I Used to Slut-Shame—Now I Am One
Embodying the true meaning of the word has made me whole
I still remember flipping past some random talk-show with my mom, sometime in my twenties. A pregnant attendant didn’t know which of three men were the father, and the guys were fighting on stage to the cheers of the audience.
—Jeez, how’s it possible to not know who the father of your kid is? Like, who sleeps with more than one person over the course of one ovulation cycle?
Yep, I said those words. Your sex-positive writer and spiller of smut and other obscenities said that. Out loud.
A slut was someone bad and disgraceful. I obviously didn’t want to be that; I wanted to be a ‘good girl’, but also ‘a cool and carefree girl’ who could hang with ‘the dudes’.
Luckily, my mother was the only witness to what makes my present-self shake her head remorsefully.
My present-self understands very well how this is possible, and could have, at times, found herself in a similar situation—had it not been for a meticulous interest in safer sex.
Up until a few years ago, I was a good girl. And because I’d only been in a couple of long…
