I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet (27 page)

Ella puts the number in a context of appropriate behavior. In her mind, the number is not important; it is the quality of the relationships that should count.

Jasmine, the black and Latina twenty-year-old student on the West Coast, observes that “the number” is not only a method of judging others. The reason people ask each other for their number, she tells me, is that “it’s a justification system. If you know someone is more active and your number is lower, then you can think, ‘Oh, I’m not that bad.’ It’s a way for the person asking the question to feel better about themselves.” She is bisexual, so “the number” enables her to situate herself in relation to both male and female partners.

Jasmine previously had admitted to me that she herself had lied by giving partners a false low number. “So you’re messing up their justification system,” I told her.

“I’ve only lied two times to guys who asked me for my number and I worried they thought I was some sleazy whore,” she responded. OK, fair enough. Who could blame her?

“What number is too high?” I asked.

Jasmine offered the highest number ranges of anyone I’d spoken with. “Unfortunately it does vary by gender,” she prefaced. “For a male partner, I’d say that over forty is too high. For a female partner, I’d say that over twenty is too high,” she said, adding that the numbers are “arbitrary.” She continued, “I would have a problem with a woman with a high number. If I had a female partner with a number in the twenties, on the one hand I would be a little impressed but I would at the same time have judgment against her.” Jasmine is embarrassed that she judges women more harshly than men using the logic of the sexual double standard, “which
makes me very frustrated. No matter how open you are, at the same time you’re always conditioned to these social norms,” she says sheepishly. I can’t help but wonder if, as she gets older, she will revise her threshold of the “too high” number for both male and female partners. Otherwise, her own “justification system” will be at risk, because surely her own number will continue to climb.

Women lie about their number not only to themselves (by manipulating which sexual acts count as legitimate) and to their partners. They also lie to their health care providers. Samantha, the white thirty-one-year-old waitress on the West Coast, told me that whenever she goes to her health clinic for her annual checkup, she’s asked how many partners she’s had sex with over the course of her lifetime. “The last time I went, I said sixty,” Samantha told me. The nurse reacted with surprise. Samantha asked her what number women typically say. The nurse told her twenty. “I think either they’re lying or I’ve been with way more people than normal.” Either way, the nurse should not have expressed any judgment. Even putting aside the ethics of the exchange, if a patient is made to feel judged, she may not come back or may provide misleading information to her to “protect” herself, which could ultimately hinder her from receiving proper health care.

The nurse’s expression of judgment was not an isolated incident. Jessica, the Latina college senior, went to the health services clinic on her campus last year when she was twenty-two “because I had a rash in my private area,” she says. She was a virgin and this was her first visit to the campus clinic. The nurse questioned Jessica’s honesty about her lack of sexual history, saying to her, “Well, there’s no other reason for
you to have this rash unless you’re sexually active. Are you
sure
you haven’t been sexually active?”

Jessica is convinced that the nurse did not believe that it was possible to be a twenty-two-year-old virgin, or even a twenty-two-year-old with only one sexual partner, with a vaginal rash. Jessica theorizes that the nurse believed that she had multiple partners. In fairness, the nurse may have been taking into account the fact that many women do indeed lie about their sexual history, and therefore Jessica’s disavowal may have seemed implausible from her perspective.

I
t’s like she wanted to believe that I was having sex with at least one person to explain why I had the rash, but because I said that I was a virgin, it was like she thought that I was lying and therefore must have been having sex with more than one person. Because if I were in a monogamous relationship, why would I lie? So it was like she was annoyed that I didn’t say that I had one partner. She tested me with swabs, but I’m not sure what for, because she never even got back to me with the results, which I thought she was supposed to do, and I didn’t follow up. She had more power than me, and I figured that she knew more about the rash than I did, so I felt that she had the control, and I was really uncomfortable. It turned out that I was allergic to my clothing detergent, which I discovered by myself.

In a bizarre loop and leap of logic, the nurse speculated that Jessica had multiple sexual partners but was lying because she was worried that she would be judged and slut-shamed. Even
though none of this was true, she was judged and slut-shamed anyway. Such is the strange world of slut-shaming, in which even virgins with detergent-induced rashes can be made to feel that there is something sexually wrong with them.

Twenty-six-year-old Diane, the white feminist marriage and family therapist in California, has also experienced being judged at a health clinic. “At my clinic, they ask for your number from the past twelve months,” she says. “I feel like the nurses slut-shame, because of the looks on their faces when I tell them my number. At my first appointment, when I was eighteen or nineteen and the nurse asked me, I said nine. And she said, ‘In the last
year
? Not in your lifetime, but in the last
year
?’ I was like, ‘You’re a nurse; you’re not supposed to look at me like that!’ She made me feel ashamed. I feel like they are setting us women up to lie, which puts our health at risk. I felt like I didn’t want to go back.”

It turned out that the day after I spoke with Diane, she was scheduled to return to the clinic for a regular checkup. I asked her to inquire why they ask women about their number, and to please let me know their rationale. The next evening, she emailed me her report:

W
hen I went to the appointment, I had to update my information for my file, and one of the questions was how many people I had sex with in the last year. I asked the nurse why they ask the question. She said it was to assess if the patient was at a higher risk for sexually transmitted infections, and that they also take into account how often the patient uses condoms (always, sometimes, or never), and if so, they would advise the patient to take a
free STD test. I told her that there have been times when nurses would ask me my number for the year and they would give me judgmental looks. She actually apologized and said that those nurses sounded very unprofessional. We talked about how that would lead other women to lie to health professionals about their sexual history and put themselves at risk. She talked to me about the clinic always being a very busy place, and that the people working here should be focused on health and being able to see as many patients as they can. But that is all that was said, and she gave me my birth control and sent me on my way.

