Being Amber Rhea

I’m working on my Balticon wrap-up post. It’s slow going; I’ve been feeling sluggish all day. (I’m telling you, I need that colonic!) It seems like the older I get, the more recovery time I need from travel; and the more sensitive I get to things like air quality in hotel rooms (which is hardly ever good). The Balticon hotel was surreal on many levels.

Anyhow. I just saw this post from season of the bitch, because she linked to me in it.

Women used slut to wound and to mark others as inappropriate, as socially unacceptable, as vicious-a slut will take your man, she doesn’t care, in fact she likes it. She doesn’t deserve female friends, she’s not loyal to women, she just cares about male attention. Slut doesn’t even mean you have lots of sex or even any sex-it just means you look like you might, or talk like you might.

The slut is a monster. Her body is the body of all women (”a cultural body”). She doesn’t recognize boundaries (”harbinger of category crisis”) and she is not like you (”dwells at the gates of difference”). She is what you should not be, she defines by being it what is wrong (”polices the borders of the possible”) and yet, strangely, she makes you jealous. You want to be her. (”Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire.”) Most importantly:

“They [monsters] ask us to reevaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, our tolerance toward its expression. They ask us why we have created them.”

My college roommate gave me the craziest look when I told her that I was going to a fetish party the night before Halloween. Despite the fact that at the time, I’d never even had sex. But I’d made myself appear sexual and I’d talked about sex, out loud. That was enough.

(I almost felt the need to justify myself further here by talking about said roommate’s sexual behavior, which shows you how deeply this shit is ingrained-it’s certainly not right for me to pass judgment on her sex life any more than it was for her to do it to me. Hell, it’s stupid that I justified myself by pointing out that I was a virgin.)

But the point is that when a woman publicly appears to be sexual, declares herself sexual, we try to shove her back into that box.

Rusty and I (and yesterday, Rusty, Jenny, Dan, and I) have spent a lot of time talking about what happened in the “Don’t Be That Guy” session. I’m still processing a lot of it, which might also be contributing to why I’m having a hard time writing my wrap-up. Tomorrow night Rusty and I plan to record a podcast about it, so maybe I’ll be able to better express myself by speaking rather than writing.

Oh, but I was trying to tie the season of the bitch post (what’s her name? I can’t find it!) Sarah’s post to the panel experience. She writes about how she is fine with the word “bitch” (applied to her but not to other women) but cannot stand “slut.” I guess I am the opposite… sort of. I mean, I can completely relate to what she says here about “slut”…

That word hits me like a slap across the face-it leaves marks. And it’s so totally unexpected when it does happen, now that I’m not in high school or even college. When it slips out of the mouth of a male friend-not directed at me or a real person-I shudder before calmly and patiently explaining that I wasn’t OK with that word in ANY context, I didn’t care how much I disliked the girl in question. That it’s a word that hurts me as much as any woman it’s directed at.

That’s a feeling I’ve had many times - sometimes when I’m the one being called a slut, but more often when the word is directed at another woman. When it’s directed at me, it depends on who’s saying it and what the context is. Often, it just slides right off as an insult, and even makes me laugh and go, “Yeah, and? You’re damn right I’m a slut, now fuck off!” I do believe that the word can be reclaimed and can be a source of empowerment. Other times when it’s used as an insult, it just makes me roll my eyes at the utter non-creativity of the would-be insult-slinger. Seriously, that’s all you’ve got? Try again, bucko. FAIL. And, during sex? I love being called a dirty little slut or several variations thereof. Hotness! And it’s hot in that context because it’s not used derisively or judgmentally. Context matters.

But there are other words I cannot abide at all. In particular: bitch.

I won’t say “never,” because I know things change, especially in how people experience their sexuality and use it as a way to work through other issues; but right now, I absolutely would not find it hot to be called a bitch during sex. I know this is arbitrary because there are other women who love it and hate “slut,” and a million other permutations. But something about that word… it gets under my skin. It is never funny to me in the context of a joke; it is never acceptable to me as a general-purpose insult (why use a gendered insult when “asshole” will do just as well?)

Yesterday during the panel, there was a point where that word started getting used by some of my fellow panelists - and then, after being met with uproarious, approving laughter, by some audience members. I can’t say whether it stings worse in the mouths of men or other women; they are different kinds of hurt, but in both cases, my reaction is a feeling of deep-down queasiness.

I was already uncomfortable with the direction that panel was going at the beginning, but when that word came out, that’s the point when I started shaking. I don’t know if anyone noticed. But when I was reading an excerpt from synecdochic’s seminal reference post* on how not to be that guy, I noticed my hands trembling and I tried to keep them close to the table so no one would notice; and I tried to keep my voice as even as possible. I don’t know if I succeeded in either of those things. I guess the audio will hold the answer to the latter.

More to come.

* If you have not read this piece? READ IT. Immediately.

Update: Audio from the “Don’t Be That Guy” session is now available.