SLUT

From AlterNet:

Why America Hates Paris Hilton

I've found a lot of the conversation around the Paris Hilton jailing to be very troubling -- people don't want to see her incarcerated because she broke the law, but because she's a "stupid bimbo," a "skanky little whore," a "stupid bitch," a "ho," a "piece of white trash," a "ignorant cum hole on a stick," a "fucking whorebag," a "whinning pussystretched crab infested skank," a "spoiled cunt," etc etc. And those are just from the first 150 comments on the post linked above. Other commenters hoped that she'd get a "full-cavity search," talked about their sexual gratification at the sight of her crying and the description of her being dragged off by a prison guard, expressed their desire for her to be raped, and even said that "the next story should be about the whore dying." Even artists are getting into the game, supposedly critiquing drunk driving by depicting Paris dead, naked and with her legs spread open (created, notably, by the same dude who did the pro-life Britney-birthing statue).

I think it's fascinating that of all the disgusting things Paris Hilton has done -- using racial, anti-Semitic and sexual slurs, mocking "lesser" rural people on The Simple Life, acting condescendingly and generally cruelly toward anyone who crosses her path, driving drunk -- what people are really upset about is the fact that she's a slut. Yes, she's technically being punished for driving without a license, but that isn't what makes everyone so gleeful about her stint in jail -- it's the pretty-little-rich-whore getting her comeupance.

Click here for the rest.

I think that the 1970s ended for me in the late 1990s. Until that point I had pretty much believed that American social attitudes about sexuality had fundamentally changed, that the sexual revolution had actually accomplished something, that the sex-hating Puritans were simply a fringe group continually dwindling into irrelevance, that most people didn't care who you were sleeping with or why, that sex was an individual's personal business. Then they impeached President Clinton for an adulterous blowjob. Oh yes, of course, technically it was about giving misleading answers concerning his affair with Monica Lewinsky during a deposition, but the rhetoric was all about sex. Even the majority of Americans who wisely understood that Clinton's crime didn't rise to the level of impeachment seemed to be shaking their heads and wagging their fingers in judgment of the President's sexual escapades. That's when I realized that, in spite of the endless stream of mass media sexual imagery we endure 24/7 here in the US, public attitudes about sex aren't what I believed them to be.

The Scarlet Letter never went away.

Say what you want about Paris Hilton. I think she's a useless parasite, myself. But having sex with lots of people is not a good reason to condemn her. I mean, yeah, it was funny as hell when South Park blasted her for it, but really, sexual promiscuity isn't hurting her or anybody else, assuming she's safe about it. And it's sexist. It's primitive and superstitious. Just stupid when you get right down to it. And it's nobody's fucking business anyway, even if she walks around half naked all the time.

Big fucking deal.

Why do so many people get so vicious when they judge her for being a "slut"?



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