I'm in the car, driving my 15-year-old home from school. There's nobody else in the car with us. He starts telling me about his day
(Someone once explained to me, after I had complained that my boys will only broach serious topics with me as I'm driving them somewhere and never while I'm sitting down comfortably at home, that boys will usually talk more, and open up more, in the car, where they know you cannot maintain eye contact with them. I largely think this is correct)
and he gets onto the subject of P.E.
Now P.E. is not my son's favorite class. He doesn't hate it, but he doesn't love it, either. His favorite class is actually Physics. Followed by Calculus.
Jock he is not.
But he has a nice group of friends in P.E., and they all just kind of hang out together and bear it collectively. They call themselves the "Nerd Herd," both in and out of P.E.
Son starts telling me about things they were discussing during P.E. time—words like "linux" and "steam" and "portal" and "pie graphs" and "Alpha" and "Beta" start flying out of his mouth and straight over my head—and then I realize he's started to talk about people.
"So Beta thought—"
"Wait, Beta is a person?"
"Yeah. We have names in the Nerd Herd. I'm Alpha, cause I'm Alpha Nerd. They decided."
(I am so not surprised.)
"Beta is second. When I'm out sick, he's the Alpha, but only when I'm not there."
"Okay....wow. What are some of the other people's names?"
"Well, we have Omega, and Fucker—"
"Wait, you have someone who's nickname is Fucker?"
"Yeah. He wanted it."
"Oh sheesh."
"If you don't like that, you're not going to like the others."
"Okay," I say, granting he's probably right. "But what about the girls? You do have girls in the group, don't you?"
"Yeah. Two."
"What are their names?"
"We call them the whores."
At this point, it was hard for me to drive, because my jaw was jamming the steering wheel.
"Son," I say, "that is NOT OKAY. Why would you do that? Why would you call these two girls whores? Do you understand how hard it is in general for girls to be nerds? How everything they do ends up being tied up somehow to their sexuality? How they're put down and insulted for daring to try to be included in circles of gamers and nerds?"
"Okay. Jeez, mom."
"No, it is not okay. It's very wrong for you guys to call them whores, just for being members of your group. What the hell were you thinking?"
"We were thinking it's funny."
"Well it's not. At all. You need to stop."
"It's supposed to be derogatory towards us, mom. Towards the guys."
"How—how is it derogatory towards the guys?"
"Because the joke is that no girls would be willing to be in our group unless we paid them."
I didn't have a clue what to say. I'm not exaggerating here: all possible answers were just wind-swept out of my head. Because when I looked at it from his point of view...yes, they were insulting themselves, not these girls, and certainly not women in general.
But it still didn't sit well with me.
Son then went on to tell me that the girls know about the name (it's not something the boys call them behind their backs), that they agree it's funny, and that they laugh about it, too.
Does this make it okay?
Can it ever be okay to call a women whores?
But then, maybe I'm whore shaming now? Certainly a woman has the right to label herself whatever she wants, and not have to get flak for it. The word "whore" doesn't have to be derogatory unless we designate it as an insult.
It can be a fact, not an epithet.
But for a group of boys to label girls "whores," even if it's to put down themselves, even if they don't mean it as an insult to the girls in question...it bothers me.
I'm just not sure I can articulate why.
... because to reclaim a word, to strip it of the negativity attached to it, it's the oppressed who have to take it on -- actively, proudly, not as a nod to the class who uses it to oppress them, but of their own volition. It can be ok for a woman to call herself a whore or a slut or even a bitch, if she's doing it not out of ignorance but with full knowledge of the word's cultural connotations. I have certainly known "whores" who have chosen this label and wear it with pride (check out the Poetry Brothel project, for one example). But until this word loses its negative, scornful meaning and stops being a tool of shaming and bullying women for their sexuality, it will not be alright to use it to address a woman, either to her face or behind her back, and say it's ok because the women acquiesce. Especially when these women are young girls who may not fully understand the implications of such terms, or may be too shy to reject them. As you correctly pointed out, it's hard for women to be "nerds" -- these girls may simply be happy to be accepted as part of the "boys' club" and thus agree to any labels. While they may be aware enough to understand the joke and be ok with it, I still don't think that it's ok, given that they didn't start it.... I fully agree with your gut instinct on this one!
ReplyDeleteIt's a lot like how I feel about the word "cunt" - somewhat confused. Added to the fact that it's a harsh sounding word (so is "fuck" for that matter) it has always had a conflicted, misogynist context for me. Why would a man describe a woman contemptuously as that which he spend most of his live trying to get into? But used within the context of a consensual sex act, that’s another story.
ReplyDeleteWhy it's not ok:
ReplyDelete1) because it makes no sense. The message is supposed to be "no girls would be our friends unless we paid them," but these girls ARE friends with them without being paid. The more consistent term would be "slut," not "whore," because they'll be friends with anyone.
2) because according to the current logic, they ARE insulting the girls. They are saying "you are friends with guys who no one would be with unless paid, and you aren't even getting paid. You are wet blankets who hang out with losers for free. You let yourself get nerd-raped every day."
And/or they are saying "you are not actually doing a good job of being female, because if you were, you wouldn't hang out with us for free, like you are. REAL girls don't want to be our friends. You therefore are not completely feminine. You can be EITHER be a real nerd OR a real girl, not both."
2) because it names the girls on the basis of their position vis-a-vis the boys. They are not named for their own identities, but rather for what they are in relation to the male members of the group.
3) because the girls might be saying it's OK just because they don't feel comfortable expressing that they don't like it. They might feel uncomfortable deep down and not want to admit it to themselves. Or they might admit it to themselves and not to the boys. Or they might feel OK with it now and wonder, 10 years from now, suddenly "why the hell did I let those guys call me a 'whore'? Why did I let them do that?"
4) because even if the girls really are OK with it, it still doesn't mean that it's OK for your kid to do something a little asshole-y. Getting permission from 2 particular girls to be sexist doesn't make it OK.