PORT ANGELES — “UnSlut: A Documentary Film” about sexual shaming, will be screened Thursday.
The Magic of Cinema, the Port Townsend Film Festival and Peninsula College’s Sociology Department are sponsoring the screening at 7 p.m. in the Maier Performance Hall on Peninsula College’s Port Angeles campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
The film will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the director, Emily Lindin.
Tickets will be $5 at the door. Students will be admitted free.
This film features the diverse stories, told in their own words, of girls and women who have experienced various forms of sexual shaming throughout North America.
In addition to those who have survived, the film also tells the story of Rehtaeh Parsons, a Nova Scotia teenager who took her own life in 2013 after being gang-raped and subsequently sexually bullied by her classmates.
“Through interviews with sexuality experts, advocates and media figures, ‘UnSlut: A Documentary Film’ explores the causes and manifestations of gendered sexual shaming and outlines the ways we can work on individual, community and institutional levels toward a world where sexual assault victims get the support they need and where the word ‘slut’ doesn’t even make sense as an insult,” the college said in a news release.
Lindin is the founder of The UnSlut Project, an online community where survivors of sexual bullying and shaming can share their stories, and where girls who are currently suffering can find support and solidarity.
The UnSlut Project was inspired by Lindin’s own experience. When she was 11 years old, she was labeled a “slut” by her classmates and was bullied at school, after school and online. During all this, she kept a regular diary.
Now a Harvard graduate pursuing her doctorate in California, Lindin started The UnSlut Project by blogging her own middle school diaries.
She has been featured sharing her story and speaking out against “slut” shaming on ABC with Katie Couric, CNN with Brooke Baldwin, The Doctors, Al Jazeera America, HLN, DNTO radio with Sook-Yin Lee, NPR with Lance Orozco of KCLU, Deutsche Welle radio, Radio Ireland and in many magazines and blogs, including The Telegraph, The New Statesman, This Magazine, The Huffington Post and The Observer.
For more information, contact Dr. Helen Lovejoy at hlovejoy@pencol.edu.
