! In the name, of course, of FEMINISM.

AMANDA: On to it!

SADY: Yes! Are too many of the kids today into it? Should we make it harder for them? SHOULD THERE BE A WRITTEN APPLICATION? Such are the questions before us now.

AMANDA: I have to admit, I found the whole accusation that Jessica Valenti is not a serious feminist a bit ... puzzling. If Jessica Valenti is a fluffy feminist, then what are we? Are we like marshmallow feminists?

SADY: I am a pure spun sugar feminist made of glitter and twinkles. I am the feminist that floats upon the air, so lightweight am I. And this is the thing, the thing that gets me kind of so angry: For years and years and years upon years, people have been like, "Well, of course The Patriarchy will attack us for being humorless and dour, but that is a harsh stereotype and a lie!"

AMANDA: Hah!

SADY: And, yes: Yes it is. So why is this lady suddenly piping up to tell Jessica Valenti to keep it down over there and not have so much fun?

AMANDA: Well: I understand the general argument. If people accuse me of being "too serious" about feminist issues—which they do, whenever I write about harassment or assault or rape or whatever—the appropriate response would not be to just sexy up my sexual assault coverage. However! There are issues related to feminism that are, in fact, not depressing at all! Like, when feminism happens, and then we can all have sex with whomever we want to when we want to without being assaulted or called whores. This is, indeed, a sexy development! And I fail to see the harm in celebrating that.

SADY: Right you are! It is extremely sexy. And, I mean, I think there's a line between "feminism that is accessible"—let us say, YOU, for I am in a complimentary mood this evening—and "feminism that is so very accessible that it is even accessible to people who are not feminists because it is not actually feminism at all" —let us say, Sarah Palin. And I think that a lot of people are just trying to figure out where that line gets drawn. I understand the calls for more "seriousness," insofar as they are asking you to "seriously" think about the issues in question. But I do not understand "seriousness" insofar as it is like, "I am sorry, this must be written in some modern super-language, for I can read it even without a post-graduate education in Ladyology."

AMANDA: Right. Like if you're a teenager who happens to not identify as a feminist, which is the group Valenti was largely writing her book for. I think one of the arguments against the happy-go-lucky feminism was actually like, Oh No! If we pretend that feminism is a wonderful happy thing, these women will be sorely disappointed when they become feminists and realize that there are like, some serious issues to deal with as well. Again ... I fail to see why the soft pitch ends up being a bad thing. If a girl decides she's interested in feminism because she understands what Valenti has to say about the more "girl power" type stuff, and then she ends up realizing why it's important to support feminism for ALL women, what is the problem?

SADY: Right. And, I mean, there is something to be said for the gateway drug. The only problem is if the kids don't get past the gateway. Like, let's just point out that I am not talking about Feministing or Valenti here, because they have in fact always managed to cover the hard stuff as well as the basics—more of the hard stuff than I have, in fact, because my goal is basically to be the Skittles of feminism—BUT. There is, in fact, something to the idea of "consumerist feminism" or "lifestyle accessory" feminism. Which is, I do think there are some ladies whose involvement with feminism is exclusively confined to their own problems, which they elevate to the position of WORST PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD, even though they are like, "a guy won't like me unless I shave my personal regions" or "I worry that women nowadays are taking the pole-dancing classes, which is gross!" Which: nothing to be said against those problems! Mandatory bodily presentation or the idea that women are always sexual and that "sexual" equals "sex industry performance" at all times are things we can talk about! BUT, it's when we get stuck there, because then feminism becomes sort of obsessively, exclusively personal, and you're not thinking about anything else.

AMANDA: Agreed. I'll reiterate that presenting Valenti as the representative of that kind of feminism is whack, however. I mean, Nina Power compares Valenti to a "friendly-bacteria yoghurt drink.” What the fuck does that mean?

SADY: I have NO IDEA. It reminds me of those Activia commercials, though. And, on the overpersonalizing-feminism thing, can I say? I think that's a line everybody has to walk, and I fall on the wrong side of it sometimes. If by "sometimes" you mean "A LOT OF TIMES." But I think that this is the thing, like the core problem with the argument insofar as I understand it: she IS CONFLATING "accessible" with "shallow."

AMANDA: Yeah. I’ll tell you one thing that's not going to make feminism accessible to the masses: Feminist infighting! I realize I may be implicating this very Sexist Beatdown by saying this, but feminists arguing about who is the bestest feminist? Not particularly riveting to non-feminists.

SADY: BUT I WAS GOING TO GET THE BEST FEMINIST AWARD! WHY ELSE WOULD I BE DOING THIS.

AMANDA: But since Nina Power is concerned with feminism becoming too accessible, perhaps this was her plan all along! "I know. I'll write a book dedicated to feminist infighting that makes absurd claims about several well-known 'accessible' feminists. That's sure to throw them off their work of making feminism more accessible! At least for a few blog posts!"

SADY: True! Now we can all quote Serious Theory at each other until we fall asleep. Also, in the morning, there might still be some sexism? But whatever! I get Cixous!

AMANDA: I get Yoghurt.

SADY: Um, OK. Lightweight.

Photo via love♡janine, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Public sexual assault: I'm still fucking talking about it! But this time, I've got a little bit of help from the illustrious Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown. Join us for a Very Special Episode of Sexist Beatdown, specially tailored for Guys Who Grab Butt, and what the hell is wrong with them.

When our powers combine, we get to the bottom of your most pressing groping questions. Such as: Why doesn't Sady appreciate it when you comment on her jugs? If it's not featured on an episode of SVU, does it still count as sexual assault? And if the girl whose butt you grabbed responds by assaulting you back, is she going to get in trouble, or what?

SADY: well, HI! I am so excited to join you on the Train to Gropetown this evening!

AMANDA: Hi! The Train to Gropetown departs now.

SADY: Perhaps we should note that many ACTUAL gropings take place on trains, which is a bummer? Truly, Gropetown is a destination of the spirit, and not one of mere place and time.

AMANDA: Right. And that on these trains, and subway cars, and buses are dozens of other people who are not gropers or groping victims, but really just witnesses who are standing but feet away from a sexual assault. One thing I hear all the time is that sexual assault is so difficult to "prove" and to "deal with" because it happens in private, tucked away behind doors and in intimate relationships. But really, it happens all the time in front of people's faces, too! And most people still don't really give a shit about it.

SADY: Yes. Oddly, I think people have a problem conceptualizing public gropings as sexual assault—the same way they don't think of street harassment as sexual harassment. It's just supposed to be one of the many things that, as Ann-Margret would say, help you to Enjoy Being A Girl. Like, there is a "Special Victims Unit" concept of sexual assault that most people have, the kind done by scary dudes for dark and wacky purposes—and then there's getting your ass grabbed on the subway, which, CALM DOWN, sweetheart!

AMANDA: I, too, have noticed a big resistance to considering groping on the spectrum of sexual assault. Of course, I have all sorts of feminist conspiracy theories as to why that's the case.

SADY: Ha. The BEST kind of conspiracy theories! But I honestly think it's the same blanket denial of assault as reality that you find everywhere. Sexual assault is rare; therefore, if it's common, it's not sexual assault. I don't know anyone who would sexually assault someone; therefore, if I know someone who would do this – or if I MYSELF would do this – it's not sexual assault. I've never been sexually assaulted; therefore, if it happens to me, it's not sexual assault. It's a wonderful loop of logic that keeps anything from ever changing EVER!

AMANDA: Your arguments appear sound, forcing me to discredit you as a man-hating feminist. But seriously folks. One of the most interesting things I've discovered in doing this series is that a lot of women respond to being sexually assaulted by freezing and shutting up. But if you look at your other options—like, say, screaming—you find women who report being stared at like she's an annoying bitch for screaming for no reason, in public.

SADY: Allow me to submit to you some anecdote as data, in lieu of an explanation for why this might be the case!

AMANDA: great!

SADY: So: picture, if you will, Sady, a burly man-friend, and a not-at-all-burly lady friend walking up the stairs of the subway. The lady friend occupying the stair level in front of me, the gentleman and I behind. Lo and behold, I see before me a hand! And the hand is most definitely reaching out to grab – and subsequently grabbing – my friend's ass. I freeze. The lady freezes. The dude who is with us keeps on a-walkin' like it's no big thing, but, whatever. After about 2 seconds, I grab the butt-fondling dude's arm and shove him into the side of the stairs and yell at him, because, WHAT THE FUCK. But for a second there, nobody was prepared to deal with what was happening. And as soon as I took action, the first thing that came to my mind was, "Am I going to get in trouble for this?" Honestly, I think people are worried about getting in TROUBLE if they respond. I think that is part of the deal.

AMANDA: I actually have a request out to the D.C. police department addressing this very issue. I haven't heard back from them yet. But my question was basically, "So, women want to know, if men touch them on the genitals, may they respond by punching the men in the face?" And they've been working on it for, like, a week. SO, surprise ending to that conundrum to be revealed later!

SADY: Hahaha. Well! I imagine it would take some time to think that one over! Except that is the thing. When you get grabbed, or someone is masturbating in your general direction on the subway, there's no time to rifle through the bylaws. And I think you just freeze up because, what are you supposed to do?! There is no chapter in Miss Manners that tells you how to politely request that someone put his boner away! And there's the possibility of retaliation, too. Like, I can't tell you HOW many times a dude has gotten up in my face to be a dickhole, just if I ask him not to compliment my astounding jugs while I am WALKING, or whatever.

AMANDA: Bitch!

SADY: I KNOW. I am a total bitch; many a person on the streets of New York has confirmed this. Also, I am not in fact all that, and although they once thought I was attractive, further study has revealed that I am not so fucking hot as was once supposed.

AMANDA: And the scary thing is that real people—people who are not the scary dude who just yelled at you on the street—would probably agree with that sentiment.

SADY: Exactly. It's the culture of tolerance around it that is the real psychedelic freakout bad trip of terror. Like, people seem to believe the phenomenon of groping to be HIGHLY COMICAL.

AMANDA: Or that grabbing a guy's arm for touching your butt is such an overreaction! Silly, emotional women.

SADY: Or, for example, you can be telling a story about a guy who grabbed your boob in a bar, and male onlookers will weigh in to tell you that you have no idea how hard it is for the men, what with their having to initiate sexual encounters!

AMANDA: HAH. That one I haven't heard! “You don't understand—if I can't just reach out and touch your butt, what am I supposed to do? Talk to you?”

SADY: I KNOW. Perhaps they feel that the ladies will appreciate their forthright natures! And I'm not entirely sure that this is all coming from guys who grab butt, either. I think these are non-grabbing guys who are just, like, "oh my God, if ladies are talking about how OTHER behavior is inappropriate, perhaps someday they might interpret MY PRESUMABLY DIFFERENT BEHAVIOR as inappropriate as well! And then I will not get laid! When clearly the priority here is for ladies to make it easier for me to get laid."

AMANDA: By any means necessary. But if you end up not being able to get laid, hey—there are butts everywhere up for the grabbing.

SADY: Like, I don't think we're long past the stage when casually smacking a strange girl's butt was considered a cute and roguish flirting maneuver, rather than a reason for that girl to methodically snap off your hand like the head on a Barbie doll. And I think that people for some reason still conceive of gropers as people trying to "flirt" who are awkward and inappropriate and Go Too Far. At least, some people. So for a girl to respond with anger rather than, I guess... sympathy? Dating tips? A welcoming smile? That is just SO CRUEL.

AMANDA: That's the real crime. I mean, the other thing that has been striking to me is how open victims of groping are to consider how their groper feels. I've spoken with women at length about what they think was going on in that guy's head when he rubbed his erect penis against her back, or whatever. You know—maybe it was an accident! Maybe he didn't mean to, maybe he was abused, maybe he can't connect with women, maybe they learned it from their dad, maybe they don't have any other sort of social power and so they want to get it this way. Because they want to know why this happened to them. I seriously doubt that these poor, lost souls are giving the targets of their erections the same courtesy.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, the point at which you casually assault someone is the point at which we can determine, objectively, that you do not give a fuck about how that person feels. That's kind of the rationale: “I want this, she has no right not to give me this, I will therefore have it without her permission. And who gives a fuck about consequences! I'm getting off at the next stop!” But that's part of women being expected to bear the burden of empathy; the last thing you should do is be a person who doesn't TRY to care, so even when people act in an uncaring way, you try to figure out motivations or whatever instead of just dealing with their actions. And that's not necessarily a bad way to be, unless you're in the presence of someone who takes advantage of it.

AMANDA: I'm not sure I have anything else to say about groping right now. I've been kind of hitting the groping sauce pretty hard lately.

