In Praise Of The Slut

This will not happen in my lifetime; or more importantly in my daughters, but we need to rehabilitate the slut. There is nothing wrong with sexual women; in fact there is something terribly wrong with asexual women (Condolezza Rice, Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon anyone?). Women should be able to have sex with who they want, when they want, in the manner they want without fear of cultural disapproval. Women ought to be allowed to be the sexual initiator without condemnation. And the flip side of this is true as well; women must also have the ability to decline participation in sexual activity when they are not so inclined; again without consequences directed at them.

This even includes women who don't want to have sex with me in particular. Most guys I know are quite willing to extend these liberties to any woman who chooses to fuck them, but withdraw these liberties as soon as they involve other men. I'm not kidding either; I talk to my male friends and wonder if they even have a clue about the irrational double standard they set up for women in their minds: be sexually free and loose with me and frigid to every other male. I guess I have the right to expect that from my wife, not out of any ownership of her. I expect that simply because that is part of the terms of our partnership with each other - she asks that of me and I ask the same in return.

You know, I have no right to ask my daughter, when she reaches that age, to not be a sexual being. The best my wife and I can do is educate her, let her know of the consequences and the rewards of sexuality. Try to advise her so that she makes good choices. Teach her that while as an adolescent it is hard to imagine bypassing any pleasurable experience, that missing one is not the end; life is rich and long and the opportunity will arise again. Listen to what she has to to say about her fears and hopes and respond accordingly. Hopefully she will grow up a healthy and complete woman. And at her wedding or handfasting I hope to get the honor of escorting her to the man - or woman - she loves.

Right now we in the United States are slipping back into a kind of dark ages with regard to women and I fear for the world my daughter will grow up in. It is subtle the way the rights of women are being eroded, but it is also systemic. Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon picks up on a sly attempt to punish sexually active women:

Let's be frank--if your real purpose is reducing the number of abortions, you would be pro-Plan B, because it has a great track record for stopping abortions. If your purpose is punishing women for having sex, you would be anti-Plan B, because it has a great track record for helping women "escape" from the punishment due us for fucking. If your main aim is reducing abortion, you'd support Plan B. If your main aim was making women pay with physical pain for sex, you'd be against it. That the "pro-life" movement opposes a drug that would actually reduce abortion speaks volumes about their priorities--women who fuck deserve to be punished. Everything else is window dressing.
Facts Meet Fantasy and Facts Lose

Another, perhaps more sinister example is the ease with which we have abandoned the rights of Iraqi women. Of course, the rights of women are simply not a priority to this administration. View the way we have embraced a proposed Iraqi constitution which strips women of almost all basic rights. Even the women who once viewed Bush as their "liberator" are now fleeing Iraq.

I'm not sure that this battle for the rights of women can be won politically before it is won culturally and even more importantly, spiritually. Every right won by women politically is under constant attack from to cultural and religious (not spiritual) grounds. Maybe instead of focusing on Roe and right to privacy we should focus on making sure that the girl who is curious about her body and how it interacts with his body is not labeled as a bad person. Nor is what she is doing wrong. Girls need to know this; they also need to know the dangers of sex, but not in a way that makes sex bad or negative.

Teen girls really face a hell of a dilemma. If you are sexual, you are a slut, trash, easy and so on - a bad girl, without value. Or you can be a prude and face disapproval for that choice. It is a lose-lose proposition, the competing and opposite cultural messages broadcast are schizoid in nature.

I don't think we will see real equality for women until we reach a point where the slut and the prude are viewed through the same lens. The lens that shows them as individual people, making individual choices - some good, some bad - both children of a Loving God. From my experience working in psychiatric hospitals, women's shelters, juvenile corrections and being a boyfriend, husband and friend to many women over the years I will share with you what I have seen from many women:

often so called prudes are girls or women who fear the consequences of sexuality and are afraid that people will think less of them if they sleep around. They worry about fitting in and how they are regarded and want, like every other human, to be wanted and liked.

a few so called prudes truly believe they are better than those who are not and that they are morally superior.

so called sluts are girls or women who who fear that if they say no, they won't be liked, particularly by men but also by peer women. They worry about fitting in and how they are regarded and want, like every other human, to be wanted and liked.

a very few so called sluts really enjoy sex and are very annoyed by those who judge them because they like sex. They have fears and insecurities like everyone else, but are able to set them aside when they make their sexual choices.

a sadly large number of women are victims of sexual, physical or emotional abuse and whether prude, slut or in between, are unable to make healthy choices about sex at all. They can heal but it takes a tremendous amount of work and suffering over years to do so.

So keep in mind that the next time you hear a woman being run down in conversation for her sexuality, whether that woman is a friend, coworker or classmate, Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, a runaway bride, missing woman or even a porn star, that woman is simply a human being doing the best she can with what she has. Don't subscribe to the cultural and religious message of disapproval; consciously reject it. Because quite often, sluts are wonderful people too.

In this post I'm really only dealing with sexuality, but so much more about the cultural and religious messages girls and women get needs to change. Overweight women are neither ugly nor lazy; those stereotypes need to go. The superthin bordering on anorexic "beauty myth" woman needs to go as well. Most annoying to me, the myth that men don't like smart women needs to be annihilated. Another post could easily be devoted to men's sexual confusions and cultural roles. But not today.