The XX Factor: What women really think.

Gender Roles Reversed in "Jersey Shore"

Kerry, the young novelists that DoubleX contributor Katie Roiphe discusses in her essay for the New York Times Book Review may be "boys too busy gazing at themselves in the mirror to think much about girls," but the men of the MTV reality show Jersey Shore are displaying another sort of modern male sexuality, one that involves both gazing at themselves in the mirror and thinking about girls.

So much has been written about the Jersey Shore phenomenon—there's another article about the show in today's New York Times—but one aspect that has not been discussed much is the appearance of the men of Jersey Shore when compared with the appearance of the women. All the men have an exaggerated version of the ideal male form: Mike, aka "The Situation," shows his abs to the world whenever possible and says he "basically looks like Rambo." They all spend a ton of time at the gym and are part of a steroid-loving culture. The women of Jersey Shore, however, are notably softer. While there is a lot of upkeep involved in their look—tanning, nails, and hair extensions are de rigueur—you never see them going to the gym, and they don't seem to mind having normal figures. Though the men of the Jersey Shore are undeniably narcissistic, they have no problem displaying their Updikean carnal sides.

Return of the Beautiful Uglies

It must be the season of the listicle. Too lazy to write an article, or, heck, even create a charticle, print and online writers turn to the list in an attempt to draw as many list-loving readers as possible. The latest comes from the folks at Nerve.com, who have seen fit to list: "The Twenty Sexiest Ugly People." Fair enough. I've long been enamored with the "beautiful uglies," or what the French refer to as jolie laide: "the aesthetic pleasures of the visually off kilter: a bump on the nose, eyes that are set too closely together, a jagged smear of a mouth."

Nerve's collection of the seemingly hideously sexy—or is that sexily hideous?—includes... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

The Virgin Speaks

Last week Samantha and I weighed in on the case of "Natalie Dylan," the 22-year-old self-proclaimed virgin who's selling her virginity at auction. The top bid is at $3.8 million. Now, in a personal essay, Dylan explains why she's selling her hymen for millions. Referring to the auction as a "sociological experiment," Dylan asserts it was her recently acquired bachelor's degree in women's studies that made her do it. After she pops her cherry, she's going to pursue a masters degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, and her virginity auction is preparation for her "upcoming thesis project." Apparently, while pursuing women's studies, Dylan became aware that "virginity" is a tool the patriarchy uses to keep women down, a paradigm she wants to subvert by selling it to someone. Come again?

When I learned this, it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men.I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.

How ... feminist? How ... empowering? Whoever invented women's studies must be gnawing at her wrists at this very minute. "Are you rolling your eyes?" Dylan wonders. Why, yes, I am, Miss Dylan! "But I'm not saying every forward-thinking person has to agree with what I’m doing," she continues. Thank God. "You should develop your own personal belief system—that’s exactly my point!" Ah, the wisdom of the young. She concludes: "These days, more and more women my age are profiting directly from their sex appeal, but I’m not sure other women should follow my lead." That would make two of us.

Until today, this sexual spectacle's onlookers have been attempting to discern where Dylan is coming from, personally and politically, but her essay makes it more than clear that her pseudo-feminist blathering is little more than a misguided attempt to conceal her mind-boggling idiocy. Suffice to say, I won't be bidding on her.

Why, Exactly, Is Sexual Harassment—er, Sexual Terrorism—OK?

To your point: I am sorry you had such a brutal work environment, and sorry that the sexuality was "the least of it." I understand that low-wage jobs are brutal. Many in my extended family, and from my high school, have worked or do work Nickel-and-Dimed jobs: trucking, waitressing, cashiering, retail, construction. (Although the men's jobs regularly pay more than the women's.) Glad you don't have to live that way now.

But I have to say, reading your post, I'm not exactly sure why you think sexual harassment is OK. Because it's the least of it? Um, not always. And why should anyone have to tolerate the kind of sexual harassment that's brutal, grinding, daily terrorism? Consider the experience of a teen who worked at a Pizza Hut, whose co-worker rubbed his, um, "private parts" (as she put it in the deposition that I read) against her bottom whenever she was at the cash register, who held a knife to her throat when demanding sex and then said he was "just kidding," who threw her to the floor and dry-humped her and would have actually raped her except that the manager walked in. When the teen complained, her manager cut her hours.

