Evelin Ramirez and Dorian are two self-proclaimed sluts currently residing in Oakland. Evelin is originally from Nayarit, Mexico and Dorian is from Erie, Pennsylvania. Evelin organized SlutWalk San Francisco for three years and is now working as a legal assistant. In this interview, I ask them about being empowered sluts and how they combat rape culture.
Do you call yourself a slut?
Dorian: I definitely call myself a slut and have for quite sometime. For me that means that I take a lot of pleasure in deciding for myself what I will and won’t do. Coming to a point where I can embrace the word slut has meant coming to a point where what I’m doing is about me and not necessarily based on how someone is perceiving me. My identity isn’t compromised by whomever I’m engaging with or whatever behaviors I’m engaging in.
Evelin: Right now I am just abstaining from sex and I’m not promiscuous per say. I was married to somebody for six years so I tend to be more of a serial monogamist. I do what I want with my body. I dress it how I want. I sleep with whomever I want. I don’t let people impose rules as to how it should look or how I should feel based on their perceptions of who I should be. For me, it’s more of a political definition. When I do have sex with somebody, I do it because I want to. If I feel like I want to share physical intimate space with somebody I’m going to do it.
What is empowering about using the word slut to identify yourself?
Evelin: For me, it was ridiculous to think that there was a certain type of woman that deserved to be raped or sexually brutalized. Not only is there a certain type of woman, we have a word for her. She’s usually defined as someone who is sexually promiscuous or sexually permissive. She probably wears revealing clothing or tight pants. She probably exposes her breasts or allows men to enter her physical space without having a lot of boundaries. [Sluts] could be really kind people, really smart people, really talented people, but society has deemed that this person who looks this way is a slut, and this slut allows people in her personal space therefore when she gets raped, she deserves that. That logic means nothing to me. After the research that I did, rape survivors spend about $150,000 of their own money to recover from psychological and physical damage. I don’t see how that is warranted by the fact that this woman didn’t have the right boundaries that society deems appropriate to prevent sexual assault. I get really offended when anybody has anything negative to say about somebody who doesn’t conform to the archetype of the modest woman. There’s sluts who don’t wear make-up. There’s sluts who don’t wear tight clothing. I’m a slut and I dress like a freaking nun.
Dorian: In terms of what is empowering for me is that now I can call myself a slut. I wasn’t the first one to use that word to describe myself. That’s been leveled at me since I was like 12, since I was little. At the time it was just an easy thing to call me. It was something that was used to shut me down and to shut me up for a really long time. My world cracked open once I started claiming that for myself, because for me now, slut implies agency, and that’s what freaked people out about me. They were so quick to call me a slut because they saw that I was moving through the world my own way, and that is really, really threatening to some people. It’s been a vulnerable place to be in, but it’s also been exhilarating to actually be able to state what I want, what I’m looking for, and what I’m drawn to. It has put a lot of people off and it has really distanced me from certain people. It’s a litmus test at this point because if someone is really that offended by the way I am living my life, then it’s probably best to keep that distance. I’ve been able to find this really wonderful community of other sluts and like-minded people in the process of being able to call myself that.
How do people react when you tell them you’re a slut?
Evelin puts her arms out and stands back as if she couldn’t believe what she heard.
Evelin: I get a lot of that, especially when I was trying to invite people to the walk. Slutwalk doesn’t translate very well into Spanish. So when I was coming up to people inviting them to “Marcha de las putas,” they were just like that.
Dorian: I feel like a lot of people laugh when I say it. They think I’m kidding, and I mean I am being flippant when I say it, some part of me. But I get a lot of uncomfortable laughter or I get people who are like “No, you’re not that slutty. No, I wouldnt call you slutty.” And it’s just like, I just did. I don’t care if you call me slutty, I am the one calling it. I had someone confront me today and they were like “I don’t understand how you can call yourself a spinster, but then you’re also a slut. How does that work?” For me, they overlap. That says to me that I’m deciding for myself and I am moving through the world as a solo person. It’s some weird, internalized shame thing for others, but no, I was ashamed before I started calling myself that.
