“I’m no angel, but I’ve spread my wings quite a bit” – Mae West
Wanton women everywhere lock up your libidos and throw away the key. It is a widely accepted practice that if a woman is single, has had multiple partners and is not ashamed of her sexual prowess to label her a whore, slut, hoe and entire gamut of ill-fitting and hurtful names. Men do it, women do it and sometimes the shaming is internal. What’s up with that?
Double-standards aside, the shaming of women and their sexual behavior reeks of judgement and bias that seldom has anything to do with the actual act of sex. Labeling a woman a slut (whether she has lots of sex or is just percieved to) has more to do with the feelings of threat than any hardcore (pun intended) evidence of wanton behavior. Rachel Hills wrote an interesting post about slut shaming.
“Most of the slut shaming that I’ve observed – particularly slut shaming from otherwise progressive, pro-feminist women – happens when the person doing the shaming feels directly and personally threatened by another woman’s perceived sexual behaviour or appeal.”
So then I guess the question now is what exactly is a slut? How do you qualify a person as such? Is it the number of partners, the frequency or the way one dresses? The answer is that there is no concrete definition and it changes with each person’s views on acceptable behavior for women. And since no one person can truly define such a demeaning term, why use it? Why shame women for making personal, healthy, consensual choices that affect only them?
When we label women, we’re really labeling our own views on sexuality and ideas on how women should be portrayed. And we’re labeling the part of us that feels threatened by another person’s behavior (whether the threat is real or perceived). With all the triumphs and progression made by women, it seems that we still get boiled down to two inadequate categories; Madonna or Whore. And really those are the real labels that deserve shame?
I think slut shaming is really nasty stuff and it’s used to discredit women in SO many ways. I’ll admit I used to do it when I was younger (I think most people in our culture do without thinking, because it’s so ingrained), but I try not to ever do it now.
@Michelle: It’s definitely ingrained in our culture and I think we do it without even noticing. But I agree labeling women in such a way discredits our choices in such a hostile way.
[...] We’re all sluts [...]
[...] We’re all sluts [...]