“Slut-shaming is the deliberate act of insulting a woman using sexist slurs in order to shame, humiliate, embarrass, degrade or intimidate her.”
– What is slut-shaming?
(via rollahardsix)
“We Are SlutWalk NYC” (by SlutwalkNYC)
***TW This video touches upon discussion of rape culture, victim blaming, slut shaming, assault, and other potentially triggering topics.*
(via slutwalknyc)
Slut-shaming on the playground
My older son is now 11 and wow… the sex negativity is increasing exponentially. It’s a sneaky value system, like a creeping vine or oozing pore. My son is getting anxious about when he is going to have his first kiss. He thinks about it a lot. I wasn’t sure exactly how much it mattered to him that some of his friends are at the kissing phase while he obviously is not.
“Mom, I’m a nerd.” He said to me as he climbed in the backseat of our car. He sounded resolute. Like, some deal had been sealed and all there was left to do was accept the consequences. But, really, being a nerd has never bothered him before. His version of nerd has a lil swagger to it. But today there was none of that, “girls don’t like me. I’m too nerdy. I’m not cool enough. Not dangerous. Not s…” and that is when the gush of words stopped abruptly.
“Were you about to say sexy? You’re worried about not being sexy? Really, E, are you supposed to be sexy in the 5th grade?”
“Some people are!”
“Ya? Like who?”
After making me promise I wouldn’t call the school and make a deal about it, he confided in me that some of his classmates were kissing after school. He then told me about a girl in his class, Z, and how she had kissed 3 boys this year, “3, Mom! Can you imagine? And everybody knows. She just kisses whoever she wants and her sister is so embarrassed. I don’t blame her, I would be ashamed to have my sister act like that! Sheesh.”
Wait? What? This is where it gets interesting for me as a sex positive parent. My son just went from wishing he was sexy to shaming a girl for being just that? I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to do some unpacking.
Thank you, SlutWalk
** Trigger-Warnung **
“July 31 marks the one-year anniversary of the night I was raped. On August 6, I will be participating in Slutwalk when it comes to Philly. They could not have picked a better date. I find it ironic that the very word that kept me from getting any help that night a year ago is now the very same word that is saving me. I know that Slutwalk has many critics, and in a way I think that most of it may stem from simple ignorance. I don’t mean this as an insult, but rather that until someone is in the situation of rape, they simply can never understand.”
Jaclyn Friedmans großartige Rede beim Boston SlutWalk. Anschauen, durchlesen und ausgedruckt als Poster an die Wand hängen:
“Well hello you beautiful sluts!
Do you see what I did there? I called y’all sluts, and I don’t know the first thing about what any of you do with your private parts. (Well, maybe I know about a couple of you, but I’ll never tell.)
That’s how the word “slut” usually works. If you ask ten people, you get ten different definitions. Is a slut a girl who has sex too young? With too many partners? With too little committment? Who enjoys herself too much? Who ought to be more quiet about it, or more ashamed? Is a slut just a woman who dresses too blatantly to attract sexual attention? And what do any of these words even mean? What’s too young, too many partners, too little committment, too much enjoyment, too blatant an outfit? For that matter, what’s a woman, and does a slut have to be one? For a word with so little meaning, it sure is a vicious weapon. And, while the people who use it to hurt may not agree on what they mean by it, they’ll all agree on one thing: a slut is NOT THEM. A slut is other. A slut is someone, usually a woman, who’s stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We’re messy. We don’t behave. In fact, the original definition of “slut” meant “untidy woman.” But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line. To separate us. To make us police each other, turn on each other, and turn each other in so that we can prove we’re not “like that.” That word comes with such consequences that many of us rightly work to avoid it at all costs. But not today. Today we all march under the banner of sluthood. Today we come together to say: you can call us that name, but we will not shut up. You can call us that name but we will not cede our bodies or our lives. You can call us that name, but you can never again use it to excuse the violence that is done to us under that name every, single, fucking, day.”
