Tag: patriarchy

Is Less Better? Women’s Day in Mexico City 2025

Is Less Better? Women’s Day in Mexico City 2025

Posted on by Karen Moe

Can it be a good thing

when the number of women at an International Women’s Day march decreases by what could very well be half from the year before and many years before that? Usually, organizers are actively recruiting and hoping for more and more protesters every year. However, in a country that has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world, could a decrease be a positive?

Mexico is one of those countries. In an article written in 2024, an estimated 10 women and girls were recorded as being murdered by an intimate partner or family member and, with only 1 in 10 victims daring to report, the real statistic is much higher. Moreover, with a 95% impunity rate, the number of predators convicted is as exceedingly low as the number of women and girls murdered is exceedingly high. Because of the extremity of machismo culture in Mexico, feminism only began to build as an organized and vocal movement in approximately 2014, originating in the Lesbian community. Until then, the majority of women were reluctant (or afraid) to speak out. It wasn’t until 2019, after a series of rapes and femicides that received national attention, that the women of Mexico had finally had enough of male violence and began to rise up en masse.

Besides the thousands of femicides that are reported and ignored by authorities or not reported at all, one femicide that received a lot of publicity—because of the ferocity with which her family fought for justice—was the 2017 murder of twenty-two-year-old university student Lesvy Berlin Rivera Osorio by her boyfriend on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM). Lesvy’s body was found hung in a telephone booth; her boyfriend Jorge Luis Hernández González had hanged her to death with the telephone cord. As is usual in Mexico, her murder was catalogued and filed away as a suicide. The real case was closed. In order to buttress their victim-blaming tradition of suicide, the Public Prosecutors Office took to social media with accusations like “Osorio was an alcoholic and a drug user who was no longer studying at UNAM and had been living out of wedlock with her boyfriend.” Authorities insisted on investigating the victim’s sex life and family relations to build evidence of promiscuousness and mental instability that would back up their fabrication of suicide. More effort was put into making up evidence to discredit her case than investigate her murder.

Wall of unconvicted rapists and murderers, Mexico City Women’s Day march, 2025.

Impunity reached a searing point in Mexico City

in the summer of 2019 when a series of assaults were committed by the police. In July and August, three women were raped by police officers; on July 10th, a 27-year-old homeless woman was raped by two other police officers; on August 3rd, a 17-year-old woman was gang-raped by four policemen in a police car; on August 8th, a minor was assaulted by a police officer in Museo Archivo de la Fotografía in México City. The women had had enough.

In direct response to the sexual violence committed by the police, women rose up on August 12th, 2019. This was the first time they expressed their rage publicly by starting the controversial act of writing on and defacing historical monuments (the first one being The Angel of Independence)—from which the women have since been criticized and their movement, to this day, discredited. Yet, regardless of the ridiculous accusations that the women are just as violent as the men who rape and murder them, what did they write on the base of Mexico City’s iconic Angel of Independence? “You are not going to have the comfort of our silence anymore.” And, with these words, the Feminist movement in Mexico had officially begun.

“You are not going to have the comfort of our silence anymore.” Photo courtesy of Restauradoras Con Glitter. 2020

In a continued response to the impunity of the Mexico City police for the multiple rapes in the summer of 2019,

the women rose up again on November 25th, 2019 for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the protests became increasingly vocal both in voice and act to the point where the city began covering the statues of the conquistadores (male colonizers) with saran wrap and surrounding the large monuments with corrugated metal to keep the women from covering these legacies of colonialism with such words as: Mexico Feminicidia! Basta Ya de Impunidad! (Enough Impunity Already, No Desaparecidas Ni Muertas, #NiUnaMenos (#NotOneLess), and plaster the walls with photos of unconvicted rapists and murderers. Saran wrap was gleefully torn off the monuments, climbed on and spray painted and the barriers torn down. The women were determined to be seen and heard.

On February 14th, 2020, there was a protest outside of President Obrador’s residence in the Zocalo—President Obrador, who did so much for the Mexican people initiating social programs and combating the Cartels from where they start with his Bullets Not Guns program and one of many legislations for justice, made a grave error when his response to women demanding more attention to be paid to the femicide epidemic discredited their cause as an act of the opposition. Then, on February 15th, 2020, seven-year-old girl Fátima Cecilia was found dead, her body wrapped in a plastic bag in a garbage can on a vacant lot. Fury escalated and the attendance of the Mexico City Women’s Day March from the Angel of Independence to the Zocalo began to surge: from 2020 to 2024 the march grew from 90,000 to 180,000.

Women climb on and vandalize monuments as other women cheer. Mexico City Women’s Day march, 2020

 

Women destroy the barricades, Mexico City Women’s Day march, 2020

I have been attending the Mexico City Women’s Day March (or 8M and it’s called here) since I moved here in 2015 and have watched it grow into one of the largest marches in the world. I was at the protest on November 25th, 2019. I remember tear gas, fires, the barricades kicked and then shoved down and gleefully jumped on to the cheers of onlookers and the hundreds if not a thousand police lining Reforma with their riot shields. I remember more tear gas. I remember when, after the city began to have only women police defending the monuments during women’s day, protesting women having fierce altercations with the women police officers accusing them of being traitors that often resulted in violence. I remember the year when the then mayor of Mexico City, now Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum, gave all the women police officers flowers, and the controversy amongst the women protesters that ensued. I remember in 2020 when protective barricades were first put in place to protect the prioritized colonial monuments from vandalism. I remember the women climbing up and over those barricades and vandalizing the monuments of the conquistadores, nonetheless. I remember every surface along Reforma covered with revolutionary writing, and the irreverent pictures including photos of some of the 95% of rapists and murderers who received impunity plastered in every available space. And I remember on one of the 8M marches between 2020 and 2024 when I was walking back to Insurgentes and from the Zocalo at 5:30 to get my bike, the march we still happening. The women were still coming like a torrent 6 hours after the march had started.

Mexico City Women’s Day march, 2020

But this year, 2025, was verging on the opposite.

Hundreds of thousands were expected; however, unlike last year when an official count of 180,000 was reported on March 10th, as of March 12th, no official count is available for this year. Maybe that is because it was so comparatively unsensational. My friend and I arrived at Insurgentes and Reforma at 2:30, an intersection where—based on the numbers over the last 5 years—the parade should have been crammed with women at that time. The boulevard was virtually empty. There were only a few women straggling around or sitting on the side as confused as I was. There was little to no writing on the walls; barely any of the buildings had been boarded up. We couldn’t even hear drums and chants. There were definitely no helicopters thumping ominously over head or drones with their swat-deserving buzzing above. Yes, a few of the conquistadors’ statues had been painted green and purple and playfully blasphemed by green scarves with the women’s symbol and purple flowers perched on their heads. But that was about it.“Where is the march? Where is everyone?” I asked a row of women, their placards leaning against a wall on the side of the broad boulevard.
“They’re up there. They passed about half an hour ago.”
“Do you know why?”
“No,” they responded. “We don’t understand either.”

Some playful “vandalism” at the Mexico City Women’s Day march, 2020

My friend and I walked for about 15 minutes and finally reached the march.

There were the usual triumphant chants, and the on-cue jumping that the young women do in time with their chant about snubbing their noses at machos, a cumbia marching band with dancers and hoola-hoops; there was a 2-women feminist punk band blaring irreverence with their electric guitars followed by a feminist ukelele group strumming and the placards with the powerful proclamations for justice that Mexican women pride themselves in. There were a few walls plastered with the faces of rapists. Feminist graffiti became more visible. A few of the infamous militants clad entirely in black, balaclavaed and armed with spray paint climbed on top of bus shelters to write: #creaenella (believe her). A large sign to give justice to Fatima was help up by women who had climbed up onto the sides of a monument. But, after 3 hours, I only saw 3 women police officers. I didn’t have to get through a wall of police with their riot shields when I wanted to run farther up to get photos of the march from different perspectives. There was levity, bereft of the abundance of drawn, traumatized faces. It was different. It was more like a Woman’s Day march in Canada, in a first-world country—albeit with Mexican frivolity and flavour. It was more a celebration of women rather than the funeral marches ignited by guerilla warfare of years past. 

