Dressed in pink — with hair to match — and a mask emblazoned with the words “Black Lives Matter,” 21-year-old TikToker @princesskenny444, who also goes by Alex the Feminist, is being filmed sitting in a camping chair, legs crossed, reading the lyrics to “WAP” off her phone. When the camera pans, there’s a middle-aged man standing in the street in front of her, reading from the Bible — though it’s hard to hear what he’s saying over Alex’s poetic words: “Spit in my mouth, look in my eyes, this pussy is wet, come take a dive.”
Commenters have cleverly labeled the video, “The Old Testament and the New Testament,” but it actually depicts something rather insidious. The man in the video is Flip Benham, an Evangelical Christian minister and notorious anti-abortion activist who’s known for harassing marginalized groups and spewing hate. In the clip, which was filmed in 2020, Benham and his anti-choice crew are harassing women outside of an abortion clinic, while Alex and her friends are defending and protecting them.
Although the video is a couple of years old, it’s gaining traction again in light of the recent leaked Supreme Court vote to overturn Roe v. Wade — a decision that would see near-total abortion bans enacted in several states. The video is one of many clips of its kind on TikTok, and offers an interesting insight into how some pro-choice activists are fighting back against the intimating and tiresome tactics of anti-abortion demonstrators — that is, by trolling them. In another of Alex’s clips, the pro-choice group do this by blasting Gillette’s “Short Dick Man” to an anti-abortion demonstrator.
Another TikToker, who’s named Julia but goes by the handle @nyc4abortionrights, also posts comedic videos of herself trolling “the forced childbirth fandom” at anti-abortion demonstrations. In one, she mocks a sign that reads, “Abortion doesn’t make a baby go away, it just makes a dead baby,” saying, “Actually I’m pretty sure abortion does make a baby go away.” Later, as the anti-choicers appear to spout Bible quotes, Julia chants, “Abort it! Abort it!” and, when they start singing, she asks, “Is this the Nicki version?” Many of her videos follow a similar pattern — in one, she describes other everyday surgeries the way anti-abortion demonstrators describe abortion (unneccesarily graphically). In another, she films a sign that reads, “Abortion pill reversal 24/7” (she blocks out the number), and jokes, “When you’re at the rave, and the abortion pill kicks in, but you can’t find any water.”
TikTok user Jo, or @virgobbb, also posts fairly prolifically about her work as an abortion clinic escort. In one video, which has amassed over three million views, an anti-abortion demonstrator approaches her with a model of “what a 12-week old looks like inside,” to which she responds, “It looks unseasoned.” Another clip sees her tell an anti-choicer that she’s limping because she has “ligma… ligmaballs.” When anti-abortion protesters bring a “promise” rainbow flag to the clinic, Jo jokingly thanks them for (inadvertently) supporting the gay community. “[It represents] a promise?” she asks, “To be gay? To the hey mamas?” She also describes the growing fetus models they bring with them as “breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner.”
If you click through to any pro-choice hashtags on TikTok, there’s loads more videos of this ilk. You’ll find clinic escorts trying to shoo anti-abortion demonstrators away by twerking (to none other than Khia’s “My Neck My Back”), drowning them out with car alarms and telling them that “One Direction is literally bigger than Jesus Christ” — which, true.
Of course, while these trolling clips are funny and an effective way of exposing the ridiculousness of anti-abortion activists’ arguments, demonstrators outside clinics are actually incredibly threatening and scary — as this particular clip of someone trying to safely enter a clinic reminds us.
But at least we now know they can be partly drowned out by a simple rendition of “WAP.”
Brit Dawson
Brit Dawson is a London-based journalist who mostly writes about sex, women's rights and sex work. She is also the staff writer at Dazed.
