being a mom
The ‘S’ Word Is The New ‘F’ Word – Let’s Talk To Our Kids About ‘Slut’
Yesterday I wrote about another teen who was being cyber-bullied and committed suicide. Â This young girl was active on tumblr and the anonymous ask and tell question website, Ask. fm. On this website she had many comments where she was called a “slut” and accused of being sexually active with various boys. I consider this to be slut shaming, when you degrade someone for their sexual or perceived sexual activities. One of our readers corrected me, and said this was not actually slut-shaming, and stated that calling someone a “slut” is not “slut-shaming” but it’s a nasty thing to do. I’m going to beg to differ here, and say that when you call a woman a slut and follow it up with comments about how she is sexually active, that is indeed “slut-shaming.” And it usually only happens to women.
I’m not in high school, but I don’t think that teenage boys who are sexually active are made to feel bad about it from their peers. I think throughout time, when a girl is sexually active she is labelled in a negative way, where when a boy is, he is generally complimented or looked at as being powerful or virile or a “player.” It was like this when I was a teen, it’s like this now. We don’t have a lot of negative words used to describe men who are sexually active or promiscuous. And even words like “player,” when said as a warning to other women to stay away from a man who is known to be sexually promiscuous , are usually said in a sort of “jokey” way. It is not spat with a mouthful of venom like the word “slut” is.
