I am a worker on a project called the RISE Project at my college, Warren Wilson. We work on educating the community about sexual abuse, domestic abuse, healthy relationships, and safe sex.
Facebook
I posted Friday on a Facebook event titled "National Punch a Slut Day." While the day is now past, people contnue to post on the wall of the event. Facebook has done nothing to take down the page even though many people have now reported it. A mother posted on the page asking for people to stop because her 12 year old daughter had come home from school early because she had been punched so many times. People responded to her post by saying her daughter wouldn't have been beat up had she not been a "slut." Further more, a few of us have been writing on the wall calling for the hate to stop. As a result, we have been attacked by many of the people "attending" the event. Below are some of the original posts to the wall of this event.
Please spread the word. Feel free to use this note or write your own. Crap like this has to stop.
This is an event on facebook.
national punch a slutt day
Location:anywher there is a slutt
Time:12:00AM Friday, April 30th
I saw that a few of my friends on facebook were attending this and was horrified. I knew I had to address it. First off, what is a slutt? Usually, this word is used in relation to the sexual double standard for males and females where males who have lots of sex are "players" and females who have lots of sex are "sluts." While this may sound like educated prattle, being called a "slut" can be incredibly hurtful. This event is incredibly sexist in that it is reinforcing sexist attitudes towards females.
Second, this event is encouraging violence.
*1 in 3 females worldwide will be raped in their lifetime.
*1 in 4 females will be raped before they turn 18.
Over the last two weeks, I have organized a series of events revolving around safer sex on my campus. It was kicked off with a "Safe Sex Fun Sex Fair" at which I had hundreds of condoms (including the ones I received from the Great American Condom Campeign), STI trivia, and Planned Parenthood to hand out information. We had many people come through the fair and receive lots of information and take away many condoms.
The next event was on-campus HIV testing done by Planned Parenthood and the Western North Carolina AIDS progect. We had 40 available tests and every single one was taken! Planned Parenthood also brought Plan-B to sell for $15, which was awesome. Last week we had two workshops, one was done by a professor from my campus who talked about his experience living in New York in the 1980's. His workshop was very well attended by a diverse group of students. The Next workshop was from te Western North Carolina AIDS Project who brought a lot of information on AIDS and other STIs. The final event is happening tonight. It is a wokshop called "Sexy Talk Party." It will be a role-play party to talk about how to disclose having an STI to a partner as well as conversations about consent in relationships. All the spots for the workshop were filled so we are hoping for a great turn out. We are planning to distribute all of the left over condoms from the fair to the dorms on campus, especially the freshmen dorms.
I was very happy to receive a lot of support from the Dean of Students at my school and am hoping for a safer attitude campus regarding sex and STIs. I hope everyone else who has received condoms is having as much success and me distributing them! Good luck in all your efforts.
