Being a sex-positive feminist might seem, to some, to be a contradiction- aren’t feminists supposed to hate men, not love cock? Well, that’s just another misconception about feminism that we need to break down, right up there with the idea equality is satanism.

The reality is that feminists have better sex; what’s not to love? That’s the question that Kidder Kaper, Cootchie, Laura Rad, and Gay Rick ask on their podcast, Sex Is Fun. Their information comes in a free, open-source medium that is easily downloadable to iTunes and tons of other programs, and their topics range from “How to Throw A Sex Party” to “Sex Education in Europe” and “How Lose Your Virginity.” They can tell you how to find the female g-spot and they have done their research about lots of what they call “non-vanilla” topics, such as butt sex, sex toys, bdsm, open relationships, multiple partner sex, and voyeurism. They’ve had guests like Betty Dodson, the Jill-Off Queen (who also writes for our favorite magazine, Bust) and Tristan Taormino, as well as product reviews… it’s a party in your headphones.

It’d be easy to endorse them unequivocally: they are providing free sex education to a country that badly needs it- - by Laura Rad’s report in Sex is Fun Episode #118, from last April, the current statistics are that 3 or 4 out of every 10 American girls get pregnant before they are twenty years old. That doesn’t mean that they have the baby, of course, but that is a staggering number compared to other industrialized nations– Western Europe, for example, averages 6 out of 100 girls.

Why? They have compulsory sex education. Condom advertisements are part of life. It has often been noted that the introduction of higher education for women in developing countries decreases birthrates; our culture’s discomfort with sex is doing us no favors.

We do use sex to sell everything, anyway: why do we have such a double standard about talking about how to protect ourselves and be healthy? It’s a question that remains to be answered, but as Kidder put it, the U.S. is also “the industrialized nation with the largest churchgoing population. Just sayin’.” The lack of federal funding for sex education also means that well-meaning sex educators, like the crew at Sex Is Fun, are forced to look elsewhere for funding.

Sex Is Fun was originally funded by the Smitten Kitten, a sex-toy store based in the Twin Cities, where Sex Is Fun is also based, and by a company that made a product called Boom Energy. Boom Energy was a non-prescription sexual stimulant that, in January of last year, was exposed as containing the prescription drug Viagra. Although the distributor plead ignorance, claiming that the product was not supposed to contain the drug, Kidder reported that the manufacturers “faced sentences of up to 20 years.”

It’s ironic that our cultural ignorance has left the best and most comprehensive sexual educational material — material that should made these four part of the academe of sex practice — dependent on deceptive products for funding. Maybe we could just admit that Sex is Fun?

My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.” One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely. We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are. We meet today to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans, a generation that came of age amidst iced chais and mocha strawberry Frappuccinos®, a generation with a historical memory that doesn’t extend back past Coke Zero. We meet today to heal the divisions that have torn this country. For we are all one country and one American family, whether we are caring and thoughtful Democrats or hate-filled and war-crazed Republicans. We http://www.hungry-girl.com/sectionimg/1176strawberry_creme.jpgmust bring together left and right, marinara and carbonara, John and Elizabeth Edwards. On United we stand, on US Airways, there’s a 25-minute delay.

Ladies and gentleman, I never expected to be speaking before you today. Like so many of our speakers at this convention, I come from a hard-working, middle-class family. I was leading a miserable little life, but, nevertheless, overcame great odds to live the American Dream. My great-grandfather fought in Patton’s Army, along with Barack Obama’s great-grand uncles’ fourth cousin once removed.

As a child, I was abandoned by my parents and lived with a colony of ants. We didn’t have much in the way of material possession, but we did have each other and the ability to carry far more than our own body weights. When I was young, I was temporarily paralyzed in a horrible anteater accident, but I never gave up my dream: the dream of speaking at a national political convention so my speech could be talked over by Wolf Blitzer and a gang of pundits. And today we Democrats meet in Denver, a suburb of Boulder, a city whose motto is, “A Taxi? You Must be Dreaming.”

And in Denver, we Democrats showed America that we have cute daughters who will someday provide us with prestigious car-window stickers. We heard Hillary Clinton’s ringing endorsement of “the weak-looking thin guy who’s bound to lose.” We heard from Joe Biden, whose 643 years in the Senate make him uniquely qualified to talk to the middle class, whose family has been riding the Acela and before that the Metroliner for generations, who has been given a lifetime ban from the quiet car and who is himself a verbal train wreck waiting to happen.

