Goes Without Saying - “sluts” and victim blaming: tag yourself i’m the slut

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

*screams in madonna-whore complex* are you really having a 'slut phase', or are you just performing empowerment? in this episode of Goes Without Saying, join us (sephy & wing) as we discuss 'sluts', rape culture, and sexuality. we're questioning whether 'slut phase' discourse is rooted in genuine sexual liberation, or if it's just another fetishised cliché for the male gaze. we really hate to see it. we're so excited to be partnering with Vegums! get 20% off your ~stunning~ vegan vitamins with the code: sephywing20 join the conversation every monday. speak your mind on instagram! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Hello guys, welcome back to Goes Without Saying. I'm Sethi, I'm with Wing. We're here today to talk about slut phases, slut shaming, rape culture, performative empowerment, all of the things that we love, love, love to discuss on this show. I don't like calling it a show.

This podcast. Stunning. Stunning, stunning, stunning. It's actually been a stunning episode. I'm really excited for you to listen and stay tuned until the end because we have a fun doing the work for this week. It's really good this week.

I'm actually fucking buzzed. Buzzing. So listen to the end to catch what your little mission is. And we're all going to be doing the work together. Okay, have you been doing the work? I wanted to get in there first this time at least, but no. Yes, I've been doing the work. We had to live in the way that we wanted to live,

make decisions based on what we wanted in that true moment rather than thinking, fuck, okay, like I've got to wake up early this morning okay when i wake up do something purely self-serving for you so mine all revolves around scrambled tofu that is how i've been living my authentic life i have been eating so that's stunning i've been obsessed with fucking scrambled tofu i have honestly had it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for about seven days straight. Jesus. Maybe that's a bit more. Also, I would say that's untrue, but I have been having it.

Oh, you're doing the work. I'm doing the most. Maybe not every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner, but I've been having, I think I've had scrambled tofu involved in my meals more often than i haven't had it in my meals to be honest who can't relate to that no one can relate to that you're having the slut phase with the scrambled tofu you're going through your scrambled tofu slut phase i really am i think i because i'm kind of like okay well i won't have scrambled tofu tonight like no fuck off you want scrambled tofu in your meal if you want want it. So you're going to have it tonight. Today, morning, midday, afternoon, evening.

Cut the crap. Let's not pretend that we want something else. Spare me. Let's not cook a little bit of pasta. You want scrambled tofu, so you will have scrambled tofu. That's been my doing the work. Actually, what do you actually want to eat? Oh, look again, it's scrambled tofu.

We happen to have some tofu in the fridge. Chop that up. Scramble it. Scramble it up. So that's my doing the work. I love that. Does it count? I don't know.

Absolutely counts. We decide if it counts. I'm saying it counts. Are you? It counts. I was thinking as I eat my scrambled tofu, you really are living an authentic life these days. God, you're authentic.

And you can't deny it. God, I can't wait to talk about this on my podcast. What about you? My doing the work was quite by accident. Okay, literally two minutes later, my dog's decided that he doesn't wait to talk about this on my podcast. What about you? My doing the work was quite by accident. Okay, literally two minutes later and my dog's decided that he doesn't want to be here. He was sat so peacefully on my lap. He's like, I didn't realise it was about scrambled tofu.

I thought it was about a slut face. Yeah, he thought he was getting some slut action. He was like, wait, you're talking about food. No, no, no, no, no. This is not why I signed up. He's like, doing the the work this isn't for me this is boring i'm a sleep all day sleep all night kind of guy right one sec go on then abandon me that was a real pisces moon thing for me to say abandon me i thought god it's not going

well me like everybody else really unhealthy like please do not bring a child into this world go on then abandon me aka go downstairs and eat. And live your life. Yeah. My doing the work this week, I thought the other day, fuck, I haven't been doing the work. And then I thought, of course you have been doing the work. You're always doing the work. Always.

The work never stops being doing. Not a day goes by. This week, my little homework that I did was quite accidental in that I turned off my Instagram notifications. But I almost didn't realise that I did that. So, I mean, I really reaped the benefit. I have no idea what you guys were saying to us all week because I haven't been here. But it actually was really nice not to feel the absence of this space, but more so just to get kind of top secret. I turn on post notifications a lot

from the sephian wing account so that i can keep up with i can make sure that our account is keeping up with people that we want to keep up with yeah but sometimes it's just a bit much i don't need a notification saying kind of emma chamberlain has posted i need that notification i need that notification in my life it's just kind of like i'll see it i'll get around to it when i choose to open the app we always speak about phones in the sense that what else has such a direct path to your consciousness nothing it's so true also i think with running this sometimes it gets quite confusing like your own identity within a person inside your own body and then your identity of people saying you guys are so empowered and it's this little caricatured

feminist version of yourself and we're like wait but i've been just sitting around eating scrambled tofu all day god i'm on my third meal of scrambled tofu of the day i'm literally turning into a bit of tofu am i so empowered i don't know i think it's good it's healthy for us to take breaks like we started a new thing where we take days off we both get a day off a week and blah which we've actually been really shit at recently. We're actually really bad at that. Yeah. Although, as I say, I've kind of been accidentally off. So. I mean, you deserve, as it goes without saying.

Well, I owe you some time, Cindy. So that was my doing the work. It was actually really, because now my notifications are back on. Nobody panic. She's back in the game. I'm well informed into what's going on. And I feel happier to be here.

