Soraya Chemaly: The Slut Manifesto
...Rush Limbaugh did us an unintended service, however. He made this clear to everyone, when he repeatedly called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute and asked her to make a sex tape for him: every woman, even one simply speaking civilly and intelligently in her own interest, can be called a slut for no other reason that she's a woman. That's because the defining characteristic of a slut is not her sexual behavior - it's her gender. In this way, more people now understand that a slut is any woman who wants to control her reproduction (for whatever reason), build a life, earn a living of her own, dress how she wants, and take care of her health and her family.
Every woman knows the word slut has power. No woman alive hasn't thought about what it means to be labeled in this way. In some cultures, where honor killings take place, it is a matter of life or death. If you're a "good" woman, don't kid yourself. No one wants to be a slut, well some people don't. But by not acknowledging how it is used, you are embracing its power over you and other girls and women. It means you've spent your life and will continue to spend your life calibrating your appearance, speech and behaviour so that you are not a slut. And you will pass that corrupt and misguided abuse of power on to your daughters and mine. That's because you know, deep down, that at any point that word can be used against you. Every woman is a slut waiting to happen. Women who abhor the word, find it vulgar, and fear it, the ones who slut-shame others, gain a little bit of power by participating in a system that denigrates them.,,
No comments:
Post a Comment