The Patriarchy is Afraid of 'Sluts.’

Illustration by Cécile Dormeau

So recently there was a TikTok trend of people showing how they met people they've dated/slept with and not thinking much of it, I decided to participate. As I had not dated anyone in the past I just used the amount of people I slept with. I had been posting videos just for fun and I didn't expect it to get the amount of attention it did. It garnered about 2.1 million views and it was rapidly increasing had I not private the video. I am someone very open about my sexuality and as I am surrounded by sex positive people, I was shocked at the comments I received. As a woman I am more than aware of the prevalence of misogyny that still persists every single day, however, to experience such levels of slut shaming by so many people revealed just how much progress we still have to make.

The fact that so many people felt the need to shame a random woman off the internet for her sexual history that has nothing to do with them baffled me. Some of these comments include

"someone's daughter"

"someone's future wife"

"imagine meeting the love of your life only to find out this was her bodycount"

"How do you expect to find a husband when you've been ran through"

and many other horrendous things.

Most of these comments came from men but what stood out to me the most was that these people decided that my value was lessened due to my sexual history and to put it into perspective, they had to put me in the role of another man's life to highlight just how horrific they thought my actions were. As if they couldn't possibly fathom a women's value in this world is exclusive to the role they play in other men's. Women do not exist just to fit into a man's narrative, I know I certainly don't. I participated in hookup culture and slept with all these men because I wanted to and because I love sex. When I look to my future I do not concern myself with the role I will be playing in anyone's life but my own yet so many people felt the need to try and place this shame that I apparently 'should' be feeling.

It is very apparent to me that these hateful comments was nothing to do with me and everything to do with the system the patriarchy has built for us because why would a random woman off the internet evoke such a strong collective reaction when they will most likely never meet me. The problem was that when I posted that video they saw a woman open about her sexuality and they were threatened by it. The patriarchy has no place for women to enjoy sex for pleasure because it goes against the idea of women's role in society which is to be a wife to a man and to bear him children. Despite it being 2022 and when moving in the right social spheres, this idea can seem very diluted but it is never truly gone as it is the foundations of slut shaming and the need to control women. After all, how can privilege exist without the oppressed?

Therefore, when these people see a woman being open about her sexuality, it threatens all these deeper ideologies and men in particular feel the need to project their fear. This reaction highlights another one of the many failures of the patriarchy because in order to oppress women, there was no room to enable men to regulate and celebrate their emotions as it was deemed a 'feminine' thing. Men are taught from a young age to not act like a woman. "Man up", "grow some balls", "toughen up", all of these sayings never actually teaches young boys how to act, it simply taught them not be feminine and to hide their emotions because if we really taught them accordingly, maybe more men would actually respect the opposite gender. It is no wonder that men's suicide rates are higher than female's because the system simply does not allow men to deal with emotions.

At the end of the day we are living in a broken system and I am still not ashamed of my sexual history. I enjoy sex and pleasure and frankly I am in no position to deny myself. I have now taken down that video as an act of self preservation because I value my own peace and mental health and would rather not let other people project their own insecurities onto me. I know my own worth and the people around me knows that too therefore I do not feel it is appropriate for this amount of strangers to bombard me with their own perception of my value when having no basis for their conclusion. As someone's daughter, my parents are very proud of me. As someone's future wife, they're going to love everything about me including my sexual history.

And as Nicole Tsang, I am my own person and I do what I want. My value is based on who I am as a person and I have no time to feel ashamed for enjoying sex when it is a basic primary human instinct.

(I am also aware that this post is written through a very binary lens but as a cis straight woman this is based on my experiences but I just wanted to add that in no way am I trying to exclude the non binary and lgbtqia+ community.)

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