By an Anonymous Contributor
I was sexually abused as a child by my own nanny.
I wouldn’t say that it was severe abuse that prolonged for months, but it did happen more than once when I was a very young child and curious about sex. That curiosity started with porn magazines and videos my uncle left at our house. My nanny caught me with the stuff and consequently abused my trust. I am lucky I realized that I was Not Guilty when I was around 17.
In short, I am a survivor of sexual abuse. I like to think of myself as having a growth mindset, so feminism, equality, and human rights are topics that I love getting into.
On Facebook, I posted about how I, like many other women, chose to minimize an incident of sexual transgression for the sake of the party. A guy slapped my rump as I was making my way past him to sit down. Big deal, right? Again, minimizing the situation. But that’s another conversation.
My post invited several other girls to comment, much like this website. One of my friends said, “Your incident reminded me of something that happened to me years ago, and I was called a slut for it…” So I kindly responded to her saying that It is unfortunate that even other girls would slut shame victims. I posted online that I even overheard a beauty queen slut shame someone and it blew my mind because slut shaming has to stop. It is so pervasive in our culture that continuing to do so just brings all women down. The more you slut shame someone, the easier it is for others to call any girl a slut.
So this beauty queen registers my comment and privately messages me. We have an intense exchange, and my only issue is that all people, especially women, need to stop slut shaming eachother. She began her message telling me about her sexual abuse and how much she hated sluts and prostitutes. Her angle is that prostitutes and sluts in her beauty queen world make her job hard. That she takes offense when someone defends a slut because she’s worked her whole life trying not to be one. She also feels like she has the right to call anyone a slut, much like a spade is a spade. Totally degrading, and she doesn’t even know it.
I tried my best to convey to her my message, that slut shaming is wrong and you shouldn’t do it in public no matter WHO the person is. But she made it all about herself and had to defend herself until the end. She couldnt understand why I couldn’t see things her way, and I kept telling her that I did and that I even have the same views as her. I just wanted to tell her slut shaming is wrong.
After watching Ione Wells’ talk on sexual assault on social media, I had to put in my piece. Victims and survivors must know they are not guilty, that in fact we do share common beliefs, and we need to stop talking over each other. I feel so let down by this beauty queen. She’s supposed to be educated and support equality and all the good things women can especially offer. In this case, she was clearly thinking and speaking as a victim, and couldn’t help but show me her prejudice and hate on social media. She twisted my only point and made it all about her, defending herself and simply afraid and defiant to admit that maybe she was wrong. She can’t seem to understand that a slut is a derogatory term for a woman. Her ignorance and defiance made me sick. I am sad some victims cannot think in a healthy light about women’s rights and choose to be so selective about justice. I just hope everyone can realize they are NOT GUILTY, before they go on to spread victim blaming behavior and justify themselves further.