And the Hits Just Keep on Coming

Reproductive rights are non-negotiable. Reproductive rights are non-negotiable. REPRODUCTIVE. RIGHTS. ARE. NON. NEGOTIABLE.

What's that? Oh no, I'm not talking to the Republican Party. I'm not even talking to the Txxxp administration. Believe it or not, I'm actually talking to the Democratic Party leadership.

Just yesterday, the Democratic campaign chief, Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) indicated that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) will continue to fund Democratic candidates who oppose abortions, stating that "There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates....As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America.” In other words, they seem to think that licking the boots of the Republicans and the alt-right will help them win back the House in 2018.

I'm here to say that, if they think making reproductive rights a negotiable bargaining chip will help them gain more votes, they are delusional. They will lose more votes from women, LGBTQ people, etc. than they will gain from old, white, male Republicans, as we do not take kindly to having our rights reclassified as being non-essential when they become inconvenient to the Democrats' success rate.

It is not a coincidence that the all-male Democratic leadership does not consider reproductive rights to be essential--not just to the party platform, but to women! Apparently we can just drop the issue for the moment and we can pick it up again when the time is right, sweetie. If you need any proof that the current Democratic leadership doesn't give a fuck about women, think about this: anti-abortion politicians, whether Republican or Democrat, will vote for anti-abortion legislation. The Democratic Party leadership is not stupid--they know this. However, even with that knowledge in mind, instead of doubling down on reproductive rights and continuing to press it as a non-negotiable issue after the presidential election, they have instead decided that our right to bodily autonomy, our right to decide if and when we have children, is worth sacrificing for votes.

The Democratic party, as it stands right now, does not give a fuck about women. It does not give a fuck about LGBTQ people. It does not give a fuck about anyone who needs reproductive healthcare services, abortion or not. It does not give a fuck if they vote in anti-abortion politicians who will continue to strip us of our reproductive rights until they disappear, as long as they get the votes they want. We really need to think about what will happen if there comes a future when candidates from both major political parties, the parties that tend to win elections, are anti-abortion.

Do you want the Handmaid's Tale? Because this is how you get the Handmaid's Tale. And it's clear that, with men in charge, we can't have basic human rights in ANY party.

Women, and Witches, Get Shit Done

I participated in the Women's March on NYC today--sort of. I went with my best friend of 20 years, her parents, and their friends. The crowd was so huge that we never actually got to march in the actual march itself--the streets were so crowded that they were basically a parking lot, which makes me so. Fucking. Happy. As of this writing, the estimated total number of marchers in NYC is 400,000, much higher than they anticipated. Approximately 3 million people, obviously a majority women, marched across all seven continents, with our marchers outnumbering the Trump inauguration attendance by a staggering amount.

Mentally prepping to be part of what would turn out to be a 3 million person march across all seven continents

If you want to get an idea of the scope of the NYC march, take a peek at this video footage of the march from the Daily News. 

Shitty cell phone pictures, because I forgot to charge my camera

Since we couldn't get into the march itself, we walked around the perimeter instead and cheered from the sidelines. And the streets. Were. Packed. The sidewalks were packed. And not one fight broke out. Not one. Not one confrontation between fellow marchers or with the police (thank the gods). In a city whose inhabitants are known for flipping their shit on slow tourists, there was a surprising amount of patience for the molasses-pace of the march and an overwhelming amount of acceptance of each other as allies in this fight. I never thought I'd see something so beautiful come out of this nightmare.

One of my best friends, Althea, aptly compared it to the scene towards the end of "Practical Magic" when the women join hands and exorcise Jimmy from Gillian Owens. We identified a problem and gathered our sisters and allies around us to support us as we said "Enough is enough." We raised energy as a collective with the target of creating positive change in our country, preserving the rights we fought so hard to protect, empowering and emboldening each other in solidarity. If that's not a spell, I don't know what is. So many women woke up to their wild woman nature today because of these marches, and it's sending chills down my spine. The Divine Feminine woke up in us today, not with a stretch and a yawn, but with a heart-stopping roar.

