ABC News ^
Watch out Republicans, here come the sluts.
Women’s rights activists are banding together to “Rock the Slut Vote” in an online effort to register women to vote and cast their ballots against Republicans in 2012.
“If the GOP thinks that throwing the word ‘slut’ at us at this point is going to silence women they have another thing coming,” said Susan McMillan Emry, the site’s founder.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh thrust the derogatory word into the political arena in February when he called law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” for testifying before Congress in support of contraceptives.
Following the national backlash over Limbaugh’s name-calling, “Rock the Slut Vote” is now aiming to “diffuse” the offensive term, Emry said.
Taking a vein from comedian Jeff Foxworthy and his “You might be a Redneck if…” jokes, Emry’s website gives visitors 22 reasons why “You might be a slut,” including “if you’ve ever used contraception” or “if you’re still downloading Dixie Chicks music” or “if you don’t go to church.”
The site aims to “re-appropriate” the word “slut” so that Limbaugh and other Republicans cannot use it to “bully and silence women,” Emry said.
“It’s really about taking the power away from that word more than it is about Rush Limbaugh,” she said. “He gave the word the notoriety but we are trying to take it back.”
Emry said the “Rush Limbaugh mess” coupled with the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to cut Planned Parenthood funding and recent efforts in state Legislatures to restrict access to abortions and contraceptives “compelled” her to create the site after 56 years on the political sidelines.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