Triumphant women at the Mexico City Women’s Day march, 2025

I’m not saying the Mexico City 8M wasn’t powerful this year

and women were not speaking out passionately against the continued reality of extreme gender-based violence in Mexico and the impunity for male perpetrators. I am wondering what it means when a march that was enormous and one of the biggest in the world was so much smaller; I am curious as to why there was less overt anger and retaliatory vandalism and what that means and whether a decrease in the number of women at an International Women’s Day march could be a mark of improvement in the lives of women in a country that has been scourged with gender violence for decades, if not centuries. Yes, there are still some reports that nothing has changed and that the 25% decrease in homicides in Mexico with the new administration of Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum has affected nothing. Yet, with the numbers at an all-time high on 8M 2024 and this year’s march—even held on a Saturday when most people don’t work—so much smaller, how can one explain this very obvious decrease? How can one explain the subdued anger? The tempered ferocity, the lack of police corresponding to the lack for the need for police enforcement? With national day care, assistance for single mothers, abortion now available to women nationally and the other social programs implemented by Obrador that could be decreasing the immasculanization and anger of men—which is so often the cause of violence against women—being continued by Sheinbaum and the decrease in homicides be making a real difference in the lives of women in Mexico? Could it be logic that when a people are better off, violence lessens in general and, thereby, decreases the rates of femicide and rape? It’s hard to say in a country where the conservative opposition will do anything to undermine a socialist government. However, in the meantime, we can only hope that the decrease in numbers at Mexico City’s Women’s Day March 2025 is a sign that violence really has lessened in Mexico—for women and men. 

Yours, 
The Logical Feminist. 

 

“I come for the girls and boys who are no longer here. The girls and boys are not to be touched.” 8M, 2025.

For a more extensive look at the birth of the Mexican feminist movement, see my 2020 article:
“The Life of a Woman is More Important than an Historical Monument.”

For an analysis of violence perpetrated against Mexican men, see this article on a solution:
“Justice Begins with the One Beside You: The Revolution of Nacidos Para Triunfar.”

For an analysis of the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration’s (2018-2024) strategy to end violence where it starts, see Part One of my article on the Morena Revolution:
“And this is a Good Thing: Contextualizing the 2024 Mexico Election. Part One.”

Mexico City Women’s Day march, 2025

 

Mexico City Women’s Day march, 2025
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Everyday Lecher

Everyday Lecher

Posted on by Karen Moe

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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The Doing is the Hope: The War in the Woods is Not Over at Fairy Creek.

The Doing is the Hope: The War in the Woods is Not Over at Fairy Creek.

Posted on by Karen Moe

In 2020 and 2021,

thousands of people came to defend some of the last remaining pristine, temperate old growth forest in the world at Fairy Creek on southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Surpassing the old growth forest blockades at Clayoquot Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island in 1993—known as The War in the Woods—with over 856 forest defenders arrested, Fairy Creek became the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian History with 1,194 arrests. In May 2021, a court injunction was given to the logging corporation, Teal Jones, by the BC Supreme Court judge that made it illegal to freely protest on unceded Indigenous land of the Pacheedaht, Ditidaht and Huu-ay-aht First Nations and the brutality of the RCMP (Canada’s federal police) “led to serious and substantial infringement of civil liberties, including impairment of the freedom of the press to a marked degree.”[1] The Fairy Creek Blockades became the new War in the Woods.

Because of the Indian Act in 1876 that formally colonized the Indigenous peoples and began both the literal and psychological genocide that continues today, the relations between First Nations people in Canada are extremely complex. The communities are divided. One side is the Band Council, a governing body set up by the Indian Act, that is bribed by the Crown and serves the government and the corporations and supports old growth logging; the other side is the ancestral First Nations who fight to defend the land and revive their traditions and, in Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones’ words, “re-plant the seed of self-realization” that was taken from the first peoples through the Indian Act and the residential schools. It was and is the Ancestral First Nations who invited the Forest Defenders to help them defend their land and save the pristine eco-systems of the Fairy Creek watershed and its surrounding forests. The Band Council, as puppets who serve the government and the corporations, say that the Forest Defenders are trespassing. The then BC NDP premier John Horgan, through the corporate interests of the mainstream media, said: We have consulted the First Nations. They don’t want the Forest Defenders there. However, all of the First Nations people are not consulted and insidious subterfuge blocks the truth from the average British Columbian, the majority of which want to protect the old growth. As you can see, it’s an insidious mess.

The rapes and murders of Indigenous women are synonymous to the rapes and murders of Indigenous forests.

On June 5th 2021, “the Pacheedaht, Ditidaht and Huu-ay-aht First Nations issued formal notice to the B.C. government of their intention to defer old growth logging in the Fairy Creek and Central Walbran areas for two years.”[2] The mainstream media reported that the forest is being protected; why are the Forest Defenders still there? However, what was not reported by the mainstream media is that the deferred area is only one-third of what was being fought to protect and now, two years later, not only has the majority of the other two-thirds been logged, the two-year moratorium of the other one-third is ending on June 5th. Horrifyingly, on June 8th the deferred forests will re-open for logging. The now BC NDP premier David Eby, despite (or maybe because of) his ambivalent promise for a “paradigm shift” in forestry, has said and done nothing.

We have been invited by Elder Bill Jones and the ancestral First Nations to return to Fairy Creek to witness and fight for the little that is left, the one-third that we were able to temporarily win in 2021 because of the courage and resiliance of the Forest Defenders. We all need to go back, including those of us who weren’t able to come in 2021. There is perhaps nothing more logical than saving some of the last remaining intact ecosystems in the world for the health of our planet and for our children. Not to mention the fact that there is so little left and the ideology of corporate greed is perhaps the least logical way of being possible. With the next five years predicted to be the hottest in human history, logic couldn’t be more obvious.

The beginning of the peaceful renewed protests to save the old growth are beginning on June 4th, 2023 at 11 AM on the BC Legislature lawn in Victoria, BC. If you are in Victoria or can get there, it would be wonderful to have a large group to show the BC and Canadian government, the citizens of BC, and the world that we are still here. And, starting on the week of the 5th of June when the deferral ends, come to Fairy Creek to stand up for the fact that, in the words of Aunty Rainbow Eyez, “We need our Old Growth. The War in the Woods is not finished.”

In honour of making a Come-Back, I’m going back to some of my writing that I wrote during the peak of the Fairy Creek Blockades in the Spring and Summer of 2021. Today, I am re-publishing an article that I wrote for Vigilance Magazine dedicated to the Forest Defenders of Fairy Creek in June 2021. In singer-song writer Luke Wallace’s words: “We can make a come-back … I can be the comeback.”[3] We are all the instigators of truth, justice and logic. The doing is the hope. See you there!

The Logical Feminist aka Tanager.[4]

The Doing is the Hope: The Forest Defenders of Fairy Creek

It’s impossible to doubt when you’re in it.

Noble stands of Hemlock and Yellow Cedar, un-haunted by stumps, the only phantoms the layers of longevity, the conflations of life/death that soothe as they stimulate. There is no one or the other here. Amidst the old-growth, lichen, alive in the brightest possible green, has the texture of kelp. Ocean merges with forest. The air is wet. Mist adorns the rainforest as it rains, feeds itself, and this air, its density of oxygen, feeds us. It is impossible to doubt the necessity to save the intact bio-diversity of Fairy Creek—some of British Columbia’s last—when you have felt exactly what it is that must be saved. When the fibers of your being become acquainted with the fiber of what is being so fiercely fought for. In the words of elder Bill Jones of the Pacheedat Nation, the ancient trees “are guides, teachers, spiritual beings.”[5] When embraced by this absolute ecosystem, our bodies are nourished as our spirits soar. This magic is truth.

When at the Fairy Creek Blockades, I had a life altering experience. This experience is even more profound in that these forests of South West British Columbia have always been cathedrals to me; I know how crucial this battle is; I feel cutting down of old growth as deeply as rape; I know that humans are not the only creature who are violated; I have yelled justified rage when the flesh of an ancient tree is cut into and, when that tree falls and the earth shakes, I have been stung by the stunned silence at the loss of the millions of non-human creatures who lived there. But, until my journey to the blockades at Fairy Creek, I had never felt the warrior spirit of Tree Defenders who will never, as long as any old growth in British Columbia is being threatened, give up. And this warrior spirit, the people who are putting their bodies on the line to save the ancient trees, the people who have made the bodies of trees as important as their own, has made the importance of an untouched ecosystem even more profound. It has consolidated the obvious, what everyone really must know if they dig down deep enough: ancient trees are not objects to be plundered for profit, they are ancestors who must be protected. Beings worthy of worship.

I asked activists: “What do the old growth trees mean to you? How do you feel when you look up at one towering above you?” As is so often the case, kids say it best:

Trinity:

“I feel happy because I can see all of these birds. Birds and their families in the trees. I feel like I’m in a fairy tale because when I see the tall trees and I look up, I feel like something is going to come out of the trees … I really like trees.”

