Isn't it Time We Talked About... Slut Shaming?

Author : Tilly

I had so many plans of how to write this blog post, I was going to write about my experience of eating disorders and how I now view them through a very feminist lens, then I was going to write about my experience of misogyny in women’s healthcare (I was refused proper treatment for horrendous gynaecological issues because my husband might want me to bear his children), which made me think that I should write about the response I get from the world for being so very disobedient by not wanting children. Honestly my brain was so full of the injustices that I had experienced that I was desperate to get them out.

Then March happened, and it was a terrible month for news about the treatment of women. I’m sure I’m not the only one who followed the news about Sarah Everard, moving from hope when she first went missing to sadness and anger when the terrible news of her murder broke. I thought about writing about this and my experience of harassment and assault at the hands of men but it felt a bit disrespectful. Like I was making something of her murder about me.

I then read about Soma Sara’s movement Everyone’s Invited. An anti rape-culture campaign and it really resonated with me. I read a number of the distressing testimonies from young women on her website and was thrown back into experiences of my own youth. The coercion, the manipulation, the outright assaults, the name calling, the dismissal of women’s feelings and pleasure truly felt like same shit, different century. It made me both terribly sad for the young women experiencing this, as I and my friends did as young adults, and incredibly angry that the world is still allowing young men to see women and girls as having less worth than them.

There are so many harrowing stories of abuse that it might seem a bit strange that the ones that affected me most were the ones where young women were called names for being sexually active, or worse for having been coerced into sexual activity they didn’t want but didn’t have the power to stop, or even raped. The lack of respect for young women who have been sexually active, with or without their consent, is something that needs to stop. It’s misogyny writ large and is such an outdated concept that I barely have the words to explain what I think of it. I do, however, have the words to explain my experience of it, and the effect of it on my life.

I was a teenager in the 1990s, which I’m going to assert really isn’t that long ago, but i) it kind of was, and ii) it was pre-internet so for many may as well be the dark ages. The Spice Girls were the epitome of feminism to young women and ladette culture was huge. Alongside this I had the backdrop of a pretty old-school patriarchal family. My father considered – considers – himself head of the household. Actually, as the oldest male of his generation he considers himself head of “the family” and therefore the Most Important out of all of my aunts, uncles, cousins etc. Growing up we had to do as he said and there was lots of “wait until your father gets home” discipline.

I don’t have any brothers, so I can’t say that he would have behaved differently with a son, but my father was very authoritarian, especially during our teens when we were exploring our independence and our burgeoning sexuality. As he had sought control over all aspects of our lives before this point he sought control in this. He was at pains to point out that nice girls didn’t.

When I was just shy of 17 my mother asked if I was sexually active. I told her that I was, with my boyfriend, and that I’d taken myself off to the doctor and the GU clinic and that I was being responsible. You’d think that, it being none of her business aside, she’d have accepted that I was above the age of consent and was acting responsibly in ensuring I had proper contraception and was taking care of my sexual health. For reasons that are unfathomable to me more than a quarter of a century later she told my father.

What happened next has a name these days. Slut shaming. I’m not fond of the phrase as I utterly loathe the word slut and feel it has no place in anyone’s vocabulary, but it does capture the venom with which men attempt to shame women and control their sexuality.

My father asked to talk to me. He sat me down and told me that my mother had said I was sexually active and that he needed me to think very carefully about what I was doing because – and I remember this word-for-word – “some people might think you have no value”. Clearly what he meant was that he thought I had no value. I asked him if he was calling me a slut (I wasn’t as enlightened about such words back then) and he said “if the cap fits then wear it”

So I did wear it. I had meaningless encounters with any number of men. Of course at the time I saw it as liberated, as my right as a woman to have casual sex like a man, as casting off the old values and embracing the new, but now I look back I feel nothing but compassion for that young woman.

When told me that nobody would value me, I internalised the message and didn’t value myself. I used casual sex as a form of self-harm, not empowerment or enjoyment. I was taken advantage of often and blamed myself for putting myself in unsafe or foolish situations. I didn’t consider anything that happened to me as wrong, because I didn’t have any worth. I basically cast myself in the role he gave me and didn’t put any value on my pleasure or my right to say no to men.

This is something I had buried for a long time and had only really come to the front of my mind during therapy a couple of years ago. Even then, however, I didn’t see the link between my self-destructive behaviour and the cruel words of my father. I still blamed myself for not having morals, or for not being smart enough to not get in difficult situations. Now I see the cause and effect and I’m angry. I’m angry that I was taught – by someone who was supposed to care for and protect me – that I had no value. I’m angry that I didn’t see that this was pure misogyny. I’m angry that I see the same actions towards young women and the same harmful behaviour now, 25 years on.

One day the message has to get through that women are people too and that we have value and worth based on more than our bodies and availability. I have to believe that it will. Until that day comes I shall channel my efforts into shouting about it from the rooftops, that women are people too. That they have value in and of themselves. That this isn’t affected by their sex drives or the abuse that they’ve been on the receiving end of, or frankly by anything else.

It’s often said to me by feminists that if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention. They’re right. And I’m bloody furious that this is still happening to young women.

End

Here is Tilly's beautiful, personal print which will be available to purchase from Monday 19th April on our Etsy Store (linked below). 10% of all profits made from this piece will be donated to a charity chosen by Tilly - Testimony Tailors - https://testimonytailors.com - which supports women to help other women and to encourage women led business which is an important step to these women being able to flourish.

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