Spitting It Out

This column is overdue. It's as overdue as the thank-you notes we should have written Mrs. Goldach for the fruit-powered clocks she gave us for our bat mitzvahs. It's as overdue as Y2K.

Avoiding it has filled us with guilt. Like dodging the Children's International spokespeople on the corner of 115th and Broadway. We feel worse with each brush-off and feigned phone call, rationalizing it to ourselves, "someone else will take care of it." Well, no one else has done it. And so, we take Miriam Datskovsky to the mat.

We'll say one thing for her. It takes guts to write about your sex life in a public forum, especially in a college newspaper where the person sitting next to you in class might have just read about your latest blow in Butler. But the latest Good Word from "Sexplorations," entitled, "Straight Talk From Straight Guys," has left us no choice. It would take a doctoral dissertation to adequately address the heterosexism, sexism, stereotyping, and downright chauvinism that abound in Datskovsky's columns. We've got papers to write, so we're just going to stick to basics.

Apparently, Datskovsky thinks we've come so far as a liberally minded society that her chauvism-loving brand of "feminism" is refreshing-an innovative throwback to a pre-liberated era of male domination. She seems to think it's cute to resuscitate the chauvinism of yesteryear because it's so harmless that it's kitsch. Unlike bell-bottoms or parachute pants, chauvinism is not something to bring back. It's a social predator that sensitive, intelligent men and women are trying to kill.

The trope in Datskovsky's columns is, essentially, that feminism is what you want it to be. In other words, you can be a nominal feminist no matter what. In her column "My Movement, My Choice," Datskovsky drives home the value of choice. She writes, "women should be allowed to choose the life they want to lead." Of course women should, but the mere act of choice does not make one a feminist. Spring breakers who choose to doff their halters and bare their breasts for Girls Gone Wild are indeed making a choice, but that doesn't mean they are feminists. Calling them such is a bastardization of language.

In her latest column, it seems as though Datskovsky fancies herself on the cutting edge by giving voice to the misunderstood "straight guy." As she gets the lowdown on what "they" like, she reveals that this is precisely what she likes to provide. (After relating her to-do list for pleasing the straight male, she ends the column by excusing herself to go put on her miniskirt).

Miriam can like getting her ass slapped and being catcalled. That's the beauty of choice. The issue here is that she sympathizes with chauvinism and doesn't acknowledge the greater implications of choice. She writes: "Straight guys kind of get the shit end of the deal: these kids are often dismissed as assholes and left to fend for themselves." There is a reason why a guy who slaps a girl's ass in public, refuses to talk about sexual issues, and insists on her shaving her vulva are left to fend for themselves. They are not a downtrodden minority, which is why Barnes and Noble, as she laments, does not have a men's studies section. Datskovsky goes on to bemoan the fact that cultural and academic studies aren't interested in "straight guys." Miriam, are you familiar with the Western canon? We aren't relegating the canon to the trash bin of chauvinism. These dead white males have some pretty brilliant things to say. But let's be honest: they are in no way under-represented.

She not only misrepresents the place of the straight males in society but also reduces them to a cartoonish stereotype. We know plenty of straight guys that are not rabid for beer, shaved pussy, and publicly assaulting women. She makes non-aggressive, non-alcoholic, heterosexual men look like flamboyantly gay pool boys. She pokes fun at guys who cry, then laments the fact that our social climate is hostile to sensitive guys. If you must be sexist, at least be consistent.

And here's the worst: our sex columnist hates vaginas. In "Spitting, Swallowing, and Some Other Secrets," Datskovsky says, "I hate receiving it and I love giving it." Miriam may hate receiving oral sex-we are really sorry for her-but she's the sex columnist for Columbia University, and Spectator readers deserve a sex columnist who doesn't believe "pussy [is] so gross." To think of female genitalia as ugly or disgusting is an opinion. This is not, as Datskovsky has led readers to think, an isolated opinion-it implies a great deal about the negative way she regards the female body. Even third-wave feminists would wave off such misogyny.

Jen Spyra is a Barnard College junior majoring in English. Bari Weiss is a Columbia College junior majoring in religion.