Most female-specific stereotypes are based in the universal fear of an unbridled and autonomous female sexuality. For women on welfare, this is complicated by their assumed undesirability and dependency on a patriarchal state economic system as well as the physical and material ways that poverty and working class lifestyles are visible on the body. Women on welfare are perceived and discriminated against in terms of their sexual activity and their body image. It is assumed that loose sexual morals or deviant desires placed them in the shameful status of poor; but not just poor—poor women that no man wants or that men only want for one thing.
As a teenage girl from a welfare family I automatically was labeled as SLUT, actually long before I was a teenager, by the time I was nine. There are two kinds of girls, those you marry and those you don’t—if you are poor you are a don’t. My sexuality was named and positioned before I was sexual. Adults were constantly deciding that their sons and daughters were not allowed to be around me and especially not allowed in my house/apartment (whatever it happened to be that month)…
I have also been noting how the assumptions of ignorance particularly diminish poor women and the incredible brilliance they operate in. Stupid girls make easy girls.
"—
—Tammy Rae Carland, “Reflections of a Stupid Slut” (from I <3 Amy Carter)
Dear Hugo Schwyzer,
Poverty does not make girls, as you say, hypsersexualized, competitive, and promiscuous. Being poor (or being nonwhite) makes rich, white, sexist men project their own feelings about the availability and worth of poor and nonwhite women onto their bodies in order to justify abusing them.
(via rgr-pop)
I just clicked the link and read that thing hugo wrote. It is so…the worst most wrong fallacious illogical string of thoughts you could say about this one thing. Why would he even try to speak on the motivations of young women at community college? Why would he think he knew— WITHOUT ASKING ANYONE!— why they dress a way? “Don’t take my word for it…see for yourself!” He has absolutely ZERO insight and NO respect for other people’s autonomy. Everything that this dude says is the biggest red flag forever HOW DOES HE HAVE THE INFLUENCE THAT HE HAS?!
(via liquornspice)
the Magic of Whiteness
(via so-treu)
When I first read that piece, I had just found out that he had previously been having sex with his students for who knows how long, so to my mind what he was really saying was… “What could blame me? Look at what I have to put up with, with their short skirts, high heels and twitching butts! They practically threw themselves at me!” In other words, they asked for it.
Even if he never comes right out and says it, people hear what he is saying in that deep part of their minds where the hyper sexualization of young girls of color and women of color has been drummed into them for centuries.
(via nanettehb)
Thank you all for the commentary.
(via pastimperfection)
(via cosmopolitan-fascist)
