This is a video of New Hampshire State Representative Nancy Elliott, expressing support for HB1590, a bill to make gay marriage illegal (again) in her state. Her main point is that gay marriage involves anal sex, which she then describes as “taking the penis penis of one man and putting it  into the rectum of another and wiggling it around in excrement.” She says “And you have to think…would I allow that to be done to me?”

This is so mind bogglingly, amazingly, monumentally stupid that I just have to rant about it.

First, I wasn’t aware that in New Hampshire, the government had traded democracy for personal dictatorship, and that if an official felt something was unappealing, he or she got to try to make it illegal. Let’s see how that works when we substitute other groups. “Those Muslims, they demand their women wear head coverings and veils. And you have to think…would I allow that to be done to me? No, so let’s make Islam illegal.” or how about “Those hunters, they shot deer. And you have to think…would I allow that to be done to me? Of course not! We’d better make hunting (or better yet, guns) illegal”

Or, to compare apples to only slightly different apples, let’s think about heterosexual marriage. It involves putting the penis of one person in the vagina of another. And vaginas bleed. EWWWWWWWW!!!! I certainly wouldn’t want someone pouring menstrual blood all over my penis, whether or not it’s wiggling.

But that’s only the surface level of how insanely stupid Elliott’s reasoning is. Does she think  only gay men have anal sex? Or perhaps she thinks only gay men are full of shit and that straight women have nice clean rectums. Is she okay with lesbians having legal marriage, since they seem the least likely group to engage in rectum wiggling? Maybe she wants every marriage to be invalidated except those involving lesbians. Or men with ED. They’re safe as well. Side note, penises rarely wiggle during sex, and especially not during anal sex. Her view of the penis makes me feel either sorry for or scared of her husband.

And can anyone explain how making marriage illegal stops anal sex? Or is it just that we don’t want to dignify the “one flesh” union with the name marriage, but it’s okay with her if there’s anal sex outside of marriage? Frankly, this whole Christian idea of “one flesh” is way creepier than anal sex–I keep imagining that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark with all the melting flesh (which is the only way I can see different flesh becoming one, by melting together):

And we don’t want that do we?

Okay, where was I? Oh right…my rant.

Last point, and this one is actually serious. Representative Elliott, marriage is not about sex. Heterosexual marriage, gay marriage, group marriage…it really has nothing to do with sex. For everyone, it’s a civil right, a legal, financial and social method for structuring society, a collection of benefits that number in the hundreds (or over 1,000, depending on how you count), and a culturally recognized declaration of serious intent and future commitment. The fact that your mind is in the gutter and can’t concentrate on anything other than penises wiggling in excrement says a lot about you, but absolutely nothing about marriage, gays or, really, anal sex.

First, we should define our terms.  The game’s back cover states:

There are certain bi-laws [sic] the men follow in life.  These laws have never been written down, but are still binding.  They are called Man Laws and most males have been taught them since childhood.  This is a game that will identify which men actually follow these laws and just how goofy women think they are for doing it.

And:

There are specific rules that women follow in life.  These feminine statutes have never been written down, but are still doctrine.  They are called Woman Rules and most females have been taught them since childhood.  This is a game that will identify which women actually adhere to these rules and just how ridiculous men think they are for doing it.

The game features two types of cards: those declaring Man Laws and/or Woman Rules, and “Case” cards, which present situations in which a Man Law or Woman Rule must be applied.  The “reader” is supposed to read a card and secretly decide if he/she agrees or disagrees with the law/rule.  Other players also write down their answers.  The non-readers try to guess whether the reader agrees or disagrees with the Man Law/Woman Rule, while the reader tries to predict the majority opinion.  Everyone earns points based upon the accuracy of and confidence in his/her guess.  It’s a cross between Apples to Apples, Wits & Wagers, and a root canal.

Since I think Professor Moss and I–and all of you, I hope–will probably disagree with just about every Man Law and Woman Rule, it would probably not be very fun to play the game with its published rules.  So I propose that every Sunday until I either run out of cards or someone cries uncle (or aunt?), I’ll post the text from one or two of these cards and we’ll discuss it (and by discuss, I mean ruthlessly deride–o.k., maybe not, but I’m not ruling anything out).  We take what we write on this blog very seriously, but once in a while it’s nice to kick back and have a bit of fun.  So let the “game” begin!

Man Law – A man shall consider a woman’s “No” to be a “Maybe” and a woman’s “Maybe” to be a “Yes.”