Not like in this space but just on instagram and online in general on this earth yeah it feels i feel refreshed i love that that's so great and i also think with the online stuff i remember putting up on the story some i always put on the story like leave like you're tapping through stories stop do not follow this yeah go away yeah and i remember someone replied a few people have said something similar but i Like you're tapping through stories. Stop. Do not follow this. Yeah. Go away. Yeah. And I remember someone replied. A few people have said something similar,

but I remember this one specifically because it was quite aggressive. And they were like, I hate when you say this, but only because I know I need to hear it. And it's like hard for me to listen and get off of Instagram and get off the internet. So if you need that reminder,

this is it. Yeah. Get out into the world i think it's so true because do you ever do that thing and i know you do this thing because everyone fucking does this thing where you are scrolling through instagram you're like when did i get here when did i get here how have i been how long have i been here when did i click on the on the little app when how long have i been in this space what have i consumed the muscle memory of clicking on apps is so toxic i'll do

this thing where i'll i'll be like oh i need to go on instagram and check oh let me just look up that thing like kind of let me research for a second i go on i'm scrolling scrolling and i think wait i came on here 10 minutes ago to look for something and then as soon as i get off the app and i started doing whatever i was doing i was like wait no i was supposed to look into something and my day is kind of 15 minutes behind suddenly you're down a deep deep hole of something when you actually went on to look at princess diana the woman that plays princess diana in the crown emma corrin oh she's all over my explore page at the moment what about you everywhere to be seen yeah i can't get away from her because i looked at her once and now i can't stop looking my thing

is still full of taylor swift because i clicked on her once and then i just kept clicking it's like yeah maybe i do just want to see Taylor Swift. I keep clicking on it for some reason. So maybe I am curious. I don't know. How could you not? How could you not be? But that's why it's important to get into the world

and out of your phone. Consider the work done. Slut phases. Yep. I wanted to start with this message, this little gold dust of information that someone sent us a beautiful message responding to the stories as always we put out questions we put out polls we put out info

and you guys feed back with your insight and your opinions on said topic this week it's slut phases and slutting and slut as a word in general this person said slut and slut phase it fails to recognize that hypersexuality isn't always done from a positive place and i think maybe this is where we should kick off this is the crux of our issues with the terminology the kind of slut culture vibe and kind of i assume we're going to lead into kind of the idea of performative empowerment yeah it's something we talk about a lot it's like a concept that we think is really important the idea of we think it's genius if we do so so ourselves i think is the world really needs to hear this that sometimes your empowerment of oh my god i'm going out i've had sex with all these people blah blah is often

more a performance for the male gaze a performance for the patriarchy rather than an innate empowerment that you genuinely feel within your bones and it might be a learned behavior that actually benefits men more than it benefits you yeah and i think even in like not in heteronormative situations where a girl is not having sex with other men and is engaging in a slut phase with whoever she may please it still is actually more about the you as the individual in that moment because i think a lot of us are having our slut phase quote unquote and actually feeling quite miserable and quite vulnerable and quite sensitive and quite quite a lot of discomfort in ourselves yeah at that time and i think it the problem with slut phase and and um kind of mindlessly

promoting that and confusing it with sex positivity is that it masks over and conceals a multitude of problems and a multitude of insecurities within yourself because you're presenting something as like the ultimate empowerment. But actually, it might actually be your... Your demise.

Your doom, your meeting your doom. I think it's so important though because the discourse is definitely confused with sex positivity so for example kind of i feel like the word slut is very um interwoven with like youth culture the idea of a young woman a young potentially naive woman for the brits slag is also acceptable a slag a slut a hoe a whore yeah all these words that kind of mean the same thing they mean a promiscuous woman there have been many words history of these a jezebel a jezebel yeah i was always called a jezebel growing up were you by my nan by my nan i should say like as a child

i kind of would run around like a bit naked maybe and she would say oh you're a jezebel so strange i think it's quite sweet Jezebel yeah that is cute it's quite not it's quite a nice name it's almost like Isabel it's quite a nice word yeah that's kind of the problem exactly a Jezebel that I would kind of totally call my child Jezebel yeah I wouldn't be identifying so much as a slut but I would say that I'm a bit of a Jezebel but I would because I've been told that by your grandma I was about four years old by my beautiful grandmother yeah. That's hilarious. Long may she reign. But yeah I think it's very much associated

with youth in that it would feel quite strange for like a 50 year old woman who for example say has just gone through a beautiful beautiful divorce and is finding herself sexual liberation finding that once again finding what she wants it would feel kind of out of the norm out of like what is socially acceptable to be like that woman is a slut to a 50 year old woman almost i think it really applies to like it's definitely an idea that's like with young women it's almost a way to demean sexual experience sexual kind of um curiosity but also 100 older women in the media are not 100 going to be called sluts by the daily mail yeah but i also think younger women are called sluts in the sense that we find women but I also think younger women are called sluts

in the sense that we find women most attractive, as you say, from when they're 16 years old. Society thinks that a woman in her prime is kind of 17. And so I think it's not that the behaviour of an older woman is any different. And it's also, I would like to say, that people, the young kids that are called sluts, their behaviour isn't, they'reuts, their behavior isn't, they're not,

the behavior isn't there. Yeah. Right? So we don't obviously call people sluts as a reflection necessarily of their behavior. The name can just come as a way to, as a way to put a woman down. But I think we call young women sluts

