For years now, the kind of thinking that resulted in all those speech codes and focus on sex in the workplace has been old news on campus. Instead, desperate to regain some of the hedonistic cachet of the '60s, hip academics have been turning their backs on rigorous, killjoy feminists like Andrea Dworkin in favor of porn stars like Nina Hartley, who tours the college lecture circuit spreading what has come to be called a sex-positive ideology. There have been porn-studies classes at University of California at Santa Cruz, UC-Berkeley, UC-Santa Barbara, Wellesley and State University of New York at New Paltz, to name just a few schools. And in 1998, the World Pornography Conference -- cosponsored by the Center for Sex Research at California State University at Northridge and the Free Speech Coalition, a porn industry trade group -- brought dozens of academics and adult film stars together for a four-day celebration of skin.

It's easy to see a direct parallel between the intellectual celebration of porn and a sexed-up hip-hop act like Lil' Kim. As a protégé of the late Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka the Notorious B.I.G., she exploded onto the scene as a part of his Brooklyn, N.Y., collective, Junior M.A.F.I.A. She achieved true celebrity soon after with the X-rated album "Hard Core," which came out in 1996, roughly at the same time as Foxy Brown's similarly gynocentric "Ill Na Na." The two albums seemed to exemplify a new era of female M.C.s who were more concerned with earning orgasms than respect. Not surprisingly, the nymphomaniac routines -- particularly Kim's scant clothing and trashy rhymes -- were magically transformed by the press into shows of feminist strength.

Kim's new album, "The Notorious K.I.M.," is her first in four years. She has spent the interim traveling as a widely toasted It Girl, selling MAC lipsticks and being celebrated in magazines from Vibe and the Source to Interview, Elle, Vogue and Newsweek. These are, of course, the same publications that have largely given a free pass to pornographic misogynists like Eminem. It's interesting that these critics use exactly the same language as the professors who give rhetorical blow jobs to gonzo porn video directors like John Stagliano. In critic-speak, Lil' Kim is often described as "empowering" or "revolutionary." Some even herald her as a mouthpiece of the "new feminism."

"She's transcended the male-dominated world of rap to become one of America's sassiest, most engaging icons," said Newsweek. "Asserting herself sexually like a hip-hop Millie Jackson, Kim's ribald accounts of healthy sexual appetite come off as empowering," crowed Time Out New York. "Kim is a revolutionary figure in the sense that she's a woman who is articulating the same perverted thoughts that men have been rhyming about for years," concurred music magazine CMJ. "In a male-dominated genre, Kimberly Jones' suck and be sucked tales -- and her no-holds-barred, straight-up raunchy (but somehow endearing) routines -- gave rap a much-needed jolt of female-fueled sexual empowerment," adds a SonicNet review of the new record. RollingStone.com was one of few outlets that demurred: "Luckily for Kim, when neither her lyrics nor her beats suffice, she can always fall back on her ass," wrote critic Neil Drumming. His review demonstrates the flip side of the press's infatuation with horny women -- the same sexual carnivorousness that the media lauds as powerful is used as a put-down once the act grows tired.

No doubt, Lil' Kim is thrillingly audacious. The chorus of "Not Tonight," from "Hard Core," included the funked-up singalong chorus "I don't want dick tonight/Eat my pussy right." You could call it the ultimate jam for the Good Vibrations set. But Kim's stardom was -- and is -- as much about timing as about attitude. She's the apotheosis of a female ideal that reached critical mass in the '90s, about the same time that universities began to see porn as a positive vehicle for female sexuality. She was a carnally voracious, fashionably outrageous diva who could match libidos with any man. Her fame coincided with the rise of the female sex columnist, with the public cult of the Hitachi magic wand, with post-"Boogie Nights" porno chic, Esquire magazine celebrating do-me feminism and Porn Star baby T-shirts mass-marketed in malls. Amid all this erotic self-congratulation, perhaps a graduate student in porn studies could argue that Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown were reclaiming or recontextualizing something like the Hottentot Venus of the early 1800s, the African woman lured to England and displayed naked as a sideshow freak because of her large breasts and butt. But this time, if there is any exploitation going on, the girls are full participants. It's a situation that precludes earnest liberal criticism. Sure, anti-rap bluestocking C. Delores Tucker complained, but no one was listening. Kim was strong and beautiful, nobody's victim.

Not being a victim, though, doesn't translate into being a heroine. In her music, if not in her much more user-friendly public persona, Lil' Kim has never been a hip-hop Mae West. Instead, like misogynist male rappers from Snoop Dogg to Eminem, the sex in Kim's music is often driven as much by hate and a desire to dominate as by lust.

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