I’ve been hearing a lot about slut-shaming the past couple weeks; watched a bunch of videos on Youtube about it today. But I’ve got to admit, this is a fairly new term in my vocabulary. I mean, I’ve heard (and used) slut since I was a teen. When I found out a girl had slept with someone else’s boyfriend, I said she was sort of a slut. When one of my friends felt they had slept with a guy too soon, they said they felt like a slut. When I wore something out that exposed what I felt was too much skin, I said I looked like a slut. But here’s the thing—the thing that I never really thought about until the other day—I don’t know that I believe that sluts are real.
Now, I can hear the snorts of derision through the computer, so hear me out. I’ve come to the conclusion that the term “slut” is nothing more than society’s (and our own) way of shaming us for behavior that they deem unacceptable. Because, really, the term slut is only applied to women, and it’s applied fairly widely (and liberally). What if a man did these things that gets a woman branded as a slut? If a guy brings a girl home from the bar, he’s at best a stud, at worst just “boys being boys,” but that girl’s a slut. Tramp. Whore. If a guy walks into a bar wearing next to nothing, he might get called cocky, maybe an idiot. But a girl is a slut. Jake from the football team nails two chicks at once? He’s a legend, a god. Those girls? Sluts. If a guy racks up multiple partners, he’s a stud, sowing his wild oats, making another notch in his bedpost. The girl with multiple partners? Well, that depends on how many, but in most cases if that number spills over onto a second hand (or if she wasn’t in relationships with all the guys), she’s—you guessed it—a slut. So if behavior that is not only accepted, but in many cases expected and even encouraged, in men is fine, but discouraged in women, can sluts actually exist, or is it just our generation’s scarlet A emblazoned on the Facebook page of any woman who dare explore her sexuality?
Looking back, I’m fairly certain that I’ve long doubted the existence of the fabled slut. When a friend would cry that she shouldn’t have slept with this new guy, the one she’d only known for a week, that she was a slut, my response was always the same: No, you’re not. It’s okay for men to do it, so why can’t you? Well, I think I know the answer now. Society has long damned women for being as sexual as their male counterparts, hell, less even. For ages women were expected to enter the bridal chamber “intact” (read: with their hymens undisturbed), while men could pretty much have as much experience as they could get (and in some cultures, this was expected of them).
But why? Some people say that women are more delicate, that they can’t handle the emotions that go along with having multiple, often casual, partners. Well, I’m going to call bullshit on that one. Personally, I believe that it has more to do with Darwinism than anything. A man could theoretically have as many children as he has sexual partners, so from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes the most since for him to spread his seed around. The more mini-me’s he has running about, the more likely his line is to be passed on successfully. A woman, however, can only have a finite number of offspring, so she has to be more judicious about who she breeds with, lest all her children be fathered by idiots who think that just because a girl wears a short skirt or low-cut top that it means she’s open season. But you see, that was before the time of things like the pill and the condom. Women can be just as choosy as they want when it comes to who fathers their children. And really, men, how many of you go around getting laid with the intentions of having a little one arrive nine months later? That’s what I thought. So this whole idea of it’s okay for men to screw whomever they want, whenever, and however is just crap.
Here’s the truth of it. The term “slut”? It’s just a way for society to make us feel shame for being sexual creatures. It is a continuation of a centuries old oppression, and quite frankly, I’m done with it. If a woman has 2 partners, or 20, or 200 (or go on adding zeros to that number), she is not a slut. If she doesn’t use protection on these sexual excursions, she is engaging in risky behavior, but she still isn’t a slut. And here’s the one that I’ve only just recently come to terms with: I used to say that as long as a girl was having sex for herself, because it made her feel good, and not because she thought it would make the guy like her or to make her feel better about herself, that she wasn’t a slut. But this implies that if this isn’t the case, that she is one. And this is not true. She may have a low self esteem, she might have self image issues that need to be worked on, but she is not a slut. Because sluts, they’ve gone the way of the unicorn.
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