A Feminist Review/Critique of “Jurassic World” (SPOILER ALERT (obviously))

[CN: violence] [MAJOR SPOILER ALERT THROUGHOUT]

I went to see Jurassic World with my boyfriend yesterday for my birthday, and I enjoyed the movie immensely, or at least all the action sequences with the dinosaurs (which is really the main focus of the movie if you’re watching it right). However, while it did make a valiant effort, Jurassic World was nowhere near perfect when it came to how they used the female characters throughout the film. 

I want to start off by listing what I did like. I was happy to see four main female characters in the movie (Claire, the mom of the two boys (Claire's sister), the woman in the control room, and Claire’s assistant). In a movie franchise that has historically had only one token female character, that was pretty cool. I was also happy to see a woman FINALLY be a fucking bad-ass heroine in a Jurassic Park movie instead of just a screaming damsel in distress. Seriously, when Claire released the T-Rex to go fight the Indominus Rex? I could barely stay in my seat. The last thing I liked, and this is going to sound weird, is that they finally had the ovaries to kill off a female character (Claire’s assistant). This was the first movie where they included a woman in the dinosaur kill count, and I thought that was pretty awesome.

That’s pretty much where my pom-pom pumping ends.

The female characters just barely pass the Bechdel test—there are only two scenes where two women talk to each other, one of which is Claire and her assistant talking about the two boys she’s supposed to be watching, and the other is Claire and her sister also talking about the two boys, so technically they’re still talking about men. The woman in the control room never speaks to another woman, and you never see two female characters talking to each other about anything particularly relevant or important, which really disappointed me because 1) there could have been some great scenes between the woman in the control room and Claire, and 2) women do actually talk about things other than men and kids and, somehow, Jurassic World, which proposes a scenario where dinosaurs are literally attacking and eating people, managed to keep the women in the movie talking to each other about just those two things.
 

The next thing that really bugged me was how they portrayed Claire’s character. Anyone who’s watched any TV shows or movies (or even read any mainstream books) that depict career-oriented women know that these “career-driven” women are portrayed as selfish and cold-hearted (and I’m putting this mildly), and it’s either heavily implied or outright stated that they are the way they are because they don’t have and/or want a (specifically male) partner and/or kids. In other words, their lack of desire for a man in their life and/or lack of maternal instinct and desire for kids is what makes them bad people. This movie was no different. For example, Claire is portrayed as being so entrenched in her work that she doesn’t know how old her nephews are (which is brought up at least twice as a “seriously, you’re a woman and you don’t know how old your nephews are?” moment). When she meets up with the hero, it’s almost instantaneously brought up that they dated at one point and that she was the reason they stopped dating (of course) because of her “overly controlling nature,” even though Owen (the hero) is equally controlling, if not more so, when it comes to the dinosaurs and how to interact with them, yet nobody bats an eyelash at that, nor does anyone bring up the hypocrisy of Owen criticizing Claire for being so controlling when he's absolutely no better. At another point in the movie, when Claire is talking to her sister on the phone and it’s revealed that she’s decided to work instead of hang out with her nephews, having hoisted them onto her assistant, her sister says that she’ll understand when she has kids. Claire responds with an emphatic “if,” to which the sister replies with an even more emphatic “when.” By the end of the movie, after the chaos has finally been quelled, we find her staring longingly at a mother reuniting with her daughter before she walks off into the sunset with the hunky hero, further perpetuating the stereotype that women who don’t want a (male) partner or kids will always change their minds eventually.

