This is the latest picture making the rounds on Facebook. I really like Elizabeth Warren and I think she is what this country needs. I love her economic policy and what she says about the current state of the American economy and how it got that way. But as much as I like her and want to see her succeed, no politician is ever a sacred cow- above criticism and always correct in their pronouncements.
However…this is not okay. The comment and the subsequent picture meme displayed up there is no less slut-shaming just because it is a male Republican. This is yet another way some “liberals” show their true, conservative attitude towards sex and sexual expression and why sex worker rights activists have as many problems with liberal do-gooders as we do with conservative moral busybodies.
Now, for those liberals who don’t consider themselves slut-shamers yet laughed at this, would you still be laughing if it was a question of a female, liberal politician who, say, worked as a stripper to pay for college and a male Republican said the same thing? I doubt this one layout in a magazine paid Scott Brown’s total college tuition but it probably helped out for a semester. Then there is the troubling but unsurprising myth of a person being stupid simply because they are more (seemingly) sexual than others. Brown appearing topless in a trashy, poorly written, women’s fashion magazine doesn’t mean that he was having lots of sex, despite the mentality of people who think nudity is synonymous with sex. And I certainly don’t see what is so stupid about Brown taking the opportunity to do a modeling job over a minimum wage-slave job to earn money for school, the latter possibly impacting the amount of time available to study much more than the former. Nonetheless, the headline of “bimbo or beautiful mind” has all the qualities of the “stupid whore” slander: you can’t be smart and a whore at the same time.
I would be very interested to see if any of the SlutWalk organizers speak out about this. How is this statement all that different from the police officer who advised women not to dress like sluts in order to avoid being raped? Or anyone who thinks respect is only given with respect to how covered up one is at any given time outside of showering? I’ll criticize Brown’s politics but I won’t criticize him for capitalizing off his looks during his youth to pay for university.
Thanks for doing this archive work. This is valuable stuff. And this is an excellent point.
It was sincerely my pleasure; Aspasia’s work is too good to lose. 🙂