because women are kind of over the age of 40 need to be kind of prudish mothers. Yeah, it's the Madonna wh whore and that's the only role that's acceptable exactly it's complete madonna whore complex you can't be anything else other than a virginous pure maternal being or a complete slut with your tits out it's the idea that there are three stages of women and i do believe they use this rhetoric in game of thrones where they say like maiden mother crone where it's like you go from being you're kind of the maiden the youthful desirable woman

who kind of is like a virginal woman then you move into the mother category which i mean we obviously know what that is that's kind of your mid your mid life and then you're kind of you're in that box and then you move into crone it's like that language they that is i don't know what this is from kind of like the odyssey where it's like you move into the old woman the kind of menopausal woman and then you die and it's like actually we do not have stages of that for men in that same way and actually a lot of the comments that you guys said someone said well lots of people saying something along the lines of men are just called men men who have sex are just called men they're called a lad women who have sex have to be called a slut yeah they have to be kind of a porn star whilst doing it that's the thing and that's why it's rooted in performance this is why the

empowerment often often often is sold to women as oh my god you'll be so mad if you do this well i also think like is the sex you're having in your slut phase any good because i doubt it this is the thing this is the crucial thing i find it hard to believe although i saw i don't know if you saw this effie i saw i've been really into reels you can tell i'm not a tiktoker but i really got into reels i'm loyal to my tiktokers i know but i think i think they're gonna die i think your tiktokers are in the grave i know I can't cope but I saw this reel I'll actually I'll put it on the story or whatever but I'm paraphrasing it something along the lines of this girl probably dancing I can't really remember and she said

something along the lines of when I was younger I really believed that women were lying when they said they enjoyed sex with men and then I realized I was gay and i was like fuck am i gay like i literally don't believe for a second that literally 99 of women that are having sex with men are enjoying it call me crazy call me um kind of jaded or bitter call you intelligent but i find it very hard to believe it's so fucking true because think about all the girls that you've spoken to all the girls that write into our polls all of this stuff all the conversations you've ever had all the media you've ever consumed in your life who is benefiting from that sex more it's the classic classic game we played in our feminist sex episode who's getting

more of the sex more often than not it's the man and i'm not even talking about did you come did they come i'm talking about the societal impact of a man and a woman having sex who got more out of it listen to that episode to find out and that's why i think that reel was so fascinating because it's like yeah that's why i we've had a lot of messages as well i remember someone specifically saying like i've wondered a lot about my sexuality because i find a level of discomfort in in sex with men with the with the power balance and and the kind of the stereotypes that that creates not just in their own experiences but in porn too they were drawn to like lesbian porn because men in porn i mean teffy and i was speaking about this before men in porn are disgusting kind of tony hawk likes i think we said last time every single man in porn

has frosted tips every single girl kind of i mean i don't we said last time every single man in porn has frosted tips every single girl kind of I mean I don't want to offend anyone that looks like this dude has frosted tips fingernails she has French tips although French tips have made a comeback but that's why I didn't want to say French tips because I actually would quite love to get some French tips right now how much of a slut are you if you're kind of just sat around kind of making really dramatic Hollywood porn star noises and having a terrible time thinking about when you're kind of just sat around kind of making really dramatic hollywood porn star noises and having a terrible time thinking about when you're next going to sit down to have some scrambled tofu so true like you're not enjoying yourself so who really is the slut phase for unless i think

interesting then a slut phase let's have a case study hypothetical young lesbian woman is having her slut phase and she declares it publicly i'm having a slut phase and she's going about having sex with kind of different women that she meets etc etc safely under covid restricted guidelines is that still a performance for the male gaze i would say yes well i think there's an element that can be empowering in that i want to explore my sexuality i want to go out have sex with a number of people and i want to report back on my findings to myself and i want to understand myself i think yeah sure there't an element that sounds great it sounds absolutely wonderful I'm so happy for you give me your notebook with your journal with all your findings

but is that it's the it was our homework for this week it's was that authentic for you or was that what you were told a single girl in their 20s should be doing and I think people don't really interrogate the reason behind the actions as much as they perhaps should with that i completely agree someone actually said uh let me read it word for word i overcompensated for a lack of freedom in my past relationship and slept with some mediocre guys and i think this is what we're saying is question why you're doing what you're doing and actually embracing the slut phase as a concept and as a discourse quite kind of unconscientiously will allow some real scrappy dudes to seep in

through the cracks you're gonna if you open up your filter you're gonna let in a lot of shit i think we underestimate at what level of clarity and like stable mental health and kind of we always talk about like having a wide tightrope how wide your tightrope must be to be having lots of sex with people i think you can easily disguise kind of a batch of like low self-esteem and kind of allowing a lot of scrappy dappie do's to have sex with you allowing them into your bed with a slut phase with oh my god i'm so empowered i'm going through a thing right now which is so fun it's like actually are you having fun because absolutely that is a thing to be empowered and to be having a lot of really good sex where you are kind of having the time of your

life obviously that's a thing goes without saying frankly goes without saying that sex is great sex is empowering sex for women is especially should be an empowering thing we're discussing the discourse of a slut phase and how it's often used does that even need to go in yeah no no it does this is your podcast and yours quite funny to listen to this pep talk this is your podcast this is your fucking podcast bitch now edit the fuck out of this you're amazing that's hilarious maybe we should leave that in this is your podcast okay so we're saying we are two sex positive individuals blah blah blah we don't want people that think we basically i basically here's the crux of it i cba for us to do this we're critiquing we're critiquing we're critiquing the culture i mean it's not coming from a place of judgment i'm not

