Being Amber Rhea

Via Melissa (I would never read Gawker Media blogs if it weren’t for her!), powerful words from someone called Slut Machine, on Jezebel:

I’m pissed. It’s an anger that’s been on a slow boil that’s beginning to bubble over, and at this point, there’s no putting a lid on it. I’ve been writing about sex on a pretty public platform for some time now, at first anonymously, and then under my real name. I’ve had to endure ignorant assumptions and cheap shots made about my looks, my weight, my vagina, my tits, my sexual health, my mental health, my morality, my character — and all for what? Being honest? For liking sex? I’ve poured my guts out all over my keyboard, and I’m well aware that that invites criticism, particularly on the internet, where people think they can say whatever the fuck they please — in the most offensive manner possible that they would never employ in real life — with impunity because they’re protected behind a shroud of anonymity. It’s frustrating. And lemme tell you, I am so sick of people telling me, “You write about sex and personal issues. You have to accept that people will sling insults.” Fuck. That. Shit. I don’t have to accept it. I refuse to accept it. Mostly because I know that this wouldn’t happen if I were a man.

Rock on, lady! I can relate. (Today’s understatement.)

And yeah, this is related to the last post because it’s yet another manifestation of the sexual double standard and bullshit sexism in our society. (I kind of hate whenever I type “in our society,” because it reminds me of freshman year of college when my friend Kira and I used to hang out in Washington Square Park between classes with this very disaffected emo guy who was in a punk band, and one time Kira and I went to see them play and their music was all screaming commentary, and one song was just repeating “society” and “brutality” over and over, and Kira said, “I can’t listen to songs with the word ’society’ in them.” But really, there’s no other way to put it that I can think of.)

Apostate and I have had our disagreements, and I imagine we’ll continue to do so. Some of what she’s written (especially wrt sex workers’ rights) has made me downright livid. But I am nodding my head in 100% agreement with this:

It’s very easy to trivialize discriminatory attitudes against women’s sexuality, because who cares about your right to screw around while people are dying!

You know, someone’s always dying. It’s not our job as feminists to make women feel bad for focusing on what matters to them and what makes it harder for them to live in this male-dominated world on a day to day basis. Anti-feminists are doing a terrific job on that without our help.

Black civil rights workers are not going to take a break from their earth-shakingly important work and tell us about sexist condom commercials and sexist media in general. They’re not going to point out all the videos out there that our young women’s male peers make about how screamingly funny rape is. But someone needs to.

We’re well-aware that our concerns always come last. It’s why women are self-conscious about calling themselves feminists. It’s very trivial to worry about your body and your safety while other people are dying. After all, you’re a privileged white woman. And black men get raped in prison too! Who cares what your concerns are, and never mind that you’re still a second class citizen even if higher on the totem pole than the people who are dying.

This is another sneaky technique to put women last. This is yet another way to confuse women about themselves, about their place in the world, about their importance.

To put it another way (via Mint Jelly)…

Unless you’re a female you just don’t get the experience of catcalls and “playful” followers and hard-held stares. How men pretend that suddenly the whole world is small town america, - they’re just saying hi, they’re just being friendly, women like it they say, when they know full well that’s not what they’re doing and that’s why they’re shouting from cars, waiting outside of convenience stores and following you home from the mall. If a man gave them the finger, they wouldn’t say, “oh yeah! is that what you want baby!?”

If I were president (i know, i know) there would be a recipe for immediate corporal punishment: grab throat, throw to ground, beatings until there is sufficient whimpering, vary ingredients and amounts according to need. And one would be allowed to walk with a spark plug in hand, to smash the windows of offending men in vehicles who think that slowing down and pacing you while you walk is cute.

There would be public service messages on television, with rainbow graphics and shiny faces telling you to not be such an idiot all the time.

That’s just how I feel. If my humanity isn’t acknowledged I will have to act like a thing, a monster. Women don’t get credit for the courage they find and the normalcy and humor they apply to it. It takes balls to be a girl, to walk around being a girl.

Couldn’t have said it better.

Note: As I’ve mentioned before, I do dislike the use of “female” as a noun to refer to women; but other than that slight nit-pick, this is brill.

Perfect example of male privilege, from a commenter on Jenny’s blog:

I said something about how it’s evident to me that sexism still exists in our society because women get cat-called and belittled and judged on their looks by strangers, and he said…

“Can’t you just yell back at them? There’s nothing stopping you from yelling back at them! You can do it too!”

