I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet by Leora Tanenbaum Page B
Book: I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet by Leora Tanenbaum
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Leora Tanenbaum
Ads: Link
about sex, but the tone is moreplayful with guys. It’s not judgmental,” Katilyn explains. “The guys ask each other questions to get advice, like ‘How far did that girl go with you, and would you do it again?’ It’s not about judging the guy.”
But the girls are always judged on the basis of their sexuality. Sometimes they are lumped together into a group of interchangeable “sluts” via “slut lists.” These compilations of girls rated “hottest” to “ugliest,” sometimes listing phone numbers next to full names, were shocking in the early 2000s but now are as common as a celebrity sex tape. Certainly you don’t need the Internet to create a “slut list”: At New Jersey’s top-ranked high school, Millburn High, senior girls every year for a decade used paper and pens—the old-fashioned, quaint method of bullying. The list included incoming freshman by name and was circulated on the first day of school as a hazing ritual. 47 But in this day and age, who needs notebook paper? How last century. Online “slut lists” are not only faster and easier, they’re harder to attribute to any individual slut-basher.
In one of the more well-publicized online incidents, in 2011 a list of over a hundred girls from seven high schools in Westchester, New York, and Greenwich, Connecticut, was forwarded so many times that one teen decided that it would be easier for everyone involved to post the list on Facebook. To avoid being flagged on Facebook as abusive, the boy called it a “smut list” rather than a “slut list.” The girls, some as young as fourteen, were ranked according to the sexual encounters they allegedly had engaged in and were willing to do, and the list included anonymous commentary. Their first and last names were included, but all boys’ names were omitted. The “smut list” group received over seven thousandlikes overnight. Facebook removed it two days later after parents and school administrators appealed to the site to take it down, but the damage already had been done. 48
The Sexual Double Standard
Why do teenagers appear to have a relentless desire to categorize girls sexually? Because they (as we all do) live and breathe under the regime of the sexual double standard.
Yes, the sexual double standard exists even today. On the face of it, this claim may seem ludicrous. After all, many women are exceedingly open about their sexuality, and from afar it may appear that they face no consequences for doing so. Many willingly and inexplicably have bared their breasts for Girls Gone Wild videos and during halftime at football games. 49 Girls’ and women’s tops have cutouts in the most unexpected places, forcing the wearer to expose her bra or forego it altogether. When Madonna and Beyoncé performed at the Super Bowl, their outfits and shoes made them look as if they had walked off a porn set. Girls and women have flooded Facebook with so many photos of themselves in bikinis that a new iPhone app, Pikinis, automatically finds swimsuit photos of your friends or even strangers based on their proximity to your city or your campus. Brides routinely celebrate at their bachelorette parties by eating penis-shaped cake.
But it is a misunderstanding to conclude that these acts are the result of sexual equality. The opposite holds true: Some women sexualize themselves inappropriately as a result of sexual inequality . A great deal of the time, women’ssexuality is stomped over. In fact, many Americans can’t handle hearing the word “vagina” and therefore censor it. In 2007, a public high school in Cross River, New York, suspended three sixteen-year-old girls who said the word “vagina” during a reading from Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues . 50 In 2012, Michigan State Representative Lisa Brown was barred from speaking on the House floor after she used the word “vagina” during a speech against a bill seeking to ban abortions. A fellow legislator said, “What she said was so
But the girls are always judged on the basis of their sexuality. Sometimes they are lumped together into a group of interchangeable “sluts” via “slut lists.” These compilations of girls rated “hottest” to “ugliest,” sometimes listing phone numbers next to full names, were shocking in the early 2000s but now are as common as a celebrity sex tape. Certainly you don’t need the Internet to create a “slut list”: At New Jersey’s top-ranked high school, Millburn High, senior girls every year for a decade used paper and pens—the old-fashioned, quaint method of bullying. The list included incoming freshman by name and was circulated on the first day of school as a hazing ritual. 47 But in this day and age, who needs notebook paper? How last century. Online “slut lists” are not only faster and easier, they’re harder to attribute to any individual slut-basher.
In one of the more well-publicized online incidents, in 2011 a list of over a hundred girls from seven high schools in Westchester, New York, and Greenwich, Connecticut, was forwarded so many times that one teen decided that it would be easier for everyone involved to post the list on Facebook. To avoid being flagged on Facebook as abusive, the boy called it a “smut list” rather than a “slut list.” The girls, some as young as fourteen, were ranked according to the sexual encounters they allegedly had engaged in and were willing to do, and the list included anonymous commentary. Their first and last names were included, but all boys’ names were omitted. The “smut list” group received over seven thousandlikes overnight. Facebook removed it two days later after parents and school administrators appealed to the site to take it down, but the damage already had been done. 48
The Sexual Double Standard
Why do teenagers appear to have a relentless desire to categorize girls sexually? Because they (as we all do) live and breathe under the regime of the sexual double standard.
Yes, the sexual double standard exists even today. On the face of it, this claim may seem ludicrous. After all, many women are exceedingly open about their sexuality, and from afar it may appear that they face no consequences for doing so. Many willingly and inexplicably have bared their breasts for Girls Gone Wild videos and during halftime at football games. 49 Girls’ and women’s tops have cutouts in the most unexpected places, forcing the wearer to expose her bra or forego it altogether. When Madonna and Beyoncé performed at the Super Bowl, their outfits and shoes made them look as if they had walked off a porn set. Girls and women have flooded Facebook with so many photos of themselves in bikinis that a new iPhone app, Pikinis, automatically finds swimsuit photos of your friends or even strangers based on their proximity to your city or your campus. Brides routinely celebrate at their bachelorette parties by eating penis-shaped cake.
But it is a misunderstanding to conclude that these acts are the result of sexual equality. The opposite holds true: Some women sexualize themselves inappropriately as a result of sexual inequality . A great deal of the time, women’ssexuality is stomped over. In fact, many Americans can’t handle hearing the word “vagina” and therefore censor it. In 2007, a public high school in Cross River, New York, suspended three sixteen-year-old girls who said the word “vagina” during a reading from Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues . 50 In 2012, Michigan State Representative Lisa Brown was barred from speaking on the House floor after she used the word “vagina” during a speech against a bill seeking to ban abortions. A fellow legislator said, “What she said was so
Similar Books