Finn:

“I feel very happy that they are there and I feel like, it’s just so beautiful and I love all the moss and how soft it is and how some trees’ bark is smooth and some is rough and then some have old man’s beard and then you can feel it and then there’s lichen that grows on trees and if you rub it against your skin, it makes it very smooth. Trees give you energy.”

It’s a very long walk to Waterfall Camp.

And that’s only one way. 10 km in; 10 km out. The loggers and the RCMP can drive there. The Tree Defenders have to walk. Carrying water, food, and bags of concrete to build their sleeping dragons with.

Sleeping dragons are holes that the Forest Defenders dig into the logging roads at strategic points; if industry and their RCMP henchmen get through, they will be able to slaughter bio-systems, some trees over one-thousand-years-old. The forests, like a healthy human society could be, are multi-generational: the young coexist with the ancient, the middle-aged reach higher and higher into the multi-layered canopy; the yet undiscovered species thrive without us: insects, birds, owls, and the thickest moss is another forest. All exist in a way of being that we, the destroyers of the West, could learn from if we only thought far enough ahead to survive—and not kill everything else in our wake.

After the RCMP have dismantled a camp, the first thing the Forest Defenders do is come back. And do it all over again. Dig the holes to make the sleeping dragons. Shove in the pipe as wide and as long as an arm. Surround it with concrete. Hurry. Before the RCMP return and fill up the holes with Styrofoam, before we can get our arms back in. Lie across the road. Chain ourselves there. Climb the tripod. Chain ourselves there. Don’t come down from the canopy until it’s saved. These ancient trees, these complete forests, are as important as my body. I witnessed people who have the courage to love the future beyond them.

And wait.

While the others pile up the rocks again. Drag the logs and branches back. Re-assert the blockade vehicle somehow, by people with the superhuman strength of living justice, and get it back across the logging road again. As I approached Waterfall camp, I became acquainted with a heightened level of awe.

On the logging road that curves through a decimated land with its aches of stumps, I encountered Green Duck. Why Green Duck? I asked him about his camp name. I like ducks and my favourite colour is green, he responded. No messing around. Camp name done. Let’s get to work.

I had seen him the night before at a meeting at Hayhaka Camp. Forest Defenders were organizing the installment of a Camp at 2000 Road, another entrance to another cut-block of old growth. Cut-block, I thought. The irony of trees as flesh about to be butchered. He reported something extraordinary that had happened earlier that day. I can’t remember what. But I’ll never forget how. His arms were wide, his stance fortified by pride, his young face animated with the energy of doing the right thing. A young man emanating the power of the ancient trees he is defending.

How’s it going? I asked, standing in the middle of the clear cut, a dead world made of brittle gasps. Victories, triumphs, do you think we’re going to win? My question was irrelevant as soon as it was asked:

“The police arrived at 4 am in hiking gear under cover and not identifying as police officers. One put a hand over a Forest Defender’s mouth so that he couldn’t warn the others. It took them four hours to get someone out of the last sleeping dragon. They’d filled the rest of them, they tore us down by noon and then they were out of there. By 4 pm, we had a four foot blockade up, we had lots of people on the way to come stay the night and help rebuild. It’s astonishing. We’re here for the long haul. We need to re-build that blockade otherwise they’ll move further up that road and that’s what we can’t have. We can’t have them get to those old growth forests. No matter how disheartening those police officers are, no matter how criminal their acts might be, in the end, we’re still here smiling. We’re still here because it’s right, it’s our purpose. We know that if you don’t stand now, there’s no other time to stand. These are the triumphs,” Green Duck told me.

“What were you doing when the last of the old-growth fell?” a placard asks at the Fairy Creek Headquarters. “Everything,” the Forest Defenders act.

 

 

It’s a long walk to Waterfall Camp

and, just when one starts to really wonder how much farther, rows of rocks begin to block the road. Continuing, longing for the destination to be around the next bend, the lines of rocks become wider and taller and are soon topped by branches that form a mesh of sticks and twigs, a chain-link fence made of forest. I knew I was almost there when I came upon a parade of RCMP trucks along with their battalion of men and the token woman; those who pose as public servants but behave like mercenaries. “Are you OK?” the one woman cop asks Forest Defenders who have their arms self-locked into logging roads during a routine safety check. “Of course I’m not OK,” the silent Forest Defender doesn’t answer. “None of this is OK!” the hypocrisy of such a question rings through the forests under threat.

The police trucks can only go so far until they have to clear another barricade. The cops are becoming increasingly grumpy as they bend and hurl and bend and hurl stacks of rocks that are never going to end because the Forest Defenders will always put them back. You see, unlike in countries like Mexico, Honduras, Columbia, and Brazil[6] where environmentalists are most expediently silenced, the grumpy Canadian cops will always have to keep moving rocks and logs and, so far, cannot fully serve their system of exploitation and simply assassinate these pesky people who care beyond themselves. Canada is a first world country after all. We have human rights. I will not use the disclaimer of ‘so-called’ here because, in terms of human rights, despite the atrocities the nation state of Canada commits against Indigenous peoples, we can still protest. We can still dissent. As we did in 1994 where over 20,000 protesters saved the Upper Carmanah; as when a significant portion of Clayoquot Sound was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2000 because the protesters didn’t give up for two decades. Both of these wins are far from perfect, but they were still possible. We can still win. Something. We still have some human rights. Especially the white people. Another reason why we descendants of colonizers need to join the front lines that our culture has made necessary.

I keep walking.

Up the hill of the final stretch to Waterfall Camp. The police move in circles of hurling more rocks and then standing to discuss the endlessness of it all. And then deciding, OK hurl some more rocks, drag away a few more logs. Waiting out their shifts. They let me pass. I say I’m writing a fair story. That wasn’t a lie.

And then I saw them. Separated from the approaching RCMP by three more victorious barricades, a group of forty or so Forest Defenders, defiant behind their final wall of stones and sticks, resistance art, juts and weaves of forest on top of sharp stones left behind by recent blasting, installations that await the arrival of those paid to tear them down.

These were the people Green Duck had told me about. The ones who’d been up all night. Re-building. And now waiting for the cops. Arms locked in sleeping dragons. A young woman wearing a mask that proclaims “Revolution” towers defiance from a tripod. The others a wall of not-giving-up. Ready as they are every day. When this scenario plays out again. They know each other. The cops and the Forest Defenders. A ridiculous round and round. Madness when the answer is so sane. “See you tomorrow,” a young woman called out with a grin on that Saturday afternoon when they won and the police retreated. Tired of hurling rocks as the Forest Defenders stacked three for every one they cleared. We can still do this. They cheer.

As the RCMP approach the blockades the Forest Defenders chant: “We want your children to see these forests too!” And I wonder, what must the police officers think when they hear this? They must. Hear. Something.

Why are you here? Testimonies of Truth:

Because these forests originated after the last ice age, so some of the trees are about one thousand-years-old. Fairy Creek is a single intact valley and there is no reason, except absolute greed, to log it. This is priceless. I’m here because I decided that it’s time to defend the side that’s right. I’m doing this for my children and my grandchildren who will want me to save these trees. This is priceless. I’m here standing for the trees because when I went back to the magical place where the chanterelle mushrooms grew, the whole forest was eliminated. Priceless. It’s impossible to replant the wild. This is priceless. We deeply care about the old-growth forest, the biodiversity and the ecosystems. We’re Indigenous and the lands are very sacred to us. There are so many layers to saving and preserving the forest. This is beyond commerce. Priceless. I’m here because the continued colonization of the Indigenous peoples operates through a silencing of the lack of full consent by publicizing the coerced. Because the government and the RCMP are at the service of corporations and the mainstream media never tells the whole truth. This is priceless. This is priceless. I’m here as a barrier between colonial violence and the land, between the loggers and the old growth and between the RCMP and the Indigenous youth. Because I know that even if the last of the old growth is logged, the current forestry practice is unsustainable. This is priceless. I’m here because clearcutting respects absolutely nothing. Because I want my grandkids to grow up and see thousand year old trees. They’re five and six. This is priceless. And if I have to get arrested, I get arrested. I came here because I love trees and I love our planet. I’m here because I want there to be life for future generations. Priceless. What they’re doing is arresting people, but they can’t arrest our hope. I stand in solidarity with elder Bill Jones and the Pacheedaht who have not been consulted because they say No.

At the end of this always journey for justice,

I climbed up to Cloud Camp, through an ancient forest that silently, oh so generously, gives us breath. It poured that day. The mud lay as banks of snow. It couldn’t have been more perfect. I had come to meet the Tree-Sitters.

