Marginal Notes

Fool's Gold

I have played various online games - MMORPGs - from the quaint Runescape to the profit-driven World of Warcraft. While I was aware that people sold high-level characters on EBay, I have just learned about "gold farmers" via We Make Money Not Art.

While the world is replete with examples of the wasteful nature of capitalism, the phenomenon of "gold farmers" must be one of the clearest illustrations of the theatre of the absurd we now find ourselves in as a result of our autistic economic system.

Imagine a world where cheap labour is used to produce virtual currency to sell for real dollars to consumers in the West for virtual accumulation and consumption...

Ge Jin, a 30-year-old Shanghai native and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego, has shot Gold Farmers, a documentary that delves into the background and lives of Chinese gold farmers. As the Gold Farmers' website explains:

Multiplayer online games have given rise to a virtual economy, in which all kinds of virtual assets from in-game currency, magic shield to whole characters are traded against real world currency. In China, there are tens of thousands of gaming sweatshops that hire people to play games like World of Warcraft and Lineage. The gaming workers kill monsters and loot treasures for 10-12 hours a day to produce virtual assets that are exported all over the world. They are called Chinese gold farmers by western gamers and many myths about them are circulated in the game universe. This documentary leads you into several different Chinese gold farms. Who opened those gold farms? How did this industry emerge? What international connections do the gold farm owners have? How do they manage the virtual transactions? Who are these gaming workers? What is it like to play games for a living? Why don't they do something else? You will hear several gold farmers tell their own stories and see their everyday struggles to live at the border of the virtual and the real.
...
Tietou went from Shanghai to Amherst College in the US to study computer engineering in 1999. However, he felt very alienated in the US and spent most of his days playing online games in his dorm, often trading virtual assets on Ebay. One day in 2002 he suddenly realized that he could use cheap Chinese labor to produce virtual assets, so he quit college and came back to China to establish gold farms. Although he was very successful at the beginning, now his gold farms have collapsed because of the fierce competition in this business...

As the stories evolve, you will also hear diverse views on this mysterious and controversial business. In China, we interview families of some gold farmers, government officials, a Chinese female gamers' club, doctors of game addiction etc. In the US, we interview gold brokers, game designers, activist gamers who established the NO Gold organization, and gamers who bought virtual assets etc. Particularly, we present why gold farming is so controversial amongst gamers. While some gamers happily buy gold as a way to enhance their virtual experience, some gamers are strongly against it. They think that the game world should be a level playing field, that it should be a magical circle free of the corruption of the real world. The game companies’ response has been ambivalent; some outlaw it but some incorporate it. We interview economists, law scholars and social scientists who debate over the social implications of gold farming. How big will this virtual economy become? Who owns the virtual properties in the game worlds? What will IRS say about your income from virtual trades? Can we tell the virtual from the real after all? How do we distinguish work from play? In the end, this film is not about massive online games, but about life in our global village. The virtual interaction makes the world smaller, but does it bring us closer?

Our economic system has literally led us to chase fool's gold. And, while we level up in response to a form of identity-marketing not even No-Logo-Klein could have imagined, the real world - the real economy, our real resources, our real incomes - are crumbling around us.

Links:

See Youtube for a clip of the film and for a BBC story on the gold farming phenomenon.

 

Sexy Chicken?

It's the end of the semester...and life is generally annoying me these days, so blogs posts will reflect my tired and roaming mind...

I know that sex is used to sell everything, but this is the first time that I've seen 'sexy' animals as the marketing strategy. Is this a win for feminists who criticize PETA for using women's bodies to sell their cause?

You have to hand it the capitalists: they're getting funky with their propaganda.

Links:

Sexy, Edible Animals via Ads of the World

This ad was actually a finalist in some London International Awards for marketing.
The agency, Far East DDB, represents clients such as ESSO and Johnson & Johnson.

Maxim's Five Scariest Women Alive

Maxim's list of the so-called five unsexiest women alive has stirred controversy. Some find the nature of the remarks sexist and offensive. Others are put off my the viciousness of the criticisms. And, others may simply be confused at this hodge podge of women that have been deemed the 'unsexiest women alive'.

Maxim's reps have dismissed the negative response as being over-the-top. I mean really, what's the big deal?  It's not as though images of women in magazines are that important and powerful...It's not like it's a matter of geopolitics, so let's not...y'know, make a federal case about it.

I have spent my fair share time with stupid, i-wanna-be-macho men. I'd like to offer my intimate knowledge of their language to translate what they mean for the rest of the world. Consider me your ambassador into the foreign world of Maxim...

