In an era of equal opportunity, when more women are earning graduate degrees than ever before, a demeaning double standard exists in our society. Everybody knows the stereotype: Men are “players,” but women are “skanks” for doing the exact same thing. And that’s not fair.
Now, in no way am I condoning the practice of freely hooking up with lots of partners, for men or women. However, seeing as we are in college, a time of raging hormones when hookups are inevitable, women must stop referring to each other as “sluts” or any other similar word if they want to see the continuation of gender balance in society.
For example, as I played poker a couple of nights ago with a full table of both genders, the subject of Robert Pattinson came up. While I’d never heard of him, apparently he’s the sexy star of “Twilight” who the ladies can’t get enough of. In an offhand attempt to express her adoration, one woman jealously declared Kristen Stewart (Pattinson’s co-star) as an “utterly stupid slut who doesn’t deserve to share the earth with Pattinson.”
While this sentiment’s acrid nature probably overstates her true bitterness, what’s alarming is the carefree use of the word “slut.” While a man’s vocabulary is filled with several dirty words capable of describing a person he doesn’t like, women, especially of the college age, generally replace these curse words with derogatory terms like “slut” and “skank.” Though these words are very degrading on their own, the true problem lies in how often women use them.
In my own everyday experience, I’ve noticed that women use these derogatory terms far more often than men do. This leads me to believe that if women generally stopped referring to each other by such names, men would follow suit.
At this point, though, the exclusion of the word from our vocabulary seems impossible.
“The word has been frequently used in our culture so long that it’s become the norm. At this point, we’re even conditioned such that if our friends call us it, it’s OK, but if a stranger does, it’s incredibly degrading,” said second-year environmental studies student Jagrup Sidhu.
The fact that some women call each other such demeaning names in a friendly manner reflects a general acceptance and complacency to being thought of as the “inferior gender.” When women call each other “sluts,” men are bound to see women in a lesser light.
Why? Because it makes you seem like an idiot. Who would respect a woman who revels in being called a slut by her friends? This type of behavior keeps women down, despite their accomplishments in graduate school rates or SAT scores.
Additionally, the word itself and the meaning behind it is generally pretty stupid. Though it is not the safest or most moral thing to sleep around, through our societal acceptance of men, but not women, behaving this way, we are allowing for continual adherence to the idea that men deserve to enjoy certain rights that women don’t. Continuing to abide by the notion that “boys will be boys” but women should be proper creates a sense of inferiority in the minds of young women.
It seems like no matter how equal men and women become in school, work and at home, degrading words like “slut” confirm the medieval stereotypes of males as sexual conquerors and females as pure virgins. In a time when the word “change” is used so frequently by politicians, we students keep confining women to unfair constraints that are centuries old. Until our vocabulary reflects our ideals of equality, no balance can occur. Once women acknowledge their power, men will too.
<em>If you want to defend your freedom of speech, then e-mail Bromberg at mbromberg@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.</em>