Why I refuse to participate in slut-shaming | Survivor Saturday

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For starters, what is it? “Slut-shaming” was coined to describe the attacking, criticizing, demeaning, or “shaming” of a girl or woman for transgressing the sexual conduct rules of a particular group. I’m sure anyone who has grown up in America can think of plenty of examples.

But wait, Rebecca, what are you saying? Are we just supposed to be accepting of any and all sexual behavior? Are we supposed to throw all standards of morality and decency out the window? Are you saying that self-esteem and tolerance is more important than obeying God? Don”t you believe in the Bible any more?

Excellent questions, and I will attempt to address them while explaining the reasons for my commitment, before God, not to engage in slut-shaming:

  • The Bible does not command us to engage in slut-shaming. We are never told to respond to sin with gossip, name-calling, derision, mocking, or any other attempts to humiliate and degrade someone. Instead, the Bible says, “Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.” (Galatians 6:1 NASB) Keep that verse in mind, because it is the very antithesis of slut-shaming.
  • Jesus did not engage in anything even remotely similar to slut-shaming. He treated all women with dignity and compassion, offering redemption and reconciliation rather than condemnation. That is why one of the most extravagant acts of worship and loving devotion recorded in Scripture came from a woman described as a “sinner”. (See Luke 7:37-50.)
  • Slut-shaming imposes an anti-Biblical standard. Before you jump to conclusions and exclaim, “Aha! I knew it! Another so-called Christian who thinks it’s OK to run around having sex with anyone and everyone!” — hear me out. First, read a pertinent passage from the Bible:

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court. Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” (John 8:3-11 NASB)

Notice who is missing from this story? How could a woman be caught in adultery all by herself? We can speculate what it was that Jesus wrote on the ground, or what particular sins made the Pharisees slink away in their own shame, but what is beyond question is that Jesus refused to participate in such gross injustice. When we act as if women engage in immoral sexual behavior all by themselves, we are perpetuating injustice.

  • If I claim to follow Jesus, I should follow His example. Yes, I fail miserably. All the time. But that is no excuse to respond to anyone — even someone caught in the very act of adultery — in a way that runs contrary to my Savior’s response of, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on, sin no more.”
  • Slut-shaming says nothing about the gospel, but everything about my bad attitude towards the target of my accusations. The good news of Jesus Christ is never, “You’re a slut!” I can’t pretend to be enamored and grateful to a glorious God of redemption and reconciliation while withholding that amazing grace from someone else — just so that I can lob verbal hand grenades in her direction.
  • Slut-shaming is demeaning to men. Whether we are venting about the “home-wrecking skank” who ran off with our friend’s husband or fussing about teenage girls “dressing like sluts”, we are saying a lot about our low opinions of men. Apparently the poor, weak dears are slaves to their hormones, which is why we don’t judge them equally harshly for their sexual misdeeds. Everyone knows they are visual creatures, helpless to resist the evil wiles of those slutty seductresses…sorry, I’m not buying it. I refuse to treat men as less than fully human, moral agents.
  • Slut-shaming isn’t about upholding morality; it’s about attacking the character, heart and humanity of someone created in the very image of God. Let’s get off our high horses and stop smugly claiming to “hate the sin while loving the sinner”. It’s easy to hate other people’s sins — why not try hating our own for a change? If we are really honest, though, we have to admit that slut-shaming is personal. We aren’t crusading for decency as much as we are on a vendetta against this particular person — otherwise, why would we be attacking, demeaning, and shaming her, instead of assuring her that she is not her sin?
  • Slut-shaming ignores and perpetuates the deep wounds of broken people. I know some women who take issue with me on this one. “Just because we enjoy a full expression of our sexuality outside of marriage doesn’t mean we are broken or reacting to past sexual trauma. It just means we like sex and we don’t agree with outdated ideas about it,” they will tell me. That doesn’t mean I can toss compassion out the window, ignore everything I’ve just written, and say, “Well, then I guess you really are a slut after all.”

But the thing is, we don’t always know everyone’s story, even if we think we do. And we might be running around with all sorts of misinformation, wrong ideas, judgmental notions, rape myths, and prejudices in our heads. If she really had been raped, she wouldn’t be sleeping around now…She should hate sex, after what she claims…I’ve seen how she acts; she must have been asking for it…She probably seduced that older guy, instead of the other way around…Child sexual abuse victims don’t act that way…Rape victims don’t act that way…Even if she was raped, that’s no excuse for sin…Since we don’t know people’s stories, we may need to keep our mouths shut. We never know the destructive power our words might have.