Let's take a look of the 'who' and the 'why' of Maxim's list:

5. Britney Spears

Maxim: Less than five years ago, Britney had a python wrapped around her well-toned torso onstage at the VMAs. Since then, she's lost the ability to perform, but gained two kids, two useless ex-husbands, and about 23 pounds of Funyun pudge.

Maxim Translated: We liked Britney as the 'good girl' with a naughty streak. Now, she is breaking the rules in ways that we don't get. Also, how can we can imagine her as our personal little oops-i-did-it-again sex toy when we keep hearing about her kids in the news?! Her body actually looks pretty damn good...but she still screwed up by going from underage sex symbol to mom. We also liked it better when she was all "oh, baby, baby". What's with this "gimme, gimme" stuff?

Madonna

Maxim: After building a personal fortune on Top 40 pornography, Madonna traded pioneering sexuality for, like other old Jewish women, self-righteous bellyaching and rapid postnuptial deterioration. Combine a Paris Hilton–like pet accessorizing fetish only for dirt-poor foreign babies with a mug that looks Euro-sealed to her skull, and you´ve got Willem Dafoe with hot flashes.

Maxim Translated: She survived all the crap about her image and personal life like the shit we keep dishing to Britney Spears. She actually has stuff to say beyond the sexual sphere and has left us to play in the soft-porn-sandbox. Damn, she's another one that had to go have kids...

3. Sandra Oh

Maxim: The only thing worse than a show about doctors is a show about sappy chick doctors we're forced to watch or else our girlfriends won't have sex with us. We're holding Dr. McSkinny, with her cold bedside manner and boyish figure, personally responsible.

Maxim Translated: Our girlfriends tell us to shut up while they're watching Grey's. After watching the character of Dr. Cristina Yang - the kind of woman we've never had - we can't get it up. Yang sucks the potency right out of you; she is so damn smart and fearless. And, Jesus, we're still reeling from the beating Oh delivered to the twit-like-us in Sideways.

2. Amy Winehouse

Maxim: When we first heard this chick boast about her reluctance to go to rehab we thought, Now there's a girl we can party with! But upon beholding her openly hemorrhaging translucent skin, rat's nest mane and lashes that look more like surgically attached bats, we were the ones screaming, "Nooo, nooo, nooo!"

Maxim Translated: Yikes. She scares poor 'ol Snoop. We like our bitches to know how to play ho to our pimp.

1. Sarah Jessica Parker

Maxim: How the hell did this Barbaro-faced broad manage to be the least sexy woman in a group of very unsexy women and still star on a show with "sex" in the title? Pull your skirt down, Secretariat, we'd rather ride Chris Noth.

Maxim Translated: It was hell to have the most popular show on television revolve around a successful writer (and worse be based on a now rich writer). Freakin' 'Carrie' reminded us of that girl in writing class who was too cool to come to our keg parties...Y'know the type who has gone on to write for The New Yorker? They think they're so above us because we're...err...writers for Maxim...basically writing prostitutes to freakin' twelve-year-old boys...Nevermind.

So that sums it up, folks. These guys aren't sexist and mean...their careers depend on co-opting the sexiness of women and spinning it out in the form of easy, non-threatening sex symbols. You can hardly expect them to be OK with women who keep showing up humanized as moms, spiritual beings, ambitious go-getters, and ladies-with-an-attitude.

Got Hymen Gel?

Once upon a time, women didn't worry about their hymens. Then, God delivered civilization, modernity and development. Capitalism spread across the globe, welcomed with open arms by all the women being delivered from oppression. In the New World Order, women were free to vote, pursue higher education, and buy all sorts of products to quell new and pressing anxieties about the the state of their bodies...

Judy Chicago, throw out the dinner plates. Our new and improved cunts  are so ultra-sanitized...so...uncunty...you really could eat...off of...them.

Links:

Hymen Tightening Gel, Ad created four Salem Drug Store, servicing the cosmetic industries of the Middle East - via Ads of the World

Shopping IS the Problem

Earlier this year, Oprah helped Bono launch Product(Red), a shopping campaign supposedly aimed at fighting AIDS. Companies like the Gap, Apple, Converse, American Express, and Motorola are selling specialized (red) products and give around 10% of the profits to the Global Fund to help women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa. Seeing Oprah and Bono ooh and awe over various products, as they grinned with the pride of being saviours, was one of the most nauseating things I've ever seen.

