Feminist Current

No one proposes ending war by unionizing arms manufacturers. Proposing to end violence against women in the sex trade by unionizing them is likewise untenable. The best way to end violence against women in the sex trade is still to end the sex trade. The unionization strategy is a reformist position – and the position that we would like to live in a world where there is no such thing as prostitution, strip clubs, pornography, while it might seem fantastical, is a revolutionary position and the correct line to have for a leftist who calls herself a feminist. It’s not moralistic hand-wringing to criticize the base assumptions of the military industrial complex; why then, is it just my “personal baggage” speaking when I criticize the sex trade?

First, we should look at the conditions in which women in the sex trade live, and ask ourselves if these conditions could be alleviated by unionization:

Seventy percent of women in prostitution in San Francisco, California were raped (Silbert & Pines, 1982). A study in Portland, Oregon found that prostituted women were raped on average once a week (Hunter, 1994). Eighty-five percent of women in Minneapolis, Minnesota had been raped in prostitution (Parriott, 1994). Ninety-four percent of those in street prostitution experienced sexual assault and 75% were raped by one or more johns (Miller, 1995). In the Netherlands (where prostitution is legal) 60% of prostituted women suffered physical assaults, 70% experienced verbal threats of assault, 40% experienced sexual violence and 40% were forced into prostitution and/or sexual abuse by acquaintances (Vanwesenbeeck, et al. 1995, 1994)… The prevalence of PTSD among prostituted women from 5 countries was 67% (Farley et. al. 1998), which is the same range as that of combat veterans (Weathers et. al. 1993).

From Farley et. al.  (2003) “Prostitution in Nine Countries”

Is this staggering violence a result of lack of unionization? Let’s see what the International Union of Sex Workers is fighting for:

All workers including sex workers have the right to:

• full protection of all existing laws, regardless of the context and without discrimination. These include all laws relating to harassment, violence, threats, intimidation, health and safety and theft.

• access the full range of employment, contract and property laws.

• participate in and leave the sex industry without stigma

• full and voluntary access to non-discriminatory health checks and medical advice

Here is where we begin to be mired in questions, a case by case judgment of “good” vs. “bad” prostitution. What defines coercion? What defines trafficking? What defines abuse? What defines empowerment? Certainly, the assumption of the IUSW is that the sex industry is a normal, neutral industry wherein women happen to be subject to incredible amounts of violence and poverty, where nearly half (47%) are under the age of 18 when they begin working. The idea of the IUSW and other unionists is that the trade is not the focus – the focus, as we so often find it when discussing sex work, is on the women themselves.

Unions often define themselves by their relationship with management – with the “boss” -  but for sex worker unions this is hardly ever the case. As the women are primarily seen as independent contractors for the sake of analysis, the john and pimps are left out of the picture. The culture surrounding the sex trade is not up for analysis, either. It is a neutral, unchanging constant.

The boss is the john, and to take action against the john or the culture that encourages him is to shut down business. Instead, the union is supposed to either challenge the state (to legalize prostitution) or to perform the functions of the state (provide protection, legal counseling, health services). Yet, these are reformist measures that simplyserve to react to the conditions women live in, rather than challenging the very conditions themselves. Lest we forget: women are not raped and abused because of a lack of state regulation (or too much state regulation), they are raped and abused because the john, pimp and cop decide to do so, and exist within a system that shelters them from consequence.

Within the realm of the normalized sex trade, rape and abuse are no longer crimes against the person, but rather occupational hazards. In the blog, “Tits and Sass”, two articles underscore this quite well. The first, about rape, is written from the perspective that “unwanted sex” is still consensual when the woman sees material gain from the process. This agrees with studies of john behavior and attitudes, wherein a full quarter believe that the very concept of raping a prostitute is “ridiculous.”

 It’s rare that I give authentic “enthusiastic consent” while I’m working. And that’s how I prefer it.

“Enthusiastic consent” was conceived in an effort to eradicate the so-called gray areas of sexual assault, so it’s hard to talk about without also talking about rape. While I appreciate the centering of desire and consent, it wouldn’t hold that every sexual encounter taking place without the enthusiastic consent of both parties is rape… But I still turn over plenty of work-related questions in my head: what does it mean for a man to keep paying to have sex with a woman who doesn’t give signs of enjoying it?

Another article, entitled “On Stripper Burnout” advises women who are tired of the verbal abuse that goes with stripping to buy new clothes, look at photos of money to boost morale, eat sweets, or work for a cruel booking agent as “fear can be a great motivator.” There is no advice here on leaving the sex trade – emotional, verbal and physical abuse in the normalized world of pro-sex work advocates becomes a grey zone, where the woman’s personal attitude is what determines the difference between occupational hazards and something that might contribute to PTSD – putting the onus of responsibility on the woman rather than on the john.

The practical side of unionization brings us back to the current, atomized-view of sex work in general. It is a localized solutionwhich does nothing to address a global problem.Questions arise: Who do you bargain with? How do we unionize all women? If a woman was in the sex trade and did not belong to a union, would this be her choice? Are johns supposed to solicit union prostitutes out of a sense of guilt, a la consumer activism (fair trade hooking?). Do we really expect johns to spontaneously grow a conscience when they are told women are for sale and it’s okay to buy them? When it comes to women in pornography, the average career tenure is quoted in several sources at being between five months and three and a half years – how then, to unionize these women?  Same with prostitutes, who on average enter the trade when they are underage – how to unionize these women? What about pimps and madams, pornographers and mobsters – are they allowed in these unions?

