A friend of mine is at a large outdoor music festival today, and she’s been posting pictures of the crowd to Facebook all weekend. This one was like a punch in the gut to me.
What are these women thinking, mingling around a crowd of thousands with giant dunce hats that label them as a “whore?” Do they think they’re “reclaiming” the word? Maybe they’re just trying to be edgy. Maybe they don’t realize what they’re saying about themselves (not just with the word but with the “dunce” hat, too). My oldest son is about their age and he says they are “being ironic” and the word isn’t as bad as I think. I wish I could agree with him.
(Update: as I was nearing completion of this article I spoke to my friend on her way home from the festival. She says one of the bands performing has a song called “Whore.” Looking up the lyrics, I still don’t see it as a positive. But at least I understand what the women are thinking.)
Here we are on the weekend of Beltane (and yeah I’m sure very few of the people at a North Carolina heavy metal concert know that), a time when for ages past sexuality was celebrated with abandon. There was no such thing as “slut-shaming” in Celtic society, or in many Pagan traditions before the takeover by Christianity. For most of the world, sex was viewed as natural, even sacred – it took the Patriarchal Monotheistic religions to cover sex and sexuality in guilt and sin and shame.
And that guilt and shame is focused most harshly on women.
Even today, society expects women to hold to a certain amount of chastity in order to be considered respectable. We expect unattached men to sleep around, especially when they’re young. You never hear of men being looked down on for having too many sexual partners, or for enjoying sex too much. There simply is no word for a man that is equivalent to “slut” or “whore.”
Nobody ever thinks a penis will “wear out” from over use. But how do people talk about women like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, or any woman they think has had more partners than they can approve of? They talk about “wearing out” her vagina, how it will stretch out and be like a wind tunnel. And lets not forget this gem from the preacher making money scaring women over their “spirit husbands:”
To the Christian Patriarchy (and probably the Judaic and Islamic ones as well, I’m just not familiar with them) a woman’s vagina is only sacred when used in a way THEY approve of. Not just because it IS what it IS. And that’s wrong.
The Power That Has Been Stolen
Two thousand years ago, British, Scottish and Irish women could go off on Beltane and have sex in the woods or in the fields and nobody thought any differently about them than they did the men they were with. It was seen as a blessing that would benefit the entire community as it would help aid in the fertility of the land. Queen Medb – one of the most famous figures in Irish mythology – was well known and celebrated for her insatiable appetites. Nobody looked down upon her for them, and in fact she boasted that she could wear out dozens of men in a single night.
When I first read that it took me a while to wrap my brain around it. Around the fact that it was OKAY for her in her time and place to boast about that. It didn’t make her a bad person, because sex had not yet been labeled a sin.
In ancient times a woman’s sexuality was her power. In reality it still is, but that power has been stolen. With the rise of Christianity in the West, women were told that they should cover their bodies lest they tempt a man to sin by lusting after them. Sex became dirty, shameful, sinful. Even in marriage, it was often just “a woman’s duty”‘ and then only something she tolerated in order to have children. Actually enjoying it? God forbid!
Even the very act of feeling aroused – something so natural that it can happen in our sleep or without our conscious will – has been labeled sinful. Your hormones, your very physiology causes you to crave sex. If you didn’t the human race would die out. How can something so primal and natural and necessary be so bad?
A woman’s sexuality should be celebrated! She is capable of creating life inside of her. And no matter how many partners she has, her vagina is made to handle it. It doesn’t “stretch out” or “wear out.” Even after stretching in childbirth it fits snugly around her partner next time around. No wonder in ancient times her womb, her vagina was celebrated and revered. The Maypole may be a phallic symbol, but places like Newgrange were meant to be a representation of the Earth’s womb. On the morning of the Winter Solstice when the light pierces deep into the tunnel, its a symbolic representation of the Sun impregnating the Earth. The very act is magical.
And it can be magical between humans as well. Why should it be reserved ONLY to marriage? Why should women not enjoy the same freedom to express themselves, and the same freedom to ENJOY themselves as men? WITHOUT ever hearing the word written on the hats of these two young women.
Can We Reclaim These Words?
I realize there is a long history of minority groups reclaiming words once used to demean them. African Americans calling each other the “N” word comes to mind – but there is a difference here. That word was widely recognized for the hatefulness it intended, and was considered a shameful word before it was reclaimed. Only a die hard racist would use it, and then only around like minded people unless he or she just REALLY wanted to be ugly. The rest of us would look down on people for using it.
That hasn’t happened with “whore” or “slut.” The sexual revolution of the ’60’s has come and gone, as has the women’s liberation movement of the ’70’s. Yet those words are still bandied about regularly, and they still carry their demeaning baggage only for the women who they’re aimed at. It’s not shameful to use them, only to BE them. So I don’t think they are reclaimable just yet. And considering how ingrained in our culture the double standard of sexuality and morality between men and women is, I don’t think they will be any time soon.