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Sometimes, feminist perspectives can be acquired at some of the most unlikely places and in some of the most unlikely situations. For me, a rich perspective on the sex work industry was acquired at a casino in Atlantic City a few days ago, with an escort with whom I spoke regarding her life, choices and challenges.

I was on vacation in Atlantic City - a two-week break from my year-long deployment in Iraq. At about 3 a.m., I ran into and eventually had drinks with a woman who I eventually brought up to my room, thinking this was going to be a mere casual hook-up, things that people do on vacation and in bars. Come to find out, before I initiated sex, and we were flirting, she told me that she is an escort and spends time with men for money. In short, it was the beginning of a business for pleasure transaction.

Though my mind was fogged with alcohol, red flags went up - firstly because I'd felt horrible that I'd taken an hour of this woman's time already, just talking to her, with the full intentions of having sex had she not been a sex worker. Secondly, I had never been in a situation like this before, and didn't know exactly what to do to tell her I had to intentions of buying her body for my own pleasure.

Having already wasted an hour of her time, with her assuming I knew she was an escort (a term she says she prefers), I made a deal: while I was most certainly sexually attracted to her, my values wouldn't allow me to actually pay to have sex with her. I would, however, pay for her time to listen to her story and learn something from a group of people I've spent to much learning about, yet never had never actually sat down and spoken with.

So there we sat, in my hotel room, and over Jack Daniels, talked about her life, choices and perspectives. She is new to the escort industry, she said - and became an escort after much careful consideration - mostly for the stigma that comes with sex work, but also consideration for the dangers she faced, and the way society and the government look upon her.

I was appalled to read Donna Hughes's opinion piece in the Providence Journal entitled "R.I.'s Carnival of Prostitution ," where she resorts to ad hominem attacks on women who speak for themselves about their experiences in the sex industry. She is an endowed chair at the University of Rhode Island's Women's Studies Program, and I am forced to wonder what her students are learning. She condescendingly refers to one woman as "tattooed," and derides another (while constantly mentioning her ethnicity) for referring to her profession as "it." As one commenter pointed out,

That never ever ever happens with other professions, right? I mean who, when asked if they enjoyed teaching women's studies for example, would say "oh yes, I love IT."

It has been a long-standing issue with sex workers that we are silenced by the media and others; spoken for and about but never with . People even caution others to not listen to us, as we are under "false consciousness" about what we choose to do with our bodies. Thank goddess at least the RI senate seems to be listening to us.

I suppose the good news in all of this is that generally, folks don't resort to these tactics unless backed into a corner. This is a good thing for the sex workers rights movement.

I know that this is NOT really related to Feminism, but I figure that some of you readers might be interested in Disability/Deafness issues. Also, there's some parts in my memoir that discusses being Indian and Muslim, along with being Deaf. Please, check out my new short story/memoir, "My Life as a Deaf Child." Part Two and Three will come in the following two weeks.

My Life as a Deaf Child

Enjoy and thanks for reading!

I’m one of those women who only in my 30s started recovering memories of my father sexually abusing me.  This discovery caused both a terrible upheaval in my life and a new found hope.

I have a terrible relationship with my family and a disaster of a romantic life.  But I have managed to make some friends: the kind I can call at 3 A.M., who would find the time to talk even after their twins were born, who will lend me money if I need to.  We challenge each other and made each other laugh.

My friends are all wonderful people with a strong sense of justice.  They could easily be any of the posters here.  None of them, however, are abuse survivors and perhaps that’s where the problem lies.

But most of my friendships have experienced strains once I started talking of my past.  So here are some things I want to say:

Who dare?
Who dare to take my dream away?
Who was the one who took away, my reality, my sanity?
Was it the older boy, who chased me around the tree, grabbing touching and fondling me?
Or was it the one who placed on me a golden wedding ring?
Was it the police who sent him back to me, the night he shot a gun at me?
Or was it the judge, who said, one night is enough for him to understand
And 50 dollars cost to him to hear the words, "never do that again or I will find you in contempt."
Was it the lady at the church, or the minister who preached at me?
Who told me time and time and time again, I should understand his pain and go back home with him.
Was it the child at the school, who called me that awful name, long before the beatings began?
When I began to believe I was not worth a single red cent.
Who dare to take away who I am, who I could be, or where I went.
Am I not a human being too?
Am I not worthy of dignity, respect, or courtesy, the kind I see people display upon the street?
Who dare? someone, someone please tell me.

I read on here awhile ago for a request of what it is we women are doing in University. I wish to oblige that request now. This is somewhat stream of consciousness so I apologize for any difficultly in following or the sheer length of the post.

