the dyke of bengal

"Snoop has an extensive criminal history, including convictions for drugs and weapons related offences and involuntary manslaughter, as well as by his own admission, pimping and trafficking women for sex. Snoop also reportedly lured two underage girls into exposing themselves on film by offering them marijuana and ecstasy.

Snoop’s lyrics glorify violence against women. He refers to women as ‘bitches’ and ‘hoes’ who ‘suck d****’. His songs include ‘Break a bitch ’til the day i die’ and ‘Can you control yo hoe? where he describes beating women who do not obey him, who need to learn their place."

But what diagnosis do you give to the shaking hands you get after a stranger whispers “pussy” in your ear on your way to work? What medicine can you take to stop being afraid that the cabdriver is not actually taking you home? And what about those of us who walk through all this without feeling any of it—what does it say about the hoops our brain had to jump through to get to ambivalence? I don’t believe any of us walk away unscathed. 

I do know, though, that a lot of us point and laugh. The strategy of my aunts and mother is now my default reaction when a fifteen-years old on Instagram calls me a cunt or when a grown-up reporter writes something about my tits. Just keep pointing and laughing, rolling your eyes with the hope that someone will finally notice that this is not very funny. Pretending these offenses roll off of our backs is strategic—don’t give them the fucking satisfaction—but it isn’t the truth. You lose something along the way. Mocking the men who hurt us—as mockable as they are—starts to feel like acquiescing to the most condescending of catcalls, You look better when you smile. Because even subversive sarcasm adds a cool-girl nonchalance, an updated, sharper version of the expectation that women be forever pleasant, even as we’re eating shit. This sort of posturing is a performance that requires strength I do not have anymore. Rolling with the punches and giving as good as we’re getting requires that we subsume our pain under a veneer of I don’t give a shit. This inability to be vulnerable—the unwillingness to be victims, even if we are—doesn’t protect us, it just covers up the wreckage."

Imagine being 9 and getting your first period, bleeding all over the toilet, thinking you're dying, and having your male peers in the room with you instead of just other girls who can get you cleaned up and comfort you, telling you what a period is and that you're safe.

Imagine being 12 and having endometriosis, curled up on the toilet in agony on your lunch break at school, and hearing the boys in the next stall over making sex jokes (or worse - laughing at your sobbing).

Imagine being 10 and having no way to hide the fact that you changed your pad from the boys in your grade who will then go on to tease you and say you're bitchy and hormonal if you fight back.

Imagine being 14 and trying to find a moment of reprieve from the boys sexually harassing you, only to have them follow you into the bathroom and record audio of you urinating.

Imagine being 6, just entering first grade, and having an older boy kick open the cubicle you were struggling to lock.

Imagine being 17 and having your male peers crawl under your cubicle, phone in hand, camera app on.

Imagine being 15 and having nowhere to be with just your female friends to cry about heartbreak or harassment, or even just to be with girls alone to laugh and joke in peace.