Tag: misogyny

Everyday Lecher

Everyday Lecher

In 2022, I published my first book.

It’s called Victim. For those of you who don’t know about it, the subtitle is: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor. Some people asked me why I called it that, Victim, why I named my book, a manifesto no less, with a word that traditionally denotes weakness and defeat. I responded, as I still do: I named it with reality.

Okay, that still may not fully answer your question because: why is it a reality that a word conventionally equated with weakness has anything to do with strength and even triumph over trauma, as I named my North American book tour? That’s because, even if a person (usually a woman) is a survivor of sexual violence, we are still victims. We are changed. The violation and subsequent trauma never fully goes away. And this doesn’t have to be a bad thing; the same way that the word ‘victim’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing: both are reality. Like I say in Victim, as simultaneously a victim and a survivor, I am “[a]live in the wisdom of what I have survived. Fierce in not accepting what doesn’t have to be true.” (153) And this is certainly true. The fact that I am alive in the wisdom. Because I definitely know a creepy lecher when one leches on me. And I am fierce in not letting him know that it is true: you’re abusing power. Stop.

Last week, I needed help. From a man unfortunately: the financial advisor of my deceased father and now the one who manages my mother’s finances. I am, again unfortunately, one of the many people in the North American land of individualism and excessive personal boundaries, a person whose sister has estranged me. And, yes another unfortunately, she is also the executor of my mother’s will—and my mother isn’t doing well. Recently, I found out my sister could sell the house without my consent. I thought we were all equal: my brother, my sister and I; but, no, mimetic to the hierarchical culture we live in, we’re not. And I also found out—perhaps predictably—that she doesn’t want to lose her power.

I needed advice as to how I won’t lose my home.

The house that I have been living in for the majority of my life since 2016. The house and place that I am very attached to. I certainly wouldn’t have sought his advice if I knew he is an everyday lecher, though. What I mean by the nomenclature “An Everyday Lecher” is because, in patriarchy as a system of ingrained misogyny and power abuse, these kinds of men are everywhere, committing acts of what they construe as a bit of flirtatious fun. It may sound minor. But another “what’s-she-complaining-about?” But it’s not. Sexual harassment is connected to rape. The particular man doing the sexual harassing may not be a rapist, may never go that far; however, it should go without saying as the most obvious logic: everything is connected.

Here’s yet another tale of sexual harassment and power abuse,

in the banality of a Starbucks no less, sipping English Breakfast tea, backgrounded by an Indigo/Chapters, Canada’s most common book store, not to mention but another greedy corporation manspreading around neo-liberal land (re: capitalism on crack). The Everyday Lecher sat down and immediately felt that it was his right to reach across the table and start stroking my skin. He was a dear friend of my father’s after all (and I wonder what my father would have thought of that, the entitled stroking of his daughter’s skin, that is). More: as he stroked and I pulled away, as I was of course taken aback by this friend of my deceased father’s hand lunging across the table, his eyes clamped onto my chest and, laughing playfully, like a goofy Lex Luther (he is kind of a dork), he exclaimed: “I like your ample bosom!”

Okay, you may be thinking: “what’s she complaining about? Things could be so much worse!” Yes, you’re right! They could be. Like the all-out sexual assaults I have survived and been victimized by; like child sex slavery in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Mexico, Latin America, Africa and wherever another war-torn country is ripped open for a new batch of female vulnerability and male, entitled, violence (don’t get your backs up, men, you’re not all lechers, rapists and sex tourists). Yet, throughout the reading of this post, don’t forget the ‘everything-is-connected-of-course’ reality.   

Then: (because I’ve had challenges with men and found myself in emotionally abusive relationships since the beginning of the string of my relationships with emotionally abusive men due to the emotional abuse inflicted on me in childhood by my father who, himself, was a victim of sexual assault and unresolved trauma and, subsequently, took it out on me, the child he saw the most of himself in), I am quite often single, having just survived another emotionally abusive relationship. Even though the conversation that day in one of the 32,660 Starbucks in the world was supposed to be about probate fees and a strategy to keep my sister from having the ability to sell the house out from under me, the Everyday Lecher’s conversational priority was to comment, every few minutes on how ‘dateable’ I am while continuing to reach across the table and stroke my skin, as he called it, not my arm, but my skin: “I like to stroke your skin,” he kept saying, starting to make me feel very uncomfortable, yet still always surprised when behaviour which shouldn’t be common at all happens in the first place.

