Slut: The Worst 4-Letter Word?

LAURA: Slut. It’s a tiny little word with a long history. Dating back at least as far as the 15th Century, the word Slut has been hurled at women through the ages. Loose women. Provocative women. Women who threatened the status quo or upset the moral code.

But today, in the age of sexting and random hook ups, when porn stars have their own prime time reality shows—what does the word even mean? Can it wound as deeply as it used to?

I’m Laura Sessions Stepp, this is Sex.Really. For this podcast we’re going to be looking at this word Slut– it’s many applications and implications.

First, we asked people to define the word.

LIZ: When I hear the word slut, the image I get in my head is probably of a typical hooker. I mean, I’ve never seena hooker in real life, so I guess it’d be the TV image of what a hooker is portrayed to look like. I don’t know- exposed skin, high heels, short skirts.

STEPHANIE: I don’t think it’s a specific look, because it could be someone in a business suit. I think it’s more of the actions, more of the personality, what’s on the inside that makes a person a slut.

TENIKA: A person that is very loose with their body organs. And will lend it to any and everybody.

CASIE: I suppose traditionally, it means a loose woman, or has indiscriminate sexual habits.

LOVIS: And it’s usually associated with women, you rarely hear a man being called a slut.

BEN: Oh no, men can be sluts, for sure.

CASIE: See that’s tough, because there are so many closet sluts out there., you’d never know.

LOVIS: I mean, there’s a fine line. It’s a fine line between slut and sexy.

BECKY: I’d say the age group that a slut could be at would probably be anywhere from 15 to maybe 55. After that it’s just gross. And before that I like to call them “prostetots.”

CASIE: It’s like short skirts.

LOVIS: A really short skirt.

CASIE: Boob-revealing top.

TENIKA: A skirt that comes right below their butt.

LOVIS: You know, a lot of cleavage.

DAVID: That’s the picture that pops to mind.

LAURA: There’s more to it, though, than short skirts and cleavage. To help us look at some of the bigger issues associated with being branded a slut, we spoke to Leora Tanenbaum. Leora is a feminist author who wrote a book called, Slut: Growing up Female with a Bad Reputation. Ten years after publication, the book is still selling well.

LEORA: I really just wanted to raise awareness about the fact that just about every single high school and junior high school in this country has at least one girl who is designated as the school slut. What has she done, or what does she represent for the other students that gets her targeted in that way? And how do the kids treat her, how do the boys treat her, how do the girls treat her, how do the teachers and administrators treat her? And finally I wanted to see what the short-term and long-term consequences are of being labeled the school slut.

LAURA: In 1999, if someone called you a slut, the description lingered at your high school, in college or around town. If someone shared a photo of you baring your breasts, the notoriety usually didn’t travel very far. In 2009, however, rumors have wings – and can easily turn into scandal.

LEORA: Today it is a very different world, things have moved so quickly on a number of fronts. One of them being the Internet, and just electronic communication in general. And now of course we have what’s called “sexting”, sending sexual explicit messages or photos electronically, and that has opened up a whole new avenue of bullying. And very, very often either the guy himself or somebody around him will forward that message or photo to a bunch of other people who forward it to other people. It becomes viral, it becomes available everywhere. And then the poor girl who did this stupid thing— but as I say we’ve all done stupid things—she then becomes horribly, horribly ostracized and becomes known as a slut. And it happens all the time.

And then another thing that’s changed is that there’s even more pressure now for young people to hook up. You know, to have sort of these loveless sexual encounters. And it’s very, very confusing for girls and boys both.

LAURA: Opportunities for casual sexual encounters are more numerous than ever, and in some ways, more tempting because they carry less potential for stigma. But that’s the tricky thing: One young woman will survive hookups with multiple guys, her reputation intact, and another won’t. It may depend, Leora says, on whether the person in question is sorority president or work-study student.

LEORA: The thing that is so interesting and surprising is that often the girl who’s labeled a slut is labeled for reasons that aren’t per se sexual. Very, very often, as you rightly point out, you could have a girl who’s very popular, attractive, for whatever reason has the social status, and she can be hooking up left and right and nobody would dare fling any insult at her because her status is too high. And then you could have another girl, who may have zero sexual experience, may never have even kissed a boy, but she happens to be an early developer. Or there may even be no sexual characteristic about her at all, it may just be that she doesn’t fit in socially, she’s different, there could be an economic class difference that is a very common thing that occurs where the preverbal girl that lives on the other side of the tracks gets labeled a slut because she fits into that stereotype. So there are a lot of factors that go into how a girl is labeled.