OK, so there’s nothing wrong with portraying a woman with a career as selfish and cold-hearted, per se. There are plenty of women out there who are exactly that way. However, when it’s the ONLY DEPICTION of career-driven women we get in the mass media, that’s a huge problem. It’s also a problem when it’s only women who get this treatment. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, Owen the Hero's controlling nature when it comes to the velociraptors is accepted without question, and Vincent D’Onofrio’s character, Hoskins, was equally obsessed with his work, but the movie doesn’t ever question him, either (apart from wondering how good an idea it is to create an army of trained velociraptors). Nobody asks either male character if he knows how old his nephews are, nobody tells them “You’ll understand when you have kids,” and the film never asks them to reconcile their work lives with their personal lives (or give up the former for the latter). It really wouldn’t have been that hard to portray Claire as having changed her mind about her relationship with her nephews without implying that she suddenly wanted to be with the hero and have kids of her own. It also wouldn’t have been that hard to portray Claire as having realized that she can be a workaholic but still want to be around her family, even if that family didn’t pop out from her own body.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. The action sequences were intense and there were amazing twists, and there were some pretty bad-ass feminist moments, but I think that the movie could have done more to upend the common stereotypes that are tacked onto women in the media—if they can create a world where dinosaurs exist, they can also create a world where women can have a career and no partner or kids and not be total assholes.

Why the MRA (Men's Rights Activist) Movement is Dangerous for Women

[Serious TW for MRA related content, forced pregnancy, abortion, rape apologia, rape culture, victim-blaming, slut-shaming, denial of autonomy, misogyny, patriarchy...pretty much if you can think of it, it's probably in here]

For those of you who don't know what the MRA movement is, the unofficial definition that I've come up with is that it's a bunch of over-privileged men who are throwing a temper tantrum because women have realized that they're not doormats, and so they're rolling on the ground, kicking their feet, and holding their breath until we women shut the fuck up and go back to being barefoot and pregnant. They seem to believe that women have it incredibly fucking awesome (because misogyny, slut-shaming, victim-blaming, etc. totally don't exist anymore), and they basically think that the feminist movement is a bunch of bullshit and is no longer necessary because, hey, women have it incredibly fucking awesome!

One of the incredibly dangerous aspects of the MRA movement is the father's rights movement, which believes in preventing women from having an abortion without the father's consent, arguing that it is discriminatory for men not to have the ability to participate in a decision to terminate a pregnancy. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is tantamount to physical, emotional, and psychological torture. Furthermore, forcing a woman to obtain consent from the father in order to have an abortion not only perpetuates the infantilization of women, wherein women are believed to be so fucking stupid that we can't make decisions on our own without the help of a man, as well as the patriarchal belief that women shouldn't be allowed to make decisions without a man's consent, but it also puts abused women in serious danger. Can you imagine what it would be like for a woman who has been abused to tell her abuser that she's pregnant and wants to abort? Can you imagine what the consequences would be for her? There are a few things that could happen, but the most likely scenarios include her being forced to endure the pregnancy and keep the child against her will, thereby tying herself to her abuser in one way or another for the remainder of her life (which might not be for very long, statistically speaking), or her attempting to abort the fetus herself, which can result in serious injury (including sepsis, a perforated uterus or intestines, etc.) and even death.

Another very dangerous aspect of the MRA movement is their stance on rape. MRAs believe that there is an epidemic of false rape accusations sweeping the globe, and these are the men you will find, after a high-profile male has been accused of rape, screaming that the woman just wanted money/fame/etc., she wasn't actually raped, she just has "buyer's remorse," etc. These men are also the same men you will find concern-trolling and stating, for women's benefit of course, that if women just dressed modestly, didn't drink, didn't go out at night, didn't go out alone, didn't go out at all, etc., we wouldn't have to worry about being raped. I've explained this before, but if rape had anything to do with any of that, women who dress modestly, don't drink, only go out during the day, only go out in groups, never go out at all, would never be raped. And yet, with a statistic of 1 in 6 women being raped in her lifetime, this happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME. I don't think I have to explain why this MRA viewpoint is dangerous to women, but just for shits and giggles, the reason this is dangerous is not only because of the obvious, which is that it perpetuates rape culture, slut-shames and blames the victim, and prevents rape victims from coming forward and pressing charges, but also because they fully believe that because of a few false accusations, all accusations of rape must automatically be assumed to be false. This is clearly more than problematic for women who are raped.