SADY: Lay off the sauce! Perhaps you can get on the Job Discrimination Wagon! Or enroll in a program for Pick-Up-Artist Methadone! Truly, I think we have delved far enough into groping. And for this, and for your excellent coverage, I thank you.

AMANDA: Does the Train to Gropetown stop anywhere near my house?

SADY: Let us hope not. I am less than fond of their preferred local entertainment.

Behold the final paragraph of Katie Roiphe's latest New York Times Magazine Book Review story on the lost art of freaky sex writing pioneered by the "Great Male Novelists" like Updike, Roth, and Mailer:

Why don’t we look at these older writers, who want to defeat death with sex, with the same fondness as we do the inventors of the first, failed airplanes, who stood on the tarmac with their unwieldy, impossible machines, and looked up at the sky?

In other words, why don't we sit around praising the "unwieldy, impossible machines" (or, you know, penises) of these white, heterosexual guys who are still writing masturbatory prose about lesbian threesomes involving strap-ons, after all these years? Is it because:

(a) The feminists! They have ruined everything!

(b) The pr0n on the Internets! It has made us more likely to watch a short video depicting lesbian threesomes involving strap-ons, instead of reading some white heterosexual dude attempt to describe it for us, in words!

(c) Those danged marginalized groups! People other than old, white, heterosexual men have taken a stab at the whole sex-writing thing, and it turns out they actually have some interesting shit to say about it!

(d) The impotence of old white dudes! Those old dudes can't get erections anymore, I hear!

Find out in this edition of Sexist Beatdown, featuring Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and myself, chattin'. After a brief holiday hiatus, Sexist Beatdown is back—and now with new and improved capitalization! Same amount of exclamation points, however!

SADY: You know, I believe it is time to discuss the DUDES OF TODAY! And more specifically, whether they are all huge pusses who refuse to write sexy strap-on scenes for Katie Roiphe's entertainment. The DUDES OF YORE (and ALSO TODAY, although they are older now) did not have this problem!

AMANDA: They did not. Though they do have a different problem, which is: They will not stop writing like it's 1960, and some females Katie Roiphe has observed are just livid over this!

SADY: Right??? I mean: first of all. I think SOME of Roiphe's concerns about the Dudes of Today, which have been repeated in many a forum and in my own personal mind, are valid. There is a creepy quasi-sensitivity about some of the DoTs she mentions, which freaks me out. I think of Kunkel's "Indecision," which has the dude protagonist making these big speeches about how the girl he's dating does not deserve him, due to his aforementioned Indecision about her, which does not prevent him from being, in fact, a douche. Or this Dave Eggers essay, about how he won't use the word "fuck" to describe the tender and glorious act of making love. Which sounds like THE WORST PICKUP LINE IN THE WORLD, actually. It sounds like a guy who TOTALLY wants to fuck, but tells you he will never use that word because it is so disrespectful, so that you will, you know, fuck him. Yes, sexism continues, even among the DoTs! But it is less overt than the Dudes of Yore, which (I think???) is why Roiphe is mad about it.

AMANDA: Right. The striking thing about this essay, to me, is that it outright states that its concern is with the "Great Male Novelists of the last century" and their male heirs. It’s also explicitly concerned with female readers, and feminists, who reject the sexual narratives in these works. But Roiphe never makes the obvious point that there are options beyond the Great Male Novelists ... like Great Female Novelists, who also do The Sex. She basically limits the discussion to, "Why don't women appreciate these classic male, heteronormative sexual narratives that treat women like cum dumpsters?" when the answer is ... pretty obvious.

SADY: Yuh huh. I mean: I think I mentioned this to you, when you were talking about it earlier in the week. And Bitch blogs (yay for Bitch Blogs) mentioned it also!

AMANDA: (Yay!)

SADY: BUUUUUUT: Did she somehow miss that ladies write sex scenes nowadays? Even FEMINIST ladies? The first person that springs to mind is Michelle Tea, who writes these very funny, detailed, daring sex scenes, about fisting and hitting people with the chain whips off bicycles and all sorts of nonsense. Or—this one was brought up by Bitch—Mary Gaitskill? You can find some sex in Mary Gaitskill! And this stuff is often interesting, and has new perspectives, in ways that the Great Male Sexy Time Authors stopped being a long time ago. Like: the problem with Roth's "hot lesbian strap-on threesome" scene is not that it includes lesbians, or a strap-on. It's that it is very obviously a straight dude's IDEA of how mystical and magical and shamanistic and pervy threesomes including strap-ons are. You can find better ones written by people who know a damn thing about it, these days! Thanks to Feminism, ruiner of sexy times. (For boring dudes.) [Note: Roiphe eventually explicitly acknowledged the sex writing of female and gay writers—in an interview after the fact. -Ed.]

AMANDA: Sure! And I think Roiphe acknowledges that to some extent—though she blames not the oppressively hetero male perspective, but rather the fact that these hetero male sex writers just can't get big erections anymore. Which is weird! But, you know, a theory! But my favorite part comes at the end, when she says this: "Why don’t we look at these older writers, who want to defeat death with sex, with the same fondness as we do the inventors of the first, failed airplanes, who stood on the tarmac with their unwieldy, impossible machines, and looked up at the sky?" So, basically, Roiphe is concerned that readers today don't bow down before the phalluses of the Great Male Sexy Time Authors enough. That we don't honor Updike and Roth and Mailer enough! I mean, given that she doesn't even deign to mention a female author, I think we honor these men quite enough, actually!

SADY: Okay, and here we enter the area that caused the MOST perplexity for me, which is: WHAT WORLD IS SHE LIVING ON WHERE PEOPLE DON'T FALL ALL OVER THEMSELVES TO PRAISE PHILIP ROTH AND JOHN UPDIKE??????????

AMANDA: A world ruined by feminists.

SADY: Or where criticizing DAVE EGGERS or BEN KUNKEL or, jesus, JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER is somehow taboo????????? People criticize those dudes all the time! Roth is treated like a national monument! WHAT HUH WHAT WHERE WHYYYYYYYYY.

AMANDA: I think Roiphe presents a really interesting (if extremely contentious) discussion, and then decides to end it with: "People are too critical of literature!" She basically just tells women to stop thinking so much and just honor the great works of men without comment. What?

SADY: Oh, yeah. And I really appreciated large parts of her argument. I forgot that one line in "The Corrections" about the lady being "still beautiful" at thirty-fucking-two, which did in fact cause me to throw the book across the room when I read it initially. Mostly from that book I remember the couch-fucking! Dude fucks furniture. It's kind of wacky.

AMANDA: Yeah. She's right about that stuff. And perhaps the part at the end where she tells us to honor these great pilots of Ye Olde Sexytime, she's speaking to the new crop of Great Male Unsexytime Writers, and telling them that they are more derivative of these earlier authors than they will admit.

SADY: But, I mean, the "sexual ambiguity" she seems to have such a problem with, the idea that people no longer believe key parties and talking about the naughtiness of watching a girl jack off or—shock!—jacking off themselves is, IN AND OF ITSELF, a symbol of Man's Ultimate Freedom From Social Mores, I kind of . . . don't have a problem with? I mean: the sexual revolution, it had Consequences! Including feminism, yeah. But also: a lot of fucked-up relationships, which, as DFW mentions in the very essay she quotes, men of his generation were probably witnessing as children. Or, you know, they were young in the '80s when AIDS became a rising concern.

AMANDA: Right, and we talked about this earlier in regards to college sex columns, but you don't have to be some sort of radical to talk about sex anymore. A lot of people talk and write about sex, and some of them are hyper-conservative, or worse, boring.

SADY: Ha, RIGHT. I mean, there WAS A TIME when talking or writing about sex—graphically, grossly—was actually a way of challenging rules about what writers, or people, could and could not do. Now, it is an art form practiced and cultivated by Tucker Max. Yes! You have sex! So do the rest of us! Say something new about it, other than the fact that it involves human lady vaginas, because otherwise I may get a case of the ZZZZZZZZZZs.

AMANDA: Yes! Our favorite. And the fans who defend Tucker Max, the college boys who are likely unfamiliar with the Great Sexy Time Authors of Yore, ultimately defend him on the basis of Freedom of the Press. They act like people who dare to critique Tucker Max are "censoring" his "opinions," and are therefore both dictatorial and prude. And that may have been the case in the past, but it's just not a relevant argument anymore. The sexual exploits of the late-20's upper-crust white American frat boy are not being censored by anybody! Tucker Max does not need to spread his literary seed in order to finally speak truth to power for all the man-children like himself. It has been done, people got over it, and now people like Tucker Max and Katie Roiphe are pretending like we need to pay attention to the "problem" of not really valuing this narrative as exciting anymore. Well ... as much as we used to. Because, of course, Tucker Max is a best-selling author.

SADY: Right! I mean, I think the age in which you could daringly place a smuggled copy of "Tropic of Cancer" or "Lady Chatterley" on your bookshelf, so that people would know you were a rebel and sexual and literary sophisticate, ended a LONG TIME AGO, actually? And now, I mean: the issue with Updike writing a scene where a dude delivers his special package all over a lady's face, or Roth and the mystical shamanic strap-on of power, is not that these scenes are shocking to us, and not that ANYONE would EVER try to censor them. It’s just that they are these very flowery, elaborate, pseudo-highbrow depictions of things that are just not that surprising because at this point everyone in America has seen them actually depicted, on film. It's the false daring that makes them boring. And they read like they were taken from studying film, not life. Although if Updike actually had a thing for face-jizz, I would prefer not to know.

AMANDA: I agree—it's the pretentiousness of it that makes you not want to just put it down but also throw it away, and I'm not sure that really has much to do with feminism, but rather just being a person who reads books.

SADY: yeah, precisely. I mean, Roth still has the power to get up my nose, which might in fact be evidence of why he's good at what he does, but also, I get these letters from fellow feminists that are like, "Give Roth another chance! He's great!" I think mine might be a minority vote, actually. And I think placing the entirety of the responsibility for why we seem to have moved away from this depiction of sex on Feminism, and mean feminists who want to take your literary weenie away, just places an unrealistic power in the hands of Feminism. We can't have done this all by ourselves! We're still working to get people settled on the "Ladies should be able to have abortions" thing!

AMANDA: Right. It's pretty hilarious that Katie Roiphe actually believes that the feminist position is more celebrated than that of the Great Male Novelists, or that our oppressive "feminist" anti-sex culture is to blame for churning out somebody like Dave Eggers. I refuse to take responsibility for that one.

Photo via flickr Commons

Here in ladyblogger land, my esteemed partner Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown and myself know all about the lady issues. But we are just positively pickled by all things manly. Pickled, I tell you! We cannot seem to winkingly referring to our female employees as "perky," successfully manage a bromance, or understand what it's like to live in constant fear of having our balls shaved by militant feminists. That's why we're fascinated with one James Chartrand, the woman who took on a male persona to feed her kids, and managed to master these manly arts—and more!—in her tenure as the very masculine blogmaster at the aptly titled "Men With Pens."

In this edition of Sexist Beatdown: How DID she do it? What would you choose to be your absurdly gendered pen name? (Mine is "Chester der Schninkle Man Man," for some reason!). Are you prepared to reference balls you don't have, a LOT? And most importantly: Can you do it all, and still emerge as a feminist? All your imaginary ball queries, not quite answered, after the jump!

SADY: Helloo! How are you holding up? It is I, Sir Baron von Winkie!

AMANDA: Why, hello, bro! Me here, Chester der Schninkle Man Man. I feel comfortable conversing with you and possibly hiring you in a variety of work situations based on your hyper-masculine name.

SADY: Yes. I congratulate you on having the balls to hire me, and my enormous, hirstute balls, for this purpose! I know I am risking my balls, here, but: balls to that, say I!

AMANDA: I applaud you for putting your balls out in a world full of women ready to shave your balls at every opportunity! BALLS.

SADY: OY. Can I tell you, when I first read the James Chartrand piece, I was really sympathetic? I mean, I know what it is like to create something of a distance between your writing life and your private life! I know what it is like to worry about losing out on opportunities because you are being stereotyped! But one thing I DO not know what it is like is to not only worry about stereotyping, and create a pseudonym (this was seriously going to be a project of mine at one point! To adopt a dudely pseudonym and see how reactions differed from reactions to "Sady") but to TOTALLY VIOLATE ANY STANDARDS OF TRUSTWORTHINESS by creating an entire imaginary life, INCLUDING BALLS, for your pseudonym.

AMANDA: Brave, precious balls!

SADY: And make your imaginary man character a sexist, also. That was a fun choice!

