I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet Read Online Free

“drama”—to whip up public attention, to create excitement, to emulate the dynamics of reality television, in which life isn’t worth living unless there’s an antagonist to contend with. Sometimes this “drama” is hostile and cruel; it is meant to hurt, and it does.
    In this book, I differentiate between “slut-bashing,” which is a type of bullying, and “slut-shaming,” which is more diffuse. Slut-bashing, I argue, is verbal harassment in which a girl is intentionally targeted because she does not adhere to feminine norms. Slut-shaming, on the other hand, is a casual and often indirect form of judgment. To complicate matters further, sometimes girls and young women engage in a practice I call “reciprocal slut-shaming,” in which they take turns calling each other sluts in an apparently friendly manner. However, I will show that regardless of intent, all of these behaviors are absolutely corrosive and wrong. Calling a female a slut even in a seemingly benign context ultimately results in a policing not only of the specific female involved but of all females everywhere.
    A third difference is that today many girls and women choose to label themselves as sluts— good sluts —to assert a positive, even defiant, attitude about their sexuality. As long as they control the label, many adolescent girls say that they enjoy the sexual attention they receive from their peers. To them, “slut” or “slutty” conveys a female who possesses sexual equality with males. If you’re around a group of teenage girls or young women, you may hear them call out “Hey slut” to one another. However, it can be hard to know the intention of the speaker for sure. Sometimes in this context, “slut” ismeant to be affectionate. But sometimes the intention is to police another girl, to warn her that she’s being watched. The speaker herself may not even be clear about her own intent, or she may have dual goals—to be a vivacious friend and a guardian of sexual values.
    Meanwhile, some adult activists choose to wave the “slut” banner to prove a feminist point. The SlutWalk movement has encouraged women to assert themselves as sex-positive, showing that there’s nothing wrong with being a sexual woman. Activists reclaim or “own” the term to disrupt negative associations of femininity with sexuality.
    I recognize that some individual girls and women feel empowered when they call themselves and their friends sluts on their own terms. Nevertheless, in the pages that follow I question whether this usage is an effective feminist strategy when employed on a large scale. Repeatedly, girls and women told me that they chose to call themselves sluts but subsequently lost control over the term when others then used the label against them. They used “slut” to mean they were an empowered “good slut,” but others turned around the word to mean that they were a shameful, promiscuous “bad slut.” Despite its worthwhile intentions, reclaiming the word “slut” may end up causing more harm than good.
    Unlike “bitch,” which often is turned on its head, becoming a shorthand for “an assertive woman with power” in a positive sense rather than “an aggressive, domineering woman” in a negative sense, “slut” is a more slippery term. “Bitch” refers to a woman’s behavior; so as long as her behavior is perceived positively by others, her bitchiness may be considered an asset. “Slut,” on the other hand, refers to awoman’s essence as a feminine being. Once she is labeled a slut in the pejorative sense, it makes no difference if she changes her behavior or if her behavior becomes well-regarded: she is maligned as a deviant.
    In short, the label “slut” is far more common, and utterly more confusing, than ever before. But one thing has not changed: regardless of context, the consequences of being labeled a slut are nearly always damaging. As we’ll see, whether the context is slut-bashing, slut-shaming, or