I climbed and slipped and descended into lush valleys that ring with the indescribable calls of Tanagers. Mae West lopped past, effortless, the extent of his determination had grown into an acute awareness of slippery roots and trails that thread along cliffs, so deadly now as the rain didn’t stop. The trees became larger, some with planks for the Tree-Sitters primed for the warning: “The police are here!” I arrived clothed in mud. A circle of Tree-Sitters sat with their dripping tarp and warming fire. Dora told me that tree-sitting for days is like being in a monk cell in the canopy. Red talked of tarpology as he prepared to climb up and get to work because an old growth forest had healed him. A young woman said: the trees are home.

I came upon Lorax high up in a hemlock, flying on a perch made from a boat. How long will you be up there? My question. As long as it takes. His answer.

I asked him what he’d been doing. A bit of writing this morning, he said. What? I responded. I’ve written a poem. The rain continued: loving, laughing, irreverent. A perfect finale for these stories of unrelenting life. Will you read it to me? And he did. From high up in a hemlock, a Tree-Sitter living for as long as it takes in a flying boat in a rainforest that still has the chance to always nourish the earth. Because the Forest Defenders have made it so.

Let’s give the last words to Lorax:

Click play to hear Lorax’s poem!

All photos by Karen Moe

*

#iloveendnotes:

[1] https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/

[2] https://thediscourse.ca/vancouver-island/old-growth-logging-deferrals-fairy-creek

[3] Lyrics by @lukewallacemusic

[4] My camp name at Fairy Creek. The Tanager is a golden bird of the temperate rainforest. They are rare and are one of the thousands of species that are threatened to become extinct by old growth logging.

[5] Quoted on the Rain Forest Flying Squad’s Facebook post on June 7th, 2021.

[6] https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/who-killing-latin-americas-environmentalists

About the Blogger:

Karen Moe is an art critic, visual and performance artist, author and feminist activist. Her work focuses on systemic violence in patriarchy: be it gender, race, the environment or speciesism. Her art criticism has been published internationally in magazines, anthologies and artist catalogues in English and Spanish and she has exhibited and performed across Canada, in the US and in Mexico. She is the author of Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor: Vigilance Press, 2022. Born and raised in British Columbia, Canada, Karen now lives in Mexico City. 

 

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Irrefutable: Last Girl First Proves the Absolute Necessity to Abolish Prostitution.

Irrefutable: Last Girl First Proves the Absolute Necessity to Abolish Prostitution.

Posted on by Karen Moe

I don’t think anyone

can read this book and still support the sex trade in any way—well-meaning as some of that support may be.[1] I don’t think anyone will be able to view prostitution as not only a job like any other, but necessary and beneficial to, paradoxically, the world’s most vulnerable people who would have no other way to survive if their bodies were not commodified. Rigorously researched, Last Girl First: Prostitution at the intersection of sex, race & class-based oppressions[2]is a testament that proves the abolition of the sex trade is absolutely necessary. This book is irrefutable logic. If you support the sex trade in any way, I dare you to read it.

From the first page, the study opens the reader to the big picture. It is crucial to look at a system of exploitation as a whole rather than cling to the delusion of individual choice being somehow separate from the system that we are all an intrinsic part of. Right away, the book demonstrates the necessity of revolutionizing the ideology of individualism that is responsible for upholding the exploitation of the other in order to serve the self. In this book, the sex trade as a system is thoroughly exposed in order to comprehend completely and be motivated to act accordingly:

“Prostitution does not only involve the person in prostitution but also other actors such as the sex buyer who imposes a sexual act for money and the pimp, who profits from the prostitution of the prostituted person. It is therefore important to decentralise the view: prostitution is not an individual choice but a social and commercial system that is exploitative.” [3] (Italics mine)

The view of the sex trade and all exploitation in neo-liberal[4] patriarchy must include all that produces it, maintains it and, most importantly, all who are devastated by it.

The indisputable fact that prostitution is a gendered atrocity is an intrinsic part of the contextualization of the study. Even though it should go without saying: the main gender sold are women and the main buyers men. It’s impossible to claim otherwise. Yes, there are a tiny percentage of women who purchase sex and, thereby, participate in the capitalist disparity of power abuse between the bought and the sold; however, this is such a small percentage and, as such, it is ridiculous to attempt to use a smattering of first world women to undermine the reality of the male buyer and female bought in a male-supremacist hierarchy.[5] In order for a hierarchy to uphold what is at the top, those below must be exploited. As a revolutionary tract that looks at the system as a whole, Last Girl First lists each of the micro-hierarchies that reinforce one another and produce the buying and selling of “the most socially, economically, psychologically and ethnically disadvantaged groups…: patriarchy, racism, colonialism, class, war and militarisation.”[6] It is through the interaction of these oppressions that men exploit (predominantly) women’s or girls’ bodies for their sexual ‘pleasure’—or pathology.

Don’t agree yet? Okay, here’s a bit of so much more:

After the wholistic definition of prostitution as a system

of sexual exploitation is laid out, a glossary of terms is provided where each component of the sex trade is defined so that there will be absolute clarity in not only the terms that will be used in the book, but also, the scope of normalized exploitation. The purpose of this book is two-fold: to prove the sex trade’s inherent violence as undeniable and a system that must be abolished, and to change mentalities and perceptions of women in society and, ultimately, eradicate demand. The Glossary lists: a person in prostitution/prostituted person (as opposed to the politically correct, misleading and damaging term ‘sex-worker’); survivor of prostitution; sex buyer; child sex tourism, sex tourism; pimping, the pimp; trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation; the “red light districts/areas”; brothels; indigenous people; minority; migrant person; refugee; asylum seeker; internally displaced person. Next, the different legislative approaches to prostitution are explained: The Abolitionist Model also known as the Nordic Model or the Equality Model; The Partial Decriminalisation Model”; The Regulatory Model also known as the Legalisation Model or the Total Decriminalisation Model; and The Prohibitionist Model. Once all of the parts of the system have been explained, the foundation within which all of these parts interact is given.

“Throughout time and history, women and girls from systemically discriminated and marginalised communities have always been disproportionately targeted by the prostitution system. Socio-economic factors and historical and political trends contribute to their over-representation in the prostitution system.”[7]

Weaving together statistics, personal stories from prostitution survivors, and reports from organizations like Kafa (Enough) Violence and Exploitation in Lebanon, Breaking Free USA, Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry (Canada), The National Center for Youth Law, the Columbian NGO Initiativa Pro Equidad, and Apne Aap India (to name a few sources of front lines testimonies provided in the first 51 pages), Last Girl First builds its analysis of prostitution as an intersection of sex, race and class-based oppression and proves how no oppression exists in isolation. Everything is connected; systemic analysis is essential for understanding.

When one thinks and feels in the big picture context of

exploitation of which sexual violence is a part, it should be glaringly obvious that the women and girls at the bottom of the patriarchal—most often white supremacist, but always male supremacist[8]—hierarchy suffer most. And, in a far from post-colonial world where the racializing, capitalist infrastructure is perhaps more voracious than ever, prostitution is a continued mechanism of colonization and profit. The beginning of Last Girl First moves from the over-representation of indigenous women in prostitution in Canada and the US, to the legacy of the British colonization of India, to the contemporary colonization of Tibet by China, resource extraction like mining and oil and gas by international corporations and sex tourism. We are given the infrastructure of the sex trade as a part of the history of imperialist patriarchy and capitalism whereby the women of the conquered people are converted to commodities to be exploited along with the land that was—and continues to be—taken from them.

In the next section, women and girls from oppressed castes in Asia are discussed along with asylum seekers and migrants. From the cut-throat perspective of patriarchal capitalism, the displacements of war are a great source of sexually commodifiable women and girls. As one of many statistics in this chapter informs: “In Europe, migrant women and girls are estimated to represent 84% of women in prostitution in thirteen European countries.”[9] Anyone who says that the legalization of prostitution in Germany is a “but a job opportunity like all others” needs to know that 90% of the (always very young) women being bought in Germany’s mega-brothels are migrant women predominantly from Eastern Europe and Africa and, now, with the war in the Ukraine, the displaced women of the Ukraine have become a large source of women trafficked to the legal brothels of Western Europe. As a manifestation of one of the many horrors of legalized prostitution in countries like Australia and Germany, the women are dehumanized in order to fulfill the sex-buyer’s demand to “own the woman [and] … do whatever you want with her.”[10] In one of the 3,500 registered brothels in Germany, “nearly 1,700 sex buyers flocked … during the opening weekend, complaining afterwards on forums about … women no longer being ‘consumable’ and ‘worn out’ after a few hours.”[11] Bound by the reductionist ideology of free choice for all, the women working legally in these mega-brothels need to service six men per day before they make any money themselves. So, basically, not only are the always younger and younger women brutalized and traumatized by six different men, they are not even being paid for their suffering. Like in the Netherlands and Austria where prostitution is also legalized, German nationals with the security and opportunities provided to women who are not displaced by war have better things to do with their lives—like take advantage of state-funded university, as one of many non-exploitative opportunities available to the privileged—than voluntarily signing up for a career of dehumanization.

