I really like this book.  A lot.  I also thought, like some of the others, that it can be uncomfortable to read about some of these things (I don't really find it that uncomfortable, honestly), it's important to talk about and read about topics that are not in the spotlight and are often ignored because they are 'uncomfortable' to address. I also be honest that I felt some of the issues that came up in the text ignored certain things, and also talked about things like the Japanese comics without adequate background information to place it into context.

Chapter 3 focused primarily on pornography.  It discussed issues that people have had with pornography including it's potential negative effects on men viewing women as objects as well as possibly contributing to the sexual violence against women.  It also discussed how porn also has a female market now, and that a growing percentage of the porn viewers are women.  The issue I found is first of all, it focused on large, money-making oriented pornography.  This is the internet.  Many people use porn ALL the time and it didn't cost them anything.  Also, the fear with those sites is NOT just fear of being found out.  Credit card fraud and viruses plague those kind of sites, some of them even "fake" porn sites, only interested in drawing people in with sexual content.  A lot of porn that is accessible on the internet is made by other internet "consumers" and is free.  I'm not necessarily trying to say "look at this, it's great", but it's not really all created by the desire for money.  A lot of it is mutual sharing, especially in fanfiction communities.  And this porn ranges from heterosexual to homosexual and from male dominating to female dominating, to pretty much everything you can think of.

Also the lack of information in the study about porn from Japan really lacked a lot of information I felt. It completely ignores that in actual society Japan is quite conservative about sexual issues.  Media, especially manga and anime, uses a lot of sexual tropes to appeal to men and women, because it becomes a sexual outlet of sorts.  Even many of their video games, especially visual novels, really contain a lot of explicit material.  It left a lot out though:  A lot of these games are not just flat out sex scenes.  Many of the manga, anime, and games include narratives and character relationship building.  Not all of them, but many of them do and it's not only titles directed at women.  That's pretty standard for ones directed towards men as well.  Also, it left out, which I think is particularly important, that Japan also normalizes homosexual porn as well, both gay and lesbian porn.  It's not out of the ordinary.  I guess I just felt like this section lacked a lot of information about pornography in Japan.

Chapter 4 focused primarily on news media and women who work as journalists as well as how women are represented in news media.  It was crazy to think about some of the statistics that were mentioned.  It also was saddening to see how the treatment of women as victims and the treatment of rape victims by the news media has probably caused a lot of women to not come forward when they are victims of sexual violence.  Perhaps what is more disturbing is the fact that many of these women are made out to be liars or as deserving of what happened to them.

For the most part I really liked the discussion about Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton.  It really bothered me though, that on page 108, the discussion turned to Palin possibly running in 2012.  It discussed that Palin was basically feeling that the conspiracy with her media experience was about class, or political "liberal" agenda, and how it wasn't hurting her then.  But, even if she doesn't recognize it, or just doesn't name gender as a force driving her harsh media coverage, that means that it doesn't matter?  It bugged me to see, "If Palin really does believe that the treatment of herself and her familyby the media is a consequence of a conspiracy perpetuated by the elite liberal corps of journalists--a class-based rather than sex-based analysis--then it's a conspiracy which is doing her no harm at all at the moment, as eyes continue to follow her tracks at a time when other presidential contenders such as Hillary Clinton have all but disappeared from view" (108).  So what?  So what if she's still getting "attention"?  That doesn't mean that the gender issues go away or that they weren't a significant factor in her treatment on the media.  Plus, as a Republican candidate, I don't think she could even get away with talking about gender as a factor, because she'd instantly be retaliated against because so many view her beliefs as "anti-feminist".  I doubt it would work out for her if she did take that stance.