I put on my jacket.

Because I was cold. And, I’m not sure but maybe subconsciously, because I wanted to cover myself, make my skin inaccessible to him. I have been afraid of men all of my life. This is because my dad was scary. It’s lessening now. But it’s still there, so I don’t process right away, especially when it’s a dear friend of your deceased father’s and you are kind of shocked this kind of thing would happen in the first place. Again.

“I don’t like it that you put your coat on. I can’t touch your skin now,” he lechered from across just another of millions of round, grey Starbucks tables. My skin started to crawl; the all too familiar anxiety began to roil in the pit of my stomach. And yet, I was there to get some answers, a possible solution as to how to save the house that heals me, how to save my father’s orchard (we had forgiveness at the end of his life—yes, a lot of context to fill you in on like everything in life— which makes the orchard even more precious to me;) my flower garden filled with sweet peas every summer; so many trees that will most likely be cut down by soulless capitalists when the house sells in order to build a monstrosity as monetarily profitably as possible; the beach that has calmed me since childhood with the clearest water where I swim every summer. As I swim, like just ten days ago now, roll around like a euphoric seal, as I float with arms outstretched and am a part of purest water and the bluest sky, I exclaim to myself and to other blissed out swimmers:

“The water is as crystal silk!”

Whenever I am away from this sea and not feeling well, I visualize its expanse, and I feel better. Always. I can’t lose this house. This place. This land. I’ll do virtually anything to keep it, even put up with an everyday-lecher/father’s-financial-advisor’s entitled, creepy advances.

The meeting ends.

There is a sort of possible solution (which ended up didn’t work out and that’s another story about first world individualism, lack of empathy, and more possible familial estrangement). Because he apparently idolized my father, he wants to see my dad’s bicycle, the one I ride when I’m in Canada. Ridiculously—yes, trauma can impel us to do ridiculous, albeit justifiable, things—I became a child again, that little girl who was abused by her father, and I tell the Everyday Lecher about the sweet peas in my garden that grew so tall this year they are a part of the apple tree. He made a comment about my ‘sweet pea’—an obvious clitoral allusion, even without the skin stroking and bosom staring previous. Yuck! The sweet pea comment would be cute coming from a real boyfriend, but from your dad’s investment guy? Yuck! And connecting my deific sweet peas with his lechery? “Men suck!” as my good friend and comrade in calling out sexual violence in all of its forms, Catherine Owen, said when I told her.

The next morning, I had to say something, of course. I texted:

“Don’t feel entitled to touch any part of me and make sexual comments again.” He responded:

“I shouldn’t have been so familial,” his response. Familial?! That’s even creepier! I had to phone him:

“Your behaviour was far from ‘familial.’ Would you insist on stroking your niece’s skin? Comment on her breasts? And then, as the climax of this apparently harmless family affair, make a clitoral innuendo?” He was shocked, the perpetrator became the victim in his patriarchal mind. He went on and on about how he would NEVER do that (the sweet pea part he found particularly ‘hurtful’). His voice was rising with horror and hurt. You did. I stated. I have been leched on by enough men in my 56 years to know a sexual innuendo when I am assaulted by one. And yes, like all of us who have lived through sexual violence, I have PTSD. It surfaced because of this everyday seemingly benign sexual violence from across but another Starbucks table. No thanks. 

In the end, the Everyday Lecher couldn’t respond to my familial rebuttal. How could he? My undermining of his diminishment of sexual harassment to some kind of familial affection rendered him speechless. The object of his abuse of power had made him ridiculous and, hopefully, deep down, to himself as well.

He didn’t help me as much anymore, predictably. All of the assistance he’d promised and empathy he’d given during the meeting disappeared. And, he couldn’t look me in the eye when he came over to give my mom an update on her investments.

Epilogue:

It’s logical that victimhood never fully goes away. It’s logical, too, that we are survivors because we have survived, we are strong and we live with and do not allow the undeniable change we experience by being victimized defeat us. It’s logical that PTSD raises its re-traumatized head when we are assaulted again—even if it’s just some unconsented to skin-touching by a man who was one of your dad’s best friends and not being shoved against a wall or onto a bed or drugged and abducted and raped.

