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March 5, 2012
"Slut:" Request for Clarification
1) It's okay to go on slutwalks, right? 2) No women are really sluts, right? 3) If there are women on a slutwalk and they are not sluts, what, indeed, are they? And if they are walking but not sluts what makes their slutwalk a slutwalk?Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 5, 2012 5:35 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
So, is "slut" going to be the female version of the "N-word" where "we can use it but you can't"?
Posted by: Mumblix Grumph at March 5, 2012 6:22 PM
My college-aged daughter is interested in the cause of reducing rape--possibly because she narrowly avoided being attacked last year by a stranger who confronted her in her bedroom at 3 a.m.--and so is organizing a slut-walk at her college. Except she really does not like using the word "slut." As she put it, it's not like she thinks women should try and reclaim the word and make it their own. Any suggestions on a catchy slogan to convey the underlying idea that women don't deserve to be raped because of how they dress would be welcome...I've tried and haven't come up with one.
As an aside, it's hilarious to hear her recount her experiences interacting with the campus womyns's groups in order to organize the Slut Walk, as she shares virtually no other common ground with them. At the last meeting, one of the older women declared, sua sponte, that hooking up with someone you just met at a bar or a party is statistically ten times more likely to end with violence than a consensual bondage encounter. She then went on to praise bondage; daughter was very puzzled to say the least but is sure that this has nothing to do with saving women from sexual attack.
Posted by: RigelDog at March 5, 2012 6:37 PM
Basically it comes to, "If you don't want to be called something, don't dress and act that way."
Posted by: Peccable at March 6, 2012 2:21 AM
Slut is a fine old English word for a female hound. As is bitch, of course.
As your daughter points out, RigelDog, women really have no business reclaiming it since it was never theirs in the first place.
Posted by: mushroom at March 6, 2012 6:05 AM
It's such a confession of inferiority to men that these frail feminists can't take it like one.
Posted by: Gagdad Bob at March 6, 2012 6:28 AM
I might add that the word "slut" AFAIK used to have a different meaning similar to the word "slob" applied to men. I don't know what the word for the concept now called by the word "slut" was then.
Posted by: Fletcher Christian at March 6, 2012 7:07 AM
Mumblix Grumph - Forget the catchy slogan, and put her in a college more attuned to her values. Maybe Hillsdale?
Posted by: BillH at March 6, 2012 7:55 AM
Hooking up with a college womyn's group is ten times more likely to result in hearing bogus statistics made up to promote someone's fetish.
Posted by: Gordon at March 7, 2012 5:25 AM