Slut Shaming

This picture, and variations thereof, has been making it’s way around the internet recently and it is really starting to tick me off.

It is a prime example of slut shaming.  It isn’t a joke.

Let’s look at the photo.  Why is she a slut exactly?  Because she is wearing heavy makeup and a low cut top?  She is wearing makeup because it makes her happy and because she likes the way it looks.  An extra flick of eyeliner or another layer of mascara do not say anything about how she chooses to behave and how many people she has slept with.

The girl in the picture also has large breasts.  Whether she chooses to wear a polo neck or a round neck top, this does not make any difference to the size of her breasts.  She has the right to wear what she wants without being labelled a whore.

I have personal experience of this.  Having large breasts myself I can confirm that no matter what type of clothing I am wearing, they always seem to come up in conversation which, whilst frankly bored by it, I am used to.  However, when I have worn something that shows a bit of cleavage I have, on many more times that I can count, been judged as “easy”, a whore, or have had my breasts grabbed at because I look “like that sort of girl”. 

What has scared me more than being grabbed at was not the actual grabbing, it was the reaction of the assailant (yes, assailant is the right word) and of those around us of shock when I have dared to complain.  The fact that I have large breasts does not give anyway a free pass to touch me.  It is sexual assault.

The picture is being passed around as a joke but I what I say that it is preserving the idea that women can be judged according to how they look and what they wear and then treated accordingly. 

Laughing at a picture of woman being called a whore is one step on the ladder to the frame of mind that says that she deserves to be/have been raped because of the way she looks or dresses.

In any case, whether a woman is a virgin or has slept with 50 men (what exact number crosses the appropriate line anyhow?) it is not your business.  If you want to judge someone then please, do it silently and to yourself.

Unless we stand up and say that these things are offensive they are going to continue.  So I am standing up and shouting back. 

Enough.

For All the Women

Just a small post from me today but I wanted to mark the fact that it is International Women's Day.

To the women who fought to enable my right to vote, to the women who are a voice for those who cannot speak for themselves,  to the women who shout back against prejudice and not blend into the shadows, to the women I read on a daily basis who enabled me to step out from behind my own shadow, to the women in my life that I love:

Thank you.

My body is my own, it will not be governed by others. My thoughts are what I choose them to be and are not what I am told what they should be. I will wear what I want and will not accept your judgement of me.  My head is high and I am worth it.

My mission today is to make another woman feel good today. Compliment each other. You are amazing.

Shouting Back

Unless you have been living under a rock, most people by now will have heard of and seen the horrendous abuse and threats that have been sent to Caroline Criado-Perez and others.  Not just insults or abusive comments, but physical threats. 

In case you are not aware of the background, Caroline had successfully campaigned to maintain female representation on a bank note and appeared on various interviews thereafter.  For that she was inundated with threats of rape, assault and murder. 

Caroline chose to shout back rather than stay silent and to alert the police rather than be scared into submission.  The reaction to those measures by fellow Twitter users, the media and the public has stunned me. 

Victim blaming isn’t anything new.  It has been going on for years and whilst I thought that in more recent times, people were a little more enlightened, it seems that couldn’t be further from the case.

Comments like “Being on Twitter is like walking down the street naked” which I saw this morning on not what you would presume (The Daily Fail) but in The Times, by people whom you would presume would know better.  So by that, if I were to walk down the street naked should I expect threats of rape?  Is the commenter saying it would be acceptable behaviour because I was naked? 

Other comments such as “if you don’t like what is being said, leave Twitter” have been bandied about by many.  Personally, I don’t see why you should be forced off anywhere because of threatening behaviour.  

If someone was threatening you in a restaurant with rape or murder, you wouldn’t ignore it, you would report it.  It wouldn’t stop you using the restaurant again.  If someone was using menacing behaviour against you in the workplace, would you leave work and find another job rather than speak up?  Of course you wouldn’t.

Insults and abuse you can ignore, block and indeed feel pity for those who have little else in their lives other than to hurl abuse at others.  Because that is trolling.  Trolling isn’t illegal.  Threats to physically hurt you aren’t trolling, they are illegal.

Those are just some of my thoughts on the matter.  I am not a “man hater”.  I am not, as I have others been accused of “moaning about every little thing concerning women”.  I just believe that everybody, men and women alike have a right not to be physically threatened, be it in the street, in their own home or online.  If it happens, it should be reported.  Being online does not mean that laws suddenly do not apply.

What are your thoughts?