Slut 101: We’ve Had It by: Irissa Kai written: 2016
They say a man can have sex with 100 women and he’s a legend. But if a woman has sex with 100 men, she’s a slut. Hold up just a second. We're congratulating the lad on a victory while punishment is being served to the lass who did no worse than a crime. Isn’t that a double standard? Shouldn’t we have moved past it already? Apparently, we haven’t. But before we dig into the social stigma behind slut-shaming, we need to know what ‘slut’ stands for. The origins of the word derived from slutte meant “a dirty, untidy, or slovenly woman”. The modern sense of the word translates to that of “a sexually promiscuous woman”, which dates back to the Middle Ages. They are labelled so due to their unwillingness to conform to societal expectations of how they should live and carry themselves. For example, if you don provocative clothing, you’re a slut. If you get away with what someone else can’t, you’re a slut. It has come to the point where even virgins can be called sluts. It is expected of a woman to be demure, not attract unwanted attention from men and remain pure until marriage. Any deviance out this stereotype entitles people, however wrongfully and falsely, to label women as ‘out-of-control, tramps’. Least to say, in a society that glorifies modesty, unconventional, unfamiliar behaviours can earn one ‘slut’ tag, asserting an even greater power to the ‘non-sluts’. How does one receive the honour of ‘slut’, you may ask? It’s simple - openly bash a woman’s sexuality and you’re part of the game of slut-shaming. So, what is slut-shaming? It's when we call women sluts, whores, skanks, implying that they’re ‘dirty’ or used for having sex or even perceived as too sexual a being. The goal here is to make her feel guilty for acting on her libido. Those slurs are mostly hurled at women, by women. It explicitly divides women into the ‘good girls’ and the ‘bad girls’. Slut shaming is a good thing in most people's eyes. And that's the problem. Slut shaming is a bad thing because it's usually motivated by hate, self-righteousness or competitiveness. In actuality, any female who acts in a way that another person doesn’t like is at risk of being slut-shamed. It’s been ingrained to shame others that we don’t realise that it’s a form of sexual harassment. There’s also the lack of a comparably popular term for ‘male sluts’, highlighting the double standard in societal expectations between males and females. Quoted by Jessica Valenti’s He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut: The Sexual Double Standard:
“How many times has rape been discounted because a woman has been deemed a slut? How many times are women called whores while their partners beat them? How often are women’s sexual histories used against them in workplace harassment cases?” In March of this year, there was a Twitter feud between Amber Rose and Khloe Kardashian. For those of you who weren’t aware, here’s the low down.
It ultimately became a competition to see “Who was the biggest slut”. The sad part? These two, powerful sex symbols in the media, are supposed to be rooting for each other, but here they are. What is with women slut-shaming other women? Do they worry they themselves might be labelled sluts? Do they want to appear less slutty? No one knows for sure. Then it dawned on me that it’s because of internalized sexism. Women are made each other’s competition, to come off as a better, more respectable woman than the other. Going back to Amber Rose, having been a target of slut-shamers for a long time, decided to call out the slut-shaming and what better way than to have a protest? Scratch that, a SlutWalk protest. These SlutWalks are international marches held to protest that sexual women are ‘sluts’ and that ‘sluts’ are asking to rape. According to the website, it recognizes that shaming, oppression, assault and violence have disproportionately impacted marginalized groups including women of colour, transgender people and sex workers. What’s significant about Rose’s SlutWalk was that she showed women of colour they had space in the movement, being a woman of Bajan and Cape Verdean descent. Definitely a game-changer. But the issue is more complicated as black women have been branded as hoes for centuries. It is completely understandable to want distance from these labels. They suffer from the
absence of the privilege to walk the streets, half-naked or not, without their safety at risk. This makes it harder to claim “slut” for black women who cannot be easily dismissed, but hey, no harm in trying right? When will the shaming end? At what point will we cut the nonsense and acknowledge that women’s bodies and sexuality are their own? We don’t realise the severity of slut-shaming till we’re facing the brunt of it. It’s more acceptable to judge and shame a women's choice about her body, her clothing, and her sex life rather than to just accept her for who she is. When women aren't made to feel ashamed of their sexuality, when they don't constantly fear the possibility of violence or sexual assault, and when they feel that they have a say in society, then "slut" will shed that last layer of stigma for good.