You would think that Amanda Marcotte would step a bit more lightly into issues of gender politics and sexuality since her last encounters; where she pissed off feminists of color several times by stealing Brownfemipower’s speech as her own, then breaking out a cover for her latest book that practically reeked of anti-Black racist imagery; and then managing to piss off women with artificially enhanced breasts by spouting off the superiority of naturally small-titted women.

You would think wrong, of course.

Not that Amanda doesn’t do some excellent work and make some excellent points as a hip indie liberal spokesperson, but on some occasions she is capable of biting off more than her mouth can digest.

I give you two examples forthhence.

First off….we have Amanda’s response to Playboy December 2009 Playmate and bikini model Joanna Krpa, who used the pages of Fixed Noise’s website to defend posing naked for that esteemed magazine in pretty strong terms:

However, the magazine’s December cover girl, bikini model and “DWTS” star Joanna Krupa, has something to say to those women who view the men’s magazine as sexist and demeaning to the female gender.

“I think they suffer from lack of knowledge and tunnel vision. How many of those self-important, so-called ‘feminists’ have been on the set when a celebrity shot a Playboy spread? There you go. What is feminist about discriminating a photo shoot just because it involves female (partial) nudity that happens to give men pleasure? Pathetic,” Krupa told Tarts in an exclusive interview.

“There are several great reasons why female celebs line up to shoot Playboy: finally a woman gets paid more than a man for comparable work, she gets to set the rules, gets to be in a real team work with other women, as many key positions at Playboy are in fact held by women!” Krupa adds. “She brings in her creative ideas, gets involved in the photo selection and ends up with something she co-created through and through.”

Notice that Krupa isn’t quite saying that Playboy Playmates have more power than other women in other professions; just that they do get a great deal of autonomy and power to determine their own destiny, and they do get paid a great deal more than the men do, too. And remember, this is Playboy, not HUSTLER….nudity rather than actual sex.

Nevertheless, that alone was enough to upset Amanda’s cookies, for this is how she responded in the typical “See me, the hip liberal elitist feminist” fashion of hers (special innanity emphasized by me):

This is the sort of ill thought-out argument that makes me grumpy first thing in the morning. (Via.) The idea behind the “porn is empowering!” argument is that women who work in porn gain power in a pragmatic way, playing by men’s rules, and feminists should support this for pragmatic reasons, because at the end of the day, women have more real power. And that would be a legitimate argument if the women involved had more power at the end of the day. But what power do they have, exactly? Johanna Kruppa cites the big paychecks you get for nude modeling in Playboy, but since those paychecks stop coming when you’re a hag of 23 or so (or possibly younger), then it’s a false form of power.

You know who has real power in the real world? Hillary Clinton. Nancy Pelosi. Tina Fey, even. Hell, I have more power than a Playboy model in the real world, since my opinions are taken seriously. All of us would never have this if we posed for Playboy, because as much as the men who make the rules coo and flatter Playboy models, they actually think you’re dumb bimbos and they don’t give a shit what you have to say.

Do I think this is fair? No. I think that it would be a better world if someone could both be in Playboy and be a congresswoman. But fair isn’t the point, by Kruppa’s own measurement—she’s making a “getting power in the unfair real world” argument, after all. But she’s failing to understand that her argument fails on its own measures.

Of course, nowhere in Krupa’s interview did she even hint that she had more power than Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton (or Sarah Palin, or Carly Fiona, or even Carrie Prejean), only that being a Playboy Playmate does have its advantages for the future.

But it’s Amanda’s notion of who has “real power” that has me really fascinated…in the way that watching a train wreck is interesting. Yes, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton have plenty of power (and look what good that has done during the recent health care debate, BTW….you’d think that the two most powerful women in politics wouldn’t get rolled by the likes of Bart Stupak, right???)…but their power comes from the institutions they represent (and the largesse they receive from corporations that rely on those institutions). Plus, even those positions are quite transient as well; nothing says that Pelosi can’t lose her Speakership if the Democrats lose big in the 2010 midterms, or even lose her seat and have to settle for the slightly less profitable largesse of the corporate sector.

