Not too young to be Slut-Shamed

Amanda Todd got what she deserved, didn’t she? I’m sure we’d all feel sympathy for an innocent victim, but Amanda Todd couldn’t possibly have been innocent. Obviously she couldn’t. She was a girl for one thing.

What’s even worse: She was a girl who didn’t act the way a girl should act. Disgusting behavior, and just like these people, I’m sure you, dear reader, would never find yourself in the same situation. (MAJOR trigger warning).

Amanda appeared naked on a webcam, with a man. How could she possibly believe this was acceptable behavior? Obviously music videos depict women-as-sexual-objects as the norm. And advertising. And magazines. And films aimed at children. And the cosmetics industry. And the fashion world.

And yes, girls are made to feel that their worth as a human being lays in their appearance. But only by everything on TV and in the movies and in songs and on the internet and in the advertising that’s inescapable and in the views of huge numbers of people around the world. Only in those things.

So why did Amanda Todd act like a whore? Well, she was 13, and curious. (Yeah, she was one of “those” kind of girls). She visited webcam chat sites online. She met a man, an adult, and he told her that she was beautiful, perfect.

That’s an adult man talking to a 13 year old child, telling her she was beautiful. This, according to Amanda, made her feel good about herself. So when the adult man told her to show him her boobs, she made a bad decision.

A child, under pressure from an adult man, made a bad decision. Despicable, wasn’t she? She showed him her boobs.

I guess she wanted to feel good about herself. I guess she wanted to please the man, because that’s why women are here, right?

Wrong!

Well, not wrong. Obviously women are here to please men through their bodies, and we men have a right to look and touch. But women shouldn’t actually do those things because that makes you a whore. So don’t actually do it. Although, we will pressure you to do it, and we want you to do it, and we’ll be really nice to you before you do it. So do it, but don’t.

Simple. What about all of that is so hard for a 13 year old child to understand?

So Amanda did it and then the adult man blackmailed her. Put on a show for me or I’ll send your naked picture to everyone you know. And she didn’t, and he did.

There may be a crazy dimension somewhere where people felt pity for the blackmailed child pressured into posing nude, and anger and disgust at the manipulative, selfish adult man. But hurrah! We don’t live there!

Amanda Todd, at 13, had officially become a slut.

She moved schools. He re-posted the pictures on Facebook. She suffered anxiety attacks and depression. He set up a facebook page. She “did things to myself to make pain go away, because I’d rather hurt myself then someone else”. The students at her school called her a whore, relentlessly.

Then a boy was nice to her. He had a girlfriend but he said he really liked her. And she, lonely and 15, believed him. Because she wanted to believe that somebody liked her.

A lonely child wanted to believe that somebody liked her.

And his girlfriend found out. And she didn’t blame him.

The girlfriend didn’t blame her boyfriend because that’s what guys do! We’re just being guys! Amanda was the slut because Amanda was a girl. That’s, like, basic science!

She heard a boy shout “just punch her already” and Amanda was knocked down.

So, Amanda drank bleach. She was fifteen, and she drank some bleach. A 15 year old child voluntarily ingested bleach. Amanda Todd drank bleach.

And lots of girls and boys posted on her Facebook how they hoped she’d died. And how she deserved it.

Kids say the funniest things!

But also, children learn so quickly. Here were all these boys and girls and already they’d learned to police and judge the actions of a female. Already these spirited youngsters had created a narrow and confused set of rules for girls to live by. Isn’t it incredible.

Amanda didn’t die from the bleach. She killed herself a month later. I guess the loneliness, and the hatred and the vicious words all became too much for her.

And after she died she got some more hatred and vicious words. It was her own fault. Where were her parents? I certainly wouldn’t have done that! Where was her self-respect?

So Ladies and Gentlemen. We have now reached the point when adult men can prey on children online and collectively we choose to slut shame the children. Congratulations everyone. What a wonderful world.

Amanda Todd did not deserve any of the things she suffered. You and I, dear reader, may disagree on many things and that’s fine. But if you can watch her Youtube video and feel not a shred of sympathy, feel no sadness, feel no anger at the putrid, spineless, vindictive little shit of a man who began all of this, you surprise me.

If you can watch it all and blame her, then I’m sorry that I share a world with you.

Amanda Todd. RIP.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Voltaire