In the post, “Dirty Sluts in America,” Chellebell writes that while boys are allowed to sleep around, girls are supposed to be innocent and pure. Once a girl is found to be sleeping around she is labeled a “slut” or “whore,” which can be very harmful to her self-esteem. I agree with Chellebell 100% that this double standard is neither fair nor right. However, I think Chellebell fails to acknowledge that it is not only men who judge women. Women also engage in slut-shaming against other women in order to move ahead or secure their social status. As a woman, I have witnessed women being very caddy with each other on occasion. If Sue does something to upset Mary by going out on a date with a boy that Mary likes, or if Sue embarrasses Mary in front of her friends, the invective Mary typically chooses to call Sue is “whore” or “slut, and she will likely use one of these terms, perhaps because she intuitively knows how easy and damaging it is to affix such a label to a woman. In “Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation,” Leora Tanenbaum proposes that since men devalue women and their bodies, women in consequence also devalue their own bodies, leading them to hate themselves. Tanenbaum states that the only way some women can feel empowered is by having the power to make or break someone else’s reputation. Popular movies such as “Cruel Intentions” or “Mean Girls” depict women being ruthless to other women and getting pleasure out of it. . .
In a post, “Sluts!” on the blog Rage Against the Man-chine, Nine-Deuce argues that “Slut-shaming is one of the chief ways women attempt to compete with each other for male approval in a patriarchy that defines women’s worth by their physical attractiveness and limits their ability to distinguish themselves by other means.” At least among heterosexual couples, a lot of men love women who are innocent and pure, and saying that a woman is easy implies that she is dirty and not someone you bring home to meet the parents. An easy girl is not someone a boy wants to take out on a date, but someone who he sleeps with on a whim and later laughs about amongst friends. Therefore, no one wants to be called a slut. Women know the damage these words cause, perhaps even better than men, and some are willing to use it against other women, as a means snagging Mr. Right. I do think that men are often directly responsible for degrading women and that misogyny is a serious problem that America must address; however, I think we as women need to realize that it is not only men who degrade us. Slut-shaming is a strategy of power, which is also deployed by women within a hegemonic system in order to attain and secure a position at the top of a social hierarchy. Women—not just men—threaten to characterize other women’s behaviors as slutty, some women are able to gain favor for themselves, thereby giving strength to the degrading ideas widely propagated about women’s sexual lives. If we really want to stop slut-shaming, then, as women we need to look at ourselves first and truly understand why we are so hateful toward one another. Once women can do this, we will be freed to act in concert to stop the slut-shaming from men as well. It makes sense that women should be able to treat each other with love and respect before we can expect the same from men. ~ Freedom Fighter
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Today in my sociology of gender lecture my Professor asked us the question “if you were to see a man walk down the street with a black eye what would be the first thing that comes to mind?” The class responded, “Oh, he got in a fight!” My professor then proceeded to ask “Ok….now if you saw a woman walking down the street with a black eye, what would you think?” The class responded “She was beat up!” People in the class assumed the woman was a victim in a domestic dispute, but the man was assumed to be an agent that could and would transform his environment. The example illustrates that we interact with men and women on different terms, but also that we often fail to notice how we are doing it. This tendency to have common sense ideas about how men and women operate in the world, and the different expectations we develop from that common sense is the double standard. Now, with regards to sex before marriage or having multiple sexual partners, one can easily see this double standard. I would like to begin this post by echoing the rhetorical question posed by Wenty in the last post: If we all agree men and women ought to be treated equally, then why are women shamed for being sexually active when men are congratulated? As has been pointed out on this blog (here), there is a hegemonic, gender ideology at work, which leads us to regard sexually active women as sluts, while sexually active men a rarely referred to as anything. A survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, and reported in Contemporary Sexualities (2003), revealed that out of 500 boys and girls between the ages of 15 and 17, 92% reported that girls get bad reputations for having sex. Associate director and senior research scientist at the Center for Research at Wellesley College, Deborah Tolman, notes that as a result of this double standard “many girls find ways of transferring blame to escape responsibility for their sexual encounters.” The article goes on to explore the way “parents, not just peers, are also guilty of applying the sexual double standard to their children. 85 percent of teens said parents have different expectations of girls and boys. Even today, sexually active boys are ’ladykillers’ while girls are ’sluts.’” Sex has become something of a spectacle and can be found anywhere in present day America, so it is odd that we seem intent on sending the message that sex is shameful for women, Just watch any number of music videos or find the nearest commercial billboard. Sex clearly sells! American society is obsessed with sex, but we don’t demonstrate this obsession in a uniform way. More often than not, we passionately decry it as shameful when it involves women, but when a man like Lil Wayne demonstrates some provocative moves in his latest video, he is in no danger of being told he should feel ashamed. Similarly, the bawdy lyrics of Trey Songz’s latest hit are not perceived to be daring, but they would be if sung by a woman artist: “You gunna think I invented sex.” .
