“Bop.”
“Bop lore.”
“You’re a bop.”
If you’re a normal person whose brain is not deeply damaged by exposure to the Internet and/or not an incel, you might be wondering what the hell a “bop” is.
A bop, the newest way for men to criticize twenty-first century women for having sex lives, is basically just a way to call a woman a slut and tell everyone that you spend far too much time on TikTok at the same time. How efficient.
If you want to get technical, it refers to a woman who gives oral sex to a lot of men. I won’t get into the specifics, but Urban Dictionary exists, people.
How men have come up with yet another way to attack women for their personal and private choices is somehow surprising, not surprising and defeating all at the same time. It seems that young men have a lot of time on their hands to create new misogynistic language, but I am not surprised that women are the consistent victims of this rhetoric.
It is 2024 and we are knee deep into the third wave of feminism, so to know that it is a persistent truth that women are still not considered sexually liberated is deeply troubling.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of this whole “bop” term is that it’s just another violation of the very privacy of the sex lives of women.
Who cares if women have sex?
It’s no one’s business except for the person she’s sleeping with.
Slut-shaming has never made sense to me for a variety of reasons but mainly because the men that call women bops, sluts or hoes are often times bops, sluts and hoes themselves! But, men are praised for their sexual “conquests” where women are considered used, dirty or “bops” if they behave in the very same way.
In the song “Back End” by Finesse2tymes, one of the opening lines is “It’s cool when they do it, it’s a problem when I do it.” Many of the women that are referred to as bops are simply women with the morals of a sexually promiscuous man, which I find important to emphasize there is no problem with being.
Sex is a taboo topic, but it shouldn’t be. If you choose to have a lot of sex, that’s great for you! It’s your personal choice. If you choose to not have sex, that’s great for you! It’s your personal choice. It’s no one else’s business and it does not matter in the grand scheme of things.
Consider my case made.
While I wholeheartedly oppose the childish and inappropriate name calling of women, I also find it necessary to state that calling men bops does not in turn sexually liberate women.
The only way to end the whole concept of slut-shaming or to dispel the aura of guilt and shame around sex is to encourage the sexual liberation of both men and women without also destroying the sanctity of sex as a deeply intimate and meaningful act. That does not happen by calling men bops as revenge.
Bop this, bop that. Go outside and touch grass.