Maybe I should just call my book "I'm A Sleazy, Slutty, Pathetic Unliberated Whore"

And I'll take title suggestions from you as well. IF I ever write it, and (even bigger if) someone wants to publish it. But first, the writing - that's how I fucked up my law school education, by worrying about the bar when I couldn't even get past second year classes.

But anyway, news flash, Betty Friedan died, and I and every other girl who's posed topless, let alone anyone who claims they might be (gasp!) a feminist and, I don't know, "embrace one's sexuality," are sleazy: (via Lenore Skenazy's New York Daily News column)

The problem is not that strippers and porn stars are becoming mainstream. It's that so many other women - and girls - are trying to emulate them. These role models are sex workers: women with silicone implants who fake their lust. How liberated is that?

It's not. There's a big difference between embracing one's sexuality and embracing Penthouse's version of the same. Posing topless or dressing like a hooker isn't "liberated." It's what it was back in Friedan's day - sleazy - but with a fresh dollop of self-delusion.

In a truly liberated world, women don't have to strip to feel powerful, because stripped women, like stripped men, aren't. They're just pathetic. In the name of Friedan and Levy, let's not fool ourselves anymore.

For I'm sure not the last time - what the FUCK is up with this utterly inane binary? Liberated vs. unliberated, powerful vs. powerless - as if sex worked so simply. Have you read any of Lily Burana's writing? Or Carol Queen's? Or Diablo Cody's? Or Katherine Frank's? Or Siobhan Brooks's? There's a whole fucking universe of women who are smart and who don't think they have to check their pussies at the door to claim a place in the world? Who might see stripping as a means to an end, an exploration, a way to make some easy money. Or not so easy, as any of these writers will tell you. But this us against them mentality has got to fucking go.

I think for everyone who was offended by Friedan's pretentiousness, by her trying to divide lesbians and straight women back in the day, we've got a new Friedan army and it's not pretty. In the supposed name of feminism and equality it's okay to be haughty and self-righteous, to tell me what to do with my body, to tell me what I should think is sexy, to tell me what's sleazy and what's pathetic, what's "real" and what isn't. Because you know, don't you? You're the Queen of Real, and I'm just some slutty whore, right? It's the same do-me feminism rap all over again, but this time from women. It's so juvenile, petty, worthless and divisive, I could scream or cry or self-destruct. Most of all, though, it's sad. It's sad that in 2006 we still feel the need to one-up each other, to draw a line between the good girls and the bad girls, the real feminists and the fake, the falsely conscious and the "liberated." What exactly is your definition of liberation? If freedom just means Herland-style sex, and believe me, I have heard so many women lately, supposedly smart, with-it, hip women, and men too, tell me how what they really think is that all BDSM is wrong, inequal, bad, to many it clearly does, then count me OUT. I do strongly believe in "sexual freedom," as in FREE to do what we want, not "liberated from" but "liberated TO" whatever our hearts, minds, cocks, and pussies desire. Liberation should mean greater possibility, not less. Wake me up when I don't have to be "liberated" any more and can actually do what I want with me body and still be a feminist.