:|

I cannot tell you how many times I have had a similar exchange with some dude. My reaction has gone from flustered to outraged to nonplussed and now to a feeling I can describe only as, “Would you prefer to be kicked in the pants, or the head? Here, just sign on the dotted line.”

Jenny has written another post that makes me want to do a little happy dance over the fact that she finally has a blog.

An excerpt from Sex, Guys, and Videotape:

Similarly, my experience on the way home last night can be written off as No Big Deal. It’s harmless, right? Silly, right? There’s nothing wrong with being called beautiful, right? Wrong. And, honestly, I do write off situations like this pretty much every day.

Which makes me part of the problem.

I put it to you, dear readers: How does a feminist respond firmly and unequivocally to this type of innate sexism without escalating a situation? When you cannot (and really should not) take the time to explain the inappropriate and harmful nature of these comments, what is a productive response? I’m at a loss.

Rusty and I were talking about this the other day. I can’t remember the specific thing we were talking about… something like a woman being verbally harassed while walking down the street, but it wasn’t that. Whatever it was, it was something asshole-ish, and Rusty said something like, “He turned it into a situation no one should have to experience.”

And I said, “But see, the thing is, women experience shit like that all the time. So much so that, unfortunately, we tend to forget how fucked up it really is.” Or to put it another way: of course it was a situation no one should have to experience. But women experience such situations on a daily basis, and no one (including the women, half the time) bats an eye.

And how fucked up is THAT??

Then I described a blog post I read a while back (too lazy to search for it right now, might do so tomorrow though) written by a guy who didn’t used to consider himself a feminist… you know the type, women have the vote and can get jobs and wear pants, so why do we need feminism anymore, and anyway shouldn’t it be called humanism, because otherwise that’s sexist. But then one day he was talking with a female friend of his and she was complaining about some asshole who’d just cat-called to her or something, and he was OUTRAGED, and was outraged that SHE wasn’t MORE outraged. And she was like, “Um, yeah, it sucks, but that happens to me all the freaking time” and that was when the light bulb went on over his head that, hello, feminism is VERY necessary! (Hello, male privilege… ah, how weird it must be NOT to know that women put up with this shit all the time and to truly believe that feminism’s work is done.)

Do we, as women, sometimes forget that men don’t know all the shit we put up with?

Maybe… but also part of it is, it’s not as easy as just calling them on it all the time, because 1) then we’re responsible for policing other adults’ behavior; 2) we’re humorless hairy-legged bitches if we do; 3) often there is the real threat of violence if we do; 4) we’d never have time to get anything else done.

So, what do we do, indeed? I don’t know. I’ve asked this question many times before and it sucks because I just don’t know.

And until more men have that light bulb go on over their heads, of the bind women are truly in with this stuff, unfortunately I think I’ll have to keep wondering (and trying to flip the switch myself, if possible…).

Octogalore, in a comment on Ren’s site, in response to a commenter called JZ:

You also say: “Having money is also weakly empowering.” There are two serious problems with that.

First, it’s an incredibly privileged statement. Can you imagine how single moms who cannot pay their food/electricity would feel about how weakly they could be empowered by money?

Secondly, it’s an antifeminist statement. Telling women how unpowerful money is, and how much more rewarding other nonmonetary rewards are, is a powertool of the patriarchy.

Know why? Because the political positions that we don’t have the resumes for (because we chose not to pursue wage-earning), the VP jobs at companies who have the power to promote women (or not), the media leaders who have a role in what images of women to put forward? Guess who gets those if the gals back off? Wanna tell them how weakly empowered they are?

I could not agree more.

Octogalore is back in the blogging game after a hiatus, and one line in particular from her post today resonated with me:

“Often, as women, we leave ourselves last in our efforts to be about everything.”

I don’t identify with the entire post, but that line really struck me. I’m just going to repost what I said in a comment there…

This is something I struggle with a lot. And I think it’s partly due to how women are socialized: as caretakers. We are socialized to put others’ needs ahead of our own, and told this is a virtue. And when you’ve been getting that message from day 1, it’s pretty damn hard to resist.

But I try. I push back against those feelings that tell me I’m selfish if I take care of myself or if I don’t donate to every cause or volunteer on every committee or whatever.