But it doesn’t have to be logical for men to be entitled to touch us, make lascivious comments all in good fun, excuse their power abuse as mere familial affection (I can’t help but wonder if he treats his niece in the same ‘familial’ fashion). It doesn’t have to be logical that we are exaggerating, making something out of nothing, maybe even making it all up. No. Such enculturated-male-in-patriarchy-entitlement that is embedded into the heads of men in positions of power can and must, someday, make no sense. Let’s call them all out. Let’s render all of their justifications and excuses ridiculous.

Me in my beloved garden in Lantzville BC. Where the sweet peas meet the apple trees xoxoxoxoox

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Follow Up. Fallout. Part Two.

Follow Up. Fallout. Part Two.

I don’t think she will ever read this.

And if she does, I hope that will be a good thing, that she will find some validity, some truth in what I am about to write and what I wrote in the first part of this double post: “Follow up. Fallout.” The reason these two posts are named thusly is because of the post previous: “What Fresh Hell is This? Same Old, Same Old” where a young woman calls herself the “modern whore” and adds to the myth that women can be empowered sex objects, that everyone can be one of the privileged 1% in the sex industry who go unscathed making happy memories of naughty and, yes of course, money—money that is represented as virtually free or, like the prostitution “sex work as work like all others” progenitors of the 80s Annie Sprinkle and Scarlott the Harlot celebrated, getting paid for sexually servicing men was a fringe benefit rather than the point of an inevitably unbalanced monetary exchange (and, as such, ironically, it wasn’t even the regular work they were claiming it to be at all). As abolitionist and prostitution survivor Rachel Moran states: “The only thing prostitution ever liberated me from was homelessness.”[1]

In capitalism, where the one paying always has power over the one being paid, there is no such thing as ‘free money’ as much as there is no such thing as prostitution being work like all others or abuse being liberation. I don’t know about you, but I have never had to give a blow job or let my boss bang me before work; I think I can safely say that myself along with the majority of wage labourers have never not been very aware of the fact that we are working for money and, most often, wouldn’t have performed said services without a pay cheque in mind. And, unless I was truly desperate to feed and house my children or support a drug addiction,[2] I—and I think I can also safely say pretty much all women—would never voluntarily sign up for an occupation on par with active warfare where women are routinely beaten, raped, maimed and killed.[3] But then, the happy hookers named above are either in denial of this reality and/or of the upper echelons of the all-in-one-piece 1% who, because of the cloisters of political correctness and fear of being SWERFed,[4] are able to speak for all people trapped in the sex trade and spread the dogma of the empowerment and even the glamour to be gained when selling one’s body (or, most often for everyone else in the sex trade, having their bodies sold by a pimps or traffickers)[5]. In the end, the good fortune of the modern whore, self-proclaimed pro-sex feminists (implying the rest of us are anti-sex), and sex-work as work advocates[6] affects self-righteous hyper-sexualization of many young women and implemented a revised misogyny that has become embedded in Western culture five decades later.

The fallout I am referring to in these posts about a young woman/teenage girl I know has to do with just these tendencies: the cultural patterns that emerged in the third wave feminism of the 80s and 90s when, in a lot of ways, feminism stopped being feminism at all as a political movement to challenge and ultimately dismantle patriarchy as a hierarchy that has to oppress in order to exist, as a male supremacist hierarchy that began and is centered on the oppression and exploitation of women by men. In feminist activist and author Julie Bindel’s words: “the authentic meaning of feminism is the liberation of women from male supremacy.” In the 80s and 90s though, regardless of women using their sexual liberation as a one-track-mind form of feminism, what has really happened is sex positive feminists have maintained and even fed what they claim to be liberating us from.

In the 90s and early 2000s,

empowered lap dancers and retro Betty Page style burlesque performers took center stage of what it meant to be liberated and all liberation was reduced to sex. Now, in the 2020s, this prioritization of sex has resulted in the hyper-sexualization of young women— along with and as a result of—their unwitting internalized sexism. As sex trade industry advocate Gail Dines says about the contemporary state of young womanhood: “either you’re fuckable, or you’re invisible.” And the young woman I know certainly isn’t going to stand for that.

