I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet (35 page)

SlutWalk performed on a grand scale what teenage girls and college-age women do when they posture as “good sluts.” And as we’ve seen, the strategy of positioning oneself as a “good slut” never ends well. When a young female asserts her sexual identity in public, eventually she loses control and the “good slut” morphs quickly into “bad.” It’s impossible to truly control how the term is used in connection with one’s own character. Even when a girl attempts to circumscribe her sexual identity within an in-group of peers, the porousness of social media leads to leakage, and her actions (real or contrived) become known—and judged—by others not in her inner circle. And when others call her a “slut,” they are the ones dictating the meanings of the term.

Why should we assume that the results would be different for women at large? I believe that they won’t be. Within the SlutWalk movement, a woman could define herself as a “slut” in the positive sense of “a woman who’s unapologetically sexual without shame,” but that was only really effective within the safe cocoon of movement protests. Because of the existence of the sexual double standard, few people outside feminist
communities will regard her as empowered. They will denigrate her—and, as we’ve also seen, quite possibly assault her. This danger makes the reappropriation of “slut” fundamentally different from efforts to gain control over other negative stereotypes. For this reason, while I found the SlutWalk movement invigorating, I strongly believe that taking up “slut” as a crystallizing call to action is doomed to hurt women rather than help them—at least at this historical moment.

Is there any hope for reappropriating negative language? The word “queer” often is held as a reclamation success story because it is no longer automatically assumed to be an epithet suggesting that same-sex desire is deviant. Its negative associations have largely been diffused. It is understood by most people today as a confrontational yet celebratory word—as the activist group Queer Nation memorably chanted in the 1990s, “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!”—or as a neutral descriptor of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people.

Yet “queer” has its detractors, too. Not all in-group members support the term’s usage. Also, the word means different things to in-group and out-group members. “Queer” was reappropriated not to replace “LGBT” but to refer broadly and inclusively to anyone with nonnormative sexuality, including straight people who identify as nonmonogamous; sadomasochist, bondage, and discipline aficionados; and fetishists. People who identify as “queer” use the term to contest rigid sexual categories based on sexual orientation. Yet most nonqueer people have failed to recognize the nuance, and have come to equate “queer” with “LGBT.” Thus, while “queer” is now worn as a defiant badge of pride, it’s a badge that often is misread and misunderstood.
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The reclamation of “queer” demonstrates that linguistic development is uncertain and impossible to predict. Likewise, there’s no way to know how “slut” would be taken up by out-group members should reclamation become a more popular goal. Perhaps “slut” would be understood as “sexually empowered.” Perhaps it won’t.

“Bitch” is also often turned on its head to convey a playful reappropriation. Twenty-one-year-old Maria, the Latina college senior on the East Coast, reports that women on her campus call themselves “bad bitches” in a positive way. “It means you’re a woman with an attitude, in a good way, and that you’re having sex and you’re proud of it,” she explains. Owning “bitch” is an assertion of autonomy and sexual independence. It means you’re not a docile doormat. But “bitch” can be appropriated in a way that “slut” cannot because “bitch” is fundamentally different from “slut.” When used pejoratively, “bitch” is a commentary on a woman’s attitude or behavior, not about her essence or about specific transgressions believed to mirror who she is as a person. If a bitchy woman changed her attitude and behavior and decided to behave submissively, no one would call her a bitch again. But when a woman designated a slut avoids any hint of sexuality, people continue to call her a slut anyway. “Slut” sticks for life, regardless of behavior.

Racism and the Risks of Reclamation

I admit that for personal reasons, reclaiming “slut” for myself is just not feasible. Having experienced slut-bashing in high school, I see no positives in trying to take ownership of the word that
wounded me and still has the power to do so. Because of my personal history with the word, were I to label myself a slut, I would worry about impairing my professional, parental, and social credibility. I support sexual equality, and I believe that women should be judged on the same sexual scale that males are. But a public identity as a slut could invite harassment.

I’m not the only woman who hesitates. “If a woman has reported being sexually assaulted, participating in a SlutWalk could be used against her,” Wagatwe Wanjuki, a twenty-six-year-old black social justice activist who has written and spoken about her own assault at Tufts University in 2007, warns me. “People who don’t believe her could say, ‘She couldn’t have been raped because look at how she’s dressed,’ or ‘Clearly, she’s not really traumatized.’ I still worry that I can’t get away with doing ‘slutty’ things because they would be used as justification to not believe that I was assaulted and to invalidate me.” Reclaiming “slut” is a luxury that many women cannot afford.

Women of color, particularly black women, worry that the pejorative meanings are inseparable from the word itself. Historically, white women and men have likened black women to sexual savages. The default assumption for women of color among white people is that they are “sluts,” “hos,” and “Jezebels”—that they are inherently and thoroughly hypersexualized and therefore impossible to truly rape. Reclamation of “slut” makes no sense for someone already assumed to be a “slut.” In fact, it may be an act of self-harm; why denigrate yourself even more than you’re denigrated already? Why deepen your own oppression?

A week before the 2011 SlutWalk in New York City, an organization called Black Women’s Blueprint posted an open
letter to the event’s organizers, signed by hundreds of black female scholars, activists, and leaders; the letter was published on the
Huffington Post
. An excerpt of the letter reads:

W
e are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word, should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress. Much of this is tied to our particular history. In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings . . . “slut” has different associations for Black women. We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label.

As Black women, we do not have the privilege or the space to call ourselves “slut” without validating the already historically entrenched ideology and recurring messages about what and who the Black woman is. We don’t have the privilege to play on destructive representations burned in our collective minds, on our bodies and souls for generations. . . .

