Throughout my sophomore year at college I’d pretty steadily hooked up with this guy, let’s call him Blake. Despite the fact that we were on good terms and friends outside of the bedroom, our hook ups only occurred when I was drunk. I’d never really wanted things to go any further with him; he was a sweet kid, but really only as a drunk hook up and fun guy to goof off with.

Things ended when he moved out to L.A. after graduation, but we kept in touch online and through Facebook ever since.

So when I clicked on my Facebook event notification and saw that he’d be back in town in a couple months, my first instinct was to accept the invite to the party in his honor.

That is, until I saw the Facebook wall.

One of his buddies, whom I’ve never met in my life, wrote on the wall: “Hey Blake, you should call that Melanie chick. That alcoholic nympho will probably get so excited she’ll bust a clasp on her straight jacket.”

Wow. What?!

Directly following Doucheface’s comment, Blake responded with a nice “hahahaha.”

Shocked, embarrassed and angry, I confronted Blake about the whole thing. He fed me some baloney about his friend “taking stories and blowing them out of proportion” and brushed me off like it was no big deal. I was not amused. I mean, this was not some private issue; my name was being slandered in a very public place. Read More »

There are a few universal truths that everyone who has left their house in the last thirty years are aware of. One is that airplane travel will never be known for the stellar in-flight snacks. Another is that Paris Hilton will never be a productive member of society. A third truth is that nobody will ever be able to agree about Ann Coulter, and her shock-jock style of being a political pundit.

Personally, while I don’t agree with all of her views, I am a fan of Ann Coulter. I admire her courage to speak her mind without fear of consequence, and her strength to continue putting forth her opinion boldly even when a vast majority of Americans absolutely cannot stand her. I disagree with her on some of her stances, and my views tend to be less extreme than hers, but overall I support her whole-heartedly. So, with that in mind, I’m putting forth an opposing argument to the accusation that Ann Coulter is the anti-feminist.

In the early 1900s, when suffragettes were working tirelessly to grant women the right to vote, they were often treated horrendously by the male-dominated world around them. They were jailed for their protests, and force-fed when they went on hunger strikes to protest their treatment. The suffragettes were treated as deviants by society, and derided as being radical lunatics trying to usurp male authority. While they had a base of support from women, they were despised by male authority figures, and other women turned against them. Read More »

We all know about those horrible, nasty and hateful breakups. Either we’ve gone through one, or we’ve comforted a friend who has. We’ve seen and heard about the batsh*t things that crazy exes will do out of jealousy, spite and heartbreak.

It hurts enough to sever ties with someone who knew every intimate detail about you, but imagine those private moments, discussions and pictures becoming public knowledge at the hands of someone you loved.

Men.Style.com recently ran a story in its Details forum concerning the topic of revenge porn, defined by UrbanDictionary.com as “homemade porn uploaded by an ex-girlfriend or (usually) ex-boyfriend after particularly vicious breakup as a means of humiliating the ex.” While the writer, Richard Morgan, cautions against revenge porn lest anyone involved (usually the boyfriend) suffer legal consequences, the casual manner in which he describes revenge porn does not fully clarify just how damaging this growing trend can be.

An influx of lawsuits concerning variations of revenge porn (homemade sex tapes posted on internet porn forums, nude pictures uploaded to MySpace accounts, distribution of homemade DVD’s) has sparked interest and concern in law-makers, who feel that new laws should be established to regulate the final legal frontier: the Internet. Details questions the necessity of criminalizing revenge porn, ignoring the long reaching effects it could have on a victim and, therefore, trivializing the entire issue. Read More »

The internet was the enabler behind most of my middle school drama.

The enigmatic anonymity that the web provides was a big green light for mean teenagers to harass other mean teenagers without the consequences of face-to-face confrontations. And it was this online shield that facilitated the worst culprit behind my pubescent angst: the fake screenname.

Fake screennames were the best way to tear your enemy (or popular best friend) apart incognito. You could lash out ruthlessly, ruin lives and then delete said screenname without being linked to any of the drama that would surely ensue.

I will never forget my most potent digital nemesis: ClawYourEyesOut. ClawYourEyesOut not only harassed me on a nightly basis with the unoriginal “slut,” “bitch” name-calling. He/she also IMed my adorable little boyfriend Brad and my bitchy, gullible friends and spread nasty rumors which quickly turned them against me.

And even though ClawYourEyesOut brutally defamed my reputation, there was nothing I could do about it. To this day, ClawYourEyesOut’s identity still eludes me.

But thanks to two female Yale Law School grads—who suffered a magnified version of my ClawYourEyesOut saga, online anonymity may not be such an impenetrable issue in the future.

The two women are trying to uncover the identity of 28 pseudonyms behind discussion board posts that spread rumors about their academic records, sexuality and even threatened rape. Read More »