Also….it’s really not about getting power that really matters, but what you do with it….and beauty models aren’t the only profession that relies of skills that can be transitory. Try being a professional athlete sometimes, Amanda; do you think that NFL or MLB players skills will last them forever and ever?? Yet, I don’t see you knocking them as any less “powerless” than you are….but then again, Playboy models seem to haave bigger tits and pull hunks a hell of a lot better than you have, right???

And as for the adage that adult models aren’t being taken seriously….well, not all of them wish to put themselves in the spotlight and spout their political views. Maybe they just want to bask in the moment of being recognized for their bodies and their beauty, and feed their egos and bank accounts in more private ways. Not everyone wants to or needs to become fighting feminists, you know. But, maybe Amanda should have actually listened to what Joanna Krupa had to say before spouting off about how superior she was.

Or…maybe it depends on which beauty contest she’s talking about at the moment.

Which brings us to Amanda’s second “WTF?!?” moment, whence she commented on the whole fracas involving former Miss California USA turned Christian fundamentalist Joan of Arc wannabe Carrie Prejean. As the world now knows, Miss Prejean has been on a campaign to play herself as the persecuted queen of conservative family values because she answered a question about gay marriage; and because she was ultimately defrocked from her crown due to not meeting her commitment to her title. The fact that she was making topless pictorals didn’t help her cause, either, even though initially Donald Trump and the Miss USA officials actually gave her a free pass, waiting for later to pull the plug. Then, when she decided to attempt to get paid by suing the paegent officials for “religious discrimination”, slander, and libel, directly citing her right-wing social views as the main reason why she was defrocked…revelations of her solo masturbation sex tapes emerged out of the blue which killed that attempt cold.

Considering that Miss Prejean has made it her personal duty and mission to educate the masses on the supposed abject evils of “pornography” and to deny not only gay and lesbian folk but also other women of the right to do exactly what she did in private, you would think that it would be a pretty strong stretch for a devout liberal feminist to defend her.

Oh, but guess who went there. And stayed there for the weekend.

I agree with Jeff here that it’s about time that we started viewing the release of privately made sexual photographs and videos to anyone other than their intended audience as a form of sexual assault. The motivation to do so is indistinguishable from that as a rapist—using sex as a tool to dominate and humiliate someone, while puffing up your own sense of power—and often the results could be even worse for the victim, because her assault was performed in front of a crowd. And I agree with Jeff that we need to consider Carrie Prejean’s ex-boyfriend the scum of the earth for releasing this video, and it’s true that it’s a case of sex being used against a woman to silence and humiliate her, as she’s claimed. All that said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with learning something from the fact that this video exists. That the video was released in an act of sexual assault, and should be treated as such. But that doesn’t mean that the act of making the video isn’t something that also matters, when the person who made it is a spokesperson for legally controlling and punishing the sexual behavior of others. I hope we can be nuanced enough about this to see that Prejean is both a victim and a horrible hypocrite. I think it’s important to realize that all these sex scandals involving the moral scolds of society demonstrate that right wingers really do get into being moral scolds because they want to reserve sexual pleasure for themselves while denying it to others. Also, that homobigotry isn’t really about some kind of strict view of human sexuality evenly applied, but that it’s basically just bigotry and attacking people for being in a minority.

Oh, really, Amanda?? Surely you know that Miss Prejean has appeared in such venues as the Focus on the Family convention and Sean Hannity’s Fixed Noise talk show extolling the virtues of abstinence and decrying the influence of “pornography” in our culture and how it allegedly debases “natural”, “wholsome” sexuality at the click of an Internet key, right?? And that she has been reported to have even attempted to lie about the age in which she appeared on those self-lovin’ vids, claiming that she was 17 (implying that she was an “underage victim” of evil men) when in fact she was of perfectly legal age and had signed model releases?? (Not to mention that she tried to put off her autonomy and will in making the photos and the vids by claiming that it was “the wind” that forced her breasts to be shown explicitly; and that the vids were meant to be merely personal and private but were released by the evil big, bad Liberal Media that really, really hates good strong Conservative women???)

Oh, and the vids were NOT released to the public (at least, not yet), one of the tapes was released to the Miss America officials as part of the defense of her lawsuit.