One of my next books is going to be on child sex slavery. Not only do such horrors need to be exposed (what I call and will entitle my book, “inconceivable reality”), the fact that child sex slavery exists at all is absolute evidence that the system of exploitation we live in needs to be revolutionized. Last Girl First defines minors in the sex trade as “an alarming phenomenon which is constantly on the rise worldwide.”[12] As the basis for despicability in patriarchy as a system of male impunity, one surely cannot be affected by the fact that “[t]he demand for ‘virgin’ girls illustrates the relationships of control and domination at work in the prostitution system.”[13] An example in Mexico is provided where virgin girls are offered to sex-buyers at a high price. One could say, “Oh well, that’s Mexico. It doesn’t happen in civilized countries like Canada, for example.” But wait, we then find out that “[i]n Canada, the average age of entry into prostitution is reported to be 13.”[14] Yes, atrocity is in the back yard of the so-called first world if we take the time to look and/or read books like Last Girl First. If sex buyers are looking for younger and younger girls to exploit (and we must not forget that the majority of sex buyers seeking young girls in countries like Mexico are sex tourists from countries like Canada and the US), there is no things-are-getting-better-for-women when we include all women as the male fetish for the conquest of vulnerability is stronger than ever—not to mention the lack of empathy necessary to be able to pay to rape a child.

I ask:

do you want to be involved in this in any way except to fight for its abolition? Any justification of prostitution as sex “work” and work like all others along with the ideology of freedom of choice—including, paradoxically, circumstantial and coerced ‘choice’—maintains such horrors. Period.

It needs to be read;

I’m not going to explicate the whole book for you. This is one of those books where you can flip to any page and find more truth backed up by both primary and secondary research. When I read—especially such an important book of revolution as Last Girl First—I have a pencil handy. I underline, parenthesis, asterisk, exclamation mark, write “Wow!” “WTF?” or “Arggghhh!” on the margins. This is one of the books where I have been compelled to underline and asterisk almost the whole thing. What follows is a collage of some of the parts that leapt off of the page for me:

Women and girls from systemically discriminated communities … disproportionate impact … the sources of prostitution … the structural and systemic discrimination inherited from colonialism … in Canada … children from First Nations communities … represent 90% of the victims of sexual exploitation where Indigenous represents less than 10% of the population … victims are sold in Moldova, Romania or Bulgaria for a few hundred Euros and then taken to Turkey, the Balkans or Cyprus where exploiters enslave them and break down any will to resist by using gang rape, food deprivation, confinement and physical violence … before sending them to Western Europe to satisfy male demand … Roma women … Dom ethnic women … prostitution as a weapon of war … Iraq … Myanmar … “spoils of war” … a culture of impunity for perpetrators … sex buyers who take advantage of extreme poverty … prostitution in exchange for food … is actually part of a wider oppression inflicted by dominant groups on dominating groups … in 2018, between fifteen and twenty thousand minors were identified as victims of sexual exploitation in Cambodia, a country described as a “key destination” for paedocriminals travelling in South East Asia … in Brazil, a leading sex tourism destination, many sexual predators—mainly from Western Europe and the United States—travel to the coastal and north-eastern tourist regions seeking to force sex on children … the glamourization and trivialisation of prostitution, as well as the perception of women’s and girls’ bodies as objects of remuneration, “a means of making a career” and even tools for emancipation, contribute to the increase in prostitution of minors and students … “Student Sex Work Toolkit” … when asked why they “entered” prostitution, 88% said “needed money” and “hungry” … sex buyers would not have access to women’s bodies in the first place if the women were not in situations of immense financial insecurity and fighting for survival … sex buyers, in a position of power because they have the financial advantage, reportedly pay women in prostitution 66-79% less if the latter insist on using a condom … for 90% of the women surveyed, their first sexual encounter was in fact a sexual assault or rape … in the United States, overall, 20% of homeless youth are LGBTQ, while the latter represents 58.7% of victims of sexual exploitation on the streets … discourses normalising and promoting prostitution as a desirable and emancipatory economic option for LGBTQ people contribute to encouraging their entry and confinement in the system … in the UK … 95% of women in street prostitution use crack or heroin … in Canada and the US, all members of the Indigenous communities, with the aim of breaking all links with their original culture—considered as inferior—and to replace it with patriarchal and individualistic colonial codes … PATRIARCHY AT  THE ROOT OF THE PROSTITUTION SYSTEM … male domination at work in patriarchy involves the establishment of a continuum of sexist and sexual violence aimed at maintaining the established order … while prostitution is portrayed as free choice for some, … it first and foremost affects those who have the least choice.

These are some of the parts I underlined and asterisked to page 111 in a 193 page book. Can anyone not acknowledge these undisputable and impeccable sourced statistics and testimonies? (If so, please comment at the end of this post and share why and how this is possible! If you’ve come to my blog, you obviously care about justice. Dialogue is essential for understanding and transformation that serves justice for all).

As I wrote in my first post on prostitution,

I have often been accused and chastised especially by politically correct, pro-prostitution academics: “How would you know and what right do you have to speak about this, to have an opinion, if you have never literally been in the sex industry?” And, yes, they are right: I have never literally been one of the majority of circumstantially coerced women and girls or one of the 1% of women who gloat that they freely choose what everyone else has been scathed by[15]; however, not only have I been a victim and survivor of sexual violence on three occasions, I am also a woman in patriarchy. And, like all women in patriarchy, (and men conditioned to abuse emotionally and/or physically and who have, in Robert Jensen’s words, a crippled capacity to be fully human[16]) I am personally affected by the normalisation of that which rapes us. As Last Girl First states, all of the factors in the system of sexual violence “are cross-cutting: they do not only apply to women from systemically discriminated communities but go beyond this categorisation and affect women in general.”[17]  

If you were already an abolitionist before reading this or if I have convinced you, it should go without saying that I cannot recommend the importance of this book enough; if you still think that there is something good about the buying and selling of bodies and that sex-work is a necessary and benign employment opportunity, I cannot recommend the importance of reading this book even more. I have striven to give a representation of the researched reality that composes Last Girl First: the intersection of sex, race & class-based oppressions. Read it. Please. Then get back to me. It is one of my greatest wishes that everyone not only comprehends, but feels and acts on the logic of abolishing the sex trade.

Your friend in justice for everyone and everything always,

The Logical Feminist.

Order a copy of Last Girl Firsl: Prostitution at the intersection of sex, race & class here.

PS: If you have found this post provocative and important,  share the logic!       

#iloveendnotes

[1] The reasoning for the Sex Work is Work platform is that de-stigmatizing prostitution and making it a job like any other will increase the safety of prostituted people. The very need to increase the safety of people in the sex industry is proof in itself that prostitution is not just another job. Moreover, countries like Germany, Australia and New Zealand that have legalized and decriminalized prostitution have not resulted in an increase of safety and security for the world’s most vulnerable people. Instead, sexual violence and the use of a woman or girl’s body for the sexual relief of a man has been normalized. Read this book: Last Girl First: Prostitution at the intersection of race & class-based oppressions, Kat Banyard’s Pimp State: Sex, Money and the Future of Equality and Julie Bindel’s The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth for three researched books that explain what has really happened and happens when prostitution is accepted (and even embraced) as a legitimate part of society.

[2] Last Girl First: Prostitution and the intersection of sex, race & class-based oppression. CAP International (Coalition Abolition Prostitution) with research conducted by Héma Sibi. Translated from the French by Karl Walsh, 2022.

[3] Last Girl First: 6.

[4] Neo-liberalism, served by individualism, greed, the unregulated free market and globalisation, is capitalism on steroids.

[5] At a recent presentation of my book Victim that is about sexual violence and a conversation that inevitably led to prostitution, a woman brought up the fact that so-called first world, middle-aged women travel to destinations like the Dominican republic in order to take advantage of the global economic disparity and enjoy the sexual services of young men. This is true. First World women go to such locales as the Dominican Republic and Jamaica with the intentions of having sex with young, exoticized, locals; however, the percentage is very small in comparison to the millions of men who travel abroad for sex with young women and any abuse involved— like between the women (or girls) and the men— is non-existent. The title of Tanika Gupta’s 2006 play ‘Sugar Mummies’ is telling in that the women have taken on the behaviour of ‘sugar daddies,’ not rapists; nevertheless, using one’s economic privilege to access another human’s body upholds a culture of domination and violence that is inherent to masculine supremacy. I think it is safe to say that women do not go to so-called third world sex tourist destinations to pay thousands of dollars to rape a child. Although I do not condone power abuse on any level, comparing male sex tourism to first world women’s dalliances in the Caribbean are only superficially comparable. As I responded to the woman who brought up women sex tourists (of course, a valid question and comment): they never result in organ damage.

