FAQ: What is “slut-shaming”?

Short answer: Slut-shaming, also known as slut-bashing, is the idea of shaming and/or attacking a woman or a girl for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feelings, and/or acting on sexual feelings. Furthermore, it’s “about the implication that if a woman has sex that traditional society disapproves of, she should feel guilty and inferior” (Alon Levy, Slut Shaming). It is damaging not only to the girls and women targeted, but to women in general an society as a whole. It should be noted that slut-shaming can occur even if the term “slut” itself is not used.

FAQ: vagina vs vulva and public “faces of feminism”

Q: A celebrity feminist said something about the incorrect usage of vagina vs vulva and I want you to explain every nuance of her thoughts to me and why feminism thinks that way.

A: “Feminism” doesn’t necessarily think that way just because that celebrity feminist does.
Possibly there is controversy about her opinion.
Possibly her opinion is highly unpopular.
Also, just a thought, possibly she didn’t actually say quite what you think she said?

This same sort of “justify feminism’s opinion on this” request gets made all the time based on the media asking celebrity feminists to opine on various matters, but the vulva/vagina distinction is a golden oldie, so why not let it be the model?

OK, let’s start with some anatomy revision.

FAQ: Rape Culture 101

This post was written by Melissa McEwan and originally published at Shakesville on October 09, 2009
Editor’s note: this post does not follow the usual FF101 FAQ conventions, but it’s being included in the FAQ list anyway.

[Trigger warning.]

Frequently, I receive requests to provide a definition of the term “rape culture.” I’ve referred people to the Wikipedia entry on rape culture, which is pretty good, and I like the definition provided in Transforming a Rape Culture:

A rape culture is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.

In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.

But my correspondents—whether they are dewy noobs just coming to feminism, advanced feminists looking for a source, or disbelievers in the existence of the rape culture—always seem to be looking for something more comprehensive and less abstract: What is the rape culture? What are its borders? What does it look like and sound like and feel like?

It is not a definition for which they’re looking; not really. It’s a description. It’s something substantive enough to reach out and touch, in all its ugly, heaving, menacing grotesquery.

How is asking the question “Why are there no fat elves in Dungeons and Dragons?” offensive to feminists?

A long question left in comments, so I’m promoting it to the front of the blog.

I was referred to this site after discussing image issues on the role-playing game website, Giant In The Playground. At that site, I started a topics of discussion regarding body image in fantasy art and RPG books, particularly involving the game Dungeons and Dragons.

The thread in question can be found here:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105473

One particular poster, whom I leave anonymous out of respect, said the following:

“Also, “heavy women are beautiful too!” is no less objectifying. That’s not the point! Women don’t exist to be attractive and sexual objects. It shouldn’t matter if they’re thin or fat or neither, ugly or pretty or neither, and there’s no real RPG art shouldn’t depict real people of both genders (and “conventions of the genre” are no excuse; I’m looking at you, superhero comics and superhero comics games). Holy hell, people.”

After responding to the effect that fantasizing is unavoidable, regardless of gender, he sent me a link to this blog, mainly for the reasons listed in the FAQ.

When asked by another poster “I’m sorry, how exactly is “heavy women are beautiful too” objectifying?” His response was thus:

“It’s “as objectifying as” “thin women are beautiful.”

It’s the idea that women’s attractiveness has any sort of inherent value or importance. Beauty as a value is a product of and a contributor to objectification. It doesn’t matter whether you say “thin women are beautiful” or “fat women are beautiful”, you’re still valuing them based on appearance.

By becoming aware that we are all taught to think like this – women and men both – and then realizing the idiocy of it, you can start to contribute, in a small way, to society being less objectifying.

And you cannot talk about people’s bodies without talking about people, directly or indirectly – especially in the context of western society, where the word “fat” automatically makes people think of qualities like “stupid”, “ugly”, “sick”, “greedy”, and so on.

Links again (because no, I am not here to educate, I am here to argue points):”

One of those links brought me here, and I’m hoping I could get some answers as to just what I’ve said that was offensive.

I have nothing against feminism (at least I don’t think I do), but I don’t know if I can avoid fantasies about them. Yes, I think heavy women are more attractive than thin women, but that doesn’t mean I judge women, or any other people for that matter, on appearance alone. I don’t allow my fantasies to get out of hand, or to hurt people. I just keep them to myself. Yes, I have sometimes roleplayed characters who conform to my fantasies, but that’s just fiction. It’s not real, and I’d be an idiot to think it was.

Can I truly be non-objective, even in my fantasies? Are my fantasies really that bad? How is asking the question “Why are there no fat elves in Dungeons and Dragons?” offensive to feminists?

Thank you for hearing me out.

I suspect that there’s more to the other person’s response than merely the question being asked. Just guessing because I haven’t had time to read the thread in question, but a slew of responses along the lines of “hell yeah fatties are sexy” would more likely be the culprit.

