Legend has it that "sluts" are lurking all around. You might encounter one on a shadowy street corner or posing in a magazine. But those tricksters also blend in easily at school, at church functions, and even in your own home. Constant vigilance is...
When we witness "slut" shaming in the media, it's often related to a news story about sexual assault. A woman comes forward to report sexual violence committed against her, and the immediate reaction is to doubt her story. Either she is confused about what happened, or she's straight up lying.
(After all, irrationality and manipulation are things we're taught to expect from women, especially when it comes to sex.)
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Our collective instinct is to blame her, somehow, rather than acknowledge that a sexual assault took place. It's simpler to write her off as a liar, an attention-seeker, and a "slut" than it is to come to terms with the unspeakable depth and breadth of sexual violence that we face.
This public "slut" shaming silences other survivors by demonstrating that reporting a sexual assault rarely leads to justice and almost always leads to humiliation and re-traumatization. Whether or not we have personal experiences with sexual violence, it's hard to know what to do with the emotions these stories bring up.
The very thin silver lining is that we're hearing about these crimes at all; sexual violence can often go unspoken and unaddressed forever. It gives us an opportunity to confront what these cases reveal about our culture.
What they reveal is that we're willing to use "slut" shaming to excuse sexual assault.
Sexual assault, it would seem, is something girls and women must think about constantly. Every moment, we must be vigilant in order to avoid it, taking care to always monitor where we are, who is near us, what we're wearing, and every other aspect of our behavior and environment. But the problem with this logic — other than its sheer impossibility — is that it doesn't work. It's abundantly clear that we can be targeted regardless of any of the precautions we try to take.
Yet this is the standard a woman is held to if she finds herself victimized. It's not true for any other crime. When a woman is sexually assaulted, we question what she was doing — why was she thinking about anything other than not being sexually assaulted?! How dare she? What did she expect? She was basically asking for it.
According to this standard, one of the easiest ways for the media or the public to dismiss a woman's report of sexual assault is to claim that she is a "slut." We make it a priority to investigate her prior, consensual sexual history, dragging up old rumors, photos, and relationships to demonstrate that she is a promiscuous, lewd woman. One who couldn't possibly have been raped.
It's as if proving that she gave consent once, to something, proves that she no longer has the right to refuse consent. To anything.
To understand how absurd this standard truly is, imagine we were talking about consent in another, less fraught context: Pizza.
Like most people I know, I like to eat pizza and I know my favorite toppings (mushrooms and prosciutto!). But you might prefer pepperoni, so maybe we'll decide to top half the pizza with my favorites, and the other half with yours. And just like everyone likes different toppings, everyone likes different things when it comes to sex. If we've communicated our preferred "toppings" clearly beforehand and everyone is on the same page, then we're on track to have a healthy, fun sexual encounter. So chances are, the pizza will arrive and we'll both be happy eating it together.
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But what if, in the time it took to place the order for the pizza and for it to arrive at the door, I decide I don't feel like pizza after all? You might find that annoying, since we'd already ordered it, but you can't force me to eat the pizza I no longer want. Even if you have seen me eating pizza with other people on multiple occasions, that doesn't mean I have to eat this pizza, now, with you.
The same goes for any kind of sexual interaction: It doesn't matter if I was flirting with you, or if we started kissing and things got heated. It doesn't matter if you know for a fact that I have had a lot of casual sex with other people. I still have the right to decide — at any point — that I no longer consent to what's happening now, with you.
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But maybe we have a great time together eating our pizza, and at some point in the future, you might decide that you want to eat pizza with me again. If I refuse, you understand that you cannot force me to share another pizza with you. You cannot tell me that since we ate pizza together before, I now have to eat pizza whenever you want me to eat pizza.
When it comes to so many other things in our daily lives — not just eating, but also where we go, who we speak to, when we take care of different daily tasks — we take consent for granted, whether we're interacting with close friends or strangers. We need to extend that understanding to cover sexual interactions, too.
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And when we encounter a report about sexual assault in the news, it's important to consider our reaction. It matters how we discuss the victim or survivor (they decide what they call themselves) and their motivations in coming forward to report the crime. We can't allow them to be dismissed, ridiculed, and reduced to a "slut." Because every time we allow it to happen in the public eye, it makes it easier for it to happen in private cases, cases that don't involve celebrities. Cases that might involve us.