Over the years I have read a lot of materials that suggest we young things are not working hard for 'the cause'. Our interpretation of what it means to be a feminist directly contributes to us believing that we have the right to get on camera and show our breasts for some underwears. This could not be further from the truth.

My friends and myself work hard everyday to inspire people to become active on campus and in our communities. We volunteer on campus and in our communities and sometimes our personal, social, and even scholastic lives pay for it. Most of us either have jobs or are looking for one. We are full-time students. We are members of multiple student organizations. So when older (2nd wave) feminists suggest that we aren't willing to sacrifice or that we reinforce the binary system or that we have got it all wrong, it really pisses me off.

Second wavers broke down so many barriers and women today owe so much to the sacrifices they made. I would never suggest that myself or my generation is not aware of nor appreciates how many changes they made. We do however still have many obstacles to over come and now it seems we fight more to protect our rights then fight to create them.

I am wrting this as a follow-on from the article "Our Feminist Ideals vs. Our Feminist Lives".

I was very interested in this article because I could comment on many areas in my life that do not always match up to my feminist ideals...but we all live in the patriarchy, right?!

So I thought - why not look at the question the other way around? How has feminism improved your life? Be it personally or professionally.

Speaking for myself - I could name a hundred ways that feminism has improved my self-esteem and made me a much stronger and happier woman - but I don't want to bore you so I have listed
just a few:

1) I love how strong I feel when I have called someone out on sexist language. And that I can hold my own in any conversation and expect to be heard.

2) I love that I can stand up to men who objecify or infantilize me..and that I can laugh when they come up with the usual defensive insults.

3) I love that I can now stand in front of a mirror and love my body from MY point of view...not my partner's, not my mother's - not SOMEONE ELSE'S!!

More after the jump

This subject surfaces predictably in our female sexuality workshops and is something that, in our experience, has significant meaning to many women. Voicing their indignation over the ubiquitous sexual double standard, they tell us they want equality—the freedom to express themselves sexually as they determine regardless of marital restraints. Gaining impetus in the sexual revolution of the 60s, this drive for sexual equality continues today. The gains or losses of this effort are subject to endless debate.

These women ask, why should man have this sexual freedom within marriage and we do not. Why can he violate the bonds of matrimony and be within quasi-acceptability, while we are not only castigated, but also often incarcerated or even killed if we follow the same path? It is not fair, they say.

No, it is certainly unfair. But, where did this inequality originate and why do we accept it? Of course, there are many women who do not accept it, who fight with all their intensity and passion against this and all other forms of injustice. Nonetheless, society accepts it and even promulgates it to some extent.

For decades, evolutionary theorists and pop psychologists have inculcated us with the belief that passivity, sexual submission, and monogamy are woman’s natural state, her innate, biologic mandate—genetically preprogrammed to be faithful. On the other hand, man is the obverse.   Because he has everything to gain in terms of spreading his genes into immortality by impregnating as many women as he can obtain, they tell us he is innately endowed to be unfaithful.

For over 5,000 years woman's sexuality has been turned on its head, inverted by society to fit the needs of its agenda...to keep woman strapped to a vaginal destiny. She has been inculcated with the belief that she was created to serve man, that her essence is her vagina, and that as a human being she is inconsequential. Her self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, to the exclusion of her own, is her natural calling.

Evolutionary theorists tell us she is simply a product of her Pleistocene ancestors, but they are wrong, and they know it; she is the result of millennia of crass manipulation built on erroneous concepts designed to keep her fucking.

Throughtout this period, scientists, religous zealots, white-coated mysogynists, and researchers have all contributed to the charade to coerce woman into accepting her copualtory mandate as her transcendental sexual expression. But, slowly, methodically, the truth seeps out. Woman has been duped. Her sexuality coopted. Her subservience is a cultural construct. The sex she has accepted as evolutionary is not the sex of her ancestors, not the sex as intended, but sex as scripted. She is a pawn in the hands of the master, a sacrifice on the altar of phallocentrism.

Crossposted on Amplify

Female condom: mythical creature or pragmatic contraceptive?  Despite female condoms’ presence on the market for over fifteen years, they retain an intimidating aura for many sexually active women, especially teenagers.  After reading today that a new version of the female condom will come up for FDA review this week, I wondered: does anyone actually use female condoms?  Would girls and their partners’ my age use them if they were, as the new version, FC2 promises, as effective and as cheap as their male counterparts?  Female Health Company, the manufacturer of FC2, hopes that their new version of the female condom might appeal to women seeking greater control over their contraception who may have been unable to afford the previous, more-expensive female condoms.  A former president of Female Health Co. did admit that they “haven’t been able to market the product.”  So what’s the deal here?  Should the FC2 pass FDA panel review, will it soon become a widely used, cost-effective alternative to the mainstream male condom?  I decided to find out: I sent the following mass text message to over twenty of my friends, both sexually active and not.

