I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet (3 page)

A second difference is that unlike in previous generations, today the label “slut” snares nearly every young woman at some point. Given the omnipresence of the insult, I believe it’s fair to say that every girl in middle school, high school, and even college can expect to be called a slut eventually, if she hasn’t been already. When I think back to the situation of two decades ago, when schools had only one or two girls whom others labeled as sluts, I am amazed; we should be so lucky today. Twenty years ago, mistreatment of the school “slut,” scary and sexist and sad, was at least not rampant. She stood out precisely because she was somewhat unusual.

But slut-bashing has metastasized. It now goes far beyond bullying. “Slut” is heard frequently today not only in school hallways and cafeterias but also in prime-time television shows of all genres, and in online social media comments. Targets of the insult have expanded to include a wide population of individuals. Today, many girls and women refer to their social equals—in person, online through social media, and via texting and instant messaging—as sluts. Sometimes this usage is casual, even banal, and devoid of an intention to
denigrate. Other times the name-caller is motivated to generate “drama”—to whip up public attention, to create excitement, to emulate the dynamics of reality television, in which life isn’t worth living unless there’s an antagonist to contend with. Sometimes this “drama” is hostile and cruel; it is meant to hurt, and it does.

In this book, I differentiate between “slut-bashing,” which is a type of bullying, and “slut-shaming,” which is more diffuse. Slut-bashing, I argue, is verbal harassment in which a girl is intentionally targeted because she does not adhere to feminine norms. Slut-shaming, on the other hand, is a casual and often indirect form of judgment. To complicate matters further, sometimes girls and young women engage in a practice I call “reciprocal slut-shaming,” in which they take turns calling each other sluts in an apparently friendly manner. However, I will show that regardless of intent, all of these behaviors are absolutely corrosive and wrong. 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.

A third difference is that today many girls and women choose to label
themselves
as sluts—
good sluts
—to assert a positive, even defiant, attitude about their sexuality. As long as they control the label, many adolescent girls say that they enjoy the sexual attention they receive from their peers. To them, “slut” or “slutty” conveys a female who possesses sexual equality with males. If you’re around a group of teenage girls or young women, you may hear them call out “Hey slut” to one another. However, it can be hard to know the intention of the speaker for sure. Sometimes in this context, “slut” is
meant to be affectionate. But sometimes the intention is to police another girl, to warn her that she’s being watched. The speaker herself may not even be clear about her own intent, or she may have dual goals—to be a vivacious friend
and
a guardian of sexual values.

Meanwhile, some adult activists choose to wave the “slut” banner to prove a feminist point. The SlutWalk movement has encouraged women to assert themselves as sex-positive, showing that there’s nothing wrong with being a sexual woman. Activists reclaim or “own” the term to disrupt negative associations of femininity with sexuality.

I recognize that some individual girls and women feel empowered when they call themselves and their friends sluts on their own terms. Nevertheless, in the pages that follow I question whether this usage is an effective feminist strategy when employed on a large scale. Repeatedly, girls and women told me that they chose to call themselves sluts but subsequently lost control over the term when others then used the label against them. They used “slut” to mean they were an empowered “good slut,” but others turned around the word to mean that they were a shameful, promiscuous “bad slut.” Despite its worthwhile intentions, reclaiming the word “slut” may end up causing more harm than good.

Unlike “bitch,” which often is turned on its head, becoming a shorthand for “an assertive woman with power” in a positive sense rather than “an aggressive, domineering woman” in a negative sense, “slut” is a more slippery term. “Bitch” refers to a woman’s behavior; so as long as her behavior is perceived positively by others, her bitchiness may be considered an asset. “Slut,” on the other hand, refers to a
woman’s essence as a feminine being. Once she is labeled a slut in the pejorative sense, it makes no difference if she changes her behavior or if her behavior becomes well-regarded: she is maligned as a deviant.

In short, the label “slut” is far more common, and utterly more confusing, than ever before. But one thing has not changed: regardless of context, the consequences of being labeled a slut are nearly always damaging. As we’ll see, whether the context is slut-bashing, slut-shaming, or even slut-reclaiming, calling a girl or a woman a slut reinforces sexist norms. “Slut” is best regarded as a toxic four-letter word that should be quarantined if not buried.

The “Good Slut”/“Bad Slut” Contradiction

Adolescent girls and college-age women face a profound sexual contradiction. On the one hand, many want to embrace a sex-positive identity as a “good slut” who is free to be sexual on her own terms without judgment. On the other hand, many emphatically do not want to be labeled by others as a slut, because except when used within a tightly contained peer group, the label “slut” indicates that the subject is disgusting and shameful. When someone outside the in-group labels a female a slut, the word becomes evacuated of its positive associations and is left as a container of harsh judgment.

Is it possible to be a “good slut”? Many adolescent girls and college-age women optimistically, naively, say yes. But once they see how “slut” becomes adapted to the presumptions of the sexual double standard—the belief that males
can and should be more sexual than females, and therefore that females who are sexually active in ways similar to men are deviant—they come to recognize that the “good slut” identity is ephemeral and tenuous. Ultimately, embracing a “good slut” identity does not serve them well. “Slut” is not an effective or wise organizing principle for expression of sexual freedom, because, as I will demonstrate, this identity makes females unsafe.

This outcome does not mean that females should avoid sexual expression. We
should
be comfortable with our sexual bodies and sexual desire, and we
should
be able to express our sexuality in a developmentally and situationally appropriate manner. But we need to rethink our methods and strategies.

