Should I Delete That? - Reclaiming Slut with Beth Ashley

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

This week on the podcast, Em and Alex are joined by writer Beth Ashley. They delve into the origins of slutshaming: where it comes from, why we do it and how we should fight it.Follow Beth on Instagram @bethashleywriterYou can order Beth's book Sluts here https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/301813/beth-ashleyPurchase tickets here for our first ever ✨LIVE TOUR!!✨Follow us on Instagram @shouldideletethatEmail us at [e-mail] by Daisy GrantMusic by Alex Andrew Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I don't really give a f*** about men like they're not who I'm fighting for in this whole like sort of slut-shaming revolution I don't care if they're in on it or not I'm just about empowering the sluts, the people who need it. How does the word slut make you feel? In this week's podcast episode we interview writer Beth Ashley, who's just written a new book all about sluts. In this interview, we dig into the word

slut, what it's meant historically, what it means now, and why people are reclaiming the word. I think for men and women alike, the connotations of the word slut are powerful, whichever way you land on it. And this was a really important conversation for Alex and I to have, even just to work out within ourselves where the shame comes from and what we can do to unpack it. We hope you enjoy the interview. Here's Beth. Hi, Beth. Thank you so much for coming in and congratulations

because it's publication time I'm so personally I'm so excited to have this conversation because it's something that I go over in my head a lot your book that you've written it's all about sluts the history of the word concept all yes all of it and I think that's so interesting

to like really delve into like what that means I guess the kind of like weaponisation of sex against women and like yeah I'm just really excited So can you tell me, I ask everyone, please, what kind of like led you to writing the book in the first place? So what led me to writing the book is I've been a sex and relationships journalist for about six years now. I ended up in sex because I always found myself being a sort of like accidental agony aunt at uni because I was raised in a very sex positive household and I thought that was normal until I went to uni and realized a lot of people kind of don't grow up at that.

So I was kind of filling that role, ended up in sex, and that just kind of means that I have covered everything you could imagine in sex. I've reported about sex toys in Japan and the kind of weird gender dynamics around that. I've gone to a Swinger's Resort in Jamaica and reported on the kind of culture there. And I've done lots of reporting around things like cheating, people struggling to get into their own sexual fantasies and some of that. people even having like affairs to be able to do that because of the shame that they feel, which opens a whole other can of worms. And essentially at the heart of every single story I've done throughout my career has been some kind of sex shame or slut shaming. Like it's always there. It's like this horrible, ugly Venn diagram of no matter which way we're looking at what particular

subject. It's always something that people have dealt with and is still creeping up on them. and for this book in particular I think that people tend to think of slut shaming as a uniquely teenage thing they think of it as something that happens in school and then maybe you don't deal with it again but when you examine your life and when you read my book in particular

you'll realise that a lot of the things you just recognise as normal day to day or you might recognise it as negative but something else it's actually slut shaming and it follows us throughout our entire life and it's about way, way, way more than sex. So, yeah, kind of a long answer, but that's why I wrote this book

because it's really necessary and it's creeping up in every aspect of our lives. Can you give us some examples of that of things that we might not necessarily see as slut-shame or, you know, a shame or slut shaming? Can you give examples of that? Yeah, I can. So I guess things like if you look at the way that people look at polyamorous people, right now and that people assume that's filling some sort of void or if you just scroll through TikTok right now and see people telling people that they're queer because of fatherless behavior I'm sure you've seen the fatherless behavior thing come up a lot and that's slut shaming but in new

words people don't so often use the word slut anymore and throw that at you um it comes in other more discreet kind of aggressions and attacks and stuff I once got really like I think maybe someone misinterpreted what I said but like it was I got quite heavily like criticised once for talking about sluts and I think probably in my view on it's always been the same so I think I definitely was misunderstood because I read what they were saying and I was like I don't really understand the insult because I kind of make sense to myself but I think it's really interesting looking back at like our teenage selves and the like relationship because that word was always on the tip of like kind of my own tongue for myself like i don't remember

anyone i mean they definitely boys would have said it and stuff but it's a really interesting thing that like looking back as an adult and you recognize the importance of male validation and how unfair that was that you had to tread the line so specifically between getting the male validation being appreciated being perceived as sexy and beautiful but you could never follow through with any of it you could never prioritize your own sexual needs because that's when the label came and I'm trying to remember exactly how this came about because I remember talking I'd seen the BBC report about how how men had men were only washing their bed sheets once every seven weeks or something it was really bad yeah and I shared it online being like this is deranged that like we are holding out

for this validation and this is the prize like and It's like, how are we getting, like, aren't we suffering enough that like we're having sex with these men and then being labelled sluts for it? And like, yeah, because I don't know, I can't even remember, I can't even remember what I said or how it was misunderstood, but also I, yeah, I feel fairly steadfast in my opinion of it, which is just, and I don't necessarily know, do you find that there are people who are finding empowerment with the word or the concept? Yeah, for sure.

