This could possibly be my shortest blog post ever, a close second to “we let women lead.”
In the past month or so I have heard several different men & women say things like this: “I’m such an approval whore” or “I’m a whore for chocolate” or “I’m an attention whore.” Everyone laughed.
It made me cringe inside and I remember thinking, “This is what happens when your eyes get opened to injustice. You start noticing stuff you never noticed before and then you have to consider doing something about it.”
And then I pushed it down in the moment because I don’t want to be one of those hard-ass judgy people who critique every little thing that people say. That feels yucky, and I know I can say all kinds of unintentionally-not-good-things, too. I also know when they said these words it doesn’t come from a bad place or a mean heart. These people care about women and people deeply and were just using it as a figure of speech.
It’s just become normal to use the word “whore” as a common phrase without thinking of its underpinning.
It’s supposed to be funny.
But it’s not.
No woman sets out to sell her body for sex.
No woman is meant to sell her body for sex.
No woman should have to sell her body for sex.
And we shouldn’t be joking about it.
When we use the word “whore” tacked onto our language like it’s nothing, it desensitizes us to the plight of our sisters.
It minimizes the reality that right now as i’m writing these words and as you are reading them there are countless number of women whose bodies are being used for sex because they are either being forced to or they have no other options.
Yeah, “whore” is just something I hope to see taken out of our vocabulary completely.
Words matter.
I would love for us to find another way to say what we’re trying to say that doesn’t further degrade what’s already being degraded.
It’s really not funny. And it’s definitely not the right word.