Or the Peerless Park, Mo., Burger King workers whom I talked with at length, who were so traumatized by similar daily grindings and attempted assaults that one—call her "Ellen," because she asked me for pseudonymity—told me that whenever she saw a car like that of her former manager, she stopped being able to breathe, and had to go immediately home and lock herself in the house for a day. This was two years later. She'd never heard the term PTSD, and when I gently suggested counseling—although that's not a journalist's place!—she told me she couldn't afford it.  

Or how about the Montgomery, Ill., Dial factory cleaning woman who was assaulted by her manager—by assaulted, I mean an attempted rape that was interrupted when someone else came into the room (I read excerpts of this sworn testimony too)—in a case in which 100 different women went on the record about such horrific harassment as being stalked and threatened; grabbed by the crotch and lifted into the air; or circled by men on the factory floor, grabbed, their heads shoved toward some guy's unzipped crotch. Or was that last one the Ford case? Or Eveleth Taconite? Or Mitsubishi? Sorry, I have talked to so many of these women, and read the depositions and written testimony in so many of these lawsuits, that I get them mixed up. They're brutal. They're designed to keep women in the lower-paying jobs on the ladder. They're inexcusable.

And I haven't even gotten into what happens to women in the financial services industry—it's too gross to post. For the ugly details, check out Susan Antilla's stunning book, Tales from the Boom-Boom Room.

All this should be illegal. Oh wait—it is!—because it alters the "terms and conditions" of keeping a job, based on a woman's sex, making it impossible for her to earn a fair living.

The good news: Rachel Spicuglia got her job back. The bad news: Hundreds of thousands of other women still have to fend off exhausting and dehumanizing sexualized threats if they want to keep bringing home their skinny pink paychecks. And in a bad economy, that's very bad news for women. 

Who's Sexually Harassing Whom?

Well, E.J., having spent several years of my adult life working as a waitress, I take issue with your post. Over a two-year period, I worked at two restaurants. For most of that time, I worked at one of the most high-end restaurants in town. Sexual harassment? That was the least of it. When I was hired, there were 13 servers. Eleven were hard-core substances abusers: cocaine addicts, alcoholics, one crackhead. There were three drug operations. Pot, coke, and whatever else you wanted to get your hands on were sold by the valets, in the kitchen, and on the floor. One night, a buser went after a chef with a butcher knife; he was fired only after he didn't show up for work because he'd been shot. By the end of many shifts, most of the servers were coked out of their heads or too drunk to talk. To reiterate, this was a very upscale place. Some of the most high-profile people in the area dined there. Maybe it took getting high to deal with the never-ending demands of the wealthy patrons upon whom we waited.

So, sexual harassment? Uh, yes. Chefs in their 30s had sex with hostesses in their teens. Managers had sex with servers. One young, drunk waitress performed oral sex on the executive chef in the liquor closet during a shift. This extremely high-stress environment was virtually nonstop rife with sexual innuendo, grabbing, and harassment. Every table had to be served bread we cut in the kitchen, and it was a regular occurrence that the cooks would holler at us to "Shake it!" as we sliced the bread. We were regularly objectified, fondled, and solicited.

And the fact of the matter is that we women sexually harassed right back. We flirted with managers to get better shifts, we unbuttoned buttons on our uniforms to get bigger tips, we regularly used sexual innuendos, physical contact, and body language to squeeze as many dollars as possible out of the men with whom we worked and upon whom we waited. Why? For the money. Because we were desperate. Because we were broke. Because we could.

I was raised by two English professors in the most liberal place in America: Berkeley, Calif. I'm all too familiar with feminist rhetoric, with academics in ivory towers who point down at the masses to declare what the populace should and should not do, with those who seem to perceive the world as a place in which what "should" happen is what does happen. That's not reality. When it comes to sex—or sexual harassment, for that matter—the situations are often neither black nor white but decidedly gray. The idea that it's possible to eliminate or police human sexuality in any context is a fantasy.