Because that's kind of how I feel. Like, I've come around to it a bit. I'm just like, fuck it. Like, let's be slutty. Like, I'm married with a kid now, so I can't be. But like, I can. You can absolutely be a slut. You can, right?

You do feel like there's an element of empowerment to it. And it kind of feels like the next level on this sort of sex positive experience and this kind of more positive sex, sex positive feminism that we're seeing, this new wave feminism. And I do feel like it's quite empowering. And I feel like using the word kind of takes the stage. out of, you know, women using the word might take the sting out of it, but maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. Yeah, I think so. I think the reclaiming of the word has become like really controversial, especially since like the slot walk started in 2013 in Toronto. It's been lots of feminist kind of butting

heads over whether we should be using this word or not. And that might have been why I got criticism. That's what I was thinking. Maybe you used it in a positive way and people were just like uproaring over that. Like, that's how like contentious this is. But to me, it's following a similar footstep to queer and fat, like people have reclaimed that to make themselves feel more empowered when you flip a word that's usually used to punish you on its head and turn it into a positive definition, then that can give people an enormous amount of power and I don't think anybody else should be taking that away. But there are huge amounts of people reclaiming the word in that same like way en masse. Like there is now, we've had like third way feminism and

sex positive feminism like you mentioned but there's now kind of this like subcategory of that that is like slut pride which is just similar to like queer pride yeah um there's like slut social which is run in london where they do like slut meetups and slut workshops and slutty sex ed which is just sex education ran by sluts and scotty unfamous does i find this um i find it's empowering i do yeah can we can we strip right back to like what is the definition of slot of a slut? Like, what does it mean? What does the word mean? I talk about this in my book and it's got like a thousand different definitions depending on where you're looking. But it interestingly used to be way back in the day

the word for a poor woman, which makes the social class chapter of my book even more. Like, because yeah, it used to just be the word for a poor woman, a dirty woman or a shit housekeeper basically. Right. Right. Right. A shit housekeeper. Yeah, a shit housekeeper. Then I am a slot. I'm a slut in every sense of words. All the definitions, I'm her. It's me. Queen of the slots.

Yeah, so it went from that to basically meaning promiscuity. If you look at academia, that's how they define it. So someone who has a lot of sexual partners. The thing is, that's subjective. Yeah. Who, like, there is no right or wrong amount of sexual partners. Was it historically gendered? Yes.

Very, very much so, just to women. And I'd say the same now, except it's also inclusive of marginalised people as well. So people who also don't get off scot-free from being able to just express themselves sexually are black men who are constantly being accused of being promiscuous. And there are so many studies out there to show that they are seen as promiscuous, like, on site because of the kind of stereotype of sleeping around and abandoning children, which is really fuelled by, like, historic racism, but also queer people. Slut shaming in the queer community, especially between queer men, is horrific. Yeah, I mean, that feels like the whole rhetoric around AIDS was like the whole epidemic was talked about as. Yeah. Yeah, it was pinned on promiscuity, yeah.

It's a hard word to say. It really is. It doesn't really love at all. What? Promiscuity. Promiscuity. It's a lovely word. It is actually. It sounds like what it is.

Yeah. It's satisfying to me in words. But, yeah, the 80s has a lot to answer for in that regard. I think a lot of us when we think about a slut, you know, before we've done the work and stopped shaming people, might think of a bisexual person, which is what I am. So bisexuals are terribly slut-shamed. They're sexualised first. People think that we are threesome fodder

and that we won't hold down a relationship because we'll miss the other sex and just disappear at some point when that is just so not how bisexuality or pansexuality works. But that actually started in the HIV epidemic, like you mentioned. So that was basically the point where people started to view bisexuals as a, the way it's put in research is an unwanted bridge.

