I Am A Feminist

"

Welcome to today’s reminder that it’s different for girls. A picture has been circulating on Twitter and Facebook since last night, reportedly taken at Eminem’s Slane Castle gig yesterday. It shows a cluster of men looking at a young man and a young woman. Him: shirt off, shorts down, cock out, arms held high, beaming with triumph. Her: fully clothed, kneeling, sucking.

It’s a grotty scene, and so are the reactions to it, because while there are two people at it in the picture, only one of them has been the focus for the attendant flack. She was given a nickname that’s been trending since (we’re not reproducing it here, because although this is an issue we need to talk about generally, the girl in this specific case has suffered enough publicity). She was also labelled with epithets like “dirty”, “slut”, “rank” and “this is why men fear having daughters”. The guy? He’s as much of a bystander as the ones watching, apparently.

In the world of popular sexual mores, public oral sex is apparently seen as pretty much neutral for men. It’s the woman who gets to be the repository for everything deemed shameful or disgraceful about sex. If a man gets caught in some non-socially-sanctioned screwing, he’s just being a man, and his reputation is unharmed.

The woman, though? She’s disgusting, and deserves all the humiliation people can find to fling at her.

"