So, I was pleased to discover Buy (Less) Crap which emphasizes that shopping is not the solution, and asks people to donate directly to charities like the Global Fund.

Not only is shopping not the solution, but it is a huge part of the problem. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs), introduced by the IMF and World Bank displace the rural sector. Restructuring undermines local, subsistence agriculture by opening economies to imports and shifting to large-scale plantations for exports -- providing luxury consumer goods for the Global North. The result is displacement of rural populations. Many men leave rural villages for work in big cities or in mines, contract HIV/AIDS from casual sex partners or sex workers, and then spread the disease to spouses in their home village. As well, the displacement of children and young women into the cities has led to a sharp increase in commercial sex work and heightened rates of HIV/AIDS.

The terrible nature of oppression is that asymmetrical relations are not only obscured, but somehow appear inversed. Think of how women who stay home with children are so often cast as dependent on men, while all the non-waged labour that men depend upon is rendered invisible. Similarly, while we save-and-aid the poorer nations of the world, we fail to recognize that they are subordinated to produce for our needs and desires in the so-called developed world.

So now our manic consumerism is no longer a cause of poverty, but has magically become the solution! We can cruise the mall with chai latte in hand, picking out iPods and Gap gear, feeling that we are helping the world when it is intuitively not so.

Political Art from Around the World

Found via Visual Resistance, PROPAGANDA III is an exhibit featuring political posters from more than 300 artists from across the globe.

Here are some of my favourites:

From Luis Yanez (Mexico):

From William Groshelle (U.S.):

From Cam BsAs (Argentina):

Links:

An online gallery of posters grouped by country of origin.

About PROPAGANDA III world tour.

This Whore Does Not Need to Have a Cuddly Chat About Her Day

Holy Jesus. If I read one more article telling women how to be sex fiends for their boyfriends or husbands, I'm going to seriously start blowing some heads off.

Take, for example, this article from the Globe and Mail, by phallic worshiper Sarah Hampson, titled 'Sex or He's Your Ex':

The penis rules. Or should, anyway. “If men don't feel respected or loved, if they don't feel like a man, if they have to walk around on eggshells when it comes to their sex drive, if their horniness is treated like an inconsiderate act of selfishness – like typical male behaviour – then they will reassert themselves with another woman,” says a man I will call Mr. Multiply Divorced.

People who make coitus their career understand this. Ask Lou Paget, sex therapist and best-selling author of books about orgasms and helpful tips on giving blow jobs, among other bedroom matters. “There's no other time in a man's life when he is more connected to his masculine self than when he is making love or having sex with the woman or partner of his choice,” she explains.

“And men know this. … It's a huge part of the male psyche that he be acknowledged for what his efforts are, and he will go elsewhere to get it if his partner doesn't give it to him. He will get it through sports. He will get it through work by the accumulation of money. I can't tell you how many men I know who are massively successful but who have crappy marriages. Or they will get it from another woman.”

It's children that change the sexual energy of a marriage. I remember an acquaintance of mine complaining about her husband's expectation of sex. She had two young sons at the time, and she was a wonderful hands-on and attentive mother. There were lunches to be made, laundry to finish, dinner to make, homework to help with, errands to run, and just before she passed out from exhaustion, a husband to do. And she did, because if nothing else, she is highly responsible. (And still married, by the way.) The whole yummy-mummy trend is really a statement of denial, if you ask me. Most young mothers will tell you that after having their bodies taken over by pregnancy, and then the demands of breastfeeding and constant monitoring of a baby, what they would really like at night is to be left alone for a bit, untouched. They've overdosed on closeness for the time being.

But husbands still want their wives to view them as the primary relationship. Another man I know – okay, we can call him Mr. Former Boyfriend – told me that in his marriage of 20 years and three children, his ex-wife, who gave up work to devote herself to the care of their offspring, denied him sex so often he had to beg for it. And when she relented, he felt it was out of pity or obligation.

Such a dynamic is common and emasculating, notes Esther Perel, a New York-based couples therapist and the best-selling author of Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic & the Domestic, published last year.

“It's not healthy for men to feel pathetic about their urges and shame about their desire. It's not just their masculinity they are expressing through sex but also their lesser masculine qualities, their tenderness, their vulnerability, their desire to give pleasure and receive it,” she explains.

