Whether you are walking around campus, through downtown or anywhere else in the city, you can hear it. More likely, it is yelled at you. In a post-Me Too America, it is miraculous to me that slut-shaming is still as widespread as it is. Slut-shaming language used to convey or contribute to harmful conversations sneaks its way into everyday talk. There is never an excuse to use these words, and frankly, it is nobody’s business what anyone does with their body.
If this seems blunt, it is because this conversation has to be direct. There is no room for sugar-coating, passive-aggressiveness or anything short of the absolute truth.
For background, before college, my friend group would greet me with language which cannot be said in newspapers. How they identified me was often by and through repeated body-count insults in a negative manner. It was genuinely startling to me to not hear this language from any of my friends in college. However, I’d still hear it occasionally in passing when individuals were talking about strangers or their peers. Even more shocking, people were offended when I used this language when telling stories about myself.
Now, I am not saying it is outright acceptable to use this language. I’m also not saying you should use this language to describe people if you do not have their full consent to use it when describing them. Society has made sex, and the language surrounding the idea of what people believe sex to be, an atrocious discourse to navigate. We need a feminist lens to talk about slut-shaming and rape culture.
If you are uneducated about the built-in misogyny and sexism which comes hand-in-hand with simply existing as a feminine person in the world, I would first and foremost listen to the stories of the individuals around you. Although slut-shaming mostly occurs to women, I am well aware it is not an entirely gender-limited issue. If putting in the work is not of concern to you, watching “The Breakfast Club,” although based in 1980s America, can give you a short snapshot to better understand the casual nature of slut-shaming, from midwestern high school to everyday life.
If you are actively putting in the energy to try and identify the depths of a person’s sexuality, you are wasting energy trying to decode a person’s private life. We are students after all, exert your energy on something more worthwhile like updating your LinkedIn page. If they make it public, it also doesn’t immediately have to become tea-spilling sessions. People are just trying to live their lives.
The amount of anger, guilt and shame which is placed on other people just for appropriately being themselves is abhorrent. It is important to highlight the weight of how serious it is to describe these monsters as how they truly are, because I will always believe that rapists deserve to be the patients in medical testing, rather than animals. If you cannot accept the word “no,” read a person’s body language or use any excuse as to why you need sex, you need to be psychologically evaluated. Animals, on the other hand, are not committing such heinous acts to others.
