Dirty Little Secrets by Kerry Cohen Read Free Book Online

her oddness, they branded her a slut. When Amanda talks about it now, she gets teary and angry. She feels irreparably scarred by that time in her life. She’s furious still at her mother for being so inappropriate and narcissistic, and at her classmates for being so insensitive and cruel. She’s also furious at herself for not having learned the rules about womanhood the way everyone else seemed to at the time—don’t be different, don’t be loud, don’t have passion.
    If nothing is more frightening than a woman’s desire, then a young girl’s desire is even more horrifying. We ostracize because we are jealous; the slut is the one getting all the male attention. Or we ostracize the slut because we want to protect our girls, because there is some sense that all sex-related behaviors for girls will lead to harm. Or we ostracize simply because we are afraid of what feels different and unfamiliar. Whatever the reason, when we banish the slut, more often than not it’s the punishment that harms her, not her behavior.
    In fact, if she embraces her behavior, it can earn her a different label. Where for years no one wanted to be called a slut, more recently, being a slut can be a self-proclaimed badge of honor. Meet the “empowered” girl.
    THE EMPOWERED GIRL
    Seventeen-year-old Ramona wrote me this: “All my family knows about my sexual history since I got expelled from two schools. They have taken me to three shrinks, and I see one every week. They disapprove of my sex life, but now if they forbid me to go out, I’ll sneak out as I used to. In the city I live, many men from different countries come to visit and all my friends and I have a list of nationalities we kissed and had sex with, and I’m winning of course. I’ve had thirty-two different nationalities and want to have more. In four years I have had sex with fifty-six men. I know I’m taking risks and the number is terrible for my age, but I’m not the only one or the worst. I just like having sex.”
    Something new has entered the culture of women. Lynn M. Phillips, in Flirting with Danger , calls this the “together woman discourse,” in which women are “sassy” and free in their sexual agency, but in actuality, that “freedom” is limited to a heterosexual stance, one that aims to attract men. 7 In Female Chauvinist Pigs , Ariel Levy refers to it as “raunch culture,” a culture in which some women have co-opted what men think is sexy and made it supposedly empowering. 8 She includes such examples as Girls Gone Wild , pole-dancing lessons, striptease marathons, and women who buy Playboy . Tied up with this is the idea that being a slut is a good thing. It means you’re strong, in control of your sexuality. The notion starts in the right direction—women can own their sexuality—but it’s almost as if, more often than not, women fall back into the familiar tire grooves of what men desire about women’s sexuality.
    Certainly, this empowered-girl culture has invaded adolescence as well. Thirteen-year-old girls proudly extol their abilities to give blow jobs, which they do in the bathrooms at parties or at school. Middle and high schoolers have sex parties. Girls compete with one another to dress as slutty as possible. In Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both , Laura Sessions Stepp notes that, in our hookup culture, teenage girls have abandoned dating and courting altogether and are simply engaging in sexual acts with others. 9 They don’t have to want to be boyfriend and girlfriend. They don’t have to even like each other.
    This may sound empowered, but think about how it would be perceived if such a girl didn’t have a male partner, or at least didn’t attract one, or if she gave off the vibe that she needed a man. Would she be seen as empowered—or pathetic? Such sexual behavior smacks of the same intentions Levy identified in her interviews with women about raunch culture. If girls have no interest in boys