I’m A Slut…

At least by your standards I am. Probably.

I lost track of the number of guys that I’ve slept with a long time ago but I only stopped caring recently. In the past couple of months I’ve realized a few things… but the most important?

My sex life is none of your damn business.

My sex life does not define who I am.

I’m someone’s daughter, I’m someone’s sister, I’m someone’s girlfriend, I’m a best friend, I’m a writer, I’m the founder of one of the Heart & Stroke Foundation’s most popular Toronto events, I’m a marketer, I’m a baker, I’m an artist, I’m an amateur bathroom karaoke star… I’m a Shannon… a wild one.

These are the things that define me, these are the things I would list if someone asked me to describe myself; I wouldn’t tell someone I had just met that I had slept with 50+ men in my life because it has nothing to do with who I am.

I want you to know this so that the next time you hurl out an insult based on someone’s sexuality whether that is slut, faggot, whore, skank, fag, dyke, cunt or tramp… you think about what exactly it is that you’re saying. The word you’ve picked out of a possible 171,476 words in the English language defines someone ONLY by who they have sex with and how often they do so. Doesn’t that seem a little ridiculous? You’re defining a person by what is between their legs. I’m a slut because I’ve had a lot of sex and somehow that fact seems to outweigh all the other things about me.

I’m not ashamed or embarrassed of my sex life, I don’t regret the men I’ve made love to or the boys I’ve had sex with or the dudes I’ve banged, not for a second. There are some boys I definitely wouldn’t recommend to a friend but I wouldn’t take back the decisions I’ve made; even if I thought it would make people look at me differently.

But I want to ask you a favour, stop using the word slut to insult women. Really. Stop trying to define women by who or what they’ve had between their legs because it’s insulting to both your intelligence and theirs. Do you know how small minded you look when you judge someone for having sex? Do you know how ass backwards you come across? Do you know that you look like a hateful person who resorts to dehumanising insults rather than having an intelligent conversation?

Slut shaming is, at this point, an epidemic.

Only 6% of sexual assaults in Canada are reported there could be a lot of reasons for this but as an survivor myself I can tell you this: For a lot of us the reason we don’t report rape or sexual assault is because we fear having our sexual history called into question. Because when I was assaulted, the first thing my friend asked me was, “Are you sure? You could have just been drunk. You have a lot of sex.” As if my sexual history had anything to do with what had just happened.

Slut is one of those hateful words that hangs in the air, tangibly, you feel it like a verbal slap to the face. Because slut attempts to eliminate all the other things about you; it makes you feel like ALL of your accomplishments and successes can be outweighed by your sexual history which when you say it out loud sounds just a little bit crazy.

Let’s all try to stop using words that make people feel like they are less than. Let’s stop blaming the victims. Let’s ask what happened instead of what did she do. Let’s look at people as the sum of their parts rather than a walking sex organ. Let’s give that a try for a while… OK?