This might sound repetitive. I would think it would. It is, just to be clear, 2016. We’ve had our first black president, we’ve created zero calorie soda, we have put a man on the moon, but we are still attacking girls for their sex lives. That’s right, we’ve conquered space but we haven’t conquered slut shaming. Slut shaming as defined by me, a Internet savvy student, is the act of bashing a woman for nothing else but the fact that she has had many sexual partners. Or bashing a woman because you assume she has had many sexual partners. Or bashing a woman because she appears to be wearing clothes that may suggest she is promiscuous and that would mean she has may sexual partners. All in all, it’s bashing a woman for something that is no one’s damn business.
The part that breaks my heart is not the men doing this. Because that is expected. I know the guys who are sexually frustrated are going to take it out on the women who keep rejecting them. I know men will jump to “slut” or “hoe” the first chance they get. Men will see a girl eating a salad and be like “what a slut”. I know this. I know men pressure girls constantly to give it up and when she finally does he will call her easy. Girls know this. This is our culture that we live in. It has been this way for a very long time. One of my professors joked, “boys are always bragging about who they’ve had sex with but call girls sluts for having sex with them… I just wonder who they expect to sleep with”. Would it be amazing if men stopped doing this? Yes. One hundred times yes. Do I expect twenty year old frat boys to understand this concept? No. I’m not trying to be pretentious or overly progressive. I just know from experience that this is a concept most men are not comfortable with. They want the short answers. Unfortunately those “short answers” are generally degrading and lazy.
So if that isn't the part that breaks my feminist fueled heart, what is? It’s the girls. It is the girls who call their best friends sluts behind their back. It is the women who use terms like “she got herself pregnant in college”. It is the girl who tweets about how so and so is a dumb hoe just because she doesn’t like so and so. It’s the girl who clings to her boyfriend’s arm and side eyes the girl in a tube top at the party. It’s the girl you cannot talk to because you know she will judge you.
We’re supposed to be standing with each other. And I know we are not all the same and we all have different opinions. Modesty empowers some. Sexuality empowers others. If she wants to have make-out with the bouncer, who cares? If she laughs about it on the way home, why shouldn't she? Women are not made of glass. We will not become smudged and dirty when we get touched.
Whether she has decided to save herself for marriage or if she sleeps with a new guy every weekend; you do not have any right to degrade her for it. How is her love life still the topic of discussion? How is her sexuality still theirs to judge? How is my body still their property? To me, a nurse and a porn star deserve the same amount of respect. They are both well rounded women who made their OWN decisions on which path they wanted to take. And if nothing else, they are both our sisters.