AMANDA: Yeah. I mean, the thing about James, is that she probably was not aware that she was accessing male privilege when she wrote that balls-out post about how feminist mommy-bloggers with their sharpened ball clippers were being so MEAN by totally ignoring her when she posted balls-y comments on their Web sites under a male name. She thought, hey! I'm a single mom! I know exactly what this is like! Why am I not being accepted by them, JUST BECAUSE I APPEAR TO BE A MAN. She felt this was very sexist, and she decided to write a little ball post about it to right those wrongs. I just wonder why, knowing that the rest of the internet was so sexist it FORCED her to adopt a male persona to make money, she didn't work very hard to discuss sexism against women in her posts?

SADY: Ha, yes. Somehow, Imaginary Person James Chartrand, CREATED BECAUSE OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST LADIES WHO WRITE ON THE INTERNET, found himself compelled, on the basis of a handful of blog comments, to engage in the time-honored and ridiculous pastime of... complaining about discrimination against DUDES who write on the Internet? Even though Chartrand had concrete proof that such discrimination did not actually exist? I mean, I think on the "why don't you discuss sexism" front, this is the peril of people adopting individualist agendas and slapping the name "feminism" on them. Because Chartrand was getting ahead, even though she had to circumvent sexism in a totally absurd way in order to do so, the goals of Feminism had actually been accomplished and she didn't need to confront sexism or aid women in any real way.

AMANDA: Right, and you know, as much as I sympathize with women who can't get jobs writing, as much as I know that happens, and as lucky as I am to write for a paper where my voice is valued, I just immediately thought something was not quite right with this story. I suspected that Chartrand had some sort of fascination with creating another character for herself, on some level. And that's fine! As long as you don't then turn around and say, after you've been outed, "Uh – it was a feminist act. Had to."

SADY: Right. I mean, I don't know if the "imaginary character" thing sits right with me. At all. And, FULL DISCLOSURE: "Sady" is not the name by which my family and close friends know me. They know me as Sara PleaseDon'tGoogleMeOfficeJobEmployers.

AMANDA: Bah! How could you! You accessed the inherent privilege in having the name "SADY WITH A Y" which is a really cool-sounding name!

SADY: But Sady is also me. As much as I keep private, I think one of the basics of writing is that people can TRUST WHAT IS COMING OUT OF YOUR KEYBOARD. They believe you mean it. Writing things that are substantively composed of lies is not a good way to go.

AMANDA: I sincerely hope you have been privately donating to some sort of fund for Women Named Sara.

SADY: Screw 'em! I'm getting mine!

AMANDA: Yeah, the lying thing also disturbs me. Like, did sexism force you to to spin an absurd lie about how you came to be a man with a knitting hobby? And also, this woman is the owner of Men With Pens. She has several employees at this point. At what point does acting like a strangely masculine weirdo begin to actually directly affect other people?

SADY: Right? Like referring to defender Taylor as the sole woman on staff and getting all wink-wink nudge-nudge... does owning a company CALLED Men with Pens and making objectifying comments about the "only" woman on staff create a certain environment in which female candidates feel discouraged, you think? Because I think! I seriously do!

AMANDA: I also think. And I also really want to hear WAY more from James Chartrand about this, because the act of manufacturing male privilege is extraordinarily fascinating to me. Like, James: How many hours a week were marked away on the Men With Pens calendar to Manufacturing Male Privilege? "Well, Chester der Schninkle Man Man, one thing that most women don't know is that Manufacturing Male Privilege is practically a full time job." I mean, how much time did this woman spend devoting to how masculine she were?

SADY: I, Sir Baron von Winkie von Testicle-Schmidt, almost doubt that it was fully intentional. The male privilege thing, I mean. I think that Chartrand devoted herself to creating a "believable" man, and this guy ended up being almost like a cartoon of a dude (Maxim-y comments about women wanting to shave his balls included) and so the sexism became, maybe without Chartrand's conscious intent, a part of the performance. And certain people have drawn parallels between this and trans men, which I find REALLY OFFENSIVE ACTUALLY, because: the point of being a trans dude is that you were always a dude. You transition, you change your name, your presentation becomes more fully YOU.

AMANDA: UGH. I had not heard that, but that is offensive.

SADY: Chartrand is consciously creating "a dude," a Man with Pen, who is NOT her, and hence... the male privilege and corresponding arrogance, uninformed by life experience and almost reading like it was assembled by studying obnoxious male stereotypes.

AMANDA: And it was a grand success!

SADY: Right! That's the thing! When I first read the Chartrand story, not knowing much about this Chartrand person, I was like, "oh, what a sobering illustration of the continuance of sexism." And then I realized what she did to keep it up, thanks to your take, and I was like, "wow, this is SUBSTANTIALLY MORE SOBERING than I had initially thought, and in more depressing ways."

AMANDA: yeah, it is pretty depressing. i'm sort of putting myself on James Chartrand watch now to see where she goes from here. She doesn't seem to be retiring the pseudonym—she's keeping her given name secret for "personal reasons"—but I wonder if she'll relax some of the masculinity. perhaps it will be revealed to be a little bit silly, now.

SADY: Yeah. That is my hope, as well. I mean, I know having two feminists chat about you critically is often the gateway drug to writing posts about how awful feminists are, or whatever. But I would hope Chartrand would take this moment and run with it insofar as actually exploring the gender question a little more honestly. Or, at least, retiring the objectification and Michael-Bay-ified aesthetics.

AMANDA: And as a show of good faith, I will retire my pen name, Amanda Hess, and reveal my true identity: an olde-tyme prospector by the name of Seamus P. Flannihurtz, a man who could only make it in the sexist prospecting business by posing as a modern-day female feminist blogger. It is a cruel business, olde-tyme prospecting!

SADY: DECEIVER! I myself am motivated to new honesty by this disclosure. I am a long-time tailgater and appreciator of The Babes, by the name of Beefnachos Budweiser McGreenBayPackers. "Tiger Beatdown" is but a launching platform for my new venture, "BikiniInspectors.com." And now you know.

AMANDA: I feel so ... feminist.

SADY: As do I, my friend! As do I! When all female writers are replaced by more manly counterparts, then will the goals of our movement have been truly accomplished.

Photo via George Eastman House, Wikipedia Commons

We all know why women identify with the protagonists in romantic comedies: We are all pathetic, overworked, wedding-obsessed spinsters with romantic lives so complicated they could only truly be expressed through the peculiar talents of Jennifer Lopez.

But what of the romantic comedy's leading man? Who is he? Why is he nothing more than a cipher of himself? Furthermore, how does Matthew McConaughey's boner always manage to steal us from our boyfriends and high-powered careers in order to make us his wife in the space of approximately two weeks?

Your questions, answered, in this week's edition of Sexist Beatdown, featuring: The incomparable Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown. Sady has become somewhat of a connoisseur of Matthew McConaughey's boner as of late, as she's recently taken in to a steady diet of rom-coms—a purely professional endeavor, I am assured! (check out Sady's eerily fascinating examination of Billy Zane's work in Titanic for proof). But enough exposition: On to us using the word "boner" too many times!

SADY: well, good morning, my friend!

AMANDA: is it time to talk about cute boys??

SADY: indeed! boys who are cute AND dreamy! and also enormous jerks whom you will hate with a fiery passionate rage until you figure out that they are actually dreamy and in love with you and then everything will more or less work itself out. i saw "bridget jones' diary" for the first time this week. were you aware of this?

AMANDA: i believe i saw that movie in the theater, with my mother.

SADY: oh, good! did it make you want TO DIE?

AMANDA: if not that one, then the second one. i have seen both of them!

SADY: oh, my!

AMANDA: sadly, NO. i was more interested in how dreamy modern Mr. Darcy was. but then again, i was 16, i think.

SADY: really! i found him extremely boring! but then, i was instilled with deep hostility against bridget jones. because – i have to share this with you – there are these constant fat jokes? like, bridget is fat and unlovable and fat and a chain-smoker and unlovable and omg, SO FAT, bridget jones! and then they show her weight at one point? and she weighs four pounds less than i do. and smokes fewer cigarettes. and, probably, drinks less. it was a sobering moment which i reacted to by throwing something at the screen.

AMANDA: I KNOW

SADY: but back to modern-age mr. darcy! because he symptomizes, for me, a major problem of the romantic comedy version of Your Boyfriend, which is: he is boring as hell.

AMANDA: i think i remember being a thin 16 year old ... and seeing that weight show up on the screen ... and thinking, WTF, I am fat? actually, I do remember thinking that! my extreme discomfort with this movie is breaking through my residual attraction to Colin Firth! but ANYWAY. back to him. don't remember much about his character, actually. i suppose that's the point.

[youtube:v=2cpd4py3GuY]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is simply a recycled version of the love interest in a Jane Austen novel, played by the actor who played said love interest in the BBC miniseries.

SADY: right. i mean, i know we are talking here about Masculinity in Pop Culture, particularly through the lens of romantic fantasies For The Ladies, but as someone who has seen a lot of these fantasies recently, one thing that bothers me is that they never do manage to create a believable human dude at any point. like, the versions of men presented for our delectation are either completely vague and dull and personality-free yet handsome (your Mr. Darcys, your Hugh Grant in early-period films, etc.) or charming and handsome assholes (your Edward Cullens, your Hugh Grant in this film, etc). Colin Firth in particular has built a career of playing these ciphers.

[youtube:v=nXVf2hAWRQM]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend mopes, over you.

AMANDA: Yes, and romantic comedies in general are sort of build on the idea of the Suspension of Unbelievable Dudes. consider any romantic comedy that is based around cheating and/or, for the lack of the better term, "homewrecking."

SADY: ah, yes. i invite you to consider these for me!

AMANDA: consider: the Wedding Planner, with the totally chemistry-less rom-com dream team of Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey, about a wedding planner falling in love and hooking up with the groom in a wedding she is, of course, planning. which makes both characters, in real life, scumbags. but on screen, they are magically transformed into ... simply boring.

[youtube:v=AkAwO5I-Tuk]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is Matthew McConaughey's boner.

SADY: oh, my goodness, yes. sleepless in seattle, same deal. it is basically about a lady with a boyfriend who instead decides to stalk a dude whose emotional vulnerability she heard about on the radio one time... and her boyfriend/fiance just goes for it! in the scene where she's like, "sorry, yo, got to go meet up with this dude i been stalking," Boyfriend (who is the spectacularly vanilla-pudding-like Bill Pullman) is just like, "too bad for me, good luck!" i watched this with my mother, who commended Bill Pullman for doing the right thing.

[youtube:v=L4KQsPnz8Tw]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is an anonymous yet sexily depressed radio voice.

AMANDA: Yeah, romantic comedies set up this weird alternate universe where cheating isn't bad, and is in fact encouraged, as long as you are hopelessly in love with Other Person whom you met about 2 days ago.

SADY: well, and also it provides... CONFLICT!!! like, there is always supposed to be this other dude in the background who is totally wrong for you but of course you don't know that yet. and that dude alwaaaaaays gets shafted. perhaps because he is basically a ken doll. he is there to distract you from realizing that you are Totally In Love with this other person until it is nearly too late! at which point you put him back in the box.

AMANDA: Right. And then, all of a sudden, totally after the fact, you realize that Other Dude is a jerk, or also cheating, or boring, or dumb, and this justifies the affair you have already embarked upon.

SADY: indeed.

AMANDA: Which brings us to the Other Other Dude in romantic comedies: the fancy "career" of the protagonist who is married-to-her-work! ... until a really boring hot dude drops into her life, which makes her realize that life is not all about planning weddings. it is also about having others plan weddings for you.

SADY: yes. often, in fact, she meets this gentleman through her career! consider, my friend, "failure to launch," which is about a lady whose job is to give apatovian losers boners and hence inspire them to better their lives. which is an odd job. but whatever. because one of the man-children she is hired to date is TOTALLY HOT! and he believes she must LOOSEN UP! and she does. or "how to lose a guy in 10 days," or... shit, this is all matthew mcconaughey. he is basically the dude who makes you hate your job with his boner. in every movie. I FIGURED IT OUT!

[youtube:v=5y28R-ZWP9A]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is Matthew McConaughey's boner, again.

AMANDA: I guess I like my job too much to let Matthew McConaughey's boner convince me that my boyfriend is a jerk? "Women are so complicated!"

SADY: we are! it's true! but if there's one thing we've learned, as a gender, it's that wanting something for your life other than a superdreamy boyfriend is misguided, and you need to Get Your Priorities Straight ASAP. with boning. illicit cheater boning. which is what women want, the end, i have solved everything.

AMANDA: but why is the cheater boning dude always so boring? Have you seen Made of Honor? I've heard that it is My Best Friend's Wedding but with a hilarious role-reversal. Is that dude boring, as well?

[youtube:v=jBQ1NG34cdg]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend falls down repeatedly, because he loves you

SADY: um. he's that dude with the super-boring face? and i never saw the movie, because his face in the poster was so boring. so that might answer some questions. for all i know there's a third-act twist where he's a bungee-jumping heroin-dealing bad boy, but his face would still probably put you to sleep before you figured that out.