If you haven’t read Follow Up. Fallout. Part One yet, I recommend you do so as to get the beginning of the chronology of where we’re going to arrive. I started out with Billie Eilish’s mega-hit “Bad Guy” and now we are about to devolve into NLE Choppa’s “Slut Me Out.” When the young woman first emerged from my neglected TikTok account (it mysteriously pocket dials; I have maybe five followers; whenever it turns on with a blare, it’s her), I didn’t think, as a feminist and survivor, I could be more horrified. However, with the latest blast, I found out I could. There was her pouty, pretty, indifferent face again, recently developed cleavage, heavy black eyelashes that inevitabilize bedrooms or pending back allies, her nostrils flaring into a fraudulent I’m-so-tough sneer, fraudulent because, like the oxymoron of an empowered lap dancer, any liberation this teenage girl is performing is all about attracting the coveted male gaze in patriarchy. Again. However, I think she actually knows this; this is what she wants and lives for: male attention and trumping other young women as the most desired and, hence, fuckable. And yes, over one-hundred TikTok hearts maintains what I pray is not going to become a fatal fraud.

“Slut Me Out” by NLE Choppa

is two minutes of can’t-get mo’-bad-ass-than-this. If you are sixteen or so and want to impress everyone at high school that you are so cool you’re beyond caring about anything including yourself, this is the song for you. The song starts, (as she did):

“Rip off my shirt if you love me
Spit in my face when you fuck me
Play with my gooch while you suck me
Suck my dick like you was ugly
I’m mean … Hello.”

Let’s start with the last line which is, because of its enigmatic and provocative manner of utterance, the hook. Flat, unfeeling intonation: “I’m mean … Hello” is stated as a sinister ‘oops’ emoji: as in I didn’t mean to, I take no responsibility for my actions and gee whiz aren’t I always inculpably cute in my exquisitely honed, solipsistic indifference? In a culture that is breeding new heights of individualism and self-righteous I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-anyone-expect-myself, the song and video are the opposite of empathy; they are sensationalized desensitization, a glamourized meanness filigreed with a ‘Hello’ that conjures a malevolent lost puppy. He’s stylishly numb: timbre pouting indifference, voice flat—as was hers in her one verse TikTok lip synch.

Continuing our explication from the bottom up,

“Suck my dick like you was ugly” plays right into the misogynist trope where young women who don’t fit into the category of ‘pretty’ are not even on the periphery of the in-crowd and have to work harder to get the male approval necessary to even exist. It’s assumed that this debasement and hard work sucking his cock more avidly than others is both a privilege and an honour. In a culture that pits women against one another in the fight to be the most desired by men, the pretty girls get satisfaction out of knowing they rise above those who don’t make the misogynist grade with their pert noses and butts to match and the constant grooming prioritized surfaces entail. However, all is not triumph for the young and the pretty. Because they succeed in attracting more attention from young men as ‘hot’ and, if they hyper-sexualize themselves in order to make the most of this, they will be deemed sluts and, thereby, presumed to be asking for and deserving to be sexually assaulted—which of course they often are.[7]

As young women self-objectify, their use-value is reinforced in a male supremacist culture and young men see women as things to be used more than ever before. This is certainly not to excuse them. Young men need to be educated on sexual violence and all young people need to be taught empathy. However, it’s reality. It’s logic. As young women strut down high school corridors in high-cropped, low cut tops and sparkling pierced navels,[8] young men, with their teeming testosterone, will be aroused. (Jordan Peterson is definitely correct on this point, but certainly not when according to him the hormone besieged boys don’t have to take any responsibility for not being able to control themselves). The use of date rape drugs is escalating in high schools[9] and as the teenager girl I know performs enjoying, wanting and condoning abuse, male impunity in patriarchy will escalate to the point where, because young women are literally asking to be raped, it is, therefore, consensual and no longer a crime.

And what is a slut, exactly,

now when so many derogatory terms have been appropriated and empowered or de-derogatized? As another late 20th and 21st Century prioritization of sexuality as female liberation, slut walks of the so-called first world are manifestations of a woman’s autonomy over her body and sexuality. Fine. Of course, we want the right to our bodies and to be free to choose our sexual lifestyles. But is that all there is to a slut walk: sexual autonomy? On the surface, yes—which is significant in itself as sexual liberation is again the only point—but when we flesh it out, like all cultural phenomenon, there’s much more than is-that-all-there-is.

