I would just like to apologize in advance to Dr. H. This is going to be a blog about sex, and it will probably make you very uncomfortable. Also, to anyone else who uncomfortable with sex, maybe this isn’t a blog post for you. That being said I am also sorry to those people. This post will talk about my sexuality and some of my experiences in the past.
In Ali Wong’s special “Baby Cobra”, she talks a lot about sex. A lot of it was her past experiences and she talks about being very sexually active in her 20s. This made me think a lot about slut shaming. As someone who has been very sexually active for a long while in my life. I had one major question for Wong after watching her special. Was she ever slut shamed?
I lost my virginity at the young age of 14. As a freshman in high school I made the stupid choice of dating a senior in high school. That was also the first person that I ever had sex with. But boys in high school, tell their boys everything. Then their boys proceed to tell everyone. When everyone found out that I had sex with him, I got slut shamed. Need I remind you the he first person and only person, at that point in time I had sex with. I would see random people I had never seen or talked to before, and they would look at me and call me a slut, or a hoe. After that I broke up with this boy and he just wouldn’t leave me alone. Could he not see that he had made my life a living hell, in the school I was going to have to be in for the next 4 years?
After him I dated someone a little bit closer to my age. I think him and I were 2 years apart. I waited quite a while to have sex with him. But inevitably, everyone found out again. Even me waiting 3 months before having sex with this guy was not enough for these people. Again, I experience slut shaming but worse. This time people would throw things at me and call me a slut. They would look at me, turn to their friends say something in a way they thought I wouldn’t hear it, and then laugh. They posted things online about it.
I mean hell my parents gave me shit for it. Before you go and say how did your parents know? I was very open with my parents. I talked to them about a lot of things that happened in my life. I didn’t ever casually come home and say, “Hey guys I just wanted to let you know I had sex.” I did however understand that I could talk to them about anything. When I started having sex I told them I was sexually active and I often came to them with questions I had regarding sex. However, that stopped when they too started slut shaming me.
However, at this point I said FUCK THESE PEOPLE. After all of this I just did what I wanted to do. Can we talk about how most of the people doing these things to me, were in dead WOMEN? Crazy, how we feel the need to do this to each other.
No matter how these people talked to or about me, I still continued to have sex. Why should I care what people think about me? Why should any of us care? The truth is… WE SHOULDN’T! I’ll even admit that after all of this I was having a lot of sex. I enjoyed it. Sex made me feel good. Why do we as females get patronized for enjoying sex, as much as men?
Now for the real question. What’s the deal with slut shaming anyway? Women have every right to enjoy sex and have a lot of it. We should have free will. They are our bodies, right? All I’m saying is that we should be able to be ourselves and enjoy sex (or not, your choice). Don’t ever let someone else control your life.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Daisy, I want to applaud you for your honesty and the fact that you don't let people's opinions stop you from living your best life! I also want to applaud myself, since I made it through your post, considering my former post about sex and your disclaimer lol. It's so unfortunate that everyone labeled you and slut-shamed you when you were in high school. You obviously didn't deserve that; no one does. I am so glad you were able to rise above the hate and continue doing what you wanted to. I'm assuming that when you said the slut-shamers were "in dead women," you actually meant "indeed." The context of that mistake is actually (morbidly) hilarious though. Like "they're disgusting necrophiliacs, who cares what they think???"
ReplyDeleteGo off girl! If you enjoy having sex, I'm certainly not going to stop you! Those boys are dumber than owl shit (I promise that is a real saying) and should've known that telling everyone about you was wrong. You definitely deserve better than them. Speaking of TED Talks, Monica Lewinsky presented her talk "The price of shame" in 2015. While she was publicly shamed on a global scale, she still has a lot to say about how the Internet changed "our online culture of humiliation". And most of comments are uplifting, which is a stark contrast to how people received her in the 1990s. https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame/discussion?language=en
ReplyDeleteI have never really understood the idea of slut shaming, but I am sure it can be tied to he bad girl, good girl thing. We are viewed as being pure and innocent, that is how society enjoys us. When we break that stereotype and use men as a way to feel good we are viewed as sluts. It is a normalized societal norm that really should not hold weight, but still it does. I think that it is a lack of education towards children. Sex is viewed as taboo and weird. I think the step to stopping slut-shaming is actually talking about sex and why its okay, and how to do it safely. It is a very normal thing, that most people do. I think that it needs to be discussed so people of age to have sex realize what they are doing and why.
ReplyDeleteI think that slut shaming goes back to the twisted idea of women needing to be whatever men want whenever they want it. Because one of the key attributes of toxic masculinity is control and dominance, I feel like a lot of men feel they aren't in control when they aren't the only person you've slept with...cue slut shaming to make their egos feel better. Then, this causes women to be in competition. I've heard so many women slut shame someone when they themselves sleep with a lot of men! I DON'T GET IT. The only way I can reconcile that behavior is that it has to be some kind of "if I tell people she's a slut it'll take the attention off me" kind of thing. I wish there didn't have to be unwanted attention on ANY of us. (And it sucks even worse when it's your parents. Thanks for sharing that because not a lot of people do, but that really hit home for me.) You're not inherently bad for enjoying sex, no matter what anyone else tries to tell you.
ReplyDeleteThank you for opening up about this. Slut shaming is really one of the dumbest things we've done as a society just because.. what do we gain from it? Literally nothing. I agree with Aneyla's comment that it goes back to the idea of pleasing men but even when we're pleasing men by having sex with them we're in the wrong. WILL WE EVER WIN???
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