looking from you and looking at you from my high horse. And we get things saying, I had a slut phase. Exactly. I had a slut phase and it was empowering for me. We know. We love that. We love that. We love to hear it. But I also think we're trying to, to be honest, we're just trying to discuss and you're here listening. So this is on you. But we are trying to discuss the relationship between sex and the patriarchy and sex and an individual's mental health sex is so massive in society and i think so massive for most individuals so we're going macro and micro what in the space of an hour conversation with my best friend who already knows my thoughts so really this all does go without saying just basically assume the best of us and we'll fill in some little gaps just don't assume the worst and we're trying to win

you over i can't be arsed exactly because i completely completely agree that sex should be encouraged for young women in whatever form it may take absolutely i will egg you on until the cows come home but not with the scrappy dappy do and not as a performance yeah here's a good point that someone said they said the phrase a slut phase that was quite difficult to say it shames women into believing that they should limit their sexual activity which is ultimately because men like virgins and view women as objects fulfill their desires and i think that succinctly puts it into a nice thing basically says our point better than we do it really does it's like actually the idea that we should have kind of that's the problem when you ask people to write things and

then we try and articulate them it's like we should just read them this should be a blog maybe we should have just done a blog we should have just started a fucking blog we should have just written a book it's been a moment of silence there for everyone what could they be referring to that does sound good the idea that men should be able to kind of freely be a it's attractive for a man to have slept with upwards of 10 women perhaps but a woman kind of your you should have your limit around 10 the society says you should have your limit you should you should definitely like explore things get good at sex know what you like blah blah blah maybe have a tiny little lesbian phase but don't be a lesbian be a bit of fun don't be fucking frigid whatever you're doing keep it hot keep it hot keep it performative pretend to be empowered but also

have the potential to be the mother of my child i'm not gonna be embarrassed of you but also don't be a slut crucially have a slut phase but don't be a slut have kind of a weird sort of summer where you sleep with kind of three whole men in one summer maybe kiss a girl and then you come back to your marriage and you have children and you turn into a mother and a wife absolute bars that's exactly what the patriarchy's wet dream is so i think they're definitely a slut phase is limiting women within itself of like you have a little mad phase but you do return to gabriella from high school musical you're sharp a for the summer then you come back to being gabriella your sexuality is a six-month thing max before your reputation precedes you and no one's

gonna want to marry you and you'll be a little miss havisham listening to our podcast locked away because no one picked you no one chose you the patriarchy's nightmare is people that listen to this i think i agree but it's mutual yeah the patriarchy is my worst nightmare patriarchy meet your your maker what are the dangers then of having your sexuality last three months i think the danger is none of it's good you miss out on a whole lot of opportunity the danger is that you've watched a bit of porn which was awful you've sort of been fucked by some mediocre mediocre scrappy dappy do and you think that you've had a phase of empowerment you go you come away from that thinking wow i've really like explored what i want blah blah

realistically a phase is not enough to know anything a phase isn't anything and you come away from that walking away thinking that you're empowered when actually and you then settle for your scrappy husband when in reality there's a whole world of stuff that you can find out about yourself and you've kind of followed the most societally acceptable male gaze version of empowerment and think you're a genius for it guys guys guys guys guys guys hold your horses i'm gonna stop you there we have a sponsor for this episode we do it's vegums i am so ready for our nails to be thriving our hair to be thriving our skin to be glowing to become the healthiest most empowered versions of ourselves and it's vegan so stunning we worked with vegums before and we were raving

before remember about how much we loved their gummies you know stephy knows my struggle when it comes to searching high and fucking low for good vitamins that i can swallow that will give me everything that i need because i absolutely hate the taste and the texture and the powderiness of the really old school traditional vitamins that you get in a really horrific kind of bottle that was sat on an old kind of cupboard somewhere for 10 years before you bought it. V-Gums couldn't be more different. They are an amazing sustainable brand. Plastic free, recyclable, vegan, completely vegan and cruelty free. And now it's not just the vegan multivitamin that we are so excited to be using

we've upgraded we are so excited about the omega-3 fish free gummy i remember being a kind of five year old little vegetarian girl and my mum force feeding me like fish oils and i used to cry cry cry about those little fish that's quite a traumatic experience i used to cry about those fish and now i don't need to because we've got omega-3 gummies. We're gonna be geniuses. Can you imagine how smart we're gonna be? Oh my, you're not fucking ready. You are not ready. They're honestly not ready. We've been taking two a day. We just had some now together with breakfast. We really did. It was quite the ritual. We literally sat down and ate some gummies together and oh boy are we gonna be smart and oh boy are they delicious. So we've been using the multivitamin vegan gummies and also the iron

and as stephy said the fish free omega-3 gummies that to me gives me everything i could have needed and more and so honestly i really recommend if you've been looking for vitamins because i feel like it's actually a real struggle i get emotional about this yeah same so emotional and also christmas is coming up if you are looking for the perfect vegan christmas present give your friend the gift of health with vegans that is not their slogan i would honestly be so happy if i got vegans for christmas and i kind of feel like i have yeah when they knocked on the door I mean when the postman knocked on the door not V-Gums I went running down yours were hand delivered wow the CEO of V-Gums came to your door so you can buy now their Christmas bundle

which is a one-off purchase and you can also get any of the gummies that we've just mentioned with the 20% off discount code which is CepheWing20 we'll have it linked in the bio of this episode and that's valid until March 2021. I think we spoke before about people having sex or girls specifically having sex and I think girls will do this with girls too I think it's just something that we're kind of indoctrinated into you so that from a young age so that as soon as you start having sexual experiences it's quite innate and it's quite an intrinsic reaction to have sex as if there are cameras on you yeah and i think a lot of people are preoccupied with their performance and not their sexual performance you're having sex being more focused on yeah the observer

whether they're there or not you kind of got your back arched you've got it all perfect meanwhile they're fucking hunched like a fucking hunchback of Notre Dame. They look like a pig. Tony Hawk pig looking motherfucker. Tony Hawk scrawny, scrawny pig. And you're there. And you're there stunning as ever. Lovely little delicate moan that you perfected.

