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

scandalous because it’s a violation of normative behavior. Before the late 1700s, British women were thought to be more sexually desirous than men. As the middle class rose in England and America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, marriage became central to bourgeois society. A shift from the extended family to the nuclear family occurred against the backdrop of evangelical Protestantism and the emerging capitalist and individualistic economy. The family unit became a microcosm of the authoritarian state, and gendered spheres of activity solidified, leading to subordination of women withinmarriage. The unequal distribution of power within the new romantic marriage led to a new way of thinking of male and female sexuality: men were naturally aggressive while women were inherently passive. 3 Jaclyn Geller, a literature professor and the author of the book Here Comes the Bride , a critique of marriage and the wedding industry, notes the significance of the Hardwicke Marriage Act, passed in Britain in 1753. This legislation stipulated that weddings had to be public and ceremonial. Marriages became formalized and regulated by the state. Sexually active women in Britain as well as the colonies who were not wives became regarded as immoral. 4 Wives themselves were also expected to curb their sexual desires. Nancy Cott, a historian, has called this sexual ideology “passionlessness.” This dominant view was that white women “lacked sexual aggressiveness, that their sexual appetites contributed a very minor part (if any at all) to their motivations, that lustfulness was simply uncharacteristic.” 5 A slut was a white woman who deviated from the ideal.
    Women of color, however, have been presumed by white people since at least the 1600s to lack the moral and sexual restraint that white women are thought to possess. The stereotype of white female chastity stands in opposition to a stereotype of black female carnality. As a result, the “bad” sluttiness of women of color reaffirms racist and sexist stereotypes rather than upends them. Thus, Harriet Jacobs, an African American slave, wrote in the 1850s that when her white master sexually assaulted her when she was fifteen years old, her white mistress did not come to her aid. Instead, her white mistress regarded Jacobs as a temptress, and therefore she had “no other feelings towards her but those of jealousyand rage.” 6 And still today, when a young woman of color is denigrated by her peers as a slut or a ho, her experience often may not receive the attention it deserves, and she is often left isolated without any support.
    Moreover, when females of color attempt, as many of their white cohorts do, to playfully adopt a “good slut” persona, the effort can backfire miserably. Shabiki Crane, a black Canadian woman, recalls that when she attended Catholic school, she and her friends did everything they could to individualize the mandated school uniform. “I, like many girls I knew, chose to wear tight-fitting grey pants as opposed to the ugly, baggy, and shapeless pants from the uniform store,” she says.
I remember checking myself numerous times in the mirror; I looked good! Unfortunately, it was not a mutual opinion. The guidance counselor coyly explained to me that I shouldn’t wear tight pants because ‘people would think badly of me.’ He even went as far as to say that Asian and white girls could get away with it because of their shapes, but on me it only looked vulgar. I felt vulgar. . . . It often seemed as if only certain people had the right and privilege to use their sexuality in a manner that was perceived as ‘light-hearted’ and fun. 7
    Adopting a “good slut” identity is a privilege that many women of color can’t access because of racist assumptions about their sexuality.
    Queer and heterosexual females also experience slut-bashing and slut-shaming in different ways from each other. Some of the women who share their stories in this