Study: Slut-shaming has little to do with sex; more to do with social class among women

[davidn3600]

A new study of college women and their attitudes about so-called sluttiness found that slut-shaming — calling out a woman for her supposedly promiscuous sexual behavior — actually had more to do with a woman’s social class than it did with sexual activity.

Sociologists from the University of Michigan and the University of California at Merced occupied a dorm room in a large Midwestern university, regularly interacting with and interviewing 53 women about their attitudes on school, friends, partying and sexuality from the time they moved in as freshman and following up for the next five years.

The researchers discovered that definitions of "slutty" behavior and the act of slut-shaming was largely determined along class lines rather than based on actual sexual behavior. What's more, they found the more affluent women were able to engage in more sexual experimentation without being slut-shamed, while the less-affluent women were ridiculed as sluts for being “trashy” or “not classy,” even though they engaged in less sexual behavior.

"Viewing women only as victims of men's sexual dominance fails to hold women accountable for the roles they play in reproducing social inequalities," Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociology and organizational studies professor at the University of Michigan, said in a release. "By engaging in 'slut-shaming' — the practice of maligning women for presumed sexual activity — women at the top create more space for their own sexual experimentation, at the cost of women at the bottom of social hierarchies."

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/29/slut-shaming-study.html

[name not needed]

1. This will end well.

[Egnever]

2. +1

K

[Warren DeMontague]

11. "Stand By For Titanfall!"

[BainsBane]

3. If that is true

I would imagine the difference was due to education, and perhaps even being exposed to--horror of horrors--feminist theory.

[el_bryanto]

4. That is undoubtedly part of it

But there is also the unthinking assumption in our society that the wealthy are just, in some ways, better people than the poor and working class. If a wealthy person does something it's excused, while if a poor person does something, it's not.

Bryant

[Louisiana1976]

12. Well said. It's the "affluenza" excuse.

[gollygee]

5. The headline isn't really accurate

If you read the article, they are shamed very much for sexual reasons, just wealthy women are excused for being sexual and poorer women are not excused for it. It's still about sex.

[RainDog]

7. but it's women doing this

women engage in power struggles and exhibit class privilege by perpetuating slut shaming.

[gollygee]

8. Everyone takes in our cultural messages

women are not immune from it.

[RainDog]

9. Women participate in the oppression of other women

by slut shaming.

As noted - this is class privilege in action.

Feminism doesn't have to deny the class warfare women wage against women - it happens and it demonstrates the same sort of "alliance" that southern white women made in the civil war - supporting slavery rather than their own right to vote.

Religion tries to slut shame women all the time - it's the primary cause of slut shaming. Religion in the U.S. is patriarchal monotheism - anyone who aligns with the major religion(s) in the U.S. is also aligning with patriarchy. They participate in the oppression of women by teaching their daughters religious myths that frame women in the most derogatory ways possible.

This is all part of the way women perpetuate misogyny by perpetuating power structures built on it.

[gollygee]

10. It is also class privilege

It is misogyny + class privilege.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

13. The study doesn't support the misogyny conclusion.

It pretty clearly concludes that its a female social hierarchy/class-based phenomena.
If you have a different study you can cite, please do.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Gravitycollapse]

14. Have you read the study?

[ConservativeDemocrat]

17. I didn't buy the book, as it's still in hardcover...

But I did read all its reviews, from Amazon and elsewhere, and it's very clear what it's about:

Go read the Guardian's review about it:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/27/how-to-end-college-class-war

Armstrong and Hamilton share the results of a five-year interview study on the campus of "MU" - an unnamed, Midwestern public university. The authors lived with, followed and interviewed a large group of women in a "party dorm" as they navigated college and post-college life.

Their research shows how many universities are literally designed for students privileged enough to party their way through school, knowing full well that they'll have a job waiting for them (and a parental financial cushion if they don't).

The authors dub this problem the "party pathway" - a social life powered mostly by fraternities and sororities that "provides a way for affluent, white, socially oriented students to isolate themselves from their less privileged peers." Between these social networks, plus easy majors and parents to support them throughout college and after, the new student elite is destined for success before they hit their first kegger.

This study is entirely focused on class privilege. Not a single review, positive or negative (it's nearly all positive), even mentions misogyny.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Gravitycollapse]

19. I didn't ask if you read book reviews. Did you read the study?

You seem to know a lot about it without actually having read it. My guess is nobody, including myself, in this thread has read the study.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

20. The study costs $32 dollars...

...so you're probably right that no one on the D.U. has read its actual text.

However, since the book is based on the study, and every single review of the book focuses about campus class hierarchies, and specifically noting that poorer women who are less, or not at all, sexually experimental, are accused of being "sluts", while rich young white women, are not (often while being more experimental), it's an inescapable conclusion that the study finds that "slut shaming" is simply a way for the children of the privileged to exclude girls who don't have the same means.

In short: the fraternity/sorority system is part of why colleges are impeding meritocracy.