Don't piss me off. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals. Does that mean I'm gay?

So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson, and this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer, and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

Acast.com I mean, this is my problem with it all. Because actually, was it empowering for you? Or did you feel empowered from that man validating you via his penis yeah and i think that's fine i think you can be validated from sex i think sex is validating sex is a great thing but are you doing it for the imaginary cameras or are you doing it from an innate sense of loving yourself and being like i want to give myself the best sex the best opportunities the best experiences possible in this earth in my one life or are you like well i'm about 21 now tick tick tick tick clock's ticking time for my

slut phase before then i'm 25 and i want to settle down with my husband what are you actually doing who are you performing for that cut the cameras dead ass well i also just think it's just like are you having fun are you having fun if yes fine but i think forget the whole patriarchy stuff even forget that that massive thing forget this is a societal issue and i actually just think so many individuals are far too sensitive or much more vulnerable not stable enough yeah then they make out it's like you haven't given yourself a chance yeah you can confuse your um desperation with an act of empowerment and be careful because you might end up marrying this fucking loser and to be honest it's quite likely

that you will looking around yeah looking around this town it looks like a lot of people are marrying the first person they ever had sex with the first old scrappy dick they they came across so true and and you cling i also think you're this kind of a different topic but bonding through trauma with somebody is a dangerous game and i think people yeah feel very chosen feel like they've been chosen by somebody and cling like fucking cling film cling the to the living daylights out of somebody clinging to the titanic and you are going down down down that iceberg has hit and you're going down and you don't even see it yet get the viol. And you're going down. And you don't even see it yet. Get the violins out.

You're going down. Get the violins out. And don't you dare stop. That's kind of us. That's kind of the metaphor. At the end of the Titanic, they keep playing their songs whilst the ship is sinking. That's kind of us making this podcast whilst the world is crumbling around us. The ship is very much sinking slash sunk.

This is fine. Everything's on fire. And we're like guys feel empowered in your slut face somebody said and i loved this embedded in the word slut is the idea of freely letting men have sex with you oh my god i love it it's almost like your passive leg spread we could convince ourselves yeah that this is an empowered conscious action from you to have your slut phase. But actually, is it a passive experience of you accepting the title of slut and just becoming the self-fulfilling prophecy? Yeah, lie back and think of England.

I wonder. I don't know. I think the label of slut is in, of course, actually having a quote unquote slut phase. there is so much room for empowerment goes without saying goes without saying i'm not prefacing every point no goes without saying i just literally cba for dms being like uh excuse me i'm empowered i believe that you are me fucking too yes it's fine we believe we believe i believe but i think yeah definitely the connotations of the word slut i mean if you actually break down the like sort of, if we did a mind map, we're in an English literature kind of GCSE class. We do a mind map of the word slut.

It's kind of like dirty. Not pure. Unpure. Kind of all these words that are dated and disgusting and make women feel shit about themselves. I think there definitely is an idea of like passivity in being a slut. The girl at school that was like behind the bike shed letting herself get fucked rather than a girl that is like actively pursuing her own desire I think there is definitely an idea of like the girl that's

been fucked by half the school been fucked it's not the idea of the queen bee of the school who has chosen out specific boys yeah essentially it's the classic you're just getting wanked into yeah you're a hole they're just using you to have a wang god if i said like sephie's like such a slut that'd be so weird i remember this this is this has just triggered a whole memory oh my god okay go so oh my god this is just such a great memory it sounds like quite bad memories no no no it's not because i was such a pure little girl at school. Very virginal presence. Basically, all my friends had lost their virginity at school and I definitely did not.

I was very much... I was quite strict with the fact that I wasn't going to have sex with anyone at school because they were TBH, a bunch of scraps, but... Losers, yeah. But no shade to the boys at my school. You were all really nice. I did fancy a few of you, not going to lie.

I even know some of you by name. Not going to lie, I did fancy a few of you not gonna lie i even know some of you by name not gonna lie i did fancy a couple of you i'd say i fancied his friend oh oh what about he was at uni oh okay what about oh fuck there's one more that i'm this is all getting beeped out yeah oh fuck Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, fuck. I do know it. That's the problem. I know it. It's like, there we go. Thing is, none of this can go in.

No. But yeah, I did fancy a few of you, not going to lie. But I was very much a virginal presence throughout school. Yeah. And I remember there was a fancy dress party once. Anyone that's listening, I mean, you'll know the fancy dress party. You know the party. The party of the century.

