I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet (39 page)

Ban the word slut,

Keep the peace!

The culmination of the conference was a performance of a theatrical work,
Slut
, which was inspired by the experiences of a multiracial group of New York girls, who were also the performers. Cappiello and McInerney developed the theme with the girls, and Cappiello wrote the script, directing it with McInerney. The play explores the intersection of slut-shaming and sexual violence, and questions the wisdom of girls embracing the “slut” label for themselves, however well-intentioned and playful they may be. It was performed over a dozen times in New York City in 2013, including at the prestigious New York International Fringe Festival, as well as the festival’s Encore Series. A galvanizing piece of theater, it could become the next
Vagina Monologues
; it has the potential to be staged by different communities and performed in varied venues. The
New York Post
called the show “hard-hitting,” while the
Daily Beast
’s reviewer said the play makes “an important and underutilized gesture in creating a space for girls, their families, and the audience to communally work through a complicated and painful issue.”
²⁷⁰

The show opens with five high school girls, members of their school’s dance team informally called the Slut Squad, joking around with each other in a friendly way about how sexy they are and calling each other sluts. “Is my outfit OK?” one girl asks. “Is it too slutty?”

It’s Friday, and one member of the Slut Squad, Joey, has plans that night to meet up at her friend Conner’s apartment
for a party. Two of her girlfriends are supposed to come with her, but at the last minute, they have to cancel. Joey decides to go ahead without them, but first she attends another party, drinking vodka and hanging out with her male buddies. Three friends—Luke, Tim, and George—share a taxi with her to go to Conner’s. Joey’s had more vodka than she can handle, but she’s not incapacitated. “I felt safe with them,” she explains later. “They’re my friends; we hang out every weekend. I mean, I made out with them a couple of times, but I never hooked up with any of them; we’re just friends.”

During the cab ride, George and Luke pin down Joey. They rape her by shoving their fingers inside her vagina. Tim, the brother of Joey’s best friend, does not intervene. He pretends he doesn’t know what’s going on, looking steadfastly out the window during the rape. The driver has cranked up the music, so he can’t hear what’s going on in the back seat.

When they arrive at the party, Joey stumbles in and throws up. Someone snaps photos of her and posts them online.

Most of the play consists of Joey, who has brought criminal charges against the boys, speaking to the district attorney. We learn that everyone at school blames her for ruining the boys’ lives. Her best friend’s mother calls her “a little slut,” even though her friend protests, saying, “But that could have been me! She is not a slut, mom. I know her. She is not a slut.”

Every sexually provocative thing Joey has previously done becomes evidence that she is lying, that she’s crying rape because she regrets what she’s done and she’s embarrassed, that she threw herself at the boys, that she asked for it. Even members of the Slut Squad don’t believe her. “She’s bringing down the whole school,” one of them complains.

It turns out that as a joke, Joey had bought flavored condoms to the first party, and even had posed for pictures tasting them. She explains to the DA that this is all a misunderstanding; the condoms were part of a private joke shared with her classmates. In health class that week, a student had submitted an anonymous question to the nurse about flavored condoms, and everyone had thought it was hilarious. “I bought condoms, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to have sex,” she insists. But the pictures have been posted online. And then there are the other pictures of her drunk. And there’s also the fact that as a member of the Slut Squad, Joey had been calling herself a slut for several years. So why should anyone believe her when she says she was raped?

“We use the term ‘slut’ in a positive, confident way,” Joey attempts to explain to the DA. “We put a positive spin on it. It means we are confident and sexy. This is the only time I’ve been called a slut in a negative way, as a dirty whore . . . Do you think the fact that my dance team is called the Slut Squad makes people think I’m an actual slut?”

Joey comes to recognize that if she moves forward with her charge of rape, her credibility would be pitted against that of the boys—three popular, well-liked athletes bound for Ivy League colleges. “No one will believe me,” she realizes. “
I
wouldn’t even believe me.”

The play is riveting because it lays out the reality faced by teen girls that no one wants to talk about even though it affects them to the core: “slut” may seem like a carefree term of endearment, and it is—until the moment a girl is assaulted physically or verbally. Girls don’t know that “slut” is toxic, because no one discusses the situation with them. They are
left on their own to figure things out for themselves—but by the time they understand the dynamics of “slut,” it’s usually too late.

Working on the play has deeply affected the young performers. None of them uses the word “slut” any longer. All of them worry about the connection between slut-shaming and sexual violence. After one of the early performances, one of the actors said during an open discussion with the audience, “There’s pressure to dress in a sexual way so that boys look at you. You feel good because looking sexy makes you feel powerful, almost important.”

I raised my hand and asked the girls if it’s possible to be slutty in a good way—as the members of the Slut Squad attempt when they proudly call each other “slut” as a compliment—without eventually being considered slutty in a bad way. They shook their heads no.

And that is why the StopSlut movement is crucial. Teenage girls and young women need guidance. Adult women and men must help them.

Cappiello and McInerney have established the Girl Coalition to raise awareness and ignite the StopSlut movement in schools and communities. Their theater company, the Arts Effect, is working together with Equality Now, an international organization that works for the protection of human rights of women and girls around the world, as well as with several other institutions such as the Feminist Press, to support this initiative.

As of this writing, a hundred racially and economically diverse girls from all over New York City and New Jersey are participating in the Girl Coalition. They meet in small
groups six times over a year with an adult mentor, becoming delegates within their schools. Each Girl Coalition participant creates a plan of action from the ground up that addresses the needs of her particular school’s dynamics to confront and address slut-shaming, sexual violence, and sexual aggression, to spread healthier attitudes about female sexuality.