And to be honest this is why I had to take a step back from certain corners of the blogosphere. It was making me feel too guilty, reading about all these causes I wasn’t involved in, and the not so subtle undertone of being a bad person if I wasn’t vocal for every cause out there.

—

This part is true too, and I get pissed off at how it’s supposedly so “hypocritical” to point out the glaringly obvious… well, hypocritical from a male liberal definition, of course. It’s funny (not ha-ha funny) how quickly the mask comes off, isn’t it?

How many guys do you know in 2-income households who are doing maybe 10-30% of the household/childcare work and don’t feel concerned in the slightest? Or, how many guys feel like if they are making money and changing the occasional diaper or attending the occasional Little League game, they don’t need to keep themselves in shape? Guys who wear your bra size but look pityingly at your miked Lean Cuisine? OK, you can stop counting now.

Mm-hmm. Now somebody will come out of the woodwork and tell me I’m being antithetical to feminism and a reverse sexist, and this is why they call themselves a humanist not a feminist, and blah blah.

But it’s true. And we’ve gotta keep pushing against that shit so it’s NOT the norm. Not that guys should feel über-stressed all the time either. But it’s not fair to have different expectations for men and women parents. That’s called a double standard, after all.

BNG keeps crankin’ out the good stuff. As such, I keep giving them a crap-ton of pingbacks.

Most recently, there’s this post from existentialhedonist, entitled The media, gender, and representation:

I think the media’s obsession with Kristen’s childhood ties directly into the prohibitionists’ habit of using the term “girls” when referring to sex workers who are between 18 and 28. It seems to be a form of infantilizing women when they exercise their sexual and economic autonomy. It reminds me of the Swedish model, and it makes me want to wretch.

How about talking about her strength in overcoming a challenging youth to grow up and land a job that paid her for one hour more than most of her critics will see in a month? How about talking about her strength in the face of this onslaught of media attention and scrutiny? How she hasn’t cowered off into some corner- how she has kept her myspace page up, and how so many of the comments there are full of love and support in the face of this?

Kristen deserves to be seen for the amazing and strong woman she is. The obsession with her childhood is simply a cheap ploy to diminish the inherent fortitude of a person who faces challenges head on and rises above and beyond to become a creative entrepreneur beholden to nobody but herself. This is the hallmark of successful sex workers everywhere, and something that must be quashed by society lest more of us become such entrepreneurs.

I think it is important for the media and people like Farley to portray us as broken and weak people. It is ironic that some of them actually do this in the name of “feminism.” The truth is that the “abused girl” thing has to be played up to create a smokescreen to hide the reality: sex workers like Kristen don’t need you or anyone else to validate them. That is power. And that is dangerous.

Check it out.

Interestingly (or not), a lot of regular “media critic” sites have been deafeningly silent on this whole thing.

From Kerry Howley, senior editor at Reason magazine:

Everyone seems to assume that legalizing sex work will reinforce all sorts of ugly cultural phenomena women struggle against all the time. Writes one commenter at Feministing, “I’m politically liberal, openly feminist, and opposed to sex work precisely” because of “patriarchy” and “heterosexuality issues.”

I find this incoherent precisely because I share all the poster’s intuitions about problematic cultural norms. Of course sexism restricts autonomy in all sorts of ways that deserve consideration when discussing the prevalence of prostitution or the choice to enter sex work. Of course it’s deplorable that sexually adventurous young women are constantly told they are “degrading themselves” by seeking out various experiences, that every bit of enjoyment eats away at some secret store of purity. This whole tradition–the idea that women need be preserved in glass so as not to “ruin” themselves, lest they diminish their sexual value by “giving it away”–restricts the lived autonomy of women in ways I can’t even begin to articulate. None of the slut-shaming makes sense unless you assume women live to give themselves to men in their purest possible form.

If you find all of these cultural pathologies unfortunate, what is the public policy you should prefer? It seems to me that it is not the policy that deems it a crime against the American people to open your legs. Anti-prostitution laws add a layer of legal sanction to all of our worst intuitions about the treatment of sexually independent women; they strengthen and validate the idea that women who bed men with any frequency are sick, marginal, pariahs.

Seriously, again with this??

If you are pro-pornography or pro-prostitution, you are not a feminist. The concept behind feminism is equality for women and girls, and the eradication of violence against women. The sex industry in all its forms exists as a tool of violence against women and more than that, a tool to keep women subjugated and ‘in their place’. If you support a system which for the overwhelming majority destroys women and girls, you are not a feminist.

