I Don’t Believe In Sluts
You know, I just had one of those satori moments that can be years in the making.
I was surfing a random tumbler when I saw a random bondage photo of a perfectly charming young lady in a rope harness, giving a big smile at the camera. Emblazoned on the photo was a watermark and URL that was something similar to, but not quite, sluts in rope dot com.
And it just hit me, the impatient and dismissive thought, as if this particular batch of pornographers were wasting my obviously-precious time: Bullshit!
She’s not a slut. She’s just a girl, a woman, a person.
I don’t even know what the fuck a slut is. I don’t have a category in my head for that.
Oh, I know two or three definitions, I just never once in my life have felt the need for that collective/descriptive noun. There’s never been a case where the woman I was trying to describe fit one of those definitions better than she fit some other handier or more descriptive word, like her name or “woman” or “girl”.
I’m not talking about biting back an epithet on the tip of my tongue, either. I know what that feels like. Take the word “bitch” if you will. I don’t believe it’s a word to be thrown around lightly, and I don’t; it escapes my lips rarely indeed, and only when I believe it to be richly and earnestly deserved. But it comes to the tip of my tongue perhaps a few times more often than that. I swallow it again, for reasons that seem good.
Not so with “slut”. It simply doesn’t occur to me. I don’t get what the big deal is. I don’t understand what it is about “sluts” that gets under so many men’s skins. Women who have a lot of sex? That’s good, right? We likes them our preciouses, yes we does? Women who enjoy sex? We want that to be the whole category, surely? Women who have sex easily and readily with anybody who asks? A mythical creature I’m sure, but you’d be as interested to see one as you would a unicorn, not full of contempt and disgust, right?
It’s not a new idea to me that I don’t need the word. But I guess I always figured there were sluts out there somewhere I just never met, or people whose relationships were so fluid and fragile they were threatened by “sluts” and needed a ready way to identify them. It took a completely-daft use of the label in an utterly-pointless context to finally ram the point home: there really is no such thing as a slut.
What “slut” is, is a label of convenience. People (male and female alike) slap it on women and girls they need power over — personal power, marketing power, sexual power, emotional power. If they can make it stick, they may get some of the power they seek. Of course, some women defuse the tactic by adopting the label first, making it their own; this may have costs, but it can be very effective too.
In general, though, when you hear the word slut, somebody is trying to pull a power play on a woman by labeling her. It’s not actually a real category. Sluts don’t exist.
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THANK you. I’m with you on that. I have lost count of the times I’ve heard dudes describe chicks as “sluts”- often chicks they’ve banged. Ok, so, a slut she might be, but YOU MADE HER THAT WAY!
Bugs the hell out of me. In general, that is, but even more so when there’s hypocrisy involved.
heck, I’ll admit that “sluts” turn me on – always have. I like a woman that knows she likes sex and doesn’t get wrapped up in the “good girl” syndrome.
Sluts are people (regardless of gender) who fuck indiscriminately.
So you say.
So, as you probably know, the word slut used to mean: a messy or sloppy woman. The implication is one who takes no pride in her home or appearance. It is my impression that it was a term that started to get used in a sexually perjorative way by other women. Like the women their men had affairs with. A slut was one who didn’t deserve the sex they were getting, and that degraded sex by taking it out of the context of a marriage and home, and all the work that these non-slut women put into keeping their men supposedly happy. (Cause it was the slut’s fault that men wanted to stray and be dirty, not the darling husbands).
So then, it seems like there was a word that justified to both women and men the sinful or unworthy woman who’s fault it was that good men had dirty thoughts. For men that liked these dirty thoughts and deeds, the slut and her power of corruption was the one that kept them from being bad guys because of it, and that provided an outlet/opportunity.
Still, to acknowledge the concept of ‘slut’ as a woman who is a guilt sponge in some way is a bit empowering now that we know sex and lust aren’t really sending anyone to eternal torment. A ‘slut’ in this sense has the pretty impressive roles of not only being a mirror of a man’s base emotion, and thereby having access to intimacy on a really deep level, but also the power to transform these emotions from something frightening and unpleasant to something that at best can be glorious and transcendent.
The woman who is not a ‘slut’ in this sense doesn’t pay the price in shame, but she also is denied the power of that transformation.
Today the chaste/love, sex/sin dialectic is a lot less of a big deal, and so I think the idea of a slut as the catalyst of transition between those poles is a lot less useful. So in a way, the slut no longer does exist. Both partners can both give and take in a relationship that everyone can feel good about. Blogs like this that get out the idea that sex and desire are natural and not shameful, and that both men and women can enjoy all aspects of sex honestly and morally, have gone a long way to making the term an anachronism. I really think this is so much better. Thanks!