Now that I've got your attention, let me begin by making what is, for an incensed liberal feminist like myself, a confession:

I cook.

Sometimes I'll cook dinner for my family. Sometimes, when time or resources allow, I'll make something for myself. I can cook a lot of things, from the lowliest grilled cheese sandwich to the loftiest lasagna. And I'm pretty good at it, too.

It's not because I run the risk of being beaten should I step away from the stove. And yet to some feminists, I would be considered an unwitting tool of patriarchal oppression, a Gen-Y teenager perpetuating women's status as domestic servants and second-class citizens by chopping and mixing, frying and baking. I undermine my own worth and demote myself to a lesser quality than men by doing what has been historically referred to as "women's work."

To that, I say posh.

For one, it's a valuable skill to have, and it's not just for a mom feeding a family of four in thirty minutes flat. I'm going off to college in two years; after that, I'll be out on my own earning too little money to go out to eat every night. This pretty much goes for everyone living alone, male, female, or otherwise: cooking is valuable because it's, well, cheaper. Depending on what ingredients one chooses, cooking for oneself can also be a lot healthier.

Yes, I do agree that within families, it is often the girls who are taught to cook, while their brothers are left completely out of the equation. For both the reasons listed above as well as for pure gender equality, boys should be taught to cook as well...because you ain't always gonna have a darlin' li'l wommin in the kitchen! (Sarcasm alert.)

I don't think I am a pawn of the patriarchy because I know my way around the kitchen. In fact, it's just the opposite. By learning to cook, I am setting the stage for my own life as an independent person. Anyone who tells me otherwise...well, no brownies for you.

Just kidding.

*Another sarcasm alert. I was not, of course, suggesting that we should all ascribe to that all-too-familiar stereotype based solely on our gender. You know I wouldn't do that.

Over the years I have learned to be less afraid of whom I am. Okay, some of you maybe wondering what does she mean, afraid of who she is.

When I was born in 1959, I was born into a family of all boy's and men. Men's opinions were valued and listened to. I learned at an early age, if I expressed a radically different opinion two things would happen, Father's wrath being the first. He would disapprove of me, and the fight would be on, inevitably I would lose some freedom, grounded or silenced.

I would like to thank each and every one of you that left a loving a caring message for you. Tonight after arriving home from my college class, I listened to my voice mail. My son had left several messages each the first stating "Where to Fuck are you come and get me." I called my husband and ask if I should travel the 2 miles to pick him up and my husband said no. The child will not treat you like that; I am on my way home.

A week ago my little world of strength, safety, security and ignorance was shattered again. Almost 15 years to the date when I escaped abuse and insanity and moved my little family to a new home town to start over again. I moved to this City September 3, 1993, In hopes of giving my family a chance to get away from the prejudices, abuse, and patriarchal small town we had come from. I wanted to give my children choices they would never have had. Well today as I set writing this, my older children all 5 of them escaped the small town attitude and developed into beautiful strong adults.

Hi Everyone;

Every once and awhile I decide I need to step out of my comfort zone and do something that is difficult to do. Doing things like speaking out at the "Take Back the Night" annual celebration or journeying on to a stage at a mamapaloza event, and reading at the poetry jam. These little exercises in freedom; as I call them have helped my journey from victimization to life again. A few weeks ago in my women's studies class I learned about the Feministing Web site and began to read it every chance I got. I also began taking chances about this time by asking one of my professors at college to read three writings that come from my private journals. These writings are poetry and pros that come from the heart of a woman who journey took her to hell and back on many occasions. I felt the panic rise as I sent those three writings via email recently to this professor. I then sat an entire weekend setting on pins and needles with a thousands thoughts and sheer panic wondering what she would think of them. The Email she responded with started out with "Holy Crap" and then she went on to compare me to a well known feminist's writings asking me if I would consider publishing them, or at the very least write my autobiography. (I have read this feminist's articles and books and know that I could never compare to someone of her strength and insight.) I remember re-reading that email and tears would leak out of my eyes it was difficult for me to believe that someone with so many qualifications would believe I had talent. My initial response was as follows "oh hell no's" was coming out of my mouth." Yes I am a feminist, I just sometimes am human to and don't always believe that I am good enough.

'Lo there. I'm a long-time reader, first-time poster, so bear with me.

So when did you first get into feminism? I remember identifying myself as a feminist after reading a book called Girl Talk , which was basically Feminism 101 for kids, when I was around nine years old. I'd be interested to hear your stories about how you got into feminism.