Julie Bindel points out “the astonishment of feminists in the Global South [that] we continue to have slut walks” when in a third world reality survival is central. Bindel tells us how the FTN (free the nipple) campaign[10] that, like so-called empowered lap dancers and voluntary prostitutes, once again serves the male gaze and his sexual pleasure they line the streets to watch the liberated nipples—read: still sexualized women’s breasts. From a global perspective, the slut walk is directly connected to the sex-work-as-work mantra that, significantly, is not espoused by the majority of prostituted people who live on the peripheries of privilege in literal third world countries like Cambodia and Nigeria and in the third worlds that exist in the first in such places as Vancouver’s BC, Canada’s, Downtown Eastside low track.[11]

And so, back to the question: what is a slut?

According to the always relevant dictionary definition in regards to the history and predominant cultural understanding of the word: “a person, especially a woman, who is sexually promiscuous” (italics mine).[12] Regardless of slut walks attempting to liberate the term from its degrading and specifically gendered female definition that originated in the 15th Century, when NLE Choppa’s “Slut Me Out” is lip-synched by a teenage girl on TikTok, the dictionary definition is the only definition. This is how she has been conditioned in this era of feminist backlash to define herself. And this is how she is defined: easy, fuckable, usable, and rape-able. And, as an added bonus for men, she has tacitly exclaimed: “Sign me up for all.”

Of course, there is also a psychologically abusive twist that maintains the physical as NLE Choppa asks the women to:

“Where your friend
Bring your buddy
I don’t think you enoughie”

Okay, even though I’m doing everything you want me to in order to not be ostracized in patriarchy as undesirable by men, thanks for the blow to my self-esteem to keep me in my abuse-compliant place. If that isn’t enough, I am framed as trying really hard to fulfill his fantasy of domination when apparently my “favourite thing to say is ‘Cuff Me,’” (italics mine, again). The women represented in “Slut Me Out” are voluntarily demeaned zombies where the center of their worth—their favourite desire ever—is to willingly submit to a man and, even then, not be enoughie.

However,

in a way, the song can be construed as not as offensive and harmful in the fight to end violence against women because it is sung by a man. When I first heard it coming out of the mouth of a teenage girl, though, I assumed it was sung by a woman and I was surprised—and a bit relieved in the moment—when I discovered otherwise. The lyric that made me hot with rage, horror and heartache when it was blasted at me from her TikTok is “spit in my face when you fuck me.” Yikes. Yuck. A man spat in my face once and I left him. How did this happen? How did what could be referred to as misogyny on crack get through all that feminists have fought for since the 70s? And yet, now that I know the ‘me’ is most likely ‘him,’ that’s a bit better, and there is a third person (or persons) who are definitely women that supports the possibility that this ‘me’ is a ‘he.’ And yet, once again, as with the attempted transformation of carved-in-cultural-consciousness definition of slut as a dirty and promiscuous female, when the lyric “spit in my face when you fuck me” is celebrated by a hyper-sexualized young woman on social media and rewarded with hundreds of likes, there is no possibly male ‘me’—it’s all ‘she.’

Of course, I have no problem when cocky men turn the misogyny that their gender is responsible for onto themselves. However, this possibility is short-lived as very soon—to his narcissistic glee—women are stereotypically climbing all over him as he leans back luxuriating on black satin pillows and are ever-so-faithfully, tirelessly, on top. Naturally, in patriarchy with the pre-requisite of bigger the better, he states (definitely no longer the target of his own misogyny):

“Big dick energy, I give it
Don’t believe me then come feel it
Gon’ put this here in your kidney.”

Okay, even better! Damage my organs with your huge dick! Please! And then, promoting the plague of male emotional unavailability: “Don’t text me.”

