By Staff Writer Tamendy Raymond.
Last week the House of Deliberation’s held their meeting in the Unity House on February 5, 2019. “What makes a person a ‘slut’” was the topic of discussion, as junior Elaine Sanchez and senior President and Founder Eric James hosted the event.
James opened the meeting with raffles, prizes and giveaways of exclusive House of Deliberation merchandise such as crewnecks and t-shirts.
The moderator of the event, junior treasurer Janeya Charpentier, was in charge of moderating the time people spent speaking. Everyone is normally given one minute to speak. The gavel first strikes at 30 seconds and by the second strike the commentator should be wrapping up the final sentence or thought.
With three taps the commentator’s time has expired and it is now the next person’s turn to speak.
The meeting began with hostess Sanchez asking questions such as why is promiscuity always referred to women? What makes a person a slut? Does body count matter? How high is too high of a body count? The questions created a heated discussion, with an organized structure, giving everyone that wanted to speak a chance to voice their opinion on the subject matter.
According to Google the word “slut” is “a woman who has many casual sexual partners.”
The issue is that men also are able to have many sexual partners, but they are not referred to or deemed as a ‘slut’ in anyway.
The term slut is mostly a negative connotation describing women. Various videos were shown as demonstrations that expose the different biases and gender imbalances of the term.
Model Amber Rose’s “Slut Walk” video was an example used. Rose talks about how the word is used in a derogatory way, in attempt to bring females down, yet she personally uses it to empower herself.
Women havinh the power of their own body was a key point. In the past, women held the stigma of cooking and cleaning, but by taking back their freedom, the hope is to change the view of “sluts.”
Music takes part in the issue, in male rappers to be specific.
Men’s perspective plays a viable role through their patriarchal power and dominance they hold in society, further continuing this stigma. Operations Management Senior Tre’von Lavaud says “what exactly makes a slut or a hoe? I feel like pretty much everybody who has lost their virginity at a certain point…had an interest to go ahead and have sex so how could you label them as something for having that natural feeling.”
International affairs alumni Alec Rodriquez entered the conversation, “Nobody wants to be judged on their past, not for nothing, the golden rule, treat others the way you want to be treated.”
Management information system junior, Femi Akindele speaks on the topic of body counts and responds “I think it is all about if someone has a low body count, [then] they probably want someone else with a low body count.”
“That’s their personal prerogative,” Akindele says. “But, I think that using someone else’s body count to judge them is a problem.”
Psychology and crime and justice major senior Dessi Miles, brought up an interesting question for the audience stating “Why does it matter? People could have multiple sex partners but only mess with them once but then people can have one or two sex partners and have sex with them so many times so why does it matter?”
Gabrielle Lorthe, english communications and black studies senior answers “I think context matters, if you are going to engage in a relationship with somebody who you are trying to build with and if sexual assault is in their history, that is an important fact to know. I don’t want to say body count doesn’t matter because the context of that body count does matter.”
On Tuesday February 19, 2019, at 5pm in the Unity House Professor Katie Kraft will be a guest speaker for the House of Deliberations’ event called Gender Is A Racial Project, the creation of gender in the United States.
“I’ve got a great team, and we have a great organization that attracts people all by itself,” says Founder Eric James.
“This is truly the best organization I have ever been apart of and founding it was the best decision I made.”
It shows tremendously, the team work and collaboration that has been done to maintain a successful organization was shown!
The next meeting is February 19 at 5 PM in the Frederick Douglass Unity House.