Even well-intended health care providers are influenced by the mind-set of the sexual double standard and the culture of slut-shaming. The idea that a health care provider needs to know a patient’s lifetime number of sexual partners is “outdated,” according to Jacques Moritz, MD, the director of the division of gynecology at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in New York City and a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist for two decades. He argues that asking such a question “may cause one to pass judgment. It’s more important to know if the patient is sexually active with the same or other sex, and if the sex is protected.”

Gloria Feldt, an author and reproductive rights activist, and the former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, tells me that “the person taking the medical history should not express an opinion one way or the other, because the purpose is to obtain accurate information to provide appropriate health care. Patients are more likely to lie if they feel judged. I imagine that some clinic staff may be
guilty of being judgmental about a patient’s number of sexual partners. Even though they know they shouldn’t express their opinions, human beings have a hard time being totally unbiased.” Dr. Moritz adds, “We physicians try to check our judgments at the door, but it is very difficult to be perfect.”

The next time you are asked by a health care provider for your lifetime number, respond with a question of your own. I recommend that you ask, “Why do you need to know my lifetime number? Isn’t it sufficient to know how many partners I’ve had recently, whether or not I practice safe sex, and whether or not I’ve been sexually assaulted?” Offer to give your number over the last six months if you don’t feel comfortable providing your lifetime number. If you suspect that you are being judged, ask, “Do you give women with a lower number different health care?” You should never feel judged when taking care of your health. On the flip side, if the provider treats you respectfully but insists that she needs to know the number, and you believe that her intentions are positive—to provide you with the highest level of care—then do not lie.

Many of my interviewees wanted to know my personal opinion regarding their number. At first, I was taken aback, unsure how to respond. In the beginning of my research, I told them that there is no such a thing as an ideal number; but they found that response unsatisfactory, since, as we’ve seen, some men will break up with their girlfriends because of their number, and health care providers may openly judge them because of it. The more I spoke with women about their number, the more I realized that saying it’s meaningless is like telling a woman who asks if she’s beautiful that only internal
beauty is important. I came to recognize that the ideal circumstance is a sexual history without coercion, regardless of the number—which is what I subsequently told them when asked for my opinion. This was a response the women understood and accepted. When placed in a larger context of what can transform sexual activity from pleasurable to dangerous, the issue of one’s number truly becomes insignificant.

Are You a Slut If You’re Single and on the Pill? What If You’re Pregnant?

The outcomes of women’s efforts to manage their sexual reputation go beyond self-doubt, relationship breakups, and raised eyebrows at the clinic—although all of those are disturbing. Worse, many women I spoke with reported that they do not consistently use contraceptives, because they worry that doing so makes them appear slutty. They have good reason to worry: Look at what happened to Sandra Fluke, the former Georgetown student who testified before Congress, arguing that her law school’s health insurance plan should cover the cost of contraceptives—which, she noted, often are prescribed for medical purposes. The radio personality Rush Limbaugh swiftly called her a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and even suggested that women who use contraceptives covered by insurance should be required to post sex tapes online “so we can all watch.” An economist at the University of Rochester, Steven Landsburg, wrote in a blog post that Limbaugh’s analogy of Fluke to a prostitute was “spot-on” and that it’s reasonable for taxpayers to be able to watch her having sex if they are
underwriting the cost of her contraceptives.
¹⁶⁵
(To his credit, the president of the University of Rochester, Joel Seligman, denounced Landsburg in an open statement on the university’s website.)
¹⁶⁶
Similarly, in 2014 former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said it was wrong to give women birth control without a co-pay under the Affordable Care Act because doing so tells them “they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government”—equating women who use birth control with oversexed “sluts.”
¹⁶⁷

Jennifer Castro was the president of the California State University, Long Beach, branch of Project Choice, a federally funded program that provides education about HIV and other STDs, from 2012 to 2013. Castro traveled around campus, talking about sex education. She went into classrooms for her lectures. “But when I talked about sex with girls, I didn’t get much attention,” she reveals.

I
n addition to lecturing, I distributed free condoms to the students, which I put in black bags in advance. I went around the room and gave each person one at their desk. The girls always said, “Oh, I don’t need one, because it’s the guys who need these.” They didn’t even want to touch them. So the girls didn’t take them. Many of them left the bags on their desks or put them on my table. They didn’t take responsibility. They wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Guys from the fraternities took them. They said, “Oh yeah, I need these.”

I asked Castro if the female students were reluctant to be seen taking the condoms in front of their peers, especially
since someone could have taken a picture of them on their phone and posted it to Facebook.

“Yes, that is definitely possible. But girls didn’t come up to me privately afterward,” she said, so the obstacle wasn’t only being seen in public; it went deeper. She continued,

W
hat happened is that the girls didn’t want to be seen as slutty. They said, “Well, I’m on the pill.” But even with the pill they tried to keep it quiet and tried not to call attention to it, and the pill won’t help with STDs. Even if the girl was with one partner, her partner may have had other partners, so she really should have used a condom even if she was on the pill. But they didn’t want to hear it. My hunch is that this attitude was a widespread thing; it was not just on this campus. But I wasn’t promoting sex; I was just promoting education about sex. I wasn’t saying that the students were having sex. I was just trying to get them to take care of themselves.