So, bisexuals and pansexuals basically bridge homosexuals with straight people, don't know, because they sleep with both of them. It's bisexual's fault that you're in the same sort of pool and dating market and sexual market as gay people. Right. So they consider bisexual people in the 80s to be this massive, like, disease risk. And that kind of never went away. You probably don't think of bisexuals as a disease.

risk per se but there's still this thing we all have that's like this innate need to question it and to fear it i find that i find that really interesting when i hear when i hear the conversation around bisexuality because it does feel like it feels like men are men are just not wedding to a bit that they're gay and women uh have just women women are just choosy yeah cheesy greedy greedy yeah mad slags you just want yeah to suck and fuck which like fine yeah yeah it's not the case for a lot of people but if it is like yeah yeah mind your business a lot of slut shaming is people just like losing the art of minding your business it's really not that deal I think most the problems in the world of people coming from that

like yeah most people need to just learn to mind their business like everyone would be so much happier yeah mastered the art of being in your own world like do you find slut shaming is more prevalent from men or from women? Of both and I think it looks really different in each one. I would actually say it's equal which is really really upsetting perhaps it coming from other women

hits harder. Yeah. But from my research in my book there's no like kind of hard concrete statistics on this but just anecdotally from writing the book and like speaking to so many people a lot of people's first ever Slot Shamer is their own mother

and this wasn't the case for me, but I've spoken to really upsetting amounts of women whose first ever experience of slut shaming came out of their own home. And it was their mom's version of protecting them, like policing what they wear, policing what they do and who they go out with and just things like makeup and like the cut of clothing or what underwear they're wearing, what age they are when they go on certain dates and stuff and shaming them for the decisions that they make. a lot of the time that does come from a really loving place but it's so like it's all intertwined

with rape culture so I think that mothers slut shame their daughters to protect them from the horrors that are out there but we all know as soon as we start reading a few like Laura Bates books and stuff that that doesn't help anything if someone wants to hurt you they will regardless of what outfit you've got on or I think this like respectability and morality feels like such a big part of that as well. I don't know if that's like, is that a reputational concern for mothers? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I think one side

of it is that care thing just being misplaced and the other side of it is morality and of course religion comes into play. Some people's parents are still pretty religious and don't want to have that shame brought on their family. That's a

massive thing in like church communities. In my book I spoke to Jackie Adidagia. think you've had on the podcast before um she's so brilliant um i spoke to her and the piece about how um she used to have like a really complex relationship of one of her family members basically because she has giant boobs that's like her whole brand um but there have been you know people who are uncomfortable with her having them out because of what it will say about their like community um her wedding also like went viral for all the wrong reasons because she had a short

wedding dress on and she was like really badly slut shamed on TikTok and her family did not shame her, but people were suggesting that her family should be ashamed of her, like, all over TikTok. Really? Yeah. But that goes back to like the fabulous thing, like what you were saying before and it's like you don't want to disappoint your dad or you know, like, what do your parents think about this? What would your father say?

Exactly. Yeah. And you see that on sex workers and stuff as I. Have you ever seen like a girl promoting her only fans and someone will comment saying someone send this to her dad? Yeah. Yeah. your dad would be so proud of you.

Yeah. Who gives this shit what my dad thinks? Yeah. It's wild, isn't it? When you start unpicking it, like, oh, bollocks, this is huge. Yeah. Well, I've done a couple of interviews so far for the book, and even a couple of those have said, like, what does your family think?

Are you still in contact with your dad? What does he think? And I'm like, I don't know and don't give a fuck, quite frankly. But it is that, I think people maybe don't realize that that question in itself is such shaming. Like, why are you asking me about my dad? It's interesting with the little girl thing, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do we do?

Like, so I have a daughter, obviously not worrying about her outfits yet, but like, you know, when she goes, I don't know, I mean, because I remember that we all will have had so many of them, like, never get your boobs and your legs out at the same time or like, I don't know, I can't think of other ones off the top of my head, but like, you, there are these little things that you're kind of taught about how to dress. And I don't know how, do you just not say anything? Do you just let them dress? Yeah, you just let them dress, you just let them dress, how they want. I would think so. I'm not on parents. I don't like to, like, do too much parenting advice, like, at people. But I don't think there's anything wrong necessarily with warning people that certain clothing might attribute to certain, like, um, assumptions.

