thecurvature:

I don’t understand that word.

I mean, I could sit here and explain it to you. The attitudes and long misogynistic history behind it. But I don’t think I need to do that, because we all know what it means. A slut is a woman — a man is a “man-slut,” get it, because it’s like a slut, only with a man, so we don’t really care, isn’t that cute? — who has sex with many partners, usually men, or who is perceived to have sex with many partners. And this is just such an awful, disgusting, unbecoming, and repulsive thing that we need a word specifically for it, an insult, that can be spit out dripping with the maximum amount of scorn possible.

I just can’t even begin to understand why it is that anyone cares so much who anyone else fucks.

Yes, yes. Like I said, I can explain it to you. I can sit here and talk about the cultural understanding of women as property that belong to men, and the patriarchal competitive scheme that was devised so that men could stop us cis ladies from having too much power with our wombs and preventing them from knowing which little future patriarchs they personally sired and therefore wanted to pass all of their wealth and women on to. Allowing those who could get pregnant to conceal who fathered which children would LITERALLY DESTROY the system of power and ownership, so women had to become a part of the property, and that meant controlling their sexuality. And even in places where we’ve moved beyond this system in its most literal sense, women (who are all wrongly assumed to have the same reproductive capacity) are still not viewed as fully human and are viewed as belonging to men and “reflecting on” them and our worth is still tied up in our (perceived) reproductive capacity, and that is tied up in our sexuality, and there is still cultural anxiety for that reason over controlling it. And as using our sexuality “right” is a part of being accepted and valued as a woman, other women have internalized it, too, that everyone has a right to know and care about who we fuck, and that if we fuck too many or too much we no longer have any worth as women — and since we clearly hardly had any worth as human beings to begin with, those who started out as having even less human worth as a result of race/gender identity/etc. are even more vulnerable to losing their social value as women. AND CLEARLY YOU NEED A WORD TO DESCRIBE THOSE WOMEN WHO HAVE NO VALUE.

Etc. I could continue, but you probably get the idea.

So yeah, I can explain it to you. Intellectually, theoretically. But I just do not UNDERSTAND.

The other day at lunch, my dad called a woman a slut, seemingly thinking that it was cute and funny. And I was just completely shocked into silence and by the time I regained my composure the moment was long gone. It doesn’t surprise me that my father has, um, anti-feminist leanings. But I just don’t understand. As much as I can explain it to you intellectually, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

Why does anyone care so much who someone else fucks?

Why do you care so much who someone else fucks?

Do they just not think of it like that? Does the question itself just never occur to them?

I don’t know, but the next time I hear someone use it, that’s the question I’m going to ask them, verbatim. If they haven’t thought about it before, they need to. And if they have thought about it, I think they owe me a fucking answer.

(via gauntlet-deactivated20110608-de)

5:03 am  •  23 February 2011  •  194 notes