How did you start organizing with SlutWalk?
Evelin: I saw it on a gossip website and I e-mailed them. They said there was nobody organizing it in San Francisco, and if I wanted to start it. Honestly, my intention was only to volunteer and do something that someone was already doing. I didn’t realize they were going to put me in charge. Once they asked me, I just couldn’t say no. I felt it was really important and I didn’t want to say no. I had no intention in devoting so much time to it. We did two annual walks and they were really successful. It opened up so many new doors, but that was never my intention. I was feeling lazy when I first contacted them. I started the whole network, the coalition and then six weeks after I started, I met someone who was interested. But the first six weeks, it was just me going out with my stupid little flyers. It was awkward.
Did it get you out of your comfort zone?
Evelin: Oh yeah. I suffer from a panic disorder. I am a childhood rape survivor, so by the time I was six I had been raped twice. I wasn’t called a slut, but I heard different versions of rape apologies. I was five years old and my best friend’s uncle raped me in their house and my mom’s answer to that was, “Well you used to love going to that house. You must have liked it.” To me that was the same old rendition that other rape survivors get, “Oh you were wearing tight jeans, you must have been asking for it. You were wearing a skirt, you were revealing your breasts.” It’s all a way to make an excuse for something that is really horrible. I was really angry because I didn’t get any support from my family. I knew that a lot of the PTSD studies were initially done on vets. But for women PTSD most commonly occurs because of sexual trauma. When it’s childhood sexual trauma that does something to your psyche. Your personality is affected, your ability to connect with people, your eating patterns, sleeping patterns, depression, all of that is affected by childhood sexual trauma. So, I was really angry and I wanted a way to connect with other people. I wasn’t trying to be the chief organizer, but that ended up happening so maybe the universe saw that I needed this and allowed me to become an organizer for this. The first six weeks were tough. However, it was amazing how many women were opening up to me about their sexual trauma. I was talking to people on the bus, on BART. After they heard what it meant, they opened up. It was like, “You know, I was raped and nobody gave a shit.” Or, “I was raped going home from school.”, “ I was raped by my pimp.” It was this common thread amongst all of these different women who probably would never acknowledge each other on the street. They had all experienced sexual trauma and they had all heard that same bullshit of “It must have been your fault,” either from family members or from the authorities themselves. That’s how that started. I learned a lot about organizing and the inner politics of San Francisco activism which seems beautiful in theory, but that shit is gnarly sometimes. There’s a lot of groups who aren’t very supportive of each other and when you don’t know anything about [organizing] you come in a fresh face and everybody thinks you’re dumb. Eventually you start seeing things for how they really are and you realize that [sexual violence] is a really complicated discussion. Then I got into policy and economic analysis. Then I did a couple of focus group films with ethnographic material on gender violence. It’s been really a gift. I didn’t want to invest that much time to it, and I ended up giving three years of my life to it.
Have you ever made to feel ashamed for your sexual agency?
Dorian: Always. I am a survivor of sexual abuse too, so I can’t even remember a time before someone else wasn’t imposing some pretty opressive stuff on me. I’m trans, so I grew up being read as a straight girl for a really long time and not really being in my body at all. I was sexually active from a very early age. I had a lot of encounters that weren’t exactly consensual. I was made to feel like shit for enjoying what I did. That was the worst part. The fact that i actually loved sex really freaked people out especially when I was young. Then, I came out as a lesbian but I slept with men so I was being policed from both sides. Then, I came out as trans and it was this whole other thing. So becoming a slut and being read as a gay man has had a whole different set of implications and whole different levels of risks. It’s been a learning curve and there’s been a lot of opposition every step of the way. Ultimately, I’ve had a lot of practice with tuning that out. It’s been sort of a privilege to move through these different identities and decide for myself each time what I was hanging on to and what I was ready to leave.
