I don't get it, Jessica. Why is this sort of thing empowering at a strip club and liberating in a pornographic publication, but sexist at a department store and degrading in a parking lot?

You know Dim, I don't even feel like it's useful to answer you half the time because the fact that I'm not anti-prostitution and pornography is something you just can't get past.

You keep using words like "empowering" and "liberating" in reference to my thoughts on sex work. When have I ever used those words? Supporting sex workers and wanting them to have rights doesn't mean I think sex work is liberating. It means I respect women enough to trust their decisions about their own lives and respect them to decide for themselves what is "empowering."

As you know, I'm well aware of the politics behind this argument, I'm just on a different side of the debate than you are.

And you may notice in my above post that I'm not making judgments on the women involved with the company. Do I find it seedy and creepy? Definitely. Do I find a lot of strip clubs seedy and creepy? Of course. I just choose to have an opinion on sexuality and sex work that goes beyond "porn=bad." It's too complex an issue to put into the framework you favor.

A friend of mine is a caterer. In the course of planning a huge party for a local sad short single fiftysomething plutocrat, he was explaining to the customer all the goodies he'd get, three food stations with chefs in traditional costumes of the country bla bla wine bla bla cheese. When he got to the bar, the customer said "I do have one requirement. The bartenders all have to be hot chicks with really big tits." My friend said that his bartenders were very good at their jobs and would make people happy, but didn't meet that criterion. The response was that this was a dealbreaker. So, off he went and long story short there's a service here called "Bar Girls" that provides exactly that, at $125/hr per "girl". The woman who usually manages his bar turned down managing them at triple her usual rate. The party sucked.

Is it wrong that one of my first thoughts was also: "Capri pants? Sexy?"

Capri pants are retro-sexy. Go back a few decades, before the time when women were ever seen in public in bikinis or miniskirts. Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick Van Dyke Show was a serious hottie compared to previous TV housewives.

I just don't understand why this elicits a creeped-out, critical post on a major feminist blog when it's actually LESS dangerous to women than things the poster supports.

Were you commenting on the men who use this and the society that condones it? But why are they worthy of special comment, and not the men who use porn and strip clubs and the society that condones porn and strip clubs?

"Valet Vixens" is a soft-core roadside version of a strip club, just without the throbbing techno beat and the metal pole (so far). Why is it worthy of comment at all, if strip clubs aren't?

And for that matter, why was "Shop with a Bunny" worthy of a boycott, when strip clubs aren't? Doesn't boycotting Nordstrom's just hurt the "Bunnies" and the female employees and denegrate their free choices to decide for themselves what work is "empowering"?

Sorry, Saks Fith Avenue, not Nordstrom's.

"Anti-feminism is resistance to the liberation of women from the sex-class system, that resistance repressed in constructing political defenses of the constituent parts of sex-oppression.

"Anti-feminism is also operating whenever any political group is ready to sacrifice one group of women, one faction, some women, some kinds of women, to any element of sex-class oppression: to pornography, to rape, to battery, to economic exploitation, to reproductive exploitation, to prostitution. There are women all along the male-defined political spectrum, including both extreme ends of it, ready to sacrifice some women, usually not themselves, to the brothels or the farms. The sacrifice is profoundly anti-feminist; it is also profoundly immoral.

"Whenever some women are doctrinally delivered to sex-exploitation, the political stance is corrupt."

- words from a prostituted woman

I agree with Dim Undercellar, we as feminists really ought to start taking a united front and girlcotting mainstream heterosexual pornography. The mainstream-ization of pornography on the whole can not be good for women, both in terms of women's self-esteem and ability to enjoy sex. Gender roles only become further entrenched in our society as a result. I think it's vital for feminists to bring this issue back to the forefront - instead of letting it fester on in the background. Yes, some women enjoy being in pornography, yes they gain some temporary power/privellege from their participation - but what do they gain in the long-term? And what does this do to gender relations in the long-term?

We need to bridge this gap between feminists, and get back into grassroots movements against the dominant views of sexuality - i.e. heterosexism.