AMANDA: so ... yes. but it's not as if the women in these movies are terribly compelling, either.

SADY: well, yeah, but they're meant to be Us. ALL OF US. personalities get in the way of mass identification. and, to be fair, not all movie boyfriends are boring! some are also hateful and borderline-abusive. such as gerard butler, in "the ugly truth," where the entire point is that gerard butler hates women like poison and fire and snakes all combined, and he takes it on himself to teach katherine heigl how awful women are so she can date, and then you learn that he broke up with a girl once so it's all okay.

[youtube:v=yUMMdLiDJSc]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is a jerk who causes your panties to vibrate unexpectedly at dinner in front of representatives from your corporate office, causing you to orgasm.

AMANDA: and he's in his mid-30s? isn't that supposed to happen in college?

SADY: NOT FOR GERARD BUTLER. the wounds of gerard butler do not heal easily.

AMANDA: he has nice abs!

SADY: he also has a face like a pork shoulder. which is mean, but also bridget jones gave me bad body image this week so i will excuse myself there. okay, MAYBE I WON'T. sorry, gerard butler. but anyway, i think we've learned a lot about what women want from men this week. it is (a) boredom, (b) an excuse to quit their fancy jobs that they love with all the passion they should be reserving for matthew mcconaughey, (c) grace under being-cheated-on, and (d) ????

AMANDA: Um ... have you ever seen a romantic comedy that does not do this?

SADY: "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" is a romantic comedy! and i liked it so, so much! but it's never mentioned in our recaps of the genre. because if a movie is GOOD, it avoids the "romantic comedy" label-of-death. also if it is focused on a dude, which a lot of them are these days. and then the ladies get to have no personality! equality! GIRL POWER!

AMANDA: yes, in the world of film, even women can be brainless objects. this is truly progress.

SADY: well, i'm just going to go and bask in the glow of How Far We've Come, if you don't mind.

AMANDA: I'm going to go watch What Women Want. I am told the answers to all of our questions lie within that film.

[youtube:v=99-8-9az2To]
In which your cipher fantasy boyfriend is psychic Mel Gibson OH GOD

SADY: ah, what is the point of chatting when mel gibson could be shaving his legs or something right in front of your own personal face? good luck to you.

AMANDA: it is what I want, apparently!

First, with the help of my Sexist Beatdown partner-in-crime Sady Doyle: a discussion about why men don't recognize themselves as victims of sexual assault, and instead dream up hilarious feline metaphors ("cheetahs"!) in order to discuss the phenomenon of predatory women. Then: a follow-up post on how we use anatomy to justify assaults against men (hint: an erection does not equal consent).

The examination of sexual assaults against men got an interesting response from some feminist commenters over on Sady's blog, Tiger Beatdown (Yes! This is a special guest edition of Sexist Comments of the Week!) Namely: Don't feed the MRA's!

MRAs, for the uninitiated, is shorthand for "Men's Rights Activists." These guys are kind of like feminists, only instead of focusing on reproductive rights, objectification of women, and sexual assault, they're more concerned with other systems of oppression—like divorce court, the Selective Service, and male circumcision. Because—say it with me—the patriarchy  oppresses men too, there's no reason that MRA's and feminists shouldn't get along. Except for one minor detail: MRA's tend to believe that feminism is the root of most of these problems that affect men, and we tend to see that's pretty much bullshit.

The unfortunate result of that divide is that feminists have sometimes discounted important issues to our movement—like violence and sexual assault against men—by relegating their discussion to the MRA community, where the issues can sometimes take on . . . interesting twists.

Kristyn wrote:

I think this article is very, very relevant, and totally true, but at the same time it definitely borders on the "fodder for MRAs" territory.

"See, you lying whore, you weren’t raped because WOMEN RAPE MEN!!! Like, ALL THE TIME!!! But men are just TOO AFRAID to say so because THE WOMEN have BULLIED THEM and WE ARE SO SCAARED like TIGER who got beaten BY A GOLF CLUB!!!! Who’s to say you horrible cheetahwomen aren’t going to HIT US with GOLF CLUBS because you HAVE MORE POWER blah blah blah blah WHITE GUYS ARE THE MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE EVER blah blah people are too PC blah blah blah."

. . . So how can we talk about this type of thing WITHOUT breeding women-hating assholes who think all lady-people are sexually manipulative golf-club-wielding animal metaphors?

Helen added:

Further to what Kristyn said—Yes, and the legal system is going to take this meme and run with it re. proving any allegation of rape.

“M’lud. I put it to you that not only did Ms Z totally ask for whatever was coming to her by getting in a car with the defendant, but that she was planning to rape him.

Happy days.

Sady drafted a really well-reasoned and important response to those criticisms. I wanted to reproduce her thoughts here, because she really summed up my thoughts on this issue:

If we refuse to say things—things that we know to be true—because some MRA or whoever could take them and twist them into untruth, then we’re letting the opposition determine the terms of the debate for us. A particularly fringey and known-to-be-nuts variety of the opposition, at that.

This is actually something that drives me a wee bit up the wall, about feminist conversations: sometimes I’m afraid we oversimplify certain principles, or refuse to say certain things, because the actual complexities or truths at hand don’t feel “safe” or in line with our predetermined talking points and agreed-upon theories. Whereas it’s precisely those complexities and uncomfortable truths we should be focusing on, really, because that’s where we need to improve our understandings. We need to go out beyond the edges of what we already understand and feel comfortable with, in order to find anything new to say.

It seems like every time I write about some not-so-admirable thing that ladies do, someone weighs in to say that I’m not presenting the gender positively enough and/or giving aid to the enemy. And I don’t shitting care about that, to be totally blunt. For one, I don’t think The Enemy reads Tiger Beatdown, and for two, I care about writing the truth, because I don’t feel feminism is served or ever can be served by ignoring the truth and instead telling each other whatever is most uplifting or whatever we most want to hear. Writing this chat felt really vulnerable, for me, which I think is a good thing, because it was confirmation that I was being honest and that I wasn’t just repeating someone else’s lines throughout.

Plus, if some MRA ever decides that feminists. just. don’t. CAAAARE about bad stuff that happens to men, or will just never ever ever admit that women can be abusive, this is one concrete incidence – one of many – that someone can point to in order to prove them wrong. It won’t make a difference to them, of course, because they’ve already committed to ideology over reality. But for people who are committed to reality, it will be evidence against them.

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

Photo by ansik, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

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

SADY: hello! good evening! it is time to discuss date rape drugging, or so i hear!

AMANDA: it is that allotted time!

SADY: first of all, i have to say that your take on the whole scenario was (AS USUAL!) highly impressive and nuanced.

AMANDA: well—some issues were perhaps underrepresented there. there are A LOT OF ISSUES. with this ISSUE.

SADY: well, this whole report – that date rapes involving date rape drugs are less rare than date rapes involving date drinking—is kind of set to be a highly polarizing thing. like, some people have been like, "see? the floozies are just out getting drunk! and making up accounts of druggedness!" and others are like, "there are, too, date rape drugs!" and what impressed me about your take was that you didn't (a) minimize assault, or (b) discount that date rape drugs might in fact be less common than acquaintance rape without that factor involved.

AMANDA: I saw that Broadsheet had already written a pretty thought out post that discussed why some women might report being drugged when that was not necessarily the case—and obviously, i read the Daily Mail's amazingly stupid take on it which suggested that women are big drunk liars—so i thought i'd focus on the media's focus on date rape drugs. which is so interesting, because even calling them "date rape drugs" is misleading—the narrative really suggests that when this does happen, it's mostly strangers swooping in with these drugs, and not "dates" per se.

SADY: yeah, exactly. and this is a terminology flaw which i myself have fallen victim to: using "date rape" to mean "rape that was not the stranger-jumps-from-bushes-with-gun" sort of rape, rather than "rape by one's date," which is what it should (and does) mean. i mean: i have to tell you. i don't doubt that date rape drugs are used. a friend of mine just told me a story about how she suspects she may have been drugged, and although she was not assaulted, all the details line up.

AMANDA: oh yes! that is a point that i realized after i wrote my piece! it's possible that druggings are more common than they appear in these studies, but they do not lead to assaults. and that can skew the data, and getting drugged is still an awful thing to have happen to you, even if it doesn't end in assault. [Note: Marcella Chester has since counted the ways that the data on drink-spiking can go awry. Read it!].

SADY: right, it's still a violation.

AMANDA: but the whole issue of rape is an issue of skewed data, because reports are so infrequent. but i would THINK—and i dont know this—that reports of drug-assisted rapes are higher than those that don't involve drugs. because the media is pretty clear about reviling dudes who drug women, and less clear about reviling men who rape women who are drunk.

SADY: yeah. exactly. like, if you're drunk, it just means you're a big old mess and/or tramp anyway, and probably you were just drunk enough to "have sex" and "regret it" and etc.

AMANDA: and i think that "reporting" difference is true anecdotally as well—they may not even tell their friends or their boyfriends or what have you, or they will tell them and they'll be discounted. Etc.

SADY: whereas if you were DRUGGED, you can clearly point to an outside agency in getting you to the point where you could not give informed consent.

AMANDA: right. there's a degree of "proof" that society accepts with those rapes.

SADY: yeah, and, i mean, i have to tell you: i like to drink. i'm having a drink as we speak! and i am a lady who's pretty smart about listening to my body, drinks-wise, and not having more than i can handle. but there have been occasions – whether i didn't have enough sleep the night before, or forgot to eat lunch, or whatever – where A Normal Number of Drinks magically became, for that night, One Too Many Drinks, and i ended up in a messy state. and I was always surrounded by people who cared enough for me to point out that i was a mess, and call me a taxi, and whatever. but HOW SHITTY WOULD IT HAVE BEEN, STILL for someone to assault me in that state? i mean, why the fuck are Drinks considered an extra culpability on your part?

AMANDA: i too love drinking! and perhaps that should be disclosed whenever i defend ladies who like to drink against charges of flooziness! so, FULL DISCLOSURE, drinking! but so: the researchers note that drinking can be sometimes unpredictable, and if your diet or sleep or mood is different it can affect how alcohol affects you. so when, a couple weeks ago, my boyfriend told me he "felt like he had been drugged" because his level of hangover way outstripped the number of drinks he had, i thought it was kind of interesting. but i didn't actually think he HAD BEEN DRUGGED. though i suppose that's possible. but i feel like, perhaps, when women are unexpectedly slammed with alcohol—and particularly if they are assaulted while in this state—they may be told over and over again that these experiences are a result of being drugged. i'm not sure if that actually ever happens. but i DO know that if a woman was ever considered unreliable because she reported she was drugged and raped, and it turned out she wasn't actually drugged, then that would be very sad.

SADY: yeah, exactly. and that's the thing: while saying you were drugged can be pointed to as an example of how you didn't exercise agency in the matter (which is important for rape survivors, because as we all know making Bad Decisions means you totally shouldn't have the right to pursue a criminal sentence for someone who had sex with you against your will) it is also a wedge that can be used to destroy your credibility. which is why women i've known who came to the conclusion that there must have been some drugging involved in their assaults have been hesitant to come forward, because they're afraid that would be used against them. which, in that case, what was your crime? having too many drinks? FALLING ASLEEP????? not to be a big old spoiler, but dudes get to have too many drinks and fall asleep all the time! i mean, a gentleman of my personal acquaintance had too many drinks and was wandering around and got – apparently – randomly beaten up by some dudes in his neighborhood, and as far as i know the police did not tsk-tsk him for wandering around all drunk and beatable.

AMANDA: i know. dudes get to have SO MUCH PASSING OUT without the consequences! and young dudes still binge drink a lot more than women do, not that you would realize that given the media attention given to the matter. male drinking tends to be a bit invisible, i think—it's just something men do, so there's no excessive fear about it. even though men are more likely to be victims of violent crime than women are. i mean, there are fears about men drinking, but they are fears about literally drinking too much and dying from drinking too much. not fears about drinking too much and getting raped, or even drinking too much and raping another person.

SADY: which maybe SHOULD be a fear. i think this is an important point: these studies which say women who have been raped frequently have also been drinking? they maybe miss the point that women have been drinking while in an environment where everyone – dudes included – is also drinking. and i genuinely think that, if ladies have these regimens over watching their ladyfriends' drink consumption and making sure they are safe, dudes should also have people watching them to make sure that they don't get to the point where they are legitimately too drunk to even get what consent MEANS.

AMANDA: yeah. and, i mean, it would help if kids knew what consent means before they knew what "body shots" means. i think it should be on the driving test, personally.