Woman Rule – No woman shall be required to watch “The Three Stooges.”

Man Law: Case #1009 – You’ve just hired a man when you notice that he has a weak handshake.  Since the Man Law states, “A man shall shake hands firmly,” do you…

• a) Ignore it.  He’s still the man you picked for the job.
• b) Point it out to him so he can work on firming it up.
• c) Find an excuse to fire him.  A dead fish handshake is just too creepy.

Woman Rule: Case #0069 – In the bedroom, your man asks you if, “It was good for you too?”  It wasn’t.  Since the Woman Rule states, “A woman must massage a man’s ego,” do you…

a) Smile and tell him it was like nothing you’ve every had before.

b) Admit it was just adequate, but it was all your fault.

c) Be gently honest.  Then ask him to watch Sue Johanson with you.

This may not seem like earth-shattering insight, but it struck me that while we often frame femininity as requiring women to inhabit more and more extreme positions–no amount of thinness, delicacy, etc. is too thin, delicate, etc.–I’m not sure that’s exactly right.  The reality is even worse.  Femininity requires one to fit one’s body, demeanor, etc. into a very narrow set of parameters, and the penalty for going too far in either direction is the same.  A woman who is too thin is shunned.  A beautiful, feminine nose must be small but not too small.  A lady’s voice must be soft and demur but not too girlish, not a mere whisper, etc.  You get the point.

And then I read two things in this month’s Cosmopolitan magazine that made me realize that masculinity is increasingly just as boxed in.  An article entitled “Are You Turning Your Boyfriend into a Girlie Man?” cautions women not to take men along for their mall runs, spa days, and other activities they normally share with their female friends.  Why not?  You will emasculate him and he will eventually resent you, of course.  Oh, and his testosterone level will drop.

What is Cosmo‘s remedy for “chick-ifying” (yes, I’m quoting that) your man?  Try more “gender-neutral” dates.  A convenient sidebar lists some “manly date ideas” (nevermind that manly and gender-neutral are not the same thing): having a pizza taste-off; going dog shopping; cooking a steak dinner together; and having him teach you how to play his favorite video game.  Another sidebar lists “10 Things We Hope You Never See Him Do” and admonishes any man who would dare “expressionist dance to Enya,” “work out to a Tae Bo DVD and do a high kick,” or “bake brownies…wearing an apron and oven mitts.”

A mere 14 pages later, Cosmo‘s “guy guru” advises a woman whose live-in boyfriend won’t cook that although the guy is “being a jerk” she should try to “make him start looking at [cooking] as a guy-friendly activity.”  She could make cooking into a contest, for example, or buy him a grill, or turn cooking into a sex game: “walk into the kitchen wearing nothing but an apron, and tell him that unless he strips down to his skivvies and serves as your sous chef, he gets no dinner…or dessert.”

So let me get this straight.  A modern man is a jerk if he doesn’t do his share of the household cooking, but if he’s going to cook, he must do so in a “manly” way.  Masculinity is increasingly also being defined as a narrow set of (still rigid) parameters rather than an attempt to achieve idealistic extremes.  The box of masculinity has seemingly expanded to allow a few more traits to occupy it (ability to cook, expressions of emotion, concern for fashion and skin/body care, etc.), but any new activity must still retain its core masculine-ness.  Otherwise, we might create an army of girlie men.

The thing that worries me here is not so much that very narrow femininities and masculinities are restrictive for women and men, respectively.  Of course they are that, but gender is always already a straitjacket: I wouldn’t advocate for a tighter one, but we already understand the primary harm of rigid gender norms.  What’s more concerning is that narrow gender mores cause double-damage (especially in the context of heterosexual dating/courtship): they foster insecurity not only about one’s own masculinity/femininity (or lack thereof) but also about the gender-compliance of one’s potential mate.

When women are told, “some guys appreciate going shopping with a girlfriend who will help him pick out nice clothes and legitimately enjoy listening to your Cat Power album in the car.  But that’s not the case for many men,” it’s as bad for women as it is for men because women now face increased pressure not just to find a “manly” man but to find just the right blend of “manly” and “not-too-manly.”  When the same article asks, “what if he wanted you to hang at sports bars, throwing back brewskis in a rumpled tee?” (the answer: “You’d feel your inner girl had been hijacked”) the message is not just that a woman must always remain feminine but that a man would want someone to go to a sports bar with him but would never want her to drink beer in an ill-fitting t-shirt.  Women find themselves measuring not only themselves but their potential mates against the spectrum of femininity, and increasingly men must have just the right amount without going over.  And men do the same with women.  Rather than an expansion of gender norms, then, we have a contraction.  This is not progress.

