slut shaming
(n.) the action or fact of stigmatising a woman for engaging in behaviour judged to be promiscuous or sexually provocative
written by ella smith
Let me ask you this. If I were to call you a slut, whether you’re male or female. Would you be offended? I’ll hazard a guess, due to social stigmatisation, if you are female, then 8 out of 10 times, yes, you would most likely get offended, because it is frowned upon to have, or have had many sexual partners, or dress provocatively. But what about if you are male? Well then my guess would be that, no, it is most likely that you would not be offended if I were to call you a slut, because the more people you have sex with, the more “laddish” and reputable you become.
So why is it that the word ‘slut’, gives connotations that women are promiscuous, dirty, immoral, and even considered to having no self-respect. But if you were to breakdown the anatomy of the adjective, ‘slut’, in relation to a man, you get connotations such as a player, confident, ladies’ man, experienced and many other positive attributes that us ladies, do not receive.
Perhaps we evoke this opinion on each other as a guy cruelly passing judgement on the way you choose to conduct yourself sexually, or perhaps it was a Mean Girls-style’ comment on the way you were dressed – but the truth is, few women will make it through their teens and 20s without either being called a slut themselves.
As touched above, unlike the insults ‘fat’, or ’ugly’, being labelled a ‘slut’ is painful because it skims over all of the superficial stuff (the things you can change), and hits you right in the centre of what makes you, you.
Too often, girls are encountered with their first instances of slut-shaming in school settings. Dress codes are enforced that strips a girl’s freedom to fashionably express themselves, and if they do, shame is brought down upon them.
I remember back to my school days where all girls would have to stay behind after assembly to have their skirt lengths and makeup evaluated. Like being punished by detention for your skirt being too short, or your bra showing through your skirt isn’t degrading enough? I hear stories of male teachers not being able to control themselves or to concentrate in the classroom if a young female student broadcasts a slight bit of their skin, or their lingerie may be peeping through the shirt, because ‘boys-will-be-boys’ and we deserve what we decide to show off.
The ideas of double standards between men and women are ingrained in us from the very start. Girls are told not to think or act on sex due to it not being ‘lady-like’, yet, as mentioned above, ‘boys-will-be-boys’, and that’s ok? A woman isn't a whore for wanting pleasure. If it were unnatural, we would not be born with such drives. We need women empowerment because degrading phrases like "walk of shame" are commonplace in our social vocabulary, yet these are only applied to women; whereas men in the same situation are praised by their peers and seen as nothing more than " a guy who got lucky", by the rest of society.
Sadly, what it boils down to is that when we call each other ‘sluts’, what we really end up doing is empowering men. In times like these, we often find it helpful to turn to Mean Girls. As Tina Fey’s character Ms Norbury puts it: “You’ve got to stop calling each other sluts and whores, it just makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores.” That’s as good an argument as any for getting rid of the word forever, isn’t it?
few women will make it through their teens and 20s without either being called a slut themselves.
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