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May 2006

Volume , Number 0
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Media Activism
Alison Weir


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Michelle Swenson


When War Crimes Are Impossible
Norman Solomon


Hotel Satire
Lydia Sargent


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Site Administrator


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David Model


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Bruce E. Levine


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Sonali Kolhatkar


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Julia Kendlbacher


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Gay & Lesbian Community Notes
Michael Bronski


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Chick Lit & Rent for Sex

By Lydia Sargent
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May 2006
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W elcome to Hotel Satire where gals come to learn how to most closely resemble livestock. This month we decided to answer a few letters from gals out there who seem completely unaware of their livestock resemblance, as well as everything else about their God-given roles in the world. 

Dear Hotel Satire Gals (HSG), 

I read a shocking article in the April 5 Boston Globe titled “Online ads offer rooms in return for sex” by Dan Goodin. The article appears, interestingly, squeezed in next to a Macy’s ad for menswear, so you can guess who’s placing the rent for sex ads. Anyway, it seems that there are more than eight million ads per month on this popular website. In Atlanta a room is offered in exchange for “sex and light office duty.” In Los Angeles a “one-bedroom pool house” is offered free to a “girl that is skilled and willing.” In New York City a $700 a month room is available at a discount to a “fit female willing to provide sex.” Another seeks a “female that likes to be nude. Nothing more expected.” A man offering a $350-a-month room in the San Francisco area advertized thusly: “I usually rent the room for 600, but if you are really ticklish and willing to trade being tickled for the extra rent, then we have a deal.” 

Don’t you find this outrageous? Did everybody miss the women’s movement? 

Signed, Enraged 

Dear Man-hater, 

Regarding your question about missing the gal’s lib movement: yes, thankfully, most men certainly missed it and they’re the ones that count. As to the ads: sex outside marriage is ungodly. Need we remind you (and the eight million classified advertisers) that marriage is a beautiful institution that permits guys to get sex, light housekeeping, and occasional office duties on demand in exchange for which gals get to be what God intended: i.e., domestic appendages whose purpose is to service men. If these ads had offered rent in exchange for sex, housekeeping duties, with an “option to marry,” then no problem. 

Dear HSG, 

I read in the New York Times Book Review of March 19 about a new book, Manliness, by Harvard professor of government, Harvey C. Mansfield, who writes such pithy sentences as, “Though it’s clear that women can be manly, it’s just as clear that they are not as manly or as often manly as men.” Huh!? This guy teaches—and at Harvard? 

Reviewer Walter Kirn quotes Mansfield writing such things as  “male and female are innately different” and “Our science rather clumsily confirms the stereotype about manliness….” and feminists “stole all their ideas from Marx [economics] and Nietzsche [nihilism].” Wha? 

Mansfield ends by saying, “So, weaker than men, women have to be indirect to get what they want, they simply can’t insist.” 

Reviewer Kirn tells us, “After making what he believes to be a meal of all these clucking hens that think they’re roosters, Mansfield wipes up the grease by going back to Aristotle and something called ‘philosophical courage,’ which is held out as the manliest manliness yet.” 

Is there no end to the continuous not-so-thinly-veiled misogyny that argues for a gender hierarchy of character traits where women are to shut up and stay in their male-assigned places? 

Signed, Enough Already 

Dear Lesbian, 

Yes, this guy’s for real and it’s a beautiful book and surely no one is more of an expert on manliness than a Harvard professor of government. We concur with Mansfield when he addresses gals’ attempts to be independent, saying, “becoming manlike is a strange way of proving you are independent of men (ladylike would seem to be a better way)” and “men are a mixture of pluck and pride….”

Also, we admire a man who makes his case for men being men and gals being, well, not men by using lots of literary references— Homer and Kipling, for instance—to prove his scientific point. If we could return to Homer’s ever so manly 8th century BC or even Kipling’s 19th, when gals were basically ladylike (i.e., property), everything would be okay. 

Dear HSG, 

I recently watched Brokeback Mountain on DVD as I missed it when it played in our local movie theater. All I have to say is, “What the f___?” And I mean that literally. These guys fall in love with each other after a few months of fishing, camping, herding sheep, and exchanging simple sentences? I don't buy it. Subsequently, they both get married and their wives take care of the home, the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, their husbands, the children, and have jobs to boot. In return they get morose husbands who hardly say more than two words to them. And yet these guys are miserable and unfulfilled, presumably because they only get to go camping and fishing with each other once a year? Is this a joke? 

It’s the women who should be complaining, for chrissakes. Is the Brokeback in the title a sly reference to the misogyny that underlies this filmic crap? When will Hollywood make a movie where women are depicted realistically and of equal importance rather than subsumed and where guys actually behave like human beings, i.e., like women? Then maybe there will be some decent love stories told, same-sex or otherwise. 

Signed, Aaagghhh! 

Dear Sociopath, 

The answer to your question about Hollywood is “Never!” By the way we saw Brokeback Mountain . We enjoyed the horseback riding and sheep herding, but closed our eyes during certain parts, if you catch our drift. The reason we tolerated the same-sex disgustingness is because this film’s message is a good one. It’s not about love, as the director claims, it’s about how today’s gals are driving men crazy and if they don’t stop it, then their men are going to do unspeakable things in a tent in order to teach you gals a lesson. 

Dear HSG, 

I was reading a review in the March 19 Times Sunday Review of Books titled “Chick-Lit Pandemic.” It’s about a collection of essays called Chick Lit . By the way, an example of chick lit is Bridget Jones ’s Diary , which the review describes as being about a woman who is “endearing, hung over, and running late for work.” Co-editor Mallory Young writes that in countries “where feminism hasn’t fully taken root, chick lit might be offering the feminist joys of freedom and the post-feminist joys of consumerism simultaneously.” Excuse me? If feminism hasn't taken root, how can they enjoy post-feminism?  And doesn’t it seem a bit bizarre to be using the words chick lit and feminism in the same sentence? Especially when writing about a genre where the goal for gals is (to be thin enough and beautiful enough) to find the right man? Jeez, at least the 1950s Cherry Ames, Student Nurse series—for all her perky curls and pretty frocks—was about her being a student nurse, not her search for a husband. And why is chick lit a pandemic???????? 

Signed, Not a Farm Animal 

Dear Pinko Terrorist, 

Are you the same person who wrote to us about the March 19 article on manliness? If so, please stop reading the Sunday Times , it’s too liberal and feminist.  

Moving on, the lesson here is that whatever words you use in reference to gals make sure they are derogatory and belittling. Also, remember that all things feminine are, in themselves, derogatory when used as adjectives in reference to all things manly . 

At Hotel Satire, we make sure to equate gals with domestic livestock on a daily basis. Fresh and dried fruits and vegetables are also good gal reference terms (tomatoes, peaches), as are baked goods (cream puff, honey bun, cookie). Lately, inspired by Homer’s use of epithets (swift-footed, rosy-fingered), we are prefacing our references to gals when they read as chickie-litted and to gals when the go to the movies as chickieflicked and gals when they bathe or go swimming as chickie-dipped and gals when they are being ladylike as chickie-zipped.

Lydia Sargent is an actor and playwright. She co-founded Z Magazine and has been on the staff once 1988 
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