I realize this discussion is hetero-centric, but 1) American popular culture is ruthlessly heteronormative and 2) gay men, lesbians, and genderqueer folks seem not to face the Goldilocks dilemma.  A wider range of gender expression seems to be socially acceptable in non-heterosexual contexts.  Queer gender may still be a box, but it’s a much bigger box than the one straight America seems to inhabit.

The film raised two issues I want to address. The first is the way in which, once again, an apparently feminist argument is really covering over a certain kind of misogyny that I find appalling and a bit dangerous. The entire documentary presented women as weak and lacking in self esteem, unable to see themselves apart from the male gaze. And while I am certainly not going to deny the pressure on women to conform to ridiculous beauty standards–or the penalties meted out to those who fail–I do think that women are intelligent and self aware, and might actually, on occasion, be able to make decisions about their bodies that are not mindless attempts to placate the patriarchy. To believe that any woman who chooses breast implants or a diet or a tight skirt is doing so because she has been colonized by male patriarchal thinking is as sexist as believing that a woman who doesn’t choose those things is not a real woman.

The cases Rogers chooses also reveals her limited thinking. The women profiled are a girl of perhaps 17 who has the surgery because her sister and a few friends made fun of her, a divorced single woman who specifically stated that she needed the surgery in order to raise her self esteem before getting back to dating and a mother who, upon looking at her vagina in a mirror, bolts from the room in tears because all she sees are the varicose veins from giving birth.

What the show never addresses is that some women seek labiaplasty because their lips are so large that it is uncomfortable to wear a bathing suit or tight clothes, or ride a bike. Other women have hypersensitive lips, so sensitive sex can actually be unpleasant. I suppose these women could “rebel against the patriarchy” by wearing oversized jeans, but I don’t think that if they seek out labiaplasty they are “chopping off bits” to please men! The low point in the show actually came when Rogers interviewed a Muslim woman seeking to be “revirginized” through a hymenoplasty. She explained that if her parents found out she was not a virgin they would kill her and themselves from the shame. Later, the director tearfully muses to the camera how horrible this young woman’s life is. “Her life is going to be absolute crap.” I’m not sure if Rogers means because she’s a strict Muslim, because she’s basing her marriage on a lie, or because of the gential surgery itself. And while it would be wonderful if we lived in a world that celebrated women’s sexuality, I’m not convinced that this woman can’t have a happy life.

My second issue with the show has nothing to do with the show itself, but rather with the broadcast. Considering that the the point of the show is to urge women to become comfortable with their vaginas and see the range in normal vaginas, it makes absolutely no sense to blur the vaginas!!!!

Okay, I understand FCC regulations and such. I realize there was no chance that close up shots of genitalia (especially female genitalia) were ever going to make it onto American television without drastic blurring. I get that. But it wasn’t just genitalia that were blurred. In one scene, we actually watch a labiaplasty being performed and in one shot, the doctor holds up the strip of flesh that he has cut off. They blur the strip of flesh!!!! Yes, because there’s nothing more erotic than detached bits of labia!

The documentary also profiles a sculpture, The Great Wall of Vagina, by Jamie McCartney made up of plaster casts of 200 vaginas. The goal of the sculpture is to show women just how wide a range there is, and how all are beautiful. And of course the sculpture is blurred. Not the casts (inside out vaginas are apparently okay), but the actual sculpture. Sigh. So yes, an entire hour long program designed to make women feel better about their genitals turns into an hour long reminder that genitals are so upsetting that we can’t look at them. Way to support the project!

Here, unblurred for your edification, is a link to  The Great Wall of Vagina. Now go look at your genitals in the mirror.

But more amazing is the fact that fifty-six percent of the respondents said “yes.” However, “because stimulation of the G-spot is supposed to induce orgasm” the scientists concluded that the women were “confused.” Let me correct my analogy of the previous paragraph. That’s like asking a bunch of biologists if evolution is true and when they say “yes” publishing a study that claims their answer proves they’re confused.

