Not so quick to call someone a slut

By Brooke Boniface

Sluts:

You think you can identify them on sight. The one with the exposed midriff and dangling belly ring walking through Benson, the herd of them staggering down Lafayette at 2 a.m. in high heels and short skirts or the girl whose clothing is never weather appropriate and whose makeup looks like she is going to a club instead of class.

These girls seem evidently slutty and are just asking to be judged by the rest of society. But are these girls actually sluts? And, for that matter, what makes someone a slut?

These are the questions that I have been pondering for the past month. Countless conversations with my friends about this topic have not led me to any conclusive answers.

Thus, when a chance arose to write a story about what constitutes a slut, I jumped at the opportunity. For about a week I asked anyone I came into contact with what they thought a slut was and why, with generally predictable results.

One male Santa Clara freshman defined a slut as "a woman who has no emotional ties to the men she hooks up with."

This definition was generally consistent across all constituencies that I interviewed, with some minor variations.

Many Santa Clara students also thought that in addition to being sexually promiscuous a slut uses sex as a tool to manipulate and hurt others.

These people viewed the term slut as an extremely pejorative term and many admitted to looking at people differently after they found out about their sexual practices.

Most girls said they would be very offended if they were called a slut, and one even said she would much rather be considered a bitch than a slut. When pressed as to why only girls are referred to as sluts, the majority of people simply shrugged and gave nonchalant replies. An example: "Well, slut just applies to girls -- usually it's just how it is."

These definitions are all well and good -- even if the official definition of slut says nothing of manipulation or harm and also states that the term can apply to men -- but how do people decide to identify specific individuals as sluts?

The term is thrown around so often. "Oh, she is such a slut," or "Wow, they look like sluts." There must be some easy way to categorize people as either whores or not. Can you identify them by sight?

Or is there some quantitative formula that can be applied uniformly across cases?

Perhaps, a slut equals the number of guys you hook up with plus how far you go each time divided by the amount of times this occurred. Surely one of these ways should work.

But upon application to real life both of these measures fall short. Many of the girls that wear clothing that could be considered "slutty" are actually sexually prudish or are in committed and faithful relationships.

Sure, some of the girls that wear small or inappropriate clothing may be promiscuous or otherwise "easy," but is it really fair to judge all girls because of this destructive minority?

And as for the formula, there is no way to establish the appropriate number of people that someone should hook up with in a given amount of time or how far they can go before they are categorized as a slut.

Perhaps if we knew someone's reasoning behind their sexual behavior we would be less apt to judge. The girl who sleeps around may be suffering from low self-esteem or may have been severely mistreated or even abused in the past. The slut label only worsens these issues and is hurtful to almost everyone.

With all of this in mind, we should be careful before we throw around the term slut, especially when we do not know the recipients of our name-calling. Sluts are people too, and we really have no right to judge them in the first place.

Brooke Boniface is a sophomore history and political science double major.