I object to all this sex on television-I mean, I keep falling off...

At Alternet, a woman named Kara Jesella has a piece about a book called Female Chauvinist Pigs and what's called "raunch culture." Her argument, as I understand it (given that I am, after all, just a man) is:

It's possible, and may even be preferable, for women to enjoy the fun and sexuality of being feminine. While still rejecting the false "female" ideals embodied in things like boob jobs.

In other words, raunch culture isn't all about fake boobs, and the women who embrace it aren't all FCPs [Female Chauvinist Pigs]. Purchasing the Aerosmith DVD with all three Alicia Silverstone videos on it (which I did) or being the pleased recipient of an old copy of Playboy as a Christmas gift (that was me, too) might not be, to use a word that Levy and the FCPs both love, "empowering," but that doesn't mean I'm disempowered. Participating in raunch culture may not always be a feminist act, but that doesn't make those engaging in it antifeminists -- or deluded. I'm thinking of the happily paired lesbian couple I went to a pro-choice march with who went to a strip club on a recent birthday. Or the feminist labor activist friend who finds Brazilian bikini waxes sexy. Levy rails against a culture in which "the only alternative to enjoying Playboy is being 'uncomfortable' with or 'embarrassed' about your sexuality." But I know lots of women for whom there is a middle ground between rabid antiporn Dworkinizing and Girls Gone Wild vapidity. There are plenty of us who have put together our sexual identities from bits and pieces of our personal histories, our pop culture experiences, our love of certain parts of raunch culture that don't feel oppressive.