Any leftist worth their red will agree that punishing women is the most counter-productive way to handle prostitution or sex work. Yet unions stop short at criticizing johns who, on the whole, generally acknowledge that women in prostitution experience homelessness, substance abuse and physical and emotional degradation. Johns know, on average, that women enter into it when they are underage and against their will. They buy sex anyway. Unionizing women will not end trafficking, will not end violent deaths – it simply turns what is a societal problem into an organizational problem. Like most unions as they exist under capitalism, a sex-worker’s union’s primary purpose is to keep the more politically-minded in line with the management. We should look elsewhere for solutions that liberate women.


Taryn Fivek is a writer in New York City.

You’ve likely heard about the ‘cannibal cop‘ by now. He was a New York police officer whose wife discovered a website open on his computer displaying a photograph of a dead girl. The officer, Gilberto Valle, had been visiting a ‘fetish sites’ (because murdering women is a ‘fetish’ donchaknow) which “show[ed] women in various stages of forced duress, including one that offered images of women who did not survive.“  There was a cannibalism element to his ‘fetish’ and “the FBI analysis of Valle’s laptop yielded a video of a naked woman hanging over an open flame and screaming in agony.”

The wife, Kathleen Mangan-Valle, said that when she later delved into her husband’s electronic chat history, she found he had been communicating with others about plans to torture and kill women, including herself.

“I was going to be tied up by my feet and my throat slit, and they would have fun watching the blood gush out of me,” she said, sobbing repeatedly through her afternoon on the witness stand.

He has now been charged with “plotting on the Internet to kidnap, rape, kill and cannibalize female victims.”

The Times article asks an interesting question, similar to one I asked back when photos were discovered of an RCMP officer who had been involved in the Pickton investigation that simulated violence against women: “When does a fantasized crime become an actual crime?”

Valle didn’t actually go through with his plans. While the prosecutor argued that the officer was plotting real crimes, Valle’s lawyer claimed it was all just a fantasy. The ‘fantasy’ argument didn’t provide much comfort to Mangan-Valle, who also found conversations about elaborate plots to have friends “raped in front of each other” or burned alive or about “putting women on a spit, and cooking them for 30-minute shifts, so they could be tortured longer.”

These were pretty specific plans for something that was just an innocent fantasy. There is documented negotiation of specific details and a payment upon delivery to a co-conspirator: “Valle insisted upon a price no less than $5,000 and assured CC-2 that Victim-2 would be bound, gagged, and alive when he delivered her.”

There is no doubt that violence against women is sexualized in our culture. But when Ginia Bellefonte published a piece called “Remember Misogyny” in the Times wondering why there was so little concern from feminists about this fetishization of violence against women, Jessica Wakeman responded, in The Frisky, with derision:

“Focusing on the craziness of a couple of mentally ill folks instead of larger systemic injustices seems like a poor use of time,” she argues. “Maybe….cannibals eating women isn’t really feminism’s most pressing problem?” Why so defensive? Visiting fetish sites that feature women being tortured, sometimes to the point of death, seems fairly misogynist to me.

Bellefonte quotes Jane Manning, a former sex-crimes prosecutor and currently the legislative vice president for the National Organization for Women’s New York City chapter, who notes:

“There’s an odd confusion in the feminist movement,” she added. “We’ve all accepted the idea that speech is protected when it’s speech. But that seems to have extended to the notion that there shouldn’t even be social condemnation attached to incredibly horrifying misogynist speech.”

Violence against women continues to be one of the most urgent and pressing issues for the feminist movement today. And I would say that sites that fetishize mudering, raping, and eating women are, in fact, a little more serious than simply “a couple of mentally ill folks” who like to surf the internet and whatever everybody just relaaaax OK? So, a man who fantasizes about hanging his wife from her feet while him and his friends “take turns sexually assaulting her before slitting her throat and cooking her” isn’t misogyny? OK. Got it.

We’re at a place in feminism where we are so desperate to either not be perceived as ‘prudish’ or to defend any and every activity as simply an individual ‘choice’ or behaviour that calling what is clearly misogyny (is there any more literal manifestation of the sexualization of violence against women than fetish sites dedicated to torturing and murdering women?) has become off-limits because it counts as ‘kink’. The desperation to individualize, legitimize, and depoliticize absolutely everything is frightening. Particularly because it seems we are most intent on doing this with relation to anything that could possibly be connected to sexuality.

I get the feeling that we’re not calling this kind of thing out because we don’t want to admit that, sometimes, misogynist ‘fetishes’ aren’t simply ‘fantasy’. They’re actually misogyny.

Now, before the ‘don’t kink-shame me’ folks start railing on me, I will reiterate that, I really don’t much care about whether or not you want to dress up in latex costumes and play silly games in the bedroom. It isn’t particularly interesting. The only people who really care about ‘kink’ are people who care about ‘kink’. So get over the idea that you’re so bad and the rest of the world is just too ‘vanilla’ to get you. You like role-playing, other people don’t. So what. Move on.

That said, there are a couple of issues surrounding ‘kink’ that do concern me. The first is the unwillingness of feminists to call out misogyny when they see it simply because we have to protect the sensitivities of the fetish folks. The second is the delusion that ‘kink’ is an identity that designates ‘kinky people’ as some kind of oppressed minority group. Kink and BDSM can certainly enter misogynist territory and it isn’t your right to force the world to pretend that it doesn’t in order to defend your sex life.

William Saletan pointed out, in an article for Slate, that :

Every article about BDSM now includes the obligatory professional woman who’s secure enough in her feminism to admit she likes to be flogged. It’s great that we’ve come that far, but the message is awkward. While reformers in India battle a culture of rape, Indian BDSM advocates extol the bliss of female masochism. While human rights activists denounce caning and waterboarding, BDSM lecturers teach the joys of caning and waterboarding. Abduction, slavery, humiliation, torture—everything we condemn outside the world of kink is celebrated within it.

Awkward, indeed. The real life rape and torture of real life people isn’t just a sexy game; but when presented as ‘kink’ it becomes innate part of our sexualities, completely divorced from larger culture.