In typical frat parties, Armstrong and Hamilton see much that is wrong with college education today. Such parties allow daughters of the affluent to flaunt their social advantages while exposing the vulnerabilities of female students from less-privileged backgrounds. Unfortunately, the authors find such parties well established in the 'party pathway' through the university. Focusing on female students, the authors find from campus observations and interviews ample evidence that four years on the party pathway will open doors of power for the elite while stranding the wannabes with mountains of student-loan debt and few employment options for paying off that debt...A provocative exposé of socially polarizing trends in higher education--certain to spark debate.

Edit: Let me add the actual synopsis from the study itself (probably should have done this originally)

Women’s participation in slut shaming is often viewed as internalized oppression: they apply disadvantageous sexual double standards established by men. This perspective grants women little agency and neglects their simultaneous location in other social structures. In this article we synthesize insights from social psychology, gender, and culture to argue that undergraduate women use slut stigma to draw boundaries around status groups linked to social class—while also regulating sexual behavior and gender performance. High-status women employ slut discourse to assert class advantage, defining themselves as classy rather than trashy, while low-status women express class resentment—deriding rich, bitchy sluts for their exclusivity. Slut discourse enables, rather than constrains, sexual experimentation for the high-status women whose definitions prevail in the dominant social scene. This is a form of sexual privilege. In contrast, low-status women risk public shaming when they attempt to enter dominant social worlds.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Gravitycollapse]

22. If book reviews were as informative as the study, there would be no need to publish the paper.

The abstract could just be released and no one would ever question the content.

In the real world of academic criticism, you read studies before commenting on them. And you definitely don't make any claim to understanding a paper by book reviews.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

23. Here you will see something that never happens on the D.U.

...by nearly anyone but myself. Certainly not by the people who gin up false outrage and constantly alert on my comments.

I cede you the point.

It was an overreach to claim information over the study itself, when all I have to go on is the summary of the study (from the study itself) and reviews of the book based on it. I don't think it was much of an overreach, but still I grant that I shouldn't speak directly of the study without reading it.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[RainDog]

24. I read about it on Slate

earlier this week.

However, as a female, my response was "d'uh." I've known about this sort of bullying by women toward other women all my life. Or, rather, since I was 10 years old. Men bully differently than women do, but women engage in bullying toward other women. So do girls. Some girls don't do this. Some do.

Anytime a woman calls another woman a slut, you can be sure it's all about putting others in their place, not about some deep commitment to a moral code. lol.

That's what slut-shaming comes down to. Women bully other women in other ways, as well. Whenever I see or read a woman do this, my estimation of that person drops to zero. Not interested in anything that person has to say after that because they have so internalized sexism they don't realize they replicate it - and some who do or have done this claim to be "fierce feminists." LMAO.

[Maeve]

31. It's also 'building yourself up by kicking another down'

"I'm not like HER; I'm better/more attractive/worth more" --'mean girls' are always trying to prove themselves better than their victims, often because they don't really believe it. And we often minimize it by calling it 'being catty'

[gollygee]

25. If women are being judged for sexual activity and men are not

there is misogyny involved. To not see that is to be deliberately ignorant.

They're saying that the misogyny is used in a class-supporting way, but the title said that it had "little to do with sex" when sex is an obvious and necessary part of it. If they'd said it had less to do with level of sexual activity than they thought, and more to do with clas, that would be accurate.

[BainsBane]

21. It is not just women

What an absurd claim.

[Gravitycollapse]

18. It is about the weaponization of sex against those who you dislike.

And, if women gain enough status, they too can become the gate keepers.

[gollygee]

27. Anyone in a position of power can be a gatekeeper

and I'm not disputing that. Just the title, that said it has "little to do with sex." Sex is a necessary part of it - they are shaming based on perceived sexual activity. It does not have "little to do with sex." It is still about sex, but also more about class than they expected.

I want to say that in addition, they're talking about "slut shaming" in general everywhere based on the experience of one university campus. That's a pretty big stretch. This could be just the culture on that campus.

[RobertEarl]

6. Heh

I think I understand what the study has determined. I think I've see it happen a few times, just like the study describes.

[Gravitycollapse]

15. We need to have access to the paper before making meaningful conclusions.

I don't trust mainstream news sources to describe properly the content of this paper. I'm trying to gain access right now but I don't know if I'll be successful.

[Uncle Joe]

16. This seems logical to me.

Thanks for the thread, david.

[ismnotwasm]

26. 53 women?

Oy.

[TBF]

28. Not a very large sample -

but I wouldn't be surprised if this were replicated at larger numbers. Especially with the backlash against women in society (media right at the forefront etc) the past decade I wouldn't be surprised to see these kind of attitudes amongst some women as well as men. It's really sad.

[ismnotwasm]

29. Truth to tell

I think it exists on all levels of society. I think a better designed study with a larger sample group would find this, rather than the class imposed results. We'd have to study different socio-economic groups and what is being judged between them, not 53 probably white women able to make it to college. We sub-divide easily when it comes to judging others sexual behavior.

Which doesn't make it more palatable.

[TBF]

30. Good points & agree. nt