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Hero Woman Refuses to Be Shamed After Her Public Threesome Goes Viral

When women are caught being sexual on the internet, it's still up to them to find a way to control their own stories.
Alexis Frulling. Photo courtesy Maryjane Peters

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This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

Alexis Frulling peels back the cling-wrap shroud of a cucumber and shoves the end of it into her mouth. Then she chomps off the end of it in one massive bite, chews it, and swallows it.

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The scene takes place in a YouTube video Frulling made in the aftermath of a public threesome she had a little over a week ago. The threesome was filmed and put on the internet without her knowledge or consent. Why a threesome would have an aftermath of any sort is because women are still big ole dirty sluts for doing what they want with their bodies. Nobody, of course, pays any attention to the men for doing the same: Rather, we expect it of them.

Frulling experienced the predictable backlash and name-calling online after the threesome video was posted. Her own video is addressed to both her lovers and haters, and addresses the threesome. It's called "Trampede (the original)" and already has well over a million views. She's clearly put some work into the video (which even has its own song about her). She sits on a porch with a huge glass of wine in the foreground, making jokes about the situation.

"I can't say I'm proud about it," she says in the video, referring to the threesome, "but I'm not ashamed."

Frulling is taking control of her own narrative. She made her Facebook profile into an open fan page, and it now has 14,000 likes. She created a YouTube channel and made a Twitter account with a sincerely boss followers-to-following ratio (1,726 to a hilarious 41, as of Tuesday afternoon). But then, in a society that blames and shames women for sex acts but expects those same women to please men sexually, what choice does she have? Either she tells her own story or the internet tells it for her. The men involved have presumably disappeared back into their normal lives and clearly don't feel the same pressure to speak up for themselves. It's only Frulling who has to stand up for herself in this way, because she's the only one being shamed.

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The sex she had was with two friends she'd hooked up with before, she told me over the phone. They were heading to the Wiz Khalifa show during the Stampede and making sexy jokes. They decided it would be funny to have a threesome. At first, she hesitated, but then she decided to "just do what [she] want[s]." They went to a discrete downtown alley between industrial buildings. What they failed to account for was the person overlooking the scene from a second floor balcony who filmed the entire thing and felt the need to put it on Reddit.

She says police are still investigating, and that person might be charged. Posting intimate images of someone else without their consent is illegal in Canada—although it's unclear how the public nature of this event would work in court—and with good cause. (See: Amanda Todd, Rehteah Parsons, cyber bullying). Frulling and the two men involved won't be facing charges, though public sex is illegal in Canada.

"We meant for this to be just between us and our friend group, but it all backfired," she explained. Someone outed Frulling when they connected the video image to her Instagram. Initially, she tried to get the evidence offline, but then she decided to own the story.

"I thought, This is fucking stupid. I'm not going to have all of these people hating on me.So I was like, 'You know what, it was me.' So many people have done this before and just didn't get caught. This isn't fair. I don't see why I should get bashed for it when the guys don't get bashed for it."

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Quick poll, then. Who among us hasn't: (a) banged a friend; (b) copulated outdoors; or (c) had some form of group sex? Just because Frulling happened to do all three at once and got "caught in the act" doesn't mean it's any of our business. It's her business and her body, and she is bravely asserting that.

As this dude who makes videos in Calgary says, turnt-up threesomes are "what we hear happen at Stampede. It's just ten days of debauchery."

And yet, people are saying Frulling is not smart. Not wise. That she should have expected the video would wind up on the internet.

No. She should have expected someone might see her, but not that they'd videotape her and put the video up online, knowing full well it could either embarrass her or unleash a violent tirade of cyber bullying and slut-shaming against her.

Besides, the threesome is a thing many of us partake in or fantasize about. Some even say threesomes are on the rise. So why the vitriol? The truth is, most people who are up in arms about this are decidedly miserable about their sad, bonerless lives.

As Rebecca Sullivan, the head of women's studies at the University of Calgary, said in an interview about the situation with Postmedia News:

"We shouldn't be discussing whether people should be doing this or not, we should be discussing why it's OK for everyone to be so abusive. To the abusers: 'What are you getting out of it, what are you achieving, and what is it about yourself that you like yourself as an abuser?'"

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Happily, some women (AHEM Belle Knox; Kim Kardashian) have harnessed similar "outings" of a sexual nature and capitalized on them, using the incidents to brand themselves as they see fit. Frulling says she's scared this will impact her ability to find a "normal" job, but she plans to use this to her advantage. She plans to get into event planning and promotion, and she says she's considering doing sex tutorials online. (Raise your hand if you've ever had the misfortune of fucking someone who could use at least one tutorial!)

Frulling doesn't owe us wisdom, to be frank, or choices we agree with. She's a 20-year-old woman doing as she pleases. Just as we need to get over the way women speak, we also need to get over the way they pursue sexual conduct. Sexualized shaming and internet terrorism have stolen the lives of too many women, and we should all be well aware of these dangers by now.

"A lot of other girls are scared to stand up for themselves and say, 'Fuck that double standard,'" Frulling says. "Guys can do whatever the hell they want. We're all human and make our own decisions."

Frulling is saying that she won't be silenced. She won't let others tell her story. And she is not here to be erased.

Follow Sarah Ratchford on Twitter.