Slut-bashing and slut-shaming are isolating experiences, but members of the Girl Coalition are part of a larger community that supports teenage girls. By working together, they create a sense of sisterhood. Because so much slut-bashing and slut-shaming is committed by other girls, it’s crucial that girls work together collectively. “We believe that one of the most important tenets of feminism is educating girls to make sure they understand how much we value their voices and experiences,” Cappiello tells me. “We don’t give them the solutions or impose solutions on them. We allow them to ask the questions themselves and to discover the solutions for themselves. The girls are the experts. They understand these issues better than we do, even better than any expert out there.”

Cappiello and McInerney firmly believe that girls must explore issues for themselves rather than listen to what adults tell them. “With every question that comes up,” adds McInerney, “we always ask them why. We turn around the question to have them answer it.”

“If you’re allowing the girls to ask the questions and frame the answers,” I ask, “then what happens if they decide they want to reclaim the word ‘slut’? Wouldn’t that go against the whole idea of the Girl Coalition and the StopSlut movement?”

“If a girl said she wanted to reclaim the word, we would ask her why and then discuss,” answers McInerney. “We’ve
had so many conversations about reclamation,” adds Cappiello. “We’ve talked about this for hours. When a girl wants to reclaim, we never say, ‘You’re wrong.’ There shouldn’t be an adult voice telling them what to think.”

Although the girls are guided to recognize that reclamation has been attempted and has failed, they are the ones doing the thinking and the talking. This is their conversation. They need to figure out themselves what “slut” means rather than going along with current norms of behaving in a “slutty” way (however they define it) for the sake of fitting in. This movement gives them an opportunity to pause, step back, analyze, and decide what is the best route forward.

We need a huge cultural shift away from slut-shaming and toward girls’ healthy sexual development. This conversation—facilitated by the StopSlut movement and the Girl Coalition—is indispensible for altering attitudes. Girls should not be fearful of their sexuality because they are afraid of being slut-shamed. We must listen to them as they speak out—in whatever medium or format—to make them feel part of a community that values them.

There is no good reason that a girl is shamed for sexting while a boy is not, that a woman’s number must be lower than a man’s, that a survivor of sexual assault has her credibility stolen from her along with her bodily integrity. For women to be truly safe, we must eradicate the use of the term “slut.” Only then will female sexuality become transformed from a site of pitfalls to one of positivity and possibility.

APPENDIX A

Dos and Don’ts for Parents of Teenagers and College-Age Children

We’ve seen that girls and young women are bombarded by contradictory sexual messages within an oppressive environment of bodily surveillance, judgment, and shaming. Because they are perpetually at risk of being labeled a slut, they may perceive they have no choice but to act in ways considered to be slutty. The following behaviors stereotypically regarded as slutty by many people are often unhealthy from a developmental point of view; they also may reinforce and perpetuate the cycle of slut-shaming:

•     Capitulating to coercive requests for naked photos, which can then be circulated against their will.

•     Wearing sexually provocative clothes, or posting
revealing photos on social media, even when they are not interested in flaunting their physique, to avoid being harassed as a prude.

•     Drinking to excess to cope with sexually uncomfortable surroundings or to evade sexual responsibility.

•     Having sex with multiple partners to assert control over their body.

•     Giving guys oral sex to feel desired or to get them to stop badgering for sex.

•     Lying about their sexual history to friends, lovers, and health care providers to avoid being made to feel ashamed.

Girls may also develop self-destructive coping mechanisms as a reaction to having been labeled a slut or to the threat of being labeled a slut:

•     Eating only a few hundred calories a day, melting away their breasts and hips with the hope of appearing undesirable and therefore not sexually objectified.

•     Using drugs such as ecstasy, acid, marijuana, or cocaine to numb the painful experience of being publicly shamed.

•     Attempting to commit suicide to end the experience of relentless public humiliation.

•     Bullying other girls, or whipping up drama about them on social media, to call attention to their supposed sluttiness.

•     Remaining silent, or participating in slut-shaming generated by someone else, without intervening when another girl or woman is targeted.

•     Eschewing birth control under the false belief that “good” girls don’t take charge of their sexuality.

What can we do to stop these behaviors and encourage healthy sexual development? Our ultimate goal is to wipe away slut-shaming, but until we succeed, we must focus on helping individual girls and women by teaching them to be aware of situations and behaviors that may lead to slut-shaming.

Those who harass, bully, or assault are the only ones who bear responsibility for their actions. It is never a girl’s fault if she is called a slut. It is never a girl’s fault if someone circulates a photo of her breasts. It is never a girl’s fault if she becomes pregnant unintentionally. It is never a girl’s fault if she is raped.

But as long as slut-shaming continues to exist, we must do whatever is in our individual power to help girls and women minimize their personal risks. They may end up harassed, bullied, or assaulted anyway; it’s not possible to eliminate risk completely. Nevertheless, we must give them tools to help them avoid potentially dangerous scenarios and to handle perpetrators wherever they may be. And we must create a supportive and nonjudgmental environment where they feel comfortable being completely open about their experiences.

Do talk with your child, even well before adolescence, about the sexual double standard and slut-shaming.

Express openness about these topics so that your child will
feel comfortable confiding in you if she or he is harassed or witnesses harassment.

Don’t express judgment against your daughter if she turns to unhealthy sexualized behaviors or coping mechanisms.

Likewise, don’t express judgment against her friends or your son’s friends. Remember, many girls today are reacting against a virulent culture of slut-shaming. Their behaviors are a symptom of a disease that we must attack and eliminate.

If you find out that your child sexts, do be understanding and not punitive.