there are an awful lot of people marching and gathering together and trying to “take back the word ‘slut’”. They’re going on ‘slutwalks’ and they’re dressing like ‘sluts’. Why are they doing it? Because some dorkbrain of a cop managed to get quoted in the media as saying “if women wouldn’t dress like sluts, they wouldn’t be victimized”. I don’t even want to get in to how asinine that statement is, and if the police officer who said it isn’t regretting not listening to his inner voice that told him not to say it, I’d be very surprised.
I don’t begrudge people their rights to protest and to gather together and to have walks and movements and all that sort of thing. I think “sex positive” is probably something really good, although I usually get confused by whether that means ‘positive about sex’ or ‘positive about gender’ because most people don’t seem to know the difference between sex and gender. And it really is offensive and ridiculous to blame victims of sexual assault. Or any assault.
It’s just as ridiculous to say, “if you don’t do anything to set off a sociopath, you won’t get hurt” as it is to say “if you don’t dress like a slut, you won’t be victimised”. But you know that already.
So what’s this about?
I never gave out the word ‘slut’ and so I don’t think anybody needs to ‘take it back’ from me. I know there are people who get horribly offended by words like ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt’ and I could really go on here. And don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great to watch the meanings and connotations of word change. I just don’t think I need to take the word ‘slut’ back from anyone.
More importantly is eradicating the idea that assault, sexual or otherwise, are the fault of the person who is assaulted.
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.