Like, I can understand maybe someone being, like, you know, if you wear, like, a really, really short leopard print dress with, like, the fishnets and the heels and stuff. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to just let a 13-year-old know that that might be construed a certain way, but they can still wear it. But it's specifically the shaming thing that I think is the problem. It's the words that we choose because the phrases that we hear are like, you should cover up or like, this will happen to you if you wear this. And the message you're getting is, yeah. But then the message you get is if something does happen to you, oh, that was my fault then. yeah i should have put my tits away how do you then

because i guess for like for moms who do have girls at that age 13 14 15 15 16 even like how do you relay that to them without without the shame behind it you know because there will be that innate

desire to protect your your daughter you know there are as we know as we know shit things that go on in the world you know and yes it's it's not it's obviously not down to what they wear but there's an element of wanting to protect them from yeah I think that's completely understandable and you're not like a bad person for wanting to take control of these smaller things that you can control because like one mom can't like stop rape culture so I think they see these smaller steps as things like oh I can control this and then that'll make me feel better you feel better like um it

It creates this kind of like, I don't know, this myth of safety. But I think we're better off trying to do what we can in our own communities to just reduce that culture instead by more warning girls about boys' behaviour and letting them know that you're there no matter what happens and why it happens, like none of that will matter. I think also those comments don't come in isolation, do they? Like, if the shame exists enough to make the comment flippantly or to just have it as like a sort of like subliminal thing,

then that will exist within the context of like other feelings and perhaps unresolved stuff from the parent. Yeah. Because that's why it's so hard to break. It's a cycle. They learned it from their, mommy, learned it from them. Of course. Yeah.

It's cyclical. It also is reinforced in other areas. We have dress codes and schools. that are really slut-shamey. There are schools constantly making the news that I write about in the book for allowing kids to overheat and get sick because they won't let them take their tights off

because it will distract the boys. There was a school in the UK like a couple of years ago that made headlines because it said that if girls wore skirts that were too short or shirts that were too low cut they'd distract the teachers which is, oh yeah.

Just don't even know where to start with that one. That's so icky. Grim. Do you imagine being like the mother of a pupil in that school? Like that school's not going to be there like anymore. But that's, stuff like that is so horrendous. So when you're a teenager, you're hearing it in so many different directions. We weren't allowed to show our bra strap.

That's so weirdly specific. So specific. But also it's like, well, what do I do? Because you can't not wear a bra because then you get in the trouble for having boobies and like, you know, having, and not wearing a bra. and having nipples and then you wear one and then it's lucky to show your bra straps yeah it just keeps coming back to that women can't win there is just no way to win with these dress codes and stuff and then you get them in the workplace so there are some like i've had a complaint filed against me when i worked in an office um about my clothing being um and they used that word promiscuous and um at the time i was really really friendly with my manager and he found out who filed the complaint when he like shouldn't have told me but he did and it was a woman and I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I was so certain it was going to be a man.

And yeah, she just, she had a problem with me because I was friendly with someone she was seeing and I didn't even know that she was seeing him. So I guess I was just incorrectly identified as sexual competition and then taken out. I think that's why that particular slut-shaming incident occurred. But that was, I was wearing like, do you remember years ago there was that H&M left of print?

dress and everyone owned it and it's like a wrap dress. Oh yeah. It's just that. Yeah, everybody owned it. I suppose you didn't. You love your leopard. I know. I was thinking I missed this. So it was that she was referencing one specific, that one specific outfit that just upset her. Yeah. Oh God. But there was no dress code in our office and they still tried to pull me up on it and like I had to have a HR meeting and it was so embarrassing and it was mostly because I have giant tits. So like if I wear anything remotely low cut, I'm gonna look like slot like that's just going to happen nothing i can do about it okay so you're using this this positively

sorry i'm really interested why do people not like it when the word is used positively why do you i think it just lands on some people like a static shock i think they think about the first times they heard it and um it just i feel like that too still saying slut kind of sorry i'm sorry to interrupt you but it does it does sound yeah like i feel kind of weird saying it so openly and Some people are really uncomfortable with it and I get it which is why I would never like call someone a slut if they hadn't like made it clear to me that they're cool with that

term but the reason that some feminists and feminist writers you've spoken on this subject don't like it is that men or people who slut shame aren't in on the joke like they don't know what we're doing therefore it just looks like we're disparaging ourselves but to me

I don't really give a fuck about men like they're not who I'm fighting for in this whole like sort of slut-shaming revolution I don't care if they're in on it or not I'm just about empowering the sluts the people who need it a term that I use like alternatively is just sexually free or sexually expressive

which I think is more comfortable for some people to triumphalise if they're not ready for slot or will never be ready for slut because that might be the case as well but without it we kind of don't have a word like there isn't a positive for promiscuous

like in the dictionary is there for men well stud yeah yeah lethario bachelor yeah

I haven't heard lethario in a while what you're saying I like it yeah you're right you're right yeah there are there are positive words for men

of course there are but passing over. Yeah. God, these are flying out of you, aren't they? I don't know why these are coming from? The Soros Alex. I don't want to keep going.

