The Sluttiest Graduate

OK, for one thing, I’m one a muthafuckin BLOGGING SPREE. It’s kind of weird. Why am I so motivated with my internet? …probably explains why I’m so completely unmotivated outside of my internet.

Anyways. Tonight’s topic, kiddos, is SLUT SHAMING.

Google the word “slut.” Wikipedia will define it as: a term applied to an individual who is considered to have loose sexual morals or who is sexually promiscuous. The term is generally pejorative and most often applied to women as an insult or offensive term of disparagement, meaning “dirty or slovenly.”

Have you seen this video? See this video.

I think she does a fantastic job.

OK,  but really, we’ve been working so hard to make this a message all girls and women will hear, so why does THIS

show up on my tumblr feed, huh? Who told the maker of this ridiculous poster that this was OK????

Where does this come from? Why can’t we get this idea that girls who engage in sexual activity are bad?

I am going to be 18 this summer. (Late birthdays. Feh.) I am graduating high school this Sunday. It’s time to be a big girl.

And there’s some bitch on tumblr (with 27,136 notes) who thinks it’s OK to chastise “whores” about their promiscuity.

“And so, I give you the winner of this year’s Lawndale High School Diane Fossey Award for dazzling academic achievement in the face of near-total misanthropy… Ms. Daria Morgendorffer!”

(Actually, I went to the school awards ceremony only this morning, and unfortunately the Dian Fossey Award is not a real thing. Also, I am not Daria.)

But sometimes, the human race really makes me hate it. To the point that I’m worried about going off to Hippie Centre, USA to fix it.

I seriously hear this all the time: “Oh my god, that slut. Oh my god, she’s such a slut. She looks like such a slut. That skirt is so slutty. What a whore! Such a slut!” Things pop out of my mouth occasionally! “Man, had I known So-And-So’s parents would be here, I’d have dressed like less of a slut!”

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

And what are the forces at work here? A big part of my peer group’s problem might be the four to thirteen years of Catholic school and ability to ferment in their upper middle class white kid juices. But there’s a…special sauce in our culture that tells girls not to wear anything “revealing” for fear of looking like a slut, to limit the number of members of the opposite sex she is friendly with for fear of looking like a slut, to abstain from sexual activity for fear of looking like a slut, to keep low the number of sexual partners for fear of looking like a slut, to avoid talking about her sexual activity for fear of looking like a slut, etc etc etc etc etc. 

And I’m so fucking tired of it. (Is it worth noting that this is from the point of view of a 17 year old girl not currently engaging in sexual activity?)

And really. Really. I know this man/woman cultural double standard has been examined a thousand times. Let’s do it again.

Guy has casual/not so casual sex, and his male peers are all: WAY TO GO, BRO.

And his females peers are all: What an ass TEE HEE THAT’S HOW BOYS ARE THOUGH

Chick has casual/not so casual sex, and her female peers are all: OMG WHAT A SLUT.

And her male peers are all: I’m gonna get some of DAT RIGHT DERE.

People complain about this for a reason. It’s real, and it’s fucked up, and no amount of ranting on the internet seems to change the mind of ignorant, 12 year old tumblr bitches or nasty high school boys or nasty college girls or people they actually allow on talk radio. It’s everywhere. Misogyny is institutional. And yes, there are things ebbing away, but that only makes the strict gender adherence laws and ideas about what a woman should do, it seems, stronger and more prone to bouts of strangulation.

So what do I do about this?

I’m going out into the world pretty soon. Which is exciting! Only been waiting my whole life. …but then there’s this:

and it’s like I get so angry I don’t know how to act.

Sex is not a dirty thing. Sex does not damn you. If you and your consenting partner are ready for it, aware of the risks and taking precautions, there is nothing wrong with sex. This is so simple to me.

But it’s not so simple to everyone, it seems, and I don’t know how to deal. This is becoming an emotions-meets-social-ethic issue here. I am a woman. When/if I choose to engage in sexual activity that certain facets of society might think of as wrong, what do I become? It doesn’t change who I am to myself, of course. But I really, really hate the idea of being something sick/wrong/sinful/dirty in even a stranger’s eyes based on whether or not I have had my hymen stretched out/when I have/how often I have.

I want to live in a world where no one sees me as an intact vs. stretched hymen.

Don’t use the word slut. (Not the way most people do, anyway. I’m aware of the “slut walk” thing, and that’s cool, I guess.) It’s sick and it’s wrong.

Please let me finish growing up in this world without being labeled as such.

I’m not a slut.You are not a slut. We will never be sluts.

We’re human beings.

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