I like looking at girls having sex. I absolutely hate it when a negative term is used to describe them. I derive pleasure from them (directly or indirectly) and they should be respected for the inner joy that they can bring to that task. Their are many terms; not just “slut” that drives me up the wall. Your editorial was very well said.
The use of demeaning names in porn is a huge pet peeve of mine. When I started modelling, I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t work for companies that use misogynistic copy on their sites. While this has been pretty limiting at times, at least I’m nobody’s slut.
So true, bravo!
I am a slut, my wife is a slut, most of my friends are sluts.
Guess we all fall into that catagory of people who have adopted the label.
I have been of the slut breed since my teens.
It has been much more rewarding than being of the prude breed.
The book “Ethical slut” started a lot of people taking the word and self labeling… but I gladly did it over a decade earlier when I realized that most use it in a negative manner only because of envy.
Plus… what other word do we have to repalce it?
I don’t consider myself promiscuous.
I am not easy.
I’m not indescriminate.
I don’t consider myself hedonistic.
I may consider myself sexualy epicurean… but that is a mouthful.
I have just had a lot more sex partners than the average person.
No label exists for me besides slut.
I am what I am.
“Slut” is one of the those judgemental words. Like the others, it says more about the speaker than it does about the subject.
The name “slut” is generally not a term of endearment. What-it-means-to-me definitions aside, why would any man refer to a woman, especially one who is giving the most intimate of gifts that she can offer, by using derogatory names or language? I can think of many better names for the women who touch my life.
Thank you.
Aaron,
The word “slut” means someone(a woman in particular) who has no discrimination at all. It will continue to mean that for a very long time.
It’s true that there are not many positive-value words for a person who enjoys having sex with a lot of partners.
I am struck by the number of people in this thread who have defined “slut” with a high degree of certitude.
Yet, they do not agree with each other.
Well said! I agree 100%.
And ditto to Adele Haze: ‘The use of demeaning names in porn is a huge pet peeve of mine.’
and Brent Dotson: ‘I absolutely hate it when a negative term is used to describe them.’
Yes “slut”, “whore”, “slapper”, “tart”, etcetc What a lovely list of absolutely meaningless words, purely there to exercise social disapproval over certain rather arbitrary standards of behaviour (sexual, but also dress-code, flirting – anything that can be perceived as a sexual come-on)
I say they are arbitrary – I suppose it may prove useful to a society to enforce those standards and perhaps control sexual behaviour to some extent. But we all know the tone of voice with which such terms are used, the kind of sneer that accompanies it…It’s not pretty
How interesting. I don’t think of “slut” in such a negative way. For example when my wife wears an outfit that makes her look extra sexy and she shows off I may say “you little slut” but she knows that it is a positive term of appreciation. It’s one of the ways of saying “you are desirable”. I like slutty girls!
As with many things, it is how words are used rather than the words themselves that creates a positive or negative effect.
You can always tell when a man is sexually inadequate. He’s the sorry S.O.B. who when he encounters a woman that he fears incapable of satisfying, starts labeling her a slut.
Sometimes, in his ignorance, he will call this scarey creature a whore, but this is because he thinks whores enter into the profession because they desire the creatures who patronize them.
Either that, or he doesn’t own a dictionary…
I think you’re loading more negative freight onto the customers of sex workers with that “creatures” than is necessary. But I very much agree that the guys who throw “slut” and “whore” around loosely tend to be verbally limited, lacking a better vocabulary with which to better express their fears and insecurities.
I think slut means something different when a guy uses it than when a girl does.
I mean, it obviously can be derogatory, but I almost never hear it used in that way except when WOMEN use it in anger. They also use it playfully when a girl says she got a new vibrator and her friend says,”uh, you slut.”
The most often I hear it is when a guy is talking to other guys, not as a power play to get the girl to do something, but as a general description of a girl who is sexy, very clear about her desire for sex, and possibly had sex with the guy after just meeting him; or made it clear that it was going to happen soon.
I also hear it often in dirty talk, and then it’s not negative at all, but hot as fucking hell!
So, while slut may not exist as a Platonic ideal, it’s only terrible when it’s used to shame or ostracize someone.
I’m not so sure that I have ever met a slut.
If I had, I would probably have married her, or at least asked her to marry me. What guy would want a sex NEGATIVE woman?