SADY: yeah. that's a worrisome statement i just made, because it seems to remove some culpability from the rapist. but i suspect that (a) assholes who drink become bigger assholes, and (b) since we all recognize that a drunk asshole is liable to get in a bar fight or whatever, we should also recognize that a drunk asshole might be an asshole who is even more inclined to rape than he was previously.

AMANDA: yeah. it seems that while society's prescriptions for female drinking include "drinking correctly"—covering your glass, going with friends—male drinking is just defined by "drinking more." which—again—i like drinking. and if my drinking becomes a personal problem, that will be bad for me. but if my drinking becomes a problem for other people—like i end up raping women or hitting my kids when i'm drunk—then that's something that REALLY needs to be addressed by society.

SADY: yeah, precisely. and the reason i think this relates to date rape drugs (ha, remember those? HI, date rape drugs!) is that, you know, they exist. and even if they exist less than rapes which occur while the rapist and/or the victim were drinking, that's still a problem. one incident of someone drugging a person in order to rape them is too many, i would estimate. but the fact that rape occurs more often in proximity to alcohol – well: first of all, i can recall being pressured to drink A Bit Too Much by certain dates, so i think it's reasonable to state that alcohol can also be an agent of coercion. and, (b) people drink. Specifically young people who want to socialize. As an extremely shy person who is far less shy after drinking, I get the reasons for this. And the fact is that if alcohol coincides with rape, this DOES NOT MAGICALLY REMOVE THE FACT THAT RAPE IS BAD from the equation!

AMANDA: exactly. and i think a lot of it comes down to ladies drinking, because drinking is a dude thing, and when ladies drink it means they're, horror of horrors, ACTING LIKE MEN, or taking away dude-time, or revealing that drinking does not actually make you more masculine and / or awesome. but sorry, dudes, i'm not going to stop drinking!

SADY: yeah! i mean: i think the Horror of Drinking is the Horror of Unladylikeness, presented in vaguely medical terms. fact is: yep, when ladies drink a bit, they let down their various guards and DO NOT always behave in the manner in which society has accustomed us to expect from ladies. they get loud. they get a bit rude or wacky, at times. they EVEN make out with people that they would otherwise be constrained from making out with! (and oh, how I know that feeling.) BUT, with all the loud and wacky and unladylike behavior they are engaging in, GUESS WHAT? you still don't get to assault them! because we are not in Ye Medieval Tymes any more, and rape is not just something that happens to Virtuous Women of Goode Renowne. it can happen to ladies who are acting up, too. and, miraculously, it is still a crime. just like you don't get to rob somebody because you think he is a jerk.

AMANDA: yeah. ok, do you wanna break? i think i'm going to go buy some beer

SADY: do it, lady! ENJOY YOUR BEERS. YOUR BEERS OF FREEDOM.

Photo by jbcurio, Creative Commons Attribution License

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

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

If you guessed D, you are probably either Steven Levitt or Stephen Dubner. (Thanks for reading, guys!) Yes: according to Levitt and Dubner, the main obstacle standing between a woman and loads of sexy cash is her dislike of sex, her disinclination to make men happy, and her failure to understand simple economic principles. So while the world's enthusiastic, man-loving, smarty-pants sex workers are rolling in millions from the comfort of their own homes, the world's poorest street prostitutes get the short end of the sex-work stick—only because they hate men, hate sex, and are—from the way the Steves tell it—kinda dumb.

Now, I'm no economist, but I'm betting that the overworked, underpaid sex worker who turns tricks on the street has got deeper systemic problems to deal with than not enjoying the work enough. But I digress: Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown has already laid the groundwork on this shitstorm in her excellent piece on the Guardian. Take it away, Sady:

Levitt and Dubner build their piece around a comparison of two prostitutes: Allie, who works from her bedroom and makes between $350 and $500 an hour, depending on the client, and LaSheena, who works on the streets and probably makes about $350 a week, based on statistics. . . . LaSheena and Allie are the Goofus and Gallant of sex work, at least in the warped little scenario laid forth in the Superfreakonomics excerpt. Arising, as Levitt and Dubner seem to assume they do, from absolutely no context whatsoever (the fact that Allie is probably white, and that LaSheena is probably not, is never once addressed, for example; neither is the personal history of LaSheena explored in any detail, though we hear about Allie at excruciating length) they are not actual women so much as they are flattened-out, hollow caricatures of Success and Failure. Allie is a good prostitute; she has succeeded. LaSheena is a bad prostitute; she has failed.

What has LaSheena done wrong, you ask? Simple: She doesn't like being a prostitute. "I don't really like men," she is quoted as saying. This is an interesting statement, which the authors fail to follow up. Why doesn't LaSheena like men? Has she been beaten? Has she been raped? Is there a man taking a cut of her money? Was she forced into this job as a child by a man, by a boyfriend she loved, by sheer poverty? And has she seen the ugly side of men too often in this job to trust any? . . . We'll never know, however, because Dubner and Levitt don't ask. They don't care to humanise her. She's the Goofus in the scenario. Her poverty—which is assumed to be entirely her fault—is only there to provide a counterpoint to Allie's shining example.

Boy, oh, boy, does Allie ever love being a prostitute!

Anyway: I highly suggest you read the whole thing. But enough dilly-dallying. Let's dive right in to every woman's second favorite pastime, after prostituting—chatting!

SADY: yo lady.

AMANDA: hello! wait ... shouldn't you be out, earning money for sex?

SADY: i know! i thought about it! but then i realized: i am probably not chipper enough for it. as per superfreakonomics, my disinclination to put your favorite song on the stereo and mix your favorite drink and smile gleefully about how awesome you are for paying someone to help you cheat on your wife would hurt me, probably, in the long run. PROFIT-WISE, that is!

AMANDA: right. which is why us curmudgeons have chosen a life of blogging, instead of the more obvious choice.

SADY: exactly. it's a wonder more women aren't out sexing for cash instead of blogging for dollars! oh, except that there are various disincentives to do that, actually? like, i am pretty sure there are women that choose to do sex work and like it, but what with the social marginalization, lack of protection by the law, health risks, etc. it is actually NOT a wonder that more women do not choose it.

AMANDA: there are so many things wrong with the treatment here, i can't even begin. you did a lot of the work in your piece, but i wanted to start off with this one sentence from the freakonomics excerpt: "There is one labour market women have always dominated: prostitution." hmm. really? i mean, i get that perhaps this is meant to be some sort of play on words, but given the amount of money men have made off of pimping out or trafficking prostitutes, i am not exaaaactly sure this is the case.

SADY: right? i mean, to frame the sex industry—not just prostitution, but other varieties of sex work in general—as "female-dominated" is just absurdly wrong. it's like calling starbucks "cashier-dominated." there are more women on the front lines, but management is by no means primarily or exclusively female. and given the exploitative relationship management has traditionally had with the service employees, that's something to worry about. not that there aren't exploitative female madams, etc. but you get where i am going, i hope. i think the entire article is so infuriating largely because it aims to present an "economic" analysis of prostitution by... talking to one sex worker, basically? and reading the work of one other dude? this stuff is insanely complex, and people have been fighting about it and studying it forever, and it DRIVES ME INSANE that people are going to read this fluff and confuse it with an actual analysis.

AMANDA: yeah. here's another little pet peeve of mine: pretending that "prostitution" is the same as "sex." I understand that prostitution is a lot different than it was 100 years ago, and a lot of that has to do with changes in attitudes toward sex. but when these researchers say that prostitutes now see competition from "any woman who is willing to have sex with a man for free," they're implying that tons of women are actually performing the work of a prostitute on a daily basis, which is absolutely not the case. the reality is that many prostitutes are not being paid to "have sex." they are being paid—as the researches note with the high-class prostitute—to have the kinds of sex that men can't get on a daily basis. and in reality, that doesn't mean "interesting sex" or "anal sex" or "enthusiastic sex" that these dudes just can't get out of their wives. it also means degradation. prostitutes are popular, to some men, because they can do whatever they want to them, and the appeal isn't in a particular sex act that they can't get at home, but rather in the experience of paying someone to be their sex partner. when these researches say you "have to like sex" enough to be a prostitute, that's bullshit. plenty of women like sex. you have to like PROSTITUTION enough. or ... be poor! and according to them, poor prostitutes are kind of fucking idiots.

SADY: well, this was somewhere i was heading in the piece i wrote for CiF, but there just wasn't room to talk about it there; even if we don't assume that all men are hiring prostitutes specifically to "degrade" them—and i don't know what goes on in all circumstances, i do assume that a lot of guys want to degrade women because they get off on the power imbalance and others do it for other reasons, from all the first-hand testimony I've heard—the nature of the transaction is fundamentally different than the nature of the transaction that is casual sex. at the risk of oversimplifying: in prostitution, a woman does what you want her to do, for money. in sex—even casual sex—a woman does some of what you want her to do, or maybe even all of it, but only in exchange for you doing what she wants as well. in casual sex, there is (unless you are a huge asshole) the expectation that you will be dealing with the desires and needs of the other party. female desire enters the picture. and i think THAT, we can say, is probably a big part of the "sex" vs. "prostitution" thing. even if the guys don't want to HURT the prostitutes, they're paying them to have sex that has nothing to do with their desires and everything to do with the desires of their clients. the only way you can miss that is if you don't acknowledge that women have desire.

AMANDA: right. so these economists are stumped—stumped, i tell you!—as to why more women don't spend their entire lives pleasing men and receiving no pleasure in return. they can't understand why this is, because outside of prostitution, women are lining up in droves to have sex! but instead of working through their obvious miscalculations here, they decide to tell imply that women are probably just kind of dumb. the kicker is when, at the end of the piece, this is how the researchers leave Allie, the "high-class" prostitute who ended up becoming an economist: "Several students said this was the best lecture they had in all their years at the university, which is both a firm testament to Allie’s insights and a brutal indictment of Levitt and the other professors." As if it's some kind of joke! when, in reality, these guys actually don't understand wtf they're talking about, and they're actually seemingly amused that a prostitute could not be a dumbass. so: why didn't she write this?

SADY: RIGHT! and that's the thing; i don't want to discount her insights or experiences—or those of LaSheena, the less privileged sex worker they interviewed for five seconds and then apparently forgot about because she wasn't smart enough to be a billionare sextrepreneur—but I think Levitt and Dubner kind of effectively discounted her already, by using her as a subject even though she IS GETTING A DEGREE IN ECONOMICS and simplifying her story, which has GOT to be more complex than the one we're reading, into this wacky quirky Happy Hooker stereotype.

AMANDA: yeah. and thank god she is getting an economics degree, because this is Exhibit A as to why more women need to be represented in the sciences. I'm sure that these guys are brilliant economists, but when you're attempting to form a theory as to why HALF OF HUMANS choose not to be prostitutes for a living, perhaps your own experience will be insufficient.

SADY: right. oh, and the lazy dumb hooker is getting a DEGREE IN ECONOMICS now! wacky twist! did you catch the part where they said she became a prostitute because she "just didn’t like working all that hard?"

AMANDA: oh yeah. i caught that part. the weird thing is that the premise of their investigation is: why don't women prostitute themselves out for cash, when the pay is so good? and they entirely fail to even begin to answer that question. they don't come up with one reason why she wouldn't! oh, they come up with one reason: maybe she's married. but i don't see another one!

SADY: i can't think of a single one! there's, like, one line where they acknowledge that it's ILLEGAL (being harassed, jailed, and potentially raped by cops: A DISINCENTIVE???) but that's only in the service of pointing out that its illegal status allows Allie to charge high fees.

AMANDA: haha right. now, i dont' know if Levitt and Dubner are heterosexual males, but let's assume they are.

SADY: assumed!

AMANDA: the only appropriate response to the ridiculous question posed in the article would be, "I don't know, why don't you suck cock for a living?" Why don't you suck cock, out of your fancy house, instead of being a famous economist? I'm sure that will be the pertinent question in "SuperDuperFreakonomics: The Freakiestonomics Yet"

SADY: yes, at some point. WHY AREN'T LEVITT AND DUBNER JOINTLY FELLATING YOU RIGHT NOW: A FREAKONOMIC ANALYSIS.

AMANDA: probably because they don't like sex?

SADY: i mean, jesus. sex work is complicated. i'm so sure—and i have to keep reiterating this, because i feel bad for assuming that allie's "i just happened to go on an online dating service and tell people i was an escort because, tee-hee, i just love sex" narrative is a Pile O' Poopy—that there are women who are very fulfilled in their sex work, or at least prefer it to the other jobs they could have. i'm SURE of this. but asking THAT ONE LADY to tell you what prostitution is like—hell, even what the MONEY side of prostitution is like—is massively misguided.