Online interaction and free speech

What John Scalzi said, after noting that despite the opinion of some people, not everywhere in the world is covered by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

this person is just absolutely, completely, ice-pick-to the-eyeballs wrong in their understanding of the First Amendment, how it applies to my site, and how it applies to the Internet. Reading this person’s understanding of how the First Amendment applies in these instances is like being slathered in a thick coat of ignorant, and then being put out into the sun to dry out before a second coat is applied, which itself will be topped off by a sealant of complete and utter stupid, and lightly drizzled with a glistening varnish of epic fail.

He then goes into detail about exactly why the particular person is so monumentally wrong, but it basically comes down to the difference between interactions between private persons and interactions between private persons and persons acting as agents of a government.

FAQ: if “gender is a social construct”, aren’t feminists saying that gender doesn’t really exist at all?

Updated 21 August 2008

A: NO. Social constructs are human conceptions, invented but not therefore imaginary (unless one thinks that social consequences are imaginary). Social constructs are human systems of social interaction organised around shared ideas. The shared ideas may be true, false or inaccurate, but the socially constructed systems that have developed in response to those shared ideas are very, very real.

Where has this confusion arisen? I suspect because people assume that “construct” means “made up” as in “imagined” or “fantasy”. Constructed merely means artificial, and “artificial” is the opposite of “natural”, not the opposite of “real”. (After all, anyone reading this on a computer is living a very artificial life compared to the natural life of hunter-gatherers on the savannah.) The artificial aspect of social constructs is that we have manufactured these systems of expectations and obligations in response to certain ideas, ideas that are often arbitrary and which can vary between cultures, rather than any particular social construct being an inevitable development based on human nature pure and simple.

N.B. The following is going to be snarkier than usual, because this one is gobsmacking (although my snark is aimed at antagonists proclaiming their superior logic rather than genuine seekers after information). Social constructs can be confusing to wrap one’s head around because social roles and expectations are the elephants in the room that most people are unwilling to ask questions about, so why do some people insist on claiming that they’ve killed the gender elephant when in fact they’ve only just noticed that it’s got large ears?

Often people who claim to have superior logic skills are using this or similar questions about social constructs to frame some allegedly devastating argument against various aspects of progressive thought. For crying out loud, I’m amazed that sentient individuals could have quite such a large dose of EPIC FAIL in the clue-catching department as to claim “AHA!! Gotcha, you gender warriors! Take that!” without a glimmering of understanding that just because social constructs are physical/biological fictions doesn’t stop them being undeniable sociological facts. Dictionaries are your friend, for a start.

List of social constructs off the top of my head:

• Money
• Land as property
• Religion
• Race
• Politics
  • party politics even more so
• Capitalism/Communism/the ism of your choice
• Marriage
• Nations
• Justice systems/legislation
• Social Status
  • i.e. royalty, aristocracy, bourgeoisie, proletariat (upper/middle/lower class)
• Slavery
• Fashion
• Sport

Gender is socially instilled rather than biologically determined, but so is religion. These conceptual systems are still real phenomena that affect people’s lives, even if they have nothing to do with our essential biology. Anyone wish to try asserting ownership of your own home in a place without a social construct of property laws or a justice system? You won’t have anything other than your brawn to back it up.

Social constructs exist because people are acculturated to a shared tradition/belief/convention that such constructs are meaningful systems. It is the multiple intersections of social constructs that institutionalise people’s perceived social roles.

The nature of social constructs that is most important for feminism (and other progressive ‘isms) is that social constructs are malleable rather than inherently fixed, and historians have documented the way that socially constructed systems in the past have regularly modify their shared beliefs (divine right of kings, anyone?) in response to changes in circumstances that challenge old conventions (including new ideas). Therefore by deconstruction and persuasion with respect to the logic of new ideas existing social constructs can be modified now and in the future (although there may be a great deal of social inertia to overcome along the way).

You feminists just want to tell women to do what you want, instead of letting them CHOOSE (and we all know girls *choose* the girly stuff)

Bumped from the Open Suggestion thread, so that we can have a general discussion about the various issues surrounding how choices can be constrained by socialised expectations:

lala, on June 15th, 2008 at 1:53 am Said

I’m an engineer and pretty much always the only woman (or occasionally, one of two women) in any workplace setting. I also frequent communities that revolve around technical subjects both online and off.

Now whenever I, or another woman, or even another man starts talking about encouraging other women to join in technical subjects, people seem to get very hostile.

Some of them will say that women don’t have the brains for it, but then claim that they aren’t being sexist because they love admire women’s natural abilities to nurture and manage social settings so that everyone is happy. I have science to throw at those people, so I can deal with them.

However, many will take the attitude that women aren’t /choosing/ to participate in technical subjects and therefore we should leave that alone. Women don’t want it, so why don’t we leave that alone? What’s the problem?