The tricky part follows: “Political advocates for BDSM see themselves as successors to the gay rights movement. They cite Lawrence v. Texas. They call themselves “sexual minorities” and depict kink as a “sexual orientation,” Saletan writes. Get it? If being ‘kinky’ makes you part of some kind of minority group, anything that counts as fetish is off-limits in terms of critical discussion. It can’t be misogynist, I was born this way! It’s sex, not misogyny!

I mostly agree with Saletan’s assessment: “BDSM isn’t an orientation. It’s a lifestyle.” And, for the most part, whether or not you like to play out fantasies or wear leather or do fancy things with ropes or dress up as a sexy nun in order to rebel against your Catholic parents as part of your sex life isn’t something anyone else has a say over. But that really isn’t the point. There is misogyny and violence and abuse that happens as part of BDSM and we should be able to call it for what it is without being accused of attacking a person’s ‘sexual identity’.

The ludicrous notion that this lifestyle should qualify a person for protection under the law,on account of being a part of some kind of oppressed minority group defined by ‘kinkiness’ is an insult to actual minority groups.

This kind of hyperbolized, perverted use of identity politics as a means to stifle feminist discourse and critical thought is a serious detriment to the movement.

We are always asking ourselves “What happened to the momentum?” and “Where are all the young feminists?” Well, I think we’re finding the answer. In the final segment of the recently aired documentary, MAKERS: How Women Made America, a three-hour look at the history and evolution of the women’s movement in the United States, Letty Pogrebin said, of the “Why don’t young women care about feminism?” question: “If they lose their rights, then they will wake up.” And I don’t think she was talking about the right to be spanked.

I supposed once we’ve completely quelled our ability to discuss anything outside individual choice and identity and are forced to discuss all actions and behaviours as neutral and void of context, we’ll truly be free.

If you haven’t yet heard about revenge porn, you’re lucky.

Notorious dickbag, Hunter Moore, is big into the revenge porn game. He can be credited with mainstreaming the concept of punishing your ex by posting their nude photos online without their permission via his website, IsAnyoneUp.com.

Doesn’t take much to get rich these days, just a complete lack of anything resembling a soul.

Not only would Moore post the photos, but he would also post the person’s name, location, and link to their social media accounts, also helpfully facilitating comments under the images critiquing the person’s appearance. Innovative, right!

Eight months after his original site shut down, Moore, committed as ever to cretin status, announced he would be launching a new site: HunterMoore.TV.

Of course, the fact that he manages to keep this up this seemingly “legally questionable” endeavour begs the question: “How is this actually legal?” Amanda Holpuch explains, in an article for The Guardian, that (in the U.S.) under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, “website proprietors are not liable for content that is submitted to them by third parties.”

Even with that loophole, it’s clear that these sites aren’t going to get off scot-free.

Another revenge porn site (Gosh, it’s just a mystery why degrading women via porn is so popular!), Texxxan.com (and their hosting company, GoDaddy.com) is being sued by approximately two dozen women on the basis that the site was “significantly designed to cause severe embarrassment, humiliation, and emotional distress.”

The deal with revenge porn is that someone you once trusted enough to let take a photo of you engaged in a sexual act or text a photo of yourself naked to, now hates you enough to want to seek ‘revenge’ by turning you into publicly consumable porn.

Now, while the purpose of revenge porn is indeed, as Jill Filipovic writes for The Guardian, “to shame, humiliate and destroy the lives and reputations of young women,”(i.e. not just about masturbation), I would add that the existence of revenge porn is very much a result of a porn culture.

When we look at the ways women and girls are harassed and abused online, we see that it often isn’t just about words, rather it is often about porn. We see this in the Amanda Todd tragedy which happened back in October. While Todd was bullied and harassed, both online and by kids at school, she was also a victim of porn culture. As many feminists pointed out after she killed herself, Todd was not only ‘bullied’, as most of the mainstream media put it, but she was harassed in a completely misogynistic way. What many news outlets failed to mention was that Todd was turned into porn. A man she’d been chatting to online coerced her into showing her breasts via a webcam, later threatening to share the image with her friends and family unless she gave him a “show.” He followed through on his threat, circulating the image of Todd, who was in grade seven at the time, online.

Sound familiar?

It isn’t possible to separate what happened to Todd from this ‘revenge porn’ phenomenon, which is also why it isn’t possible to separate ‘revenge porn’ from ‘porn’.

Revenge porn is about degrading and humiliating women. It doesn’t work on men because men aren’t hated on a mass scale, as women are, and because men’s bodies are not used against them, in order to punish them.

Just as revenge porn isn’t simply about naked bodies, neither is mainstream porn. It’s the power dynamic that’s ‘sexy’ and it’s the degradation that separates both revenge porn and ‘regular’ porn from straight-up nudity and sex. When women are objectified, they lose power and men gain power. The male gaze is a disempowering one.

The fact that pornography is being used as a means to publicly harass and degrade all women (regardless of whether or not the woman in question was compensated for her image and/or the use of her body) should tell us something about pornography and about our misogynistic culture. It tells us that porn isn’t ‘just about sex’ or about ‘loving women’s bodies’ and that it isn’t somehow completely neutral.

The fact that 12-year-old girls are being pressured to text ‘sexy’ photos of themselves to boys and men (as well as older girls and women) is as a result of a porn culture. Porn cannot be separated from larger culture; isn’t something relegated to ‘adult only’ sites. It’s what we’re all supposed to be, as women, and it’s used against us. Feminists say ‘porn harms’ and often the public isn’t sure what that means. Well here’s an example.

Men like Hunter Moore grew up in the same culture that the man who harassed Amanda Todd did and in the same culture boys are growing up in today, learning that to coerce girls to turn themselves into porn gives them power.

