❝ Lately I’ve been considering how ‘slut shaming’ grew – unacknowledged – from the experiences and intellectual contributions of sex workers who first identified ‘whore stigma.’ Slut shaming exists now as a critique external to sex worker feminisms and politics, applied mostly by women without sex work experience to describe the loss of social capital they suffer when assumed to be whores. What’s been lost is the centering of people who are marked as whores, in the assumption so common within attempts to resist ‘slut shaming’ that being a whore is the worst thing to happen to you. So long as we cling to that notion of the slut or whore as the ultimate outsider, we reinforce whore stigma. This should be obvious.

❝ For we have always known that the socially constructed image of innocent white womanhood relies on the continued production of the racist/sexist sexual myth that black women are not innocent and never can be. Since we are coded always as “fallen” women in the racist cultural iconography we can never, as can Madonna, publicly “work” the image of ourselves as innocent female daring to be bad. Mainstream culture always reads the black female body as sign of sexual experience.

❝ I hate how the phrase ‘have some self respect’ is used to shame women who are comfortable with their sex lives. ‘Have some self respect’? I do respect myself, that’s why I wanna have a fucking orgasm tonight, thank you very much.

❝ Sex tapes are not uncommon, but what is rare is for their female star to be unapologetic on their release. To discuss ideas of shame, intimacy, consent and privacy, instead of agreeing to a sad-faced interview in the Sun, pictured in polo-neck and natural makeup to denote modesty – that’s unusual. There’s no shame in happy sex, Tulisa asserts. The shame should lie with the person who uses it as currency against his partner’s wishes, who uses a record of it as a weapon. She’s not in the wrong for having sex, for enjoying sex, or for being filmed – her (until now anonymous) ex should be ashamed for betraying her, embarrassing her and attempting to damage her career.

❝ Next time you want to call a woman a slut, think about what you actually mean to say. Does the fact that she’s open about her sexuality make her a slut, or is she just a liberal woman? Is the woman that fucked your boyfriend really a whore, or is your boyfriend simply a cheating asshole? Is that classmate wearing the low-cut top skanky, or is she just gutsy enough to wear something you could never pull off? It isn’t until we stop being so loose with our word choice that the problems associated with this powerful vocabulary will begin to dissipate.” - Mercedes Mueller — The Fulcrum (University of Ottawa)