Now…as I posted here before here when the Prejean mess first came out, I’m not going to come down on her for making intimate sex videos or topless photos of herself; it’s her body to do with as she wishes. It’s the dissonance of hypocrisy, though, for her to do this AND simultaneously insist in being the Patron Saint of Christian prudery, let alone the Great Misunderstood Martyr for Ex-Sluts Turned Born Again Maidens for Christ. It’s not being perfect Christians, of which there are none; it’s about walking your talk and speaking one thing while doing exactly the opposite….or doing in private the sime exact things that you would censure and censor others for doing.

Of course, for folk like Amanda to acknowledge that would mean that she would actually have to acknowledge that there are women who actually DO sex videos and porn for their own pleasure and profit, and don’t hate themselves or the men and women who happily consume such product. Since Amanda wants to be in with the hip elitist antiporn feminist liberal crowd who sees such folk as anathema to their own concept of feminist purity and male sex baiting, she simply can’t go there. So much better to see Carrie Prejean as both a hypocrite AND a victim of universal male gawking and male sexuality…which serves as the wonderfully universal convenient scapegoat for feminists who want to “save” women in sex work and porn and adult modeling from the Evil Male Gaze…and from themselves, too.

And then there is the matter of “the evil boyfriend” who supposedly ruined and “slut shamed” Prejean by “releasing the tape to the public”. Ahhh…I really, really do hate to break in the joyous male baiting, but certain facts get in the way of the celebration:

1) The boyfriend did not steal the vids from Prejean; she GAVE them to him for his own entertainment. That makes them HIS videos, not hers.

2) He did not release them all to the public; he only gave one video to the legal team representing the Miss America paegent…and only after Prejean had apparently lectured him to lie about her being underage when doing the vids….which would by law subject him to legal charges and serious jail time. Why would she perpetrate such a lie, other than to cover up her role in the affair…and to maintain her air of hypocrisy as victim??

3) If he really wanted to destroy her, he would have released the offending videos during the paegent, when it would have done the most damage….remember, Prejean was reigning as Miss San Diego at the time, and the public release of those vids would have been absolutely toxic to her career. So, why did he wait until now, and why only one vid??

4) And maybe, just maybe, Prejean is being a bit coy about her outrage about the vids, using the publicity to full advantage to hawk her book and rail against the “liberal media” and make crackbacks at Keith Olbermann for not applying the same standards to Michelle Obama and Sonia Sotomayor?? Perhaps she would rather play both sides of the street, pretending to be so high and holy for the Christian fundie and radfem crowd, while also hawking her “other side” for her male conservative base to finance her future career?? It would’t be the first time someone played both the sex and anti-sex angle, you know.

But…when you have been raised to believe that all men are potential rapists who use their penii to slash and assault women, that even right-wing women whose stated values are exactly the polar opposite of yours can be allies with you on the subject of controlling the evil sex desires of men and their female “enablers”, and that you being a hipster liberal are more capable of guiding another woman’s experience than that woman herself, the inconvenient facts tend to get in the way of your rant.

Personally, I don’t think that girls who do personal private sex tapes of themselves willingly should have a Goddess damn thing to apologize for, nor should they be put up on charges if they are that self-confident and proud of their bodies and their sexual prowess. They should be careful and understand that their online “sexting” can be seen by others and that they should be prepared fully for any consequenses should their content fall into the wrong hands, and they should be aware of the local laws against showing sexual content among underage persons….but other than that, no one should be slut-shamed at all for showing themselves off willingly. It’s not the tapes that is the issue with Carrie Prejean, it’s the hypocrisy of her being such a right-wing antisex activist and attempting to criminalize the very activity she engages in in private.

On the other hand…it doesn’t help matters when self-identified liberal feminists, in their zeal to “protect” women from the “male gaze”, deny these same women their agency and free will and reduce all their activities to the essence of “male rapicity” and “sexual assault” as a “cultural concept” that targets “us”. as a gender.(And I’d say the exact same thing about Gloria Allred and her thinly-veiled threat to prosecute Prejean for her “sexting” activities.) The men who use their activities to slander and smear these women, though, should be called out and dealt with…but for their antisex bigotry and their excessive actions, not for them having erect penii.

In other words, Marcia Pally’s old adage still applies here: FIGHT SEXISM, NOT SEX. Too bad Amanda Marcotte is too caught up in herself and her feminist supreriority complex to read and understand that memo.

Update: By al means, Ren Ev and Natalia….pull your punches. Or not. (And Natalia?? Nice hair. )