In the wake of the Rush-Limbaugh-calling-Sandra-Fluke-a-slut debacle, there have been a slew of rants, raves and opinions about health care, religion and many other related topics. But overwhelmingly the debate circles the issue of slander versus free speech, and the resounding question seems to by why is the word “slut” such a big deal?
I was reading a post about misogynist language and whether we are being “too sensitive” about its use. Someone had written to the author saying they thought that liberals were perhaps just too sensitive to misogynistic language. Liberals should focus on the issue of denying women birth control, not on the epithet used to discount the importance of birth control. We women needed to “lighten up.” The blog author argued that Rush was just being a big meanie, and we needed to have better manners in our society. One commentator, called Verbose Stoic, was hesitant to dictate appropriate language to anyone. He even asked in his comment, “So if I wanted to make a derisive comment about the promiscuity of a woman, perhaps as a general statement of my distaste for what I might consider excessive emphasis on sex, what word should I use?… Again, putting aside any idea that insulting is itself wrong, what insulting term should he have used?”
Are. You. Kidding. Me.
In summation, what Mr. Verbose Stoic wanted to know is “If I am a misogynist for calling a woman a slut, then what insult can I call a woman and NOT be labeled a misogynist?” Allow me to rephrase his question for you- “If using racial slurs makes me a racist, then what insults can I call those people and NOT be labeled a racist?”
The author’s call for civility, as well as his audiences call that freedom of speech trumps all, both missed the bigger picture of the transformative power of words on our social norms. Language and action are direct reflections of one another. They are not separate creatures. They are the hydra’s heads of ideology. If you condone constant, unending derision of a group of persons, the obvious and inevitable outcome is the derisive treatment of that same group of people. It is that simple. If you constantly demean women by giving them simple, insulting labels such as “slut” and “bitch” and “whore,” then they will be treated like, surprise, sluts, bitches and whores. This isn’t an anecdotal assumption I’ve made, though as a woman I can provide plenty of personal examples of this casual dismissal of my own abilities, the validity of my opinion and my basic personhood. But putting my emotional experience aside, let us look at the facts.
A study was conducted by psychologists from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey in merry ole England. Psychologists took excerpts from popular men’s magazines, as well as quotes from interviews with convicted rapists as found in the book “The Rapist Files.” Men between the ages of 18 and 46 were asked to determine whether the quotes were from magazines or the rapist interviews, and overwhelmingly they were unable to differentiate. When given a source, men tended to agree with the statements labeled as magazine excerpts, and disagree with those labeled as rapist interview quotes. What is chilling is that the statements were occasionally purposely mislabeled by the study.
Our society has completely normalized the hostile sexism directed at women. When a person commits an act of violence against another person, the first step is rationalizing and justifying their actions. In cases of rape, perpetrators use a common justification- they blame the victim. What is unique about rape as a crime is that society is more than happy to join in the blame game. No one blames a driver hit by a vehicle that failed to yield at a stop sign by saying the sign didn’t look serious. No one blames a person who’s house was burglarized because they invited the thief in with their welcome mat. But when a woman is raped, the response seems to be, “Well, she shouldn’t have been out with him, and she was wearing THAT skirt.” It takes a woman, a person with thoughts and feelings, and the ability to make choices about her own person, and turns her into an object.
Rape is not some phenomenon isolated from society at large. It is a symptom of a larger disease, a result of a systematic, systemic dismissal of women as people. We have begun to spare rapists the agony of having to justify their crime, by our own acceptance of hostile sexism in our everyday lexicon. When we can’t tell the difference between a men’s magazine and a rapist, we have a serious problem.
So why should you care about Mr. Limbaugh calling Ms. Fluke a “slut?” Because this isn’t about Ms. Fluke. This isn’t about Mr. Limbaugh. This isn’t about birth control and your feelings about it’s legitimacy or morality. This is about a lack of respect for other human beings, a deliberate choice to move beyond debating their stance to demeaning them as a person. What has made this entire debate so devastating to me is the unwillingness to take accountability for our words. We can say “sticks and stones” but in reality words have very real power, and if spoken often enough and with enough conviction, they lead to action. We all recognize the danger of hate speech when it is directed at people of a specific race or ethnicity. The same goes for misogynistic speech.
The problem here is how we think and speak about women as a whole. Women face an overwhelmingly persistent, pervasive and violent culture of slander. What appears in one instance as a harmless stereotype, a casual jab, is but one instance in a long pattern of reducing women. As long as we continue to accept the current cultural norms that are used to objectify and subjugate women, we will continue to see violence towards women. Look past access to birth control, and instead consider a woman being raped every two minutes, and 1.3 million women annually becoming victims of domestic violence, in the U.S. alone. That is ONE IN FOUR women in the U.S. who will be battered and/or raped in their lifetime.
Of course I can quote all the facts I want, and it doesn’t mean you will listen. Hell, for years I didn’t even listen to myself. I have been called a slut so many times over my life I am sorry to admit that for a long time I had become numb to it’s meaning and effect. I had “lightened up,” resigned myself to its usage. The last man who referred to me as a slut muttered it while holding me down against my will and he forced his hand up my skirt. As his friends pulled him off me, they said if I hadn’t been wearing that little black dress he wouldn’t have done it. As intelligent, educated and confident a woman as I am, for a moment I actually allowed myself to think they might have been right, that it was MY FAULT this man had attacked me.
We have to recognize the damaging effects of violent sexism and misogyny on women, their self esteem, their status and their safety in our society. What will it take for other women and men to stand up to misogyny? Do you need your own emotional experience to give the facts meaning? How about that of your mother, sister, lover, daughter? Does it take watching them be devalued and derided? Or does it take them being assaulted? Haven’t there been enough women subjected to the violent sexism already?
I believe in freedom of speech. But I do not believe that freedom comes without responsibility. We should demand accountability, from the media and each other, for the words we speak and the attitudes they promote. I am not saying everyone should not have an opinion, I’m saying that we should think before we speak and act. And if we cause harm, then as a society we should learn to apologize and make amends. If anything, what we are lacking in our society is education in the field of sociology, psychology and philosophy. We teach children how to add, but not how or why to be kind, compassionate and caring people. I will be damned if I will tell my children to “lighten up.”