For those of you interested in reading a moving, compelling, and insightful book about what it's really like to live and work in the trenches of America by a woman who found out the truth by sticking her head into the toilets of America's rich, buy yourselves a copy of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

No Free Speech About Women?

As if Emily's article hadn't left me appalled enough about South Dakota's Orwellian new abortion "disclosure" law, I actually clicked over to read the 8th Circuit's appalling decision. Fortunately, no one else was in the office—everyone's sensibly headed out for the Fourth of July holiday—so they couldn't hear the astonished and foul language erupting from my corner.

Let me add some thoughts to what Dana has been saying. First, I have trouble believing that any female in the country has failed to think about what's happening in her tummy (to use the technical term) when she's pregnant. I remember imagining it when I was in grade school, putting my hands on my tummy just like my mother did, and thinking about something growing in there. Maybe I was an unusually imaginative child, but every girl knows the story: that collection of rapidly dividing cells could become a human being if not stopped. That's the whole point of getting an abortion: to prevent that cluster of cells from becoming an actual person who is your responsibility. It is insanely paternalistic to suggest that girls and women haven't considered what they are doing—especially, as Dana suggests, if they must make the 350 mile drive to the clinic.

Second point: that 350-mile drive. Rachael, to me, the point of noting that distance isn't to decide whether or not this dearth of full ob/gyn health clinics in the state is an evil conspiracy, or a consequence of the harsh anti-abortion policies and rhetoric of the past 30 years, or just a neutral fact. The point is that a lot of thought and planning goes into making that trip, and into pulling together the gas money and funds to pay for the procedure.

Third point: To force doctors to mouth nonsense language that they flatly can't believe about a blastocyst being a human being, or about unlikely and unproven possible consequences—well, I don't think I can finish that sentence. It's appalling. The very fact that the law must mandate such statements reminds you that there is a furious national debate over precisely this question. Which tells you outright that the 8th Circuit was on crack when it said there isn't a free speech issue here: The government is forcing doctors to mouth political beliefs that they do not agree with. What's worse is that the 8th Circuit says that a court shouldn't easily overrule duly elected representatives. Well, yes—except when the government is trying to violate an individual's basic rights. As it is trying to do here. Isn't that why we have a Bill of Rights and constitutional review: to protect the individual from the overreaching state?

Fourth, the dearth of abortion services IS a consequence of the harsh rhetoric, et al., of the past 30 years. Why doesn't every ob/gyn offer this surgery? Wouldn't they all, if they'd seen the deaths and maimings of women that came before Roe, and could see that legal, medically supervised abortion is a lifesaving procedure? Yes, I am writing this even though, for decades, I have had zero risk of accidental pregnancy. (It always used to be fun to answer a new doctor's or nurse's questions: "Are you sexually active?" Yes. "What contraception method do you use?" None. Their doubletakes were very amusing.) But I have friends, sisters, cousins who need to control their own sexuality and fertility. And I care about women being able to have a say about what happens inside their own organs.

I realize that I am aiming now into basic disagreement territory, so I will stop. Besides, it's time to start celebrating the July 4th weekend.

Virgins: Not as Dumb as You Think (Or Are They?)

Anybody else read the NYT Magazine piece on Harvard's intentional virgins? It was in many ways right off-the-rack: Not all young people who are virgins on purpose are dum-dum religious nuts. Some of them—brace yourselves—have even infiltrated Harvard. And have complicated philosophical reasons for this lifestyle choice. Too complicated, in fact, even to take a stab at explaining. But don't sweat it, because underneath—who would have guessed?—they're religious nuts, too! With hilarious hang-ups, as you'll note when I torture Harvard's Head Virgin with completely disrespectful questions about just how far she'll go. So ciao for now and see you next time, when I pull the wings off butterflies. ...