AMANDA: i mean honestly. LaSheena straight-up tells them that she "doesn't like men." And somehow, because Allie says that she LOVES men, this sample size of 2 indicates that women who like men make tons of money doin' what they love, and women who don't like men are poor street hookers. so really, women don't cash in on the obvious benefits of prostitution because they're ... bitches?

SADY: that's what irked me so much – they're so invested in this Ayn Rand fantasy of the fulfilled sex-liking happy safe rich sex worker that pretty much everyone else is left out of the picture, or else shamed as inadequate. Allie is like the John Galt of professional sex, in this equation.

AMANDA: hahaha

SADY: i also liked the fact that their response to LaSheena's statement of "I don't like men" was... what if there was more money in it for you? and she's like, "yeah! sure! what's that you say? I can get my degree from home in my spare time? And it includes a course in Air Conditioner Repair?" it turns into this weird sales pitch for sex workers.

AMANDA: right. it's like, why do you think she is doing this? because she DOESN'T want money?

SADY: yes. and even though we know pretty much everything about Allie up to and including what she ate for breakfast this morning and whether there is corn in her poo, we know nothing about LaSheena. none of the factors that have led to her having four more or less illegal, low-paying jobs, at least one of which she hates, all of which are dangerous. and am i wrong for thinking her story might be the more interesting of the two? then again, maybe she just didn't want to talk to the Freakonomics guys. can't say I blame her!

AMANDA: i'm pretty sure that she didn't want to talk to the fucking Freakonomics guys. They admit that they had to pay her in order for her to talk to them, which they think says a lot about how desperate for money she is. but i think it just shows how unpleasant it is to be recast in the lens of the Freakonomics guys.

Photo by otisarchive3

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

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

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

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

Whoever is editing MacKenzie's page decided to leave consent issues out of it—the relationship "developed." But editors of John Phillips' Wikipedia page want to make sure that readers know the father-daughter incestuous relationship was totally mutual. The most recent contributor to the page decided to remove some scare quotes around the world "consensual." Others have tried to scrub the whole incest thing out of his profile. One announced that they both "had planned to go burn in Hell together," as blame should be distributed equally between a horrifically abusive father and his child. (Note: It's not all rape apologists over at John's page. Another contributor keeps editing Phillips' "Occupation" to read "Musician, Rapist").

So! Join me and Sady of Tiger Beatdown as we attempt to edit the Wikipedia pages of OUR MINDS to stop blaming the victim and start

SADY: oh, say, have you heard of any fairly famous stories of abuse and sexual assault that people are spinning in a totally alarmingly rape-culturey way lately? because I HAVE!

AMANDA: wait ... you mean the consensual incest?

SADY: ha ha, YEAH. i played a little game, the day that story broke. it was called, How Many Headlines Are Not Totally Fucked Up?

AMANDA: how many!

SADY: here is your answer: i found two that were not! one was on MTV news and it read:  "Mackenzie Phillips Claims Her Father Raped, Drugged Her." one was on E! and it read, "Mackenzie Phillips: I Was Raped By My Father.” now! you could find some problems with these headlines! BUT, every other source was like "Mackenzie Phillips Confesses Sex Affair With Dad.” leaving out the part where it became "consensual" after several rapes.[Note: Huffington Post has done pretty well on this too

AMANDA: and the part where it never becomes "consensual"! because it never can be! i was interested the differences in the media coverage of this incident and the Phillip Garrido incident. there's a whole lot we don't know about that situation, but whenever "sex" is mentioned between Garrido and his kidnapee, it's usually at least referred to as rape. because you can't kidnap a person and rape them and then raise them as your child/wife and have that slowly blossom into a consensual relationship. and this is the same thing, except—you can't rate tragedies, but i'm gonna—worse? because he is the man with the responsibility to raise his child and he kidnapped her from her childhood and drugged her and raped her for decades.

SADY: yeah. i mean, here's the thing. this reminded me a lot of anais nin, who started having "consensual" sex with her father as an adult. BUT: she also struggled to figure out whether these memories of him molesting her as a child were real or distorted or what (a PRETTY common thing for kids, who have trouble making sense of memories of molestation) and there's no doubt that he was abusive to her in other ways. and, like, these are different cases. phillips' started out, unambiguously, as sexual assault, and she named it as such. but then – here's a thing i think is tricky to articulate so IF I FUCK UP TELL ME – it became "consensual," to HER, but arose out of this context of abuse and drugs where she basically didn't have the option of NOT being victimized in this way. like, i think that the whole "compliance is not consent" thing is important to articulate, because sometimes people tell themselves that what is happening is consensual just to deal with the fact that they don't have an option of it NOT happening.

AMANDA: definitely. because even if you leave that relationship, that means severing one of the most important relationships in your life, your relationship with your father. and that's not a real choice. especially when your father has been emotionally and physically—so many drugs!—prepping you to consent to this shit since age 10

SADY: right. exactly. it's a thing a lot of people struggle with, whether it's abusive family relationships or (HEY!) rape culture: when you're receiving constant information to the effect that how you are treated is normal and OK and excusable, you – you, yourself! – may have trouble articulating that what was done to you was not OK.

AMANDA: i didn't watch the oprah interview, but i was dismayed to hear how it went down. Oprah, as many know, was raped as a child as well. she's interviewed a lot of victims of sexual assault on her show, and I think that's great. but there's still this very obvious manipulation of the interview for the general public – silently judging for Phillips continuing to GET RAPED after she turned 18, etc.

SADY: right. but her take can be sort of sensationalistic. and i have a problem with the Oprah Face – it's something she does a lot in interviews, this thing of Making The Face You Imagine Your Audience To Be Making – so she looks "scandalized" when what is said is "scandalous" or etc.

AMANDA: yeah. and it's so weird in a situation like this, because the news of this years-long abuse just hangs there. where do you go with it? it's just objectively awful and terrible, but interviewers have tried to spice it up a little bit by judging which parts were most awful, and which parts were maybe her fault

SADY: actually, can i tell you my FAVORITE reactions? they were really special! and did not come from oprah!

AMANDA: sure!

SADY: my FAVORITE reactions have been those that are like, "this is so horrible! for my ENJOYMENT OF THE MUSIC OF JOHN PHILIPS!" which is closely tied to the Should She Have Said Anything At All? Maybe Not! debate, but that is fairly predictable and pedestrian silencing, whereas this – THIS! – demonstrates a bold and innovative approach to making the issues secondary to your own personal comfort.

AMANDA: i know. how is that even related? i'm reading a story about surviving rape, why the fuck do i care if someone does or does not like the mamas and the papas?

SADY: but that's the thing! and this happens so often in cases of celebrity abuse. like, i believe that, when you and i discussed the chris brown and rihanna thing, you pointed out that a lot of people who covered it were just coming off a post where they drew jizz on a star's face or whatever to express disapproval.

AMANDA: yeah.

SADY: when something like this is treated as a "celebrity story" (which it is, to some extent) rather than a story about sexual violence (which it is, to a larger extent, I would argue) there's going to be lazy or uneducated or insensitive coverage. which isn't to say that everyone in the whole wide world who writes about celebrities is lazy or uneducated or insensitive, because that's blatantly untrue, but that people who don't know shit are going to write their piece too.

AMANDA: and on that note: with this story in particular, i find the "Think of the Children" defense extremely bizarre. I mean, what kid is going to be reading and/or caring about news about John and Mackenzie Phillips? I barely knew who she was before I heard about this. If a parent had to explain incest or rape to a child because of this news (and ooooh, talking to your kid about abuse is such a baaad thing), they're first going to have to explain who the fuck these people are, right?

SADY: yeah. totally true! but, i mean, speaking of talking about abuse... the reactions that have been like, "why did she tell us ewww" or "but what of my record collection?" have been rare(ish) and call-out-able.

AMANDA: Except from her own family! Bonus reaction of her step-mother, who was married to John at the time: "John was a good man who had the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction," the statement read. "He was incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child."

SADY: "Mackenzie has a lot of mental illness. She’s had a needle stuck up her arm for 35 years."

AMANDA: I mean, the statement isn't even like, "i had no awareness of this happening," but rather, "he couldn't have done this, he was too good!"

SADY: right! the drug abuse and mental health issues have NOTHING to do with potential trauma! she's just a freakshow! also, john was cool!

AMANDA: yeah. SHE did a lot of drugs, so she can't be trusted. HE did even more drugs, so he can't be a rapist. it all makes sense!

SADY: i mean... on some level? because my heart is full of twinkly stars and daisies and unicorn dust? i want to see how this HUGE story, which is playing out in public and is right in front of everyone's face, can actually illuminate for people how victim-blaming and misunderstandings of consent can work. like, with the family turning on her. and the accusations that she just wants attention. and the minimizing of the word "rape" and widespread use of the word "sex." these things are so common in MUCH SMALLER STORIES and i want to believe that seeing them, and seeing a conversation around them, is going to show people how fucked-up they are.

AMANDA: i'll believe it when i see it

SADY: yeah. i mean, what's typically going to happen is that voices who call shit out are going to be called fringe and unreasonable and mean and blah de blee blah bloo. but, you know. people are talking about incest now. and what with how little we all seem to get about it, given how it's been covered? i hope to God at least some of us are going to REALIZE how little we get it, and move in the getting-it direction.

AMANDA: i agree that that much will probably happen. i hope.

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

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

But first, a douche coping primer:

(a) HOW TO ENDURE DOUCHES. April 2008. Rebecca Solnit for the Los Angeles Times on what to do when old white dudes Sit You Down and Explain their superior understanding of a Recently Released and Very Important Book—a Book he doesn't realize you Wrote.

(b) HOW TO CONQUER DOUCHES. Sept. 2009. Deborah Solomon of the New York Times interviews "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, and asks him why he's such a fucking douche.

Proceed.

SADY: why, good day, madam! allow me to EXPLAIN why we should talk about dudes who EXPLAIN things to the ladies. and other assorted douches!

AMANDA: YEAH!

SADY:: i have indeed read the article you recommend. which is delightful! and i have been thinking about douches all week long. seems to me they are a reoccuring problem in human life! specifically, douches of the SEXIST variety.

AMANDA: yes. first i'd like to say that we are all, at one point or another, douches. some douches, however, endure, and withstand the test of time.

SADY:: right. it's when "douche" stops being an accidental, occasional thing and becomes a lifestyle that you really have to think about strategies.

AMANDA: for example: the douchey guy who was explaining to Rebecca Solnit about this book that she wrote and he didn't read that he thought she didn't understand. i, too, have thought i understood things that i didn't understand. i was once a tween! but when you grow out of your tweens and begin lecturing historians about nonfiction books they've recently published, perhaps it's time to consider WHY you think you know the things that you don't know.

SADY:: right: or (same article!) the douche-by-default who told this DELIGHTFUL story about how a neighbor's wife had run out of the house and started screaming that her husband was trying to kill her. ha! ha! a merry jest! unless, you know, her husband was trying to kill her. a possibility Mr. DBD apparently didn't consider. it's people assuming that they have the right to define what matters and what doesn't, and defining that 100% in their favor at all times, that i think makes a true douche.

AMANDA: one of the things that Solnit talks about is how strong gender roles play into her reactions to these affronts to her intelligence. she's really, really polite! (and then, of course, balls up her outrage into a really awesome LAT opinion piece, but she's polite to their faces) EVEN when, as she says, it's completely obvious to everyone that these Men Who Explain Things are shitting their douche all over the place.

SADY:: right. and i think that's the issue. one of the things a Sexist Douche capitalizes on is that ladies are socialized, more or less from birth, not to express anger or outrage publicly. not to be confrontational AT ALL, in fact. and the double-bind there is that, if you don't express anger or outrage, people get away with walking all over you, and they can say that you "deserved" it. but if you DO, you're not acting like a REAL WOMAN, and you are therefore absurd! fodder for a delightful joke yourself!

AMANDA: yeah, and even I—and I do not give a shit about censoring myself when I write a piece—I experience this pretty frequently in person. I've attributed it to shyness, but I think there's a gendering in the form of deference that it can take. case in point: a male friend was telling me a story about how he was at a bar, and this college student aged women was sitting alone at the bar. and an older drunk guy was sitting next to her, and he was grossly flirting with her, and the college aged woman was humoring him – politely laughing at his jokes, etc. and my friend relayed the story back to me, saying that he thought the woman's behavior was 'disgusting,' and he didn't understand why she would flirt with the guy.

SADY:: uh, yeah. because it's not like ladies routinely do that to NOT be called a bitch!

AMANDA: yeah! and the guy is drunk, and you don't want trouble, and you just want to drink your beer.