We were all planning our outfits for months in advance. Actually hilarious if you listen to this hey i ended up going as tinkerbell and it was actually an incredibly short dress i should not have worn this it was a real tiny little triangle covering my vagina vulva out moment but i was i wanted to go as katie perry in the california girls music video with the cream pie boobs oh stunning just being divorced going out on stage crying her eyes out yeah russell brown's just divorced me the iconic moment couldn't be more stunning and i was thinking this is the this is the look for me i've got the fringe i've got the look it's stunning and there was a big big big girls group chat of like all the girls that were going like loads of us sorry is

that why you've got a fringe it's just left over from that party that you one time dressed up as Ding about. You did it once, you committed to the look. And I thought, well, I've wanted to go as Katy Perry and I've cut the fringe now, so I guess I can't go back. No, I thought, okay, I can play on my existing look with a Katy Perry nod. Stunning.

Big girl group. And I said, I kind of was like, I think we were probably about 14 or something. I was quite young to be going as little Katy Perry. And I was like, like cream pie boobs were probably about 14 or something quite young to be going as little crazy Katy Perry and I was like like cream pie boobs my parents must have been quite worried yeah yeah I wrote on the thing guys I want to go as Katy Perry but I don't want to look like a slut and this girl had replied who was kind of one of the cool girls who was a bit scary replied being like don't worry you could never look like a slut and i remember being heartbroken she fucked you up and i thought oh my god game for you you could never that is hysterical but yeah i remember

saying to my friends guys why couldn't i look like a slut like i'm really annoyed why can't i look like a slut like that's rude isn't it and they were all like no that's so nice of her and i was like don't fucking lie we all look like a slut at fancy dress party and i can't why can't i look like a slut even if you wanted to like don't worry no no you could never look like a slut i was like what the fuck are you trying to say bitch that is hilarious i know so that triggered my memory of if someone had ever called me a slut because i don't have ever been called a slut so that some reason everyone thought i couldn't dress up as Katy Perry. What about you?

Did everyone think you were a little slut? I've probably been called a slag, but not really. No, I didn't really have a slaggish reputation because I was just kind of, I wasn't kind of romantically linked to a lot of boys. I had the same thing as you of kind of, these boys are disgusting. Like I wasn't very impressed. But I definitely, I think, as you say kind of um these boys are disgusting yeah like i wasn't very impressed but i definitely i think as you say popular group you look a certain way you get called you're called a slut if you wear makeup you're called a slut if you're kind of quite fuckable at 14 in the paedophilic

society that we have if you walk around with a certain vibe of confidence a certain like a knowingness of your own sexuality i think then you're called a slut it's not even really about your person um your actual sexual history i mean a lot of it is about your sexual history but i think a lot of it is about how threatening you are to men i also think yeah i'm quite maybe not but i think growing up i was definitely not openly sexual but i was i've always been comfortable with sexuality and comfortable with like i grew up really talking about sex with my mum quite quite casually like and i told her when i my first sexual encounters and stuff i told her oh wow and i told her when i first had sex actually i still haven't i'm like

no i'm still a virgin just need to tell you absolutely no dick has been near me but i think i have always been quite even like from a young age i've been really interested in sex i think just interested in it and so i think then i mean it is interesting it is quite fascinating it's interesting right it's fucking fascinating yeah i think i was quite sexually liberated actually at a young age with sex not that i was having a lot of sex or blah blah blah but i didn't feel and it was all like i was 100 performing in so many different ways and i wasn't necessarily having or getting fingered all the fucking time or none of that but i think i just felt quite free i didn't feel and i still don't feel shame around sex and i think a lot of people a lot of young

women feel a lot of shame around section that sex and their sexuality and and wanting sex or having sex or etc etc I definitely think there are two ways that women can be shamed throughout sex so you want to be in this kind of weird basically it shows that women cannot fucking win you want to be in this middle camp under the patriarchy's eyes you want to be the person that slept with like one or two people has had one like steady boyfriend whatever you want to be kind of neatly packaged you know about sex but not you don't know too much about sex you're still willing to get rammed in the ass so you either get shamed if you are a virgin too long or you get shamed if you are not a virgin too early did that make sense yeah you either get shamed whether you have not had sex or you have had sex basically but you want to be in this little camp yeah you don't want to be

a slut you don't be a virgin you just want to be very neat like kind of girlfriend material well you kind of just need to not exist because nothing's gonna work yeah every nothing is gonna work to make the patriarchy happy and i also just think in life nothing's gonna work to make anybody happy so you may as well just do what the fuck you want this is the biggest lesson in life isn't it everyone can say they've tried for a long time being a people pleaser tried to please everybody never said no to anybody did what everyone else wanted you to do are you happy though and it's no one fucking liked you then so you may as well just do what you want you may as well be disliked for a good reason it's the most revolutionary lesson when you realize you cannot win so drop out of

the game drop the fuck out of the game there's no point trying to be palatable because you're always your flavor might not be right for someone at the end of the day anyway yeah you could be a kiwi no one likes kiwis though their rank you could be the best fucking one but they didn't like them but some people don't like kiwis i hate so many kiwis one time when i was little the first time i had a kiwi and i had about 12 kiwis after that and i threw up they're not nice why would you eat 12 kiwis and i didn't have a kiwi for another 10 years because i loved them i thought oh my god who's been hiding kiwis for me they're amazing and i went through so many of them and i was like mum peel me another one peel me another one really young and i mum peel me and i smashed them out all over the fucking floor i think they are quite sickable

they are quite sickable my boyfriend had recently a phase where he got into kiwis and i was peeling them non-stop like the fucking um madonna hall complex that i have like the kind of maternal raising him he's not your son vibe and i thought he's gonna be, but he wasn't. He held it down. He was like, let's make this guy sick. Took it like a champ. Can we talk about the connotations of being a slut and having a slut phase and asking for it? Yes. I think that goes back to school as well. A question we asked on the story, actually, which I thought was fucking genius.

