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Hope's experience and suicide make me angry in so many ways. Slut shaming begins really early it would seem, and while she may have exercised an error in judgement in sending a photo of herself to a boyfriend (and how many of us haven't done something similar, even knowing the risks?) that should never have led to the levels of sadistic bullying she endured.

And hell yes, bullying is bad enough.

Wait, what? "Slut shaming"? The only thing that makes a slut a "slut" is that she's not one of the popular kids to begin with. This isn't at all about a peer group enforcing appropriate behavior, it's about yet another way in which an individual perceived to be weak is carved out from the herd for slaughter by sadistic wolves needing to feed their own ravenous egos.

If, instead of killing herself, this poor girl had actively fought back, she would have been ostracized for her "disproportionate response" and would now be in mandatory treatment for her "emotional imbalance". One step further out on that spectrum is "the trench-coat mafia". The only way to survive is to "just endure it" until you go off, far, far away to college, and hope nobody follows you there on Facebook.

Slut shaming tends to be less about reality and more about perceptions. If a student is perceived as being a "slut" then she (or he, but less usually) is shamed for whatever she is supposed to have done or said or whatever.

In reality, it's a mob tactic for targetting and abusing women (mostly) to "keep them in line."

There's also the side of slut shaming that states that any women with a positive attitude towards sex is automatically a slut, and therefore worthy of public shaming.

Slut shaming is, in short, bullshit.

(I should probably also mention that I don't have a negative perspective on the term "slut" personally, but acknowledge that it's perceived as a bad thing for people who are terrified that women might find out what an orgasm is.)

Edited Date: 2010-10-08 09:01 pm (UTC)

Sorry, I still don't buy it. I can see it as a defined term, etc, and so on, but as you say, it's about perception, and keeping some "in line" is no different than bullying when the bullies define where "the line" is in the first place. It might be a sub-class of bullying but no more worthy of a separate label than "bed-wetter shaming", "nose-picker bashing" or "flincher pounding".

Well, the short answer is that slut shaming is a particular topic of interest for feminists (http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/what-is-slut-shaming/) but can also be used as an effective tool for bullies.

I disagree, actually - early and frequent attacks on a girl's sexuality, based on something as simple as slightly early puberty, are a uniquely demeaning means of bullying, and it has lasting effects on self-esteem. Slut-shaming also continues into adulthood, while bed-wetter shaming, nose-picker bashing and flincher pounding generally stop when people grow up and get lives, so sometimes you never have a chance to get away from it.

We should all gang up on those people, the "female orgasm deniers", and stuff them into a locker with some smelly jocks.

Yes, thank you for that. The whole "bullying isn't bad enough" thing upsets me. I understand where they're coming from, but yes, sometimes it is enough. Regardless of whether one child can resist the pressure and survive it and another child cannot.

What is this "bullying isn't bad enough" thing? I don't know that I've encountered it.

I was going to link to it but you don't have

red_girl_42 friended.

Here's Kate's take on it... http://tisiphone.livejournal.com/1886255.html

Oh, oh, right. I read that post. I just wasn't sure if this was something going on that I'd just missed, or what.

Wasn't that a

bernmarx-idiocy-inspired thing?

It started with

red_girl_42 who is a reasonable person although I don't agree with her on this subject, and then

bernmarx jumped in and it all went to hell.

I generally have a good opinion of

red_girl_42. I'm sad that she's jumping on the accusatory bandwagon.

I hadn't read the comments on Kate's post; when I read it there were still only four or five comments. I'm pretty irritated by the person insisting that there has to be some underlying mental illness or whatever.

Me, I'm a cheerful person, have had a really bad last couple of years, but overall I'm happy, easily amused, in love with life, and I nearly killed myself after my partner died last year. I don't, insofar as I know, have a mental illness, I'm not a terrible pessimist, nothing like that. It's just that sometimes some things are a little more than you can cope with.

No, he just piled on.

"no harm contract" - fucking rightwing libertarian bullshit!

A transparent attempt to transfer the blame to the victim, as always!

So fucked off, so very very fucked off.