This Slut Votes

So a group called This Slut Votes has started to try and organize against the recent epidemic of anti-woman Republican legislation. 

I fucking love it. 

This might not be a surprise, considering the name of this blog, but I'm a big fan of reclaiming language.  You wanna call me a bitch?  Bring it.  If your definition of "bitch" is "woman who disagrees with me and doesn't snivel about it" than, fine, you got it, I'm a bitch.  After I heard my brother say, "I usually don't use this word, but Hillary Clinton is such a cunt," I was, like, if Ms. Clinton is a cunt, than I sure wanna be one, too!  

Not everyone agrees.  That's fine.  I understand that some people who've been hurt by such language in the past don't like to hear those words thrown around, or feel that "reclaiming" does more harm than good.  I've seen it argued that taking on "slut" is giving into the male-pleasure dominated porn culture, and that it can never truly be an empowering word. 

But I don't think that's what's going on here.


"This Slut Votes" is less about making slut an empowering word (I doubt you really could...that's a discussion for another time, though), and more about showing that we're not going to let divisive shaming tactics work. 

Slut, as both a slur and a concept, has always been a way to divide women.  I think if there's anything good coming out of the whole Rush Limbaugh/Fox News reaction to the contraception debate, it's that the virgin/whore dichotomy is being destroyed. We're all sluts, now.  We can't call (or let others call) some women sluts, and pretend we ourselves are "good girls" anymore.  In the eyes of many on the right, it seems, unless we're willing to be a perfect virgin until marriage (walking that impossibly thin tightrope between being feminine and attractive without slipping into slutty), submissive to our husbands, and perpetually pregnant, we're sluts.

I love the idea that this debate can topple one of the biggest walls of the patriarchy...the dividing wall between women, erected to keep us for standing together, as we compete for male attention.  Many women are terrified of being called sluts.  Stigmatizing other women gives them the ability to point the figure, to say, "I'm not like that, I'm a good girl."  Sluts get STDs, sluts get abortions, sluts get raped, sluts get used and discarded.  If I'm a good girl, those things won't happen to me...and if they do, it's not my fault, I'm different.  (See: "The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion", the common rationalizations very pro-life women use when they themselves need abortions.)  Separating the world into sluts and good girls keeps us from working together to solve the problems that concern all women.  (It's also just a dick move.)

When the feminist movement of the '60s was getting started, it was a common tactic (still is, actually) to call a feminist woman a lesbian.  And a lot of women were very upset by this, and bent over backwards to show that, no, they were straight, really, they loved men, they weren't like those dykes.  Until many of them realized that by doing so, they were by implication saying that being a lesbian was an awful, bad thing.  So a lot of them took that label.  "Really, that's all you've got?  Fine, if a lesbian is a woman that loves women, call me a lesbian.  I don't give a fuck.  It doesn't change a goddamn thing; you still have to treat me like a human being."  Instead of letting themselves be divided, instead of giving into the temptation of demonizing other women for male approval, they instead stripped the word of its ability to insult.  (Note: not all women, of course...there was a lot homophobia within feminism.  Feminists are not a monolith.)

So I'm an asexual lesbian.  Maybe most people wouldn't consider me a slut.  But, apparently a slut is now anyone on birth control...and golly gee, I've been using hormonal birth control in one form or another for most of my adult life.  I'm a slut now!  And you know what?  That's great!  I've wasted too much time judging other women for clothing choices or sexual practices that weren't my cup of tea.  I'm not going to waste anymore time, or lose anymore chances to meet and work with women I might otherwise stay away from, based on some highly subjective notion of proper female behavior. 

Regardless of whether you call yourself a slut, I hope you do the same.  (And I hope you vote.)