In relation to the previous paragraph, many MRAs believe that it is discriminatory to name accused rapists while providing the accuser with anonymity. Clearly, they have never experienced what it's like to come forward with a charge of rape, only to be told that they're obviously lying because of their clothing, their past sexual behaviors, their level of sobriety at the time, the time they were outside, etc. In other words, they've never experienced the same vitriol that they throw at rape victims all the time. They also clearly have no idea of the kinds of repercussions that a rape victim faces from not only her attacker, but from the friends of her attacker, etc. It's not uncommon for rape victims to have threats of further sexual violence and death thrown at them for daring to come forward with the charges. Not only this, but some MRAs actually question the criminal status of marital rape, and when having sex outside of marriage, they have suggested the signing of a "consensual sex contract" by partners before sexual intercourse in order to protect men from accusations of rape. So, in other words, according to MRAs, women who get married to men cannot possibly be raped because men are entitled to sex with their wives, even if it's forced, and when having sex outside of marriage, instead of obtaining enthusiastic, clear consent from their partners and only performing the sexual acts that said partner has consented to, they place a ridiculous burden on their partners in the form of this ridiculous contract, which doesn't actually prevent the man from raping his sex partner; it only prevents him from being accused.

I only have one question when it comes to this contract: what's going to prevent the man from raping his partner and then using the contract as evidence that he didn't rape her?

If there are any MRAs reading this right now, I hope your eyes have been opened a bit, and I hope you realize that there is no supposed War on Men. There is, however, an increasing demand that you men take responsibility for your words, actions, behaviors, etc., particularly those that perpetuate misogyny, rape culture and the patriarchy. There is a VERY big difference between a "War on Men" and asking men to take responsibility for their actions, and if there is a conflation of the two in your mind, if you equate the cessation of the continued subjugation of women with a "War on Men," you have serious fucking problems.

The Goddess and What She Has to Do With Feminism

[TW for misogyny, patriarchy, erasure of identity]

As many people are well aware of, I am an out and proud Pagan as well as a feminist. These two paths, while seemingly unrelated on first glance, actually have quite a bit to do with one another. When I was first starting out on the Pagan path, part of what drew me to it was the fact that there was a Divine Feminine as well as a Divine Masculine (which in the mainstream religions is all that there is). I wasn't yet consciously a feminist, but even as a child, the idea of being represented by an omniscient, omnipresent, all-controlling male deity didn't sit well with me. I often found myself asking myself (and anyone around me who would listen) why it was that if we were all supposedly created in God's image, then how could it be possible that there was only a male deity? There would have to be a female deity as well, because clearly women exist! As I learned more and more about Paganism, I became intimately acquainted with the triple goddess, this ultimate representation of all things feminine, and all seemed right with the world.

And then I became a feminist.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Paganism and/or the triple Goddess concept, the basic gist of it is that there is one female deity with three different forms: Maiden, Mother and Crone (think of this as the Pagan version of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit). The Maiden personifies youth, purity, innocence, etc., the Mother personifies fertility, sexuality, the cycle of creation, etc., and the Crone personifies wisdom, endings and death. The triple Goddess in all her forms is also represented as being nurturing, caring, passive: all qualities that are traditionally identified as feminine. When I first started out on the Pagan path, I had no qualms about or issues with the triple Goddess, but as I got more involved with feminism, I realized just how restrictive this concept of the Goddess can be, especially considering that most Wiccans and Pagans look to the Goddess as a representation of all women.