SADY:: right. and i think some guys, not having done that, don't realize how shitty and scary it can get. like, once i was walking down the block past a cafe with an open-air porch. and two guys make some loud comment about how my tits are SPECTACULAR and do i want to sit with them? and i say "fuck off," as you do. and these guys GOT IN THEIR VAN AND FOLLOWED ME AND SCREAMED AT ME FOR LIKE FIVE BLOCKS.

AMANDA: i mean, why were you being such a bitch? I think that Men who Explain Things are kind of like Drunk Guy At Bar or Drunk Guys Who Like Boobs, that you either have to say, 'fuck off, dude' and risk their wrath, or just ignore it and nod along. because—in this article!—even when you try to politely correct them, because you are a polite woman who happens to know something, they won't even listen and/or believe you. and it is a pain! as someone who has basically grown up with the internet, everyone can call everyone else on their shit pretty easily, and i know i've been called out as much as i've called other people out. but it's been surprising to me how many people have just not even listened to me over the course of time. just physically not even listened! people who are not Drunk Explainy Guy, but rather My Friends

SADY:: right. and, i mean, i think it's a form of asserting authority. if you Explain Things, you're attempting to create an environment in which you are the expert and the lady you're talking to is dumber than you. but if somebody challenges you, and you react with either belligerence or out-of-hand dismissal, you are still asserting authority. i seriously wonder if guys realize what a sexist power play this is. creating an environment in which you are the authority and objecting to you or calling you out on your shit is either unsafe or looked-down-upon or both. i mean, i am typically fairly confrontational one-on-one. like, confrontational sometimes in unsafe ways that have resulted in me being followed down the block or punched in the face or whatever. but i often, when there are people around, find myself being kind of disappointingly meek and subtle and caring more about whether i seem like a "good sport" than whether i'm articulating my point as fully as possible.

AMANDA: totally. can i tell a college story?

SADY:: oh yes!

AMANDA: SO IN COLLEGE, I think everyone has a little bit of Explain Things in them. you're in college and you know everything, whatever. and in my college, in my group of friends, the positions of authority were (a) people who were funny, and (b) people who could buy beer. and so the jokes could get kind of competitive in conversation, and there were so many times that my boyfriend, who was also funny, would STEAL MY JOKES.

SADY:: AUGH

AMANDA: and not like, i would tell him a joke one day and he would use it the next day, among friends. i would make a comment, and he would repeat the comment—not necessarily louder, but from him—and then people would laugh! oh my god! it was torture! and a friend of mine, who was also dating a guy in the same circle of friends, recently reported the exact same thing. I know people could hear me, because he STOLE MY JOKES, but for some reason they weren't funny until he said them

SADY:: AHHHH! This happens ALL THE TIME! I too have experienced the hell of Point/Joke-Repeating Torture!

AMANDA: REALLY?

SADY:: for me, it's not often jokes so much as serious points. like, people like my jokes just fine. but in, like, work meetings, or classes, or serious discussions, i'll say something (or another woman will say something, or a person of color will say something: it works along MORE THAN ONE AXIS, i tell you) and it won't even be heard. or people will just kind of be like, oh! Whatever! The lady said something! ON TO SERIOUS BUSINESS. and then a dude will say the VERY SAME THING and people will engage.

AMANDA: the worst thing about this is that, uh, it comes off looking like a bit of a conspiracy theory. like, I KNOW I SAID IT. but nobody else seems to recall it in the same way, and the LA Times piece talks about that too – competing memories of the same event, where two people remember different things being said and happening (mostly: the douche remembers the lady being crazy and/or irrelevant), and only one of those memories is valued. it's enough to drive someone crazy, but i do think that all of these things have really significantly affected my personality. like, i feel like i've definitely become a lot more confident in my ideas and my positions, and better at articulating them, since i started writing about lady stuff. but it's likely that i've become shyer in person—just because after i've put myself out there i know how absolutely intense and insane the reeactions from strangers can be. the'yre scary, and it's a lot easier to ignore them if they're online

SADY:: oh, yeah. can i tell you the best/worst side effect of lady blogging for me?

AMANDA: yes

SADY:: first, most of the people in my life read the ladyblog and have said kind things about it. so i am like, WELL! should i choose to weigh in on LADYBUSINESS, surely my opinion will be valued!

AMANDA: oh no...

SADY:: but then, since i have ALSO received so much feedback to the effect that i am an insane delusional preachy humorless feminazi, i also start worrying that everyone else thinks THAT of me, too.

AMANDA: yeah. YES. i TOO HAVE EXPERIENCED THIS. and honestly, part of it is a reflection of the fact that i just want to live my life like anyone and not bring my work home with me that if a dude i know makes a comment, i don't necessarily step up to the bat. i choose my battles. but some people i think are afraid that i'm going to be a "bitch" to them!

SADY:: right! and the constant awareness of what people might think of you if they are huge sexists can actually make you the most incoherent person alive! "ha ha, well, I'M LAUGHING AT YOUR JOKE, but it's really not funny, and I'M NOT INSANE, but i think that's fucked up, BUT I WANT TO BE NICE ABOUT IT, but you are being an asshole!" this constant dance between feeling obliged to speak up and trying to do the insane performing-monkey Look You Can't Stereotype Me Dance.

AMANDA: exactly. can we end by talking about someone who has managed to make a career out of conquering douchebags, Deborah Solomon?

SADY:: i believe we should do so!

AMANDA: i'm sure tons of people have called deborah solomon a bitch, but it doesn't matter. at all.

SADY:: people are AAAAAAAANGRY about that NYT interview [with "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane], dude! i have seen a LOT of reaction to the effect of "how dare she" and "she came off SO MUCH WORSE than he did" and etc. etc. etc.

AMANDA: that was the greatest interview of all time! i want to make one point about it: after she hammers him over the rape jokes and the racist jokes, she totally razzes him on technical aspects. so any reader who was like, 'she's some crazy feminazi' gets very confused at that point ... like, 'she's some crazy feminazi who ... has a deep understanding of the work of a colorist?'

SADY:: yeah. that was what i loved: the whole "but i am a douche in the name of art" defense was completely shut down by her very specific criticism of the art itself. like, "actually, no, you are not a crazy diamond who must therefore shine on. you're a hack, and your material stinks."

AMANDA: also, 'are you straight?' that question was just a bonus, i felt like. i can't really justify exactly why that question was asked.

SADY:: yeah. some people thought it was mean-spirited, in that there's been speculation about his sexuality before from (shall we say) Less Than Enlightened sources! BUT, it got him talking about the women in his life and why he apparently doesn't have any. and the "why is that" follow-up just blew my mind.

AMANDA: to me, i thought it showed that she was completely in control of the interviewsomehow, she had just really accurately judged him, and she was going to ask all the questions necessary to reveal him to the world.

SADY:: yeah. it's the control radiating throughout the interview that i really loved. there was no "let's play nice" in it. she was not only a character in the interview, she was the chief character. she got him in the room, she sat him down, and she put him in a position to defend himself on specific terms rather than push it off on how Bitches Just Don't Understand. which: maybe Bitches don't! But when one of the Bitches is sitting across from you, recording your words for the NYT, you best have a good answer planned, dude.

Photo by flickr user mrbill, Creative Commons license 2.0.

I was pleased to read Jessica Wakeman's interview with Diablo Cody this morning, because it features Hollywood's most hated woman talking about Hollywood's other most hated woman—Megan Fox. The talking, incidentally, is a major source of the Cody-Fox hate fest. People hate Diablo Cody for talking about being an ex-stripper (above), a big part of her unlikely success story; people hate Megan Fox for talking about being a hot girl in movies. Cody has been talking a lot lately to promote her latest film, Jennifer's Body, which stars Fox as a hot high school girl who eats boys. Let the hate-fest begin.

How have Cody and Fox become so successful while inspiring such vitriol from the general population? Because both have found that success by acting like objects, and objects aren't supposed to talk about being objects (they're not supposed to win Oscars, either).

Men tolerate women who take off their clothes for money (or in Fox's case, almost all of her clothes), because men like to watch naked ladies. Feminists tolerate women who take off their clothes for money because they know that the patriarchy encourages women to make a living objectifying themselves for men. But neither group really likes to hear women talk about taking off their clothes for money. Why? Because men don't like their objects to be people, and feminists don't like men's objects to be feminists. Naked women who can speak for themselves don't help dudes get an erection. But they also don't help feminists argue that the lives of naked women are being destroyed by the men who like lookin' at 'em.

Granted, Cody generally catches the hate of the objectifiers, while Fox courts hatred from feminists. But it's the same shit: Cody rose above her stripper past to win a trophy, while Fox is still working as a hot girl. Neither women ought to be considered better fit to talk about what that's like.

Which is exactly why it's interesting to hear people like Diablo Cody and Megan Fox run their mouths. One, because we never hear enough from the stripper perspective, the professional hot-girl perspective, the sex-worker perspective, or the porn-star perspective (the insanity of the Fox/Cody backlash is a perfect example of why that's the case). And two, because those are exactly the women that feminism intends to represent—those that have been objectified for the benefit of men. Of course, Megan Fox doesn't speak for every hot girl and Diablo Cody doesn't speak for every ex-stripper, just as Sasha Grey doesn't speak for every female in the porn industry. But it's a hell of a lot better than people who aren't strippers, sex workers, and professional hot girls insisting on speaking for them. We may not always like (or understand) what they have to say. But when these women talk, the worst thing we can do is tell them to keep their traps shut. After all, both Cody and Fox identify as feminists, even though we tend not do them any favors. Since we know that they don't speak for all feminists, everywhere, what are we so worried about?

That being said! Here's Cody on feminism:

K, here’s a problem that is holding back feminism and you see it on the blogs. We all hold each other up to an incredibly high standard in a way that men do not. Let’s say a woman directs a movie that’s not very good—everybody piles up on her. It’s, like, “No! You’re representing us! It has to be perfect!” And that’s not how it works! Women should be allowed to make bad movies. Good movies. Porno movies. Terrible made-for-TV movies. Women just need to be out there directing as many movies as men do. We don’t all have to be the model woman—what we need is to be more visible. We really, really are tough on each other.

And Cody on Megan Fox:

She really makes people angry! Girls hate her, don’t they? . . . I appreciate [her sense of humor]. I do not know her very well. Even having worked with her to this extent, I don’t know her very well because she’s very private and mysterious. But I’ve [heard] these things come out of her mouth. I’ve been present for some of these interviews and she is totally fearless. What she is saying is completely genuine. It is not a front. I think people think she’s trying to create some kind of image for herself that she’s not, but she’s a really, truly eccentric person. . . . I don’t think people know how to process her at all. I think it’s one of those things where she does not fit the mold in any way and it freaks people out!

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

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

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

People Who Think "No" Means "No": Men and women with an "egalitarian" worldview which "judges the character of men and women by a largely unitary measure, and treats female sexuality as a legitimate expression of individual autonomy." Makes sense, right? Not to some:

People Who Think "No" Means "Maybe": As it turns out, people who can't tell the difference between "yes" and "no" are nevertheless very invested in maintaining differences between "men" and "women." The people most likely to believe that a rape victim actually consented, even though she said "no"? Those with a "conservative, traditional, and hierarchical" worldview, marked by "highly differentiated and stratified gender roles."

Among this group, older women were the most likely to pooh-pooh "no means no": "Overall, women were no more or less likely to favor conviction than were men. However, women who subscribed to the hierarchical cultural style—particularly older women who did—were more inclined to form a pro-defendant view of the facts." And Sady of the the brand-spankin' Tiger Beatdown and I think that requires a Sexist Beatdown.

BUT FIRST, some background: Kahan based his study on the Ironically Fucked-Up Rape Case of the Century, Commonwealth v. Berkowitz. The case surrounded a college sophomore girl and a college sophomore boy who got to know each other—platonically—through a "sexual-assault awareness lecture" entitled, I'm not fucking kidding, "Does ‘No’ Sometimes Mean ‘Yes’?"

Only weeks later, the content of that lecture would be tested when the girl entered the boy's dorm room, and they got to talking:

Before the victim could leave appellant’s room, however, appellant asked her to stay and “hang out for a while.” She complied because she “had time to kill” and because she didn’t really know appellant and wanted to give him “a fair chance.” Appellant asked her to give him a back rub but she declined, explaining that she did not “trust” him. Ap-pellant then asked her to have a seat on his bed. Instead, she found a seat on the floor, and conversed. . . . During this conversation she had explained she was having problems with her boyfriend. .

[After a few minutes, the defendant] moved off the bed and down on the floor, and “kind of pushed [the victim] back with his body. It wasn’t a shove, it was just kind of a leaning-type of thing.” Next appellant “straddled” and started kissing the victim. The victim responded by saying, “Look, I gotta go. I’m going to meet [my boyfriend].” Then ap-pellant lifted up her shirt and bra and began fondling her. The victim then said “no.”