For. Fuck’s. Sake.

*headdesk*

Scratch that; submitted with the only comment being, “Are you fucking kidding me??”

DEAR ABBY: There seems to be an awful lot of women exposing themselves on the Internet in graphic sexual fashion. My wife says that men degrade themselves by looking at them.

My question to you is, what is more degrading? Looking at them, or women exposing themselves? — WONDERING IN PUYALLUP, WASH.

DEAR WONDERING: For a woman to post graphic sexual images for people she doesn’t know to view strikes me as more degrading because it indicates that she thinks she has little else to offer.

However, for a married man to view those images could also be considered degrading — and threatening — to his wife. Many women have written to me because their husbands spend more time looking at porn on the Internet than having a sex life in their own bedroom. In other words, the practice became an addiction.

*headdesk*

Again, I ask, “Why oh WHY do so many people persist in the idiotic belief that taking nude photos of yourself means you have no self-respect??”

I do not understand.

[Via Dacia]

This is an updated video, a follow-up to the one I posted yesterday. Watch it!

[Via Pro-Porn Activism]

I don’t have time for much of anything other than work today, but I do want to post something real quick in response to a discussion at Ren’s place. Over there, I said:

Octo,
As I said before, I agree w/ a lot of what you are saying re: the gendered tilt to “sex week” being problematic. In fact, we agree on much more than we disagree on here, so I don’t want it to seem like I’m nit-picking. But this did irritate me a little:

And “age is just a number” notwithstanding, college girls and guys aren’t that savvy about longer term issues.

Now I realize I have this thing where I personalize everything. I’m not sure how to stop doing that, or even if I *should* stop - but what it boils down to is, when I see a general statement made that doesn’t apply to me, a little red flag goes up, because that means the general statement isn’t so general. And sure, I could be an outlier, and there is value in speaking in generalities if they apply to a large majority - I certainly understand that. And yet, that statement rankles. When I was in college, I absolutely was savvy about longer-term issues, and I was very annoyed and insulted by people assuming I wasn’t, simply because of my age or because I was in college.

I really like and respect Octogalore and so I didn’t snap at her or anything. I want to understand where she’s coming from. But it might end up being a fundamental difference in perspective, and I do take umbrage at the suggestion of college girls being “impressionable” and, basically, infantilized.

This is something that always bugged the shit out of me in college, the way some people insisted on treating college students like high school students in slightly bigger bodies. (I saw more of this at UGA than at NYU, but I have no doubt it happens to a degree at every college.) I was always like, goddammit, college students are adults! We are over 18. Hence, ADULTS. So fucking treat us like adults!! If you continually treat college students as NOT adults, what good does that do? It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yeah, some people come from sheltered backgrounds. But you know what? They’ve gotta grow up and learn how to deal in the real world at some point. So quit with the coddling, because it’s fucking offensive!

I may have even blogged this sentiment when I was in college, because I’ve had my blog that long.

As for this Yale Sex Week business, hey, Gail Dines, did you even bother to look at the schedule? The “Who Looks Most Like a Vivid Girl” contest contest is one part of a full week of diverse programming. As in many situations, parts of the programming might not be nearly as “progressive” as they are marketed to be. Color me skeptical. And yeah, if I were at Yale, that contest would likely stick in my craw. But as far as the actual women involved, it all boils back down to a pretty simple concept for me. I don’t have to like or endorse or sing the praises of every woman’s choice. DUH. But see the thing is, other women don’t NEED my approval to do whatever it is they want to do, and vice versa.

From the perennially awesome folks at SPARK! Reproductive Justice Now (formerly Georgians for Choice) comes a video about stupid HB526:

So far there’s only one comment on the YouTube page (let’s fix that) and it’s from some fool who says the following:

What is wrong with the state giving back parental rights to parents? It is not up to a clinic to decide how to raise and protect our children.

Right, because it’s up to the government to decide how to raise and protect our children.

I already posted a quote of the day, so this one will have to be for tomorrow (let’s just pretend I do these on a regular basis). Susan Mernit has written a seriously kick-ass BlogHer post, and really I should just say this is the post of the day instead of the quote of the day, because it’s hard to choose an excerpt.

I was going to write a post, at my friend Viviane’s urging, about women sex bloggers who are persecuted and their blogs shut down because their frankness offends members of their extended real world community, but I think the real issue we need to talk about is the high price women are made to pay, again and again, both for being sexual and for speaking their mind.

