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: