A Slut's Defence

I’ve never partaken in a Slut Walk, nor did I ever intend to. But it’s comments like columnist Naomi Lakritz’s in "Self-respecting women don't call themselves sluts" from this morning’s Calgary Herald that make me want to grab a sign, strip down to my whities and march the streets.

In the 1960s-- the heydays of the sexual revolution-- women calling themselves ‘sluts’ would have appeared odd, even downright misogynist. Four decades later, however, I think it’s safe to say that the social context for females has greatly changed and therefore so has feminism.

Perhaps to Lakritz women calling themselves sluts and parading the streets like sluts is mind boggling, but I liken it to a form of a Pride parade, like the Gay Pride. It’s not about conforming to an idea of proper etiquette. In fact, it’s about subverting exactly that. If you think women are more warranting in jeans and t-shirts, we say women are deserving regardless of what they are wearing. Most importantly we say, “Hey wait, we love our bodies and our desires.”

Today, we want to reclaim things our mothers couldn’t (and probably still wouldn’t) have dared to do. The word slut is one of them.

The Slut Walk is an attempt to regain our sexuality. If that makes us come across as sex objects, well at least the point is getting across!

(Aren’t we all human? Don’t we all have libidos? Aren’t we all therefore sex objects? That to me is being called a “person” first and woman, simply by birth.)

This generation is all about re-appropriation and subversion, whereas the one of my mother’s-- the leaders of female freedom-- was all about emancipation, legally and culturally.

Being called a slut shouldn’t hurt. It shouldn’t have to mean a woman who sleeps willy nilly, here and there, according the whims of man. No. A slut should mean a woman who is proud of her libido and the various ways she wants to celebrate it.

What young females are fighting for today are things that condone parts of our personality. We say, let’s give power to every part of being a woman (i.e. human) which as well as wits and shoes, includes our sexuality.

In 1997, Easton and Hardy first wrote something revolutionary in their book, The Ethical Slut. “To us, a slut is a person of any gender who celebrates sexuality according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you.”

That’s what a slut means to me, today. And I am proud to call myself SLUT.

If you aren’t comfortable walking around in your undies, we aren’t asking you to join. But we feel the need to show ourselves as women, which-- let’s not forget-- also includes our sexual goddesses. We of this generation feel the need to say, hey, that’s o.k.

A Story for Sluts: A look into Cameryn Moore’s “slut (r)evolution”

Her presence is unapologetic. Wearing a skin-tight black tank top with a fiery red girly skirt, her frame -- much like the baggage she brings onstage -- cannot be contained in the space she is allotted.

“Everybody thinks I’m putting [sex] out there, but it’s just ‘cause I have big tits.”

Cameryn Moore is no stranger to the wild and obscene. Her place on stage at the Montreal Fringe Festival is more than fitting. In her second debuting solo-performance, following hot after last year’s award-winning act in “phone whore”, Moore is yet again scoring big for her unconventional loving. In “slut (r)evolution: no one gets there overnight”, Moore details the stories of her very promiscuous and atypical sex life. In a gripping hour of laughs and candid honesty niched comfortably in a local Plateau café, Moore pushes the audience to look beyond her sexual life as an incendiary account. Alas our libido’s are celebrated; slut-dom reclaimed.

“I bring a lot to the party: It’s my civic duty.”

Having grown up in an American Mormon household, Moore has come a long way from her roots. Today she boasts an impressive resumé from burlesque dancing, group sex, kink retreats, lesbian sex, straight sex, all the way to internet dating. She tells the audience her motto for everything and anything that is consensual is “yes”. Quite notably, there is something very empowering in her sexual flirtings.

“I want to get my freak on!”

The word “slut” has deep roots in Moore’s life. It has been used against her as a label for her lifestyle choices-- from dress, mannerisms, and even sexual escapades.
Today, while Moore performs she keeps a copy of “The Ethical Slut” befittingly by her side. As Moore explains, the book is dedicated to reclaiming the word “slut” from the pejorative to mean simply those who lead a consensually promiscuous life. “Words like “slut” are used to police women’s behaviour,” Moore says reflecting on the experience of herself and women around the world; adding that, as this book brings to mind, "we should diffuse words that injure.” For Moore, the personal is very political: this is the mantra of her slut (r)evolution.

Alas, through her wild stories of sex Moore leaves the audience fulfilling her end of the deal as a performer: she has captivated, moved, and brought questions to our assumptions. There is no greater accomplishment in theatre.