On April 29,
2012 I reposted a blog a friend sent me on Facebook. It was about the idea of a
“slut”.
Essentially, the idea of a “slut” is a myth told to
women to keep them in their place. Just as Santa will not actually bring you
coal on Christmas if you break a few of the house rules, you will not actually
turn into an intrinsically tainted, unpalatable creature if you break one of
society’s rules and have sex with one too many men. The word “slut” isn’t a
criticism for having too much sex necessarily, but for being a woman: a real,
living, breathing woman with quirks, foibles, normal sexual feelings, and
personality; and failing to live up to the societal ideal for a woman: the
passive, pliable, perpetually innocent, and sexually available Barbie doll.
--- STFU, Conservatives
I wasn’t as well
versed with women and gender studies last year as I am now, but it’s definitely
worth mentioning that I still have a lot to learn. To prove my point, it wasn’t
until a few months a go I gave into the process of reclaiming the word to
combat slut shaming. I have always maintained that sluts did not exist, as
there is not a unanimous definition of the word. For example, there is not a
formula that calculates the amount of sexual encounters a woman has in period
of time and with whom to produce a “slut”.
But the reason why I am bringing this up now is because I have seen
“slut” and “whore” way too many times this week, and I was able to understand
that the experiences of the person being labeled a slut are so real.
You see when the
two young men went to trial after evidently raping a young lady; the entire
media explodes with things like:
“I’ll stop
tweeting about this whenever everyone understands that Jane Doe is a whore.”
“The slut was
definitely asking for the D.”
#sheaslut
“Whore status”
“She’s a town
whore anyway…”
“lol I say I
don’t feel bad for that chick in #Steubenville and all the sluts come out to
defend the slut”
“the bitch got
what she deserved”
The list goes on
and on, but the ultimate message here is that sluts are not seen in any way
shape or form as being real life human beings because degrading humans is wrong
but degrading sluts is not.
After reading
this I thought to myself, how easy is it to reduce a human being to a simple
deviant label to excuse one’s wrongful actions. These labels exist to
dehumanize people and justify oppression including rape. If the woman is a slut
she is no longer warranted respect, dignity, and according to these tweets
deserves to be raped. Why? Because the slut is not a woman she is a soulless
machine whose function is to have sex. The slut is merely a sex toy. A slut is
a thing that fell short from being a human being because she was not able to
live up to society’s standard of “woman”; the submissive, sexless, passive,
poise woman. A slut is the vicious threat to the patriarch society, the very
basis of our culture. So of course, the slut needs to be put in her place! And
if you rape a slut it is not a crime because you were only using the machine as
it was intended.
So if the slut shows
signs of being somewhat of a real human such as claiming to be abused, society
is extremely quick to point out that she isn’t, because above all, above a
human being, she is a slut.
In the end, the
social construction of a slut is never enough to define her realness but is
always enough to take realness away from her. And all that’s left to understand
is that the slut’s experiences are so real, and those experiences carry feelings,
and her feelings are more than enough to prove that she lives.
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