Get over the fear of being labelled a slut

A slut… Such a dirty word, isn’t it? And one that women everywhere fear to be labelled as. The stricter the culture, the bigger the fear… Often being a slut is understood to describe the clothes a woman wears combined with the number of sex partners she has had. It runs deeper than that however, and has nothing to do with either, although both apply to some, ehrm, sluts. I apologise for sticking to the term simply because everyone knows the meaning of the word and thus makes this post clearer.

Let’s define the word first as what people are really thinking: A slut is a woman who offers sex to men with no or low standards for her partner(s). “Easy”.

Some consider a slut to be a cousin to a whore or even synonymous to a whore. However, a slut does not exchange sex for money, but for something else entirely. Now, the following may be distressful but I am trying to first unravel what people mean when they talk about sluts (consciously or unconsciously).

A slut, as established, exchanges something for sex, but not material goods, but what they want out of that trade is love and acceptance. A person in this mindset feels that they must “play time” with the man. They know this man doesn’t love them yet, so they rationalise the situation so that if they attend to the man’s sexual needs and give them enough of a reason to hang around until the man falls in love, often out of fear that if they don’t put out, someone else will and will steal him away. Unfortunately this tactic doesn’t work, because a man, just like a woman, will fall in love regardless whether they have sex or not. It is absolutely irrelevant whether you have sex or not, and if you stand to lose a man’s respect, you will lose it regardless whether you have sex or not. In that sense, you can stop worrying about the slut label. It won’t be attached to you based on your sexual activities but based on your motivation for them.

You can have sex to either give love or to gain love. To give love (unconditionally) will gain you love, to give love only in order to gain it, you’ll lose every bit of it. You can’t fake this, which is to say that you should never have sex if you don’t want to, nor should you ever stop yourself from it if you feel desire towards someone. The best idea is to not have sex at all for as long as you are afraid it will give you that label – because as long as you do, it probably will stick to you like a tattoo. How to get over it – we’ll get to that in a minute.

I must again stress this: Men do not lose their respect for women if they have sex with them. The sexual act in itself is NOT a factor in the man’s level of respect for you. You don’t lose their respect if you make love to them to show them you love them and to give love to them, but you will lose their respect if you have sex in order to get love out of them. If you do, you are disrespecting them (thinking they’re only after sex when no man ever is), and in return they disrespect you. You gain respect by respecting the other person, but if you don’t have respect for others, they won’t have respect for you. (This applies in all life situations.)

To get over the fear of being labelled a slut requires you to get to the state of mind where other’s opinions no longer matter to you. If they call you a slut behind your back, you genuinely just feel sad for them: “How do they have time for monitoring your bedroom door?! Don’t they have any themselves?!” It simply doesn’t matter! This is where you want to be. Until then, your sexual behaviour belongs to the public forum and you allow others to judge you. You even agree with their judgement. The irony is that when you stop caring about what people say about you, they are very unlikely to say anything – or you simply don’t notice if they do. Then, the guys… They will be looking at you differently, because to them you are no longer a slut, but someone they’d love to love and love to protect. They know you don’t bargain with sex but that it is a natural part of a relationship – even if it’s short.

Now the question is this: Do you rather that your girlfriends don’t think you a slut but the men do, or would you prefer the men didn’t think you’re a slut but your girl “friends” did? You have to accept that there’s always someone who wants to talk about you if they find out your “numbers”. What they say about you shouldn’t matter, anyone who concerns themselves with other people’s sexual behaviour should mean zero to you, not the ones who talk, nor the ones who listen. Find better people. These ones mean shit to you. If you don’t feel that way, stop being a slut and play the game their way. If you do like your men, then you go for them rather than the acceptance of your critics. It’s a choice. You can’t avoid labels, but you can stop bowing to them.

Going further, discreetness always dampens the talk about you. You don’t have to talk about your sex life to anyone. Simply don’t talk about it. It’s nobody’s business even if you are a girl. Men are taught to not kiss and tell, the same should apply to women. The less attention you gather with your sexual behaviour the better. What you do is your business, and if it loses it’s meaning simply because you don’t get the attention for it, then you’re doing it for the wrong reasons and you should look into that instead, why do you need the attention? Are you using men to gain points in your group of friends?

If you know the men you are sleeping with are talking behind your back, stop having sex with them. Expect more for yourself. They’re beneath you from now on, ok? Not all men are like that, and you should look towards meeting men with higher standards for themselves and their women. Then you should focus on becoming a better woman, one that deserves the love and respect of these kind of men. Raise your standards for yourself higher, and you will find men who will attempt to become the kind of men who would deserve your love.

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