It should be clear by now that porn is not about loving women.

This article was originally published at rabble.ca and was reposted with permission from the author.

The Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) and one of its spawns in the campus based Men’s Issues Awareness Group movement have arrived at the University of Toronto with  a bang; and a seeming campaign of overt intimidation against those who oppose them.

CAFE, as I have previously written about at some length, is the front group that presents the public and ostensibly less extreme face of the Men’s Rights Movement (also known as the Men’s Rights Advocacy or MRA) in Canada. As I noted in the article they have made on-campus recruitment a major thrust of their overall strategy.

In furtherance of this aim, they have set up a number of campus clubs including one at the University of Toronto. The Men’s Issues Awareness group held a public event on campus that featured Warren Farrell on November 16, 2012.

Farell is a men’s rights apologist who touts his former “feminist” credentials to act as the intellectual spokesperson of the MRA. He is the point person they trot out to to make Charles Murray, Bell Curve style arguments that obviously distort and misuse statistics, anecdotal evidence  and historical record in defense of what are transparently specious and ahistorical notions that patriarchy is a myth not only now, but even in the past.

This event was protested by a group of University of Toronto activists and feminists who objected to Farrell’s and the MRA’s presence on campus. This resulted in the campus police and the Toronto police ultimately breaking up the protest, as protesters attempted to block access to the event. This protest, which has not lead to any actual charges, has lead to accusations of police brutality. It has also led, in part,  to a statement by the Provost of U of T stating, rather disingenuously, that “the disruption of this event by protesters was a threat to free speech”. While obviously, one might note, disrupting events and civil disobedience are also a fundamental part of free speech and of the historic fight against injustice, a fact the administrations of universities seem to regularly disregard, it should additionally be noted that this is a statement issued by a university administration whose alleged devotion to “free speech” was so great that, during the G20 protests they hired a private investigator whose reports of “people outside of the GSU building wearing “Black Bloc attire”” led to what is now known to be one of the worst unlawful episodes of mass false arrest and detention during the entire G20 weekend.

After this action by U of T students, a number of activists within the U of T community have described to me another incident on December 6th, as students gathered on campus to honour the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women and Children; a date chosen as it is the anniversary of Canada’s most notorious case of misogynist and anti-feminist hate violence, the Montreal Massacre. As this remembrance event drew to a close an MRA member aggressively demanded to be allowed to make a statement, while another was seen photographing participants.

In the days since this, matters have gotten significantly worse, in a way that deserves notice and that exposes the fraudulent claims by CAFE, and their on campus offspring,  that they are only interested in discussing “gender issues” and “fairness” and that they are not an anti-feminist or misogynist group.

These posts now have broadened to include at least four students and can all be found on their main page. They include derogatory personal comments, photographs of the women in question, and threatening language. They seem to be adding female U of T activists to this front page almost daily.

In addition they have added some of the activist’s names to the reprehensibly misogynist website, register-her.com.  This is a website supposedly devoted to “exposing” alleged female rapists and women who have allegedly  laid charges of rape which turned out to be false. The minuscule number of alleged women offenders actually listed on the site simply reconfirms that neither of these notions are a significant social issue. In fact, 97% of sex offenders are male, and a similar site devoted to listing the names of North American men who had either committed rape or had falsely stated that a woman was lying about rape would include millions of names and be inconceivably larger in scope. That the website is now primarily a vehicle for heaping scorn and humiliation on its female opponents shows just how specious the website’s claims are and what its real purpose is.

CAFE, in a ridiculously self-contradictory and disingenuous article has attempted to both distance itself from the A Voice for Men website and state that its critics are “quote mining”. This is almost a humorous accusation given that the article itself links to the A Voice for Men website, and clearly, thereby, brings these posts naming and attacking specific activists to the attention of CAFE members and followers.

Given that the A Voice for Men website is in the United States, and given the details that they know about and prominence that they are giving to the U of T feminist activists, it seems rather difficult to believe that they are not being, at the very least, fed information by U of T’s men’s rights activists. In addition, one of the posts is co-written by “Agent Mauve” and Paul Elam. Paul Elam is a well established leader within the far right American Men’s Rights extremist and hate wing. As he lives in Houston, Texas, however, it is clear that “Agent Mauve” is likely the real author. One can only point out the irony that someone so dedicated to “exposing” individuals is too much of a coward to say who they really are, as obviously they wish to avoid any legal or personal ramifications in Canada.

CAFE has good reason to worry about “quote mining”. Even a cursory examination of MRA websites, their rhetoric and their statements, rapidly exposes outright misogyny.

A Voice for Men has very recently published articles like “Marc Lepine is a feminist hero”, “Manufacturing female victims, marginalizing vulnerable men”, “Child abuse in the name of feminism” , and many, many more. You need not even get to the comments or discussion boards, or “mine” their archives, to find countless and clear examples of how misogynist this website is. When you do get to them the vitriol and violent hate speech are only amplified.

Once one delves into the discussion boards of various Men’s Rights groups, forums that they likely think are out-of-sight, the “front” comes down”, an issue that I will return to in a later article.

Anyone can look through the A Voice for Men discussion boards to see palpable anger and hatred towards women and feminists.

As just one other example, one need only see this forum regarding my article in October, on the website  Men’s Rights Online, to get an immediate idea of what the MRA is about when it thinks no one is looking (and a warning, the imagery and content of this page is extremely offensive). The irony is, they are far more abusive than this when discussing their female opponents. This is not, by any stretch, the worst of their comment boards.

As CAFE not only does not disavow these sites, but links to A Voice for Men, among others, they cannot honestly claim not to endorse them.

The U of T Provost states “We will continue to monitor and review this situation.  It is important that all members of our community can express their views in a civil and respectful manner, without fear, regardless of which position they take on this or other divides.” But this is a wrongheaded response.

