Airial Clark, writing at Good Vibrations Magazine, describes how she has had to combat her 11 year old son learning Slut-Shaming on the Playground.
The whole piece is awesome and quite frankly, I feel as though educators could learn a lot from this example. Here's a little taster, but the best bit is further along in the piece:
This is where it gets interesting for me as a sex positive parent. My son just went from wishing he was sexy to shaming a girl for being just that? I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to do some unpacking.
“Um, so what about the boys she is kissing, should they be ashamed too? She’s not kissing herself…”
I do not feel I have anything to add (not yet a parent, and besides, Airial's post is pretty self-contained and has everything). I'm mainly posting this to do what little I can to boost the signal and get this piece of awesomeness heard by a few more people if possible.
I'll leave you with Airial's closing remarks:
I don’t want to raise a hypocritical judgmental misogynist. Which means I have to have these conversations with him NOW, not when he’s 21 and in college.
I’m learning that what goes down in the dorm room starts on the playground. And mama ain’t havin’ it.
The more deeply we allow attitudes like slut-shaming to become embedded in a young person's mind, the harder they are to extract even partially.
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