Photo by Erez Avissar

Odd Future ringleader Tyler, the Creator's controversial spring continues with this week's trip to Australia, which has culminated in allegations of verbal abuse, the shutdown of an in-store signing, and requests that his visa be revoked. The setting and specifics are new, but the complaints are the same as those that have been lodged against Tyler and the Odd Future crew since they began receiving attention a few years ago: that his lyrics promote violence against women (sexual and otherwise) and that he should be penalized for them.

The controversy stems primarily from the criticisms of a feminist group called Collective Shout, who've been lobbying for Tyler's Australian shows to be cancelled and his visa taken away. As the Music reports, they've received the support of Alex Hawke, a (very conservative, male) member of the Australian House of Representatives, who's attempting to turn Tyler into a national political talking point.

Hawke told the House of Representatives this week, per The Music: “Allowing this man a visa to promote this misogyny to audiences, including children, is a complete disgrace and an insult to all of us, and to women in particular. Australia must be clear that we have a zero tolerance for these extreme acts of violence, and the government and the minister have power to take action against this sort of intolerance and those encouraging the dehumanisation of women.”

Hawke has gone so far as to involve Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, saying: "Prime Minister, I urge you… to seriously reconsider and review the visa granted to Tyler, The Creator under section 501—the character assessment test. All of us in his House should stop the spread of this vile message against women.”

Just some background on Hawke, whose outspoken young-gun conservatism got him noticed in 2005, when he said: "I do not shrink from signing up people who believe in conservative agendas and the free market" and took aggressive stances against drugs, abortion, and the legal age of consent for (homosexual) sex.

Australia, a confounding place where ultra-conservative and feminist ideals align in the righteous name of villainizing and penalizing American rappers for their lyrics.

The campaign against Tyler has strengthened with allegations from Talithia Stone, a Collective Shout member who says she was verbally abused last night on the basis of her Twitter campaign against the rapper, as The Guardian reports.

Tyler retweeted Stone saying: "have to visit [streetwear store] @Culturekings tomoz to protest against @fucktyler he will be there at midday. I think they need an educating on #misogyny." According to the Music, Odd Future's in-store signing at Culture Kings was shut down by police, seemingly due to sheer overcrowding.

According to The Guardian, Tyler, in characteristically petulant fashion, went on a rant against Stone during his show last night (she was in attendance). "Fucking bitch, I wish she could hear me call her a bitch, too, fucking whore," he said. "Yeah, I got a sold-out show right now bitch. Hey this fucking song is dedicated to you, you fucking cunt."

"I was petrified," Stone, who captured clear video of the rant on her phone, told The Guardian. "I was standing among the crowd of people chanting along with threats toward me." She's since reported him to the police on grounds of verbal abuse, but her efforts might be futile: "FUCK THAT SHOW WAS THE BEST FUCK," Tyler Tweeted. "AUS WAS AWES... THEY MADE ME FEEL LIKE I WAS IMPORTANT TONIGHT DUDE."

Watch the video below.

Each time someone starts up the feminist argument against Odd Future, I'm reminded of Lorrie Moore's eloquent and nuanced dissection of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho from 1990, in which she wrote: "We tend to leave the protest against violent misogyny and its complicitous depictions to radical feminists and the fundamentalist right; too often, then, efforts at legislation ensue."

It seems all-too-pertinent to the latest controversy surrounding Tyler (along with the recent discussions of rape jokes in comedy.) "If a work of art depicting sexual violence also fails at eloquence, authority and intelligence, if it seems faked and masturbatory, how is it that ordinary women, in a national climate where women are raped and murdered daily, do not cry out?" Moore asked. "Certainly readers or publishers should be able to do as much, or at least to dissociate themselves from such works as a way of exercising their freedom of speech. Why equate objection with censorship?"