As with so many liberal, seemingly “free speech” oriented statements, it gives equivalency to both sides as if this were a “debate”. By doing so, the statement, in fact, legitimizes the Men’s Rights Movement, in the same way that the American media legitimizes creationists by giving them air time.

The Men’s Rights Movement is an organized, dedicated and growing hate movement that constitutes an explicit and violently oriented backlash against women and feminism. It is not akin, in anyway to the feminist movement and is not, somehow, a legitimate counterpoint to it in an academic environment. Faculty, administrators and staff had best wake up to this reality before it is too late.

Michael Laxer lives in Toronto where he runs a bookstore with his partner Natalie. Michael has a Degree in History from Glendon College of York University. He is a political activist, a two-time former candidate and former election organizer for the NDP, was a socialist candidate for Toronto City Council in 2010 and is on the executive of the newly formed Socialist Party of Ontario.

We, in feminist land, like very much to encourage folks (particularly media-type folks, as they have a pretty significant role in framing discourse) to use correct language. Or, at very least, language that describes something real. In my last post, for example, I talked about the fact that many mainstream news sources reported on the murder of Kasandra Perkins without ever using the words ‘violence against women’ or even ‘domestic abuse’. Feminists know that naming the act and the perpetrator is important lest systemic inequity and the fact that we live in a sexist society disappear into the ether. It’s hard to address misogyny if we refuse to acknowledge that it exists and shapes our lives. Language matters.

As such, I would like to address a newfangled term that has mushroomed in popularity like an idiot weed due to funny fun-times Slutwalk and other ‘WE DO WHAT WE WANT FUCK YEAH‘ feminismish happenings.  That term is ‘slut-shaming’.

I implore you, friends of feminism, language and logic — Stop saying ‘slut-shaming’. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s misleading. And makes you all sound ridiculous.

Now, before you start explaining to me why slut-shaming is actually a real thing, allow me to stop you. I understand what it is you are trying to get at. I myself have experienced this ‘shaming’ many a time. I know all too well about the double-standard that won’t die. The one that makes promiscuous women ‘sluts’ and promiscuous men into ‘pimps’. (Get it, boys? Being a ‘pimp’ is a good thing.) And you don’t even have to be ‘promiscuous’, whatever that means. It’s a thin line, for women, between love and hate. One minute you’re revered, you’re beautiful and precious and desirable andandand…. the next, you’re in the gutter. Women lose their sheen quickly. That’s what happens with commodities. You’re worth is in the hands of a fickle and punitive market.

Like you, I am sick as fuck of being treated like shit while men brag and boast about their ‘conquests’, shaming the very women who trusted them for doing just that: trusting. Silly girl. Trust is for amateurs. You’ll get your comeuppance.

Yes. I agree that this is bullshit.

Being called a slut is painful. It sticks with you. I know.

Even now, as a bone fide adult, when I should really not have to deal with this crap, I still do. I still feel there’s an expectation that I play the chaste game. That, while men can pretty much act on any impulse, I will be judged for my behaviour. Masquerading as a classy lady is work. I do my best, but the end I usually just do what I want. What other people want obviously has less bearing on my choices than what I want. If that weren’t the case I’d likely have some kind of stable job, a better credit rating and a practical degree. Regardless of my stubborn hedonism, somewhere in the back of my mind there is always a tiny voice yelling “SLUT!” Residual trauma I’m guessing.

So please, spare me the lecture on the sexual double standard. I’ve lived it and been punished by it for half my life. By men and women alike.

Yet stillI cringe every time I hear someone talking about ‘slut-shaming’. As such, I’ve compiled a list of  reasons that describe why I feel this term is stupid and should go away forever:

1) There’s no such thing as a slut. Can we please stop pretending there is? ‘Slut’ is a word used to shame and silence and attack women. It is only a real thing to misogynists who use language to hurt women.

2) The solution to the sexual double standard that shames women for having casual sex, being promiscuous, enjoying sex, having female bodies, leaving the house, whatever,  is not, as a very smart lady on Twitter put it recently, to “turn ‘sluts’ into a special-interest group“. You see, there is no such thing as a ‘slut’ or a ‘non-slut’. There are women. This whole ‘slut-pride’ thing and terms like ‘slut-shaming’ reinforce the very dichotomies feminism works to destroy. Us vs. them. Good girls vs. bad girls. Reinforcing the idea that some women are ‘sluts’ and that ‘sluttishness’ is attached to female sexuality (i.e. that whole — now ‘slut’ means a ‘woman who likes sex‘ crap) is not useful in terms of defining our own lives and sexualities. Like sex, don’t like sex, whatever. You aren’t a ‘slut’ either way. You’re a woman.

3) ERGO. ‘Slut-shaming’ isn’t about shaming ‘sluts’. It’s about misogyny. It’s about shutting women down. It’s about hating women. It’s about silencing. You can be labelled a ‘slut’ regardless of whether or not you have or like sex. Whether you’ve had one partner or fifty. It’s doesn’t matter. Just like women get called bitches regardless of their behaviour. Do we go around telling people not to ‘bitch-shame’ us? No, we say that men who call women bitches are sexist assholes who don’t like it when women speak (read: exist).

4) No matter how hard you try to take back ‘slut’, people will still use it to shit on  you. And it still won’t feel good. Just because you’ve painted ‘slut’ across your chest and proudly tromped down the street in fishnets doesn’t mean that assholes across the continent are going to stop using sexist language. A lot of people like to make comparisons around ‘taking back’ the word ‘slut’ to the n-word. But as we all know, racists still use this word in a racist way. Because they are racist and because racism is a thing that still exists in our world. You can pretend that, in the last year, ‘slut’ has been taken back to mean ‘awesome-fun-times-sexy-lady’, but it’s not true.

5) Half of the time people talk about being ‘slut-shamed’ or witnessing ‘slut-shaming’, it’s about clothes. Not sex. Someone thought you or your buddy was dressed ‘like a slut’. Your response was to say that, apparently, some ‘slut-shaming’ happened. But I’m confused now. Which is it? Is it that women who ‘like sex’ are being shamed? Or is it that women who wear push-up bras are being shamed? Because, for the record, wearing ‘slutty’ clothes has nothing to do with liking sex or not liking sex.

The point I’m trying to get across here is that this language is confusing and, rather than take apart virgin/whore, good girl/bad girl dichotomies and rather than address the root of the ‘slut’ language (which is misogyny), ‘slut-shaming’ skirts around these things.

Not only that but the supposed reclamation of this language has served to reverse these dichotomies in a decidedly unhelpful way. So now, the ‘good girl’ is no longer the prude. She is the girl who like to have tons of sex (with dudes). She’s liberated. This is awesome for patriarchy because it provides more soldiers in the ‘feminists are prudes who hate sex’ army. It means that women who don’t like sex (with men, in particular) don’t have valid opinions. Because they’re just maaaad. (Or they have their periods or something. Who really knows.) This phenomenon is also referred to as ‘compulsory sexuality’.

So Salon published a whole article the other day about a study that shows “the sexual double standard is alive and well and still influencing women’s everyday behavior.” Well, fucking duh. Any woman who exists in this world is well fucking aware that she’s always on the verge of being called a slut or a bitch or a cunt or a whore. Because that’s just not something that’s avoidable in our culture. If you turn down a date you might get called a bitch. If you have sex on a first date you might get called a slut. If you get in a fight with your boyfriend because he’s a dickbag, you might get called a whore. I’ve been called a slut for not having sex with someone I did not want to have sex with. So go figure. Either way, women lose. Your being called a bitch or a cunt or a slut or a whore has nothing to do with you actually being any of these things. Frustratingly, the article was entitled: “Study: “Slut-shaming” won’t go away”.

Regardless of the problematic headline, the study highlighted is a good study. The research was lead by Terri Conley who we like very much here at Feminist Current because she busts crap-o evolutionary psychology myths that try to justify sexist stereotypes about male and female behaviour à la ‘Men love sex with everybody all the time! Women hate sex and also want to make babies all the time!’ variety. In this new study, Backlash From the Bedroom, the researchers find that:

…under the right circumstances—that is, when the experience promises to be safe and pleasant—women are just as likely as men to engage in casual sex.

Key words: safe and pleasant. It’s more difficult for women to have casual sex, not because they, as a universal group, necessarily don’t desire it, but because women live in a world that is neither safe or particularly ‘pleasant.’ I’m not saying that if we lived in an equitable society free of sexism and the threat of violence all women would be having casual sex all the time, but I am saying that what we need to understand about men and women and sex is that universalizing based on solely on evolutionary psychology that ignores cultural and social contexts is dumb.

Conley and her colleagues also found that:

Women who accepted a casual sex offer were viewed as more promiscuous, less intelligent, less mentally healthy, less competent, and more risky than men who accepted the same offer,

And indeed! This is a true thing. Because of sexism. Calling women ‘sluts’ is about controlling women.

I mean, lets break this down. Say you engage in consensual sex with some dude. Afterwards, say he feels good and you feel bad. What the hell, right? It felt good at the time, yeah? Often, this man is the one that makes you feel bad. Often he does this on purpose. What the fuck? Why should you feel bad about engaging in consensual sex with a person you were attracted to? Well, for one, because dudes can be fucking assholes. For two, patriarchy doesn’t want women to feel good about themselves. Feeling bad means boob jobs and Girls Gone Wild and faking orgasms. Feeling bad means trying to please men above all else. It means you’ll keep reaching for this thing you can never have. Because pleasing men will never give you real power.

Patriarchy thrives on women’s insecurities.

Hate yourself, patriarchy says. Do it. Do it because the man who sleeps with you and then turns around and makes you feel like a worthless, insignificant, scummy, piece of shit subhuman because his ego needs that in order to survive — he hates you.

Have you ever had sex with someone to punish them? I haven’t. But I sure have been fucked as punishment.

This isn’t ‘slut-shaming’. Fuck that noise. It’s woman hating.

Coverage of the murder of Kasandra (Kasi) Perkins by NFL linebacker Jovan Belcher has been incredibly brutal over the past few days as we bear witness to mainstream news sources rushing to defend Belcher’s character and erase any whiff of ‘male violence’ or ‘domestic abuse’ from the conversation. Most media that covered the story over the weekend barely mentioned her, headlines reading” “Chiefs LB Belcher kills self”, “NFL tragedy: Chiefs chairman says Jovan Belcher murder-suicide ‘incredibly difficult’”, “Jovan Belcher murder-suicide leaves Chiefs in shock”, “Kansas City Chiefs’ Belcher in fatal double shooting“… You get the picture. Something about a football player. The NFL is taking it pretty hard.

Fox Sports went out of it’s way to find people to defend Belcher’s honour:

“He was a good, good person … a family man. A loving guy,” said family friend Ruben Marshall, who said he coached Belcher in youth football. “You couldn’t be around a better person.”

“He was someone who took genuine pleasure in bringing happiness to others,” [Dwayne] Wilmot said.”

CTV News quoted Kansas City Mayor, Sly James, who urged people not to ‘judge’ Belcher:

“I hope people will look at the situation and try not to judge the person. There are a lot of people hurting. There’s a young baby right now without parents,”

The New York Times stacked their piece with quotes assuring us that Belcher was a good man:

“I had every reason to believe he was a well-spoken, articulate man who exhibited a lot of genuineness”

“I didn’t want to believe it. He was a good man. A good, loving father, a family man.”