But wait, the horror!:

poor, massive-cocked, glorified mean-guy is trapped by a lascivious flight attendant in the closet, his now puppy-dog eyes begging duped girl-fans to come and save him. I can feel them yearning starry-eyed from the other side of the screen: I’ll save you so I cannot be ‘enoughie’! Even though she is far from ugly, we know the the flight attendant will have no choice but to suck his dick like she is; however, with her desperate and cougar-ish representation, she won’t have a problem with that.[13]

Ending where it starts, the first line that is written on the opening frame of the video: “Why you being weird to me” victimizes the victimizer. Does he, after all, have his tongue a bit in his cheek as the answer to being rejected and someone (or everyone) being weird to him makes him desperate enough that he asks to have his face spat on while being fucked? Does “Slut Me Out” have something in common with Eilish’s “Bad Guy” when she enigmatically claims her hit pokes fun at the way people present themselves meanwhile representing glorified nose-bleeds, Lolita-esque bruises on innocent knees, in order to, yes again attract the male attention? In both, “Slut Me Out” and “Bad Guy,” if there is any satire to be had, young girls grasping for popularity are never going to get it. And, unlike “Bad Guy” where ambivalence runs through the song to the point where the singer-songwriter’s intentions are inscrutable, for NLE Choppa, except for this one enigmatic sentence, any undermining is undermined by all that comes next.

As a cultural theorist, I am fascinated by this anthropological study of cultural de-evolution; as a human, feminist and victim/survivor, I am horrified by how young women are being expected to want to be degraded and abused in order to, in Dines’ words, not be invisible. It is my hope that for my young woman friend this is only going horrifying a phase (but, unfortunately, her actions are also damaging to those who view it and believe it). It is my hope that she will get through it as equally unscathed as the happy hookers with their “pro-sex” initiatives and empowerment through prostitution who (most likely unwittingly) brought us here. It is my hope that she’ll read this someday and recognize the self she grew out of.

Until then?

Where does this lead to? Well, being voluntarily/non-consensually choked, of course. (Looks like there will be a Follow Up. Fallout. Part 3 after all).

Yours always logically,
LF.

#Iloveendnotes

[1] Rachel Moran Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015: 152.

[2] Simon Häggström Shadow’s Law: The True Story of a Swedish Detective Inspector Fighting Prostitution. Selina Öberg, trans. Bullet Point Publishing, 2016: 72-73.

[3] Victor Malarek The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It. New York: Arcade Publishers, 2011: 228.

[4] When I was on my Trauma & Triumph Tour 2022 across the US and Canada for my book Victim, I visited many sexual violence non-profit centres. I asked them about their take on sex-work as really being work like all others and not inherently exploitative. Many of them agreed with me; however, when counselling often mentally ill, traumatized and drug addicted women in the sex trade, they are unable to offer any exiting strategies, other opportunities for prostituted people to support themselves in a way that would most likely be interested in. This is because of the politically correct prerequisite to not question the exploited person’s ‘free’ choice even through implication. Through her extensive research and travels investigating prostitution internationally, feminist psychologist Melissa Farley reports how: “In 9 countries on 5 continents, 89% of more than 850 women in prostitution told us that they wanted to get out.” Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections. Prostitution Research & Education, 2007: 27. Prostitution survivor Rachel Moran comments in her memoir, Paid For, how when she was in the sex trade, she acted as though she had freely chosen to be there in order to psychologically protect herself and have some sort of empowerment. It is common when women get out, they realize that there was no free choice involved and that is was all circumstantial and coerced choice. When you think about it, this is logic. However, some sexual assault non-profits, so steeped in the dogma and delusion of ‘free’ will and the freedom to choose exploitation and to not offend by openly offering alternatives, SWERFed me (sex-worker exclusionary radical feminist. See this link for more details)

[5] As Detective Inspector Simon Häggström, the head of the Stockholm Police Prostitution Unit, says: “When it comes to people’s backgrounds it is clear that certain groups are more at risk of ending up in prostitution than others.” Simon Häggström: 72-73

[6] Sex-workers advocates are well-meaning. They want to protect people in the sex trade by destigmatizing it and making it regular work. This is never going to happen because the majority of men who buy sex from predominantly exploited women and girls, hate women and there will always be an unequal power relationship. When a man is paying a woman for her sexual services, he has control over what she has to do. And, if she doesn’t do it, the man feels entitled and it has often been stated by men that raping a prostitute is not rape. Prostituted women always have an escape plan set up before going with a john. And, there are emergency buttons in brothel rooms (that sometimes don’t work). Do any not-prostituted people need an emergency button or an exciting plan before starting their shift? I think it’s safe to say, No. Logic.

