http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-slut/371773/

Highlights:

  • Five-year longitudinal study examined how college students slut-shame.
  • Elizabeth Armstrong, sociology professor at the University of Michigan, and Laura Hamilton, then a graduate assistant and now a sociology professor at the University of California at Merced; findings later formed basis for Paying for the Party, their recent book about how the college experience bolsters inequality. (cf. http://www.amazon.com/Paying-Party-College-Maintains-Inequality/dp/0674049578)
  • All but five or six of the women practiced "slut-shaming"; it seems there was no better way to smear a dorm-mate than to suggest she was sexually impure.
  • “I think when people have sex with a lot of guys that aren’t their boyfriends, that’s really a slut,” as one put it.
  • The rampant slut-shaming, Armstrong found, was only a symptom of the women’s entrenched classism. But more importantly, the allegations of sluttiness had little to do with real-life behavior. The woman with the most sexual partners in the study, a rich girl named Rory, also had the most sterling reputation—largely because she was an expert at concealing her sexual history.
  • One of the most striking things Armstrong learned was that, despite the pervasiveness of slut-shaming, there was no cogent definition of sluttiness, or of girls who were slutty, or even evidence that the supposedly slutty behavior had transpired.
  • [Obligatory Rodgers mention] To Armstrong, the [Rodgers] shooting highlighted that “slut” is simply a misogynistic catch-all, a verbal utility knife that young people use to control women and create hierarchies.