If you’re a woman, chances are pretty high that you’ve been called a slut (or some variation of it) before.
Slut: noun. a promiscuous woman; a woman who has many sexual partners.
Whether or not you are actually fit Merriam-Webster’s definition of a slut doesn’t matter. Slut-shaming, the belittling of a woman because of her presumed sexual activity, is about more than just sex.
“The Breakfast Club” had it right back in ‘85
“Well if you say you haven’t, you’re a prude. If you say you have, you’re a slut. It’s a trap. You want to but you can’t, and when you do you wish you didn’t, right?”
With this line, the classic coming-of-age film offered subtle commentary on the way women are expected to behave sexually. In more scholarly research, this phenomenon of women either being a prude or a slut is referred to as the Madonna-whore complex. Women are either pure or promiscuous; there is no in-between.
Dr. Mara Berkland, a professor of gender and women’s studies, explained that this dichotomy exists in patrilineal cultures and has deep historical roots. “We always know who the mother is, right? The only way we can know who the father is is by controlling the sexuality of the women,” she said. “It’s an archaic throwback to property lines.”
In “History of Marriage,” author Stephanie Coontz explains that sexuality is more of a social construct than a biological engagement. Berkland added that people are in control of many aspects of their biology based on social rules. “Sex is just another way of manipulating biology,” she said.
The understanding of female sexuality has varied over the course of history and, according to Berkland, “that’s how we know that sexual behavior isn’t innate, it’s a socialized expression (because) in many cultures the virgin-whore dichotomy isn’t even a thought. Women are sexual beings just as anybody is a sexual being.”
While things have begun to change in the last couple of decades, the change is concerning. Berkland points out that much of the change still exists for the pleasure of men rather than solely to empower women.
It’s not just about sex
“When women exert their sexuality they’re not trying to play in the system that exists, they’re trying to change the system that exists,” said Berkland. The weaponization of female bodies is a complex issue, but it is done as an attempt to repair transformative actions like embracing feminine sexuality.
“It’s as if someone’s trying to use the rules of an antiquated system to make sure the antiquated system doesn’t change,” said Berkland. “That’s the problem because we’re in this space right now where the system is in the process of changing but it’s tentative.”
In the midst of the #MeToo movement, it can be easy to assume that things are changing for the better women. However, it is not that simple. People can say they believe survivors and create open spaces for women to share their stories, but until masculinity is addressed things will not be able to change. Slut shaming is about more than just sex; it is about power dynamics and keeping male dominance in control of women’s sexuality.
Presidential promiscuity and blaming women
With male dominance being at the core of slut-shaming, it is worth examining men who have held the highest power in the country. There is a long list of presidents with sex scandals behind them, from rape accusations to affairs to secret children. This goes all the way back to George Washington; it is nothing new.
However, two of the most notable scandals have remained in the news over the last couple of years. Former President Bill Clinton’s affair with then-intern Monica Lewinsky was a massive political news storm in the mid 90s and is still a topic of conversation today. With the obvious power dynamic between Clinton and Lewinsky, it should have been clear that he took advantage of his age and position as president. Yet, people still place blame on Lewinsky.
Current President Donald Trump has been accused by Stephanie Clifford (known professionally as Stormy Daniels) of having an affair in 2006. Similar to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, many have pointed to Daniels as being to blame. Beyond that, her career as an adult entertainer has been used to discredit her accusations.
Women are expected to defend the system which pushes the idea that sex is a game. Berkland said this can be detected in the way Daniels speaks about the affair. “’Well, I went to his room…’ She almost makes it sound like she lost and that was the penalty she had to pay,” she said.
“Because of that idea of the system, women must protect (it) and they can’t want anything sexually,” Berkland said. “Women are expected to pretend they’re not sexual beings when in fact they are and in some cases, they actually believe it and then they can no longer access their sexuality so that when they get into a sexual encounter it follows the dating scripts.”
“He advances, she retreats, he advances, she retreats, until eventually, he catches her through no fault of her own because she was weaker, which is this bullshit game which doesn’t even make sense or reflect what we know about human sexuality biologically,” Berkland said.
Changes in student discourse?
As one of the professors in the small gender and women’s studies department, Berkland has found that not many heterosexual cis-gendered men take these courses. It is predominantly women who are “starting to get the sense that they deserve more, that they deserve freedom, that their sexuality is not necessarily the property of anyone else,” she said.
However, she recognizes that other parts of the system believe that “you can have your right to sexuality as long as it doesn’t interfere with the greater masculine right,” a belief that lies at the heart of slut-shaming.
Students taking GWS courses have changed the way they speak about slut-shaming over the years, but there has been no change in the way they discuss rape. Because female sexuality has been portrayed in media more positively, though not equally to men’s sexuality, some women have become more comfortable with expressing or discussing their sexuality.