OK, so it infuriated me, but it did sound one hopeful note. When the head virgin (who doesn't even order dessert after lunch, poor sensually starved child) debated a campus sex blogger (who voraciously gobbles every crumb of her ginger cake with cream-cheese frosting and raspberry compote, get it?) the two women showed mutual respect. They declined to supply the crowd with a catfight and refused to live up to their billing: Harvard's Jezebel Takes On Campus Virgin Mary. "The women themselves saw their encounter as a meeting of two feminist positions,'' the story says, and good for them. Afterwards, they probably headed out for a glass of water and a chocolate martini. Oh, and according to their chronicler, the men of Harvard indicated that after some serious reflection, they would indeed rather marry Mary Ann than Ginger—though I'm not sure either of them would say yes.

"The High Quality You’ve Come To Expect in a Woman"

Hillary Clinton needs superdelegates, but maybe not this one. Will today's revelation that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer—a Clinton ally—was a client of a high-priced prostitution service generate any response from the Clinton campaign? Should it?

I think it should. On the one hand, Spitzer's failings are Spitzer's failings, and not Hillary's responsibility. On the other hand—is she or ain't she gonna stand up and tell us what she thinks of men who think it's OK to buy sex?

The prostitution service at issue is "Emperor's Club VIP." Their Web site has been taken down, but the cached site is here.

They promise "unique introductions" that "offer a sincere connection while providing you with the freedom of private, risk-free dating and companionship without long-term-commitment intricacies" for "clients who will not compromise in any area of their life." (Eliot, that's you! Or, that was you, anyway ...) "Our meticulous standards of beauty, intelligence, presentation and charm ensure that you always encounter the high quality you’ve come to expect in a woman."

Quick reaction: I think this is actually a complicated one for Hillary. Spitzer isn't just any prominent Democrat who happens to support her; he's a close ally from her adopted home state of New York. And prominent men caught in sex scandals isn't a new one for Hillary. How she handles this will tell us something, perhaps, not just about Spitzer, but about how's she's come to define herself ... as a woman in a world where a few too many of the prominent men around still think it's OK to do this kind of thing.

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, etc.

Torie,

You and Jezebel are right that Heather Mac Donald goes off the rails with her rant against drunk college girls. Which is too bad, because before that, she was making an important point. At first I wondered, why is she rehashing this now? Because I thought so many others, including Christina Hoff Sommers in her excellent Who Stole Feminism more than 15 years ago, had cast significant skepticism on the 1-in-4 trope. But, despite all the back and forth on the study by Mary Koss back in the 1980s that gave us this statistic, and despite all the healthy debate about what the real numbers are (anywhere from 2 percent on up), this number that should be controversial is still bandied about as accepted fact. (Even the CDC uses it. And my alma mater, too.)

No doubt that the activists and counselors who cite it are well-meaning and want women to be aware of what can happen to them. But it still peeves me to no end. This inflated statistic is actually harmful, because it trivializes the women—whatever percentage that may be—who actually are raped. If one in four of us is brutalized and we're all walking around just fine, then, hey, it must not be a big deal, right? It happens to everyone, so just get over it already, why don't you?

There will probably always be gray areas in defining rape. And such crimes will probably always be under-reported—it's unfortunate but true. But there have to be ways to address those problems that involve neither trumpeting a flawed statistic or attacking young women for being irresponsible.  

College Girls Are Easy?

In a Sunday column for the Los Angeles Times, Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute questions the incidence of campus rape, which is reported to affect 20 percent to 25 percent of college women. (Penn State, the college I attended, is among the schools Mac Donald scolds for repeating the statistic. I say “college I attended” because alma mater’s a little highfalutin for my state school.)

She argues that the statistics are flawed because some of the women counted as being raped did not, in fact, consider themselves to have been raped. She writes, “A 2006 survey of sorority women at the University of Virginia, for example, found that only 23% of the subjects whom the survey characterized as rape victims felt that they had been raped.” That means either A) college women are woefully uneducated about what constitutes rape or B) the stats are inflated. Mac Donald, of course, believes the answer is B, though I suspect it’s a combination of the two.

It’s fair to question the accuracy of the numbers and to debate the definition of rape. The real problem with Mac Donald’s piece is, as Jezebel puts it, that she “descends into a Laura Sessions Stepp-like rant against drunk sluts.” Feministing also slams Mac Donald for “think[ing] girls who dare to leave the house and socialize are getting what they ask for.”

