Words relating to female sexuality have long been used as insults, as a way to invoke shame upon women who dare to express their sexuality as openly as their male counterparts.
The word ‘slut’, for example, is used almost exclusively as a descriptor of women, but hardly ever of men…
A man who enjoys sex is celebrated. ‘What a lad’, ‘he’s such a ladies man’, whereas a woman who enjoys sex is a ‘slut’, a ‘whore’, ‘she can’t keep her legs shut.’
In terms of where the word originates from, its origins are actually not rooted in sex at all.
The first recorded evidence of the word ‘slut’ being used can be seen in an Oxford dictionary dating back to 1402. The definition then was a ‘woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance’
^ (See? Devoid of any sexual connotations)…
It wasn’t until 1966 that we began to see the modern definition of the word slut arise.
A woman who enjoys sex in a degree considered shamefully excessive.
Since 1966, the word has been used in this manner to degrade women but…
Why?
The question is why, when men who are openly sexual are just ‘ladies men’, ‘lads’, are women ‘promiscuous’, ‘sluts?’…
It all boils down to power.
What stops a woman from parading down the street with her breasts exposed? Not the criminal justice system, when not wearing a bra in public isn’t illegal, but her fear of what other people will think.
An evolutionary defense when in ancient times we would’ve been cast outside of the group, ostracised from the pack, therefore leaving us susceptible to danger, what really keeps people ‘in line’ is not the police, but us, whereby, through socialisation (shame), we’re told what is right and wrong, moral and immoral, good and bad.
In a society where men are seen as ‘superior’ under the patriarchy, a society where women are expected to ‘just take’ what is given to them, to be ‘passive and submissive’, women who express freedom around their sexuality are perceived to be a ‘threat to the system.’
Labelled as ‘sluts’ to invoke shame, an ‘us vs them’ dynamic is created, not just between women and men, but more unsettlingly, between and amongst women themselves too, with women being ‘ostracised from the pack.’
‘I’m not like other girls’ is a sentiment that is echoed amongst women who want to separate themselves from what society (men) are calling ‘sluts.’ The insinuation being that women can be either beautiful, (see also: ‘hot’/’sexy’), or intelligent: ‘Brains vs beauty’…
^ This is what the patriarchy wants you to believe, anyway…
They want you to think that to be liberated is to sacrifice your morals, to choose sex over respect: ‘Object’ vs person. And unfortunately, far too many women do think this…
Despite religion arguably having the least influence it has ever had on Western society, where ‘no sex before marriage’ is largely disregarded and secularisation- atheism and agnosticism, ever increasing in popularity, the shame that women feel around their sexuality is still strong.
‘It’s so shameful’, to the extent that women have been falling victim to a scam that has been doing the rounds for years.
People know that the shame women feel would see some forking out thousands of pounds to ‘protect their image’, and the scam preys on these women…
The scam sees someone emailing you claiming to have hacked into your phone’s webcam. They tell you that they have footage of you watching (& enjoying) pornography. and that if you don’t send them a specified amount of money, then they will share the footage with everyone in your contacts- your family, your friends, your employers- thus putting the fear of God into you that your reputation will be ‘ruined’ as a result.
Now this is a scam, and if anyone gets this email, then you’ve heard it here: It’s a scam, don’t fall for it, but the point is that people know how much shame women still feel around their sexuality. Even though men send ‘dick pics’ as an opener to women (something which is now illegal thankfully, ‘cyber flashing’, but which has been occurring for years by men who seemingly have a God complex, where they think that women are just dying to see what is between their legs), God forbid a woman has photos on her phone that she has taken from the privacy of her bedroom, for herself.
God forbid that a woman enjoys sex too…
What the scammers and the victims of the scam fail to understand is that there does not have to be a sacrifice made where a woman can be only ‘sexual or respectable’, ‘beautiful or brainy’, as some people would have us believe.
We can be, we ARE, both.
Wearing a revealing outfit, for example, doesn’t take away from the fact that I have a degree. It doesn’t eradicate the fact that I discuss politics for a living, or that I write poetry, or that I am a ‘respectable’ (whatever that even means) woman.
What I choose to wear, how I choose to express my sexuality, does not change my worth as a human being (in fact, if anything, I would say that it adds to it, my self-worth at least, because I am in control)…
For which we can all be in control.
