The Thing About Slutwalks... and a World Without Rape

On the occasion of today's Slutwalk in NYC -- I am reposting this piece I did on Slutwalks. Its also available at: http://rwor.org/a/244/thing-about-slutwalks-en.html



by Sunsara Taylor

Posted Thursday, August 25, 2011

I'll admit, when I first heard about Slutwalks I cringed. I hate the word slut. It is too hateful. Too bound up with shaming women for their sexuality. Too linked to the deep trauma experienced by millions of women and young girls every single day. Too much part of the cultural DNA that says, "She deserved it," or, "She was asking for it," or, "She's dirty," or, "You little cunt whore."

To get even more specific, for me the word "slut" was too indelibly linked to a girl named Kelly. She transferred into my junior high school in the middle of the year. She was ridiculed and outcast in that kind of mean-girls way that reduces a young woman to an invisible, despised zero for absolutely no reason except to make others feel like maybe they exist. And really, what could be more lonely and humiliating for a junior high girl than standing in front of a whole cafeteria filled with uproarious laughter carrying your lunch tray from table to table being told that every empty chair is being saved for somebody, anybody, who isn't you?

But, Kelly had big breasts and so a table full of boys called out to her and pulled up a chair. All it took was for her to sit down just that first time.

To be honest, as the weeks rolled on and the rumors rolled with them, I have no idea which—if any—were true. I do know there were parties with lots of drinking where the girls still wouldn't speak to her and the boys would lure her into bedrooms. I also know that a young girl seeking acceptance and desiring some means to explore their own budding sexuality in this highly repressive society can get caught up in—and even, at times, take initiative in—all sorts of behavior that is degrading and demeaning to herself in a very deep and lasting way.

But most of all what I know is that Kelly became someone who wasn't seen by anyone in that entire school as an actual human being. No, Kelly was a "slut."

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The NYTimes Whips Up More Moral Agonizing About Women's Reproductive Rights – Enough!

Against the backdrop of a record breaking number of restrictions on abortion being proposed and passed at the state level, as high profile national politicians cut budget deals over the lives of women, as Christian fascist shock troops target courageous abortion doctors, the New York Times has decided to feature yet another article calling into question the morality of women who make their own decisions about their child-bearing.

In their Magazine piece entitled, “The Two Minus One Pregnancy,” the NYTimes agonizes about the ethics of reducing twin fetuses to a single fetus so that a woman can have one child instead of two.

The article attempts to portray its own agonizing over twin reduction as having nothing to do with abortion. For instance, in contemplating where the supposed moral difficulty in twin reduction lies, at one point Ruth Padawer writes, “Perhaps it’s because twin reduction (unlike abortion) involves selecting one fetus over another, when either one is equally wanted.”

However, the article is caught up in the same unscientific thinking that leads so many to believe abortion is – or should be – an agonizing decision, or a decision that should be denied to women outright.

The only basis for viewing the decision of a woman not to carry every fetus to term as a “moral” or “ethical dilemma” is the unscientific lie that treats fetuses like people, rather than as a subordinate part of a woman's body.

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