Frankly, I’m agnostic on the whole g-spot thing. It might be there. It might just be the internal part of the clitoris. It might be a figment of everyone’s imagination. Whether or not the g-spot exists is not what has me fuming. What infuriates me is that once again, science has decided to tell women what’s really happening with their bodies (Freud and his immature orgasms anyone?). And then the marketplace comes along and tells women how to fix whatever is wrong, or abnormal or different.  The g-spot was originally touted as a good thing–incredibly intense orgasms! But that was so quickly turned into an ideal women were expected to achieve (especially since it seemed to absolve men of any responsibility for helping with a woman’s orgasm) that one of the co-authors of this current study started it because she wanted to spare women the humiliation and stress of not being able to find the g-spot and orgasm on command.  So an additional source of pleasure became another sexual club to beat women with–if she couldn’t orgasm from intercourse, she was defective, repressed or both (again). Sigh.

In the same vein, here’s a video clip of a news show called The Doctors talking about labia bleaching. Yes, seriously. Now granted, the doctor does say that changes in labia color are to be expected, but first of all, she defines pink/brown as “normal” (apparently color change due to childbirth or aging isn’t normal) and second, although she does say that dyes are acidic, she never actually says “Women, don’t do this! This is a ridiculous product and you should be perfectly happy with your labia as long as they work!” (Oh, and apparently the next segment is on “help with embarrassing crankles” but that’s another rant).

And in case you were wondering, here’s a link to the product. Now we can all have pink labia!

1) If it is meant to raise breast cancer awareness, how is it supposed to do so?  The chain-letter-esque Facebook e-mail message that started this “campaign” makes it clear that the first rule of breast cancer awareness club is that no one talks about breast cancer awareness club: “It will be fun to see how long it takes before people wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.”  Presumably women readers are supposed to understand what the color status updates mean but men are not?  How will an in-joke raise breast cancer awareness?  The only way to understand the status messages is to know already why they’re being posted.  If you know that, you’re aware of breast cancer.  This could quickly slip into tautology.

2) How many women need a reminder that breast cancer exists?  As Professor Moss argued back in October, our culture probably already has enough breast cancer awareness.  I suppose one could argue that too much of a good thing is never bad, but in the land of the short attention span that is American popular culture, overexposure tends to diminish a message’s effect.

3) I’m not sure how posting cryptic Facebook status messages is a viable form of activism.  Even if the point was to post something much more explicit and tangible–post a fond memory of a woman in your life who has struggled with or died of breast cancer then link to the URL of a breast cancer research charity, for example–I’m not sure what that would accomplish, other than making the status update authors feel better about themselves.  This “post the color of your bra” nonsense strikes me as a very shallow form of activism at best.

4) What if the joke is on women?  This meme has all the markings of an urban myth or (as I said above) chain letter.  The Facebook call to action even ends with “haha.”  But who is the butt of this joke?  If this whole enterprise is simply supposed to be fun, it’s a very strange brand of fun.  Post something incomprehensible to one’s circle of Facebook friends so that those who are in on the joke can laugh at the puzzlement of others who are not?  Why?  Surely something as serious as breast cancer deserves a less sophomoric public relations strategy.  What if the “joke” here is to see how easy it is to get well-meaning people to do foolish things without thinking them through?  That’s not really funny at all.

5) Am I the only one who finds it oddly ironic that the bra is the focal point of this brouhaha?  For second wave feminists, the bra was a symbol of oppression, neatly embodying the ways in which patriarchal society forces women’s very bodies to conform to its unreasonable demands (in this case, defying gravity itself).  Now the bra is a symbol of empowerment?  In order for the bra to function as a synecdoche for breast cancer–metaphor is the only way to convey meaning in a status update comprised solely of one or two nouns–we must assume that the bra is integral to femininity.  Wasn’t that one of the assumptions second-wave feminists (rightly) decried?

Let me be clear here.  I’m not saying breast cancer isn’t a terrible disease.  Nor would I suggest that we ignore it completely.  However, I wonder if pink ribbons and Facebook status updates are really the best way to educate the public about the grave issues of our time.  I wonder if we’re so concerned about feeling that we have done something for a cause that we take insufficient time to examine the efficacy and propriety of our actions.

I can’t get over the fact that this was made in 1982! Okay, the production values pretty much scream early 80s, but this video is still shocking for so many reasons. First, the men are objectified–dancing around in bikinis, flexing and posing. Second, to make the objectification clear, the singers ogle the men. It isn’t left to chance; the video makes quite clear that women like to look at male bodies and that doing so arouses them. There’s no soft focus, no romantic looks or restrained embraces. This isn’t a video (or a song) about women finding husbands or even boyfriends. They’re finding one night stands!