It’s not about the blogs, you see, it’s about the right for complete self expression. In other words, it’s about being silenced.

In my view, as much as we have strong women coming forth to share their experiences and beliefs, the culture at large is still making those who don’t fit the standard models—whether because of their sexual practices or their social mores—pay a price, and this is particularly true for women.

This kinda coincides with my latest Download Squad post (note the warning label is still intact, with irony apparently lost), but Susan is more eloquent. Read the whole thing. Oh, and she mentions Dacia and Paris Hilton one right after the other. Ha!

(But Susan, one question… Dave Winer is your friend? Really? Glad you guys get along, but geez, personally I cannot be friends with guys who say shit like, “Women are always accusing men of being sexist!” Cue tiny violin, take 5,676,372.)

Guess I need to add a #8 to this list…

Just because someone says it’s his/her CHOICE to be a bank robber, a terrorist, a homicidal killer, a prostitute, a porn industry worker…. that makes the CHOICE and that “profession” acceptable and legitimate?? Some may have obvious and tangible negative consequences on others, but worse are those with subtle, insidious, and intangible negative consequences. Wake up!

The stupid! It burrrrnnnnnssss!!

You see? THIS is yet another example of why I don’t read the so-called “A-List” blogs. (And let’s not even get started on the even more “mainstream” ones like Daily Kos. Or the mainstream media such as the New York goddamn Times. Just fuck me in the ass with a football bat already, as Queer Dewd would say.)

Fortunately, Ren is going to make an “arguments about sex work” Bingo card. I can’t wait to see it.

Also, to be fair (I guess), some of the other commenters on the Feministe post give the dumbass equation of “sex worker” == “terrorist” a good dressing down. Unfortunately, even most of them still seem hung up on “sex worker” == “victim,” which isn’t a whole lot better. They seem to think Bob Herbert is generally A-okay. And the concern trolls going on and on about how they’re so worried about sex workers spreading STIs makes me lose my appetite.

People and their hang-ups… GOD!

Generally, I’m not real big on New Year’s resolutions (although Rusty and I do have a joint resolution [har] this year to recycle more, and in fact I’m about to go to Target to buy some recycling container thingies), but Figleaf has a resolution I can definitely get behind:

Oh yeah, and *especially* for those of us who are heterosexual, as long as we’re exploring, let’s explore some new ways to be healthy, happy, and horny-together human beings without dragging quite so many misery-inducing stereotypes into bed with us.

As a precursor to my eventual full book review of Robert Jensen’s Getting Off, I wanted to post an excerpt from the chapter entitled “Pornography as a Mirror,” in which Jensen colorfully describes scenes from several porn movies in order to drive home the point of how awful and misogynistic all porn is.

With all the porn Jensen has watched (for research purposes, you understand), one can only assume that he summarized these particular movies because they’re the most effective at validating his thesis - and the most likely to garner a reaction of shock from readers. So what’s the deal with this…?

A scene from Delusional, a 2000 release from Vivid:

Lindsay, the film’s main character, is a woman slow to return to dating after she caught her husband cheating on her. She says she is waiting for the right man - a sensitive man - to come along. Her male coworker, Randy, clearly would like to be that man but must wait as Lindsay explores other sexual experiences, first with a woman named Alex, whom she meets online and assumes is a man. Later, after Alex and Lindsay have sex with a man in the kitchen of a restaurant, Lindsay is finally ready to accept Randy’s affection. He takes her home and tells her, “I’ll always be there for your no matter what. I just want to look out for you.” Lindsay lets down her defenses, and they embrace.

After kissing and removing their clothes, Lindsay begins oral sex on Randy while on her knees on the couch, and he then performs oral sex on her while she lies on the couch. They then have intercourse, with Lindsay saying, “Fuck me, fuck me, please” and “I have two fingers in my ass - do you like that?” This leads to the usual progression of positions: She is on top of him while he sits on the couch, and then he enters her vaginally from behind before he asks, “Do you want me to fuck you in the ass?” She answers in the affirmative. “Stick it in my ass,” she says. “I love the way you slide into my asshole. … Deep in my ass. … I’m coming on your cock in my ass.” After two minutes of anal intercourse, the scene ends with him masturbating and ejaculating on her breasts.

So, wait. Where’s the degrading part in that scene?