  • When we slut-shame the survivors of sexual trauma and abuse, we are repeating the messages of their abusers. We are perpetuating the lies told them by the tormentor of their souls. We become abusers as well. If you think I am overstating my case, read Nikki’s story, especially this: “The dead corpse of my soul was surrounded by a body that was good enough to take, but never good enough to keep.” As survivors, until we begin healing, that’s the sort of things we believe about ourselves. That’s the devastating reality of our lives. Sometimes our abuse began when we were so young, that it may have rendered chaste sexual behavior not only seemingly impossible, but an utterly foreign concept. When we comment on someone’s sexual behavior, will we further batter the already battered? Heap shame upon shame? Crush the bruised and broken? Pour salt on their wounds? Or will we offer hope by showing Jesus to them, to each other, to ourselves?

Those are reasons why I purpose, as a follower of Jesus, not to engage in any slut-shaming of anyone. But there is a far greater reason why I hope never to add to anyone’s shame. Jesus, my precious Savior, bore my shame on the Cross. He took all that shame on Himself — the shame I’ve suffered because of my own sins and failures, and the shame I’ve suffered at the hands of others — He took it all. Knowing that, how can I attempt to place shame on anyone else?

Move it Monday: bodily exercise profits little

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Well, yes and no. I don’t think 1 Timothy 4:8 can be interpreted as telling us not to waste our time with fitness and exercise. Certainly we are to be good stewards of the bodies God has given us. At the same time, there is no Scripture telling us that fitness is next to godliness, either.

I’ve had a number of wake up calls over the past few years, and I’ve been forced to face the toll that the life I’ve lived…and am living…has taken on my aging body. I’m way past my prime; whenever that supposedly was, I think I may have missed it.

Without getting all whiny over relatively trivial aches and pains, I can sum things up by saying that normal wear and tear plus a minor injury or two kept me from being as active as I’d like to be. This went on for long enough that I’ve lost energy, range of motion, flexibility, balance, strength, and motivation. I’ve been slowly easing back into being more active.

Now it’s time to get more serious. I’m tired of feeling blah. I’m tired of the weight I’ve gained. I’m tired of my poor eating habits and semi-sedentary ways. For a couple weeks now, I’ve been gearing up for today, the first of what I decided to dub “Move it Monday”. Here’s what I’ve done:

  • This morning, I started a new workout regimen at the gym.
  • I’ve eaten healthily all day so far.
  • I’ve kept busy and active.
  • I’ve surpassed my daily step goal.

It feels good. I don’t expect to turn back the clock or whip myself into some incredible shape. Mostly, I want to be fit and energetic enough to play with my grandchildren, enjoy long hikes, go on teaching karate for a while longer, and stay as healthy as possible. Oh, and fit back into my clothes…

Fashion Friday: how did I ever live without these pants?

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I am probably almost the furthest one can get from being a fashionista. I do own clothes purchased in normal retail stores during this decade, even this year, and I have been known — on occasion — to clean up fairly well and don an outfit that was actually stylish. But for the most part, I’m oblivious to style trends, and dress mostly in what I prefer to wear. Oh, and I don’t dress age-appropriately.

Once in awhile, I’ll read a fashion/style article, and discover some Awful Truth, such as my tragic answers to screaming headlines such as:

  • Are You Stuck in a Fashion Rut?
  • Do You Wear Clothes From the Last Decade?
  • Do You Still Dress Like You Did in College?

The answers are apparently so, yes, and even worse, I still dress like I did when I was in junior high…

So this is the worst place to come for actual fashion advice.

That having been said, I just have to tell you about a pair of pants I got recently. I’ve been on a several-year quest for the perfect hiking pants, only to discover:

    • Hiking pants are ridiculously expensive.
    • Either I have large thighs (which I do) or women hikers all have thin thighs or the fashion trend in hiking pants is to be tight to the point of impracticality.
    • Too many hiking pants are made of techie fabrics I find hot and uncomfortable.

Then I discovered backpacking cargo pants by a company named Molecule:

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These are so roomy, practical, and comfy that I am tempted to have them replace jeans as my wardrobe staple…but that might be venturing too far into fashion no-no land even for me.

What guilty pleasures lurk in your wardrobe?

