The Hayley Williams fiasco.

[xx_rapunzel_xx]

Hey, I'm new here.

I'm assuming most of you know about the Hayley Williams situation that occurred last night - she took a topless photo of herself and accidentally posted it on Twitter.

Today, I posted my opinion on the whole thing on tumblr:

Comments

[xx_rapunzel_xx]

^ that's exactly what i'd like to do, and i'm glad you (and all the other commenters) are pointing out the faults in my argument. i'm very interested in educating myself more on feminism.

honestly, what really got me interested in all this was an incident that happened on my college campus last september - a girl accused 5 men of raping her, but lied to hide from her boyfriend at the time that she had consensual sex with 5 guys. when this was found out, everyone kept referring to her as a "slut" because she cheated, lied, and had sex with 5 guys at the same time. my point was that since she was in charge of her own body and desires, i didn't consider her a slut. (to me, it seems like a lot of people define "slut" as someone who is promiscuous and doesn't have any respect for herself. she might not do the thing ever again, so i think it's wrong to call her promiscuous) i don't know.

in retrospect, it may not have been the right point to make - as you pointed out in your second paragraph, i was probably doing the same thing there as i did now - but it just enraged me so much that this girl was being called something i didn't think fit her. i wasn't even aware of the term "slut-shaming" until i found the lj comm wtf_sexism. i posted the situation there, which sparked more responses than i imagined, and now, i'm surprised that the mods of that comm agreed with what i said.

so, i want to thank you and everyone for going over what i said without making me feel like crap, haha.

[xmorningxrosex]

Other than the people involved, it's hard to know what happened in that situation.

Maybe the woman (or did you really mean "girl"?) had consensual sex with 5 men, and felt guilty/shamed/embarrassed so she lied to hide it and said she raped.

Or maybe the woman was raped by 5 guys, but then after threats by the guys or intimidated by the community or overwhelmed at the idea of pressing charges and going through the court process, she dropped the accusation of rape and instead is saying it was consensual in order for people to leave her alone.

In either case, she shouldn't be called a slut or promiscuous. In the first example above, it would only be fair to give her a derogatory name if all 5 men received it as well (but really, why do we need derogatory names for consensual sex?). In the second example, she's a survivor of rape, and being raped doesn't mean you're promiscuous.