Numerous mainstream news outlets who covered the events framed the whole thing as a baffling tragedy.

 ”It feels like an infinite number of lives directly impacted by the decision of one person. And for now, no one knows how or why he came to that decision. All anyone knows is that he did.” (Aol Sporting News)

“There’s going to be unanswered questions, the why’s of this tragedy. It’ll never be truly known to us.” (Fox Sports)

And indeed, it was a tragedy. But while the media obsesses over the death of a young athlete, wondering how such a crazy, crazy thing could happen, they miss the most obvious thing. That is male violence against women.

What this situation isn’t, in fact, is baffling. Because violence against women is a global epidemic. In Canada alone, a woman is killed by her intimate partner every six days. Global research “suggests that half of all women who die from homicide are killed by their current or former husbands or partners.” In England and Wales, two women per week, on average,  are killed by a partner or ex-partner. In the U.S.,  between 1980 and 2008 the percentage of women killed by intimate partners went from 43 percent to 45 percent. For men it went from 10 percent to 5 percent. A blog post over at What About Our Daughters points out that “black women ages 25-29 are about 11 times more likely as white women in that age group to be murdered while pregnant or in the year after childbirth.”

And we are baffled when it happens again? This ‘double shooting’, this ‘murder-suicide’, this ‘unthinkable tragedy’? We don’t know how this could have happened? Really? Take a guess.

Instead of stating the obvious — that this was yet another case of male violence against women, we feign confusion.

But there’s nothing confusing about the situation. We can even, simply, look to the way in which media has framed this incident, to see why this continues; to see why women continue to be abused and murdered by their partners. Domestic violence is prevalent because we clearly don’t take it seriously. We are more concerned about the loss of an NFL player than we are about the fact that this was a violent man who took the life of his partner.

Oh. And as pointed out by Jason Whitlock, the Kansas City Chiefs decided not to cancel their game the very next day. A woman is murdered by one of their players, but god-forbid they postpone their Sunday celebration of masculinity and violence. And let’s please not pretend that the male-centric culture of professional sports like football and hockey don’t centre around violence and aggression. That it isn’t a blind celebration of patriarchal capitalism. Let’s not pretend like the NFL gives a shit about women.

“The Chiefs issued a statement that said their game Sunday afternoon against the Carolina Panthers would go on as scheduled, even as the franchise tried to come to grips with the awfulness of Belcher’s death.” (Fox Sports)

And then, of course, almost on cue, there’s the victim blaming.

While the New York Times was bad, including leading quotes like: “What could have caused him to make him do that?” “You never know what would trigger that.” “We had heard that they had been arguing in the past,” Deadspin managed to post the most disturbing coverage of them all, quoting from an email sent to them by an anonymous friend of Belcher’s.

The relationship had “soured” this friend said. The couple had been “arguing”. We shouldn’t focus on this “isolated incident”, the friend stressed, this had been building for some time. Oh. And did we forget to mention the obvious? That Perkins was after Belcher’s money?

“…she made it clear that she was leaving and [would] contact a lawyer to “get as much money as possible.”

And as if this ‘friend’ had not gone far enough, here’s the kicker: Perkins was, according to this source, “the catalyst to this incident.”

The friend (as well as other sources) mentioned that Belcher had substance abuse issues and had suffered a number of concussions. So looks like Belcher was the real victim here.

I have no idea what could have inspired the folks at Deadspin to print this (seemingly libelous) garbage. It seems unnecessary. Detrimental even. Why contribute to a culture that is clearly so desperate to avoid holding men accountable for incidences of domestic violence? Maybe Belcher had problems. In fact, I’m sure Belcher had problems. And one of those problems was patriarchy and a culture that feeds, encourages, and understands masculinity to centre around aggression and power. Belcher’s problems are real. But so is patriarchy. And men aren’t the primary victims of that system.

None of those quotes Deadspin featured will sound new to anyone who’s ever come out about abuse or to anyone who’s known a woman who’s gone public with her experiences of male violence. Not one. I myself have been at the receiving end of all of them and more. The “Oh, but you two were fighting, weren’t you?”, the “She pushed him to do it. You know… she’s kind of a bitch…”, the “She’s just trying to get revenge/money/attention/whatever”. I’ve heard the same said about my friends. I’ve heard the “Well you went back to him…”, the “He was drunk”, the “She’s crazy.” I could go on.

The point is that this has to stop. We pay lip service to domestic violence or ‘family violence’ (the newest in terms the state uses in order avoid describing the truth of the matter), removing gender from the discussion and presenting violence against women as a private matter (a ‘family’ matter) — ‘they had problems’, ‘oh, it’s none of our business’ — yet we are so clearly committed to doing nothing. We are unwilling to admit that this is a systemic issue and that this is about gender. Because we don’t give a shit. We care more, as a society, about sports than we do about violence against women. We are still representing women as conniving gold diggers who ‘ask for it’. Who push men to violence. Who are the ‘catalysts’ in their own murders.

The media is not innocent in this. They aren’t simply ‘reporting the facts’. The media is shaping the conversation and they are shaping it in a way that excuses and erases male violence against women.

The media and journalists make choices. They can say ‘bullying’ or they can say ‘misogyny’. They can say ‘sexting up kids!’ or they can say porn culture. They can say cyber harassment or they can say sexual harassment. They can say ‘murder-suicide’ or they can say ‘domestic violence’. They can say ‘family violence’ or they can say ‘male violence against women’. They can choose to quote people who accuse Perkins of being a gold digger or they can quote people who are critical of an unequal and oppressive society (but that probably won’t be quite as popular) and of a male-centric culture that celebrates and idolizes violent men. Certainly they can choose not print quotes that reinforce that which so many already want to believe — that women deserve the violence they are subjected to. That somehow there is no one to blame. Just another isolated incident wherein a woman happens to die at the hands of a man. “What can we do??” We ring our hands. It’s all just so baffling, isn’t it.

