Last Friday, as I was rushing to pack and get on the road for a weekend trip to Los Angeles, I quickly read the post about the Cosmo Orgasm Face, and though I didn't have time to respond, I did manage to spend some time in the car, while my husband drove and my daughter complained about how long the drive was, stewing over what I encountered as the tossing about of erroneous assumptions about women and sexuality, and wanting but not able to respond.

Here's the shorter version of the long-winded sentence I just typed: I am a third-wave feminist.

I'm not sure I would have called myself this before this weekend. I knew it, but I didn't have all my waves sorted out before I began thinking about it. Now I do.

What does this mean exactly? In my eyes, a third-wave feminist rejects the notion of women always being vicitims. She rejects the idea of sex and pornography being bad. She rejects the notion that pornography is made only for and by men. She incorporates queer consciousness into her thinking about sexuality. And she celebrates sexuality in general. (There are more clarifications to made about this third-wave category, but you can go to Wikipedia for that. I'm not interested in footnotes today.)

How I Got There

I am a visual person. I love good design. I am attracted to beauty in the environment and deep, rich colors. I married into a family of artists and I appreciate their attention to light and detail. I love women and men who, in choosing what to wear, aren't afraid to show their bodies. I don't do it myself, but I don't mind looking at it. I find the human body infintely intriguing. I used to love New York City in the summertime because it was a virtual flesh fest.

I reject the notion that women are not "visual" and therefore have no interest in pornography or that they don't care to look. I admire feminist writers such as Suzie Bright, who brought sex-positive idealogy and women-centric pornography out into the light (I always thought there was a good reason her last name was Bright) and sex eductor Betty Dodson, and other enlightened women who paved the way for women to rob pornography of its male-centrism and reshape it into something that women can not only feel good about, but not feel ashamed to say they like.

In an article about Suzie Bright for Salon, the writer boiled down Bright's essential argument: What is our problem? Sex is a gift from the gods, it creates life and it makes life worth living. Why must we keep afflicting it with a crown of thorns?

Having survived Catholicism and the moral policing that went along with it, I became a person who eschews shaming and celebrates sexuality. This means I don't mind talking openly about sex, and I don't have a problem with people who make different choices about it than I do. I don't mind reading articles that focus on it, even if its not the way I experience it, even if it challenges my sensibilities and enters into my discomfort zone. I don't even mind reading about a woman's "orgasm face" because I don't automatically assume that a woman is thinking about it because she believes that she "exists only for the sexual satisfaction of young men."

In fact, I think even saying that is a giant slap in the face to young women, who certainly don't think of themselves that way.

As a third-wave feminist, I certainly don't look down upon women who work in the Sex Industry. Many of them are in complete control of what they are doing and have chosen this as their field of interest and feel empowered by it. I realize that this is not true of every single woman working in the sex industry, but I recognize that it is not accurate to dismiss them all as victims of male oppression. In fact, many women, and some of them I have known as friends, are women who prefer to sleep with women in their everyday lives, and consider men merely as clients.

I see and know women working in queer and straight pornography, and I don't automatically assume that this is bad, or that they are being "acted upon" and unable to be consider their own pleasure.

There exists a whole world of women's erotica and pleasure chasing media— and it's yours and mine for the taking.

Who Helped Me Get There

In the late 1980s, I was pursuing a degree in English with a minor in Women's Studies. I'd discovered feminism, this new thing that my mom never really talked about even though she had lived through the sixties and was going back to a career a few years after I'd been born.

I was so pleased with myself for finally feeling empowered, for finally seeing women as they ought to be seen. And then I read Andrea Dworkin, et al and it completely turned me off. It seemed as if my sexually repressed Catholic parents and Andrea Dworkin were probablly on the same side.

Worse than that, I hated seeing myself as a victim of male oppression. I hated seeing myself as a victim, period. I knew I was more than that. I knew that I'd had a difficult relationship with my father, and that he was emblematic of the term "sexist," but I also recognized his behaviors as a product of the 50s and, sadly, of religion. He had failed to look deeper into gender roles and streotypes. And his own sexual repression paved the way for his need to hide Playboy magazines in drawers where he thought no one would discover them.

It was shameful to look at the human body, right? Well, I didn't think so. Even as child, I loved looking at pictures of naked women and men. I found it intriguing. And it didn't ruin me. It didn't make me feel as I existed only for men. I didn't become an object—far from it.

You could argue that the real damgae was done by a culture that made me feel like a deviant for looking at pornography without thinking that it was something horrible, demeaning, and wrong. I never thought that sex was just intended for procreation, and I still don't.

As a third-wave feminist, I know that I have benefitted greatly from the feminists who came before me. The women who helped us win the right to vote, the right to chose what we do with our bodies, the right to have whatever profession we wanted—barring, of course, the Presidency but not excluding prostitution, which I think should be legalized—and the right to be taken seriously by men, and not seen as a potential secretary.

But it also gives me the right to speak out against those who still insist on seeing women as being powerless to the media, as "being acted upon" (and not getting "action" themselves!) or "pornified." This skates too dangerously close to Puritanism and the cult of victimism for my tastes.

Yes, it makes me laugh when I see the varying degrees of undressing that constitutes fashion among the contemporary teenage set. I see those teenage girls as attempting to use the power of their sexuality in a culture that is obsessed with it. They want power, just as boys do.

And yes I think that the whole boob obsession (and fake boob obsession) is ridiculous—it's just a body part that happens to hold a lot of power in our culture. But I don't assume that the women who display theirs are soley "bimbos" or "victims" or even "objects of the male gaze." Remember, I am capable of looking, too.

Have you ever been into a lesbian bar or gone into Good Vibrations and looked at some of the sex-positive books for women? You'll see plenty of cleavage there, too.

As a third wave feminist, and the mother of a girl, I recognize that it is my responsibility to make these distinctions for my daughter, or at least guide her to them. My hope is that her self-esteem and education on these issues will supercede her need to buy into stereotypes. By that I mean that she will inevitably see and read Cosmopolitan at some point in her life, especially if I attempt to demonize it (worked for my parents). But she will see it, as I do, as just another part of our culture, one which holds no more power over her than anything else does.

It's all a balancing act, isn't it?