As in the way that people are reclaiming words that were previously used as derogatory terms around diverse sexual orientations, ‘queer’, ‘butch’, ‘dyke’, etc, so too are people reclaiming derogatory terms around sexuality in terms of… liking sex (because again, ‘God forbid a woman like sex too’)!!
Whereas a decade ago, the word ‘slut’ was THE worst thing that a woman could be called, bringing shame on, not only them but their whole family, today, women are reclaiming the word as a self-descriptor, a form of empowerment, ‘girl power’, so as to remove its power from the hands of men who use it in an attempt to disregard our power… Men who try to shame us back into submission, ‘you’ll take what you’re given.’
Now, of course, usage of the word slut all comes down to context and intent.
A woman calling herself a slut vs a woman being called a slut; Where the former is about a woman owning her sexuality, the latter is rooted in the patriarchal assumption that a woman’s sexuality is to be owned [by a man].
Empowerment vs misogyny…
But thankfully, more and more women are owning their sexuality, with the reclamation of the word slut being at least in part creditable to the increasing popularity of sites such as Only Fans (dubbed the ‘paywall of porn’), a platform that empowers women to be in control of their own sexuality…
Unlike traditional porn which is often headed by a director (usually a man), with the woman getting only a tiny percentage of the profits made, Only Fans puts the woman in control, cutting out the ‘middleman’, giving her total autonomy and access to all the profits which are rightfully hers.
By shining a light on the fact that sex work is a viable option for women, and not something that is reserved for ‘prostitutes’ and ‘drug addicts’, as is an all too common stereotype, it quashes, or at least, tries to quash, the idea that sex work is a ‘last resort’ for people who are ‘desperate for the money’, because ‘why else would someone do something that is so shameful?’
Also helping to decrease the shame around female sexuality are public figures who are using their platforms as a force for good/as a way to reduce the stigma when it comes to women and sex.
Grace Campbell, for example, (pictured below), a 30-year-old British comedian, writes standup comedy which focuses almost entirely on her sex life.
‘Sex-positive’, as she writes of her work, ‘my comedy has no bounds.’
Yet Campbell also poignantly recounts the time she was raped in LA in 2021 in this Guardian article, and how she worried about whether she would be ‘taken seriously’ based on her sex-positive work…
I made a name for myself with sex-positive comedy. Then I was raped on a night out. Would my openness be used against me?
An extract from the Guardian article:
‘Every time someone asked me, “Why didn’t you go to the police?” I felt as if the joke was on me. Me? Go to the police? The girl who once got up on stage and told a room of 400 people that she doesn’t even need lube when she does anal is now claiming that she was anally raped? The girl who has bragged about how many public places she’s had sex in is saying she didn’t want to have sex in a hotel corridor? The same girl who rode a dick-shaped cloud on the cover of her book? The girl who describes herself as a slut, who has openly discussed which STDs she’s had? The one who has said that men tell her she “smells like sex”?
To me and my friends, this openness is completely normal, but when I checked in with the reality that, in a police station, it would be used against me, I spiralled. I was imagining the ways I would be ripped apart. I thought about passages from my book, my Instagram, or my standup being taken out of context in order to paint me as this whore who was deserving of her comeuppance.’
^ And this is a conundrum that many women face…
Were we ‘deserving’ of it?
Were we ‘asking’ for it?
A common sentiment that rape victims hear:
‘Well, what were you expecting going out dressed like that?’
(To receive the same autonomy over our bodies as men, perhaps)?..
‘I can be a cocky, self-proclaimed slut, who wears revealing tops, and writes shows about being obsessed with men, and I can also be raped. Those two things can exist at the same time. I know this because it’s what happened to me.’
– Grace Campbell.
A form of sexual liberation, it is entirely a woman’s choice to create an Only Fans, for example, or to ‘brag about how many public places she’s had sex in’- she is entirely in control of that. But when that liberation is used against her, it becomes exploitation. Where any sense of control is taken away, she is no longer IN control, she is BEING controlled… Where she stops being somebody and just becomes ‘A’ body…
The issue does not lie in the word ‘slut’, but in the assumption that to be a slut is to be ‘asking for it.’
Telling a woman that it is her fault for being raped because, ‘What were you thinking going out dressed like that?’, is equivocal to telling the family of a dead person, ‘Well, it’s his fault for being murdered because what was he thinking walking down the street like that?’
ANARKISS 