We got to know Barack and Michelle Obama, two tall, thin, rich, beautiful people who don’t perspire, but who nonetheless feel compassion for their squatter and smellier fellow citizens. We know that Barack could have gone to a prestigious law firm, like his big donors in the luxury boxes, but he chose to put his ego aside to become a professional politician, president of the United States and redeemer of the human race. We heard about his time as a community organizer, the three most fulfilling months of his life. We were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, “Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.” We were honored by his pledge, that if elected president, he will serve at least four months before running for higher office. We were moved by his campaign slogan, “Vote Obama: He’s better than you’ll ever be.” We were inspired by dozens of Democratic senators who declared their lifelong love of John McCain before denouncing him as a reactionary opportunist who would destroy the country. No, this country cannot afford to elect John Bushmccain. Under Republican rule, locusts have stripped the land, adults wear crocs in public and M&M’s have lost their flavor. We must instead ride to the uplands of hope! For as Barack Obama suggested Thursday night, wherever there is a president who needs to tap our natural-gas reserves, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a need for a capital-gains readjustment for targeted small businesses, I’ll be there. Wherever there is a president committed to direct diplomacy with nuclear proliferators, I’ll be there, too! God bless the Democrats, and God Bless America! (From David Brooks, NYTimes Op-Ed Columnist).

I keep hearing statements of this kind - reminders that this is a “historic candidacy” and that Obama is a first, a representative not just of the state of Illinois but also of black people everywhere.

What smelled fishy to me was not Julio’s food but the smugness with which he delivered this pronouncement: What does a Colombian kid care what color the President of the United States is? Colombia did not have a civil rights movement, and, to my mind, has suffered for it. To Colombians, the idea that their powerful northern neighbor would be run by a descendant of slaves is a rude challenge to the existing power structure.

I think that many Americans view Obama’s candidacy in this light, too, much to his benefit. Yet, if we were to attempt to construct a Foucaultian reading of the situation, I believe that we’d find something else altogether. In his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault argues that the repression of sexuality actually helped construct an idea of sex as a powerful entity. Thus, when people speak openly about sexuality, they feel that they are performing a powerfully transgressive act, but they are actually acting in accordance with the systems of power that encoded that transgression. Yeah, whatever, you’re saying, but how does this have to do with Barack?

Well, an application of this “Rules are Made to be Broken” hypothesis would lead us to the conclusion that the repression of black people in the United States has strengthened the idea of black people as a powerful entity- an entity so scary and so powerful that they needed to be repressed in order to prevent them from taking over the world.

By Foucault’s argument, Obama’s candidacy does not challenge but reinforces preexisting power structures: although we’ve been taught that an opposition exists between The (white) Man who oppresses and The (multiethnic) People who are oppressed, in reality, The Man and The People are interdependent.

While it is true that in some very real senses, having Obama as a president will offer new evidence of social mobility in the United States, and reinforce the promise of the American Dream, is it not also worrisome that the Obama campaign is right now something more of a cult of personality instead of being based on any kind of platform or issues? Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC was moving, yes, but she did not talk about issues.

In her column this week, Maureen Dowd wraps up with ” So that added to the weird mood at the convention, with some Democrats nitpicking Obama’s appearance, after Michelle’s knock-out speech and the fabulously cute girls. . . They wondered why he wasn’t wearing a tie, fearing he looked too young, and second-guessed Michelle’s green dress, wondering if it clashed with the blue stage, and fretted that there wasn’t a speaker Monday night attacking McCain and yelling about gas prices. “I’m telling you, man,” said one top Democrat, “it’s something about our party, the shtetl mentality.” ”

Frankly, that’s what I’m fretting about, too - that Obama has gotten so caught up in his cult of celebrity that he’s forgetting he has got to apply for a position outside of that village-sized cult– a position with the American people. The Bush Administration has handled things egregiously; there’s no question that this election should go to the Democrats. Yet where is the strong anti-Bush rhetoric? Does Obama, Man of Change, already mean Obama, Man of Democratic Party Line?

Yet at the same time, a newer report on Faux’s antics sees its standard of journalism perilously close to the kind of satire achieved in such masterworks as Brohemian Rhapsody, (hat tip to Shmitten Kitten for the link).

