A popular narrative about sex work, earnestly discussed in Women's Studies courses throughout the nation and represented in countless "I stripped my way through college!" memoirs, is that adult labor is automatically, and by definition, feminist.

The argument goes like this: By using sexual stereotypes professionally, by "owning" them (using them consciously), and by "subverting" them (choosing which stereotypes to exaggerate and which to discard), a sex-working woman is participating in a feminist reclamation of both personal and economic power.

Her deliberate use of gender-drag turns wearing a g-string and gyrating on stage -- or behind glass -- from an act done merely to pay her rent into a strong, assured and transgressive statement more akin to political performance art.

You can't objectify me -- I am objectifying myself, shrewdly and self-consciously, in order to obtain power through money, and control through being considered sexually desirable.   more »

It's always easier to see the bias of others than to recognise one's own. A story that supports the status quo is generally considered to be neutral and is not questioned in terms of its objectivity while one that challenges the status quo tends to be perceived as having a "point of view" and therefore biased.

Statements and assumptions that support the existing power structure are regarded as 'facts' whilst those that are critical of it tend to be rejected as 'opinions'.

The officious policing of impartiality and balance will mean ensuring that statements by those challenging the establishment (government or business) are balanced with statements by those whom they are criticising, though not necessarily the other way round.

Too much emphasis on objectivity in news and current affairs can lead journalists to leave out interpretations and analysis which might be construed as personal views.   more »

What's happening to Bush

has been going on for a millennium

in the political tradition which formed America

Rulers reach for more and more power

until their parliaments and barons

think things have gone far enough

and begin clipping regal wings

   more »

Keywords: absolute, presidency, imperial, power, corrupation, cheney, bush

The war on terrorism as pronounced by the terrorism entrepreneurs captures that particularly Washingtonian flair for packaging naked self-interest as the national agenda.

Go back to the 1950s when Sen. Joe McCarthy found communists under every bed. Just take his words which used communism over and over and substitute terrorism.

You will see we have allowed the country to be taken over by this "ism" hysteria.

It will take a big person to unwind this fear of terrorism. It took Richard Nixon's trip to China to finally start unwinding our neurotic fear of communism. Hopefully there will be a less neurotic leader, to say "enough already."   more »

Neo-conservatives intellectuals and corporate elites are championed globally by the Bush Regime.

According to the rhetoric of BushCo, their efforts to "make the world safe for capitalism" via "Economic Globalization" and the "War on Terrorism", is out of a desire to affirm "freedom and democracy".

Capitalism is NOT about "freedom and democracy", as the Establishment economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Freidman had championed in his book of the specific title Freedom and Democracy.

Capitalism is a political economic system which seeks to facilitate the materialistic ambitions and insatiable pursuit of commercial profit by "owners of capital". Capitalism is not about affirming rights of 'people' in a democracy.   more »