[Editor’s Note: Thank you to our first male contributor! It isn’t every day that a male athlete approaches us and asks to write an article about the controversial issue of “slut shaming”. We really appreciate his initiative and willingness to speak out publicly about a difficult topic that resonantes with so many of us. While we’ve published pieces from a female perspective (check out Katy’s Combating Complicity: Confessions of a Former Mean Girl, Alissa’s Insulting Our Way to Equality?, and Ariel’s Moving Past Blame: Our Shared Responsibility to End Sexual Assault), we’re so excited to present this issue from a guy’s point of view. Take a page from “The Earl of Rochester”– our author’s psuedonym– and help end the silence, recruit male allies, and effect positive change.]
Feminism and equality are terms that I constantly hear used in class discussions, lunch conversations, and various other settings around campus and for most of my time here I have been unsure what these terms meant. Recently, I have done some relatively light research into the vast literature around feminism to give myself a basic foundation of knowledge of the key issues and one that really caught my interest was “slut-shaming”. As I did more research into the relatively straightforward issues around slut-shaming I have come to realize that it can be defined by one of our favorite terms as Grinnell students, “a social construction,” and it is perpetuated by both men and women.
From a male’s perspective, I found that I perpetuate slut-shaming constantly because the social perception of whether or not a woman is considered to be a “slut” would have an effect on the level of interest I would have in initiating a relationship with that woman. But why would a young male in college be less interested in a relationship with a woman socially deemed a “slut”? After all, men want sex more than anything else right? As strange as this may seem, there is a simple reason for my hesitation: reputation. Of course! No self-respecting young man would want to establish a relationship with a slut! As surprising as this sounds, it is actually a highly problematic situation with several polarizing issues:
- What is a slut?
- Why is someone called a slut because of his or her personal choices?
- Why is there a stigma around pursuing a relationship with a person thought of as a “slut”?
- Why is it assumed that all males want sex regardless of who the partner is?
These are contentious topics among students on our campus, and while I do not have the credibility to provide solutions for each of these problems, I know that it will take a long time for the enactment of necessary culture changes to make people more cognizant and responsible about the words they say and the effect they have on others.
However, I would like to suggest that we, as Grinnell students, can begin these changes by staying true to our supportive and egalitarian mission and stop the slut-shaming culture on our campus. It is driven by insecurity, perpetuates sexism, and creates a culture of dehumanization and disrespect. Unfortunately, this problem is so deeply ingrained in society (yes, even at Grinnell) that many of us have become desensitized to it. We can do this by recognizing where in our lives we perpetuate slut-shaming, why facilitating slut-shaming is problematic, and by making the decision to acknowledge and ameliorate the culture around slut-shaming.
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