(Thanks for the picture, epi.) For the record, these are good Christian pandas--they are not having fun but doing their duty. But a cute duty it turns out to be.
Take it from this porn liberal, there are lots of enemies of sex out there. And they are right wingers. Why some liberals find this incessant need to keep pretending that feminists are trying to ruin their fun when they have perfectly good enemies on the right, I'll never know.
Actually, I do know. They aren't liberal or progressive, at least not when it comes to gender issues. And as a big proponent of sex-positivity, let me be the first to declare that this attitude is just as sex-negative as anything flying out of Rick Santorum's mouth.
The reasons for the attention may be worth pondering. Countless public figures have been accused of sexual harassment since the world learned that the semen-like stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress was, in fact, semen. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2003 gubernatorial campaign was dogged with numerous accusations of unsolicited groping. Last month, Australia's Labor Party leader John Brogden attempted suicide after he admitted to fondling a reporter while drunk.
Still, Dov Charney is a relatively unknown figure, and Overmyer says she is surprised by the extent of the public's interest. She suggests it's not Charney's specific actions but his company's sexually brazen culture that's on trial. In many ways, Overmyer may be right: fifteen years after Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas insinuated sexual harassment into the popular consciousness, a new wave of court decisions, legislation and business practices is renewing the debate.
Is Dov Charney the tighty-whitied Rosa Parks of those who seek to desegregate business and pleasure?
Same old chauvinism disguised as "sex positivity". Wanting a world where women can feel positive about sex, where it's not a condition of our employment or survival, where it's not used to humiliate or overpower us, is "sex negativity", apparently. If a woman doesn't like being held up for ridicule by an ass-grabbing asshole, then god knows she's a dour feminist who hates sex. Fucking your subordinates is the brand-new sex positivity. It's so brand new that Strom Thurmond was engaging in it when he impregnated his 15-year-old maid. Nothing more daring than bringing back the era of the secretary who plays wife to her boss in all sorts of ways, while of course not even having the privileges given to the actual wife. Men are so oppressed by feminists who want to take away their sex toys female subordinates, that maybe the only way to rectify this is to assign every well-off man his very own sexy secretary who has to have sex with him or else sleeps in the snow. It's only fair.
Man, when they made it illegal to fondle women at work and intimidate them by hanging out and appraising their body parts, they might as well have banned sex. What we silly sex-hating feminists don't get is that sex is zero sum game. If women can feel good about sex instead of afraid of having it used as a weapon to put us in our place, then men have to lose by definition.
If Charney is such a hotshot superstud, then why can't he just suck it up and lay off his employees? If he's near as hot as he says he is, then he should surely be able to get laid by a woman who he's not paying, I would think.
Pinko Feminist Hellcat has more.
Tangentially related--Susie Bright and Ariel Levy talk about real sex positivity. You know, the kind that Charney types aren't so hot on, the kind where women are more than props for men's ego trips.
