This is what slut shaming looks like

Your wish is granted.  You can now get a gender-neutral t-shirt with quotes from this post on teespring.  All proceeds go to Girls, Inc.—a foundation that helps girls overcome gender, social, and economic barriers.

I hear the term slut shaming bandied about frequently on the internet, especially in the world of YA lit.  I've even been accused of slut shaming in CREWEL, which made me simultaneously want to bang my head on the desk and smile, because well, that's kind of the point of the book: the myriad ways in which society sees and treats women and girls, even how they treat each other.  A lot of times these references to slut shaming leave me with a bad taste in my mouth, because it's really easy to cry "slut shaming" without thinking about what it means in terms of the narrative or in terms of our culture.  In fact, I pretty much hate the term, because, to me, it feels even more abused than the word "literally" (and we saw how that ended up).

You see, one of the reasons slut shaming bothers me is because I know exactly what it's like to be slut shamed.  If you know me, you know that I have no issue talking about S-E-X.  It's a personal anomaly.  I grew up in a household where sex was a four letter word.  I was warned about it. I was taken to church. I was given the talk by my mother and aunts who shared their personal horror stories about mistakes they made involving the dreaded S-E-X.  I was told in no uncertain terms that my parents were done raising babies and they would NOT raise another.

And this was before I ever had sex.

My parents are good people, but like a lot of Americans they harbored an unnatural fear of S-E-X and this fear was disproportionately laid on their three daughters rather than their one son.  I don't say this out of malice.  I honestly believe they were terrified for us.  We were girls. We were weaker. We were easily tempted. At least, that's what it felt like.

The funny thing is that I never, ever believed it.  I'm certain that was due in a large part to the heady cocktail of being a teenager, and therefore both all-knowing and invincible (maybe that was just me), and my own peculiar ability to consider the abstract nature of the issue.  You see, I never believed I was a slut for liking boys.  I never thought it was wrong to have sex before marriage.  And I was perfectly happy to share those feelings with other people.

Of course, that just meant I was branded a slut at school.  A pretty girl who didn't blush artlessly when sex was mentioned?  A girl who might even talk openly about sex?  Well, there's only one word for her after all.

Slut.

I was a slut long before I ever let a guy get to second base with me.

Most of the time, the term merely stung.  Other times I seemed to slip into the role, falling victim to the prophecy of others, including that of my parents.  They said I was a slut, so maybe I should act like one.  I'd be lying if I said I never, ever did anything I regretted.  We all would be.  It's funny, though, how few sexual experiences show up on my regret list.

In high school I learned that a girl could be a slut for letting things get too far.  She could be a slut based on rumor alone.  A girl could be a slut for the clothes she wore or the people she hung out with.

Looking back as an adult, the only two things I know to be true about slut shaming are that it always, always involves judgment—and not rational, objective, well-meaning judgment, but self-righteous, close-minded judgment—and it's nearly always leveled at girls.  From the things I see and hear about high school these days this hasn't changed much.  Sure, a guy might be referred to as a man-whore, but what do you expect after all?  He's only a boy. I don't even know where to begin with that fallacy, but I have an idea.

Which leads me to why I stopped watching TV on my night off and wrote this blog post.  I encountered a well-meaning, but, shall we say, poorly reasoned blog post by Mrs. Hall. You can read it here. Go ahead, this post will keep.

I could tear this post apart, but I actually don't want to.  What I want to point out is that this is slut shaming and this is how it begins—insidiousness masquerading as innocence.

Take for instance the photos included in the original post of teenage boys in swim trunks, making muscle poses at the beach. Since the post was published and after some dressing down in the comments, a new post has been erected, featuring the boys eating apples fully-clothed.  I'm glad that Mrs. Hall was able to see the hypocrisy of posting those photos with that post, but I wonder if her opinion of those photos has changed?  Does she look at those photos and think sexual or lewd or scantily-clad or sultry? I bet not.  I'd almost guarantee those photos are tucked back in the photo library. And that's exactly what bugs me so much.

The double standard that a boy is a person and a girl is an object.

Now I'm a big fan of being involved in your kids lives, but I have this funny desire to respect my children.  Which means that when my son is 16 and he shows me a girl on his FB page in a tank top, I'm going to be more inclined to ask him about WHO SHE IS than I'm going to be to hit the block button.  Because posts like this do nothing more than promote the idea that a girl is only an outward appearance.  A temptress.  A sexual succubus intent on dirtying up the minds of the boys around them.

And here's the thing.  A teenage girl doesn't need to worry about a guy thinking sexual thoughts. He's going to.  And a teenage boy doesn't need to worry about a girl thinking sexual thoughts. She's going to. It's called biology, yo.  And it's totally normal.

What's not normal is pointing fingers or sanctimoniously declaring no second chances.  What's not healthy is to shame a girl for wearing a tank top while posting pictures of your sons topless on a beach.  What message are we sending to both the young men and women in our culture when we do these things?

I'll give you a hint. It's not a good one, and they're getting that message of hypocrisy loud and clear.  The problem is they're internalizing these messages and learning to judge each other based on appearance or sexual attractiveness, and when we do that—when we hit the block button and choose to look no further—we're feeding into a sexist hegemony that not only undervalues our girls but our boys as well.

In the end, I'm tired of reading about how to "fix girls." If only we could tell them how to dress or act or if maybe we could lock them in a tower until they were sufficiently modest and comely.  Throughout time, "proper" woman have been expected to stay inside, to not court controversy, to avoid the male gaze. We've told them to be good and pure.  And I think in 2013, it's time to get pissed off and say ENOUGH.

I'm not locking myself up. I'm not wearing turtlenecks and floor length skirts. I'm not averting my eyes.  I'm not repressing my sexuality, and I'm certainly not going to let you shame me for it.

I couldn't clearly articulate why I believed what I did back in the good, old slut-shaming days of high school. It was a a feeling, an intuition, but now I have those words:

I'm a girl, but more importantly, I am a person.  I am complex.  I am a walking mass of emotions, ambitions, opinions, and skills.  I am a work in progress.  And I don't need you to fix me.