Myths of Slut-Shaming

Slut-shaming- the act of judging someone(typically women) based on real or perceived sexual behaviors.

Slut-shaming has one really big myth attached to it.  The first is that so called sluts do the things they do because of emotional baggage.  This is not statistically true and it's unfair to assume this is true for any population. You cannot presume to know how another persons processes life events and how those life events manifest in their personal lives.  Just because a person had a shitty childhood and happens to have lots of sexual partners, you can not assume that that person has lots of sexual partners because they had a shitty childhood.  It is never that simple.  When you assume are whatever way people are because of something that happened to them you negate just how resilient people are and that should never happen.

Where girl-power went wrong

Girl Power-Power exercised by girls; spec. a self-reliant attitude among girls and young women manifested in ambition, assertiveness, and individualism. Although also used more widely (esp. as a slogan), the term has been particularly and repeatedly associated with popular music; most notably in the early 1990s with the briefly prominent ‘riot girl’ movement in the United States (cf. RIOT GIRL n.); then, in the late 1990s, with the British all-female group The Spice Girls.

Women leaders are lacking across all walks of life.  There is a very large disparity of women in high paying job positions compared to men, as well as a disparity in women in math and science fields. So the idea of empowering girls is tempting, but what if it comes with problems.


The first problem I'd like to point out is the means that the early pushers of the girl power movement were The Spice Girls and Barbie style toys.  That's what I want.  Someone wearing next to no clothes dancing on stage telling my daughter to have girl power and/or playing with over-sexualized dolls. Sexualization of children much?


The second problem with this is that the idea of girl power is a direct contradiction to every other media message girls get.  "Don't be smart, boys don't want too much competition."  "Don't have sex, you'll be a slut." "Don't be powerful, after all a woman's place is being gentle and meek" The point is that girls receive so many damned mixed messages about the right way and the wrong way to grow up, until we rectify those mixed messages, we can't hope to smoothly transition girls into womanhood.

Marriage Equality.

I hope my generation isn't judged because we have a handful of crazies.  I hope when they teach about the bigotry GLBT people faced, that they teach more about the people and the organizations that worked against than those that worked for it.  But, most of I hope that they teach that history is important, because if you don't learn it, it will repeat itself.

Amen.

Glee Choke Recap and Review

I watched the newest episode of Glee and read some reviews and it got some heat.  Imma give a quick recap so if you haven't seen the episode yet and don't want to have the episode spoiled- skip this post.

-Rachel and Kurt had their NYADA tryouts.  Rachel forgot the words to her song and blew hers.  Kurt did a fantastic job on his.
-Puck failed a geography test and it appears he won't graduate with his class.
-Beiste's husband beat her and she tells everyone that she's left him, but in reality she hasn't.  

I really liked this episode.  It's really realistic I think.

Rachel apparently ruining her chance for NYADA fits, I think.  She's been such a star for all three seasons, I think bringing her back to earth sends a really good message that sometimes things don't happen like we'd like them to and it's really important to have a back up plan.

When I was in high school I was one test away from graduating like Puck.  I failed that test.  My teacher gave me a D anyway. So, let's not count Puck out of graduating on time quite yet.

Domestic violence is a huge deal, and I actually kind of love how Glee handled this.  We all know the right thing to do in this situation, or if you're a bystander in this situation.  The right thing involves leaving, accepting friends help, and not thinking it was your fault.  Let me tell you, doing the right thing is hard, really hard.  It is infinitely easier to fall back into old patterns.  It's easier to fall back into old patterns until you have the moment of clarity comes.  I can't wait to see what Beiste's moment of clarity is.

The Cost of Being Me

I am both a student, a feminist, and a kinky blogger who writes under an assumed name.

I turned in my last paper of the semester this morning and in that paper I pulled huge quantities of information word for word from this blog with minimal editing.  After I copied and pasted the information into my paper and changed a few personal pronouns I realized that if she ran my paper through the universities anti-plagiarism system there would be one really huge chunk of perceived plagiarism, and way more little incidences of potential plagiarism.  After all, I wrote my paper about many of the same things I've blogged about.

I put myself out there on this blog and have a generally good response to putting myself out there, but if push comes to shove and I have to out myself, I believe it'll be worth it.  Because everything happens for a reason, and after all you never put anything out on the internet that you don't want put on your permanent record.

What if the church*† is wrong?

*by the church I mean all churches that identify as Christian.

†The church is not capitalized because I believe that grammatical entitlements are earned, not demanded.  I actually carry over the same philosophy into my kinky life.

In the gospels there isn't a whole lot of talk about the church, or building a church. Jesus mentioned the church in two verses in the Bible.**  He spent far more time speaking about how to treat people than building a church.  The church isn't actually a creation Jesus made and built.  Rather,the church sprung up around Jesus. Sure, you could argue the Holy Spirit guided the people who actually built the church and designed the function and organization.  You could also argue that Jesus never intended to start a new religion at all.  None the less, the church perseveres, however it was or wasn't intended to come into being, it's here.  We've established that people built the church, not Jesus himself, and I think that's super important to keep in mind for the rest of this blog post.   

Why do we treat the church like it's infallible, when clearly it is not?  Why do we treat the Bible as infallible, when we know that it was written by humans, who are fallible? Why are people within the church often afraid to speak up when the church is wrong and since when did uniform conformity become so important for the church to exist?  Why is questioning so frowned upon in so many churches and when questions are raised, why is the answer often something circular that makes no sense if you're thinking rationally?   

**Mark 16:18&18:17