That time I was the hostess at a Pick-Up ‘Artist’s’ Seminar

I have a problem. I hate-read. Call it a hobby, a pastime or a pathology, I came across The Red Pill when I was traveling in Asia, its bitter ideology in such jarring contrast with my own, progressive feminist views and was instantly hooked. Which is where I found Roosh V.

Roosh, an expatriate of the US who left to trawl poorer parts of the world for women ostensibly ‘unspoiled’ by Western culture, is the creator of his own series of ‘Bang’ books and the notorious centre of the manosphere, the website, Returnofkings.com. Like an addict meticulously picking the carpet for forgotten crumbs of crack, I consumed his entire, ahem, oeuvre, and was fascinated, the nausea rising in my throat with every click. It was glorious. And when I heard he was seeking hostesses for the London stop of his ‘World Tour’, I couldn’t resist getting in contact, to get a first hand look at exactly what type of man would pay to see him talk. And there was another reason.

As a mixed-race pragmatist and having spent years in more rugged parts of the world, I’d grown disillusioned with what third-wave feminism was turning into. Co-opted, petty, and suffocating, I failed to understand exactly what people like Lindy West were trying to achieve with ‘fat acceptance’, or events like Slutwalk, that all seemed like half-baked, self-serving distractions that draw attention to exciting pictures of themselves on their Facebooks, with ‘slut’ daubed across their chests in lipstick, and away from poorer, browner women who…