No one wants to be The Slut.

I'm in the middle of reading Naomi Wolf's book Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, and it's not bad.  A little self-indulgent, but not bad.  In it she explores the variety of ways she and her friends experienced their sexual coming of age growing up in San Francisco just off the Haight during the 70s.  In the introduction she admits that this isn't going to reflect the experience of all girls everywhere.  But after reading about half the book, what really got to me was the discussion of sluts.  This is not the first book, by far, that discusses the phenomenon of the Slut in teen girl culture by taking on the subject from the outside.  And by that, I mean that the teenaged Naomi Wolf was herself not considered a slut.  Nor were Leora Tanenbaum of Slut:  Growing up Female with a Bad Reputation, or Emily White who wrote Fast Girls:  Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut.  White admits to both fearing and envying the class slut. Wolf admits to knowing that she and her friends had far more sexual experience than the class slut at their high school, a friend of theirs that they "drifted away from" after her labeling.

While I appreciate the work being done, I kind of wish it were being done by someone who had worn the label of slut.  You get an entirely different perspective when you're the ostracized one, than when you're observing the phenomena from the outside. 

In seventh grade, word got around that I was easy.  By the end of eighth grade, I had slept with the entirety of the football team and many of the male teachers.  In ninth grade, my stubborn refusal to abandon my pregnant best friend cemented all the accusations in the minds of my classmates.  By tenth grade, forget it...

I lost my virginity in a rape in tenth grade. 

Yup, the school slut had never so much as SEEN a penis in real life, let alone sucked one or screwed anyone.  Hell, up until 10th grade, I really hadn't even made out with anyone.  Sure I started developing early.  I started wearing a bra in fourth grade, by seventh I was a 38B.  Anyone who says a B cup is small, obviously didn't have B cups in junior high.  My breasts were a constant topic of conversation, boys in my classes spent their time learning how to unhook my bra through my shirt, while I got scolded for trying to squirm away, too embarrassed to explain why.  However, at home while listening to the Rolling Stones' "Emotional Rescue" (the creepiest song ever), I still played with my model horses and re-read Black Beauty and the Secret Garden over and over again. 

At the age of 12 my Dad's co-workers started hitting on me. Female co-workers of my father's often assumed I was closer to their age than their kids, or at least in high school.  At 13 I could get into bars pretty regularly.  I liked wearing more mature clothing.  Not slutty or revealing, but just more stylishly adult than your average 12 year old, lots of boat necks and batwing sleeves (this was the early 80s, bear in mind).  I wanted to look like the women in Duran Duran and Roxy Music videos.  Ok, I wanted to look like the women in Adam Ant videos MORE, but living in Boise, ID I didn't really have access to those styles.  

In seventh grade, while I was still 12, not even officially a teenager yet, a group of girls that included my former (and future when she got knocked up and only I would talk to her) best friend called me a slut for the first time.  Word spread around school like a brushfire.  Reports of eyewitness testimonies regarding me and football players, boys from the high school, male teachers, sprang up every time I turned around.  It didn't matter to any of these people that I hadn't actually done any of these things.  Boys would ask me out, I would say "No," and the next day it would be all over the school that I'd fucked them.  Apparently, you can't admit when the school slut turns you down.  I mean, she's screwed everyone else, right?   

My reputation followed me to the high school.  I'm pretty sure that my reputation was the direct cause of my date rape.  He seemed honestly upset to discover that he'd forced himself on a virgin (there was blood and everything).  As long as he thought I'd already had sex, forcing his way inside me was all good.  But I hadn't.  He couldn't dump me fast enough.  

Now, I did run with a group of other sluts, most of whom had actually had sex before, some because they liked it, some because it got them things from men, often many years older.  I learned a lot from those girls about how to tell the world to fuck off when it tries to dictate your behavior.  I also learned a lot of erroneous sexual information, that they themselves believed even after  having sex. 

In Idaho sex education on the junior high level consisted of an incredibly graphic chapter on venereal disease (as it was called in those days) and "Just say no."  I think they may have mentioned that birth control existed, but only as an abstract.  You didn't get your next sex education unit until your senior year of high school.  Considering how many girls dropped out before then because of teen pregnancy, I find the timing ill-advised.  No one mentioned rape, or that it was wrong.

Honestly, what I now call Date Rape, back then no one talked about it.  If you were alone with a guy, particularly with a reputation like mine (deserved or not), everyone assumed you wanted it.  Because if  everyone said you were a slut, obviously you were.  Running with the other sluts, largely because only they and the nerds would have me, was further evidence of my sluttiness.  Nevermind that no one else wanted to hang out with me. 

