Quotes About Stigma

Three out of ten women in the United States have an abortion by the time they are forty-five years old. And women who need abortions get abortions, whether or not the procedure is legal or safe, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Blaming women who need abortions through slut-shaming is not only morally reprehensible, it also is medically irresponsible.

Today, girls are pressured to dress and behave in an overtly sexual way, despite the conventional understanding that a "slut" is a woman who does just that. In this milieu, calling oneself a "slut" doesn't allow you to wrest the term away from those who would use it to judge and control women. Rather, it just confirms negative stereotypes of what it means to be female. You're merely adding ammunition to the arsenal.

When my reputation was at its height, classmates insulted me right to my face as I walked down the hall. When a teacher called on me, boys snickered and girls rolled their eyes. My body and face burned. I felt mortified. I contemplated suicide.

There is no good reason that a girl is shamed for sexting while a boy is not, that a woman's number must be lower than a man's, that a survivor of sexual assault has her credibility stolen from her along with her bodily integrity. For women to be truly safe, we must eradicate the use of the term "slut." Only then will female sexuality become transformed from a site of pitfalls to one of positivity and possibility.

What drives abortion bans and restrictions? The belief that women who have sex for pleasure rather than procreation are sluts.

I tell girls and adult women that they never deserve to be called sluts or "hos"- and they never should call themselves sluts or "hos"-because in the absence of one sexual standard for everyone, the concept of "sluttiness" is grounded in sexist and specious ides about femininity, even when "slut" or "ho" is used in a seemingly lighthearted or even defiant manner.

Calling a female a slut even in a seemingly benign context ultimately results in a policing not only of the specific female involved but of all females everywhere.

The epidemic of violence against sex workers would be a national emergency if any other group were involved; but sex workers, particularly those who are working on the street and may have addictions or be radicalized, have not been the object of any great concern.

But I am clinically depressed and have an anxiety disorder, which interferes with things like studying and learning and breathing and living. He thinks it's something I can just turn off and on with willpower.

Divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat.

Growing up in the '70s and '80s, science fiction and especially fantasy had such a stigma attached to them. I felt so punished and exiled for being devoted to these things.

They think i'm at a special school for computer geeks and homosexuals.

I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.

Don't you think the things people are most ashamed of are things they can't help?

Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.

I don't think any rapper can go back. You can be a car salesman, a bank teller - I mean, really good jobs, and people are still gonna look at you and be like, 'You used to rap; what happened?'

A lot of queer characters get painted with either a caricature brush, or they're used to teach, in a way.

Industrial hemp is a very useful plant. I challenged the attorney general to get rid of the criminal stigma associated with hemp so we can look at it in terms of how it might be useful.

I think the gay - the gay/straight alliances in the school are very useful as far as creating understanding among kids and so kids aren't necessarily so stigmatized or demonized for being who they really are.

Some reporter called me 'the angriest gay man in the world' or some such. Well, it stuck, but I realized it was very useful.

I'm lucky to have depression less severely than a lot of people. I know some find it useful to talk about it and people are definitely doing that more. It's becoming less stigmatised.

Besides, my usefulness here is destroyed because all of my friends think me a man of unsound mind.

Gigantic sums are now required to maintain prisons and insane asylums and protect the public against gangsters and lunatics. Why do we preserve these useless and harmful beings? The abnormal prevent development of the normal.

Society routinely degrades fathers. Men are typically depicted by Hollywood as inadequate and useless beings who are nothing more than comedic props.