Cognitive Behavioral Slutwalk

What am I saying here? See below.

Holly, of the Pervocracy, is one of the people I am determined to meet in real life before I die, if only for this exchange in the comments of her post on the Slutwalk(s).

Tit for Tat said...

Ok, is there any time that you should be aware that what you are wearing might potentially cause you physical harm?

May 6, 2011 6:22 PM

Holly said...

Yes. When you are wearing a live porcupine.

May 6, 2011 6:25 PM

I, quite literally, spewed iced coffee all over my ipod. (They hold up well to that sort of abuse.)

My 63-year-old mother-in-law (hereinafter "MIL") was sitting next to me when this happened, and she asked me what was so funny. I explained it to her, and she said, "You tell him, Holly!"

Now, you may be thinking "Wow, 63 and championing hot pants," but it's more than that. 10 years ago, my MIL was a waitress dying of congestive heart failure. She didn't know that last part until she was in the hospital and they were saying things like, "If you live long enough for the surgeon to get here, we'll be doing a quadruple bypass." Yeah, if you live long enough.

Today, she's a nurse with a scar that runs down her breastbone from an inch below her collarbones to the top of her abdomen. And she doesn't cover it up. She's not wearing my level of breast exposing tops, but you can pretty much always see at least an inch or two of that scar. Why? Because she's proud of it. She survived. She changed her life for the better. She succeeded. And it was all because of what led to that scar.

And people say the same thing to her about her scar that they say to "sluts" about their low cut tops and high cut skirts: Cover that up. What kind of attention are you trying to get? Don't you know what people will think?

My MIL's response is Holly's response: fuck you.

So, where does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (hereinafter "CBT") have to do with it? The essence of CBT is simple: I can't control what you do or say or feel, but I can control my reaction to it. How does that apply to the Slutwalk and it's message? Simple. You can't control what a woman wears, but you can control your reaction to it. You don't have to catcall or harass or rape a woman. She could be walking down the street naked as the day is long and you can look away.

Look, guys, the world isn't all about you and neither am I. What am I saying with the dress above? Comfort, actually. I wore that yesterday to remove wallpaper and sand and prime the bathroom walls. That dress, and the flowery one just like it, are SO comfortable. I cannot describe to you how comfortable those dresses are. Was I attracted to it by the low neckline and the opportunity to attract men*? No, actually. I bought the flowery one first. I liked the flowers and the price was right. And, it was one of those "Surprise! It's 90!" spring days you get in Pennsylvania and I wore a sweater to work because it was 45 the day before and I needed a new outfit fast. It was so comfortable, I went back and bought the black one, and I am kicking myself for not getting the blue and the pink.

So, I'm comfortable. I can control that. What I can't control is how anyone else views me. Not my problem. It's up to you to control how you react. You can view me any way you want. You want to think "SLUT!!1!eleventy" to yourself? Go ahead. I don't care. You want to spend the rest of the day imagining me bent over your desk? Have at it. Just keep it to yourself.

Here's the thing: I very rarely wear those to work. (I wear a blazer over it in the building.) When I do wear it downtown, I get catcalls aplenty. I also get catcalls when I'm wearing six layers of clothing midwinter. When I wear that dress in my home neighborhood, I don't get any catcalls. Men do occasionally tell me I look nice, but that's not creepy.

Now why is that? It obviously has nothing to do with me. It's the same body in the same dress. What is different is location. Downtown is the scene of many violent attacks, from stabbings to sexual assaults. My neighborhood? Nope. Shortly after I moved in, I forgot my keys and had to break into my house through a window. The cops were there 2 minutes after I got inside. My neighbors called them. Last summer, my husband and I heard a woman screaming. We ran outside and followed a horde of our neighbors to the source of the screams. There had to have been over 100 people at the scene. It was a teenage girl with an obvious slap mark on her cheek and her boyfriend. We do not allow that sort of thing to happen in our neighborhood. So I don't get catcalls, I get compliments.

And that's the secret, kids: it's not the woman and it's not her clothes. It's the rapists, the harrassers, the catcallers. They're the ones who need to change their behavior, and that will not happen as long as we excuse their behavior by slutshaming women. You decide what world you want to live in. You decide what world you want your daughters to live in. Downtown or my neighborhood?

*I'm a heterosexual woman. What else would I want to attract? Giraffes?