Not really, but kind of just quite an interesting concept i think and i know that lots of you agreed because you replied with exclamation marks um we said growing up my understanding of consent was more impacted by slut shaming culture than i had realized and everyone said yeah that's true because i think you're raised to think yeah we're asking for it or just told to monitor your wardrobe and your behaviour in such a way. Oh, well, I'm going out. It's going to be dark this time. So maybe I shouldn't wear a skirt.

Yeah, this short skirt is an invitation to fuck me. For rape. Yeah. My outfit is a direct invite for rape. How on earth are we not indoctrinated with the idea of asking for it? She's a slut. She... Or even like, if you flirt flirt with someone they now have free access

to your body even just getting drunk it's like that will be used against you in fucking court or wearing red underwear she was so drunk she yeah she was so drunk she had red underwear let's parade it around the courtroom she was asking for it she was asking for it because under her clothes she was wearing red underwear she's a slut of course it was going to happen to her it's absolutely bonkers do you think that that's changing this discourse around asking for it do you think we're i mean there's undeniably been more of a focus on consent at least in the media over the past few years even with hollywood me too etc but often the fear that we have with the concept of it changing or going away is that it's not actually going away it's just becoming more sophisticated and actually is still very damaging i don't know if it's

getting better in that i can look around my conversations with my friends and with people in similar kind of liberal quote-unquote circles and for example our instagram which is a lovely beautiful echo chamber as we've said before it seems if you look at that that it's getting better but you only have to fucking stumble into right wing tiktok or right wing youtube and you stumble across tommy robinson's stuff um and edl stuff and you see that no boys will be boys is still very much alive and kicking and almost i'm scared now to raise my son in this world now women coming forward with rape allegations ruins men's lives it ruins men's lives it takes away

their opportunities that is still a living discourse yeah i remember i put something on the feed that was like she's not praying for your downfall bro she just reported you for sexual assault that's one of my favorite fucking quotes she's not coming for you she's not psycho she's not oh i'm just gonna ruin his life no you raped her and realistically you won't go to jail for it don't worry you'll still have all your opportunities you've just ruined her life don't you worry don't you lose any sleep that your life will be ruined no hers will be ruined as a result of your actions you can't so what was your did you we had quite a rape scandal in our school when i was really young it's actually quite an interesting story um unfortunately you know how sometimes you

look back on school well we do all the time you look back on school situations with the glory of hindsight and you can place it now as an adult and see it for what it was yeah unfortunately with this situation i actually really don't know what the fuck happened there i don't feel like i've shed more light on it as an adult i've got obviously a more holistic perspective but yeah i think it was still very blurry and still very i don't know i don't know what was what actually went on there but i'll tell it on my podcast it's just someone's life uh basically there was this couple there was this couple they'd been together they were both a boy and a girl. They were both in the year above me.

And they, I think, and they'd been together for about four months, maybe. Maybe six months, maybe longer. Which actually, maybe it was actually a bit longer. It might have even been a year. I would say six months to a year. But at school, that's like a fucking lifetime. They're a married couple, right? Oh, yeah.

They're planning their baby's names. It had come out that he had raped her. Okay. They'd broken up. And the story was he raped her he raped her he raped her i at the time was actually quite good friends with him in the way that i mean if you're around the same age as i as we are it was kind of speaking on msn with people all night kind of yeah you're somehow you're talking to people that you don't act like why would you know these people blah blah blah and i think also maybe speaking on my own behalf i know for a fact that being a young girl a lot of the people that would add you on msn and start talking to you were boys especially boys in the older yeah yeah

like the year above and stuff all kind of from different schools like a the boy in the school from the year above in the village next door and you're like oh okay defo village next door is a bit sweet but yeah we were kind of i guess friends in that way that when you're a young girl boys message you and and you talk all the time you're kind of talking every day like when i was younger i'd speak to so many people every single day oh my god you're one of these people were you not like that i knew that was a very much thing i never had a blackberry no one bbm was a huge huge thing no neither i never had a backberry because i always thought i've always wanted to be involved in the bbm discourse i went straight to iphone yeah i

well i went straight to kind of a taco light oh wow which no one had but even on msn yeah yeah were you up all night talking to people on msn no not up all night but i definitely knew that msn was a big big i had msn i would do my chats but i think it was lights off at sort of five whoa well lights were maybe six but i don't think i was in on it and i think my mum wouldn't allow it i wanted to be that person that jumped on msn all night but i wasn't i honestly would be on msn on a school night until like 1 2 a.m oh my god i wouldn't have been able to keep my eyes open that was a a big part of my thing, like being, like, I'm doing cam to cam. Oh, wow.

You would be on webcam chats with someone and I would also be talking to like 10 other people. So then that person would be like, what are you laughing at? Anywho, I was friends with a rapist, basically, is where the story returns. You're nice, okay. And one time I was walking home

and I think he was was we were walking home together he had been accused of rape i was still friends with this guy jesus the accompanying story was that actually they had had sex yeah they had had sex her dad had found out and she had said no no it wasn't sex he raped me it well i see how this happens at school i mean it's such a school narrative yeah exactly and now as an adult i'm like yeah believe that girl till the cows come home but we're so ingrained with patriarchal discourse of we don't want to ruin his life though like we don't want to call him a rapist it's like that's a big accusation i would happily call him a rapist even if a man hasn't

done something i'm like oh he probably did it's like actually a woman gains nothing from coming forward if anything she loses her reputation. She loses her credibility. People, all her friends turn against her. Remember when we discussed rape fantasies? Yeah. And almost the quite, as we said earlier about women being raised with a lot of shame around sex. Yeah.

