On Feminism and Slut Shaming

Recently I had to explain slut shaming to my 7 year old daughter. Not in those terms, but for the usual reasons. While traumatized by the whole event (me, not her) I did take some pride in the fact that it was not her doing the shaming, but other little girls in her class. Let me start by saying that I’m at my kid’s school…a lot. I volunteer in the library, we teach extension type courses, I help with class activities. I am, you might say, a visible presence. I say this not to bring accolades to myself as an involved parent, but to say that I know the kids in this (very) small school community very well. So when I saw two little girls who are friends with my daughter huddled together calling another little girl a “hootchie mama” for the way that she was dressed my jaw hit the floor. These were 7 year olds! Both being from quite religiously conservative families (one had told my daughter what a dirty word sexy was when they saw it on the list of Halloween costume no-noes last year) it was not surprising that they would take notice of clothing less conservative than their own, but come on, let’s call it what it was: SLUT SHAMING.

catshamingThis school yard observation was one of the more recent occurrences that has fueled my recent obsession with slut (and public) shaming. Hell, I live a good bit of my personal and professional life on the internet I see shaming all of the time. People shaming their students, women, even their fucking pets because why? They want to see change in the behavior of the shamed or they just want to make sure everyone else sees how outraged and judgmental they are? I’m guessing that it is the latter because their students, the women that they secretly take pictures of at Wal-Mart and their poop eating pets can’t see or don’t give a shit (no pun intended) about their “witty” comments and handmade sandwich board signs.

But slut shaming (and this 7 year old “hootchie mama shaming”) is something else. Something more nefarious. It is specifically meant to change the behavior of someone (women and young girls in particular) by making them feel ashamed of their bodies and their sexuality. And most importantly, by making them feel culpable for any assaults that they find themselves victim to. Verbal or otherwise.

In recent weeks I have watched shocked as internet mobs have gone after women for supposed lapses in “virtue” with disastrous outcomes. We’ve talked a bit around here about the charges of sexual impropriety levied against Alison Rapp in a manner that ultimately led to her dismissal from Nintendo of America. But one of the things that has flown under the radar for most was the apparent suicide attempt of R&B singer Kehlani after she was the victim of an online harassment campaign that sought to shame her for posting a picture of herself on Instagram with her ex-boyfriend while she was in a relationship with a basketball player. She was attacked and accused of cheating to the point that she sought solace in death. While both of these cases may seem extreme, they are becoming more of the norm.

The internet has become a safe-haven for hate-mongering hordes of anonymous cowards who seek to shame women into submitting to their antiquated ideas of female propriety. But as Leora Tanenbaum reminds us in her book, I Am Not a Slut: Slut Shaming in the Age of the Internet, this is not a new phenomenon, nor is it one that is restricted to the internet.

Even when we aren’t connected to any digital gadget or computer, we behave differently from the ways we did fifteen years ago. We all experience and respond to new behavioral norms. It’s not incorrect to blame “the Internet,” but we have to be clear about what we mean. Blaming “the Internet” is like blaming “culture” or “the patriarchy” for sexist behavioral norms. We need to understand all the dynamics–online and offline–in the new sexual landscape for young females.

And this is the landscape that we are seeing not only the teenaged girls that Tanenbaum talks about in her book, but much younger girls in schoolyards, navigating on a daily basis. There are many factors at play in this slut shaming behavior it is not just the internet, culture, or the patriarchy but a combination of these things and so much more. But the big question is how do we begin to combat this when slut shaming and public shaming has become such a spectator sport? I am astounded by the number of times that I see people that I would consider kind at best and civil at worst sharing and laughing over images of “fat women” at WalMart or “ugly babies”. These are things that we never would have never seen done before the Internet made laughing at unknown people easy and acceptable. And now it is a thing that has not only become acceptable to share virtually, but on phones in hallways, in lunch lines, and in other real world spaces.

All of these things have come together in a perfect storm of desensitization and judgement that have made feminism and humanism (in the sense of being more humane) more necessary now than ever before. This is the time when we as humans (and especially as feminists) have to understand and acknowledge that other people’s choices are not our to make and definitely not ours to judge. Feminism and equality is not about all making the same choices, but rather about accepting the choices that others make as being valid choices for themselves.

The concept of accepting people for who they are and respecting their right to make their own choices and not judging them for those decisions is, in my opinion, one of the most important tenets of feminism and one that I was surprised and saddened to have to explain in practical and applied ways to my 7 year old daughter who came to me wanting to know what a “hootchie mama” was and where in the world her classmates would have learned to apply such an awful term to another classmate. But this is our teachable moment. This is the moment when we teach our daughters, our family, our friends that choice exists. That other people’s choices are not our choices and that they have to be respected. This is where we stand up and let people know that laughing at pictures of unnamed people on the internet is not a harmless activity, but rather one that has repercussions that extend far past the internet. This is where we stand up for the future generation of women (and men) who might find themselves in the position of being shamed because of who they are, what they wear, or how they look and just say “No!”