“a slovenly or promiscuous woman” -my beloved Dictionary widget
I get frustrated when I see well-meaning people who believe they are working against a paradigm taking some sort of action that I sense mainstream society will dismiss or disrespect without much consideration because their action doesn’t do much other than preach to the converted. A small example would be a campaign at my college in which a group of students wrote supportive messages on sidewalks and sent out mass emails urging the student body to break with tradition on Homecoming night and shout welcoming phrases in lieu of hurling insults at freshmen. Those who were already disinclined to insult people had a more-audible-than-past-years presence that night, but due to the culture and structure of the college, I doubted that the group’s specific methods would really spawn a wider grassroots movement to take insults out of college traditions or reach those few people who actually might attempt to physically harm or seriously verbally abuse a freshman. I’m weary of this debate just writing two (long) sentences about it, but I find myself thinking of it more often than I want to in the context of the current trend to reclaim the word “slut” as a term for women who enjoy having lots of sex and who take ownership of their own sexuality*.
I started referring to myself as “slutty”, among close friends and in private conversations about a year and a half ago, pretty much as soon as I became aware that the word was “being reclaimed by sex-positive feminists”. Much like Emily McCombs from XOJane.com in her post “Yep, I’m a Slut” (I love Emily, BTW), I have been called many names over the years but “slut” was never one of them, so it was a term that took little thought to “reclaim” as it had never been used to hurt me. This might have been my first mistake, depending on what side of the debate you are on. Can you really “reclaim” something that no-one else has (to your face) told you that you are?
Most of my years as a sexually active person could hardly be considered “empowering”. I was drawn so quickly to self-identifying as a slut in part because I wanted my use of the word to erase some of the damage that was an occupational hazard of being a person who had lots of sex with lots of people but was not, in hindsight, equipped to handle the repercussions. I wanted my friends to think that I was in control of my sexuality and sexual expression; that the sex I was having constituted “informed and mature choices”. I wanted to believe that too; to frame past sexual encounters as “fun choices I made” even though some of them were only partially or none of those things.
As I became more brazen in my use of the word “slut” in more public or acquaintance-y situations, I was also thinking more about my relationship to my own sexuality and was concluding that I had been interested in sex, in having sex, in being promiscuous for fun more than I had given myself credit for in the early stages of slut-identification. Yes, some of the sex had been damaging, but most of it had been lots of other things, like embarrassingly terrible, funny, idiosyncratic, and ultimately something that I used as a means to understanding other people and the world and myself. A close friend who talked with me about coming out as a lesbian said “I’ve known for a long time but I didn’t want people to define me first and foremost by my sexuality, because I define myself by a whole lot of things and my sexuality is far down on the list”. The thought that all people didn’t define themselves primarily by their sexual and romantic attractions was completely new to me. My white, middle-class, heterosexual privilege had allowed me to be able to define myself how I wanted to be defined more freely than most people, very much including this friend, and it appeared that “my sexuality” was about as high up on my internal list of “salient points about myself” as it could get. “Slut” seemed even more relevant with this realization.
My white, middle-class, heterosexual privilege also allowed me to go on calling myself a slut for a long time before I began to notice the criticism surrounding the slut-reclamation movement. The Slutwalk, a protest that began as a stand against a the Toronto police department suggesting that “women should avoid dressing like sluts” to keep from being sexually assaulted (read this for the SlutWalk thesis straight from their website), was embraced enthusiastically by a lot of young women more or less like me, and criticiszed and rejected by many others, notably female and minority writers and bloggers. People of Color Organize (peopleofcolororganize.com) has an article that was important for me to read before continuing to call myself a “slut”. A categorical opponent of libertarianism, I am dismayed to see myself when the author calls the SlutWalk a “libertarian wet dream of personal preference”. Additionally, isn’t this similar to what rankles me about other types of niche-protesters? Then, Ernesto compares “slut” to the reclamation of racial slurs this way:
“Have young people been given important tools to self-actualize and change their objective conditions by calling each other words racists use? Are communities of color more empowered when white people can ironically use racial taunts as reputed endearments?”
He’s certainly not the only author who has made this critique and comparison in some form.
I believe that in the communities in which I am most active I can use “slut” thoughtfully and effectively as a way to challenge paradigms and celebrate my love of sex and the sex-related. I believe this because I am going to stop simply throwing the word around like it’s already an accepted term and instead test the waters and consider the audience before calling myself a slut. I’m going to keep writing and reading and learning to be as sex-positive and positive in general as I can be. However, I recognize now that the use of “slut” may not be doing anything to change the perception of women outside of these communities, and I recognize that my choice to call myself a slut–the fact that it is even a choice I can make– is very indicative of my social class, age, and race.
Women don’t have to be sexual and proud any more than women have to be anything else. I want to use “slut” because I love the slutty parts of life and want to feel like this is a positive aspect of my personality, not something I need to hide or suppress in order to be taken seriously and be respected. My personal experience has led me to believe that the more open I feel I can be about sex and sexuality and slutty things, the safer I am from harm– from being harmed by others and from harming myself. I know so many thoughtful, intelligent, well-spoken, better-at-taking-political-stances-publicly people and I hope that some of you are reading this and will comment, email me, whatever, and have discussions with me about this and any other topic. Please tell me what you think: should I really be calling myself a slut?
*For a fabulous description of slut-shaming and why it is bad for all of us, visit: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/what-is-slut-shaming/
References:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/slut_walk_feminist_folly_6wtwkoKdY0RgRtGfWTe47H
http://www.xojane.com/sex/are-you-slutty-prude-or-prudish-slut
http://www.slutwalktoronto.com/about/why
http://www.xojane.com/sex/reclaiming-the-word-slut
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/04/21/feminists_now_completely_own_the_funny.html
The Enlightened Sexpot 