I was recently at a party where a really beautiful guy walked by a group of gay men. One of the guys in the group said, “He’s really hot” and another guy in the group said, “Yeah, but he’s such a slut.”
This comment has stayed with me…and bothered me. It led me to ask myself (and my friends) these questions:
Is a slut someone who simply has more sex than you do?
Is a slut someone who has more sex than you think people should?
Is a slut someone you condemn or are jealous of?
Historically, the word “slut” typically referred to women. In her book “Slut”, author Leora Tanenbaum talks about slut-bashing as a form of powerful, culturally-sanctioned misogyny. Unfortunately, it appears that the LGBT community has adopted the word to be an appropriate label for both men and women.
This is not progress.
Tanenbaum writes: “I wanted to educate people about the all-too-common experience of slut-bashing. Just about every high school in the country has a designated slut. Being known as the school slut is terrifying: classmates gang up on you and kids yell out “slut,” “whore,” or “bitch” when you walk down the hallway or enter the cafeteria. It is a humiliating position to be in…”
Slut-bashing is what I witnessed at the party; the beautiful man was slut-bashed big-time. Perhaps you are saying to yourself, “Michael, you’re taking this way too seriously.” But, hear me out: calling someone a slut or a whore or a ‘ho may seem like innocent play. But words have power. Power to hurt and slander.
Why call someone these sexually-derogatory names? I wonder if jealousy and insecurity are the main motivators. If your sex life isn’t so great, and you think that someone else has a better one, can you be happy for them or must you trash them?
Really secure people don’t care how much sex other people are having (or not having).
Or maybe calling someone a slut is just another mean label, like calling them stupid, ugly or some other insult. After all, who really knew if the beautiful man at the party was even having sex at all? Was his beauty what evoked the cruel response? Is this how we treat someone we envy? If the hot woman at the bar turns us down, do we later tell our friends, “Oh, she’s just a big ole slut anyway.”? Is calling someone a slut just a defense against feeling our own insecurity?
“The Ethical Slut” is a ground-breaking book by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt. This book has been around for many years and continues to shake and rattle first-time readers. I recommend it as a useful step in examining what “slut” means to you.
The book aspires to be “a comprehensive, no-holds-barred guide for anyone who dreams of having all the sex, love and friendship they want”. If you’ve ever envisioned a universe beyond traditional lifetime monogamy, this book is a good place to start. For an “ethical slut”, love, sex and pleasure are not limited qualities.
The book attempts to take back the word “slut” like many LGBTers have taken back the word “queer”.
Years’ ago, the word “queer” had a very negative connotation. Then, somehow, our (LGBT) community took the word “back” and now it has a neutral, if not positive meaning for many of us. Can we do the same thing with “slut” that we did with “queer”? Should we?
Traditionally, the word “slut” has been an ugly slur. However, In “Dropped Names”, Frank Langella’s aubiography, he celebrates his sluttiness as a worthy – even noble – way of life. Perhaps he’s already read “The Ethical Slut”.
By writing about his cheerful debauchery, Langella sees sluts as wonderful people who are hungry for experience and generous with themselves in its pursuit. He talks about how joyful it was in his 20s to “throw some scripts, jeans and a few packs of condoms into a bag,” and head out to act in plays and have sex with all the beautiful people who came his way.
I am not advocating a sex life like Mr. Langella’s, nor am I advocating its opposite. My purpose in this column is to bring the concept of “slut” up for examination. I have been questioning it lately; I invite you to do the same.