Wikipedia reports that “According to former FOX News producer Charlie Reina, unlike the AP, CBS, or ABC, FOX News’s editorial policy is set from the top down, stating that “The roots of FOX News Channel’s day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered.” Sweet, right?

That bias pervades the channel whose tagline remains “We Report. You Decide” to this very minute. The current headline reads, “Obama RIck-Rolled!” There’s a caption beneath it with the details: “A new video surfaces featuring Barack Obama ’singing’ to Rick Astley’s 1987 hit ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’” In fact, the “video” is of Obama, on Ellen, in 1987, shaking it in a dignified manner, interspliced with clips of Obama collaged to coincide with the lyrics of the song.

Not only is the song a celebration of monogamy, but he’s also Rick-Rolling, if that’s what the dance my 87 year-old white Jewish grandfather does when he’s making fun of dancing is called, approximately 20 years ago. Now, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it’s such a travesty to roll your fists in a circular motion every 20 years or so. Also, I love that jam.

I concur with YouTube’s The Liberal Viewer in his multiple catches of Fox New’s bias — for example, they have repeatedly twisted stories to impugn Obama’s discussion of race, and to remove the Daily Show’s criticism of McCain from a clip, even though that also excises the entire joke.

What I love about the Rick Roll’d example, though, is that it has entirely backfired. It is exactly for this reason that I love Obama: he’s not a stranger to love. He will never give me up, or let me down, or make me cry, or fail to Rick-Roll on the Ellen DeGeneres show in 1987. Not only is his medical history of the last 21 years 1/1,200th of McCain’s medical history of the last 8 (I am not making this up), but he’s got moves. What’s not presidential about familiarity with 80s music?

America, let’s not be strangers to love. I just want to tell you how I’m feeling. I’m feeling like we should all be getting our news from Counterpunch and ZCommunications and Democracy Now!

Ok, ok, I’ll let you see the video. I am, after all, playing it for only the seventeenth time as we speak. I suppose I can share, even if it means that it will load more slowly in the future.

I was recently driving around my city (and by recently, i mean two weeks ago, since I’m currently stationed in Colombia, South America, in a city that’s anything but my own) and I saw one of those cars plastered with bumper stickers- coexist, hug a tree, my other car is a broomstick, that sort of thing. And then I saw it, that one mind-altering sticker. It was a new slogan, or new to me, anyway: “I’ll be postfeminist in the postpatriarchy.”

The concept of postfeminism has always intrigued me. Wikipedia credits Susan Bolotin with the first usage of the term in her 1982 article, “Voices of the Post-Feminist Generation,” printed in New York Times Magazine. The article, according to our ever-accurate wiki sources, “was based on a number of interviews with women who largely agreed with the goals of feminism, but did not identify as feminists.”

As I noted in an earlier post (”I’m Not A Manhater, I Just Dream a Lot”), many of the women of my generation share these same philosophies about feminism - they agree with it in everything but in the name. This reluctance to align oneself with a mostly-decrepit civil rights movement differs dramatically from other civil rights movements, namely (and tellingly) the Civil Rights Movement.

While it could easily be argued that groups like the Black Panthers were demonized by the media, (and it could also be argued that their leaders were systematically assasinated by the U.S. government — check me out on that one in “Speaking Truth to Power: the Canary in the Coalmine“), it’s not too peculiar that no one feels the need to declare themselves “post-blackpower” or “post-Civil Rights.” Of course we’re all post-1968; that doesn’t mean that the issues of that year aren’t salient today.

Let’s give ourselves some context: feminism is not a dead movement, but when we think of feminism, pop culture offers us images of the bra-burning, Steinham-worshipping protests of the sixties and seventies.

Given everyone’s obvious location in the present, any claim to be “post” any historical movement must be read as a deliberate rejection of that history. This would lead us to read “post-feminism” as synonymous with “anti-feminism;” yet, as Bolotin notes, the “post-feminists” are actually feminists by a different name.

I argue that, based on my survey, which is described in more detail in my Manhater article, “post-feminists” display a hypocrisy that is unconscious political folly at best and a symptom of internalized misogyny at worst. It’s all well and good to declare oneself to be “over” something, but to hold to its tenets and deny it in name is to betray confusion.