SlutWalk London: “Yes is the only consent.”
(Foto von miss.selina.)
SlutWalk Boston.
(Foto von tankgirlrs.)
SlutWalk Chicago: “Every slut is someone’s daughter.”
(Foto von Kristen Althoff.)
Slut Walk: Für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung und gegen sexuelle Gewalt
“Offenbar wurde hier der Nerv einer jungen Frauengeneration getroffen, die sich noch immer dem Diktat männlicher Sexualität unterworfen sieht, das bedeutet, sich in Sack und Asche kleiden zu müssen, wenn man vermeiden will, ungebetenen Annäherungsversuchen zu entgehen. Die Aussage Sanguinettis, dessen Sicht von nicht wenigen geteilt wird, impliziert nichts anderes, als dass Frauen Übergriffe quasi herausfordern, wenn sie sich zu leicht oder freizügig anziehen. Es wäre also fast „normal“, wenn sich ein Mann dann eingeladen fühle, sich die von ihm begehrte Frau im Zweifel auch mit Gewalt zu nehmen.
Diese Auffassung entspricht einem Pragmatismus, mit dem jede Frau aufwächst. Ohne darüber nachzudenken, ist sie in jeder Lebenssituation, in der sie nicht selbst Interesse an einer sexuellen Begegnung hat, instinktiv auf der Hut, dass nichts „Mißverständliches“ passiert, Männer keine Möglichkeiten zu Übergriffen haben – in öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln, auf der Straße, in der Firma, bei Partys. Nicht selten sogar im Umgang mit „Kumpels“ oder männlichen Verwandten. Oder sogar in einer einvernehmlichen sexuellen Situation, bei der der Mann die Grenzen nicht respektiert, die sie setzt. Die meisten Männer dagegen müssen sich vor ungewollten sexuellen Avancen oder gar sexueller Gewalt deutlich seltener und nur im konkreten Fall schützen.
Die Gesellschaft lehrt: Lass dich nicht vergewaltigen, anstatt: Vergewaltige nicht.”
“If someone calls you a slut, there’s nothing you can say to refute the claim because it never had any cognitive content anyway. Even virginity is not a defense against alleged sluttiness. Virgins can be sluts if they dress the wrong way, walk the wrong way, or even instill the wrong thoughts in other people.
Some people will convict you of sluttitude because your body is the wrong shape, or the right shape. What determines sluttiness? Is it number of partners, or the number of sex acts, or the kind of sex, or whether you enjoy it, or what other people infer about your self-esteem based on what they assume about your sex life? It’s all of the above, or none of the above. Either way, you lose. Maybe it has nothing to do with you at all. Maybe it’s because your accuser is racist or classist and your “sluttiness” is built into some stereotype that was clanking around in their head before they ever met you.
If you try to argue that you’re not a slut, you’re implicitly buying into the idea that there are sluts out there. If there’s some criterion that will set you free, that standard will indict someone else—someone with a higher “number,” or shorter skirt, or a later curfew. So we get bogged down in slut/non-slut border skirmishes over a line nobody should have tried to draw in the first place, and we all lose. The only “refutation” is to laugh in your accuser’s face and get on with your life, however you choose to live it. That’s what Slut Walk is about.”
Zu selten wird beachtet, dass es einen massiven Unterschied macht, ob ich mich selbst mit einem bestimmten Wort bezeichne oder ob andere das tun – Sprecher_innenposition und Kontext sind absolut entscheidend, wenn es zu entscheiden gilt, ob eine Benennung angebracht ist oder nicht. Vielleicht mag ich es, wenn mein_e Freund_in mich “Süße” nennt, aber das bedeutet noch lange nicht, dass jeder beliebige Mensch mich grundsätzlich so ansprechen darf.
Ob ich mich Schlampe nennen möchte und was das für mich bedeutet, soll meiner Deutungshoheit unterstehen.
