The sex-positive movement is a social and philosophical movement that seeks to change cultural attitudes and norms around sexuality, promoting the recognition of sexuality as a natural and healthy part of the human experience and emphasizing the importance of personal sovereignty, safer sex practices, and consensual sex. It covers every aspect of sexual identity including gender expression, orientation, relationship to the body, relationship-style choice, and reproductive rights. Sex-positivity is "an attitude towards human sexuality that regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, encouraging sexual pleasure and experimentation." It challenges societal taboos and aims to promote healthy and consensual sexual activities. The sex-positive movement also advocates for comprehensive sex education and safe sex as part of its campaign. The movement generally makes no moral distinctions among types of sexual activities, regarding these choices as matters of personal preference.
Slut is an English-language term for a person, usually a woman, who is sexually promiscuous or considered to have loose sexual morals. It is predominately used as an insult, sexual slur or offensive term of disparagement. It originally meant "a dirty, slovenly woman", and is rarely used to refer to men, generally requiring clarification by use of the terms male slut or man whore.
The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written in 1996 by Eve Ensler which developed and premiered at HERE Arts Center, Off-Off-Broadway in New York and was followed by an Off-Broadway run in at Westside Theatre. The play explores consensual and nonconsensual sexual experiences, body image, genital mutilation, direct and indirect encounters with reproduction, vaginal care, menstrual periods, prostitution, and several other topics through the eyes of women with various ages, races, sexualities, and other differences.
John Stoltenberg is an American author, activist, magazine editor, college lecturer, playwright, and theater reviewer who identifies his political perspective as radical feminist. For several years he has worked for DC Metro Theater Arts and as of 2019 is its executive editor. He has written three books, two collections of his essays and a novel. He was the life partner of Andrea Dworkin for 30 years and has lived with his husband, Joe Hamilton, for over 15 years.
V, formerly Eve Ensler, is an American playwright, author, performer, feminist, and activist. V is best known for her play The Vagina Monologues. In 2006 Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called The Vagina Monologues "probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade."
Rape culture is a setting, as described by some sociological theories, in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to that setting's attitudes about gender and sexuality. Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by sexual violence, or some combination of these. It has been used to describe and explain behavior within social groups, including prison rape and in conflict areas where war rape is used as psychological warfare. Entire societies have been alleged to be rape cultures.
Naomi Iizuka is a Japanese-born American playwright. Iizuka's works often have a non-linear storyline and are influenced by her multicultural background.
Young Jean Lee is an American playwright, director, and filmmaker. She was the Artistic Director of Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, a not-for-profit theater company dedicated to producing her work. She has written and directed ten shows for Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over thirty cities around the world. Lee was called "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by Charles Isherwood in The New York Times and "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by David Cote in Time Out New York. With the 2018 production of Straight White Men at the Hayes Theater, Lee became the first Asian American woman to have a play produced on Broadway.
SlutWalk is a transnational movement calling for an end to rape culture, including victim blaming and slut-shaming of sexual assault victims. Participants protest against explaining or excusing rape by referring to any aspect of a woman's appearance. The rallies began on April 3, 2011, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, after a Toronto Police officer suggested that "women should avoid dressing like sluts" as a precaution against sexual assault. Subsequent rallies have occurred globally.
Slut-shaming is the practice of criticizing people who violate expectations of behavior and appearance regarding issues related to sexuality. The term is commonly used to reclaim the word slut and empower women and girls to have agency over their own sexuality. Gender-based violence can be a result of slut-shaming primarily affecting women. It may also be used in reference to gay men, who may face disapproval for promiscuous sexual behaviors. Slut-shaming rarely happens to heterosexual men.
The manosphere is a diverse collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists, incels, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA), and fathers' rights groups. While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry, or hatred of men. Acceptance of these ideas is described as "taking the red pill", a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix.
Spiderwoman Theater is an Indigenous women's performance troupe that blends traditional art forms with Western theater. Named after Spider Grandmother from Hopi mythology, it is the longest running Indigenous theatre company in the United States.
SLUT: The Play is a 2013 American play written by Katie Cappiello. The play was developed with members of The Arts Effect All-Girl Theater Company to address the damaging impact of slut-shaming and slut culture. The creators note that their play "is a call to action – a reminder" that slut-shaming is happening every day, almost everywhere. The play premiered at the 2013 New York Fringe Festival. In 2020, SLUT: The Play was adapted into a Netflix series called Grand Army.
Gray rape, also spelled as grey rape, is a colloquial description of sexual intercourse for which consent is dubious, ambiguous or inadequately established and does not meet the legal definition of rape. The term was popularized by Laura Sessions Stepp in her viral 2007 Cosmopolitan article "A New Kind of Date Rape", which says gray rape is "somewhere between consent and denial and is even more confusing than date rape because often both parties are unsure of who wanted what". The term "gray rape" has been criticized. Lisa Jervis, founder of Bitch magazine, argued that gray rape and date rape "are the same thing" and that the popularization of the gray rape concept constituted a backlash against women's sexual empowerment and risked rolling back the gains women had made in having rape taken seriously.
Vera Papisova is a Russian-American journalist. Papisova was the first ever digital wellness features editor at Teen Vogue, and covered drug education, gender, identity, mental health, sexual health, sexuality, trauma, and wellness.
Farah Tanis is a New York City–based feminist activist and co-founder and executive director of the Black Women's Blueprint and of the Museum of Women's Resistance. She is the chair of the US Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Black Women and Assault. She attended the 2017 Women's March to raise awareness on the trafficking of black women. Having experienced physical and sexual abuse as a child, Tanis began working in activism on behalf of women around 1993, running a women's shelter before founding Black Women's Blueprint. She was one of the organizers of the 2017 March for Black Women in Washington D.C.
Leora Tanenbaum is an American feminist author and editor known for her writing about girls' and women's lives. She is credited with coining the term "slut-bashing" in her 1999 book Slut!: Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation; the concept has since been mostly known as "slut-shaming."
Grand Army is an American teen drama television series created by Katie Cappiello that premiered on Netflix on October 16, 2020. It is loosely based on Cappiello's Slut: The Play. In June 2021, the series was canceled after one season.
Alexandra Rutherford is a professor of psychology at York University's History and Theory of Psychology Graduate Program and author of Beyond the Box: B. F. Skinner's Technology of Behavior from Laboratory to Life, 1950s-1970s and Pioneers of Psychology.
Soraya Lisa Catherine Chemaly is a Bahamian-American author, activist and feminist. She became famous in Germany with her book Speak out! The Power of Female Anger.