I asked two women, Katie Cappiello and Meg McInerney, who work intensively with teenage girls if it was possible for a young woman to assert her sexuality in a developmentally appropriate and empowering way and
not
be called a slut. They paused for a few beats, unsure. Cappiello is the artistic director and McInerney is the managing director of the Arts Effect, a theater company in New York City for teenagers, which they cofounded. The All-Girl Theater Company, one of the Arts Effect’s programs, gives girls leadership tools to initiate social change in their high schools.

“I don’t know,” McInerney finally responded. “I want it to be possible, more than anything, but I don’t know that it is actually possible. If they express their sexuality, every day they have to worry about the consequences. They can’t not worry.” Cappiello agrees. “The answer is: I don’t think so. The only girls we know who are protected from the label are the ones who have never kissed a boy, never wear anything tight, never
party, never hook up. Yes, they are protected, but they’re also being ignored. They cry about the fact that guys don’t know they’re alive.” There’s seemingly no middle ground here: if a young woman does not erase or hide her sexuality, she is at risk of being labeled a slut.

“Slut” is a product of the sexual double standard—the mind-set that males are expected to be sexually active, even in an uncontrolled manner, while females are supposed to police themselves (and other females) to remain minimally sexual. The sexual double standard creates physical and emotional danger for females. Only girls, not boys, are mistreated for being allegedly “too” sexual within a heterosexual context. Yet many people, female and male alike, regard girls and women through a sexual lens. Whether females are sexually active or not, we are seen as beings with sexual potential. Just walking, speaking, and breathing put us at risk for being judged to be “too” sexual.

For at least the last two and a half centuries, white women have been expected to be sexually chaste or monogamous; therefore, their “bad” sluttiness is scandalous because it’s a violation of normative behavior. Before the late 1700s, British women were thought to be more sexually desirous than men. As the middle class rose in England and America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marriage became central to bourgeois society. A shift from the extended family to the nuclear family occurred against the backdrop of evangelical Protestantism and the emerging capitalist and individualistic economy. The family unit became a microcosm of the authoritarian state, and gendered spheres of activity solidified, leading to subordination of women within
marriage. The unequal distribution of power within the new romantic marriage led to a new way of thinking of male and female sexuality: men were naturally aggressive while women were inherently passive.
³
Jaclyn Geller, a literature professor and the author of the book
Here Comes the Bride
, a critique of marriage and the wedding industry, notes the significance of the Hardwicke Marriage Act, passed in Britain in 1753. This legislation stipulated that weddings had to be public and ceremonial. Marriages became formalized and regulated by the state. Sexually active women in Britain as well as the colonies who were not wives became regarded as immoral.
⁴
Wives themselves were also expected to curb their sexual desires. Nancy Cott, a historian, has called this sexual ideology “passionlessness.” This dominant view was that white women “lacked sexual aggressiveness, that their sexual appetites contributed a very minor part (if any at all) to their motivations, that lustfulness was simply uncharacteristic.”
⁵
A slut was a white woman who deviated from the ideal.

Women of color, however, have been presumed by white people since at least the 1600s to lack the moral and sexual restraint that white women are thought to possess. The stereotype of white female chastity stands in opposition to a stereotype of black female carnality. As a result, the “bad” sluttiness of women of color reaffirms racist and sexist stereotypes rather than upends them. Thus, Harriet Jacobs, an African American slave, wrote in the 1850s that when her white master sexually assaulted her when she was fifteen years old, her white mistress did not come to her aid. Instead, her white mistress regarded Jacobs as a temptress, and therefore she had “no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy
and rage.”
⁶
And still today, when a young woman of color is denigrated by her peers as a slut or a ho, her experience often may not receive the attention it deserves, and she is often left isolated without any support.

Moreover, when females of color attempt, as many of their white cohorts do, to playfully adopt a “good slut” persona, the effort can backfire miserably. Shabiki Crane, a black Canadian woman, recalls that when she attended Catholic school, she and her friends did everything they could to individualize the mandated school uniform. “I, like many girls I knew, chose to wear tight-fitting grey pants as opposed to the ugly, baggy, and shapeless pants from the uniform store,” she says.

I
remember checking myself numerous times in the mirror; I looked good! Unfortunately, it was not a mutual opinion. The guidance counselor coyly explained to me that I shouldn’t wear tight pants because ‘people would think badly of me.’ He even went as far as to say that Asian and white girls could get away with it because of their shapes, but on me it only looked vulgar. I felt vulgar. . . . It often seemed as if only certain people had the right and privilege to use their sexuality in a manner that was perceived as ‘light-hearted’ and fun.
⁷

Adopting a “good slut” identity is a privilege that many women of color can’t access because of racist assumptions about their sexuality.

Queer and heterosexual females also experience slut-bashing and slut-shaming in different ways from each other. Some of the women who share their stories in this book are
lesbian, bisexual, or sexually questioning. Yet the policing of female sexuality described here is conducted within a heterosexist framework. Regardless of the orientation or gender identity of the girl labeled a slut, she is pushed to conform to heterosexual norms. Slut-bashing and slut-shaming are therefore not only sexist but heterosexist as well.

Different Women, Similar Story

If you are in any doubt as to the violation that girls and women experience from being labeled a slut, listen to their stories.

Jasmine, a twenty-year-old college student on the West Coast, relates how she was slut-bashed in the tenth grade. Jasmine’s father is black and her mother is Latina. As a young girl, she lived on an air force base because her dad was in the military, but after her parents divorced, she moved with her mom to a large, gritty inner-city neighborhood. She attended a big urban school whose students were primarily Latino. In describing the various ways in which her school lacked financial resources, she mentions that it offered no honors or AP classes. Four of her friends became pregnant while they were still in high school.