There is no such thing as a slut

[unrepentant progress]

That slut stigma is simply class warfare becomes even clearer if we turn to the wisdom of whores. ... Whore stigma, as I write in my book, “Playing the Whore,” “makes central the race and class hierarchy reinforced in the dividing of women into the pure and impure, the clean and the unclean, the white and virgin and all the others. ... While most think that slut stigma is about sex, as Armstrong and Hamilton have shown, sex in fact has little to do with it. Slut stigma is explicitly about creating — and maintaining — difference. Abolishing it will therefore require more than the ’90s-era reclaiming of sex. ... Here, core feminist causes such as abortion access and an end to gender-based violence should also be understood as part of attaining sexual freedom. Though they are often pitted against each other, the truth is that the fight for health and equality cannot be won as long as it is divorced from the fight for pleasure and liberation. Desire and justice are inseparable. But as long as slut stigma persists among women, sexual freedom will be reserved for the few.

Link: http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-slut

For what it's worth, I think most inequalities boil down to class issues. But then I have a Marxist axe, and every problem looks like a Capitalist tree to me. The genius of neoliberalism is how easily it coopts social justice issues while cleaving them from their economic roots, which is why the Democratic Party is too often at the vanguard of conservatism in these modern times.

[Warpy]

1. When I hear a man call a woman a slut, I know that she has rejected him for sex

and that she has accomplishments that he'd like to reserve to himself but which he utterly lacks.

The only real requirement for being called a slut is being female.

[unrepentant progress]

2. What about when women call other women sluts?

Which is what Armstrong and Hamilton's research is about.

Armstrong and Hamilton’s work culminated in a book called Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, as well as a new study in the June issue of Social Psychology Quarterly focused squarely on the slut question. As the sociologists got to know these women, they watched as they stratified into what they defined as “high status” and “low status” social groups, with high-status women typically emerging from affluent homes around the country and rising through the Greek system, and low-status ones coming from local middle- and working-class backgrounds and coalescing into friend groups boxed out of sorority life. They found that the groups had different conceptions of what constituted a campus slut, with the low-status women pinning sluttiness on “rich bitches in sororities,” and the high-status women aligning sluttiness with women they perceived as “trashy,” not “classy.”

Link: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/28/slut_shaming_and_class_a_study_on_how_college_women_decide_who_s_trashy.html

[big_dog]

3. this is the great untold story of class warfare in the good ol usa

good post

[BainsBane]

5. It's part of the same neoliberal backlash

against women. That women engage in it doesn't change how it functions in society.

[1StrongBlackMan]

8. +1 ...

but I would not limit it to "neoliberal" backlash, as all groups ... conservative, liberals, progressives ... that accept/ignore the patriarchy status quo are equally backlashing against women, even when those groups include women.

This is much like pointing to any political segmentation as backlashing against racial equality, when ALL (most) political groups accept/ignore the racial status quo, even if to pay more attention to economic conditions.

[1StrongBlackMan]

7. I'll have to read the research further; but ...

what jumps out at me is that while "High" versus "Low" Status is might have economic connectivity, the designation of "slut" is, likely, NOT widely understood to be connected to economics, as there are those designated as "sluts" within each group, by members of the respective groups.

Anecdotally, in my college days (152 years ago), the sorority that held the designation of being the most "slutty", was populated with the most affluent membership; whereas, the "good girl" sorority was populated largely with members hailing from the working class(es). And, these designations were both an internal, as well as an external, identification.

[BainsBane]

4. Given your Marxist approach

I think you'll find this article interesting. It pulls all of the issues of labor exploitation, human reproduction, and gender violence together.

http://isreview.org/issue/91/explaining-gender-violence-neoliberal-era

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. Well ...

For what it's worth, I think most inequalities boil down to class issues.

That would depend on how one defines the term "Class". If one uses it in the generic sense, i.e., one group distinct from another group(s), that is correct. However, if one applies the economic meaning, I could not disagree more ... as a wealthy woman, experiences the same "dividing of women into the pure and impure, the clean and the unclean, the white and virgin and all the others", as women of lesser means.

But to the article ...

In a recent discussion with BabyGirl 1SBM, we discussed this "slut" versus "good girl" distinction and what I concluded was the "slut(s)" was/are simply non-compliant females; whereas, the "good girls" were/are compliant females. And this has absolutely nothing to do with sex.

[BainsBane]

9. While "prudes" are also non-compliant females

and the same woman can be viewed as both a slut and a prude by the same men, depending on the circumstances. I wrote about my recent experience with this here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/125544521