It just sounds like sex. And by some people’s standards, pretty vanilla sex. Even for people who would consider it at the kinky end of their personal spectrum, due to the dirty talk and assplay, I really can’t imagine anyone finding it degrading who didn’t have bigger hang-ups about sex in general. In fact, the only part of that excerpt that I see as degrading to women in any way is this:

Lindsay lets down her defenses

Note, that’s not a line from the movie. Those are Jensen’s chosen words to describe the onscreen events. I find it very telling that he uses language which casts the woman in the passive role, and the man in an active, even conquering role, with the implication of sex being a conquest and women having “defenses” which must be “broken down” by men.

This is, of course, the sexual script that’s reinforced by the dominant culture day in and day out, to the detriment of everyone. This skewed view of gender roles (as Figleaf would say, women as the “no-sex” class) is exactly what Jensen claims to be opposing. Yet with a few words, he’s revealed volumes about how entrenched he still is in sex-negative cultural norms.

I linked to Dacia’s latest post about “feminist porn” in my del.cio.us links yesterday, but I had such a “yes yes YES that’s IT!” reaction to it that I feel compelled to quote liberally here…

To me, making feminist porn is not about what is actually shown on screen and much more about what is happening on the production end of things. This is very clearly an expression of my years working in the sex industry and working for sex workers’ rights, but like Petra says in the beginning of this paragraph, “our tastes on what we find sexy in the bedroom or on film differ.” We can have a whole argument about the nurture and nature of “taste” - but I don’t think liking or not liking specific acts can make or break a feminist.

I don’t care if porn shows a woman masturbating by herself (like in many of the Abby Winters photo sets and videos), a woman fucking a guy with a strap-on (like in The Bi Apple, a woman enthusiastically sucking cock (like in Erika’s films), or a pregnant woman getting fucked up the ass with a baseball bat (like in Belladonna’s Fucking Girls Again). What I do care about is: does that performer want to be there? Is the director/producer respecting her needs and paying her appropriately? Did she get blindsided by requests for acts she doesn’t want to do?

The answers to those questions determine whether or not the porn is feminist, sex-positive, and ethical for me, not what is happening on screen.

Do you get it now, people? Do you? I still do not know why this is a difficult concept, but clearly it is. And so these things must continue to be said, emphatically.

I might write more about this later. I need to crawl into bed now, though, because I got up at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

In a recent post, Figleaf says:

And then as soon as I realized that it occurred to me that maybe that’s why there’s such a huge, huge, huge disconnect between, say, Ren or Amber Rhea and their critics. The *external end result* of Ren’s work may or may not appear to have any agency for women but she clearly, and correctly, feels an incredible amount of agency during its *production.* The *external end result* of pole dancing may be a bunch of lolmenz going “hur hur lukkit hur shaken em ta-tas! On a polez!” but she clearly and correctly feels an incredible amount of agency while she’s doing it.

Anyway, under such circumstances it’s possible for both pro-porn performers and anti-porn critics could be 100% right *from their perspectives* (though in practice I’m not sure anyone can be 100% right about anything.) They’d just happen to be right about *totally different things.* Which would, of course, account for some of the vitriol that’s spilled in, um, let’s call it debate between the two sides.

I think he’s got something there. Maybe in these seemingly endless “debates,” a big problem is we’re talking about two different things. One side frames it in terms of the viewer/consumer, and the other frames it in terms of the actor/producer.

If the issue is agency, obviously I think it makes much more sense to focus on the latter. But maybe we can agree that this is what we’re disagreeing on, and go from there.

Would write more about this, but I’m on vacation and on a mission to track down some family history.

First Duane sent me this cartoon, and then I saw it at Feministe. I’ve been meaning to post it, because it kicks ass.

Heh.

There has been a whole lot of awesomeness at Bound, Not Gagged lately (in addition to their usual awesomeness, that is), in response to Melissa Farley’s latest piece of “research.” I urge everyone to go read all the good stuff there, listen, think, and learn.

There’s so much kick-ass writing there that it’s almost impossible to choose a blockquote representative of the whole. But Amanda really nails it with this post, so I give you the following quotage:

Today’s feminists rail against prostitution. They reduce women to their orifices and make judgments based on sexual activity - the exact same crime they accuse all men of doing to them. I fail to see the difference. One person who bases my value as a woman on my baby-making abilities and purity is pretty much the same as any other person who does - regardless of gender.