“Why is this still a thing to discuss?” he asked during our weekly late night FaceTime chat. I was up late in the twilight hours of the morning, stricken with insomnia and fueled by a heated discussion from Twitter that had been deaded hours ago. After seeing meme after meme of hoe/slut definitions, I had to bring the subject up to my followers to get their opinion on the matter.
“You’re a hoe if you wear this type of dress,” or “You’re a slut if you behave in this type of manner” was the subject of every meme, crafted with humor to gain laughs and likes. While some of them made me chuckle, most of them made me turn my nose up in disgust. Who were these people that so boldly deemed themselves gatekeepers of female sexuality? During a time where feminism’s voice is boisterous and blatant, it seems forced for these judgments to still exist.
What exactly is a hoe? Does this labeling of a woman still exist? “Hoes are women who have sex for money, but a slut is a woman who is sexually promiscuous,” one follower stated, as if she were reciting definitions straight from Webster’s Dictionary. I get it. Society has never had a positive place for women who have unapologetically embraced themselves as sexual beings. But this prejudice almost seems archaic in the present day, with female sexual liberation increasingly making its way into mainstream consciousness for forever.
My lover went on to bring up the history of why this slut/hoe complex even exists. “It goes back to biblical times. Women were either seen as saintly and virginal or Jezebels and Mary Magdalenes,” he said. And I know this all too well. Growing up in the rows of padded pews of the Baptist church, where sexual awareness outside of the union of marriage was condemned, made me fearful of being seen as anything but a good girl. Yet my virginal mind was always drawn to the Jezebels of the Bible, who seemed to be doing nothing but minding their own bodies and living out their truths.
History has always presented double standards when it comes to the expression of sexuality for men and women. Casanova could hop from bed to bed, revered as one of history’s greatest lovers, yet Cleopatra was condemned for entertaining the affections of two men simultaneously and goes down in history as kind of a harlot. It’s the same broken record: it’s okay for a man to dip into as many vaginas as he pleases, but if a woman is linked to too many men in her lifetime, she’s labeled a slut unfit for marriage or social acceptance.
“I just don’t think the label of ‘hoe’ is valid anymore,” I said to my lover with a nonchalant air. “Women of the new millennium have decided to counteract the stigma of Old Testament standards to think for themselves as it pertains to their sexuality.”
“You’re right,” he replied. “And we have women like Amber Rose who are pushing back and are unaffected by the word. ‘Slut’ really is just a word and not a label.”
Both Amber Rose and Kim Kardashian have been revered as pop culture’s current sex symbols. Despite their unapologetic display of sexuality, both have risen to commercial success, gaining millions of fans in the process—but not without a trail of slut shaming trolls behind them. One is labeled a whore because of a sex tape done in private, leaked and marketed for profit, while the other is branded a slut based on her past as an exotic dancer and her ability to generate profit by marketing her body and sexual liberation.
While these women are condemned for controlling and policing their sexuality for personal gain and profits, men who operate in the same space of entertainment aren’t held to the same standard of judgment. Trey Songz can croon about being a panty dropper and being the inventor of sex, and gain both the adoration of millions of women worldwide and the respect of men who desire to have his influence. But no one labels him a slut for his history of bed hopping. We can watch Ray J and The Game look for love on reality television, swapping saliva with multiple women living in the same house, but these actions are never labeled as whorish.
There was a day where hypersexual women remained in the shadows, in fear of being publically humiliated and degraded for their desires. But as it stands in 2015, having casual sex or using sexuality as a means for profit seems to be a societal norm. If a woman chooses to have sex with herself or anyone else within the standards she sets for herself, why should it bother anyone else? If she is practicing safer sex, caring for her body, and is fully aware and consenting of her actions, she should be labeled as a healthy and responsible adult, not a hoe.
In my personal perception, the hoe/slut complex doesn’t truly exist anymore… probably because I come from a sex-positive perspective where anything healthy and non-threatening goes. Everyone has a different awareness of what’s personally acceptable as far as sexual expression is concerned. But in a country where same-sex marriage is now legal, transgender women are able to live openly, and freely sexually liberated women have the right to live in their truths, the slut pejorative is played out.
The sentiment of my Twitter following further drives my point home. Many who engaged in the conversation could care less about what any woman does with her sexuality. Most were in agreement that society has shifted as a whole into a space where being female and sexual is no longer a thing to shame. There will always be members of society that hold to the moral standards set by religious manuals and patriarchs of the past. Still, it’s safe to say that new age millennials aren’t placing the control of their sexuality in the hands of society. This, my friends, marks the beginning of a sexual revolution.
Glamazon Tyomi is a freelance writer, model and sex educator with a deeply rooted passion for spreading the message of sex positivity and encouraging the masses to embrace their sexuality. Her website, www.glamerotica101.com, reaches internationally as a source for advice and information for the sexually active/curious. Follow her on Twitter at @glamazontyomi.
