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.

"She deserved it." "She was fast." "She shouldn't have been alone." In 2001, Joanne N. Smith listened as young female students regurgitated the opinions of their parents, teachers, and peers, blaming an eight-year-old victim who had recently been followed, dragged, raped and left bloodied on her way to school.

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."

Two years ago, best friends and daughters of second-wave feminism, Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein climbed into the front seat of a Chevy Cavalier and criss-crossed the United States, talking to more than a hundred young women along the way. The end result of their inspirational journey is Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism, a non-fiction book that looks and reads like a magazine, coupling Aronowitz's critical prose with Bernstein's vibrant photography.

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.

You don't have to look any further than the mainstream media to understand why author Jessica Valenti believes there is a moral panic in America over young women's sexuality. It's hard to know what to believe when Tyra Banks and Oprah Winfrey are sounding alarm bells over an epidemic of teen sexuality, while at the same time Esquire magazine is asking "Where have all the loose women gone?"

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.

Jessica Valenti, author and Feministing.com blogger extraordinaire, speaks some feminist truths about sexist double-standards with a packed crowd in Toronto. Hear excerpts from her new book, He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, as well as her previous book, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters.

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Filmed for the book lounge by Michelle Langlois.

Can a cookbook be a useful tool to advocate womenâe(TM)s equality? Can crafting up some tasty dishes in your kitchen help rekindle a social movement?

As counterintuitive as these notions might seem, the Cookbook for Womenâe(TM)s Equality: Out of the kitchen, cooking up equality! is a cookbook that inspires action! It challenges us to remember that womenâe(TM)s equality is not a given, that it still requires our hands, hearts and minds; to stay alert to what the government is promoting in its policies and continue the fight for womenâe(TM)s equality.

As a chef and caterer, I found myself examining my actions outside of the kitchen. In running my own business, I make sure to pay well and make allowances for the personal needs of my employees.

FEMALE ICONS aboundin mainstream culture:the goddess/saint, the mother(preferably virginal),and the bad girl/slut(most congenial, andsafest, when blessedwith a heart of gold).Composed of impossibleassemblies of select characteristics,the female icon is an archetype, unrealoutside of the conventional collectiveimagination.

The very process of makingor becoming an icon is aboutnaming/being named, about being judgedworthy or not, depending on whateverdominant values reign at a given point intime. What happens when she who isjudged, weighed, compared decides to dosome naming of her own?