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Sexual Censorship and Slut-Shaming

Sexual Censorship and Slut-Shaming

Everybody has a weakness. My weakness is completely and utterly obsessing over celebrity gossip. The facts come in handy for the errant offhand question a coworker will ask or for any form of pub trivia, but as of late the facts have changed.

Lately, I find myself defending women like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Lena Dunham, and Kim Kardashian simply based on the fact that some folks out there have decided they need to “cover up.” A few months ago, before graduating with my master’s degree, I got in a tiff with a professor who told me that though they’re in support of feminist liberation, they don’t believe anonymous sex and Beyoncé’s VMA performance and clothing choice were evidence of sexual liberation. I made sure to ask more about the professor’s knowledge of Bey and Jay’s personal life, along with the assumptions placed on her body because of what she chooses to wear (or not wear). With no response given that wasn’t coated in slut-shaming, the fight was only apparent in my grade at the end of the course.

In our recent history, we find a public divided on topics of nude photos on a cloud, twerking, and big booties; and in past years we can see evidence of assumptions placed on women’s bodies that surpass just J. Lo and “The Dress.” Heck, Jezebel spoke on what they believe to be the most ancient of slut-shaming — that of Cleopatra by the Roman Empire working under Augustus:

“According to [Duane A.] Roller and his research, Cleopatra was the target of one of the very first negative PR campaigns … the salacious facts about who she slept with, the magic spells she conjured, and questions about who fathered her children were all designed to remove focus from the indisputable facts of her reign.”

This means feminists are working to defend sexual liberation against an incredibly long supremacy of ancient history telling us to cover up our bodies … and if we don’t? History will write us in as sluts.

Buried deep in the fear of talking about LGBTQ issues is a fear that many folks who don’t identify on the spectrum espouse: How do queer bodies work? How do they … do it?

It’s really easy for people who don’t want to talk about sexuality to run to their safety nets to avoid it: the Bible says it’s wrong; men and women physically fit together and anything else just doesn’t make sense; lesbians just haven’t found the right man yet; gay men just want to be women; transgender people must have been abused as children; bisexual people are just slutty. These are all excuses we’ve heard that truly hide the reality of our situation as queer people: What we do is against the grain, and if we attempt to show our bodies, we’ll force people to face their big fear.

But I named a group of women above who, as far as my knowledge goes, identify as straight. What do they have to do with all of this LGBTQ liberation?

Feminism knows no bounds and, unfortunately, we live in a pretty heteronormative society that has the straight, white, affluent men telling us what to do, how to be, and who to act like. Those moguls choose women like Bey, Nicki, Lena, and Kim to be on our TVs and in our magazines and that means they’re going to tell us what’s normal. When we have these women moving toward a world of sexual liberation, it means they have the option to shift society’s viewpoint. For every one of these women taking it off and baring it for us, we have hundreds of people who tell them to cover it up for multiple reasons: My children are awake to watch this! I have morals! I don’t need to see “all that” hanging out! Her body is unrealistic! She sets poor ideals of what is okay for young girls!

Instead of running to the “I don’t wanna see it” defense, I ask people to view statistics surrounding unwanted teen pregnancy. According to Colorado Youth Matter, Colorado’s rate of births to teens ages 10 – 19, though declining, was still at 6,648 in 2008. When we censor topics like sex, we’re also censoring the topics that surround it — sexual health, sexual education, and, you guessed it, sexuality. Hiding such an integral part of our lives in fear of embarrassment or out of confusion based on how we were raised as kids has only proven negative. So what can we do?

Let’s talk about sex. Let’s allow women to showcase themselves as they see fit. Let’s talk about liberation in realistic ways, because it’s 2014 and we legally can. Let’s get down and dirty with the down and dirty instead of shaming it into a back corner, because the more we do that, the more lives will be affected by STIs and unwanted pregnancies and shame surrounding sexual attraction toward others.

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