DISCLAIMER: This episode discusses some sensitive subjects and contains some explicit language.
In 2014, American writer Jessica Valenti wrote this in a column for The Guardian: "So what makes you a slut? It seems the the only hard and fast rule is that you have to be a woman." Five years later, that appears to still be very true, even if the term has also been extended to gender non-conforming people and members of the LGBTQ community.
Either way, it's exhausting to be slut-shamed. In this episode, we speak with Priya Alika-Elias, author of the recently-published book Besharam, and a lawyer and feminist writer based in New Delhi. We discuss our experiences dealing with criticism about our dating lives, clothes we wear, beverages we drink, and how these remarks tend to come from different places: partners, ex-partners, family members, acquaintances offering unsolicited opinions.
As easy as it would be to stop caring about what other people say, the truth it, slut-shaming hurts. As Priya writes in her book, "And yet, no matter how many times we hear it, no matter how many casual comments we make about not caring what people think, we are not free of its tyranny."
We also discuss:
Season 1, Episode 4 of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's show, Fleabag, where she stumbles upon a centre that teaches men how to be less misogynistic. Here's an interesting interview with her from 2017.
Music Credits:
"Me In Your Life"
Music By The Passion HiFi
www.thepassionhifi.com
Summer Coffee by Barradeen | https://soundcloud.com/barradeen
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US
