slut shaming

GDV

|

Yesterday I was walking down the street to go to a picnic with my friends, and I was wearing a cropped top with spaghetti straps, and shorts. I passed a man and we accidentally made eye contact; as he passed me I heard ‘little slut’. As I am only 13, this was a ridiculous comment and I was really shocked, so when I actually told my friends I laughed it off and called it ‘not a big deal.’ However, when I actually thought about it on my way home I was really shocked that an old man thought it is fine to call a young girl a slut and I hope comments like this and sexual harassment are eradicated.

slag

|

i’m 16. i’ve only slept with 2 people. i get called a slag on a daily basis just because of how i dress, the fact i accidentally kissed my friends ex ONCE whilst drunk and because most of my friends are guys. after a while i started to believe them. that hurt because i started to hate myself almost as much as they hated me.

American Woman

|

When I was 6 or 7, a sweet older cousin (19 years old) always played games with me and gave me attention that I hardly got from the rest of my family. One night we were having an innocent conversation where, again, I was feeling loved and cared for. Too often in my childhood, my needs and interests were ignored. Anyway, my father came home to see that I was sitting on my cousin’s lap. Dad stiffened as soon as he came in and told me to go upstairs. Later, once my cousin had left, my father yelled and called me a slut. I didn’t know what that word meant.

Sofia

|

Someone I know told me that a young male friend of hers claimed that, “if a lot of keys can unlock a lock, it means that that lock is a rubbish one but if a key is able to unlock many locks, it is a master key.” By this analogy, he meant a lock to be a woman’s vagina and a key being a man’s penis. As if a woman’s body and what she chooses to do with it is something to be condemned but a man’s body and what he chooses to do with it is a sign of ultimate power? Just, no.

ash

|

on a school trip i had brought lots of my favourite clothes that i wanted to waer while away, i was especially looking forward to wearing a lacy black top. however when I put it on to wear one day, when i asked other girls what they thought of it they all said it was ‘too slutty’ and that i would look like the ‘slutty’ girls in our year. because they had said this i lost lots of confidence and didn’t wear my favourite top bc other people were telling me that wearing something revealing is instantly giving off the wrong message — when the thing that’s actually wrong is people sexualising a 13 yo girl’s clothes. now im sure the girls arent sexist, many of my freind in the group say they agree with feminism, but still. i think that what happened was sexist because it made my own choice about my own body into something inherently sexual and that would distract boys.

Julie

|

My ex husband was talking about our children having opposite sex friends staying over. ‘I’m old fashioned’ he said ‘I don’t let [teenage daughter] have boys in the room’. He says ‘She’s not that kind of girl and I expect the kids to show more respect in my house’. He says ‘I caught [teenage son] at it with [son’s GF]….she’s a right handful that one, a bit wild, she will get herself a reputation’ ‘ah…so THAT kind of respect huh?’

Cara

|

A few years ago I got my first job as a waitress in a cafe that my dad’s friend and his wife owned. The workers were really nice and fun to be around, at least for the first month. And I loved it there. But later, when I was part of the “qlique”, I started doubting them. That was when the harrasment started. I had seen them do it to each other in the fist month, never did they include me. It seemed like an inside joke and because some of them had been or were at the time in a relationship with eachother it did not seem as much. I was a virgin, never had I been intimate with someone. And then the “jokes” started. slapping my ass in front of the costumers, pinching my boobs, sex noises behinde the WC door, standing behind me with hands on my hips while I was pouring drinks, humping me from behinde as a surprise and the endless sex jokes and suggestions. I was scared to tell the owners that I was not comfortable with it because I was ashemed that my dad would find out. I was scared of slut shaming, tho I had done nothing wrong. I had asked the others to stop it, but got called chicken and told to loosen up. And as it was my first ever job, I didn’t want nor could I lose it. But I had this inside feeling, that if I did ask for it to stop and reported it, I would be sacked.