Good Girls: Gender, , Vol. Elizabeth A. Armstrong1, Laura T. Hamilton2, Elizabeth M. Armstrong1, and J. Lotus Seeley1. Abstract Womens 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 undergrad- uate women use slut stigma to draw boundaries around status groups linked to social classwhile also regulating sexual behavior and gender performance. High-status women employ slut discourse to assert class advantage, defining themselves as classy rather than tra- shy, while low-status women express class resentmentderiding 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. Keywords stigma, status, reputation, gender, class, sexuality, identity, young adulthood, college women, qualitative methods.
Slut shaming, the practice of maligning university in the Midwest, women labeled women for presumed sexual activity, is other women and marked their distance common among young Americans.
For from sluttiness. Armstrong, Department of Sociology, 1 Slut. Urban Dictionary. Email: elarmstr umich. Downloaded from spq. Although young We outline three explanations of womens men are expected to desire and pursue participation in slut shaming. These sex regardless of relational and emotional approaches are not mutually exclusive, context, young women are permitted sex- in part because the concept of status is ual activity only when in committed rela- central to all three.