Although we vehemently support a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants any time, anywhere, within the context of a “SlutWalk” we don’t have the privilege to walk through the streets of New York City, Detroit, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, L.A., etc., either half-naked or fully clothed self-identifying as “sluts” and think that this will make women safer in our communities an hour later, a month later, or a year later. Moreover, we are careful not
to set a precedent for our young girls by giving them the message that we can self-identify as “sluts” when we’re still working to annihilate the word “ho,” which deriving from the word “hooker” or “whore,” as in “Jezebel whore” was meant to dehumanize. Lastly, we do not want to encourage our young men, our Black fathers, sons and brothers to reinforce Black women’s identities as “sluts” by normalizing the term on t-shirts, buttons, flyers and pamphlets.
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The argument put forth by Black Women’s Blueprint is that only a woman with white racial privilege can reclaim “slut.” The SlutWalk movement flaunted the privilege white women possess to play around with a “good slut” identity, erasing the history of Black women’s sexual slander. “Slut” can’t be reclaimed because out-group members use the word with its pejorative racist and sexist meanings.

Many white feminists similarly worry that “slut” is too dangerous for them personally, or for the women in their communities. “I was in
The Vagina Monologues
last year, and people paid a lot of attention to the ‘Reclaiming Cunt’ scene,” reports twenty-one-year-old Cynthia, the white Pennsylvania student. “I noticed that now people use the word ‘cunt’ a lot—but in an abusive way. People on campus who don’t believe in women’s equality like to be able to use the word because they think it’s acceptable and cool, and they don’t even realize that in the play, it’s supposed to be about women’s sexual empowerment. And I think it’s the same thing with ‘slut.’ The majority are going to use it in a negative way.” If we normalize “slut,” providing opportunities for people to use the word conversationally, they may wield it as a weapon
under the cover of social acceptance. Georgiana, the twenty-two-year-old white doctoral student in comparative literature, succinctly sums up these concerns. “Try telling someone on my campus, where ‘feminism’ is a dirty word, that ‘slut’ is a positive word. It would not work at all.”

Before and after SlutWalk NYC, the organizers of the event met to discuss the issues raised by Black Women’s Blueprint, which were about the movement in general, not about the New York event specifically. Nicole Kubon, one of the white organizers, as well as other organizers involved, did not want to exclude any feminists “just because they didn’t support this particular movement,” she tells me. “There was a number of us that wanted to address the issues that were raised during the rally itself. We had long discussions and arguments about how to respond to the critique.” But Kubon, who is a social worker and the vice president of the National Organization for Women’s Young Feminists and Allies chapter, admits that not all the white organizers wanted to address the Black Women’s Blueprint critique. “Some of the organizers worried that the critique took away from all the hard work we’d done to organize the event itself and to give voice to marginalized folks. We all recognized the role of racial privilege, but some of the organizers became defensive instead of examining the ways this privilege affected their point of view. Internally, we could not get on the same page. Not everyone ‘got it.’”

Of the thousands who participated in the event, many were people of color, and three of the MCs were women of color, but the majority were white. There’s nothing wrong with a white-dominated political event, just as there’s nothing wrong with a black- or Asian- or Latina-dominated political
event. What
is
a problem is when white feminists universalize the experiences of white women, suggesting that their concerns are shared by all women and excluding the problems of other women—a racial blind spot that many white feminists have long held. If reclaiming the word “slut” is a good idea for some white women, the thinking goes, then it must be a good idea for
all
women.

And then there was the notorious sign. A white participant at the 2011 NYC SlutWalk created a placard quoting John Lennon and Yoko Ono: “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.” A friend, also white, was photographed holding the sign above her head, with white women standing around smiling, seemingly unperturbed. I didn’t see the sign myself at the event, but in the days that followed, the photo made its way around the feminist social media blogosphere, with women of color and white women heatedly discussing the arrogance of the sign’s messages—that the oppression of blacks (presumably black men) is a metaphor for the oppression of women (presumably non-black women); that black women don’t exist; and that it’s acceptable for white women to blithely use the ‘N’ word. “If SlutWalk has proven anything,” wrote Aura Bogado, the author of the blog
To the Curb
, “it is that liberal white women are perfectly comfortable parading their privilege, absorbing every speck of airtime celebrating their audacity and ignoring women of color.”
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“The fact that we are always Black and female at exactly the same time is a fact that continues to elude white women,” wrote Brittney Cooper, an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, on the website
Crunk Feminist Collective
. She continued,

T
he organizers of SlutWalk are genuinely baffled that this happened in the first place. To organize a movement around the reclamation of a term is in and of itself an act of white privilege. To not make explicit and clear the privilege and power inherent in such an act is to invite less-informed folks with privilege (in other words, folks who know just enough to be dangerous) to assume that reclamation can be applied universally. . . . “Woman” is not a universal experience . . . “Nigger” is not a catchall term for oppression . . . And “slut” is not the anchor point of a universal movement around female sexuality, no matter how much global resonance it has.
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The concept of reclaiming “sluttiness” presumes that a woman has other options for her sexual identity. She could “own” sluttiness, or she could “own” being a prude. A woman who is always assumed to be a “slut” and can never take on the “prude” persona no matter how asexual she may be or pretend to be can never have fun with the “slut” identity. Cooper explains that “sluttiness” and “slut-shaming” are “central to white women’s experiences of sexuality. So to start a movement around that word is inherently to place white women and their experiences at the center.” Black women “are always already sexually free, insatiable, ready to go, freaky, dirty, and by consequence, unrapeable. When it comes to reclamations of sexuality, in some senses, Black women are always already fucked.”
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