You're under pressure now. I think I'm done, sorry. Okay. But that's more than enough. But they are all positive, aren't they? Yeah, for sure. I think occasionally men get called a man-hawn but that's just throwing man in front of a word used for women.

But it's also still quite an endearing he's a total man-hoar. Yeah. Like, I can hear people using, that as I kind of like, oh, you might get lucky with him. Yeah, or like he's a man whore, but I'm going to weigh him down. Yeah, like he can't be pinned down. Yeah, he's so, I can tame him.

Yeah, exactly, that's so true. There's an allure attached to it. There is, that's so, that's so it. But there isn't when guys call you a slot. Like, this is, this is the weird thing with how gendered the word is as well. Like, I'm comfortable with using the word slot on myself. I'll call my friends a slot. I dedicated the book to my mom and called her a slut in it.

She liked that, but there were certain family members of mine who saw it she did who we were like she's gonna fucking kill you and I was like she's not she's she's fine with it and she loves it she like teared up so everything called a slut publicly but there were other female relatives for other reasons yeah did you disparage me like but there were there were certain female relatives who were like scared they were like I think you should ask her permission before you do this because this is like gonna land badly and it it didn't she loved it um so you can see why there's still that kind of fear around it and stuff but um yeah it's it's so it's so gendered the thing the thing with that because as much as i'm

happy with it and my mom was happy with it and lots of other people are happy with it you kind of like the idea of it i don't think i'd be okay if like harry were to refer to me at harry's my husband were to refer to me as a slut to like his male friends yeah yeah yeah totally Because it changes definition then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I guess is what these writers are talking about when they say men aren't in on a joke. Yeah.

So it's contextual. Yeah. I've got so many questions. It's okay. But I want to ask you quickly. Do you reclaim the other synonyms for Slag, like Slag or. Do you reclaim those too? All the time.

Slag is a bit more like my kind of, I don't know if it's generational or like location base, but Slag was the bigon at my school when I was a kid. Where are you from? West Midlands, so, like, nearish Birmingham. Slag and Skett were big ones in my schools. Yeah, Skate was big in mind, too. Yeah, so I do use slag a lot. Obviously, like, there are certain ones

that I don't think are necessarily mine to reclaim, because even though not a lot of people are aware of this, there's lots of, like, words that are very specific to communities and history, so, like, Jezabel was created during the sort of, like, slave era for black women. I don't think a lot of people know that. And it was also, like, screamed out of Will Ferrell in the middle of Barbie.

He calls Barbie a jazzabelle in the film. And it is actually, like, a really racially loaded word. Oh, I didn't know that. So that one's kind of not up for reclamation for me. And same with whore. That comes from prostitution, as sex work used to be referred to as. And that one would just be, I'm not a sex worker. So for me, that feels a little inappropriate for me to have any.

any kind of stamp on, but I know sex workers who are my friends who love calling themselves whores, which might sound really shocking and bizarre to people outside of the community. But I think in a similar way, they find it empowering to use something that spat at them as just a label to describe themselves. Totally jumping around. I want to go back briefly to your childhood and your mum, and you said that you grew up in a sex-positive household. Yes.

What does that look like? Ask me for a friend. What is this? But what did that look like? I feel like that's quite unusual to hear, like, in Britain especially. It's so unusual. My month's chill as hell, but I would not just find our house as a sex-positive house. Mine was a sex-negative house, for sure.

I don't know what mine was. Was it a sex-neutral? Yeah, we avoided the word at all cost. So you're sex-a-verse? We can't say sex in my house is S-E-X. Really? Yeah. Wow.

And my mum's from a very Catholic. Oh, okay. Liverpool family and, yeah. No, no, no, no, we're all very much adults, but that's still how it goes. No, my mum makes me the sex jokes. Maybe we're not a sex-a-verse house. We're very sex. I don't know.

I don't know. I was always allowed to, like that. Maybe it's just not really something you thought about before. Alex was allowed to come and sleep in my room. There wasn't any questions around that. Oh, no. That sounds pretty. pretty sex positive.

My mum is, really. My mum is. I think my mum is actually, yeah. I think she probably is sex positive. But I was just so fucking awkward. You weren't. I think I might have been the problem rather than her. Possibly.