Spelling, Indoctrination, Public Schools, and Internet Debates

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As a child, I was an excellent speller, but I hated the subject of Spelling. It was hideously boring, being forced week after week to engage in the most mind-numbing exercises designed to teach me to spell words I already knew how to spell.

In second grade, my frustration caused me to rebel. I began using words in my spelling sentences designed to show how ridiculous it was that I should be pretending to be “learning” anything. For the word “colors”, I used my new favorite word: “The colors in that painting,” I wrote, “were stupendous.” At every opportunity, I threw in the spelling and vocabulary words that I was learning, at home. My attempts to get my teacher to see the error of her ways failed miserably.

In third grade, I would try to force my sentences into stories — not at all an easy task. That teacher didn’t see the light either.

By fourth grade, I gave up. I can remember listlessly scrawling my homework in my spelling workbook day after day. Apparently my scrawling was so atrocious that it outraged my teacher, who called my parents, with the result that I was forced to copy everything into a fresh spelling workbook, only using far neater penmanship. There was a bright spot in all this: in addition, I was finally freed from the tyranny of the spelling curriculum and allowed to create my own spelling and vocabulary curriculum in its place. (Hey, it was the 1960’s.)

I wasn’t necessarily that “gifted” in all my subjects.

As an adult, I have been diagnosed with the inattentive type of ADHD. It has made me wish I could run back to all my teachers, wave the results of four grueling hours of testing in their faces, and insist, “See? I wasn’t lazy, or careless, or stubborn, or stupid! And there was a damned good reason I wasn’t always paying attention!” Some kids, as frustrated as I often was, act out. Some give up entirely.

I was a quiet rebel. One example: on the last day of my tenth grade creative writing class, the teacher asked in an offhand sort of way while dismissing the class, “If anyone has any suggestions to improve this class…?” and I whipped out a spiral notebook and left it on her desk.

That notebook was how I’d vented my anger at having a teacher suck the life out of the thing I did that gave me the greatest satisfaction in life. It was my ideas on how the class should have been taught. Actually, it was far more than that. It was a course outline, with goals and objectives — and almost a full semester’s worth of lesson plans and assignments.

Of course it was wasted on her, and I knew it.

Oh, and by the way, all of my former teachers who used to tell me that I just needed to work harder? You have no idea how hard I worked in your class.

From second grade onward, I was observing, critiquing, analyzing, and silently resisting. I saw the injustices of the system. I saw the absurdity. I saw the emptiness and futility — even at excellent schools with excellent teachers. It was a box. It was a prison.

School robbed me of joy. It crushed me. But I refused to let it destroy me.

And years later, when my first child approached school age — a child who “learned differently” and would have had to have been diagnosed, labeled, and drugged in order to fit into an elementary school classroom — I swore that no child of mine would be served up to the institution until they were mature and strong enough not to emerge as wounded as I was.

I don’t think public school is evil. I don’t think teachers exist to make children’s lives miserable. I had some excellent teachers, whose memories I cherish. (Come to think of it, the really good ones were renegades and rebels themselves.)

In fact, I think many students are well served by the public schools.

But most of you…of us…have been indoctrinated. Unless we have ever questioned the system — and I mean far, far beyond, “Why do we have to take this class?” and “Waah, waaah, that teacher grades so unfair” — we have been indoctrinated. Unless our public school teachers taught that alternative forms of education (some of which look nothing like our notions of “school”) are just as valid if not more so than our education, unless they had us reading authors like John Holt, unless they encouraged us to question whether we really belonged in public school — we have been indoctrinated.

Some of us fought it better than others. Some of us eventually woke up and saw the system for what it is. As long as we think that government-funded institutions of learning are somehow neutral, indoctrination-free zones, where every teacher, administrator, and textbook author has the amazing ability to remain free from personal biases or agendas — we are still drinking the koolaid.

All this came back to me during a recent Facebook debate which, I’m told, finally degenerated into correcting someone’s spelling.

A note to my readers: I have been dubbed The Typo Queen. The spelling brain cells of my youth seem to be vanishing rapidly. In addition, I’m close to being world’s worst proofreader. So feel free to offer me any and all corrections. You would be doing me a service.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that poor spelling means poor reasoning, or that your spelling prowess makes you somehow superior in intellect. If that’s what you think — or if you think odd grammar, lack of a college degree, and poor proofreading abilities makes someone “uneducated” — you need to get over your indoctrination. Learn about multiple intelligence theory. Face your bigotry and prejudice. Don’t try to squeeze the whole world into your institutional schooling box.