A Spanish language translation of my work has been viewed more than 15 million times without being credited to me
On reclaiming my writing
I have hesitated to talk about this publicly, because I do not believe in scandals and call outs as a way of dealing with problems. But I believe there is a way for me to tell the truth and to trust my audience to uphold my ethics of refusing dehumanization and attack. I am sharing this not because I want you to “come for” the woman who has plagiarized my writing, but because I want to publicly claim this writing as my own and return it to its rightful place in my body of work.
In 2012, when I was 25 years old, and just beginning to leave the trauma reenactment active addiction super crazy chapter of my life, I wrote a piece of writing called “yes i am a slut,” in response to the Slut Walk movement that started in Toronto, the city I called home at the time. I published it in a zine. I made a video of myself reading it on youtube. And then I published it in my first book.
Even back then, when I was very crazy, I was actively publishing my writing and I had an audience. My piece “yes i am a slut” went viral and was shared many times. I’ve always had a Spanish language audience, because I share my writing widely online and sent zines to readers in Mexico and various places in South America. Someone translated the piece into Spanish: “sí, soy una puta.” Someone added Spanish subtitles to the video of me reading the piece and the piece also went viral in the Spanish language world. I have always been okay with people translating my writing and distributing the translations, as long as it is credited to me, because I have a multilingual audience and many of my readers want my writing to be available to their language communities. The translations are small scale amateur translations, and people aren’t making a huge amount of money on them.
Here is the piece of writing in English, from my book.
Far from being a fun flirty piece about sexual empowerment, this is actually a piece about sexual trauma. It discusses very specific traumatic experiences from my life. Anyone who knows my body of work will recognize me in this writing, although this is me at 25, before going to therapy or getting sober. This is me as a totally traumatized, sexually compulsive young person trying to make sense of my lived experiences. It is extremely personal writing.
Here is a screenshot of me at 25, reading from the zine version, with the Spanish subtitles. I don’t have a copy of the video anymore but I will embed the version with subtitles below, as it is still uploaded on someone else’s youtube. And to be clear, I have no problem with people sharing this because this version is credited to me.
Over the years I have received various requests for people to use the Spanish language translation and I have always said yes as long as the writing is credited to me. I know this piece has been performed in Spanish a number of times by a number of different people.
A few years ago, I wanted to find the translation to share with a Spanish speaker I know, so I was looking it up on youtube. I came across this:
This is a performance of the Spanish translation of “yes i am a slut.” It is incomplete — the entire piece is not in this performance — but it is a word for word translation of parts of my “yes i am a slut” piece. She is literally saying things from an “I” perspective that are not her own experiences. The life described in this performance is not her life — it is my life. This video clearly had a budget that is higher than any monetary support I have ever received for any of my work. It has been viewed over 15 million times. I am not credited at all. None of my writing that is actually credited to me has ever reached this many people. This is literally my most famous piece of writing and it is not credited to me.
It is also likely that her record label made substantial money on this, as youtube is a monetized platform based on views. The 25 year old I was who wrote this piece was poor, and the experiences described in this piece come from the most impoverished and traumatized chapter of my life. I received no credit, and no payment. They even claim to have copyrighted the piece, even though it was already copyrighted in English and I did not give permission (nor was I asked) for its use here.
I have tried contacting her, and I received no response. I did a consult with a lawyer and found out that because this is an international, cross language plagiarism situation, and because I didn’t find out about it until many years after the video was published, it is a very complex situation that would be very expensive to even try to address. So I let it go. But it has always bothered me that my most famous writing is not credited to me, and that Mujer Luna Bella is literally parroting my life and pretending it is hers.
I am sharing this to honour the traumatized 25 year old writer who wrote this, who deserves to be credited for this writing. I am sharing this so that this piece of writing can come into conversation with the writing I am doing now at the age of 37, with so much more trauma recovery under my belt. I’m not seeking legal advice. I’m definitely not asking you to attack Mujer Luna Bella online — please don’t, as that would be completely counter to all my values. I am trusting my audience, as always, to treat even those who have done something wrong with compassion, dignity, and respect for their humanity. If by any weird chance, someone reading this has contact with her, I would love to be put in touch to ask her to please credit me for my writing.
Edited to add:
Someone sent me this older performance of the piece by Mujer Luna Bella. In this version, at the end of the recording, she credits me. This shows that she actually knew who the author was and chose not to ask me, credit me, or pay me when making a professional music video out of it.
Respect to you for walking the talk, both in honoring yourself and honoring a misguided other. Whatever does or doesn’t come of this, I’m glad you shared.
Clementine, what book of yours is this writing from?