How do I act sexually without someone thinking I'm a slut?

[Heather]

New advice column up today:

gorg.mel asks:
How do I text my significant other without coming off as a thot or a whore?

Heather Corinna replies:
The idea that women who sexually express themselves in any number of ways -- like something as simple as expressing sexual desires to a partner through words, be it in speech or text -- are sluts, people without or with less value or only sexual value, "bad" women or any of the other crappy things usually meant by people who think like this comes from sexism.

It's sexist to believe that women can only sexually express themselves acceptably in certain ways or else they lack value or worth because they're women. Words like you're using here are almost exclusively applied only to women. Even when they're rarely used about men, they don't pack anything close to the same punch. We get questions from users who are girls or women nearly every day expressing this kind of concern. I could count the number of times on my fingers in fifteen years of this work that men or boys have expressed similar concerns, and most of them have been gay or bisexual.

Even the idea that people who are earnestly whores (who engage in prostitution or other kinds of sex work) are "bad" women is usually about sexism. Hint: they're just people with a job they can do or want to do for the same or similar reasons people choose other kinds of work, like so they can eat and keep a roof over their heads. It's also often about some other kinds of discrimination -- like discrimination around economic class or race: women of color, for instance, are far more frequently arrested for prostitution than white women -- but sexism is usually the biggie.

Ultimately, what you're asking me is how to avoid sexism.

Here's the bad news: we often can't. If only!

Sexism is pervasive, like racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia or other bias or bigotry. No one is magically immune or untouched by it, especially anyone who any of those biases are about. We can't avoid it by only behaving in certain ways, because this stuff touches everything, and it's very arbitrary: there isn't one set of standards everyone sexist shares that a person can know and easily meet.

In fact, that's a big part of what makes -isms of any kind so awful. Because it's not really about how we behave, we can't often avoid it by certain ways of behaving. It's about who we are, no matter how we behave. So, unless you choose not to be a woman -- and are also not considered a woman by someone -- you can't avoid sexism. Heck, sexism even impacts people who aren't women: no one's immune.

Here's the good news: you can make choices that limit how much, and in what interactions and ways, you have to deal with it. That includes your intimate relationships and your sexual expressions with someone else. There are some relationships, interactions and situations where the choices we make absolutely can greatly limit the amount or kind of sexism we experience...

Read the rest here: http://www.scarleteen.com/article/gende ... _im_a_slut