You’re weak on the surface, You speak when you’re nervous
And all the wrong words unite in your head
You can’t stand the space in your bed
So you shake in the darkness, You break like an artist
And all your big plans are small the next day
You can’t wait to throw them away…
When i saw this backdrop from FoxCity coming out for Uber (that opens today!), i knew the ‘thot topic’ storefront was perfect for the topic that i wanted to discuss today: slut shaming.
i’m not entirely sure where this double standard in SL and RL both came from… but it seems like that if a woman enjoys sex, or enjoys other intimate activities with a Man (or another Woman), then she’s deemed a slut or a whore, or some other kind of negative word that has been derived to shame us our of sexual enjoyment.
Maybe it comes from the religious idea that sex is for procreation, so if a woman’s job is simply to procreate, then she shouldn’t have to *enjoy* sex… and if she does, she’s obviously not focusing on the ‘more important’ aspect of sex – procreation.
But that’s purely speculation based on my time in organized religion growing up.
Either way, slut-shaming is alive and well both in Second Life and in real life. i found myself in a discussion on this topic yesterday, stemming from why people might be nervous to play or have scenes in public. i brought up, using myself as an example, that if i were to have a scene with Joe Schmoe during one month’s party, and then have a scene with Bob Smith at the next month’s party, well suddenly i’m a whore because i’m being ‘intimately’ involved with more than one man – despite my being an unowned and unrestricted submissive.
Someone came in, rather loudly and matter-of-factly, that that doesn’t happen. Both that it doesn’t happen generally and that it DEFINITELY doesn’t happen in the place we were speaking of.
Meanwhile, i was speaking from my own personal experiences. After all, my last scene wasn’t public, but it was after a public event, and the next thing i knew i’m hearing about whispered nameless accounts of my activities from that day coming from others who weren’t there/weren’t involved.
And i wasn’t necessarily upset that the gossip tree was alive and well – it is absolutely everywhere. There’s no real way to squash it completely. But what got to me and made me more emotional than i meant to get in that conversation, caught a bit off-guard, is that it was like my experience was being completely invalidated.
No matter how i tried to explain that i was speaking from personal experience, that one person just kept insisting that it never happened there.
i’m GLAD that not everyone has that same experience. And at some point i’ll stop giving a damn what other people think about me enough for that to stop affecting me, but for now it’s still bothersome. And even more bothersome to just be invalidated and dismissed like that.
So all that to say… slut-shaming is still alive and well in Second Life. Please consider what you’re saying before you say it. It affects some people more than others. Just because you might not care if someone was discussing the details of your sexual preferences and experiences in SL doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t care.
Be excellent to each other. ♥
Shape || Mine
Body || Legacy Body (v1.3) | The Shops/The Mesh Project
Head || Nova Head (Evolution Line) (v2.5) | Lelutka
Skin || Daisy Skin (Tan Tone) | MILA
* Hair || Vesper Hair (B&W HUD) | Stealthic | Kustom9 | new!
* Shirt || Monica Shirt | Vagrant
Jeans || Dolly BellBottoms | Vive Nine
* Necklace || Harley Necklace | RealEvil Industries | FaMESHed (Nov)
– You can’t see the necklace too well in this photo, but i wanted to list it in case anyone was wondering what it was. Too see a more close-up photo of the necklace, you can check out my last post.
* Backdrop || Flagship Photo Booth | FoxCity | Uber | new!
Pose || Smiley 1 (curve) | Stun Poses
* Projector Lights || Optional Soft Blue & Red Directional Lights | FoxCity
– These optional directional lights are part of the new VIP group gift of SkinFX projectors
Location || Home
Blogging Tune || “Busyhead” – Noah Kahan
Antisocial Darwinism 