“Where this falls short, the problem with it, is then we go back to the idea of the game,” Berkland said. “If someone is sexually assaulted, we still rely on the tropes of ‘well, that’s what you get for being in that system.’”
What was she wearing? Was she drunk? Did she lead him on? These questions are attempts to justify or repair behaviors within the system as it stands. In part, this response comes from historical legal expectations that said “unless a woman fights to the death she wasn’t raped,” said Berkland. “And now that’s a part of the rape myth, ‘did she fight?’”
“We slut shame women to perpetuate an anachronistic system,” she said. “Women’s sexual freedom has become possible but we haven’t taken away the idea of men’s sexual dominances.”
Without questioning masculinity in this context, it is hard to move forward. “Women are allowed to be career women, but men aren’t necessarily expected to be caretakers of children. Women are allowed to be sexually free, to an extent, but men aren’t required to be sexually respectful,” she said.
Women can’t have sexual liberation while at the same time men are still dominating them. “There’s really no incentive for men to change their behavior,” said Berkland. “Why would they? If I were a male and I could have a female partner who is bringing home the bacon as well and cleaning up my house and care taking all of my children, why would I change anything?”
Professional slut-shaming
Female politicians, doctors and teachers have been publicly humiliated by both men and women degrading them for their sexual history. Again, whether this history is true or not doesn’t matter; labeling someone a slut or using masculine dominance to threaten a woman is powerful enough on its own.
As Berkland pointed out, this is something every woman has experienced in one way or another. When she was a graduate assistant, for example, a male student threatened to show up at her house and rape her because he didn’t get the grade he wanted.
Threats, negative comments and rumors are the norm for many professional women. One of the easiest ways to discredit a woman’s position is to use her sexuality against her. Again, this goes back to the idea that male dominance needs to take precedence over women’s successes.
“There have been so many rumors about me that have gotten back to me — I can’t imagine the rumors that haven’t — about whether or not I was straight or a lesbian or whether or not my partner and I had an open relationship and it’s just like, why does this matter?” Berkland said.
Girl-on-girl attacks
Blaming men and masculine dominance for the prevalence of slut-shaming would be easy given the history of it, however, it is so ingrained in Western culture that women participate in the shaming of their own gender.
Research from Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Laura T. Hamilton, Elizabeth M. Armstrong and J. Lotus Seeley found that because of this internationalized oppression, women often labeled other women as sluts to distance themselves from the stigma. Their research, outlined in “‘Good Girls’: Gender, Social Class and Slut Discourse on Campus” followed students living in a ‘party dorm’ and aimed to pin down the stigma of being called a slut.
As other research has shown, the ‘slut’ label is not just about sex. It is about power, social ranking and damaging one’s reputation. “Women were both potential recipients of sexual stigma and producers of it — simultaneously engaged in both defensive and oppressive othering,” according to the article.
The women in this study often struggled to agree on what defined “slutty behavior.” However, they did make it clear they were not a part of the problem. Distancing themselves from the stigma was critical to these young women, even if it meant attacking their own friends.
With as frequently as this phrase is used, many women can feel desensitized to the word. And yet, it still holds power. Berkland explained that this is because culture changes slowly.
“A woman’s value, up until even recently, was that she would bring to a romantic relationship her stability, her purity, all of this tying from the idea that we wanted a woman we could trust to carry on our family line,” she said.
“When we think about that idea that slut still holds a large term it is because we have the traces of that term,” she said. “Even in churches, we still have the idea of the virgin mother… and so how do we change a cultural assumption that is so culturally embedded about what a woman’s responsibility to the system is?”
Sluts are the new witches
Through the ages, slut-shaming has taken on many forms. From publicly denouncing adulterers à la “The Scarlet Letter” to commenting “WHORE!” on a celebrity’s Instagram picture, punishing women for their sexuality has always been around.
As Berkland pointed out, “anytime a woman has power we tend to suppress it… anytime a woman has a freedom that might upend masculine power, we try and attack it.”
Some scholars, like Kristen J. Sollee, have said that sluts are the new witches. While modern women are not being burned at the stake for their supposed evils, they are being persecuted for embracing their sexuality.
“Women’s sexual freedom is a threat to masculine power as we understand it because we have defined masculine power as the ability to dominate and control,” said Berkland. “But the ability to dominate and control is masculine power and if women are having sex for their own pleasure, not for the pleasure of another man, then it takes away our ability to control their aspect of their reproduction, their aspect of their bodies that we thought belonged to us.”
“Witches did the same thing. They brought about knowledge that men didn’t have and couldn’t explain. So any time women have a power that men can’t control or have a set of behaviors that men can’t control, we look to malign those women in ways that make everybody afraid of them or disrespect them or want to ostracize them. Sex is just another way of upending masculine power,” she said.