The Word You're Looking For Is "Victim"

The last line. I got all the way through to the last line of this article about tween pregnancy ("not uncommon", yet the author could only find 4 examples- worldwide) before I exploded.

After listing the health risks of young pregnancy, Tom Henderson has this to say about young girls and pregnacy:

The moral of the story? If you want to start a family, wait until you graduate from elementary school.

And maybe -- at least -- a good 12 years after that.

Yes, Mr. Henderson, a pregnant 6-year-old*, 9-year-old** or 10 year-old child was surely the agent of their own sexuality, carelessly seducing the grown men who impregnated them. I'm just going to have to assume that Mr. Henderson is a pedophile, because I can't think of any reason a person would think that. Ever. Except in the case of the 10-year-old Roma girl, who was impregnated by a 13-year-old iirc, all the other cases mentioned were cases of rape- the rape of children by grown men, all of them family members.

Yeah.

So, can we stop with the slut shaming of children now?

*Not a tween.

**Also not a tween.

Sorry, "Stroppy" Is Not an Excuse for "Slut"

(h/t to boganette)

Apparently, you just can't say it enough: calling someone a slut is not okay. I really would not have thought that I would have to say that a school administrator calling a 14 year old a slut is not okay, but there it is.

I hadn’t intended to deal with the story about 14 year old Newlands College student, Amethyst Staladi, being told by dean Angela King to pull her skirt down because she ‘looked like a slut’. That was until I saw her mother, Kahira Marshall, onOne News last night telling the country that she considered Mrs King’s verbal apology a couple of days ago ‘doesn’t go far enough’ and that what she wanted was ‘a letter of apology to go on both Amethyst’s and the dean’s personal file’. At that point my blood began to boil.

Wow, my blood boils, too, though not for the same reason the writer's does.

Think about this incident for more than two seconds. Not only do we have slutshaming of a 14 year old girl, which is just totally out of bounds, but we have a serious power imbalance as well. The slutshamer is an adult and a school administrator. The shamee is 14 and a student at the school.

Suppose I stopped by the school to drop off a forgotten lunch for a neighbor's child and Ms. King told me I looked like a slut. As an adult unrelated to the school, I have options. Using that language in front of children is still unacceptable, but I can leave or read her the riot act. What can a 14 year old do? She can't leave. She can't retort. She is shamed, as Ms. King clearly intended, in front of her peers with no recourse.

I have no problem with her mother demanding a written apology. If I were her mother, I'd be demanding Ms. King's dismissal. Ms. King is a slutshamer, a power abuser and I am very uncomfortable with her remaining in charge of children. A written apology is the least she could do.

But no, sluts deserve slutshaming. Victims deserve blame.

Well, let’s look at the players in this mini-drama: a stroppy 14-year-old girl with behavioural, discipline and attendance issues who’s received previous warnings about breaching the school’s dress code; a highly professional teacher with an impeccable record, supportive of and popular with students, described by her colleagues as someone ‘who helps everyone really’. (The staff had sent her flowers because she was upset.)

I see. So it's totally okay to slutshame a 14 year old girl (cannot be said enough) as long as you are nice and popular and the girl in question is "stroppy". Oh, and I am crying a fucking ocean over Ms. King, Ms. King!, being upset over the incident. Fucking seriously? She called a 14 year old girl a "slut" and she's the one who gets flowers? You know what, I want a written apology from the entire staff after reading that.

So who needs to be taking a good look at themselves here – Mrs King or Amethyst’s parents? Which would be more appropriate – teaching Amethyst a little respect for her teachers and for the rules of the school, or encouraging her to be a smart-arsed little bush lawyer, trumpeting her 14-year-old rights on television.

You know who needs a lesson here? You, you ignorant asshat. Ms. King abused her authority and abused a 14 year old girl. There are few things worse in the world of a 14 year old girl than being called a slut and the one throwing that word around does not deserve my sympathy. Absolutely this 14 year old girl has a right not to be slutshamed by a school administrator and I don't care how "stroppy" or "little bush"* she is.

You know what, Brian Edwards? Fuck you. Seriously, go die in a fire. But don't get upset about that, okay? You totally deserved it, so I'm sure you'll be okay with me telling you to shut your twatting** mouth, you ignorant asshole. ($5 says he's more okay with 14 year old girls accepting abuse than himself accepting abuse.)

*Is it just me, or does all New Zealand slang sound a little sexual?

**I bet that's the wrong use of that word, but it felt right. Oh so right.