For the past feels-like-forever (in reality, probably 2-3 months), I’ve been combing may way through the Australian and international media trying to get my head around what’s being said about young adults and sex, and how all the different narratives and messages fit together.

(Fun fact: most publications are more complex on deep reading than they appear to most people - including me - on the surface. This is not in every case a good thing, but it’s interesting to consider why there’s such a gap between what we hear and what is actually said.) 

In the “progressive media” portion of my analysis, one issue that has come up quite a bit is that of “slut shaming” - or dissing chicks who get more action (or appear to get more action) than you do. This, it is generally agreed - and I concur - is a shitty way to behave. But reading all these articles, and the comments that accompany them, has got me thinking about why people - and why women in particular - do it.

The consensus is that slut shaming stems from feeling threatened in some way. But while I’ve heard plenty of tut-tutting over women who “gave it up” too early (“he got what he wanted, and…”) or to too many people (an amount that differs from person to person), I think this fear comes from a more visceral place than simply thinking that women who have sex in unsanctioned ways pose a threat to the status quo.

Most of the slut shaming that I’ve observed - particularly slut shaming from otherwise progressive, pro-feminist women - happens when the person doing the shaming feels directly and personally threatened by another woman’s perceived sexual behaviour or appeal.

When I hear the word “slut” bandied about, it usually has less to do with the number of partners a girl has or what she wears, than with her perceived threat to the Girl Code.

It’s about stuff like flirting with another girl’s boyfriend (or hell, flirting with another girl’s love interest), or seeming too interested in the attentions of men (particularly men whom other women are interested in the attentions of). It’s about the possibility that professional success might be predicated in some way on sex appeal. It’s about the fear that the “slut” in question might betray you for a man … or even just for a fun night out. 

None of this makes slut shaming okay. It plays into the idea that women are in competition with one another, and that success - in love, sex, work, or whatever - is a zero-sum game. It places the onus and the blame for emotional and romantic pain with the other woman rather than with the man, or with yourself. And the fact that it is the word “slut” that is used to express these anxieties only adds strength to the other connotations of the word, reinforcing the idea that for a woman to enjoy or seek out sex (or even just “look” as if she does) is a bad thing deserving of shame.

Which begs the question of why we use the word in the first place - why we make sexuality the locus of anxieties that are often about something quite different. Why say “slut” when what we really mean is “I don’t trust her and I’m scared that she might hurt me”?

Related: We are all bad feminists, really.
Everyone hates a slut, but no one knows what one is.

Elsewhere: Slut Panel Postmortem: Shame, Shame Go Away (Feministing)
Who is a slut? Depends (Jezebel)