I CAN BE YOUR WHORE!

“I CAN BE YOUR WHORE!
I am the dirt you created.
I am your sin; I am your whore.
But let me tell you something baby
You LOVE me for everything you HATE me for!”

I love to blast this in the car – windows down – on a beautiful day when the sun is blessing everything and I am feeling on top of the world. Like most metal (rock?) music the song is loud and obnoxious and totally full of energy. I imagine the live concert with bodies jumping, hands waving, fists pumping in the air, the crowd literally SCREAMING the refrain. I wish I could be right there, right in the middle, screaming myself hoarse. I totally feel this song.

A few male friends heard me reveling in the moment, and cautioned “You know you can’t let your daughters hear this, right?”

FIRST OF ALL – your opinion was neither solicited nor appreciated. Please stay in your lane.

SECOND OF ALL – Why the fuck not?!

And before you all clutch your pearls and brand me with a scarlet letter let’s examine the lyrics.

She starts by exuding confidence: “I’m the girl you’ve been thinking about/The one thing you can’t live without/Yeah, I’m the girl you’ve been waiting for/I’ll have you down on your knees/I’ll have you begging for more.” She saw him watching her, licking his lips while he thought of all the vile things he would love to do to her. Men do this – regard women as semi sentient beings whose sole purpose is to fulfill whatever fantasy a man may dream up. Society dismisses this as “boys being boys”. And not only is she aware of the attention, but she confronts it. She is telling him that she is so skilled that he will no longer be in control of his desires. That she will have him begging. How about that dichotomy? I will give you this piece of candy, and it will be everything you thought it would be and then some, but afterwards you will not be able to think of anything else. You will beg and plead for it, hoping that I will relent and give you another. That is badass, pure CONFIDENCE.

Next, she called him out. “You probably thought I wouldn’t get this far/You thought I’d end up in the back of a car/You probably thought that I’d never escape/I’d be a rat in a cage, I’d be a slave to this place.” The assumption that because she did things that a “proper lady” would not do, she would be relegated to the lowest dregs of society; that her worth was somehow lowered to almost nothing. Let me tell you, I have been told to my face that I would not be good for anything but laying on my back. And then everyone around him told me that I was being too sensitive, and that it was just his painkillers talking. (To those people: Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, fuck you. I’m out.)

And then: “You don’t know how hard I fought to survive/Waking up alive when I was left to die/You don’t know about this life I’ve lived/All these roads I’ve walked/All these tears I’ve bled.” In other words “You can kiss my entire ass.” Women are not disposable playthings. But for some reason women are mistreated and tossed out like garbage. And when they try to bring attention to crime they are abused yet again by a society that says she asked for it. These lyrics are attesting to this fact. And yet she survived, and then thrived. Sex workers, I give you one hell of a SALUTE. Your line of work does not give anyone the right to abuse you. Missy Elliot said “Girls, girls get that cash/If it’s 9 to 5 or shakin ya ass/Ain’t no shame ladies, do your thing/Just make sure you ahead of the game.” No, I am not going to be a sex worker – I am not cut out for that. But not everyone is cut out to troubleshoot software code. Ladies – and gents – go make your money the best way you know how and tell the rest of the world to kiss your ass – for a fee of course.

And then she smacks him with the truth:

“I’m the one that you need and fear
Now that you’re hooked, it’s all becoming clear
That all your judgments that you placed on me
Was a reflection of discovery
So maybe next time when you cast your stones
From the shadows of the dark unknown
You will crawl up from your hiding place
Take a look in the mirror
See the truth in your face”

She basically said “Throw another stone motherfucker, I dare you.” You are telling me that I am lowest of the low, that I am worthless because of what has happened to me. You didn’t expect me to figure out how to use your base desires to control you. And now you are fucking terrified of how the slave can now be the master. How does that shit feel now?

“So how can this be?/You’re praying to me/There’s a look in your eyes/I know just what that means/I can be, I can be your everything…”

This is the ULTIMATE empowerment song. She was treated like a rag doll, and now she knows exactly how to catch them by the short and curlies. They thought they had her beat; they thought wrong. She learned to use her sexuality as a weapon and now they have reason to be afraid.

So, ladies. Someone told us that our most powerful weapon is our most shameful feature, and we bought that lie. It’s time to sell it back. Look him dead in the eye and scream:

I CAN BE YOUR WHORE!!!