The fact that the Goddess is given the traditionally feminine qualities that supposedly "belong" to all women helps perpetuate the stereotype that this is how all women are "supposed" to be; I mean, if the Divine Feminine is just that, feminine, then shouldn't all women emulate that femininity? Shouldn't all women seek to be nurturing, passive, dainty, etc.? It is also pretty observable that most, if not all, artistic portrayals of the Goddess are devoted to conventionally beautiful women; even the Crone aspect of the Goddess is often simply the Mother archetype with silver hair and maybe some crow's feet around her eyes. I have yet to see an artistic portrayal of the Goddess that features a woman who might not be considered conventionally beautiful; a Mother with a pear-shaped figure rather than an hourglass, a Crone with sagging arms and cellulite and varicose veins on her legs, a Maiden with what amounts to an explosion of acne covering her face. According to the popular Pagan song, "We all come from the Goddess," and yet from what I've seen of the portrayals of her, apparently only conventionally beautiful women come from the Goddess; the rest of us are fucked.

Ultimately, the triple Goddess concept restricts a woman's life cycle to three roles; innocent youth, fertile adult and old woman. Obviously, most of us will fit into these three roles at one point or another in our lives, but women are so much more than just youth, fertility and age rolled into one body. We are artists, dancers, students, teachers, academics, lovers, thinkers, creators, doers, actors, therapists, warriors, champions, destroyers, healers, deconstructers, lushes, partiers. We are all of that and more, and we simply cannot fit every single woman, every single aspect of our womanhood, into only three roles. Many people have tried, of course; for example, any act of creativity, of personal fulfillment, is often neatly filed under the Mother category. Any goddess of fertility or creativity is filed under the Mother category and left there. The logic is that motherhood doesn't necessarily mean giving birth to a child and raising it (e.g. you could "mother" a pet or someone else's children) and that fertility doesn't just apply to the creation of new life; it also applies to the creation of everything else.

I agree with this, to a point. While I agree with the sentiment that nurturing and fertility should not be restricted to the act of procreation, I also don't feel that these other acts of creation should simply be filed under the role of Mother and forgotten. In my opinion, it oversimplifies the varying goddesses of the different pantheons, as well as each and every act of creation and fulfillment, and forces women to embrace the role of Mother, regardless of whether or not she agrees with that role. It also erases transgendered women in that physical fertility, while often argued as not being the be all and end all of the Mother aspect, is often touted as the ultimate sign of embodying that aspect of the Goddess. Evidence comes in the form of the fact that, despite many people's insistence that fertility is not cemented to procreation when it comes to the Goddess, I have never seen a depiction of the Mother archetype where she was anything other than heavily pregnant. I have never seen a version of the Mother archetype in which she was taking care of animals, painting a picture, writing a thesis, etc. In other words, the archetype of the pregnant Mother overshadows and erases the copious other roles that women fill each and every day, and for the women who do not feel comfortable identifying with the Mother aspect, they are forced to either identify with the Maiden aspect or the Crone aspect, which many women also do not identify with. For example, at this point in my life, I would technically fall under the Mother aspect of the triple Goddess, but that is not a role I identify with. I would identify more with a Goddess of academia...perhaps Athena? Or a Goddess of kicking ass...Sekhmet or Artemis, maybe? Try filing Kali the Destroyer under one of those three aspects and see what happens!

Once upon a time, I belonged to a Pagan forum where I was told by a fellow Pagan woman that I would never truly know the love of the Goddess because I had not had children of my own nor planned on having any. She then went on to say that I would die alone and unhappy, so I really didn't put much stock into the rest of what she had said either, but she did help to demonstrate how some Pagan women, many of whom come to Paganism as a middle-finger to the patriarchy and who would normally never adhere to the patriarchal demand that all women must become mothers, will readily follow and perpetuate that exact same stereotype as long as it's packaged neatly in a female/Goddess figure. It's much easier to recognize sexist tropes when they come from a recognizable source, but when that same stereotype enters into your belief system, one that you believe is an affront to the horribly sexist system you left behind, it's much harder to identify.

