Slut-shaming isn’t a real thing. You aren’t being shamed for having sex; you’re being shamed for being a woman who isn’t doing what a certain group of men want.

Prude-shaming isn’t a real thing. You aren’t being shamed for not having sex; you’re being shamed for being a woman who isn’t doing what a certain group of men want.

Please can we stop perpetuating the idea that this is simply about cultural perceptions of sex, when really it’s about men — men — hating women and trying to control our bodies?

Please can we stop claiming the term ‘slut’ as if it’s some kind of tremendous act of defiance? The power of that word is not in the word itself, but rather the hegemony behind it, and to claim that the answer is simply to normalise certain behaviours associated with it is incredibly dangerous.

Men, as a class, agree that they should control women. They don’t necessarily agree on how they should control women. There are groups of men with different beliefs and interests — different ideas of how women should be. Some men think that women should be constrained within marriage; others that women should be free from monogamy and sexually available to them at all times (hence pornography and prostitution). Most think, whether consciously or not, that women should constantly attend to their personal whims, which are often incongruous with their political beliefs anyway.

It’s not revolutionary to rebel against one faction of patriarchy and not the others. It’s just choosing which you consider to be the lesser evil; which suits your own desires more. Taking on the label of ‘slut’ and sleeping around near-indiscriminately is just kicking one side in the bollocks and then running to the other. It doesn’t change how people see female sexuality because it isn’t female sexuality. It’s women trying to get as much out of exploitative male sexuality as they possibly can.

Sexual liberation in our current society isn’t female liberation. The answer to male dominance over us isn’t to simply fuck more. All us fucking more does is allow men to fuck more. It doesn’t stop men seeing women as objects. It doesn’t convince men of every woman’s right to autonomy. It doesn’t require men to see a woman’s sexuality as being her own rather than something for their pleasure. It demands nothing of them. The movement towards ‘sexual liberation’ is simply a movement to unite men against us, encouraging them to reject marriage for some hideous form of free love, where our availability to them is absolute.

There is nothing feminist about sleeping with men if you don’t demand respect for all women from those men. Basing your sexual behaviour on the misogynous ideals of one group of men isn’t demanding that respect, and you can point at the other group and their opposing misogynous ideals all you like, but it doesn’t change that.

We don’t need to reclaim the term ‘slut’ and the behaviours associated with it, because we don’t need to pander to the wants of any group of men. We don’t need to reclaim any words which belong to the language of a civilisation that we intend to destroy. We don’t need words that measure how much sex you have, even if they have positive connotations, because how much sex you have shouldn’t be important. It’s only important because men want to control the amount of sex that women have, whether to only have sex within marriage or to have sex with multiple men on camera for thousands of other men to enjoy.

‘Prude’ is one man’s rule. ‘Slut’ is just another’s. Self-respect can be both being naked and covering yourself from head to toe. But it certainly isn’t following any rules other than your own.