The tides of feminism are changing. The era of Andrea Dworkin as the dowdy, man-hating posterwoman for feminism has faded. And while academic discourse may suffer from the lack of her extreme, yet insightful, positions, the people in charge of feminism's PR are going to have a much easier job.
More and more women are beginning to view sex against a historical pattern of puritanical denial in collusion with political and religious hypocrisy. The Catholic Church has declared feminism (the heretical idea that women are equal) anathema from the Church. Under Bush, we saw a veterinarian appointed as the head of the FDA's Office of Women's Health, and watched in horror as the Supreme Court protected certain types of gender-based pay discrimination (Hells yeah! for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009).
I, for one, am tired of the Ted Haggards of the world raging against sex so loudly that they hope we just won't notice when they leave their gilded houses of worship to go fuck their mistresses, gay escorts, or child victims. Besides, look at the mess these douche bags* left us with. A generation of kids who don't know how to satisfy their partners, or how to put a freaking condom on! In addition to contributing to a surge in the divorce rate over the next 20 years, these kids will grow up to be vectors for those STIs that are transmitted without penetration, lovely little presents like HPV. Presents, I might add, we wouldn't have to deal with at all, if the people who brought us Sex Ed for Idiots Who Want To Hide Their Heads in the Sand, hadn't fought against federally funded vaccinations - because they were so afraid that if six-year olds were given a vaccine that might all but wipe out cervical cancer, it might encourage the little devils to have sex! To paraphrase the immortal concept voiced by Gloria Steinem, if it were a vaccine that could wipe out prostate cancer, the federal government would have used it as a reason to push through socialized health care.
With that pre-requisite rant out the way (i want to give you a fair idea of what you're getting into here), I'd like to end on a lighter note by writing a few words about a woman I admire, Jenna Jameson (because it's my blog, and I've always wanted to express my Pro-Sex feminist warm fuzzies for her). I admire Jenna Jameson, not because I find her beautiful or talented (I don't, I prefer my porn to be more of the Stunt Girl variety), but because of her excellent business acumen. She's the porn world's answer to Madonna. After going rogue, Jameson managed to create a woman-owned, woman-run sexual empire. Forbes tapped her (yes, intended) for their Celebrity 100 list in 2005 because her holding company raked in $30 million that year. Couple that tidbit with the fact that she hadn't slept with anyone other than her husband, in seven years, and even Bill O'Reilly had to be impressed. Because really, that's one smart cookie.
Think about it ladies (okay, so feminists don't typically use the word "ladies", but in addition to being a Pro-Sex feminist, I'm also a cranky and contrarian curmudgeon), $30 million a year for something you probably do anyway: sleep with your partner and videotape it . (Don't try to deny it - X-Tube and You-Porn didn't create all that content themselves.) Jameson retired earlier this year, but by all accounts, still has enough footage of her less-haggard visage to put out two films a year, for the next six years. Given the fact that she already looks like a cadaver sporting surgically implanted casaba melons, the potential income is astounding. I'd like that kind of retirement plan.
* So "douche bag" isn't technically a part of the Official Feminist Lexicon, but it should be. It's so perfect. A douchebag is like the appendix of feminine hygiene, it serves no purpose other than to collect the effluvia of what is most likely a ph wrecking substanc, AKA bad juju; known to coincide with occurences of douchebaggery.
