Keith Reedy said:
Kpt._Rob said:
TB_Infidel said:
and rather then listening to advice on how to avoid rape, they want to protest?
The piece of "advice" you refer to, against which they are protesting, is a police officer telling them that "if they don't want to get raped, they shouldn't dress like sluts." That, incidentally, is
not advice, it's sexism at its worst. It's blaming the victim. Honestly, it's not all that far from the passage in the bible where it says that if a woman gets raped in the city and doesn't scream loud enough she should be put to death because she should have screamed louder. It's the worst kind of patriarchal bullshit, and it's the kind of attitude that people do need to stand up against.
I don't know that attempting to "reclaim the word slut" is the right way to go about it, but nonetheless, it's important that people stand up and point out that saying things like that isn't going to be tolerated in a civilized society.
In a perfect world this would simply be taken in stride and not a person would care, sexism is only sexism long as you consider it that way. If you think man versus woman you shall see sexism if you don't, no sexism TA DAH!
To quote the old internet saying "LOL WUT?!" This is like saying "well yeah, if the slaves didn't notice that only black people were getting enslaved, it wouldn't have been racist." The idea that sexism exists only because we perceive its existence is the kind of dismissive conservative nonsense which has allowed its existence to continue. Sexism is the genuine gender inequalities which are present within our society.
Dealing with diversity, whether it be gender, racial, or any other sort is a difficult issue because while there are genuine differences between these groups (often these are sociological, but that doesn't mean they're not real), we still have to treat all the different groups as equal. To recognize and celebrate difference, but treat all entities the same, at times that's a seemingly paradoxical task. But that doesn't mean that it's unimportant, and ignoring or pretending it doesn't exist it is not the solution. The solution is to recognize difference but look past it to the core of who a person is.
When you say, however, that someone got raped because they were "dressed like a slut." You're not looking at that person as a person at all. You're just looking at them as a slut, and we don't use pejorative terms like "slut" against people who we intend to treat as people. It is sexist because it's treating a group of people (victims of a horrendous crime nonetheless) without the respect and love that they deserve on the basis of a sociologically imposed gender difference.