I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet (7 page)

In the spring of 2012, President Obama announced that he would give a commencement speech at Barnard College rather than at Columbia College, his alma mater. Barnard is the all-female sister school of Columbia University, whose campus is across the street in Morningside Heights in New York City. Hundreds of resentful Columbia students slut-shamed Barnard students so viciously on Columbia’s student-run blog that even the
New York Times
reported on it.
²⁰
Anonymous students complained that because admission to Columbia is more selective than admission to Barnard, the women at Barnard are therefore less intelligent and more sexually promiscuous than the women at Columbia. According to Ravenna Koenig, a Barnard student, “slut” was “one of the tamer words used” on the blog.
²¹
Columbia students wrote,

“While you guys were perfecting your deepthroating techniques and experimenting with scissoring and anal play, we were learning Calculus (usually by sophomore year of high school).”

“Barnard is full of academically inferior students that are able to use OUR campus, take OUR classes, and are stereotypically easy to get in bed. We feel like we worked our asses off to get here, and it’s annoying as fuck that Barnard can get the milk for free, so to speak.”

“That is why we hate you cum dumpsters.”

“Moral of the story is that ugly, feeble Barnard women
need to shut their jizz holes and just be happy that Columbia let Barnyard pretend it was affiliated for this long.”
²²

Why did resentment against Barnard focus on the sexuality of its students? Because when you want to put down or undermine a woman, accusing her of being slutty works every time.

Later in 2012, the YouTube entertainer Jenna Mourey, known as Jenna Marbles, released a video titled “Things I Don’t Understand About Girls Part 2: Slut Edition,” in which she railed against “sluts.” She defined a slut as: “someone that has a lot of casual sex,” who has one-night stands with random guys, and who has sex with other girls’ boyfriends. As of this writing, the video has had more than five million views. Like Limbaugh, Mourey was forced to reevaluate her stance on “sluts” after dozens of disgusted fans created their own YouTube videos critiquing her. She told the
New York Times
that she “doesn’t regret the video, but plans on avoiding similar topics for now.”
²³

In March 2013, two teenage football players were convicted of publicly and repeatedly raping a girl in Steubenville, Ohio, who was so drunk she had passed out. For approximately six hours, the two boys took the unconscious girl from one location to another, assaulting her in a car on the way. No one tried to intervene. In fact, over a dozen peers photographed the naked girl and documented the assaults, as well as the mocking reactions of the rapists, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The victim was widely blamed for being raped on the grounds that she chose to drink to excess and because she was supposedly slutty. After the two teenage boys were found guilty of rape, reactions on Twitter included
comments such as “she’s the town [———] anyways. She’s hasn’t stop drinking yet. just pray. cause God’s gonna get her worse then anyone can.”
²⁴

Even the tennis superstar Serena Williams raised the issue of the victim’s supposed sluttiness during an interview with
Rolling Stone
magazine:

D
o you think it was fair, what they got? They did something stupid, but I don’t know. I’m not blaming the girl, but if you’re a 16-year-old and you’re drunk like that, your parents should teach you: Don’t take drinks from other people. She’s 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn’t remember? It could have been much worse. She’s lucky. Obviously, I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t a virgin, but she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that’s different.
²⁵

Williams echoed the commonly held belief that a slut is a sexually active girl who drinks to excess and therefore did something wrong that caused her own sexual assault.

A slut or ho is not only someone to be judged; she is also someone to be disbelieved. She has no credibility. As a result, when she’s gang-raped, her friends are more likely to snap photos of her assault than to snap away the rapists.

Contemporary Definitions

What is the essence of “bad” sluttiness? What ingredients transform an empowered “good slut” like the one envisioned
by Kathleen Hanna and SlutWalk feminists into a shameful “bad slut”?

In the summer of 2013, I led a workshop on slut-shaming for counselors of a Jewish summer sleepaway camp in the Northeast. The counselors were primarily (though not exclusively) white, educated, college-age men and women, gay and heterosexual. I asked them to write down the definition of “slut” that comes to mind when they hear campers or their peers use it. Making it clear to me that they do not endorse these associations, they scribbled:

“A girl who is known to hook up with a critical mass of people within a given timeframe.”

“A girl who dresses or behaves in a promiscuous way.”

“A person, generally female, who is overtly promiscuous through her clothes or actions or speech.”

“A female who has more sexual interactions than her peers do.”

“A woman who gets with a lot of guys or is very flirty or wears inappropriate clothing.”

“A girl or woman who does many sexual activities with many partners in a brief period of time.”

“An older teenager or young woman who wears provocative clothes and doesn’t think about the consequences.”

“A girl who has sex with a lot of boys or dresses provocatively or is not afraid to express her sexuality.”

“Someone who doesn’t respect her body and allows others to disrespect it.”

“A girl who does inappropriate things with a boy or boys outside of a relationship.”

“A girl who gets around, who hooks up a lot but with no emotional attachment.”

“A girl who’s sexually active in some way, or who has a reputation of having multiple partners in a short time span, whatever that means.”

At first glance, these definitions appear extraordinarily vague. What does “a critical mass of people within a given timeframe” actually convey? What does it truly mean to do “inappropriate things”? Many of the counselors hedged their definitions with the word “or”—a slut does this
or
she does that
or
she does this other thing. They seemed to have difficulty pinning down a specific definition. Clearly there is no one definition. “Slut” is in the eye of the beholder. Similar to how Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964 that he couldn’t define hard-core pornography but “I know it when I see it,” the definition of sluttiness is likewise slippery yet identifiable. Young people simply know it when they see it.

