two questions for my BTVS friends (one sincere, one rhetorical)
A sincere question;
- Awfully often in fic, I read Spike calling Buffy "Slutty." In some fics, the writers will have Spike call her that all the way through.
I’m wondering; how many times did he call her that in canon?
A rhetorical one;
- Is it just me, or are we a little too eager to use that term– and, when we slash the boys in poly arrangements of one or another sort, don’t we think we might be making a gaddamn hypocritical choice of epithets?
In answer to your sincere question, I can only recall one canonical moment where Spike refers to Buffy as ‘Slutty the Vampire Slayer’ (which, seriously, if you’re gonna go there, shouldn’t you go whole-hog and go with ‘Slutty the Vampire Layer’?), and it’s actually in an episode of Angel, to the eponymous brooding avenger, and not to Buffy’s face.
As far as thoughts on the use of ‘slutty’ go, I don’t read much fic involving the ladies, but I’ve certainly encountered ‘slutty’ and ‘sluttish’ and ‘sluttishly’ and all that used toward men, too. Me, I like it as a word. I like its sound. I like that it’s a little dirty, a little teasing, a little naughty, and often a little backhandedly worshipful (as used in fic I’ve read, that is).
Funnily enough, ‘whore’, which comes up in all kinds of power-play dirty talk towards men (and I’m guessing women, too), puts me off immediately.
it’s so weird to have chosen the handle I did– Dharma Slut– and be so sensitive to the ways the word is used against women.
The difference between men and women being called “slut” is one of presumed agancy, if you think about it. A man who spreads it all over town is a rake, a gay dog, a man’s man. A woman… well, there’s something wrong with her, and no self-respecting guy would see anything of value in her.
I’d say that’s true of the stereotypical use of the word, but not of how it’s often used in fic. I’ve much more often seen fic authors that turn that view on its head and have male characters referring to female friends as slut in a kind of damn-I’m-impressed way and referring to each other as slut in either a porny kind-of-degrading-and-don’t-you-just-love-it way or as an offhand comment about a guy’s promiscuity that’s often got a sort of negative spin.
Well, when the writer, using a guy as her agent, repeatedly calls a woman a slut for having had three canon boyfriends, one of whom is the guy who canonically said it about her once– and when the writer has placed those guys into a poly situation where he, the woobie, and the brooding avenger are fucking like minks in loving detail…
I gotta call hypocrisy. And it happens a bit too often.
This is how I’ve seen it get used in good fic in other fandoms. The denigrating use you cite, dharma_slut, sounds like it’s not typical usage, it certainly isn’t in the fic I’ve read. And I’d agree it’s hypocritical. However, I do not know if it’s a more common usage in BtVS fic than in other fandoms. It’s true that different fandoms do take phrases and spin them off in totally different meanings that have, in the past, caused some huge dogpiles between fandoms.