After reading What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl's Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety, I had some of the best sex of my life, and felt happier and healthier in my relationship.

No, this isn't a phony endorsement for your run of the mill dating advice or sex tips handbook. It is definitely not in reference to an article I read in Cosmopolitan magazine. In fact, What You Really Really Want is a desperately needed antidote to the slew of toxic sewage in the form of "sex and relationship advice" targeted at girls and women.

What is a feminist?

Is a feminist an academic who can quote bell hooks and Betty Friedan with ease? Is a feminist a great orator who steps up to podiums, demanding freedom for all women, using buzzwords such as marginalization, empowerment and exploitation? Is a feminist white, benefitting from class privilege and well-versed in feminist theory, as the representation in last week's highly criticized CBC documentary The F Word might suggest? Or is being a feminist simply antiquated, as columnist Margaret Wente declares "The war for women's rights is over. And we won."

The works of seasoned feminist psychotherapist Susie Orbach were never part of the subversive women's studies syllabus that I was taught. A quick scan of her credentials quickly underscores why. Not only did she treat the late Princess of Wales, she is also the consultant and co-originator for the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Plainly put, Orbach's writings were never featured on my course readings because she's aligned with a brand of liberal feminism discordant with most of the more radical theoretical tendencies of women's studies academics. They believe -- as I do -- that equality can only be achieved through a transformation of existing, oppressive structures.

Members of the Miss G__ Project for Equity in Education have sometimes been called — or have been accused of being — "media darlings." Equipped with bubbly personalities, quick-wit and analytical minds, the steering committee of this grassroots feminist organization understands the mutually dependent relationship between activism and the media and they know that image is important if they want to garner headlines.