Evelin: I started developing really young, and dealing with early childhood trauma my sexuality was imposed upon me, especially when you’re big chested and pubescent and start attracting attention from men, from people, sometimes it was from women too, who should know better. This child has big breasts, but she’s still a child. There were all of these different misunderstandings of who I was. People would pay attention to my body, but I was also in honor classes. I really liked to crochet and I liked to cook and I’m more of a tomboy. I never felt feminine and because I had a big chest, people were imposing a gender stereotype upon me, “She should wear this. This is how she should look. She knows she has a big chest, why is she taunting that guy. Men are men and they are going to react to the sexual advances of a young girl.” Now, I am 32, I am divorced and I don’t have sex with anybody. I really like that freedom because a lot of women don’t have that. A lot of women feel like they belong to a man or that their sexuality belongs to some man. My sexuality is mine, and it was taken from me for a long period of time and I was haunted by it. I felt like it was abused not just by the rapist but society in general. Now that in my 30’s I finally feel like it’s my body and I am going to dress it how I want. And if I don’t want anybody touching it, then no one is going to touch it. I feel really empowered at this point in my life.
Was there tolerance for slut where you grew up in?
Dorian: I don’t know if there is tolerance anywhere. I remember getting that from my mom, both of my parents actually. I was a kid and as sneaky as I thought I was being, I wasn’t all that sneaky when I look back. I remember getting warnings from members of my family and from a few teachers who overstepped their bounds and decided to let me know implications and that boys were going to think things and it was my job to make sure people didn’t get the wrong impression. Looking back, it makes sense that most of my friends were guys and mostly gay guys. At the time, there was something about that, that really seemed to threaten people. I remember from a very early age people telling me, “You’re not one of those girls. Don’t let them think that you’re one of those girls.” Everyone seemed to know who those girls were and looking back I was sluttier than all of them! I learned to keep that really secret, and there’s a dissonance that comes up when you have to sneak around and hide what you’re doing and feel like you have to apologize for behaviors that are based on what you want or who you are.
Evelin: I just always heard the urban legend of the girl who had a gangbang. I’m from Southern California, and there was always a legend of some girl who had a gang bang. Nobody knew her personally, they just knew of her. I always thought to myself, that poor girl, she must have these low fucking standards because theses guys are all turdy. These were guys who spoke of this girl and called those types of girls bitches, “Oh those bitches like that.” Maybe they didn’t throw the word slut around, but it was definitely girls who were sexually promiscuous or allowed boys to touch them when parents weren’t around. There was always that rumor. There was definitely no acceptance. By the time I was 16, I was severly depressed and into a gothic stage. I was wearing tons of makeup and just black all the time, so nobody called me a slut then.
What is rape culture?
Evelin: What I think it means, and it’s not textbook, because I have a different definition of it is the artifacts, the technology, the knowledge that’s created by our society. Media promotes women’s bodies to be accessible. To a certain extent the women who are portraying themselves in the media that way have agency. The fact that a lot of them make so much money after they make their bodies accessible, I think that’s evidence of rape culture. The fact that the only reason we know who Kim Kardashian is because of a sex tape, or the fact that Pamela Anderson has had so much longevity because of a sex tape, to me that’s a symptom of rape culture. Rape culture isn’t tangible, but you can see it in symptoms. It’s all the messages you see reinforcing this idea that women’s bodies are here to please sexually or in other forms of exploitation whether it be to clean your house or be your servant. It’s not just women, now that I think about it. It’s that you don’t need consent to have access to a person’s body. There’s rape culture in everyday interactions. Like being really aggressive and how for some people it’s okay to be really aggressive. People think that without asking consent, you are more in charge. I think that rape culture has little tentacles. It’s not just specific to sex. It’s that certain people’s bodies are accessible to other people who have more power. That’s what rape is about.