Finally, the singers who not only take center stage performing but a sexual beings (lying on a heart-shaped bed, reaching out to grope the male dancers) are emphatically not stick thin, overly made up, traditionally attractive women. Almost always, the only way a woman gains the priviledge of being sexually active is by being stunning looking in a very stereotypical way. Thin women with big breasts and full lips, long hair and perfect makeup can desire a man, since there is no chance any man would find their desires unwelcome. And even those women have to be simultaneously desiring subject and desired object, by dressing in skimpy, and again, stereotypically sexy clothing. For example:

Or

And of course:

Gee…I sure am glad we’ve made all this progress. Clearly, we don’t need feminism any more!

So a friend sent me a link to this New York Observer essay. After reading it several times, I’m 99% sure it is a joke, a satire on the way we’ve taken to describing various types of women as cats (for a much funnier and clearly satirical article, see this blog response to the Observer article. The original article describes the behavior of the “cheetah,” a term used to describe “women past the first flush of youth wanting to date or at least fuck ‘above their station.’”

Lovely.

The writer discusses the behavior of the cougar (the 40+ but fabulously kept up woman who only dates/sleeps with much younger men) and the puma (the 30something woman who wants boys 21 or younger) and compares them to the cheetah, who is, apparently, their pathetic cousin in that she is “girl who has recently come out of a relationship that she’s been in for a long time, and she suddenly realizes that getting laid is not as easy as it once was.” In addition, she will attach herself to the drunkest man at a party and essentially date rape him (luring him into sex when he is barely  conscious) and then spend the night, hoping waking up with her will start a relationship.

I’m late to the party, and other bloggers have already taken apart the writer Spencer Morgan and his supposed “irony” (see here, here and here, in addition to the mainly fabulous and razor edge comments to the original article). But I have a few things to add.

First, talk about your lose-lose scenario. The beauty standards for women are extraordinarily high these days–women don’t get to grow old gracefully (or at all), and instead have to spend a small fortune and all their free time to look 10 or 20 years younger than their age. But if they actually accomplish that goal, they don’t get to celebrate; they get mocked and feared by their “prey”–men, who apparently can only get hard for  women 27 or younger, and women who wait demurely in their box until a man opens the lid. So to summarize: women should be strong, fit, beautiful and well dressed…for no reason whatsoever.

Second, I realize (and other writers have pointed out) that the reason men have turned to cats for these degrading nicknames is because women have (or are) “pussies.” But I think there’s another, possibly subconscious, element here. All these big cats live and hunt alone. They don’t live in packs, and after they’re done mating they never see the male cat again. Now, men can puff out their chests all they want and babble about “ball and chain” or the need to be free or even their fear of committment, but the simple truth is that men actually like being married. Men are more likely to remarry after divorce, they’re healthier and happier married than single and have more regular and satisfying sex. But culturally men apparently still need to pretend that they all want to be bachelors as long as possible.

Well, what happens to that fantasy if women won’t play their role of relationship junkies? If a significant number of women take the friends with benefits route, the men will have to step up and actually admit they like relationships, they even like (gasp) marriage. And that would damage some egos. Much better to make it about animalistic and out of control sexuality, a flaw in the women.

So with the other people who ripped into this article, I’d like to say “boo hiss” and “not funny.” And I’d like to call a moratorium on giving women animal names. How about we call them…women?

Let me be perfectly upfront–mostly the appeal of this show is snarking and feeling superior. It might not speak highly of my morals, but sometimes, nothing is more fun that sitting back and mocking people for caring desperately about things I think are silly. This is also, by the way, the reason I love the website Go Fug Yourself.

There is also the pleasure of simply looking at the dresses. Sometimes they’re beautiful and sometimes they’re…not. Either way, wedding dresses are one of the few dramatic, formal pieces of clothing left. And it’s amazing how many variations on “long white dress” designers can manage. The dresses I like best are what I call “stripper wedding” dresses. Apparently, the current fashion in wedding dresses is to show off the goods (maybe to make all the other men jealous?) and the extreme version of that is this dress:

Yes, the bodice of that dress is a lace, see-through corset. What did you wear to your wedding?

