Faux Feminism

The recent suicide of Amanda Todd got me thinking. From where I'm sitting, there are two schools of thought. One is that she was a young girl who made a stupid mistake on a social networking site by exposing her breasts. One picture ended up doing the rounds of various social platforms and in the end, she could stand the bullying no longer and in spite of having changed schools, she gave up and ended her life.

The second school of thought suggests that she recorded multiple videos involving masturbation, which she distributed through BlogTV whilst persuading a thirteen year old boy to cheat on his girlfriend. Amanda Todd has been compared with Paris Hilton, hence the picture above. "Why does everyone pick on Paris, she does such great work for charity and she only did one sex tape".

Give me a break.

Let's get this into perspective here. Paris Hilton is an attention seeking 'celebrity' who spends Daddy's money and gets to go to lots of red carpet events to exchange air kisses with other beautiful people who have also had sex tapes leaked (cough) and feel her 'pain'. Amanda Todd was a young school girl who was physically assaulted and dumped in a ditch. She drank bleach in an effort to kill herself and when that didn't work, she committed suicide, this time ensuring it was effective.

Those are not the actions of an attention seeker. Those are the actions of someone who had truly had enough and wanted off this planet, for good. But why ? Because some pitiful insecure pack running bullies decided she wasn't good enough to join their social circle ? Really ?

When it comes to overt sexuality, why is it that women perpetually turn on women ? This is what I find so perplexing. We live in a society which deems it acceptable for an individual to approach a seven year old child and tell her - "Your mother is going to die of AIDS", simply because that child's mother chooses to work quite legally as a sex worker.

We live in a society in which Rape Crisis Scotland deem it acceptable to loudly announce a 'Reclaim The Night' march in Glasgow in support of women against rape (which in itself is fantastic) but to then denounce sex work as an 'act of violence'. One rule for the 'nice' women and one rule for sex workers ?

We live in a society in which Joan Burnie of the Daily Record deems it acceptable to say that Edinburgh saunas are "sad, seedy and sorry". I doubt that she has ever set foot in a sauna in her life, I challenge Ms. Burnie to visit the saunas with me, and speak to the women therein. I think she'll find that they are very much of the same ilk as herself, ordinary women getting by and paying their bills day to day.

All of the above is what I lovingly refer to as 'faux feminism'. It's when women who choose to call themselves feminists selectively choose their allies, to the exclusion of other minority groups who don't meet their moral standards. And it's not on.

So why am I so angry about 'faux feminism' ?

I'm a sex worker, prostitute, whore, call me what you will. I have felt first hand what it feels like to be isolated and bullied because of what I have chosen to do in private, between consenting adults, and within the law. I don't fit within the moral code of faux feminists, I make them uncomfortable. How they deal with that discomfort is to project their insecurities onto me.

They call me slut. They call me whore. They hold their husbands tighter. They hitch their skirts higher, to compete.

None of which bothers me, but what does bother me is when a young impressionable girl like Amanda Todd is driven to suicide because of the elitism of others. She was a hormonal teenager and flashed her breasts. Crime of the century ? We could have a discussion around the 'Page 3' debate ad infinitum, but the reality is, there will always be breasts in the media. Nudity, even. I'm willing to bet that the very women who complain loudest about the 'abuse' of such 'victims' who dare to show their breasts on a public platform are the very ones who creep to bed with 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and their rampant rabbit. That's morally preferable, after all.

I just hope that those who ensured Amanda Todd's early grave can live with their conscience and can sleep at night. I sure as hell couldn't bear that burden, and if you pay any heed to the sex work abolitionists, then you will know that my future confessional is simply straining at the seams.

LL xx