Julie Bindel points out in her 2013 article, the women who travel south “are looking for attention and excitement but end up, often without realising it, being one half of a prostitution deal.” Of course, as with the male sex tourist trade, poverty is the key component due to the economic disparity between the First and Third Worlds and the young men would most likely not have sex with the middle-aged women from the north if they did not have, and give them, money. The trend of women buying sex in tourist destinations like Jamaica can also be connected to female ‘raunch culture’ where fun feminists of the US, Canada and Northern Europe are all about sexual prowess and have, out of proclamations of sexual liberation, adapted patriarchal behavior. See Julie Bindel: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2401788/Sex-tourism-Meetmiddle-aged-middle-class-women-Britains-female-sex-tourists.html https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/aug/09/comment. gender

[6] Last Girl First: 7.

[7] Ibid:18.

[8] It is important to note that not all prostitution occurs in white-supremacist patriarchies that were lborn of European colonialism. In Israel and Lebanon, for example, women from the Slavic countries of eastern Europe are trafficked as ‘Natasha’s’ and their white skin and often red hair are fetishized by Israeli and Lebanese men (See Lydia Cacho Slavery Inc.: The Untold Story of the International Sex Trade and Victor Malarek The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade and The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who But It). In Iraq the Yazidi minority [is] targeted  by the armed group Islamic state where the women are subjected to acts of sexual enslavement (LGF 141-142). Tibet, as an imperial victim of China, is also a prostitution destination where the male predators are predominantly non-European. Moreover, in especially Cambodia and Myanmar, Chinese and Japanese sex-buyers are rampant along with their Caucasian counterparts. The Yakuza (Japanese mafia) are also key players in not only the prostitution in Japan, but also in South East Asia along. And, we cannot leave out the Korean comfort women of Japanese Imperialism. Even though white men brought prostitution to colonial contexts like North America by exploiting Indigenous women (and this is certainly not to trivialize the impact of European colonialism and the sexual violence that continues to be inflicted upon Indigenous women today), they did not invent it: men did in the masculine supremacist hierarchy that is Patriarchy which spans cultures and races.

[9] Last Girl First: 36.

[10] Ibid: 91-92.

[11] Ibid: 167.

[12] Ibid: 48.

[13] Ibid: 49.

[14] When I was on my Trauma & Triumph Tour for Victim in 2022, I connected with sexual assault non-profits around the US and Canada. When in Kenora, Ontario Canada, I found out that young indigenous women from the reservations are abducted and taken to resorts on the Lake of the Woods to sexually service (read: be raped by) men. Canadian men don’t have to go to sex tourist destinations like Brazil or Cambodia: they can be sex tourists in their own country.

[15] Like feminist Meghan Murphy says, the privileged 1% of prostituted women who claim to be, or are, unscathed and preach the glamour and legitimacy of sex work as a good job opportunity, “drag everyone else under the bus.” https://www.feministcurrent.com/2013/08/02/interview-meghan-murphy-on-the-sex-industry-individualism-online-feminism-and-the-third-wave/

[16] Robert Jensen The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2017: 71.

[17] Last Girl First: 47.

About the Blogger:

Karen Moe is an art critic, visual and performance artist, author and feminist activist. Her work focuses on systemic violence in patriarchy: be it gender, race, the environment or speciesism. Her art criticism has been published internationally in magazines, anthologies and artist catalogues in English and Spanish and she has exhibited and performed across Canada, in the US and in Mexico. She is the author of Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor: Vigilance Press, 2022. Karen lives in Mexico City.

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Follow Up. Fallout. Part One.

Follow Up. Fallout. Part One.

Posted on by Karen Moe

A follow up to my previous post, “What Fresh Hell is This? Same Old Same Old.”

I doubt she’ll ever read this.

And if she does, I’d like to think that would be a good thing.

As not only a logical feminist, but also, through the wisdoms gleaned from logic, a fierce one, I discovered recently that a young woman, a teenager whom I am very close to, embodies my worst nightmare.

I am a survivor and, what I designate in my book Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor, also a victim because: “the bodies of rape victims stand as accusations. Our scarred, vibrant beings as memorials.”[1] With a memorial, a never forgetting, comes memory; memory is knowledge and with knowledge comes knowing what is going on; by honoring our scars,[2] victim/survivors know not only in our minds, but deep within or bodies. The inevitable scars of surviving violence are legacies of trauma. And, paradoxically, never forgetting the sources of our trauma is a good thing because our awareness can help change the pathology of a culture built with exploitation that creates a generation of young women who could be described as voluntary victims.

How did I find out about this nightmare?

Well, I have a TikTok account as “The Logical Feminist.” I haven’t used it much. Only three or four posts. As you will know if you use social media to try and effectively share a message that extends beyond your personal life, it’s tough to keep up with all of the posting not to mention actually creating the projects that you will post about! That said, it’s on my extensive list to get on the TikTok and get Logical Feminism more extensively out into the world and help stop this nightmare backlash.

Every now and then when I am walking with my phone in my pocket, my TikTok turns on. I have only about five friends and every time the TikTok comes on and startles me out of some peaceful state, it’s her.

The first time it happened, I didn’t recognize her at first. She was lip-syncing to a song insulting other women, internalized sexism blasting from this insolent and, dare I say, lethally ignorant, young woman. Her eyelids heavy with hyper-feminine, excessive black lashes, push-up bra cleavage, her beautiful so-recently-still-a-girl face pouting “I’m more fuckable than she is.” My ire flared instantly and I was just about to comment “You’re an idiot,” when I saw her name and recognized her beneath all of the horror I was seconds away from lashing out at. I felt like I was going to puke; rage, panic and  heartbreak momentarily darkened all hope and, amidst the gains a lot of women have made at least in the so-called first world, I thought: how the hell did this happen? This toxic backlash has to stop.

She’s sixteen now. When she was twelve or so she told me all she wanted was to be ‘cool.’ I thought “Oh No … here it comes ….” But, even though I have been studying and writing about sexual violence, feminist backlash and internalized sexism for decades, I never imagined how bad it could get.

It all started with Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy.

Yes, I know. It’s a great song; it can be seen as a farce, a critique of terrible, power abusive men—up to a point. However, in the numerous interviews when Eilish has been asked what her enigmatic lyrics mean, she doesn’t get close to any analysis of what actually constructs the “bad guy” (what to me as a feminist and one who deconstructs systems of exploitation is obvious); but then, not to excuse her lack of feminist awareness, good art often goes beyond the intentions of the artist. She replies that the song “pokes fun at the way people present themselves.” Okay, if Eilish is taking the piss, it certainly isn’t obvious.

Unfortunately for inevitably impressionable girls, the main thing about the song and the super-slick video is that it’s cool. As a clever, catchy pop-song riddled with artful rock & roll ambivalence, right off the bat the ‘character’ Eilish is playing is a seamless combination of predator and prey. And, as demonstrated by the out-take laughter between Eilish and most likely her brother before the video starts, the brutality that is about to come is funny. This is rock & roll frivolity at its finest, the little snippets between songs that give ravenous fans a taste of their idol’s private life. However, what is about to come is far from funny.

Low-fi super-cool catchy:

Eilish kicks out of mustard-yellow paper that is the same colour as her be-hoodied sweat suit both defiant and energy-sapped as she slouches sulky gangsta’ groove in the baggy suit; cut to “white shirt now red my bloody nose,” and, yes, her nose starts to bleed. I researched the nose-bleed trope and found out that it is supposed to signify sexual arousal. Tellingly, in terms of what is being communicated as young women’s sexuality in this 2019 hit, if she is sexually aroused, she looks pretty numb (and/or indifferent) to the whole thing or like she’s coming back from being raped on a date-rape drug. However, if one doesn’t know about this connection between sexuality and nose bleeds, the young woman is just plain bleeding. And what is blood typically connected to? Well, logically: violence.

