http://www.teenvogue.com/story/woman-calls-out-shirtless-men-slut-shaming-women-social-media
I some how came across this article that I thought was super important. My Outside of Class event was about the Unslut screening we went to and in my paper I talked about how women are being slut shamed and never the men. Usually men are praised for "being a slut." This article is about a women who found a twitter account of men slut shaming girls and her firing back. She calls out, in a kind of funny way, the men who pose shirtless or upload pictures of them shirtless. To me, this is super important because why are women the only ones being slut shamed? And more importantly, why are they being slut shamed at all? Slut shaming is so pointless to me because, for example, if you're calling a girl a slut because she sleeps with a lot of people who is that effecting? The girl is choosing to do that. Her body her choice. Why do people always point fingers towards women and never the men?
UGH I'm so over slut shaming on social media. It's getting absolutely ridiculous. I think that this article points to the bigger problem that it's so important to revise our sex education system. In many schools, sex is taught in the light of abstinence, making it scary and shameful. Therefore (amongst other reasons), women are shamed. Because, in the light of abstinence, we promote a heteronormative and conservative idea of sex, we promote a sort of patriarchal worldview. This partriarchal worldview tells women that they are the lesser gender, that they are to be taken care of by a dominant breadwinner man. When women step outside of these roles by reclaiming their sexuality, they are no longer seen as the virginal fragile flowers of 'traditional family wives'.
ReplyDeleteFor the purpose of this argument, I want to note that there is nothing wrong with being a wife or a mother or having a traditional family. I'm focusing on how this seems to be the only option for women when we teach them about their own sexuality, 'wait until marriage' etc.
This idea of empowered women is threatening to the entire structure of patriarchy and is therefore threatening to men who are ruled by the dominant culture of masculinity. This fear of the breakdown of such a historically ingrained system often causes the reaction to be aggression or anything to reinstate this system of oppression. I think that this is where slut shaming often comes in.