The problem, in short, is that, in the popular media, feminists are manhaters. To be a feminist is to take a stance, it’s thought, against heterosexuality. For the contemporary woman, barraged with and undermined by marketing about ’self-improvement’, to take such a stance is to jeopardize her own femininity. Since a perfect (sexy yet not aggressive, smart yet not argumentative, competent but not competitive, 36-24-36) feminine persona is an abstract ideal unattainable enough, the additional caveat “feminist but not homosexual” is unwelcome.

I think, in short, that the desire of many women (and men) of my generation to reject feminism and “man-hatred” has resulted in a collective movement, however unintentional, towards the rejection and hatred of women and themselves. By claiming “postfeminism,” such women perpetuate patriarchy by denying their connection to and benefits from the civil rights movement that is their heritage. I mean, no one wants to give up the vote or the right to own property. But let’s not forget, let’s not impugn, let’s celebrate and accept the power of our sister-predecessors to make changes we still benefit from today. After all, if it’s sexy you’re after, feminists have better sex (check my post “Keep Your Socks On, I’m Cumming,” for details). And there’s nothing hotter than that.

As Feministing astutely notes, Bolotin’s coinage has now been used, more than twenty years later, in the New York Times itself, to describe a presidential candidate. Robin Toner writes “The Obama campaign is, in some ways, subtly marketing its candidate as a postfeminist man, a generation beyond the gender conflicts of the boomers.” As Feministing’s Jessica Valenti points out in an article about Harriet Miers, “It’s self-deceptive to think we’re in a postfeminist world when we never tried a feminist world.”

Hat tip to Bust for their coverage of this well-heeled event in their August/September issue: there’s a a new annual parage of feminist men who strut their stuff and walk the walk, literally.

The “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes,” which bills itself as an “International Men’s March Against Rape, Sexual Assault and Gender Violence” — in which men walk a mile in heels to raise awareness about gender violence and simultaneously raise funds for rape crisis centers.

The organization creates communication about sexual violence by encouraging empathy across genders by putting “yourself in her shoes,” and then promoting an ongoing male identification with the experience of femininity by “walking the walk.”

The movement reminds us to “talk the talk,” because “ It’s critical to open up communication about sexual violence. While hidden away, it’s [incurable]. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get people talking.

“People unfamiliar with it often don’t even want to know it exists. It’s ugly. People that have experienced it themselves want to forget about it. How do you get them talking now, so they can prevent it from happening? And after it’s happened, how do you get them to talk about it so they can recover?

The site concludes, “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® provides several opportunities to get people talking. For preventive education, it helps men better understand and appreciate women’s experiences, thus changing perspectives, helping improve gender relationships and decreasing the potential for violence.

“For healing, it informs the community that services are available for recovery. It demonstrates that men are willing and able to be courageous partners with women in making the world a safer place.”

With 99 Walks already planned internationally for 2008, the organization has grown by leaps and bounds since its inception in 2001, carrying its message that violence against women hurts everyone. As they put it, “Sexualized violence does not just affect women. It affects the men who care about them, their families, their friends, their coworkers, and their communities.

“Sexualized violence is epidemic. Some of the statistics: Every two minutes someone in America is raped. One in six American women are victims of sexual assault.That means someone you know, someone you care about, has been or may become the victim of sexual violence. It may be your mother, your sister, your friend, your girlfriend, your wife, your coworker, or your daughter.” For a calendar of events and a listing of locations by city and state, see this page.

So far, this seems to be some creative-minded do-goodery: interesting, yes, but not necessarily significant. Yet consider that the high heel is typically read as a tool of female self-objectification — it literally puts the female on a pedestal; it recalls us to the female foot flex in orgasm that is thought to be the origin of the foot fetish, suggesting an always-erotic being.

Diary of a Goldfish’s imaginary feminist claims that “high-heel shoes serve one purpose. Standing on tip-toes makes your arse stick out in such a way which advertises your sexual availability to other primates. High-heel shoes are entirely for the benefit of men who live under the illusion that all women are available to them for sex. And by wearing high-heel shoes you perpetuate this myth, as well encouraging other women to do the same.”

