I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet by Leora Tanenbaum

she’s being slut-bashed, hurtful messages appear the moment she turns on her phone, tablet, or computer. Disconnecting from the Internet isn’t a viable solution, since that means disconnecting from social life completely. Besides, with teachers increasingly integrating technology into their classroom and homework assignments, disconnecting is not even a choice a girl is permitted to make. Diane, a white twenty-six-year-old marriage and family therapist in California, tells me that when she was seventeen, a “gang of girls” attacked her on MySpace. “They called me a bitch to make me fearful and to threaten me. It was easy for them to reach out to me, to find me, with the technology, which was pretty new at that time. They could see that I had posted pictures of myself with a guy I had hooked up with, and they decided that that meant I was having sex with guys and therefore I was deserving of being attacked.”
    Slut-bashers are also strengthened by the Internet and mobile communication. Hiding behind the anonymity of thetechnology, their impulse to bully is fueled by the knowledge that no matter how coarse and abusive they are, they can’t be tracked down. They may regret their actions after the fact; but once comments are sent, they can be endlessly mass-forwarded, posted online, and linked to multiple sites. Completely scrubbing away the names, photos, and comments about an individual girl may become impossible. Even when an online comment is deleted, it’s never really eliminated.
    Not only young females are vulnerable: any person’s professional or social reputation can be discredited because of untrue reports posted online. We are all vulnerable in the digital world. But many adults can move on, fight back, enlist professional support, or post their own narratives. Typically, young people possess far fewer resources and far less savvy.
    The addictive nature of the Internet can make its effects unbearably corrosive. Psychologists treat patients who have been diagnosed with Internet Addiction Disorder. When a girl today is labeled a slut, her bullies are in her bedroom with her, one click away. As much as she may not want to, she can’t quite help clicking and reading the most recent remarks posted about her online for all to comment upon.
    Who ever thought that we could be nostalgic for the odious comments carved into bathroom walls? The ephemeral nature of that graffiti posed an advantage. A freshly painted wall after summer break indicated that what was written last year was dead and buried. A new year meant a new start for both the bullied and the bullies. However, unless the wall was photographed, there was no evidence of the abusive comments. If a girl was abused year after year, she lacked a compilation of evidence over time. Today, a girl can create a recordof screenshots and printouts to bolster her position that she’s being bullied.
    To explain the viciousness of anonymous bullying, I need to say only one word: Formspring. A social media site created in 2009 that has since waned in popularity, Formspring quickly became the online destination for mean, crude, anonymous comments and questions. It was, according to the New York Times , “the online version of the bathroom wall in school, the place to scrawl raw, anonymous gossip.” 41 Sharon broke it down for me: “You create an account, and then people can anonymously ask you any question about anything. Since they know you’ll never know who they are, they ask crazy things. They can search your name, or they find you because your profile is connected to your Facebook or your Twitter or Tumblr. They ask things like, ‘What size bra do you wear? Your boobs are huge.’ Or ‘Why are you acting like a slut and whore?’ Some people actually expect you to answer. Then you post their question with an answer, so everyone sees it.” At that point, the identity of the person questioned becomes public, but the questioner still remains anonymous.
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