“This expression through the body is often the primary language that men use to say these things. It's easy for the women to just brush it off, and say, ‘All he wants is sex.' What they should be asking is, ‘Why am I never interested? What happened to my own desires?' “ Ms. Perel's prescription for good marital sex is what she calls “more air.” Too much intimacy, having to know everything your partner did and share every activity he or she enjoys, kills lust, she believes. “The paradox is that the pursuit of passion involves excitement, mystery, unpredictability. But the pursuit of intimacy involves wanting to be known completely and expecting predictability. And yet we want both.”

The trick, she says, is allowing “a modicum of freedom in a relationship. Don't ask the other person to give up freedom so you can feel more secure.”

Many men, not being the greatest communicators, resort to anger when they're not getting the intimacy they crave. They will say lack of sex makes them feel “they were sold a bill of goods,” as one guy explains, since “women are much more sexually aggressive and suggestive during the courting stage, and inexperienced men can be fooled by that.

“I've come to believe firmly that people need to be honest with themselves [and their partners] about their libidos,” he continues. “If they have big ones, they should seek out partners with a matching appetite.” (Yes, that's Mr. Multiply Divorced talking.) He has a point, but married life can be stressful, what with mortgages, kids and work-life juggling; and stress, for women, is a sex-killer. For men, on the other hand, a romp in bed is stress therapy. “For us, it can be like golf or watching television,” admits a source from the world of men.

Of course, for women, talking is like golf. (Confused yet?) “Women want to emotionally share and talk about their day,” the man continues.

Still married to his wife of 21 years, with whom he has two children, he should be called Mr. Highly Evolved. But he didn't get there on his own. All that wisdom about how women and men think differently comes from years of couples therapy.

“For men, it's like Chinese water torture to be talking about something endlessly,” he says. “Guys think, ‘Just fix it.' So when the wife says she wants to be asked how she is, the man goes, ‘What? We've got to have an hour and a half discussion about emotional connection before you feel like having sex? What happened to sex on the kitchen floor?' “ Mr. Highly Evolved was preparing for divorce, he confesses. “Part of the equation for me to stay in my marriage was that I care about my boys, and ultimately, I realized that if I want to live in a relationship, whether it's with my wife or someone else, I have to do this work. And as long as my wife is interested in doing it, too, which she was, then it's worth it.”

On a final note, let's return to Ms. Paget, who, 51 and once married and divorced, now enjoys a live-out boyfriend and a live-in 20-pound cat called Mr. Freddie. I could hear him meowing for her attention in the background of her Los Angeles home.

“Men marry for two reasons,” she states. “They're proud to be with that woman socially. Look,” she adds in best-girlfriend whisper, “we both know women who have sex with men who aren't seen with them publicly. The second reason men marry is sexual compatibility.”

Which brings me to a final bit of good advice. Be a lady in public and a whore in the bedroom. And help him understand that before talking dirty, the whore sometimes needs to have a cuddly chat about her day.

Have I entered the twilight zone?!

Here's a hint as to why women want less sex after marriage and children: they're fucking exhausted.

Why do I suspect that these 'cuddly chats' involve asking men to help take the kids to school and so on for the upcoming week?!

So, a word of advice to all those neglected men out there: put on some rubber gloves and get the house clean. Express your 'less masculine qualities' by making lunch for your kids and getting them bathed for the night.

Then drop to your knees and figure out where the clitoris is.

We lady-whores are more than happy to accept some 'stress therapy'.

Related Post:

Guiding Women: From Good Wife to Shrink/Sex Kitten

The Dos and Don'ts of Body Mutilation

(to appear in an upcoming issue of Seventeen magazine)

Todays teens are often left perplexed and confused by the complicated world of body mutilation. These Dos and Don'ts will help you navigate the when, where, and how of this often misunderstood practice.

DO plan surgery-for-grad procedures well in advance. If you want to have those new D-cups for freshman year of college, you need to get the ball rolling now. Surprise Mom and Dad with some great grades on your next report card and convince them to start shopping for surgeons!

DO consider body mutilation as a practical solution to fashion conundrums. If you can never fit into those perfect pumps, consider shortening your fifth toe or removing it altogether. That's right: send that little piggy to go 'wee, wee, wee' for good! All but the most orthodox of feminists are cheering for fashion-driven surgery!

DO research pornographic materials to learn body ideals from head-to-toe. (This is what we call some crazy market synergy!) Move over Louis Vuitton; designer vaginas are the new must have accessory!

DO take a conscious approach to daily living to prevent potentially avoidable procedures and to preserve work that has been done. Take a gentle, almost removed, approach to sex; limit outdoor activity; and consider moving very rapidly at all times. Approaching the speed of light, might actually slow the aging process!

