Objectification: The Cause Of Slut Shaming

First published on http://www.cliterati.co.uk on 8/2/14. “Objectification.” It’s a word we hear all too often. The charge of “objectification” is levelled at films, the news media, lyrics, art, and of course porn. Sometimes we intersectional or sex positive feminists might feel like it’s a catch-all term which silences those who have sex industry careers- especially

Why We Should All Shut Up About So-Called “Teen Pregnancy”

First published on the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association blog on 27/12/13 as “Teen Pregnancy: Stop The Stigma”. Teen mothers. They’re sluts. Benefits scroungers. They’re not good mothers. They’re all working class. And they’ll never, ever amount to anything. “Society expects the worst outcomes for pregnant teens & young parents, so it gets the worst

Slut Shaming: When Teens Adopt Traditional Values

This article was first published on Cliterati.co.uk on 11/12/13.   Slut shamed to death. Not just Amanda Todd, Rehtaeh Parsons and Audrie Potts but other victims all over the world who we’ll never hear about. Most of the women we do hear about are middle class, cis, white and very young. They usually have caring, confident

Female Pick Up Artists: Challenging the Patriarchy’s Science

First published as “Female Pick Up Artists” on Fearless Press on 16 October 2013.   Pick up artists. Men who “run game” on women. We’ve all heard of them- but why do we never hear about female pick up artists running game on men? I referred to girls trying to get boys into bed as “playing

How Glee Teaches Girls To Slut Shame

Glee. Marketed as a progressive LGBT positive show, it just…well, isn’t, as the LGBTQI community worked out about three years ago. As @princessjack has documented in this blog, Glee has a fine tradition of slut shaming: Teacher Sue Sylvester posed nude for a magazine way back when but it is used to threaten her reputation

The UnSlut Project interview: Emily Lindin and Jessica Caimi talk slut shaming, bullying and their documentary film

Emily Lindin (founder of UnSlut Project) and Jessica Caimi are looking for funding to film a documentary about slut shaming in schools, the media, communities and culture. Emily revealed her experience of being slut shamed when she published her teenage diaries online. The UnSlut project offers advice to teens and is a space where we

Easter and April Fools: religion and discrimination

I think it’s great that Easter Monday has fallen on April Fools’ Day. My usual (internal) reaction to hearing about religions I don’t know much about (i.e. most of them) is “So, which groups of people do you have to hate?”. Because while whatever Holy Communion is remains a mystery to me, the hate and

Slut shaming and victim blaming: Why we shouldn’t do it

This might seem too obvious to a lot of you who’re reading this, but internet comments as well as the ignorance I’ve seen in real life kind of inspired me to write this. Weirdly, women slut shame and victim blame more than men (in my experience); with men, the only ones who victim blame seem

Slut shaming has no place in our time: the ideas and history behind slut shaming

Slut shaming is illogical because it targets only one gender, thereby discriminating against that gender. It also prescribes different rules for each gender (the double standard). This double standard is self defeating, because it says boys should have lots of sex while girls should have less or little (or even none, depending on which area

Slut shaming isn’t just about bullying: Why we should stop using the word “slut” completely

We need to stop using the word “slut”. You probably know this already, as slut shaming has been topical since the SlutWalks in 2011, and recently there was an article ‘Slut Shaming Shames us All’, about slut shaming and other forms of bullying in a broadsheet I can’t remember the name of. However it seems