“Well, what kind of a guy goes to every city, he has sex with every girl, then he catches HIV and — is that someone we want to respect and tell our kids about? I think he should be ashamed of himself.”
This quote was spoken by L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. He is referring to former NBA star point guard and current philanthropist, activist, and L.A. Dodgers co-owner Earvin “Magic” Johnson. It is a cheap shot visited upon a legendary basketball player, as well as a bizarre and ill-advised attempt to deflect attention away from the well-publicized accusations of racism which saw Sterling banned for life from the NBA last month. This racism is so virulent and long-standing that it led Sterling to change his original surname, “Tokowitz” in order to hide his own Jewish heritage.
It’s true that Magic Johnson was diagnosed with HIV following a prolific sexual history, as Sterling claims. It’s also true that, while announcing his condition to the world, Johnson promised to dedicate his life to fighting the disease. Shortly thereafter Johnson created the Magic Johnson Foundation, the initial purpose of which was to fight HIV. In 1999 he spoke at the United Nations World AIDS Day conference. He has worked hard to raise awareness of the disease, and to combat the then-ubiquitous belief that only gays and drug users get HIV and AIDS.
But even if he’d done none of that, Magic Johnson’s HIV-positive status is ultimately not Sterling’s concern. Sterling’s astounding claim that Johnson has done little for the African American community, as well as his miscategorization of Johnson’s condition as AIDS, were deliberate and personal: Sterling’s mistress posted to her Instagram account a picture of her with Magic Johnson, which is what led to the racist tirade which caused Sterling’s expulsion from the NBA. Beyond Sterling’s racism, his attempt to condemn one man for his sexual proclivities is noteworthy given the irony inherent in his having a mistress in the first place. According to Sterling, having a mistress is okay, but having several is not.
(Disclaimer: The woman at the center of all of this, one V. Stiviano, has as far as I know not been acknowledged by Sterling as his mistress; reputable media outlets tend to refer to her as a female friend. However, in March of this year Stiviano was sued by Sterling’s wife for the return of a $1.8 million duplex, a Ferrari, two Bentleys, and a Range Rover, all of which were purchased for her by Sterling. Is there anyone out there who believes that these items would have been purchased for her were she simply a casual acquaintance?)
Ultimately, Sterling’s attack on Magic Johnson is slut-shaming. It seems to be unusual for one male to slut-shame another male; the target of this heinous practice is traditionally female, as slut-shaming is a response to female sexual agency, and a means of punishing same. Presumably there have been other instances of one male slut-shaming another, though this appears to be the most high-profile of which I am aware.
What’s the big deal? you may be asking, though if you’ve read this blog for any appreciable length of time you probably aren’t. After all, this isn’t the first time we’ve blogged about slut-shaming. Two years ago this week we published Slut Power!, a post examining the phenomenon, questioning whether the word “slut” should be retired, and calling upon sex-positives everywhere to reclaim it and rob it of its power to harm. After all, that’s the point; most people who use such language do so to hurt women, to keep them in their place, so to speak, and to maintain the status quo.
Slut-shaming reflects a stunted and unhealthy attitude about sex, a practice in which virtually everyone takes part. We all enjoy sex, don’t we? So why the negativity surrounding it? Why judge someone for taking part? What gives anyone the right to belittle another person for enjoying sex, regardless of whether they’re enjoying it in a different way, or enjoying more of it, or enjoying it more publicly, than someone else?
In case I have been in any way unclear up to this point, I must state for the record that I am unequivocally against slut-shaming in any of its forms. That being said, I can almost understand why a man might slut-shame a woman who’s having sex, but not with him. I would never do it, nor do I support the practice; any man who slut-shames a woman in this fashion betrays either his unchecked sense of entitlement, or his deep-rooted feelings of inferiority (or both, but almost certainly the latter). After all, a man who is confident in his own sense of self shouldn’t care that any given woman has rejected him sexually. In such a case, slut-shaming is born from jealousy and insecurity, and many men – most men? The majority of men? I don’t want to generalize here – exhibit more than their share of these two things at some point in their lives. Thus I can see a malformed and deficient half-man striking back in the face of rejection by slut-shaming a woman who has declined his advances.
What I absolutely cannot understand, and never will understand, are men who slut-shame women after they have sex with them. This is, somewhat counterintuitively, a pretty common thing. In my younger days, before slut-shaming had a name or at least before I was made aware of it, I remember hearing guys talk about their conquests in a negative fashion, and I remember wondering why someone would have sex with a woman if he thought so little of her. Nowadays I still hear of it; societal attitudes about women have created an environment wherein such a thing is tolerated if not encouraged. In more than two decades of fucking, I’ve never had sex with a woman and immediately thereafter thought she was a lesser being because of it. Hell, I probably thought the exact opposite, though that may be due more to my rampant ego.
Maybe I was raised with healthier attitudes, or maybe I’m just grateful when a woman chooses to have sex with me. But the idea of in any way exploiting or otherwise mistreating a woman after she’s put herself in a vulnerable position – after she’s trusted me to that extent, with her body and/or with her emotions – is anathema to me. It points to such a flagrant lack of care for the woman. Now, I’m not saying that I’ve cared much for every woman with whom I’ve had sex, or even that I cared for them at all. But I sure as hell didn’t see them as a potential victim. The fact that so many men do is a big part of what is wrong with relations between the sexes these days.
Men slut-shaming women with whom they’ve had sex is indicative of a different, perhaps less obvious problem: Lack of self-esteem in the men themselves. That a woman’s perceived value in the eyes of a man can somehow decrease after he’s had sex with her speaks less to the value of the woman and more to the value of the man. Forget the fact that a man’s perception of a woman’s value has no bearing on reality and should in no way dictate her self-opinion; why do these men apparently view their own penises as some sort of toxic waste dispenser? She’s the same woman afterwards that she was before, but your own fucked-up attitude about sex has tarnished her in your mind. Shake off the programming and get some self-esteem, fellas.
“You fucked me? What’s wrong with you, girl?”
The worst version of slut-shaming, however, may well be the “women slut-shaming women” variety. As with any other type of slut-shaming, the breadth of the victim’s sexual experience is no more the business of a woman than it is a man. However, it is unfortunately all too common for people to judge others for failing to live up to their own arbitrary standard of behavior; women can be as guilty of this as men. That a woman chooses to have no sex, or have less sex, or have sex privately and refuse to acknowledge it publicly, or have relatively vanilla sex, or sex in the context of a monogamous relationship, does not give her the license to hurt another woman for having different needs.
I feel that this variety of slut-shaming is so much more insidious than the more widespread male-on-female form because, while men who slut-shame are simply perpetuating the same old bullshit misogyny – how original! – women who do it have allowed themselves to be blindly co-opted by the oppressive establishment, used as its agents to further browbeat women who, again, are guilty of nothing more severe than enjoying the same activities as everyone else on the planet. The difference is that these women aren’t willing to pretend they’re not, or be forced into a society-defined compartment. Begrudging someone else the happiness you’ve consciously chosen to give up for the sake of appearances is awful. But when you’re a woman denying another woman, it’s betrayal.
Just because you’re too ashamed, sheepish, reactive, out-of-touch, afraid, conditioned, self-conscious, or stupid to take an active interest in sex and exhibit some sexual agency doesn’t give you the right to deprive anyone else of the same, or to slut-shame them when they refuse to be similarly cowed. If you are a man and you slut-shame women, you are another in a long line of oppressive assholes. If you are a woman and you slut-shame other women, you have no decency, nor have you any sense of the greater picture. Women seem to have enough to worry about these days, from inequal pay for equal work to victim-blaming for the most awful crimes.
In Slut Pride!, I opined that I probably wasn’t very knowledgeable with regard to the label, and probably shouldn’t have been talking about something that didn’t really affect me the way it does women. But in the same post I quoted Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy who, in their 1997 book The Ethical Slut defined the word as “a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you.” This is certainly an apt description of myself, and while I’m not a fan of labeling in general, “slut” is a label I now wear with pride.
At the time I also denied that I’d ever been called a slut. But I can remember on one occasion having the word lobbed at me by male friends – see? It does happen! – who may have been smiling when they said it, who may have been trying to sound good-natured about it, but who I assume felt uncomfortable by the fact that I was getting laid. Perhaps they were envious. Perhaps they believed that sex was better left for marriage. I can’t guess. I never took it personally, and in fact I may have chalked it up to the aforementioned envy; however, I never understood why they made such a big deal about it.
Sex is healthy. It’s wonderful and fun, and undeserving of the prevailing taboos surrounding it. The more public attitudes on the subject shift, the more the concept of slut-shaming is likely to disappear.
