SL*T!!!

It's like she's in my head.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Recently, I have been re-listening to some of the Now Playing podcasts, particularly the Halloween and F13 retrospective episodes. In both, the word 'slut' is tossed about pretty liberally to describe just about any woman who is sexually active in the movies. This drives me batshit crazy because as I've ranted before, being sexually active should not be grounds for calling a woman a slut. I don't think I put it into words quite as well as The Frenemy who articulates why it is such a demeaning, hurtful thing to call a woman.

For example, in their discussion of Halloween 5, one of the guys (I don't know which) says of Annie, "what an annoying little slut" then goes on to explain that he is NOT calling her that to be misogynistic, "she is actually a slut". Uh, huh? There is no basis for this classification whatsoever. Annoying she is, but why slutty? Because of her Halloween costume? Because she wants to have sex with her boyfriend? Why is that slutty? If you aren't being misogynistic, then what are you being?

Similarly, in their discussion of RZ's Halloween, he (I'm pretty sure it's the same dude) describes Judith as a "mean slut". Again, I am assuming this is because she would rather sleep with her boyfriend than take her kid brother trick-or-treating.

Just now, I was listening to their Terminator retrospective and during their attempt to figure out if John Connor knew that Kyle Reese was his father when he decided to send him back, one of them (the lady whom I believe is the wife of the guy who made the other slut comments) asks, "Did [John] know his mom was a slut?" The slut designation here is being placed on Sarah Connor because she slept with Reese after knowing him for one night. While we learn in T2 that Sarah would shack up with guys in attempts to find a protector for John, I still am bothered about passing judgment on her as a person based on her sex life.

This denigration of a woman based on her sexual active is so disturbing to me. It is especially upsetting when the person using the term implies that when the slut dies she is getting what she deserves and not just because she's "annoying" or "mean" but also because she is a slut.

Perhaps I find it most bothersome because some people have take this Madonna/whore moralizing in horror movies to such an extreme. While I agree that some filmmakers have made that part of the formula, I don't buy it as a requirement.