But take a closer look. There is one common element, one telltale sign: agency. The “bad slut” actively
does something
to earn her reputation. She is never passive or in the wrong place at the wrong time. She has put effort into her sexuality—and for that reason, she has been condemned.

The same dynamic is captured by
Urban Dictionary
, an online reader-created slang dictionary. “Slut” is the second most popular “S” word on the site. It is sandwiched between “sex” and “shit.” Readers of the site submit definitions; once a definition is posted, other readers determine its popularity
by voting it up or down. Of the 360 posted definitions for “slut,” the most popular one is “A woman with the morals of a man.” Is this definition positive, negative, or neutral? Impossible to say. Of the twenty most popular entries, most are negative and female-specific; of those definitions, all involve agency:

“A derogatory term. Refers to a sexually promiscuous person, usually female. One who engages in sexual activity with a large number of persons, occasionally simultaneously. Also refers to one who engages in sexual activity outside of a long-term relationship within the duration of said relationship. . . . In some cases, used to refer to a woman who is wearing ‘skimpy’ or tasteless clothing.”

“a girl thats fucked so many guys she cant close her legs anymore.”

“Slut: a girl who will sleep with anyone.”

“A female who will screw anyone who asks her to.”

“A chick that will spread her legs for anything of the male species. They also use their looks to get what they want . . . and if a guy wont do what they want they are then labeled ‘gay’ by the slut.”

“A female, who’s legs are open like 7-11. (Community Pussy.)”

“A female, who’s vagina is like a car park, guys can ‘park their car’ anytime.”

“Scum of the earth.”

Some of the definitions are presented neutrally:

“A female who has multiple sexual partners without engaging in any relationships.”

“A female who enjoys performing sexual acts with multiple partners.”

Several contributors expressed empathy for “sluts” even while they derided them:

“an unintelligent girl with low self-esteem that will do anything for attention and the approval of others. They start having sex with guys left and right to make them (the guys) happy and then they start to get used to the sexual lifestyle and actually start depending on it. Sluts are great people deep down inside they are just caught up in a downward spiral of a dirty lifestyle created by scumbag guys who claimed they loved them but all they really wanted was to stick it in and get it out. Sluts are NOT just good for sex, they are people just like you and me and they can love too, just give them a chance.”

“girl who will fuck/suck anyone because she has no self esteem, not to be confused with a girl who loves to have sex. Sometimes fucks to get guys to like her, never works.”

One contributor extolled the “slut”—sarcastically:

“Someone who provides a very needed service for the community and sleeps with everyone, even the guy that has no shot at getting laid and everyone knows
it. She will give him a sympathy fuck either because someone asked her to or she just has to fuck everyone she knows. These are great people, and without them sex crimes would definitely increase. Thank you slut, where ever you are.”
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So the components of a slut’s sluttiness include:

•     Displaying agency; being active rather than passive; choosing her actions (even when she is a victim of manipulative men).

•     Deviating from the sexual behaviors of her peers.

•     “Having sex” (heterosexual intercourse) or “hooking up” (engaging in any sort of sexual activity, which may or may not include intercourse) with more than one partner outside a romantic relationship, with little to no time in between partners.

•     Not being choosy with her sexual partners.

•     Giving the appearance of any or all of the above, even if she’s not actually sexually active.

•     Wearing clothes that her peers determine are too sexually revealing.

•     Expressing sexual confidence.

As a result of her characteristics, these corollary statements are regarded as valid:

•     Because she doesn’t treat herself with respect, others don’t have to, either.

•     If a guy sexually assaults her, she has no one to blame
but herself. If she weren’t slutty, she wouldn’t be assaulted.

•     Despite her low status, she may be praised for providing a service in the way that a prostitute does.

•     Her reprehensible behavior is the result of her upbringing; therefore she is someone to be pitied.

•     Alternately, she should be praised for asserting herself in the face of the sexual double standard.

Being a Slut Can Be Good. . . . Except When It’s Bad

We know what “slut” has meant historically, and we know what most people today are trying to convey when they use the word. But what does “slut” mean to the teenage girl or young woman who is herself so labeled? How does she make sense of this word to herself? How does she understand the term, especially if she’s not sexually active or not more so than her peers are?

I went directly to the most knowledgeable, reliable source: straight-talking New York City high school students, ages fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen. I asked a group of seven girls what the word means exactly among their peers. Members of an acclaimed theater group called the Arts Effect that draws students from several different private and public schools, they sat in a semicircle on the floor of a downtown studio, wearing jeans, tank tops, and hooded sweatshirts. Although the Arts Effect is multiracial, the girls who showed up on this particular day all were white. At first they seemed eager to
decode their language for me. But as our conversation progressed, it became clear that they were mostly eager to decode their language for themselves. Articulate, thoughtful, and poised, the girls wanted so much to talk about the word “slut” that they found it difficult to contain their thoughts. Their sentences galloped over each other.

The first thing they wanted me to know was that sometimes, if they’re able to control the circumstances, girls enjoy being known as sluts because the label indicates that they are being talked about. In the age of social media and reality television, being talked about is a baseline requirement of being someone who matters. If you’re not talked about, you’re not “relevant,” or you’re “under the radar.” Teenagers emphatically want to be relevant and on the radar.