DON'T forget: just because certain forms of body mutilation are okay in our culture, does not make them so in other cultures. Body mutilation associated with religious rites of passage (such as Female Genital Mutilation) are always oppressive. Unlike religion, cultivated consumer demand always empowers women with choice. While you're on bed rest from your procedure(s), consider writing  piece for your school paper -- help spread democracy by educating people about the oppressive cultures of the non-Western worlds!

DON'T let your ethnic or racial background hold you back from attaining the ideal.  'White' is one fashion trend that is not going away. Women of colour know that skin-lightening products often fall short in achieving this sought-after look. New body mutilation procedures can replicate Caucasian noses and eyes!

DON'T take matters into your own hands. Body mutilation must be left to well-payed experts. Don't participate in any forms of body mutilation that might be associated with alternative culture. This may be taken as a sign of resistance! Remember: body mutilation is supposed to be fun! Angsty teens, turn that frown upside down!

Related Links:

'Cosmetic Surgery or Genital Mutilation?' at April Reign
Self-mutilation and Emo News Watch via the Daily Dissidence

More on Faux Feminism...

I haven't been well enough to blog this past week, but happened upon this blog entry tonight that discusses many of the same issues touched on in my recent post 'Liberated Women?'.

I have to applaud 'infinitethought' of the Long Sunday for such frank commentary:

Feminism TM is the perfect accompaniment to femme-capital TM: Politics, such as it isn't, belongs to the well-balanced individual (the happy shopper), sassiness is like, so where it's at (consumer confidence) and, most of all, one must never, ever admit to cracks in the facade (oh, you know, ideology). This foundation is flawless! And it lasts all night! Unlike men, titter, titter, etc. etc. Capitalism makes a better lover than any guy - it's full of shoes, and Sex in the City DVDs and gossip mags and, like, now we've proved that eating chocolate is more exciting than kissing...but didn't we know that all along, girls?...The world is ours for the taking...just let me finish this packet of Maltesers first...

Today's puff piece for equality by Jessica Valenti informs us that not only does feminism do wonders for one's flat ('as I was getting ready for the photoshoot for this article, the guy I'm dating...tidied up for me so the photographer wouldn't see what a tip my apartment is at the weekends'), it actually makes life more fun. You see, girls, it's not all about grim-faced non-shaving and being a bit angry. Feminism can, ohmigodnoway, totally help you out. Take Valenti's job description, for instance: 'I have an amazing group of women friends who spend their days speaking out against sexist idiocy - and who also happily dance their asses off with me when we're out clubbing.'

...

Stripped of any internationalist and political quality, feminism becomes about as radical as a diamanté phone cover. Valenti 'truly believes' that feminism is necessary for women 'to live happy, fulfilled lives'. Slipping down as easily as a friendly-bacteria yoghurt drink, Valenti's version of feminism, with its total lack of structural analysis, genuine outrage or collective demand, believes it has to compliment capitalism in order to effectively sell its product. When she claims that 'ladies, we have to take individual action', what she really means is that it's every woman for herself, and if it is the Feminist-brand woman who gets the nicest shoes and the chocolatiest sex, then that's just too bad for you, sister.

Please visit Long Sunday to read the entirety of 'Two Sides of the Same Con' by infinitethought.

Down with feel-good-feminism.

Liberated Women?

I have been incredibly ill this past week. Ideas run through my head day and night as I lie wheezing and gasping, my brain revved up on ventolin and prednisone. Forgive this blog entry for its lack of coherence. Since I already can't breathe well, I just want to get a few things off my chest about The Pussy Cat Dolls, post-feminism, and distorted notions of freedom.

So, to begin, I recently was up all night, very ill, and began watching a marathon showing of The Search for the Next Pussy Cat Doll on Much Music. I really liked it, but that doesn't negate my feminism. I like Pepsi too, but my critiques of capitalism still hold. (Better to live as a hypocrite than be in self-denial.)

So, around the same time, I was browsing some of the big U.S.feminist sites on the web and feeling a bit annoyed, because so much of it is this sugary, sexy feminism that really isn't so far from the notions of female empowerment put out there by The Pussy Cat Dolls. And, can I just say, for the record, that one can be pro-sex and anti-pornography. Can I also just say that this is not about lipstick or Brazilians or any of that shit. Hey, I am ready to fluff and puff myself too. But, I draw the line at my ideas; they are rough and ugly and not the stuff of fuck-me-now, friendly feminism.

Also in this past week, I have been reading bits and pieces out of an edited book (from one of my internet impulse buys) called Material Feminism:A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives. Many of the writers in this book echo other writers that I have read recently (e.g. Mohanty, Bennholdt-Thomsen, etc.) that lament the descent of feminism into postmodernism and identity politics. The editors of this book, Hennessy and Ingraham, write:

...if feminism is to be  social movement that aspires to meet the needs of all women, it must also confront its own class investments in refusing to connect its analysis to a global social system whose very premise is that some women benefit to the expense of others...The colonization of the unconscious promoted through advertising and high-tech telecommunications produces desire and sexuality, family and femininity in modalities that commodify women's bodies and labor as the property of men, even as some women are allowed more freedom to exert their "independence" in the competitive marketplace.

This reminded me of a piece I read by Barbara Ehrenreich some time ago in which she took aim at post-feminists pointedly remarking: "...while Muslim women are being stuffed into burkas, American post-feminists are trying to stuff their feet into stilettos." After which, she goes on to herald the return of paleo-feminism.

Let me now jump to the March/April Canadian edition of Adbusters in which there is a thought-provoking photo essay by Kalle Lasn, which he writes was inspired by an essay by Hanif Kureishi that appeared in The Guardian.

The photo essay features advertisements from the 1920s to present day that are interspersed with historical images, such as those from the civil rights and women's rights movements and on to the fall of the Berlin wall and the veiling of the statue of Saddam Hussein with the American Flag prior to it being pulled down.

Some of the words that flow through the essay are as follows:

a passionate struggle for freedom is deeply embedded in the history of the western world. freedom is our great meta-meme, the crowning jewel of our civilization...

but lately, in our own back yard, freedom has taken a perverse, hyper-individualistic turn.

we use up more resources, create more waste, and deliberately flaunt our wealth, power, and sexuality more than any other culture on earth.

why are we trying to impose our freedom around the world at the point of a gun?

...now there's a growing movement around the world - a new kind of freedom fight - to be free of our brand of me-first freedom.

And here is a brief except from the article by Kureishi:

But Muslims are far more aware than we are of our self-deceit, of the "spiritual" price we pay for our freedom. They can see that the beautiful ideas we are peddling - democracy, free speech, individualism - bring considerable negatives with them. If the west is trying to sell these excellent ideas they are also, like a sleazy salesman, failing to mention their obverse - what it is, as it were, that you see when you turn the pretty picture round. (Read in full here.)

I've scanned two of the images from the Adbusters spread (don't sue me, Adbusters). Notice in the one image that the soldiers -- the freedom fighters-- peruse Hustler and Penthouse as they take time off from the fight. Yes, women of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are coming to save you, because we Western women have figured freedom out. If you're lucky, your men and society will come to hold you in as high regard as does ours! Now, the second image...who is free? who is empowered?

So, what am I trying to say? I am rethinking my notion of freedom. It is not enough to dare to proclaim yourself a feminist and facebook yourself up the kazoo with feminist groups. We have to ask if our so-called freedom and equality is coming at the expense of others? And, while understanding cultural and individual mechanisms of both social control and agency are crucial, we have to get back to the basics of labour and exploitation. This post-feminist, cultural transformation bullshit feminism is annoying. It reduces feminism to a mere identity: ooh, she's so urban chic, she's so goth, she's so ghetto, she's so freakin' feministing.  At the end of the day, pro-choice, pro-equality, pro-porn feminists are no more of a threat to the system than The Pussy Cat Dolls. Seriously, if Paul Wolfowitz supports your version of female empowerment, you have to ask yourself if you're really on the right track.

Find yourselves some boas and learn how to dance, my pretties, because your analyses are literally going down in flames in others' backyards.

Links:

'Give Me That Old-Time Feminism' by Barbara Ehrenreich, via AlterNet

'Reaping the Harvest of Our Self-Disgust' by Hanif Kureishi, via The Guardian

Try to get a hold of a copy of the March/April edition of Adbusters to see the captivating photo essay 'The Existential Divide' by Kalle Lasn

Join the Facebook group Unearthing Paleo-Feminism - consider it counterpositioning

Also, visit the BreadnRoses forum for what I consider a good antidote to post-feminism on the web, as well as all-round interesting discussion.

Resources:

Hennessy, R., & Ingraham, C. (Eds.). (1997). Material Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives. New York: Routledge.