Cut from the nose-bleed:

dressed in pressed, white Bermuda shorts are little girl legs with “bruises on both my knees for you”; the bruises are red, raw, and suggest pre-bruise, recently-peeled scabs matching the fact that these bruises are ‘for you,’ as the young woman, simultaneously martyred and tough, is offering her wounds as a macabre valentine to the multiplicity of men who trail behind her on tricycles. Of course, these men are all really hot, those whom she is both victimized by and dominates while she is riding and rocking out on a bright red kiddie-car doing her soon to be very trendy manic-slouch dance as she states in super cool[3] unfeeling zombie-voice I’m the “might seduce your dad type.” (As in my last post, here comes the sensationalized Lolita trope again).

Eilish (or the non-self-character that is impossible to pull off as a rockstar in their music video because fans will always see them as the rockstar) is the epitome of the delusional empowerment so many young women think they achieve through their external and internalized hyper-sexualization[4]. Confiding: her chin is raised in male defensive/offensive defiance and/or having just received an upper-cut as eyes roll insolent and exhausted with “just can’t get enough guy.” However, despite—or perhaps because of—abuse, she states simultaneously gloating and indifferent: “I’m the bad type, make your girlfriend mad type.” Ambivalence reigns as the tough-girl/victim smears the blood from her nose-bleed all over her face.

The final shot is in a dimly lit, luxurious apartment. It isn’t hers. Not that it isn’t possible for an eighteen-year-old rockstar to own such an apartment, I think it’s safe to say it belongs to the man who is at least ten years her senior whom she is apparently dominating or is a five star hotel room paid for by him. This is another layer to the regurgitated mythology that luxury can be gained by young women using their sexuality to manipulate men. And where is Eilish (oops, I mean the character that we aren’t aware she’s playing)? Well, she’s oh-so-scandalously sitting cross-legged and cheeky as a little girl who wants to be more than spanked on of the man’s back as he does push ups (this requires her of course to be the idealized slender female of patriarchy that so many young women ferociously fight against their bodies to achieve).

Simultaneously smug and innocent,

she states, looking as though she is about to pass out (again date rape drug comes to mind): “I like when you get mad. I guess I’m pretty glad” and then asks, “you say she’s scared of me?” (referring again to the jilted girlfriend and the all-powerful “she” existing in her sexuality as the triumphant source of the jilt). Here (another segment, yawn amidst the apparent edgy innovation, of again and again) is the message of women having so much power over men that they betray their girlfriends for us because we are such hot bad bitches; however, by aspiring towards this representation of an indifferent, emotionally shut down person, we simultaneously betray our sisters and, at the same time, this triumph is based on the fact that the men want us because we are self-victimizing and we like, even ask for, abuse. Does anyone really want to be abused even when they have been conditioned to ask for it?

I know, this is gender-politics-twisted-madness and the artful ambivalence of the song and its video swirls round and round. As an art critic, I must admit this is a riot to write about, but there is no way a pre-pubescent girl who wants to be cool will get anything out of the video except the desire—or need—to be like that. She’ll gobble up this dangerous candy; embody what will piss off her parents; be what will put her in the danger that she either doesn’t know about or doesn’t acknowledge or it’s cooler to feign indifference to or, worse yet, it doesn’t matter because putting herself in danger is the whole point: asking to be abused. This is what she’s been trained to do. In the end, this representation of a hot, insolent young woman (who is being played by a teen idol whose concerts sell out in minutes) turns young women who want to be mainstream-cool against themselves.

The only ‘empowered’ lyric exists in the midst of its undoing:

“I like it when you take control even if you know that you don’t own me, I’ll let you play the role. I’ll be your animal.” (Italics mine). Okay: in terms of gender politics, I get it: things are a mess in so called post-feminist so-called first world young womanhood. But, at the same time, what does this mean exactly? What does this mean in terms of young women thinking it’s cool to imitate this contradiction laden way of being a woman? Let’s unpack it, or try to:

  1. She says she likes being dominated and maintaining the male role of domination and the female submission. Men will continue to see themselves as dominant and women as mere things to be dominated and vessels for the enactment of their power. They will continue to dominate and often brutalize women because they are not valued fully as human. And, better yet, the women ask for it now. They have consented to being an object. She is objectifying herself.
  2. This he who is the paradoxically submissive ‘bad guy’ might know he doesn’t own her. Might being a key word. The consent of this role-play has not been consented to and acknowledged as play (read: not entirely real because even play contains reality). How does this play out in what it maintains beyond this apparently benign sex game? Especially when she’ll be ‘his’ animal? Isn’t the animal that she is playing that is ‘his’ but then, at the same time, not owned by him of the same body? He doesn’t own her and yet she is his. It’s titillating. Great rock & roll angst. And edgy rebellion for teenage girls to get their trying-to-figure-out-who-they-are-peer-pressured-to-be-cool-and-part-of-the-in-crowd teeth into.

By the end of the song, Eilish—or the bad-guy-girl she is attempting to be acting—is the bad guy. As her male victims’ decapitated heads hang around her in bags, any sort of empowerment in the song has simply flipped the hierarchy of power abuse: the woman is now as violent as the most violent of men to the point of achieving the indifference of a sociopath serial killer as she playfully pokes a hole in one of her victim’s head-bags. There is no empowerment here as my teenage girl friend has chastised me. This is but a sensationalized reperpetuation of that which exploits and now she, as the exploited, is the exploiter—or, in a still male supremacist culture, so she thinks.

However, in yet another interview where yet another music critic is trying to unravel her enigmatic lyrics, Eilish tries again to explain: “The initial idea for the song is like people that have to tell everybody that they are a certain way all the time? They’re not that certain way. […] In general, I feel like you will never catch a bad bitch telling everyone she’s a bad bitch. It’s on—it’s you.”[5] Okay, I don’t know about you but I only sort of understand this, and I only sort of understand this in the context of an interview and as a convoluted comment on pretension and narcissism. But as an intention readily accessible in the work of art as the ‘bad bitch’ is more glamourized than critiqued? Not so much. Or even at all.

Even though we love it,

even though it is one hell of an ear-worm, I don’t think anyone got what the artist insists she was trying to do in Bad Guy—and this is most likely why so many music critics have had to keep asking her. I know the young woman I am close to didn’t. I think it’s safe to say that all of the other young women and pre-pubescent girls who strive to be cool didn’t. However, there is one almost useful revelation: beneath the unfeeling bravado performed by a bad bitch who, in the end, is the mirror image of the bad guy; through the internalized sexism that has simmered to the point of self-brutalization that pathologically produces a twenty-first century “liberated” young woman, Eilish is crouching on the sidewalk, despondently feeding pigeons (an urban pass-time that is often equated with loneliness and mental illness). Yay! I love it! An acknowledgement of vulnerability! There is a trajectory of logic here as a young woman trying to be a bad guy does quite often fail as she is abused in order to be accepted in the boys club of inherently power abusive men. And yet, again, this inevitability is washed away as the despondency becomes a decadent, stylized, first world depression, yet another act of coolness as the insolent, young woman performs being unaffected by trauma and teenage girl “Duhs” punctuate the groove.

Don’t get me wrong,

Billie Eilish is a brilliant artist and singer-songwriter. The song and its video are a pop masterpiece. However, because all artists find their inspiration in the fodder of the everyday, what does it say about our culture that this song exists in the first place? And what happens when girls imitate the very thing Eilish claims to be critiquing?

My young friend took all of Eilish’s stylized sulky, saucy slouching as real, as what she is supposed to be in order to embody coolness. And, yes, she is ‘cool.’ Hundreds of hearts on TikTok whenever she performs and posts acts of toxic, internalized sexism, but at what cost both to her personally and to reinforcing misogyny and either maintaining or increasing violence against women? Huge.

And after this early adulthood education what has she graduated to? Well, this: stay tuned for NLE Choppa “Slut Me Out.”

Yours,

LF

#iloveendnotes

[1] Karen Moe Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor. Vigilance Press: Mexico City/Lantzville, BC: 2022: 39.

[2] Ibid: 144.

[3] I can’t help but repeat this term ‘super cool’ as it’s the main theme despite being otherwise expressed by Eilish.

[4] Read Natasha Walter Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism for numerous examples where T-shirts that say “So Many Boys, Not Enough Time,” are marketed to the parents of toddlers. 3-year-old girl maturity through young woman (even girl) sexuality

[5] https://www.nme.com/news/music/billie-eilish-breaks-down-bad-guy-lyrics-2543500

*

Note on images: all images of Billy Eilish are wallpaper free downloads except for the first and last which are screen shots from a live concert posted on YouTube.

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Logical Feminism: the premise is simple, its execution crucial.

Logical Feminism: the premise is simple, its execution crucial.

Posted on by Karen Moe
Photo: Adriana Barboza

Logical Feminism: anything that has anything at all to do with power abuse and exploitation is wrong.

