"Diminuendo," the magazine that is issued quarterly, featured poetry and art about sex as the first of a series of three issues devoted to "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.,”Loyola University-Chicago's student-published literary magazine was yanked from stands last week amidst an uproar over some of its content. This is the first time administrators at Loyola have felt the need to do this.
"Diminuendo," the magazine that is issued quarterly, featured poetry and art about sex as the first of a series of three issues devoted to "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll." The goal of dedicating an entire issue to sex, according to the mostly female staff, was to air a tabooed topic at the Jesuit school. While the goal may have been a good one, the cover of the publication and some of the content were a little too much for many people to handle.
A penciled sketch on the cover depicts a woman wearing only electrical tape on her nipples, straps across her body and panties with the cursive word "slut" on it. The artist, Ashley Davis, said the underwear worn by the woman on the cover was something she has seen for sale at mainstream shops. We don't know where Davis shops, but we doubt if this is the type of undergarments she sees regularly in many mainstream places.
In fact, a quick Google search for these slut undergarments returned, not surprisingly, mostly links to porn sites.
"I don't think of slut as a degrading term," Davis said, "It's someone who enjoys their sexuality."
We have to disagree with Davis here. Slut is definitely a degrading term. When a girl is labeled a slut, she is being insulted and looked down upon. When a group of girls dressed in skimpy clothes walk by and someone drops the S-word, they are not offering it as a compliment of the girls' healthy appreciation of their sexuality. The word is meant to be degrading.
We think the casual use of words that are degrading to women-such as young women referring to a group of their friends as "my bitches" or "hos" -have desensitized people to their meaning. Degrading words are also offhandedly thrown around to indicate extreme enjoyment of something not sexually related, such as "attention whore" or "coffee whore."
A slut, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a woman of dirty, slovenly or untidy habits or appearance; a foul slattern" or "a woman of a low or loose character; a bold or impudent girl; a hussy, jade." Not a degrading term? Why do women call each other by the very word used to put them down? Perhaps women are attempting to "take back" the word from society, assuming that if they call each other sluts and whores, the terms become less hurtful or are inherently less insulting.
Ana Garner, an associate professor in the College of Communication who teaches Race and Gender Issues in Mass Media, said she believes that this attempt is a futile one.
"I don't think you can take back something that you never owned in the first place," she said. "Women reproducing images that promote this idea are not taking the "word" and claiming ownership. Rather the end result is the continuation of a negative stereotype that is harmful."
We don't think we're ready for the word slut to be used so freely, nor will we ever be. Gender equality, while always improving, is far from ideal. Women should demand respect from others instead of merely becoming used to the disrespect. The use of demeaning terms is unacceptable, and women in particular should take a stand against it.
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