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Aylee -> RE: BOUNTY'S coffee shop (11/18/2008 7:41:36 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: sunshinemiss
I vote we pour Aussie wine alllllllll over angel and THEN taste them.
hmmmm I think they may be right. I have gotten awful slutty these days. Oh the horror of it all!
Slut. One of the powerful epithets used to pull women into line. Others include bitch, whore, cunt, and fat. Respectable women are either virgins or mothers (married.) As Mary Daly would point out, "respectable" for whom and for what? I have to ask, myself and any other woman, why do I want or, why should I, be respectable? Frankly the role of the mother and the role of the virgin are both much too constraining for me.
The fact is that the role of mother and the role of wife is subsumed into the husband/father's existence. It is as if mothers do not have a life of their own. They do not have a mind, will, or self that is seperate from the husband/father or their role as wife/mother.
The other role/catagory for "respectable" women is virgin. Its main meaning is one that has not experienced sex. Being exemplified because of what one has not done is hollow. All other accolades are given for action, not inaction, yet a woman's biggest praise stems from her inaction, her negation of doing anything. Men are not praised for not killing someone, or for not stealing. Yet women are praised for not fornicating while men recieve accolades for this act.
The patriarchal system which instills that women remain a virgin until marriage - when they "give" it to their husbands - makes virginity a prize, an object to be bartered, hence phrases such as "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" And we are supposed to understand that free milk is not worth as much or is as respectable as milk from an owned cow.
The role of virgin also limits women because it denies them their rightful sexuality. Instead of being able to experience their sexuality as a whole person, the virgin must be ever aware of who is going to recieve her "milk." Her sexuality belongs to the man she is supposed to marry someday instead of to herself.
Virginity is also a limiting role because a woman can lose it. Women who lose their virginity through sex outside of patriarchal marriage are thought of as dirty and bad. So it becomes important to always protect one's "milk." Even if this means that she must limit her movements and choices within her own life. There is also the threat of loosing one's milk through the violence of rape and sexual assault. Even these women will not escape the defiled-ness of their transgression.
As women, we must take back our own sexuality, make it our own, learn to make it a part of ourselves. Learn to wallow in it.
We cannot step aside and be told which small categories we can belong to. We must find roles that have more scope. We must learn what out true selves are, we must, "learn to see with our own eyes." The "Slut" holds power, "This character [the slut] makes the choice, wither consciously or subconsciously, to reject the traditional roles open to her and to posses power, a power that is always presupposed to have be usurped from the male sphere. Although in most cases she does not reject her femininity, she does reject the social limitations of her femininity."
We, as women, must reclaim our own sexuality. Women must harness its power, its transgressiveness, and its refusal to stay within its confines.
So, Sunshinemiss, make your self and your sexuality the subject of your own life. Not to be the subject of some one else's life. And most assuredly, not to be an object to be bartered away.
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