LAURA: Wait a minute, you might say. The word slut is also used between friends, like: “You’re such a slut.” There’s Slut lipstick, Slut bubble bath. A coffee shop in Seattle sells T-shirts that say “Ride the S L U T” – an acronym for the South Lake Union Trolley. So…can the word “slut” be used playfully? Here’s what some young people had to say:

LOVIS: No I don’t think that’s okay. Because it’s like, people say they try to make the “N-word” a positive word. If it can’t be positive in all respects, then I don’t think it’s okay for women to call each other sluts, even in jest.

BECKY: When I say the word slut, I definitely mean it. Unless it’s one of my friends and I’m joking.

VERALYN: Like, say, Samantha, from Sex in the City— she sleeps with a lot of guys and if you call her a slut, she’s not necessarily offended by it, because she’s okay with sleeping with a lot of guys.

CASIE: Promiscuity isn’t as bad as it used to be. Like, it won’t ruin your life. Because everyone does it.

STEPHANIE: I don’t think there’s anything positive about the word slut at all. I’m sorry. Like, I’ve had people like saying that jokingly, and I do not find that funny at all. I’m not a slut, I’m sorry.

DAVID: I haven’t heard it, but I would be supportive of anybody who wanted to start using it in, I don’t know, a more colloquial, fun, reclaimed kind of way.

VERALYN: Females will be like, “Oh, you’re such a slut!” And it’s like, it’s almost like they’re saying it in a positive way.

CASIE: Words are powerful. And I think that’s certainly one of them. I don’t think it will ever become a good thing, but I don’t think it’s as offensive as it once was.

LIZ: I don’t really take any word too seriously. It’s kind of like, words are just words. So it doesn’t hold a lot of meaning to me.

LAURA: Still, Leora Tanenebaum says the word has power. And sometimes tragic consequences.

LEORA: You’ve got a bunch of hip, feminist-minded girls, and they can kind of see a dark humor in the whole thing and call each other slut as a way to turn the whole thing on it’s head and kind of make fun of the sexual double-standard. Within that context, I guess I don’t really have a problem with it. But it is a term that very disturbingly continues to hurt and damage so many people to the point of suicide.

There was a recent case of a girl, named Hope Witsell, from rural Florida—she was 13 years old—who did commit suicide as a result of slut-bashing. And so when you look at the term within that context there’s just nothing funny and nothing casual about it.

LAURA: I asked Leora why those who are called sluts are criticized, and those who do the name-calling are not.

LEORA: We are surrounded by this sexual double standard that it is socially acceptable for boys and men to be sexually active, to have sexual desire, to have sexual thoughts. It is not acceptable for girls and women to have the same thoughts and desires and to behave in the same way, even despite the fact that we have this hook up culture. It’s this bizarre paradox and it is so confusing and the pieces of the puzzle just don’t fit together.

LAURA: Right, it is very true. We’ve gotten rid of some other words in our vocabulary, why can’t we just get rid of this?

LEORA: That’s such a great question, something I grapple with all the time. Many, many, many people believe that it’s okay to denigrate a girl or a woman because of her actual or presumed sexuality. And the thinking is that that would be a deterrent so that either that particular girl or other girls and woman won’t be involved in sexual behavior that could lead to pregnancy or disease. So there’s this attitude that it’s okay to shame girls and women, but that you don’t have to or you shouldn’t need to shame boys and men. So the thinking behind the label is that it’s acceptable.

LAURA: And how do we change that, Leora?

LEORA: Well, let’s start with you and me. We need to raise consciousnesses.

LAURA: And let’s just erase the word from our vocabulary. Get rid of it.

LEORA: That would be great. Then we could start to talk about sexual equality, which is our goal.

LAURA: Right, exactly.

LAURA: One last thought: Women in their 20s might be able to laugh at the word slut, or shrug it off. But that’s not so easy when you’re 13 or 14 and still forming identity. Even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal, shouldn’t we try to get rid of it for younger sisters, daughters and daughters-to-be?

I’m Laura Sessions Stepp and this is Sex. Really. I’ll be back in two weeks with a special episode for Valentine’s Day.