Dressing Like a Slut

Don't you just hate it when women wear cute, figure-flattering outfits and then have the audacity to suggest men should treat them with respect?

I mean, hello! If a woman doesn't want men staring at her tits or grabbing her ass, then she should cover up! Amirite?!

If you're new to my blog, imagine those two comments written in your favorite sarcasm font. I've written about slut-shaming, sexual assault, and boob-shaming before, so I'm hardly about to act all high and mighty about what women wear.

Too bad the same can't be said for twitter.

Imagine my surprise last week when my twitter friend Michelle retweeted this.




I found it incredibly offensive, but I try and initially use logic when pointing that out, instead of immediately getting pissed. (Whoever the hell @dj_grimes13 is, he has since deleted all his replies to my tweets, so I can only show what I tweeted at him and Michelle).


Y'all. My clothes are slutty when a guy is trying to control my life and/or make me hate myself, or when a girl wishes she had my boobs. Seriously. 

I just want to apologize to Tina Fey, who is one of the funniest, smartest, sexiest women in TV and film. Despite twitter's overall obsession with all things Mean Girls, Tina's thesis apparently didn't sink in.


Like I said, I can only post my replies because @dj_grimes13 deleted all his tweets to me. Then he blocked me. Real mature, misogynist! And Michelle basically just told me I was overreacting. I guess she's never been sexually harassed on a regular basis or sexually assaulted within an environment of her sexual harassment being condoned by everyone? 

And I guess she doesn't want to see tweets about it because she then unfollowed me. After following me for about a year. So she's now my ex-twitter-friend. Except I still follow her because I still like most of her tweets. Just not the slut-shaming ones.

Anyway, go to the bottom and read your way up. Tweets are bottom to top, oldest to newest.


Rape culture is one of those feminist buzzwords that not everyone understands. From wikipedia:


Within feminism, rape culture is a concept used 
to describe a culture in which rape and sexual 
violence are common and in which prevalent 
attitudes, norms, practices, and media normalize, 
excuse, tolerate, or even condone rape.

I know it was "just" a joke, but when does a joke become a rape defense?

"You can't dress like a slut and want to be treated like a princess." 

"Respected ladies don't get raped." / "The act of the rapist is made easy because it would be easy to remove the half-cloth worn by the women." / Don't dress like a slut or a whore (or you might get sexually assaulted). / "When you see some of the 13 year old young ladies strutting their stuff as they walk through the mall there is only one word of description, Jail Bait."

Not so funny, is it.

When I point out slut-shaming and double standards and misogyny, it's not because I don't have a sense of humor. It's because I have seen firsthand how sexist "jokes" can cause irreparable harm to young women.

Young women like me.

In middle school and high school, I was surrounded by boys calling girls sluts, and everyone laughing. Not all girls were called sluts--only girls who had outgrown their training bras or who had done more than kiss their boyfriends.
 

So when a boy sexually assaulted me, and I didn't stop him, I thought it was my fault.

I thought if I told anyone, I would be called a slut.

I was sexually assaulted three more times as an adult, these times all in France.

I didn't tell anyone about any of this until last spring, when I finally blogged about it here, sobbing the entire time I wrote about it.
 

Because I was surrounded by people who thought women just lied about it for attention, I felt like I couldn't ever talk about it without being accused of lying.

Because I was surrounded by people who found it perfectly appropriate to judge me for having large breasts, I felt like I couldn't even talk about it without being blamed for enticing sexual assault with my choice of clothing.

So when you tell me that if I dress like a slut, I can't be treated like a princess, you're telling me that every time someone violated my body, it was my fault.

Fuck you.
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