The article concludes primly, “College is for learning.” I’m always confused by that admonition. Of course college is for learning. But learning and partying (that all-encompassing term for drinking, hooking up, eating greasy pizza at 4 a.m., singing along to “Livin’ on a Prayer”—sorry, getting a wee bit nostalgic here) aren’t mutually exclusive. I graduated in 2006 and had a good time in college. I partied my fair share and also managed to learn, land internships, work, and take part in extracurriculars. I guess she was just looking for a pat way to wrap up the piece, but scolding college women for spending too little time with books and too much time with booze isn’t the cure for any of the ails Mac Donald bemoans. It won’t keep women from being raped or make statistics more accurate. She seems more disturbed by girls getting drunk than the prospect of sexual assault.

The Snip Series: Reprised for Valentine's Day

A couple of years ago, for reasons that I can't remember, if they ever existed, I decided to do an unscientific research project on circumcision. I asked men who'd been circumcised as adults and experienced sex both ways, to write in about which they liked better. My findings, two Valentine's Days ago: 

Of the 79 men who'd experienced sex snipped and unsnipped, 43 said sex improved (55 percent) after their circumcisions, 23 said it went downhill (29 percent), and 13 said there was no change or a mix of pros and cons (16 percent). My numbers don't differ much from the latest research: Based on a sample of 84 men who'd been circumcised as adults for medical reasons, a 2005 article in Urologia Internationalis found a 61 percent satisfaction rate, with 38 percent saying that penile sensation improved after the procedure, 18 percent saying it got worse, and the rest reporting no change. (Read more if you really want to.)

In the meantime, to my surprise the topic has become unfrivolous. Studies have shown that circumcision helps prevent the transmission of HIV and AIDS. In the absence of a vaccine, it looks like the next best thing. (Though apparently only for men--no evidence that it decreases the risk for women.) A South African study found that men who thought that circumcised men enjoy sex more than uncircumcised one were seven times more likely to have the procedure. And so a research team in Uganda conducted a large-scale study: 2,210 men were randomly chosen for the snip; 2,246 served as a control group. They were followed for two years. Results: A sexual satisfaction rate of more than 98 percent for both groups.This is so high that it seems incredible. But Ronald Grey, one of the lead researchers and a Johns Hopkins professor, defends it. He pointed out to me that in know-nothing studies like mine, people who feel strongly are inevitably over-represented, and that could bring the anti-snip folk out in droves. The Urologia study has a different problem: The men in it were circumcised for medical reasons, which means their experiences may not reflect other men's. The Uganda research, Grey thinks, is the first and only effort to track thousands of men who were perfectly healthy etc, before and after. So for the moment, at least, the question seems to be settled: circumcised men shouldn't worry about what their missing. Except there's just one thing: The researchers didn't ask them the relative question--whether sex got better or worse after the snip. Next study. Or maybe there are some things we're better off being left to wonder.

Evolutionary Strippers

Meghan, Anne,

Here's another recent study to add to the pile of questionable evolutionary psychology findings about women's sexual signaling—the evo psychs are obsessed with proving that women on their fertile days actually do experience estrus like other mammals. Sure, you may be sitting around a conference table discussing the last sale's quarter, but really you're just repressing the urge to lift your buttocks like a baboon in heat. Researchers at the University of New Mexico decided to actually look into fertile women's buttocks' movements, so they tracked the tips 18 lap dancers earned at various points during their menstrual cycle (and wouldn't you be pleased if your UNM tuition was helping pay for this study). Surprise! The lap dancers' tips dropped considerably during menstruation, even though, the male researchers point out, "menstruating dancers can wear tampons (with strings clipped short or tucked up) and change them often during heavy flow days, without revealing any visual signs of menstruation." The findings, say the researchers, are "the first direct economic evidence for the existence and importance of estrus in contemporary human females. ...These results have clear implications for human evolution, sexuality, and economics." Or, another way to look at it is that the results have no meaning beyond the fact that contemporary human female lap dancers know g-strings and tampons are not a good combination.