My thoughts on the “Meat List”

There have been approximately a thousand writings about the “Meat List” and what it means for the security of Fetlife. The answer is…. nothing. It means nothing. There is no security breach, no sensitive information was attained.

This “Meat List” is a list of links to the profiles of women under the age of thirty on Fetlife. Its despicable. Its deplorable. Its idiotic. The guy who set it up is trying to make some money off of horny, lonely men without the consent of the girls whose profiles he posted links to. He’s pretty much the scum of the earth.

Sounds like no big deal then, right?

I am inclined to say no. Its actually a big deal but not for the reasons people seem to think. As a relatively intelligent, cognizant woman, I can look at the world around me and know that if I post things on the internet there is a risk that it will be used by someone else – whether it be for someone to masturbate to, someone to take and claim as their own, or for someone to pass it around to others. I know the risks when I plaster pics of my tits all over my profile. I also know the risks involved with posting face pics and the possibility of being outed. We all do. We aren’t children. So the posts about the fairly obvious ways to protect ourselves from that end up sounding smug, victim-blaming and condescending.

What risk I didn’t think of, was that someone might categorize me or my friends as “meat” and create a list of us like we are chattel. I don’t recall consenting to being treated as a commodity. And I am pretty sure no one else did.

It is disheartening that so many commentaries on the “Meat List” focused on possible breaches of privacy and how it could be Fetlife’s fault, and not on the obvious breach of humanity. On Trilema’s website he refers to women specifically as a commodity to be traded and invites people to help him “turn Fetlife into a meat market.” He bemoans the lack of search functioning on Fetlife that makes it hard to search for women and seems totally nonchalant about the trading of women as the basis on which our society is built.

So my issue with the “Meat List” is not simply that some asshat breached the privacy of people in my community, but rather the tone of how women are regarded by this person.  My outrage lies in the way the community regarded this as a breach of privacy, rather than as a degrading action towards young kinky women.  Women are not a commodity for men to consume, trade or buy and sell.