And I think this is over 10 years ago. This is a long time ago. And the discourse around believe her didn't exist and the discourse around rape and in schools was very very different and also the discourse with kids having sex with people that they were in a relationship with at school was different everything was different it was 10 it was a long time ago and a lot has changed in that time also what how the fuck from your in your small small life you've just literally hopped out of a womb how on earth are you able to unpack sort of a history of consent consent to anything in that one instance where it's a girl and a boy and you're like what's happening it's too much for

children to handle too much for adults to handle i mean i never ever spoke to him about it i remember specifically never said to him did this happen like blah blah didn't ask just kind of knew that he was kind of someone that wanted to be in my business and was kind of around basically because i think i was filling my time with a lot of just kind of people it's just kind of like quite a social life and one time i specifically was walking home and he was there too and this was kind of i don't know maybe three months after i don't know the allegations or whatever and i remember it being quite a buzz because it was quite a buzz in the school i remember walking home with him one day and some guy pulled up on a motorbike and started beating

the fuck out of him and you were there i was i was just standing there like what the fuck which is why it's really annoying because i'm like i'm 24 i still have no understanding what the fuck was going on then what you witnessed like what actually happened i don't know i'm like i know he went on to live his life obviously in my memory they were together for a decent amount of time but how fascinating friends of the rapist never would have thought it would you guys i'm joking and i actually know that one of my good friends growing up one of my good friends we don't speak anymore but i have fond feelings towards her um goes without saying goes without saying was was in a relationship with him when we were about 21 yeah so i don't know i would really like to think that there was no truth in that but listen rapists are everywhere every woman knows a rapist but no

man seems to know any man that has raped anyone or has not raped or they have not raped anyone themselves so exactly everyone knows someone who's been sexually assaulted but where are the men saying oh yeah my mate sexually assaulted someone this is why we said like you saying you were obsessed with sex from a young age obsessed with sex you're fascinated you didn't say that you never said that but i think i i am quite obsessed with the politics of sex like the i think it's so fascinating i think it doesn't get enough credit yeah it's a fascinating fascinating world like sex rules the world it makes the world go round wouldn't be here without

it personally the politics of it of like oh it's so complex and that's why an hour is not enough time to break down the concept of a slut it's like we really do need to create a whole netflix tv show about it or something because it's just not enough yeah and that's why i think it's not only on a societal level not only about the patriarchy but actually about you as an individual yeah your own mental health what you've been up to this week and whether or not you'll have sex tonight is all coming down to your own stability it's nothing about um oh it's that time in your life you're single you've just been broken up with time for you to enter a slap phase it's not about that it's about how you feel it's like if you're not having sex at the moment oh you're practicing

abstinence yeah it's like jesus i'm literally just living my life. I'm living my life. Why don't we just let these women live for a sec? Honestly, get your filthy paws off my silky drawers. Silky stinking drawers. Maybe not stinking drawers. Would you pull that crap with a net? Sorry. Yeah, it's just get the fuck away from my sexual history. You'd have no place being here.

I think looking back as well well like if maybe some of you i know that some of you are still in school and school now is a very different place to what it was then but i think we can all look back on situations with a new yeah with the glory of hindsight and think what the fuck was going on there with our newfound empowerment and education and just thank god that was fucked yeah we still need to do our episode on school we've been promising and promising this and people have been messaging and believe me you'd be messaging about the school episode yeah and we will come around to it because school's fucked school is fucked school is fucked it's great to get your education all but that is not what that place

was doing the school is fucked the last thing that thing was about was about learning in my eyes bottom line is school is fucked just remembered we haven't done a homework oh yeah i thought of something during the episode i thought is it too much to say do something quite sexually liberating this week or is that a bit much no you don't have to send us videos or pics we'll just trust that it happened but by a fucking one of those oh my god you know those vibe those they're like sex toys but it happened but buy a fucking one of those oh my god you know those vibe those they're like sex toys but it's not like a fucking vibrator the ones that are like a clit sucker it's a sucky thing buy one of those i don't think you know what funny you should say that when i see them i think not for me but i imagine sephie would be into that well i always

see them and lily allen has just launched a line of them i always see them online and i think those look fascinating well i already know your homework then can you believe my queen lily allen no they're like 90 quid that's how you're doing the work there's so much come on i like the idea because it's weird it's like what air technology they say but okay let's all do something sexually liberating we'll all push ourselves we'll see if i sexually liberating fucking hell i need to get back on msn's flash the boys in the air above and that doesn't mean go and fuck a scrappy dappy dude that is not sexually liberating unless you really love a scrap no i'm not telling you to text your fucking ex who doesn't deserve you this isn't fuck your ex. No, this is do something sexually liberating. Liberating.

My God, I can't wait. I think get quite creative with that. I wonder what they'll do. Yeah, like I want to, yeah, this is kind of a mission, this one. Even like draw a naked self-portrait. That sounds so stunning. Take a nude. Yeah.

I'm obsessed. Okay, I can't wait. Right, let's go. Leave us a review take nudes bye