Honestly, in my opinion, the concept of the triple Goddess is vastly outdated. Obviously not every Pagan will agree with me on this, and I don't expect them to, nor do I demand that they do; the beauty of Paganism is that you have the freedom to believe whatever fulfills your spiritual needs. It is simply my personal belief that there are just too many differences between women (and men) for there to be one deity (even one with three aspects) to cover them all. Does this mean I look down upon mothers? Not in the least. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for a woman who wanted me desperately. Does this mean I look down upon the triple Goddess? Not in the least. Just because my understanding of the triple Goddess goes one way doesn't mean I hold a grudge against her. Does this mean I look down upon women who will continue to honor the triple Goddess in their Pagan practice? Not in the least. Just because my personal understanding of the triple Goddess goes one way doesn't mean that every woman on the planet is going to understand her in the same way, nor would I expect them to do so. Every woman's experience on this planet is going to be different, ergo their understandings of divinity and Paganism in general are going to be different as well. I simply believe that we should honor all forms of the Goddess, the warrior Goddesses and the academic Goddesses and the artistic Goddesses, etc., on equal footing with the mother Goddesses.

My personal vision of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine is that they are created from the collective unconscious of every single woman and man (cisgender and transgender) on the planet. In my vision, the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine do not encompass women and men, respectively; they encompass whoever feels drawn to them. In other words, an effeminate man who identifies more with the Divine Feminine is just as much a part of the Divine Feminine as any woman could be, and a masculine woman who identifies more with the Divine Masculine is just as much a part of the Divine Masculine as any man could be. A genderqueer person with no specific gender identity is welcome in both the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine without question, while a person who identifies with both genders is accepted just as readily. In my mind, the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine are comparable to those ripples of oil that you sometimes see in puddles. With every drop of rain that hits those puddles, with every footfall, that oil swirls and changes; so, too, do the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine, and with each person that makes hir way into existence, they change ever-so-slightly in order to meet the needs of the people seeking them out.

Welcome to Rape Culture

[TW for rape culture, rape apologia, victim-blaming, patriarchy]

It's absolutely amazing [read: terrifying] to me how hard people will fight to keep the rape culture running. How vehemently people will argue that the rape culture doesn't exist. How passionately people will argue that okay, maybe the rape culture does exist, but aren't we taking this just a little too far? How difficult it is for people to realize why rape prevention programs that place the burden of preventing the crime on the victim instead of the criminal help perpetuate the rape culture. How hard people will argue that yeah, we should teach men not to rape, but we don't live in a perfect world, so we should also teach women how not to be raped, and not realize how that idea also helps perpetuate the rape culture.  

The rape culture has everything to do with the patriarchy and with women being given second class status to men. Men are never told what to wear, where to go and at what times of day it would be appropriate for them to be there, how much to drink (if at all), who to go home with, how many people it's acceptable or not acceptable for them to sleep with, etc. This burden is always placed on women. When you tell a woman she's not allowed to wear certain clothing, that she's not allowed to go out to certain places at certain times, that she's not allowed to drink a lot (or at all), who she's allowed to go home with and how many people she's allowed to sleep with, etc., not only do you implicitly blame her for any crimes that might be committed against her, you take away her agency. You take away her right to make decisions about her own life. This is directly related to the patriarchal idea that women are meant to be controlled, that we cannot (and should not) be allowed to have our own autonomous lives. We are instead meant to live in total fear and submission, and this is where the whole "here's how not to get raped" thing connects to the problem. 

The problem with teaching women how to avoid getting raped is that if they do get raped, the implication is that they didn't listen to the people telling them how not to get raped and that is blaming the victim, no matter how you slice it. There are people who argue that even when teaching men not to rape that some people are going to fall through the cracks, so women should be taught how not to be raped, as well. People are going to fall through the cracks, yes, that is an unfortunate fact of life, but rapists are the only ones who should have to be told anything concerning the prevention of rape. A woman should be able to walk down the street in the shittiest fucking neighborhood fucking NAKED and DRUNK OUT OF HER MIND and expect not to be raped. She should be able to go to the police and expect that they won't put her on trial for her own assault. She should be able to do, dress, talk, act however she pleases and expect not to be raped. Telling women "this is how you avoid getting raped" in this society, a society that condones, normalizes and, dare I say it, encourages rape, is equivalent to saying "if you don't follow these rules, then you deserve what you get." 

No, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where if a woman is raped, she is guilty until proven innocent and the rapist innocent until proven guilty. We live in a world where her rapist will often never go to trial because either the victim knows how her case will be treated by a court of law and doesn't bother to report the rape because she knows how it will end up, or her rapist is acquitted. We live in a world where rape victims are put on trial by the very people who are supposed to be helping them, where questions that amount to "What did you do to make this happen to you" are ok to ask the victim. No matter how much women do to "prevent rape," it is never enough. If you dressed modestly, you were out too late. If you went home early, you were dressed like a slut. If you were home early and dressed modestly, then you drank too much (or at all). If you were sober and home early and dressed modestly, then you simply gave off all the wrong signals and didn't say "no" loudly enough.

So really, all the ways we're supposed to keep ourselves "safe," in the end, don't really matter at all. It's just a list of things that help rape apologists blame the victims instead of the criminals, and as a result, the victims wind up defending themselves while the rapists walk free.

And that, my friends, is the rape culture in a nutshell.

I am Sick and Fucking Tired of the Patriarchy

[TW for victim blaming, rape and sexual violence]

I began engaging in actions of a sexual nature at age 15 and lost my virginity when I was 16 years old to a guy I dated for a month and a half. I've had four other sexual partners since then in the span of four years, including my current boyfriend. I have had sex on the first date just about every single time. I have had sex with people with whom I did not intend to enter into a relationship. I have had a one-night stand. I am what many people would call a "slut" because of these behaviors.

Many people will probably question my decision to post my entire sexual history on the internet, but my reasons are crystal clear in my mind: it is because I want to make the point that I do not deserve to be raped and/or murdered, and neither does any other woman, regardless of her sexual behaviors (past, present and/or future), her occupation, the way she dresses, etc. It is because people have taken to throwing around the word "slut" to degrade and dehumanize women for decades now in order to make them "other than" so that when institutionalized and gendered acts of violence happen to them, such as rape, the general public can brush it aside with the simple statement that "They deserved it."

Most of the common conceptions of a slut seem to be a woman who dresses in an overtly sexual manner and/or is blatantly open about her sexuality and her sexual behaviors. There are plenty of women who do dress in a sexy manner, engage in sex frequently and are indeed blatantly open about their sexual activity. There are plenty of women who dress in a sexy manner and do not engage in gratuitous amounts of sex, but will still talk about sex with their friends. There are women who do not dress particularly sexily, but will have sex with the entire neighborhood and will broadcast it from the rooftops. There are women who dress in a sexy manner who engage in sexual activity so frequently that you'd wonder how they got anything else done during the day, but they keep it to themselves. There are so many different types of women who are a combination of all these factors, but the point is that it does not matter how you dress, how much sex you have and with whom, or how open you are about it. YOU DO NOT DESERVE TO BE RAPED OR KILLED BECAUSE OF IT, and you are NOT a bad person or a bad woman for being sexual!

The wonderfully patriarchal society that we live in (/sarcasm) has made it social suicide for women to be sexual in any way, shape or form. When women step one toe out of line in terms of what's acceptable sexual behavior for them (which changes on what seems like a daily basis), they're termed "sluts" and are given Other Than status. When women are raped, they are often put on trial in place of their attackers. The defense seeks to prove to the jury that the victim deserved what she got. Victim blaming is so rampant in this country that it's sickening. We are not told not to get robbed, not to get murdered, not to get run over in a hit and run accident, and yet authority figures tell us not to get raped instead of telling rapists not to rape. When those poor women's bodies were found in Long Island, victims of a serial killer, I heard so many people saying how their deaths weren't worth investigating, that the killer was doing our society a favor. Why was this? Because they were sex workers.

Anyone who believes that women are lesser than or deserve to be raped and/or killed is fucking sick, and while I'm willing to make concessions on just about everything else I believe, this is not one of them.