Originally published by Ladybud Magazine

Sometimes it’s fun to be a slut. I, for one, have a wealth of great stories and experiences made 100% possible due to my promiscuity.

My sluttiness led to a bizarre night getting fucked against a window in a studio apartment with a direct view of the Eiffel Tower (the actual structure in Paris, not a penis on a lame French dude). It has gotten me free sunset sail boat rides on the San Francisco Bay and dinners in New York City. I even once did it in a fancy bathroom at a wedding at the exclusive Los Angeles Country Club. There is nothing like a little secret session before they cut the cake and pop the champagne.

And why shouldn’t I be a cock-hungry slut? We women have fought hard for the right to have sex with whoever we want, whenever we want and (almost) anywhere we want. But just because we have earned that right doesn’t mean we aren’t simultaneously plagued by it.

Women today exist in a sexual quandary. If you aren’t having sex or at least putting out at a socially acceptable level you are deemed a prude or a religious zealot. If you are practicing free (and hopefully safe and responsible) love, you are considered an STI-ridden whore. What is a girl to do?

What is the appropriate ratio of putting out and keeping it in your pants? Do you wait a couple days for a first kiss or do you slide into home on the first pitch?

There is no good answer to that. Really.

Remember when these women burned their bras so you could have sexual freedom? Probably not.

Unfortunately, I think it is a lack of discussion on this subject that has already contributed to an ever-growing rape culture in America. These blurred lines of consent and promiscuity have become the norm in our Christian-Puritian sexually repressed society.

We continue to shame girls for dressing skanky or drinking too much when we should be shaming the boys and men who have made them feel like they need to be both a Madonna and a whore.

After the Steubenville rapists were sentenced to one and two-year prison sentences the mainstream media cried for their lost potential as college football players while in the meantime a girl was violated not just by them but by the media and the public over and over again.

She was turned into the poster child for girls who drink too much everywhere, as if in her drunken state she deserved what happened to her because those boys just had no way of controlling themselves. Those boys were never expected to show restraint, to think about women as equals, they came from good homes and mothers who could have been just like that girl when they were younger.

And what about our girls? What are they worth?

A hell of a lot more than college sports, that’s for sure. And while the boys who perpetrated the crime, and then bragged about it on social media, are only getting 1-2 years, the Anonymous hacker who exposed them may serve ten.What type of message does this send to would-be teenage rapists everywhere?

Girls who feel pressured to “be” a good time often drink themselves far beyond sexual consent in an attempt to ease the discomfort of not knowing where to stand sexually and socially. They are being fed conflicting and confusing messages: “Be pretty, but not too pretty you will get raped. Put out, don’t be a prude, but don’t sleep around. No one likes a slut.”

Back in my days as a Catholic schoolgirl pre-slut (I would not fully explore that world until college), I witnessed slut-shaming so blatant, so wildly sick and so utterly normalized. A 16-year-old girl, not a popular girl but not unpopular, skinny and modestly beautiful,  had a relationship with our biology teacher. During the short time they were sleeping together, you could feel the uneasy comfort she had created for herself by feeling like she was finally running with the cool crowd.

He was a real Grade A douche-bag. He put cheerleaders in the front row of his class and gave the big-busted girls special attention, he would go surfing with football players on the weekends and was rumored to be buying cocaine from our popular delinquent pseudo-drug dealer in exchange for passing grades. He had a wife at home who had just given birth to their first child.

When her parents found out they were sleeping together, he was fired. I remember sitting in the sun one day at lunch watching her get escorted through campus to empty out her locker, since she was being expelled. Boys yelled slut slurs at her and threw food. I will never forget the tears streaming down her face as the people who were her friends the week prior quickly labeled her a slut, a whore, a bitch, a skank — all because they felt sorry for him.

While she should not have been sleeping with a married man, a teacher, the fact of the matter is she was 16 and he was in his late 30s. He should have known better, he shouldn’t have taken advantage and those kids shouldn’t have shamed her for what she did.

What’s more was that the girls were doing it too. This slut-shaming exists in a bizarre Stockholm Syndrome void because women are constantly convinced they are at fault when something bad happens to them. As long as women play along with this sick game where we forget we, as women, hold the power to change this quandary it is never going to end. Why are we always blaming the victims?

We need to talk about it. When our friends, family or lovers – male or female – slut-shame a woman, we have to politely challenge them, make them realize what they are doing to their wives, girlfriends, sisters and friends. We need to prosecute the men who get pats on the back for victimizing these women in society. We need to change our view towards women, towards teenage girls. We need to be more compassionate to each other and less forgiving of those who violate us.

We shouldn’t be having sex unless we really want to have sex. We know what feels right, we know what feels wrong and we need to go with that feeling. When we women free ourselves from this complicity built trap we will realize we hold the power, and the only one who should be spreading our legs is us, or the Holy Spirit.