I'm not usually a ranter, but this particular thing has been bugging me for quite some time, and even though I'm not the first person to rant about it, and I certainly won't be the last, I figure that there are so many people out there who seem to think it's acceptable, that getting another voice out there against it is the very least I can do. This rant is about a word I hate, and it's a word that people seem to think is pretty okay--even people who promote themselves as pro-woman. I'm talking about the word SLUT.
The reason I hate this word is that it brings everyone involved back to bad old days, when a woman was judged strictly on the status of her "virtue." Virtue meaning virginity. I hate how people who profess to be in the feminist corner will use it to describe girls and women they think don't measure up to their ideas of what a modern, forward-thinking, VIRTUOUS woman ought to be. This doesn't mean that I'm a free-lovin' hippy, and it doesn't mean I think it's okay for ANYONE to put themself in a potentially harmful sexual situation. But to call a woman a slut, simply because YOU think that she is not living up to some imaginary ideal is just plain WRONG. It is wrong becuase it betrays the speaker as a subscriber to the idea that even still, a woman is really only as good as the negative number of notches on her bedpost. Nevermind that we don't call sex-loving men anything that nasty--player and playboy even have, well, playful connotations. Words like manslut and mimbo COME FROM slut and bimbo, because the worst thing that anyone could come up with to label a man as sexually voracious had to equate with the same "fault" in a woman. This just kills me. As a result, anyone out there who uses the word slut will no longer be take seriously by me. Ever. ESPECIALLY if it's couched in with supposedly "feminist" ideas. Sorry--you're ridiculous.
3 comments:
But cunt and whore are still ok, right?
RIGHT?
Feminist reappropriation of names should draw the line at bitch. Even thats kinda lame- makes me think of that dumb song from the early 90s. Tart might be ok though. Not like that has an especially offensive tone to anyone other than my grandma.
I think the word tart is now so wrapped up in people's minds with pop-tarts, it's pretty much lost all its zing. Unfortunately, now I've subliminally suggested pop-tarts to myself, and must go and find some.
I agree that it's a mean-spirited, out-dated word, used mostly by men to excoriate women who won't sleep with them. Also, judging people in general is wrong. However, it's my humble opinion that anyone (man or woman) who really wants to be taken seriously should save sex for people they actually care about, so as to protect it from becoming meaningless. But like I said, that's just my opinion and it's not anyone else's responsibility to live by it.
-Chester A. Arthur
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