[7] One woman every 17 minutes is raped in Canada, one woman every 2 minutes in the US, and one woman every 18 seconds in Mexico. The most common age when a women is raped is 13-30.

[8] The teenage girl who is the subject of this essay proudly showed me what she was wearing to school the next day. I said that’s a belt; but, no, it was actually a ‘shirt.’ There needs to be dress codes at high schools and universities. However, there quite often isn’t because of the politically correct dogma of ‘freedom of choice.’ In the end, political correctness supports and maintains rape culture.

[9] In this article about a Vancouver area high school, young women are starting to fight back; however, when male teachers ‘flag’ teenage girls for wearing revealing clothes, the young women say it’s their choice to wear what they want. Yes, it is. But unfortunately self-objectification as a sex object and the inevitable male response to this does nothing to end or even abate rape culture. Sorry. More logic. https://www.newwestrecord.ca/local-news/new-westminster-students-rally-against-high-school-rape-culture-5368130

[10] Julie Bindel Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation London: Constable, 2021: 14; 80.

[11] The low track is the prostitution ‘stroll’ where some of the most desperate women in Canada are prostituted to pay for drug addictions. According to Gabor Maté who worked as a psychiatrist in the DTES for many years, all of the mentally ill and drug-addicted women being prostituted on the streets were sexually abused as children and continue to be sexually assaulted virtually every day. This is the location where serial killer Robert Pickton found his victims over a ten year period. The disappearances of these women were ignored by the Vancouver Police for almost a decade. See See Gabor Maté In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction and Lori Shehner That Lonely Section of Hell: the Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away.

[12] A substantial and historical definition of ‘slut.’ “The word’s origins are unknown, but the Oxford English Dictionary coined it as “a dirty, slovenly, or untidy woman” in the 1400s. Until the 20th century, the term ‘slut’ referred to poor women with low standards of cleanliness. ‘Slut’ was not only gendered, but also classed. According to society, the poor women it referred to should be more productive in the labour market. It was not until 1966 that ‘slut’ became what we know it as today; a “woman who enjoys sex in a degree considered shamefully excessive.” https://yeoja-mag.com/origin-word-slut/

[13] There is also the derogatory ‘cougar’ stereotype is at work in this scene as well. It is so annoying when the name of the big cat in BC, Canada forests is brought up and right away men go to the stereotype of a ravenous middle-aged woman preying on younger men. Of course, when an older man is with a young woman, if anything, he is called a sugar daddy. Women can be labeled sugar mamas, as well. However, giving someone sugar is a much more positive metaphor than a female/predatory and terrifying wild animal attacking innocent young men. This annoying topic came up once again last weekend at a dinner party (by a man of course). I explained the above and, alas, a woman said to me, “people can’t say anything these days. There is no sense of humour.” (Sigh). Derogatory stereotypes are never funny: be they racial, gender-based or class-based. In his video, NLE Choppa as a literal and ideological predator in a male supremacist system becomes the victim as he is pulled into a closet by a misogynist myth. From my experience as a middle-aged woman, they are the young men who (often to my surprise) hit on me. Hey, middle-aged women sisters: what’s your take on this myth? Tell me in the comments!

*All images of NLE Choppa and his video “Slut Me Out” are screenshots from the official video on YouTube.

About the Blogger:

I am an art critic, visual and performance artist, author and feminist activist. My work focuses on systemic violence in patriarchy: be it gender, race, the environment or speciesism. My art criticism has been published internationally in magazines, anthologies and artist catalogues in English and Spanish and I have exhibited and performed across Canada, in the US and in Mexico. I am the recipient of the “Ellie Liston Hero of the Year Award” 2022 for being instrumental in the life sentence given to a serial rapist who abducted and brutalized me and countless other women. Since that time, as I write in my book, Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor:

“And, believe it or not, what I suffered and survived …. all of those years ago gave me a gift of knowing my strength and what I can survive. And now, resistance, fighting for justice for all, is what I live for. My life is far bigger than myself.”(186)

My personal experience of surviving and triumphing over sexual violence and trauma is the origin of Logical Feminism.

I live in Mexico City and British Columbia, Canada. Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor is my debut book.

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