5 Things You Need to Know About Slut Shaming

"Girls slut-shame other women because they are afraid of being slut-shamed themselves.”
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Courtesy of FOX

In 2013, Emily Lindin started the UnSlut Project, which is a collection of her old diary entries from middle school that show the kind of devastating damage slut-shaming causes. She wanted to help other women and girls who also experienced sexual bullying who, like her, might not feel comfortable confiding in adults. “I would have loved to have some reassurance that this time would pass and my life would get better,” Emily says. Her openness, however, sparked others to contribute their own stories too, which brings us to the UnSlut documentary.

Slut: A Documentary features the stories of girls who were driven to suicide by sexual bullying and women who have experienced slut-shaming, including Samantha Gailey Geimer, the minor involved in the 1977 Roman Polanski case. The documentary offers interviews featuring media figures, sexologists, psychologists, and other experts, including former WWE wrestler, RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) volunteer, and now UnSlut executive producer Mick Foley. The film also demonstrates just how deeply slut-shaming affects schools, teens, and communities, and how easily it can spread via social media.

While the documentary isn’t available for purchase just yet, public screenings started in September, and you can see it by checking out their schedule here. Until then, check out the five things we learned from the people interviewed in Slut: A Documentary.

1. Too many people have sex before they’re ready

“Young people ask me all the time, ‘How do I know if I’m ready to have sex?’ If you cannot talk about sex, you are not ready to have sex. If you can’t say to your partner, 'When was the last time you were tested? Can we get tested together? This is what I like when it comes to sex, and this is what I don’t like.’ You should not be having sex, because you need to be able to have those conversations first.”

  • Dr. Ebony Utley, Ph.D, intimacy expert, author, and professor

2. Victim-blaming is offensive to both women AND men

You don’t want to dress too sexy, because supposedly men can’t handle themselves. The whole 'she’s asking for it' mentality is really degrading not only to women but also to men. "It pegs men as these creatures who can’t control themselves,” says Gina Tron, who was kidnapped and raped by a man she met at a bar. When someone says the way a woman dresses or looks is somehow the cause of her being attacked, they are also saying that the man attacking her is incapable of being responsible for his reaction to seeing her. I don’t know about you, but I know plenty of men who are capable of looking at a beautiful woman without wanting to rape her.

Furthermore, Mick Foley points out how assault victims are treated differently than victims of other crimes. He explains, "Nobody says, 'Oh you were robbed? What were you doing with those nice clothes on? Why were you at an ATM? Why were you driving a nice car? Don’t you realize you were asking to be robbed?’ No one does that.”

3. Posting sexy selfies is a sign of successfully learning social rules, and women are punished for it

“This is a no-win situation for girls and women because we grow up being taught that we are as good as our bodies. That to be an attractive, valuable, desirable woman is to be sexy. So, when they end up taking selfies and posing on their beds and being sexy, what they have done is successfully learned really complicated social rules, and then we tell them that they’re terrible sluts for having learned those rules.”

  • Dr. Shira Tarrant, Ph.D, contemporary gender issues expert, author, and professor

4. Women slut-shame other women because they are afraid of being slut-shamed themselves

“We live in a patriarchal society, and women are trying to find places where they can fit and be acceptable. The best way to do that is to put someone else down. As long as there are 'bitches' over there, as long as there are 'sluts' over there, then you’re safe because you’re not one of them. That’s what makes 'slut' so easy,” explains Dr. Utley.

Indeed, a 2013 paper found that 55% of women and 35% of men said that when a person of either gender hooks up with or has sex with lots of people, they lost respect for them. The study found that women are more conservative than men in their attitudes toward casual sex in general, likely because women have been taught for generations upon generations that sex is the enemy of a woman’s reputation.

5. People still don’t understand what consent is

One of the hardest things to watch in this documentary is rape victims talking about being slut-shamed. “Once a woman or a girl gets labeled a slut, then there are still people who think a slut can’t be raped. Once she gave it up, she’s willing to give it up to anyone. She’s given consent,” says Dr. Tarrant. So, basically, there are people who think that if you have sex once, you’re a slut, and therefore you want to have sex all of the time with anyone. Let’s also not forget that girls and women are slut-shamed all the time simply for how they look. So, if someone decides for whatever reason that a girl or woman is a slut, that’s consent in their mind.

If you’re confused about what consent is, this sexual assault and consent page put together by Northwestern University will help.

To find a public screening of Slut: A Documentary near you, check out their calendar. To read or contribute your own slut-shaming stories, visit the UnSlut Project’s Tumblr.

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