Dorian: I’m thinking about spaces that are set up that way. I’m thinking about ladies’ nights at bars. Sometimes it’s really insidious because feminism has gained traction and these discussions are now out there. We want to believe that we are beyond it, but now it operates in these really insidious ways where women get in and they drink for free. But the draw for men that are showing up for ladies’ night is that they’re going to be surrounded by a lot of women that are intoxicated. A lot of it is coming from establishments and institutions that are set up that way to inherently unbalance dynamics. You come in early and you get in for free. There’s no cover because you are already drunk by the time that men start showing up at the bar. There is something really unbalanced about that, but it’s presented as a perk for women because they’re drinking for free and they don’t have to pay to get in. No one wants to actually look at what the cost of that is. Rape culture is being able to ask in the courtroom, “What was she wearing at the time of the assault?” The fact that’s even permitted in cases is evidence that it’s really embedded in our laws and institutions. I feel like unless we are really conscious as individuals, it’s really hard not to be a participant in rape culture. I think that’s why a lot of people don’t want to talk about it because we’ve all played our part in one way or another. As much as I can talk now about how I was bullied for being a slut, I called other girls slut when I was growing up, and I probably made some of them really miserable. I don’t know how to acknowledge the pervasiveness of rape culture if we don’t acknowledge the ways that we’re perpetuating it, even if we are claiming to be victims of it a lot of the time. That’s where it gets really messy and where a lot of people shut down because they don’t want to start investigating the ways that they help move this machine along.
Evelin: Lately I’ve witnessed a lot of rape culturish behavior among older men feeling like they have access to the bodies of younger men in lower ranking employment positions. I saw a man slam an 18-year-old kid into some lockers by his collar and then grab his scrotum. The fact that there were four other men there laughing, that was rape culture.
How can people engage in discussion and action against rape culture and slut shaming?
Dorian: I think a lot of my dealings now are with cisgendered men and usually older. There’s a huge gap in experience and awareness. I see a lot in gay culture of what you’re [Evelin] talking about, where there’s an age difference, a financial difference, and where people know their places. A lot of them do feel like they have access to anyone else’s bodies and will really impose that. That’s kind of glorified in gay culture. I’m at a point now where because they read me as male, I can speak to them and sometimes they hear me. Not always, and not always the way that I’m trying to come across. I can definitely tell that when I speak in a room now, people hear me in a way they did not when they read me as a woman. I know when you [Evelin] were doing your focus group there was this issue about men watching their friends do some pretty shady stuff when it came to picking up women and how they didn’t feel like they needed to intervene. This mentality is out there right now. People who want to enact some change and recognize that they have a degree of power really need to use that and speak up where they can because a lot of the time people being assaulted or being oppressed aren’t able to necessarily make a stand for themselves because they have too much to lose or too much to fear by coming forward that way. For men who are trying to make a difference and interrupt some of these patterns they need to be talking to other men. They need to be checking their friends and checking strangers and stepping into situations even when it’s awkward. There’s a lof guilt around privilege and, “Oh this isn’t my battle.” But if people are going to listen to you, you need to be speaking. There’s a lot that can be done on a daily basis, just recognizing whose voices are absent or missing from discussions and making sure you are not just looking away.
Evelin: You don’t have to go to a march to be an ally. If you see something, then say something. Take precaution, but at the same time don’t encourage your friend to take that drunk girl home. When you’re hating on someone or trying to belittle them, check your insult. Why are you saying that? What does that imply? Why do you have to make somebody else feel less than you? One of the reasons I stopped organizing is because I felt I wasn’t living those truths. I was telling people to take agency in their lives, but I was in an abusive relationship. A lot of the activism starts in your own everyday life. Are you accountable for your actions every day? Are you stepping on people? Do you like to push people? Are you taking advantage of another person? Even though it feels amazing to have four hundred people shouting with you, every single day is a battle. Be more accountable, pay more attention to how much privilege you have and I think that’s a really good start.
almendra 