Slut. Bitch. Whore. Trash. Ugly. Too Fat. Too Skinny. Not good enough. Go Kill Yourself. And all my life, I was told that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words would never hurt me”; however, our language and words have the ability to rip each other down and mentally and emotionally leave scars. Bruises and cuts heal, but the damage words have can elicit a lifelong battle of recovery. These words are ingrained in our society and are used millions of times a day and our society allows it to happen. We use these words to describe women on a daily basis and therefore, discriminate against women and their actions. However, our society is too quick to blame men for shaming women and their actions when the reality is women are brutal to one another as well. Women have learned that in order to promote themselves they must put another woman down in the process. We destroy each other in order to better our own social standing. In a world that is male dominated, there are enough people to do that for us.
In order for women to flourish, we need to start supporting eachother, rather than ripping eachother donw. The words we use to put each other down are deadly at times and there needs to be an end to this madness. Slut shaming, body shaming and the use of our language needs to be altered and stopped completely. It is important to end this culture because of how influential these words are on our generation as well as generations to come.
Ending the slut shaming culture begins with recognizing it is wrong, changing our own perspectives, altering our choices of words and striving to promote each other and congratulate each other on our successes. I am a woman who wants equality and justice; therefore, I need to alter my own word choices and actions to end this culture. I am in no way perfect. No one is. I have fallen astray and said things I am not proud of, but recognizing that and how unjust my actions and words have been helps me realize that this is not someone I want not be or not a society I want to live in. Women need to respect themselves and each other in order to have an impact on the world at all so let us all work together to be positive influences in the world.