However, aside from the fluffy, snarky fashion-y reasons, there is a slightly serious reason for watching the show. Sometimes, surrounded by my feminist friends and working in academia, I forget how differently most of the world thinks about gender issues. Say Yes to the Dress serves as a reminder that for most women–for most of the world–it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that “your wedding is the most important day of your life.” The show normalizes a host of behaviors–being appalled if the finance tags along, grown women describing themselves as princesses or Cinderella–that were actually off my radar as issues. It is unnerving but good to be reminded that traditional views still have a huge sway for most people.

But mostly, it’s about the snarking.

My cell provider divides screensavers into categories, and many of these are banal but predictable (sports, movies, music, etc.).  I was intrigued, however, by two categories in particular: “For Him” and “For Her.”  My blog-radar began to beep uncontrollably.  What, you may ask, is in each category?  The surprising thing isn’t so much the differences in gendered screensavers as the one glaring similarity.

Many of the differences were predictable.  Men are expected to want screensavers from the categories “skulls,” “camoflage” [sic], “gamers & geeks,” “poker,” and, of course, “Lingerie Football League.”  Women, on the other hand, prefer “Hello Kitty,” “Betty Boop,” “butterflies,” “fairies,” “fashion prints,” and “cute and clever.”  Tattoos are apparently gender-neutral.  But so is Playboy, and this gave me pause.

My first thought was: why would a woman want a Playboy screensaver on her cell phone?  I think I know why Sprint would think women might be interested in Playboy periphernalia.  A pre-feminist reading would be that men want to look at the women in Playboy and women want to be the ones looked at.  But even a feminist (or post-feminist, if such a thing exists) reading might validate Sprint’s choice.  A woman might freely choose to identify with the Playboy brand.  Why is it so hard to believe that such a choice can be willingly made?

This gets to a central question to which I’ve never found a satisfactory answer: is it possible for a woman to choose freely to objectify herself, to emulate politically/socially weak women and/or their lifestyles, in short, to assume the role that men traditionally (i.e. under patriarchy) have been said to want women to take while still empowering herself?  Or is any participation in these activities an internalization of the patriarchy?

The recent kerfuffle over Joanna Krupa’s comments about her December 2009 Playboy photoshoot brought this question back to the surface.  I’m not going to add to the thoughtful comments made by bloggers here, here, and here, but the fact that so much ink has been spilled over the subject suggests that it’s not a settled question.

Things become even more complicated when we consider that until very recently, the Playboy empire was run by a woman, Hugh Heffner’s daughter Christie.  A recent New York Times piece lauds Ms. Heffner for her liberal philanthropy and quotes Victor Navasky, chairman of the Colombia Journalism Review, who considers Ms. Heffner “certainly a liberal feminist and a liberal Democrat.”  Is it appropriate to label someone a “feminist” because she’s achieved wealth and success in business, or because of her contributions to liberal and/or feminist political causes, even if she gains her wealth and prestige by trading in retrograde gender stereotypes?

I don’t think this is an easy question to answer.  In fact, I’d like to suggest that it may even be the wrong question to ask.  Perhaps a better question is: what would it look like for a woman to freely choose to pose nude in Playboy, or eschew a career to become a housewife/mother, or pursue a career in prostitution, or take her husband’s name in marriage, or <insert traditional feminine cultural role here>?  How would we know if the choice were freely made?  The debate is often framed as one between feminists who say that no such choice can ever be freely made (or who pay lip service to the idea that free choice is possible but can’t cite a single example of such a choice) and critics of feminism who say that choices are always free and feminism won’t/can’t acknowledge that.

I think it’s much more complicated than that.  I’m not sure I believe it’s possible ever to make a free choice when dealing with matters so deeply culturally codified as gender.  As a man, I face the same sorts of questions if I decide to hold a door open for a woman, or if I believe that it probably is better for a baby to have her mother home with her during the first six months of her infancy.  Do I make these choices or hold these beliefs because I was raised in a patriarchal society or did I arrive at them independently?  What if I have scientific evidence to back my claim (evolutionary biologists love to wax poetic about gender in nature and culture)?  Can the science be separated from the culture that produced it?

Is it possible for Joanna Krupa to make feminist “art” in a magazine like Playboy?  Is it possible for Nina Hartley to make feminist porn?  Even if she herself is a feminist (which might be a matter for debate), and she sets out with the clear intent to make feminist porn, isn’t the visual language of porn always already tainted by its patriarchal roots?  Is it possible to break free from that precedent.  And, once again (and more importantly), what would that look like?  How would we know it when we saw it?