Slut-shaming. It starts early.

Mia writes: when my first child started school, I was surprised to learn that kiss-and-catch is now banned in the playground. But it was not to protect the girls. It was to protect the boys. Not much has changed. I recall harassing a little boy called Joel to play kiss-and-catch with me when I was 5. It was always a game the girls were keener on than the boys.

Anecdotally, this trend appears to continue throughout primary school. Generally, girls seem to be more….forward with all that stuff until boys catch up around puberty. But it raises some challenging questions. Like the one about ‘slut-shaming’. Blogger Airial Clark writes:

“My older son is now 11 and wow… the sex negativity is increasing exponentially. It’s a sneaky value system, like a creeping vine or oozing pore. My son is getting anxious about when he is going to have his first kiss. He thinks about it a lot.  I wasn’t sure exactly how much it mattered to him that some of his friends are at the kissing phase while he obviously is not.

“Mom, I’m a nerd.” He said to me as he climbed in the backseat of our car. He sounded resolute. Like, some deal had been sealed and all there was left to do was accept the consequences. But, really, being a nerd has never bothered him before. His version of nerd has a lil swagger to it. But today there was none of that, “girls don’t like me. I’m too nerdy. I’m not cool enough. Not dangerous. Not s…” and that is when the gush of words stopped abruptly.

“Were you about to say sexy? You’re worried about not being sexy? Really, E, are you supposed to be sexy in the 5th grade?”

“Some people are!”

“Ya? Like who?”

After making me promise I wouldn’t call the school and make a deal about it, he confided in me that some of his classmates were kissing after school. He then told me about a girl in his class, Z, and how she had kissed 3 boys this year, “3, Mom! Can you imagine? And everybody knows. She just kisses whoever she wants and her sister is so embarrassed. I don’t blame her, I would be ashamed to have my sister act like that! Sheesh.”

Wait? What? This is where it gets interesting for me as a sex positive parent. My son just went from wishing he was sexy to shaming a girl for being just that? I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to do some unpacking.

“Um, so what about the boys she is kissing, should they be ashamed too? She’s not kissing herself…”

“Well, no, uh, they just go with it. It’s like she comes after them. She’s forceful.”

“So you don’t think they want to kiss her. Do they seem uncomfortable? Do they say no but she does it anyway?”

“Uh, no, they seem happy about it. The first two boys stopped being friends after she kissed the second guy.”

Try not to roll your eyes. Try not to roll your eyes. Try really really hard to NOT roll your eyes. Deep breath. I continue, “So, ok, it doesn’t sound like she’s pushing them into kissing her, so can we assume they want to kiss her as much as she wants to kiss them? Unless, you’ve heard or seen different?”

“Ya, I guess so, ok. But still, Mom, don’t you think 3 is a lot for a girl? Her sister even said so.”

“Honey, I’m not concerned about the sister, I’m concerned that you are judging someone for doing something that you yourself wish you were doing, and I’m also a little upset that you’re making this about her being a girl.”

“Oh.”

“People develop at different speeds. People are comfortable with their bodies and with intimacy at different stages. You’re not there yet and that’s totally ok. You will be when the time is right for you. If I was her mom would I be a little worried about this behavior? Yes, but not because she is a girl, but because she is young. I would want to make sure I had all the talks with her that you and I have had.”

“So, it’s obvious I am jealous?” cue the ego deflation.

“Uh, yes. Majorly. You’re anxious about when you’re going to be ready, you’re anxious for a girl to like you, and you’re angry that this person in your class is doing what you can’t, and you’re probably a little pissed that she isn’t doing it with you.” Did I just unpack slut-shaming for the 11 year old? Yes, I think I did.

It would have been easy for me to  demonize this girl’s behavior in order to make him feel better and also to try to control his future sexual behavior. Slut-shaming is a time tested tool in our culture. We use it under the guises of keeping kids from doing some sexually inappropriate thing. But does that work? No. Does it cause a lot more harm than good? Yes. I don’t want to raise a hypocritical judgmental misogynist. Which means I have to have these conversations with him NOW, not when he’s 21 and in college.

I’m learning that what goes down in the dorm room starts on the playground. And mama ain’t havin’ it.”

This post  originally appeared at Good Vibrations and has been republished with the kind permission of the author Airial Clark.

 

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