As Jessica Crispin notes in her review of The Meaning of Sunglasses over at The Smart Set, some feminists take an even more cynical view. She reports that “a work colleague recently took one look at the four-inch peep toe heels I was wearing and snarled, “Don’t you know why men invented high heels?” I doubted anything I said would deflect what was coming next, so I just shrugged. “So you can’t run away when they want to rape you.” I understand. I used to be a humorless feminist, too, complete with shaved head and my father’s combat boots. Then I discovered Charles David heels and got over it. If only The Meaning of Sunglasses had existed sooner, I could have spent less time being a self-righteous twit.”

So why do we wear these shoes when they are so often equated with objectification and even rape? Certainly these associations and their clichéd companion phrase, “she’s asking for it,” though absent from the Walk in Her Shoes website, are the link between the support of rape crisis centers and the display of men in heels.

The fact that the Walking men are not gussied up to resemble women, outside of their footwear, reveals the equation of heels with rape ludicrous. What I love is that heels are employed here by male feminists not in a mode of objectification but in a display of active solidarity that reinforces the agency of the heel-wearer. The heels are not just to look at, but to walk an entire mile in! I admit, however, that even my favorite pair of relatively comfortable thrift-store pumps would probably have me hobbling, or more likely, barefoot, at around two thirds of a mile. Then again, I’m told I’m something of a dirty hippie. I’m going to save a more serious investigation of heels for another day, when it’s not 4 in the a.m.

1. He does not support a continuation of the foreign policy that created the War Against Afghanistan or the War Against Iraq.

2. He does not, as McCain does, state that the military should be making foreign policy decisions and suggest that it would be "fine with" him if we were in Iraq for "maybe 100 years. "

3. In the past, or so I’m told, people protested when we had to have a draft because we had long, ongoing wars, like Vietnam. I don’t support war in the first place, but senseless war (where are the WMD? ) makes even less sense when we’re planning to continue it indefinitely.

4.  McCain has stated, on television,  "I don’t think Americans are concerned if we’re there for 100 years or 1000 years, or even 10,000 years" (see original link for video)

5. If Republicans stay in power, their imperialistic wars may start to require a draft, and may not hide the fact that the economy is collapsing like a house of cars while they spend money on more missiles.

6. Our country will be left with no choice but to protest. Let’s not wait: let’s not give these rich white boys the reins. Let’s be concerned, now, about the man who would like to keep violence in the Middle East running for another 10,000 years.

7. There was recently a Supreme Court decision declaring that everyone has the civil right to handguns in their home. You don’t have to watch The Wire to understand why this is a controversial issue. Yet don’t think that Obama is going the wrong way by opposing it: under Obama’s governance, there appears to be less of a plan for continued war. We will not have to take to the streets in protest when every able-bodied person is called to serve, and mass armament will not be an issue. Obama approaches foreign policy with the capacity for negotiation which carries over into his approach to domestic policy. No true patriot, and no good president would support the unnecessary death of his countrymen that senseless wars inevitably cause.

“”Violence against women has reached unspeakable and pandemic proportions in some societies attempting to recover from conflict,” he said.”

The BBC notes that China, Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam expressed reservations about the universalized classification of rape as a weapon of war, but in the end, the entire Security Council voted unanimously to condemn rape.

While it’s good to hear that the U.N. is no longer turning a blind eye to the problem of rape, it’s unclear whether this resolution will have many consequences, especially considering that in the past, U.N. Peacekeepers have engaged in rape and pedophilia and employed child prostitutes, according to the Washington Post and evidence gathered by blogger Michelle Malkin, both in 2005.

Since the Security Council stands little chance of stopping violence in wars themselves, those of us outside of war zones are left to question what consequences the new classification of rape has. The Council is clearly trying to move in the right direction, but the use of the word “unspeakable” in connection with discussions of rape reiterates the old equations of rape with impurity and shame.

Surely, feminists everywhere are celebrating: rape has been recognized as the grievous crime it truly is, encouraging the decline of rape culture and the cultivation of a more woman-friendly global community. Yet does this mean that we need to view gender relations as a form of war? Is this a productive way to examine the issue? Clearly, this is an issue that deserves greater examination, although the ruling is a good start.

To the right is six year old Mapendo, a Congolese girl who survived rape during war and is now being given a ten-year scholarship by The Goma Student Fund.