After roughly thirty seconds of kissing and fondling, appellant “un-did his pants and he kind of moved his body up a little bit.” The victim was still saying “no” but “really couldn’t move because [appellant] was shifting at [her] body so he was over [her].” Appellant then tried to put his penis in her mouth. The victim did not physically resist, but rather continued to verbally protest, saying “No, I gotta go, let me go,” in a “scolding” manner.

Ten or fifteen more seconds passed before the two rose to their feet. Appellant disregarded the victim’s continual complaints that she “had to go,” and instead walked two feet away to the door and locked it so that no one from the outside could enter. . . . The victim testified that she realized at the time that the lock was not of a type that could lock people inside the room.

Then, in the victim’s words, “[appellant] put me down on the bed. It was kind of like—he didn’t throw me on the bed. It’s hard to explain. It was kind of like a push but no. . . .” She did not bounce off the bed. “It wasn’t slow like a romantic kind of thing, but it wasn’t a fast shove either. It was kind of in the middle.”

Once the victim was on the bed, appellant began “straddling” her again while he undid the knot in her sweatpants. He then removed her sweatpants and underwear from one of her legs. The victim did not physically resist in any way while on the bed because appellant was on top of her, and she “couldn’t like go anywhere.” She did not scream out at anytime because, “[i]t was like a dream was happening or some-thing.”

Appellant then used one of his hands to “guide” his penis into her vagina. At that point, after appellant was inside her, the victim began saying “no, no to him softly in a moaning kind of way ... because it was just so scary.” After about thirty seconds, appellant pulled out his penis and ejaculated onto the victim’s stomach.

Immediately thereafter, appellant got off the victim and said, “Wow, I guess we just got carried away.” To this the victim retorted, “No, we didn’t get carried away, you got carried away.” The victim then quickly dressed, grabbed her school books and raced downstairs to her boy-friend who was by then waiting for her in the lounge.

Once there, the victim began crying. Her boyfriend and she went up to his dorm room where, after watching the victim clean off appellant’s semen from her stomach, he called the police.

The defendant testified in his own behalf. He admitted that he initiate[d] the first physical contact, but added that the victim warmly responded to his advances by passionately returning his kisses. He conceded that she was continually “whispering ... no’s,” but claimed that she did so while “amorously . . . passionately” moaning. In effect, he took such protests to be thinly veiled acts of encouragement.

Kahan's study presented an almost identical account to study participants, and asked them to judge whether the incident constituted rape or not. 58 percent of people surveyed said they would have found the boy "guilty of rape." 42 percent would not have found him guilty.

AMANDA: Hey, would you like to chat now? Remember: In this chat, "no" means "maybe."

SADY: as it should! i, personally, like to SAY "no" so that my chat partner will not believe i am enthusiastic about the chat that i totally actually want to be chatting.

AMANDA: I generally restrict using "no" and variations on it, such as "stop," with undergraduate rapists whom I have never met before, in order to ensure that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court nows that I truly maybe wanted it.

SADY: right? so, this case. around which this study is based. is actually like some terrifying cartoon of sexist assumptions. girl goes into dude's room. girl has been friendly with dude. dude proceeds to initiate sex, to which girl says no. sex continues on apace. which is rape, right? but instead there are all these discussions of whether she tried to unlock the door or whether he shoved her onto the bed HARD enough to constitute "force" (did she bounce?) and the "no," although admitted to by both parties, actually DOES NOT COUNT AT ALL.

AMANDA: Did she bounce. That's the really, really weird thing about this case: All the assumptions about what makes a "real" rape are totally fucking insane! and the one sane assumption—that if she says no, it means she doesn't want to have sex—is discredited

SADY: right. and at one point, they mention that it was determined that the "no" meant lack of CONSENT, but did not thereby qualify the act as RAPE, since rape requires force and also that you not be married to your rape victim. so the question is, then: why isn't "no" enough? why is "no means no" a problem, and for whom? and the answer is... um, older ladies, apparently.

AMANDA: yeah: the answer is older, privileged ladies that i imagine to be stroking gigantic white cats while informing rape victims that they actually wanted it . . . in order to hold on to their social privilege, and the diamond-encrusted tiaras that go along with it, or whatever. these older ladies are really interesting to me, and i was trying to figure out what exactly about their cultural circumstances made them want to decide this case this way?

SADY: right. like, one SAYS no to the gentleman, dear, that he might not think you a harlot. whilst you have the sex that you said "no" to because you wanted it. oh, and also, if you say no AND MEAN IT there's no way for the dude to know that! because you SHOULD be saying no ALL THE TIME!

AMANDA: And also, implied, I think, is that if any women actually say NO and mean NO, then the women who say NO and mean YES will be considered sluttier than the rape victims. WHICH IS FUCKED UP.

SADY: UH HUH. and, like, if you want to play an incredibly hot erotic sexy game of saying "no" to sex every time you want sex, whatever. for me that is like playing a game of Let's See How Close I Can Stick My Face To This Chainsaw every weekend. but what are the odds that a woman who says no and means yes is going to then up and take her case to a rape court? for funsies? like, that is pretty time-consuming and awful, actually! i doubt anyone is THAT invested in maintaining her reputation as a non-sex-liker! so why should it affect the construction of the law? AT ALL?

AMANDA: beats me. the really scary thing is the assumption that because these jurors will decide based on their cultural attitudes and NOT the law, it doesn't matter WHAT the law says rape is

SADY: right, which is what the study seems to confirm.

AMANDA: however, in this particular case, the jury did decide to convict the dude of rape, and then the penn. supreme court decided 7-0 to reverse it ... based on the law. or ... based on their weird cultural assumptions? perhaps there were some hidden Privileged Older Ladies on the bench?

SADY: it really strikes me that the basic assumption here (in people who assume that "no means no" is a bad thing) is that dudes go around accidentally raping ladies ALL THE TIME and shouldn't be punished for it.

AMANDA: yeah. oops!

SADY: like, the idea is that dudes can't interpret the word "no" correctly, because they are less smart than your dog, and therefore should they accidentally rape someone who is saying "no" a lot you have to give them the benefit of the doubt. like, better luck next time, timmy!

AMANDA: even though, chillingly, the accused and the victim got to know each other in a sexual assault awareness lecture titled “Does ‘No’ Sometimes Mean ‘Yes’?” you really have to wonder how the lecture resolved that question

SADY: Oh, GOD. "in conclusion, no means no except when that is inconvenient for you personally! hope this helps!"

AMANDA: like, if the lecture concluded, "No, No Doesn't Sometimes Mean Yes," the attendees could have said, well yes, but what if No actually means Yes in your conclusion that No Doesn't Mean Yes?

SADY: ah, the timeless "but I WANT ice cream" logical maneuver.

AMANDA: it's terrible, because "no means yes" has always struck me as some sick dirty joke that people tell, but now i see that it has affected the actual reasoning of juries. the main point to take away from this is that jurors need to stop taking their jury duty vacation as an oppportunity to punish women that they think are sluts. if i were a lawyer, i would start asking that question in jury selection.

SADY: ray of light here, though? younger, more sexually active folks of both genders were more likely to grasp the meaning and validity of "no." like, apparently if you get that women CAN consent to sex, you're more likely to not have sex with them until they DO!

AMANDA: yeah. totally.

SADY: which, you know. the slut-punishing vigilante squad aside, makes me feel hope for this new generation, and their ability to understand words you learned when you were two years old.

AMANDA: this study was extremely depressing. i at least thought that the "she wanted it" defense would at least concede that admitting that she actually said "no" would be bad for their case. you'd assume the rapist wouldn't admit that! but when he does, the Old Privileged Ladies seems almost more likely to believe him

SADY: well, you know. he's a poor young man! led astray by that permissive harlot! and so on, and so forth.

AMANDA: no bouncing, so what can you do

SADY: right. NOT ENOUGH PREMARITAL FORCE-BOUNCING, that's what was wrong with this case. so, here's my advice to the world: however you feel about "no," can we hope, maybe, that you are MORE excited to get a "yes?" Because that, I think, is what you should be aiming for. "Yes, I would like to have sex with you." That, I would assume, is a statement that we can all agree is a positive.

AMANDA: . . . Maybe!

Photo by flickr user freeparking under Creative Commons

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

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

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

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

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

AMANDA: 9:23 a.m. is a great time to talk about the ups and downs of not ejaculating into vaginas.

SADY: yes. personally, when i heard that not ejaculating into vaginas was a "reliable" form of birth control, i had my suspicions! i was like: apparently all of the dudes i have argued with about birth control have become scientists! who knew?

AMANDA: published in the renowned peer-reviewed journal of medicine, Maxim.

SADY: right. it strikes me as some flawed science, is what i am saying! for, even if withdrawal is a semi-effective method of "birth control," it strikes me as a highly ineffective method of Not Getting Various Diseases Such As The Herp Control. which i think is what Tracy Quan is saying, which is good common sense.

AMANDA: of course, but at the same time, real scientists who are not your ex-boyfriends have worked very hard to come up with dozens of methods of birth control that also don't prevent STDs

SADY: fair enough! the scientists, they do these things! i suppose i am a person who likes a certain modicum of control over these situations. and withdrawal as birth control, TO ME, relies on your partner having (a) really good timing, and (b) a solid commitment to not getting distracted or losing track of whatever he is supposed to be doing, during a moment that (AS I UNDERSTAND IT) can be kind of distracting! (I AM REFERRING TO THE MALE ORGASM. In case my incredible tastefulness and subtlety are working against me.)

AMANDA: this is a point that Quan made as well, and I agree that for a lot of people withdraw would not be a good option for this reason. But all forms of birth control come with a degree of human error, or in some cases, shit ripping inside your vagina error. say you're a couple who doesn't want to use condoms. and the woman takes her birth control pills, but the man, like you, can't trust her—for whatever reason—to take them at the same time every day. maybe she forgets sometimes!

SADY: fair enough!

AMANDA: he might not want to rely on her, either. and so if you forget a birth control pill, or a condom breaks, or you ejaculate into a vagina, you know, you can take emergency contraception as well. one of the interesting things to me about this study—and i'm just going to assume the study is accurate for argument, because i don't know anything about methodology with these things. is that it placed withdrawl slightly below condoms, right? and still, most of the response has been, 'there's no way this could ever work, this is some frat dude conspiracy.' and so perhaps what this study reveals isn't that withdrawl is a very good option, but rather that we have a bit too much faith in condoms

SADY: a fascinating point! and i agree, some of this may have to do with the fact that, as long as i've been alive, anyway, Birth Control has been less important to the discussion than Safe Sex. and most of the sex ed i have ever received has been like, "USE CONDOMS, also there are other methods but seriously just USE CONDOMS." and i'm still a fan of the condom, because it is cheap and does not require a prescription and has a lower failure rate and higher disease protection rate than other things! the withdrawal method, to me, requires what is (in many or most circumstances) a perhaps unrealistically high level of trust for one's makeout partner. but maybe this just has to do with the fact that i have been culturally conditioned to trust other people less than i trust the Trojan corporation.

AMANDA: of course. and the method is really counter-intuitive, because pulling out is something that irresponsible 15 year old boys are supposed to do, when really it's something that would be more appropriate for, say, mutually monogamous STD-free old people.

SADY: right. it is odd for me that something which is the centerpiece of much heterosexual porn is now a meaningful expression of committed monogamous trust. NEXT UP: how having sex on a bus can keep you from getting cancer!

AMANDA: hhahaha. yeah. i heard if you put a donut on it and then seductively bite it off it lowers the risk of kidney failure, or something

SADY: WOW. a doughnut, you say! i guess i've been doing it all wrong with the bagels.

AMANDA: i'm with the critics of Quan with this one, though – something that PEOPLE DO turning out to be less sexually risky than we thought is probably a good thing. she says a bit of anxiety is good, but i actually have a lot of that! and so reducing that is probably a good thing for a lot of people. maybe not for Quan, but it's not like we're getting rid of condoms! The Trojan lobby (sponsored by Tiger Beatdown) would never allow that.

SADY: true enough. i guess i am just concerned with the fact that there is already pressure on girls to be the "cool" ones who don't "make" the dude use condoms. i do not know why i think that the sort of dudes who apply that pressure are all going to show up with scientific studies and go through a careful risk-benefit analysis! yet i do. in conclusion: withdrawal is totally fine, if you want to do that and are reasonable about it, and not fine if you do not. CONTROVERSY!

AMANDA: agreed. DON'T LET HIM NOT EJACULATE IN YOUR VAGINA IF YOU DON'T WANT HIM TO NOT DO THAT, KIDS.

SADY: there, problem solved. everybody does what they want to do. the real winner? the paper towel industry. hurrah!

Photo by amorphity