Katy Perry has been accused of sexual misconduct by her “Teenage Dream” music video co-star.
Model Josh Kloss, aka Katy’s love interest in “Teenage Dream,” has decided to use the music video’s anniversary to reflect on his experiences with the singer.
In an Instagram post, Josh recalled an incident in which Katy purposefully exposed his penis at a party. He wrote,
“This one time I brought a friend who was dying to meet her. It was Johny Wujek’s birthday party at moonlight roller way. And when I saw her, we hugged and she was still my crush. But as I turned to introduce my friend, she pulled my Adidas sweats and underwear out as far as she could to show a couple of her guy friends and the crowd around us, my penis.
Can you imagine how pathetic and embarrassed I felt?”
Josh said he was motivated to tell the truth about Katy because he’s tired of our culture being “set on proving men of power are perverse” when “women with power are just as disgusting.”
In another post, he released emails between him and members of Katy’s team in which they seemingly told him how to answer interview questions.
He wrote in the caption,
“I was supposed to minimize myself and stay PC to protect her ‘image.’ I listened and was a good boy. The fear sticks with you, when you are censored to protect someone else’s image. But in return treated like a prostitute and exposed in front of a group of her friends and other random people.”
He continued by writing,
“You hear over and over a million times that Males are the great evil on this planet. Meanwhile, you know the truth POWER empowers what is corrupt in people, regardless of their gender.”
He concludes by saying that he doesn’t want fame or money but merely to reveal the truth about Katy.
Ok, so this is obviously a lot to unpack.
I’m going to put aside the emails and such because the main thing that needs discussing is the incident that occurred at the party.
As a general rule, I always believe victims of sexual crimes. Only 1% of sexual assault victims lie about the crimes in question. And there’s really no reason for Josh to lie about this.
So assuming that Josh’s story is accurate, what Katy did to him was absolutely not acceptable. As Josh states, both men and women can be perpetrators of sexual misconduct and Katy certainly abused her power. There’s truly no excuse for what Katy did all those years ago and if her team pressured Josh into staying quiet, that’s not ok.
That being said, Josh’s word choices and phrasing are extremely… problematic, to say the least. In two of his posts, he’s clearly taking aim at the #MeToo movement and the recent indictment of men who have abused their power. He says that he’s tired of men being called “the great evil” on this planet and that our “culture is set on proving men of power are perverse.” Frankly, he sounds like his fragile masculinity has been bruised.
I’ve seen it time and time again on social media: men who complain that feminists are “man-haters” and that (white) men are the true victims these days.
In this case, however, Josh is a victim. Not because he’s a man in a man-hating world, but because Katy decided to do something completely inappropriate and uncool. So, as much as I dislike the way he wrote his Instagram posts, that doesn’t discount what happened to him.
As for Katy, she has yet to respond to Josh Kloss’ accusations. She’s currently dealing with the fallout from a copyright lawsuit for her song “Dark Horse”, which she lost. She now owes $2.78 million to a Christian rapper named Flame.
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