Specifically, I’ve been listening to their song “Hustler,” off of their recent release “Attack Decay Sustain Release,” in which a mediocre synthy beat backs a husky female voice claiming to be a hustler and telling a story about shoplifting vinyl. The song has some merits — it’s catchy- and subversive-enough to be hot, in a pseudo-pop kind of way.

What makes it post-worthy, though, is the video.
There are two videos for “Hustler” on youtube - one of which, released by Universal Music Group, appears to be a group of model-thin female hipsters sitting in a circle and passing a secret, which turns into a lick and then a kiss. This video is relatively unexciting from a theoretical angle, taken alone: it seems to be about the voyeuristic, objectifying pleasure created by two Jameses when they get a bunch of hot girls to make out. But in light of the second video, it begins to have political and ideological value.

The second video (at the end of this post), released by Wichita Recordings, the group’s record label, begins with similarly objectifying material: forty seconds of hot girls in leotards shakin’ it to the song’s synthy beat on rotating platforms, as if they were pole dancing at a strip club.

After the first forty seconds, the girls are replaced with images of hot food: french fries, twinkies, fried chicken, donuts, chocolate cake, hamburgers, hot dogs with ketchup, unwrapped chocolate bars, strawberries, introducing parallels between sexual and physical appetite consistent with the objectification of the initial message of the sexy dancers.

This equation is not a new one. Larry Flynt, in his July 1978 issue of the coincidentally titled Hustler, portrayed woman as a piece of meat — literally– by putting the female image through a meat grinder. Hustler, which was famous for featuring blatantly racist and misogynistic cartoons as well as hardcore porn, presents a serial cartoon about a prostitute, “Honey Hooker,” setting it in sharp contrast with competitors Penthouse and Playboy, which also feature serials starring sexy females: Wicked Wanda and Little Annie Fanny.

Interestingly, despite, or perhaps because of, this emphasis on a markedly unromantic sexuality, Hustler has also published editorials with a more economically and sociallly left-wing bent than other pornographic magazines, while simultaneously remaining “hardcore” — meaning that women were portrayed showing “pink” — i.e. inner labia — and themes such as child molestation were blatantly portrayed.

This magazine, which is also mailed for free and uninvited, to every member of Congress, has become a metaphor for the aggressive objectification of women. It is with this in mind that we return to our examination of Simian Mobile Disco’s second video.

Following the images of the rotating food, the sexy leotarded women return and begin to gorge themselves, thus transforming from objects of desire to subjects of desire, identified with the viewer, who presumably (see Laura Mulvey and the male gaze of the camera) originally lusted after both them and the donuts. As the hot women transition from spraying whipped cream into their mouths to eating peanut butter with their hands, and standing in piles of food that have fallen from their overstuffed mouths, their appetite and ours is gradually rendered grotesque.

As the video continues, the women begin to vomit disgusting colors– blood-red and bile-black — until the viewer is repulsed. The end of the video finds these hot models transformed into hideous, denture-wearing old women, who are clearly no longer the objects of anyone’s desire.

This transformation of woman from object to object-cum-subject to autonomous creature can be read in two ways. A Marxist reading would render these women models of the consumer, whose appetites ultimately render them disgusting, as consumption overtakes their humanity. Yet this condemnation, and a subsequent interpretation of the video as ironic, does not jive with the lyrics of the song, which describe the singer as a “broke” music enthusiast who does not have the money buy records and so resorts to shoplifting — an action which is presumably anti-capitalist enough to comply with Marxist standards.

The lyrics, then, might serve as a guide to another, more comprehensive interpretation of the song. The chorus, a repetition of “Yeah, I’m a hustler, baby/That’s what my daddy’s made me” suggests a female consciousness of patriarchy, or, in other words, a potential feminist reading. In this light (which I admit I did not need much persuasion to see), the video becomes a portrayal of the acquisition of female agency and autonomy. The transformation of women from object into subjects and finally into the anti-objects, the Kristeva-esque abject, subverts the traditional hierarchies of symbolic order. The viewer, initially lulled into a feeling of power over the women in the video, ends his or her viewing experience with the surprising feeling of uncontrol, reminding us that gender power, like every kind of hierarchical power, is a construction that harms, constricts and controls everyone who participates in it, regardless of their relative positions. This Simian Mobile Disco video reminds us that these encounters with these nubile young women are really encounters with unknown Others, who are not to be understood or possessed through objectification. So here, finally, is the video: