Unraveling the Slut Narrative: Gender Constraints on Adolescent Girls' Sexual Decision-Making

Abstract

Limited research exists on the slut labeling process, a key means of enforcing rules around appropriate female sexuality. This study explores that process through qualitative interviews with 44 adolescent girls in Travis County, Texas. Labeling girls as sluts or hos was pervasive and was based on a number of factors beyond sexual behavior, including dress, friendships with boys, or jealousy from other girls. Responses depicted a narrow space in which girls functioned, bound at one end by limited agency and at the other by pervasive vulnerability. There was consensus about the negative consequences of being labeled. Most girls held mixed opinions about the slut labeling process: this may reflect their attempts to push back against a system that entraps them. These findings suggest that prevention and sex education programs must explicitly address slut labeling as well as other gender narratives that impede healthy sexual development.

A new feminist materialist analysis of girls and the sexual violence assemblage

“…Derogatory comments reduced girls' capacities. Previous research has documented boys' use of pejoratives as a strategic use of power that serves to materialise an idealised heterosexual masculine performance in the presence of other individuals (Summit et al, 2016). Pejoratives spoken in IsiZulu were underpinned by cultural affects and mobilised a phallic form as reflected in other research (see Renold, 2018).…”

Gendered emotion work and the micro-practices of heterosexuality: Two middle-class teenage partner relationships

“…For both couples, their relationships served as sites of safety and pleasure. They also-especially for Christina and Matt-formed a place to escape from the often suffocating social surveillance of the school and related social networks; gendered and often sexist regulation which was acutely evident in the wider study, and has been highlighted in much research on young people's peer cultures (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2014;Chambers, Tincknell, & Van Loon, 2004;Miller, 2016;Ringrose et al, 2013;Summit, Kalmuss, DeAtley, & Levack, 2016).…”

The Slut‐Shaming Instrument: Preliminary validation, correlates, and links with psychological distress among adolescent girls

“…Adolescent girls are the focus of intense messaging about both the importance of being sexually attractive to men (American Psychological Association, 2007; Graff et al, 2013), as well as the consequences of being perceived as being too sexually available (Bay‐Cheng, 2015). Girls whose sexual behavior or sexualized appearance is perceived as exceeding social norms, however, are particularly vulnerable to social sanctioning as shown in qualitative research (Armstrong et al, 2014; Hackman et al, 2017; Lyons et al, 2011; Summit et al, 2016), in work linking girls' sexual behavior to peer acceptance (Kreager et al, 2016), and in the continued evidence of double standards where the sexual behavior of men is evaluated more positively than that of women (Endendijk et al, 2020). Girls who engage in, or are perceived as engaging in, sexual behavior or sexualized expression in excess of what is considered acceptable experience victimization and social degradation, a phenomenon popularly referred to as “slut‐shaming” (Sweeney, 2017).…”

“…One recent study also linked slut‐shaming (defined as having received offensive messages because of dress, make‐up or sexual behavior or being the target of sexual rumors) to health problems and depressive symptoms (Goblet & Glowacz, 2021). Qualitative research also suggests that slut‐shaming is related to real or perceived sexual or sexualized behavior, but also serves to reinforce existing social hierarchies (Armstrong et al, 2014; Chmielewski et al, 2017; Summit et al, 2016). Girls with higher positions in these hierarchies (i.e., girls with higher socioeconomic status, who are heterosexual, or who are white), then, would be expected to experience less slut‐shaming than their socioeconomically disadvantaged, sexual minority, or racialized peers.…”