Though I occasionally find a good article in Vice, mostly I just find really terrible writing and misogyny/efforts at popularizing pornography. I mean, I like reading about drugs as much as the next person, but I just can’t stomach the constant objectification and glorification of porn (because I’m too fucking uptight or stupid to ‘get’ how objectification is actually artsy and ok if hipsters are doing it).

The magazine has really nailed the whole ‘irony masks racism and sexism‘ thing. It’s also spawned a whole faction of idiot hipsters who think that their writing is deep because it makes no sense. It’s the emperor has no clothes redux. NOBODY SAY ANYTHING JUST SMILE AND NOD AND PAT YOUR BUDDIES ON THE BACK BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALL THE RIGHT HIPSTER CONNECTIONS AND HAVE NEVER WRITTEN ANYTHING BEFORE AND DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE ANYTHING INTERESTING TO SAY BUT TODAY THEY DECIDED THEY WERE A WRITER AND HAHA DOES ANYONE HERE REALLY KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON HAHA NO BUT WHATEVER HA THAT CAPTION DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE.

ANYWAY.

Bad writing aside (yeah whatever, people in glass houses, yada yada), I’m getting fucking sick of the whole misogyny disguised as irony thing.

Earlier this week I saw these photos posted from a local hipster night that I’ve actually attended on many occasions. It’s awkward to say so publicly because Vancouver is a small place and because friends of friends etc, but seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people?

It’s one thing to put up your party photos in your outfits trying to impress one another. It’s absolutely another thing to put up images of girls who are clearly fucked up and wasted spreading their legs for the camera. Did you ask their permission ONCE SOBER whether or not they minded having these images posted publicly? Because if it were me I would fucking mind. Acting like a trashy idiot whilst drunk is par for the course. We ALL do it. Ok, so I do it. But once actions become imagery, said images could possibly be construed as porny and it’s not your GOD GIVEN RIGHT because you know how to work a fucking camera to post this shit on the internet.

And even if all those women did give permission, in sobriety, for you to post their crotch/boob shots online, these images, whether or not you think they’re hip or ironic or funny or whatever, are fucking porny.

But I digress. The initial reason for this post was actually to address Jezebel’s new sex advice columnist, Karley Sciortino, who’s blog, Slutever got her a show at Vice under the same name.

In her inaugural column at Jezebel, Sciortino addresses facials and something called “pussy whipping” (Which I didn’t know was a thing either. APPARENTLY it’s “when someone hits your vagina with a whip”. Good to know, good to know.). And whatever, do what you want I guess. But for someone who is a) writing a sex advice column, so like, one would assume we would have thoughts and opinions on things and issues relating to sex, and b) writing a sex advice column for a feminist-ish site, responding to the issue of pussy whipping by saying:

In my mind, asking my view on pussy-whipping, or facials, is equivalent to asking, “What are your views on can openers?” These are all just things that exist in the world, and we don’t need to take a stance on them. There are certain matters that deserve careful consideration (i.e. casting an actress to play yourself in the movie version of your life); some casual jizz on your face isn’t one of them.

Um, what? Pussy whipping is the same as can openers? HAVING OPINIONS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT THINGS IS SO STUPID YOU GUYS.

She goes on:

People — women in particular — really need to get over the “is this degrading?” thing. If you have to stop and think about whether something is degrading or not, then it probably isn’t. I understand there are complex emotions involved in sex, so everything isn’t always black and white, but I also think that sometimes girls’ brains become so clouded by bullshit “feminist” ideals — “thou shall not be treated like an object,” “thou shall always be offended by men’s pervy remarks” (as if we are not equally adept at dismissing them, and dishing them out) — that we spoil our own fun.

Ok so no. Women do NOT in ANY WAY need to get over the “‘is this degrading?’ thing.” They do not need to stop thinking about things and questioning things like objectification and misogynist comments AKA SEXISM IN ACTION. That isn’t to say that you can’t like what you like or do what you want in the bedroom, but to suggest that thinking about and questioning our behaviour and sexuality is a stupid waste of time because, I don’t know, IT’S ALL SO IRONIC AND WE’RE SO BLAZÉ AND APATHETIC ABOUT EVERYTHING BECAUSE THINKING ABOUT THINGS AND CARING ABOUT THINGS IS SO LAME, is the worst, most thoughtless, boring-ass “advice” I’ve ever heard.

And then there’s the dig at feminism. That one really takes the cake: “Sometimes girls’ brains become so clouded by bullshit “feminist” ideals…” Really? REALLY??? Our brains are clouded by oh-so-powerful feminism? That’s like saying our brains are clouded by thoughts. “Oh y’all are just thinking to much. Let patriarchy take care of this for you.”

When the response to perfectly valid questions about whether or not a sexual act may or may not be degrading (and no, that doesn’t mean it is black and white – there can be BOTH nuance and critical thought for people who are ok with using tools such as critical thinking — BUT EW GROSS THAT’S FEMINISM ISN’T IT??) is “don’t worry your pretty little head about that”, that pretty much means that we’re supposed to let patriarchy do the thinking for us.

So what have we learned from this sex advice column, folks? Caring about and thinking about things JUST ISN’T COOL. And whatever, that’s fine for Vice. We expect that from them. We expect casual misogyny because giving a fuck isn’t a thing that the cool kids do – but for a site like Jezebel, which sort of aims to provide feminism-lite style commentary on issues and events, to hire a sex advice columnist who tells women to stop thinking so much and then slags feminism for brainwashing us into using our powers of critical thought is total bullshit.

Time to start caring about shit, hipsters. You look like a bunch of assholes. LIKE YOU CARE.