It is not just that there are double standards, but that the standards placed on women are themselves inconsistent and therefore impossible to satisfy. On the one hand, men frown on women who flaunt their sexuality, but at the same time, they seem to insist that half-naked women parade around in the background of music videos. Does anyone sense a trap? In their posts, ChelleBell and Wenty wrote about the practice of slut-shaming and noted that women are objectified, and their bodies are sought by men hoping to become manly. Masculinity theorists like Jackson Katz might point out that men, in fact, depend on sex with women in order to “do” masculinity well. A society characterized by hegemonic masculinity strongly encourages men to develop characteristics such as aggressiveness and a will to dominate, but it also encourages men to participate in the subordination of women, all in to the name of obtaining a true masculinity. ~ Country Girl citation: Teen Gender Double-Standard Persists. Contemporary Sexuality [serial online]. April 2003;37(4):7. Available from: Academic Search Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed May 4, 2010. In a recent post on this blog, titled “Dirty Sluts in America,” Chellebell argues that women are pressured to “engage in sex to fit in, but once they have sex, their peers bash them.” After reading the article, the question that bogs my mind is why sex is generally acceptable for men and not for women. Why in particular are women so often shamed for engaging in premarital sex? I mean, why aren’t women just as entitled as men to make decisions for themselves when it comes to their own sex lives. . .
Not only does slut shaming occur in the United States, but a recent article explores this phenomena in Turkey (here). In the prosaically titled “Ambivalent Sexism and Attitudes toward Women who Engage in Premarital Sex in Turkey,” Nuray Sakali-Ugurlu and Peter Glick observe the sexual double standard that women are pressured and ridiculed when they engage in premarital sex while men are not. They argue that “women who are known to have engaged in premarital sex are not only disrespected but may face myriad forms of discrimination, including serious social and family problems” and such women undergo “involuntary virginity examinations, surgical reconstruction of the hymen, and physical abuse for failing to ‘protect’ their virginity.” Whether in Turkey or the United States, it is my view that women are independent individuals whose sexual ideas and desires should be respected. The disrespect directed toward women who have premarital sex not only demonstrates a double standard, but shows a broader pattern of discrimination against women. Attacks on the rights of women to make choices for themselves about their bodies reveal how vulnerable women are, and the fact that this standard is applied unequally for men and women demonstrates that we are still living in a patriarchal society. To take the analysis a bit further, I think it is important to understand that the double standard applied to women is bound up with hegemonic masculinity. In other words, men ridicule women for having premarital sex, but at the same time, they often depend on having premarital sex with women in order to achieve their masculinity. In this light, a woman’s choice about who she wants to have sex with and when she wants to do it is scrutinized and ridiculed because men depend on it for their own masculinity. It is important to highlight that even though masculinity is hegemonic, women retain a measure of control. Ironically, women are centrally involved in the production of hegemonic masculinity, which in turn, subjects women to a sexual double standard. By this logic, women are co-creators of the system that imprisons them, and if this is true, then it stands to reason that women have a direct way to intervene on the production of hegemonic masculinity. Women have agency, and they aren’t just the victims Chellebell seems to take them for. Unfortunately, exercising this agency is not without its consequences. Women are raped every day for daring to decide for themselves the terms of their sex with men. It is often stated that rape is more about power and control than sex. I think women fall victim to rape because they are attempting to exercise their agency in denying sex with men who seek to realize their masculinity. They are, in effect, attempting to wrestle power away from men. ~ Wenty How would you feel if you were called a slut? No one would be happy if they were called a slut, especially if a man is the one who delivers the insult to a woman. No girl wants a bad reputation. In an article based on her book, Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation,” Leora Tanenbaum talks about a double standard women face every day. The article points out that before the age of 18 over half of all girls in the United States have had sex, while according to a New York Times poll, 53% of girls said sex before marriage is “always wrong.” Nearly three quarters of boys engage in sex at least once before the age of 18, but only 41% of guys think sex before marriage is “always wrong.” In high school most girls engage in sex to fit in, but once they have sex their peers bash them. A lot of girls are judged harshly based on their promiscuity. When I was in high school I only knew of a few girls who had sex. Most of my classmates wanted to wait until marriage. The few girls who did have sex were called rollers and sluts. Many guys saw these girls as easy, but this is of course a double standard. In high school boys often face pressure when it comes to having sex as well. In contrast to the experiences of many women, if a guy is a virgin when he is 18, people may think he is gay or inept. Guys often boast about having many sex partners so they can be seen as cool. But if guys can sleep around, why can’t girls? In her article, Tanenbaum recounts how one high school dealt with a huge controversy regarding sex among its teen students. At this particular school, many girls were found giving boys oral sex in parties and public parks. Reports about this in the media depicted the girls as promiscuous. The school responded immediately by calling the girls’ parents. Many girls were “reeducated” about teen sex because of this scandal, but what about the boys? The boys at this school did not receive any media attention, they did not receive any punishment by the school, their parents were not called, and they were not “reeducated.” Why did the girls face trouble while the boys received pats on the head? Adults called the girls sluts, and the boys were told that they were just acting like boys. If you think about it, things have been this way for a long time in the United States. I recently saw the documentary, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. In it, women were walking around in bikinis, but as they walked they were faced with men grabbing them as if they were merely objects. . In a lot of hip hop music videos, along with cars, jewelry and money, women are seen as material objects that men simply acquire in order to feel successful. One day when society becomes less male dominated, maybe women will receive the respect they deserve. ~ Chellebell |
AuthorsThe Class Blog Project, or CBP, is a blog featuring undergraduate students forming a critical dialogue with each other around ideas related to the sociology of gender. Archives
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