Außerdem lässt “Slutwalk” sich nicht ausschließlich mit “Marsch der Schlampen” übersetzen. Es kann genauso bedeuten “Aktion, die sich um das Konzept “Schlampe” dreht, es nutzt, damit spielt” – und kann damit genauso Plattform für Widerstand gegen diese Bezeichnung überhaupt sein wie für Reclaiming oder, wie Ur-Slutwalk Toronto betont, “Reapropriation“, also Wiederaneignung des Begriffs und Neudefinition - oder aber auch, um “Schlampe” als die leere Worthülse zu entlarven, die übrig bleibt, wenn der Begriff von seinen misogynen Inhalten befreit wird, indem die darin manifeste verzerrte Wahrnehmung von (vorwiegend) weiblicher Sexualität mit dem Ziel, diese zu kontrollieren und zu maßregeln, bloßgelegt und zurückgewiesen wird.
SlutWalk can get across a focus on slut shaming language and how attitudes perpetuate the exposure of women to rape and sexual violence.
[…]
So I think this chance to focus on shame is really helpful. I also think it’s mobilised a fresh batch of victims. Who else knows the power of slut shaming, but the people who’ve been stung by it?
What’s even more positive is that given half a chance a new batch of women want to march through the street and shout about it. This spontaneous expression of mass courage, suggests that previous feminist efforts have made important progress in the fight against victim blaming, shaming and the general taboo around rape, which SlutWalk can, and has, amplified.
When this new mass of women marched through the street on SlutWalk, even more victims experienced something they haven’t heard enough of before - It’s not your fault. We won’t be cowed. “Bitch, slag, cow, whore, we won’t take it anymore”.
That’s what they heard, and I think the power of it is why I saw women crying on the Edinburgh SlutWalk.
‘Slut’ as a word and a style of dress is used to make a very strong point at protests: namely, that it is appalling to shame a woman for her sexual behaviour or clothing, neither of which should provoke abuse of any kind. Members of SlutWalk marches enjoy expressing themselves - which seems to further illustrate the point that we shouldn’t have to fear going out dressed a certain way.
The fact of the matter is that while we live in a day and age of cell phones, laptops, solar cells, feminism, and (still-budding) equal rights, yes, there are awful people in this world. But to say after a victim has been assaulted that it could have been avoided if she hadn’t been wearing a revealing outfit is offensive and completely unfounded. If this were so, then women who dressed conservatively (not to mention, men) would never be raped, which as any logical person knows, is completely untrue. Besides putting all the blame on the victim of the crime, it paints all men as potential rapists, waiting in the shadows with mouths watering at the thought of forcing themselves on a women dressed just slutty enough.
The definition of “slutty”, “sexy”, “revealing”, “provocative”, and “lewd” are all relative, and can be applied to any woman if given by any one person. A woman who looks like a supermodel in a halter top and miniskirt has the same risk of being raped as any woman dressed any way doing anything, walking in any city across the country and across the world.
After walking around West Hollywood Park and seeing young women holding signs that referenced their childhood rapes, it was difficult to think of a single reason why SlutWalk wasn’t important or meaningful and I felt my reservations about the movement sliding away. Speaking to attendees like Mandy Burgundy, a 34-year-old trans woman who is harassed daily because of her style of dress, or Lillian Behrendt, a 21-year-old who bravely admitted to being sexually assaulted three times, really put things into perspective. Behrendt actually wasn’t going to attend the event, but as she read more about it, it began to feel more personal.
“Every time I was raped, it felt like my fault,” Behrendt said. “When I was first raped at the age of eight, that was the conclusion that I came to, but no one said it was my fault. Because of the culture we live in, I knew instinctively to blame myself for what happened. Victim blaming in not acceptable, it doesn’t matter who the victim is. Slut shaming is not ok, all it does is support and perpetuate rape culture. I’m doing this for personal reasons. Maybe I don’t unanimously support the SlutWalk message, but this is a start for a lot of us.”