I say ‘anything at all’ in order to highlight the fact that power abuse, exploitation and its maintenance often go unnoticed and, as in the case of those who support the sex industry, for example, regardless of good intentions, functions under the proverbial umbrella of ‘free’ choice, rather than the reality of coerced choice which results in no real choice at all. (Stay tuned for a post about Sex Workers Rights Advocacy and Sex Trade Abolitionism.) [1]

In order for logical feminism to effect any long-lasting change

as opposed to being merely an untenable utopia, we need to become aware of our positioning in the patriarchal hierarchy of privilege[2] and be self-reflexive as to the toxicity we have internalized. When discussing his abusive father, transman Thomas Page McBee says that men need to “have the courage to look at the injustice within themselves to join the fight for something better.”[3] As radical feminist Robert Jensen stated after he had done the work to look at the injustice within himself: “I was socialized in patriarchy into a toxic masculinity that not only subordinates women but also crippled my own capacity to be fully human.”[4] Because we live in system of exploitation and predation—and as a male system, men do have the most hard work to do[5]—such revolutionary work is not only about men: it’s about all of us and everything.

Technically, I am what is called a ‘radical’ feminist,

a feminist that runs the risk of being TERFED and SWERFED[6] (more on that later). The Logical Feminist is me, Karen Moe. I am a writer, author, artist, feminist and revolutionary. I am the author of Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor (Vigilance Press, 2022). During the writing and research for my book, I found it not only interesting, but also ironic, that the wholistic fight (read: a struggle that exists beyond liberating only the self and continuing to play into the ideology of individualism) to end a culture of violence is deemed radical. However, through feminist Sayak Valencia, I have since found out that ‘radical,’ in its etymological sense, is a return to the root of things.[7] When we dig into it, such a commitment is, indeed, logical—especially when confronting and resisting a system that has spun into a state of ideological and literal warfare against marginalized peoples, other species and the earth globally. We need to start over: re-think, re-act and re-make what doesn’t have to be this way. What is needed is an ideological revolution that prioritizes resistance and justice for all that can be achieved through a politic of empathy: feeling and living beyond the self. We can ground our new radical roots in this.

It should go without saying that any feminism that has anything at all to do with patriarchy (except to overthrow it) is not feminism. 

Believe it or not, there is a so-called feminism called ‘neo-liberal feminism,’ what Valencia calls ‘free-market feminism.’ A movement that proclaims empowerment within that which oppresses is what I call fraudulent feminism (I will be writing a piece about this soon). I know some of you may not like this (and that’s ok because the Logical Feminist strives to be controversial and stir up perceived truths in order to work towards something better), the #MeToo movement—fun as it was in terms of seeing so many powerful men go down after decades of impunity—is included in the oxymoron of self-proclaimed feminists striving to achieve power in a man’s world and reperpetuating a system of power abuse. #MeToo doesn’t and didn’t go far enough and, as such, feeds into maintaining that which is responsible for the sexual assaults and power abuse in the first place: a system of impunity for powerful men. Women striving to become equal to men within his system and proclaiming themselves feminists is what Valencia calls “the most ferocious type of neoliberalism” because it insidiously sustains what it claims to be against. As radical feminist activist Julie Bindel says: “Feminists should not be seeking an equal place at the table but rather to smash the table to smithereens.”[8] This is the goal of this blog: the Logical Feminist is straight up, no holds barred, logic: we will break the bars that hold us in our exploitable passivity.

Feminism is a revolutionary movement that began with the liberation of women

in the male defined system of patriarchy; therefore, the purpose of feminism has always been to resist and challenge the exploitation that this male defined system of hierarchy guarantees. In Bindel’s words: “the authentic meaning and goal of feminism is the liberation of women from male supremacy.”[9] The feminist revolution began with and is based on the liberation of women, and our foremothers made great strides in the fight to overthrow male supremacy. This fact cannot be disrespected or denied. And, unfortunately, it is.

The voice of women (read: cisgender/biologically born women) cannot be silenced at the same time as we cannot deny the voices of all marginalized groups in a culture that thrives on marginalization. We must not devolve (under the banner of evolution) into a hierarchy of a prioritization of voices. Everything and everyone that and who is exploited in patriarchy (and we must add the now neo-liberal hyper-individualist and consumerist global forces that are all a product of patriarchy on even more steroids [10]) is feminized, be they women, children, transpeople, animals, the earth and men through the oppression of race and class.

I am what is called today an intersectional feminist. However, when I came to my feminism in the 90s, we didn’t have a name for it. For me, my feminism has always been grounded in the fact that everything is connected. As Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones agrees, “everything flows together.”[11] I would add that everything should be flowing together in order to have a healthy and sustainable world but, as one of the most basic factors, the ideology of individualism and hyper-consumerism (patriarchal constructs and unfortunate realities)  keeps us separated from one another, other species and the earth. A patriarchal mantra of ‘divide and conquer’ verges on cliché for a reason.

I am a big picture thinker, writer and scholar. I believe in research and dialogue.

Like everything I write and all of the art I create, this blog will be steeped in research and I welcome all forms of dialogue in response to what will be controversial entries that are meant to dislodge and contribute to an ideological revolution which is our only hope in creating a world without violence. I pledge to you, dear reader and revolutionary, that I will be unrelentingly fierce in living up to my own words of “not accepting what doesn’t have to be true.”[12]

Karen Moe/aka The Logical Feminist.

 

There is no revolution without context: aka Research, Dialogue, and Endnotes! #iloveendnotes

[1] As one of the most prominent examples is the controversy between the idea of free choice to enter the sex industry and coerced choice for ending up there. For discussions of the logical facts that the majority of the time people work in the sex industry because of combinations of economic, race, drug addiction, sexual abuse, sex and gender, see Rachel Moran, Lydia Cacho, Victor Malarek, Finona Broadfoot, Julie Bindel, Simon Häggström, Melissa Farley, myself and countless others, along with the directors of many sexual assault centres I spoke with across Canada during my Trauma & Triumph tour for Victim who expressed the sensitivity of this issue, but fundamentally agreed that there is no choice when one is coerced by marginalization and, in Judith Butler’s words, precarity.

[2] I do not say “white supremacist” patriarchal hierarchy because there are male supremacist cultures like Iran and China where the male perpetrators are not Caucasian. In the colonized contexts of Europe, however, I am referring to white supremacist patriarchal hierarchy. Patriarchy is a predatory system that functions through extreme violence. In Iran, such predation is out in the open and we only need to think of the recent murder of Mahsa Amini on September 16th, 2022 for not obeying the Muslim symbol of female submission as a horrific example of extreme masculine violence wielded in order to maintain power; in the West, the violence to maintain power is more insidious and takes place primarily in the enclaves of the so-called third world, be they outside of the national borders of the first world of the exploiters, or within (we can take Vancouver Canada’s Downtown Eastside and the horrors of post-residential school cycles of sexual violence in particularly remote First Nations communities in Canada (out of sight out of mind) as an examples of third worlds within the first.

[3] Thomas Page McBee. Amateur: A True Story about What Makes a Man. New York: Scribner, 2018: 44.

[4] Robert Jensen The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2017: 71.

[5] During my Trauma & Triumph Tours in the US and Canada for Victim, I connected with sexual violence centres across North America. During our conversations, it was exhilarating to learn that many of the centres are creating initiatives (as much as funding allows, which is always an issue when a culture does not prioritize dealing with the causes of sexual violence, or even enough to the effects) directed towards young men, the potential perpetrators who are often dual: Victim/perpetrators.

[6] TERF: Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. SWERF: Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

[7] Sayak Valencia Gore Capitalism. South Pasadena, CA: semiotext(e) intervention series 24, 2018: 273.

[8] Julie Bindel Feminism for Women: the Real Route to Liberation. Great Britain: Constable, 2021: 80.

[9] Ibid: 26.

[10] See Sayak Valenica in Gore Capitalism for an in depth analysis of what she calls “the devastating system of hyper consumerist, gore capitalism” (266) and in particular the dynamic between the third world exploited and the first world exploiter. 

[11] Interview with Elder Bill Jones June 10th, 2022. My next book will be about the colonizing and colonized consciousness. The working title is Re-Indigenize: The Revolution of Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones. Within the current politically correct confines of Western culture, I will state here that, as a white woman and a descendant of the colonizing culture in Canada, Elder Bill has given me permission to base my book on the story of his life and revolution, so accuse me of cultural appropriation all you want! Ironically, it’s usually other descendents of the colonizing culture (read: white people) who are the most vitriolically politically correct. 

[12] Karen Moe Victim: A Feminist Manifesto from a Fierce Survivor. BC Canada/Mexico City: Vigilance Press, 2022: 153.

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