I started smoking in 7th grade, because all the sluts smoked.  I started drinking shortly thereafter because it numbed the pain of dealing with the abuse heaped on me by my classmates who figured I'd earned the punishment they dished out with my whorish ways.  I did a lot of drugs for the same reason, well, and to lose weight... Ahhh, amphetamines.  I once spent the better part of an hour hunkered down in a badger hole in the desert (Boise is high desert), because some football players had seen me riding my bike out there, and started chasing me.  I feared the badger less than the football players.  Kids would  run up to the house, pound on my bedroom windows and screech "Slut!" in the middle of the night.  I developed a phobia of going anywhere alone.  There was one abortive TP-ing attempt on the house, but we had a big dog who barked at the slightest noise and that scared them off.  My husband found a box of tee-shirts from my teenage years a couple years ago, and after pulling three or four out of the box, said,"Why do these all have these holes across the backs?"  I asked him to think about how far apart the barbs on barbed wire were.  I'd ripped many of those shirts diving between the wires of barbed wire fences to get away from my tormenters.

While I treasure the strength that being the slut ultimately gave me, by my senior year I'd learned to laugh in the face of whatever people called me, it isn't at all romantic.  There's nothing "Rebel Without a Cause"-like about it, well, except that it does wind up killing many of it's victims.  Girls suicide over being called sluts.  I thought about it many, many times.  

My parents and the other adults in my life were no use whatsoever.  When I told them about the constant barrage of abuse, my mother would say, "Ignore them and they'll go away."  They didn't.  They escalated.  Until the day one of them hit me with his car.  Fortunately, he just grazed me with a bumper, and I think the thud of the car clipping my hip scared him as badly as it had me, because after that he just avoided me.  I spent the next few days home "sick" from school, sneaking ice packs into my room. 

Unless you've lived being the "Slut" you don't really get how awful it is.  Today I discussed this post with two friends of mine, neither of whom were sluts.  One was the Prude and the other was "Just one of the guys."  In both cases, their parents' threat of people thinking they were "sluts" kept them  sexually in line.  However, what neither had realized is that acquiring the label doesn't hinge on anything you do or are.  It's entirely arbitrary, and that's the worst thing about it.  The fact that there isn't a damn thing you can do to avoid it once someone decides to hang it on you. 

Sign up to get our eNewsletter.

Support California NOW's work.

Follow us on Twitter
Find us on Facebook

Mickey Schulz is a guest author for the California NOW blog; her opinions are not necessarily those of California NOW. Copyright Mickey Schulz, with permission granted to California NOW for use on this site.

Comments

[Brandi]

Thank you! The word slut is such an awful word for girls. When I was in high school(which was not that long ago) I was called a slut and I never even had sex! I was forced out of being in theatre because a girl started a rumor saying I was a slut and everyone stopped talking to me.

[Mickey Schulz]

Brandi, I'm sorry that it happened to you, too. People don't understand how incredibly awful the persecution can be.

I think it's why I liked "Lord of the Flies" so much, because Golding eloquently expressed what going to junior high was like for me.

[Geo]

WOW, thanks for the great (sad) post; I did unfortunately, called couple of girls slut in my high-school years, now that I think back I was completely horrified they would turn me down, so when friends queried to ask them out, that was the go to answer.

It was nowhere near as hardcore as what you describe here in my eyes, but of course, I did not have internal access to what was going on in those girls' life.

I so wish I had access so I could apologize for such a stupid behavior, anyway, thanks for the insight.

[Angelique]

I got that label in high school myself, in spite of the fact that I had not had sex. My friends were "sluts" and had mostly lost their virginity at around 13 or 14, and it was kind of a birds of feather association going on.

I kind of rolled with it and figured I should enjoy it. So I smoked, drank, sat on my boyfriend's lap in public (scandalous behavior!) and wore skimpy clothes because I thought they looked cool. I was awkward looking in middleschool, but by high school I was growing into my looks and after all of the teasing for being awkward I had a tough skin and I had learned to be pretty unconcerned with other people's opinions. I really did believe my mom when she said they were jealous; I was having more fun than most of the meaner girls and they thought I was having even more fun than I was.

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

I recognise a lot of your story. Especially how a reputation can be made up by others, how lies can cling harder than truth until the truth just doesn't matter anymore and how that reputation spreads far and wide without being able to stop it.

It's good that you came out and told this story, because I wish more people would understand that bullying is not harmless, kids will not be kids, and the things they say about their victims are entirely arbitrary and made up. The victim never causes any of the bullying and has no way to make it stop.

[Tandy Byrd]

I was "weird," which also came with some baggage and a terrible year during which I was afraid for my safety. One of the lesser reasons I have decided not to have children is my fear helplessness that I would feel if my child should come to me with peer issues like those you have discussed here.

The adults in my life were useless, as you describe. Do you have any thoughts on what adults can do in these situations? Past believing what young people are telling them, and believing that the situation can be serious--sometimes deadly so--how to handle this?

I have imagined going to my child's aid with metaphoric guns blazing, but I think that this would just drive the tormentors underground. I'm really at a loss to think of proactive ways to handle this on a personal basis. (Coping with such issues on a societal basis is a whole different matter and would make up a whole new post.)

Thank you for your story. Time to write a book?