“If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.”
~Maya Angelou
The first time I was called ‘a slut’ I would have been about 17 years old. And of all the people to hear say it – my mom!
I’d been to a party the previous night and returned later than usual – one o’clock! I almost never had a curfew because all my friends had curfews and so I had to return home when they all did anyway. Quite clever that was of my mom, letting me think she was so liberal. Anyway, one o’clock was late, midnight was the usual deadline and I know most of my friends got into trouble either that night itself or the next morning at breakfast.
This next conversation was my version of ‘getting into trouble for missing curfew’:
Mom: You came home at 1 last night. Howcome?
Me: Mary's bro was on duty and he had the keys, main door was locked so it took ages for her bro to come home n open. So by the time it was quite late.
Mom: So you should have called your father to come pick you up na. We got worried.
Me: Sorry mom, but it was really not a big deal. Anyway, nothing happened.
Mom: Maybe, but the neighbor saw you apparently.
Me: What do you mean?
Mom: She saw you coming home last night! At one!
Me: So?
Mom: What do you mean ‘so’? You don’t care what people think of you? You don’t mind if she thinks you are a ‘littil slet’.
The rest of the conversation isn’t important. My sister, who was also at the breakfast table, and I burst out laughing. For one, the way she said it, with her superb Dhivehi accent was just.. I can’t describe it, but if you have a friend with Dhivehi accent, ask him or her to say ‘little slut’ so you’ll know what I mean. For another, where the hell was this coming from?? My sweet, uncorrupted, typically-Maldivian mom had said ‘slet’! I’d never even heard her say ‘idiot’!
You may think I’m making this up. But within half an hour my friend Mary called me up to tell me how her (also typically-Maldivian) mom had called her a ‘Buladdy vore’. [Again, ‘vore’ is Dhivehi voicing for ‘whore’.]
Now before you get all outraged at this kind of ‘verbal abuse’ from mothers to their daughters, I must clarify. They were not really calling me and Mary ‘slets’ or ‘vores’ but just warning us that these might be terms others (our nosy neighbours) are using to describe us.
Now these nosy neighbours (how the alliteration) have no clue what My friends or I had been doing with our ‘private’ parts.
But that’s how these words work. If you ask ten people, you get ten different definitions. Is a slut a girl who has sex too early? With too many boys? With girls? (Oh no! Those ‘lesbos’ are the worst kind!) Without proper commitment? Who has too much fun? Who ought to be more discreet about it, or more ashamed? Is a whore just a woman who dresses too ‘obviously’ to attract sexual attention?
What the fuck do these terms mean?? What’s ‘too early’? How many boys is ‘too many boys’? What do they mean by ‘proper commitment’ and ‘too much fun’? How does one dress less ‘obviously’??
These people who called us ‘slets’ and ‘vores’ – I doubt even they know what it means really, but this much they will agree on – a ‘slet’ is NOT THEM. A ‘vore’ is also NOT THEM.
Mary and I both laughed at this nonsense. But it was far from nonsense to her mom and mine. They were hurt and angry. Not at us (well a little bit, we didn’t have to provoke such comments did we?) but our filthy-minded neighbours.
But today, I understand their anger. It stems from fear. Because words like these engender violence. It is words like these that justify the existence of the oxymoron – ‘rape culture’.
What the fuck is rape culture? At first I thought – how insane is this terminology?! Rape and culture should not go together. Of course the reality is that they do.
An eleven year old is raped by 22 men. One of the many articles about this horrifying incident of violence calls them ‘teens and men’ because apparently the youngest ‘participant’ was aged 14 years.
Obama is going on at length about how HE has managed to rid the world of Osama bin Laden and how the killing of Osama bin Laden is a milestone in the fight against terrorism.
What does he mean!!!!!
What happened to that eleven year old CHILD is terrorism! And what’s even more terrifying is how WOMEN in that Cleveland community are worried about ‘the tension this incident has caused’ within their community. They are worried that ‘such an incident, if it isn’t dealt with quickly, will cause a lot of upheaval for ALL those involved.’ They believe this incident should just be ‘over and done with quickly’, after all ‘these boys will have to live with this for the rest of their lives – isn’t that enough?’ Is this not terrorism????
The New York Times that first reported this act of terror felt the need to also make a mention of how much make-up this little girl was wearing. THIS too is terrorism.
All of these are variations on the good ol’ “She was asking for it” bullshit.
And it’s not just the rapists obviously who say this kind of crap. So many people do it. And you don’t even realize how offensive you sound.
Years ago, my sister and I were getting ready to go to a party and she came to my room wearing a fitted, short black dress and asked how I thought she looked. She was also wearing these really high heels and I remember saying to her, “Isn’t that a little bit slutty?” I don’t even know what I really meant then. Was I telling her that if she wore that outfit boys would give her dirty stares – and that would be her fault? Was I telling her that if she wore that outfit boys would think she was ‘easy’ – and the way to not make them think that was to ‘dress differently’???
Both of those are true. They would have given her dirty stares. They would have also flirted her with thinking they’d get invited to her bed that very evening just because she was wearing a short dress. But why should it be her responsibility to dress differently! Why isn’t is the responsibility of these boys and men to grow up and learn some decency and manners!
Milestone. What a fucking milestone.
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