Very possible. Yeah, I think a lot of people grow up in either sex negative or just like sex nothing houses. And also a lot of girls' relationships with their fathers get very weird at a certain age of that stuff. Unfortunately, some girls grow up with father. others who just don't want anything to happen to them sexually ever and they're like weird about it i have friends who have brothers who were allowed to do things that the girls weren't in terms

of dating and sleepovers and sex and things like that and then it was like locked down chastity for the girl and it's just really creepy this like possessive nature um so i do think a lot of households are like that unfortunately but yeah for me i think so my mom had me when she was 17 so she was a single teenage mom so I'm kind of guessing that the sex positivity just came from her not wanting me to be a teen mom so she was like you know

I had this kind of upbringing where neither home nor school was telling me a whole lot about sex I'm going to have to fill that gap with my kid or she's going to have a kid at 17 at love I think to her that was just a no-brainer so it wasn't really something she was like actively trying to do

like I don't think back then my mom would have even been aware of the phrase sex positivity and she wasn't like, you know, Otis's mom and sex ed and like creating this like sex house where we were having sex therapy over breakfast. It wasn't like that. It was just like she created a culture in the house where I could just say anything to her and nothing would happen. Like she wouldn't shame me. She wouldn't ask me who, what were, and why about certain dates and stuff like I remember I had a horrible one-night stand once and she was the first person I called when I left and I was like crying down the phone to her and she was just like yeah he sounds like an absolute twat like and then she just kind of asked me if I needed the morning after pill or

anything because I was at uni at the time and she was like do you need me to put the money in your account for one um just went through all those kind of questions you know did you use a condom do you still have your implant is everything okay and then she just it was like half an hour walk home and she just stayed on the phone with me but when I got back all my flatmates were like you told your mom oh my god like I'm like what she would probably be the last person on earth that I would tell my mom I told my mom when I first had sex like it was a juicy but of course oh I love that I mean I look like that is so cool that is maybe it's because she was quite young as well like you kind of get more of a friend yeah yeah there was like a sisterly vibe

and it wasn't so long ago for her that she was dealing with this kind of like teen drama and stuff but how did you tell her? Which one? The one that stand or when I was when you first start sex? I just kind of said it was in a weird situation so my mom was married at that time but like literally in the process of divorce

and I had snuck this boyfriend in during the summer holidays which shagged he left and I was almost caught by the former stepdad who was not like super sex positive and so I essentially like pulled my mum to one side and I was like yeah I had sex so nearly said his real name we'll call him John I don't think he'd appreciate I was like yeah I've had sex with John and yeah nearly got caught by stepdad and mom just kind of laughed at me and then like talked through it and stuff that's so nice it's just it was just never a

big deal like I remember like when that um break up happened me and my mum moved back in together alone again which we were when I was kids and then she had this marriage that didn't work out and then we went back to being in the same dynamic of me and her and she just like we had communal condoms that we were just sharing like we were flatmates like she just put a box of johnnies in the bathroom and was like you can I cannot relate in the slightest I mean there were times when I was a teenager where I actually slut shamed her because I didn't like how open she was

so I think no matter what kind of upbringing you have you are going to have like some butting heads moments like when my mum was dating sometimes like she'd bring people home and I'd be like because I was like 15 I'd be like slag yeah because that was what I was hearing at school

that like just women who have sex are slags and I was like oh my mum's one no There's one in my home But now I look back on it And I'm like, I've always been so good At like breaking up with people when I need to And like seeking out the support that I need

And asking for what I want in bed And fucking people off at the first red flag And I'm like, I learned that from her Because we live together while she was dating I watched her navigate plenty of fish and tender and all those hellholes and like that that was really beneficial for me I might not have seen it at the time

I was a bit embarrassed and yeah one one thing I was really really thankful for her when I was a teenager like no matter what like even when I was like slut shaming her and stuff is she was also there for my friends who didn't have this yeah that's what I was thinking when you were saying that actually I bet your friends loved her to this day my friends like will ask my mom for sex advice

oh that's so lovely and like they would kind of come around to hide from their parents Oh, that's really nice. Yeah, my house was also the house lots of people would pretend they were at when they were actually at boyfriends. I don't know if my mum necessarily knew that part, but yeah. That's so nice, though.

It was really nice. It's good to have someone like that in your community. When you're saying about how you'd kind of, you ended up kind of thinking of your mom as a slut, which sounds like a horrible sentence. back your mum's a slot no that's horrible I hate it not for me to say

but that's coming from somewhere and obviously it's coming from school and I'm always kind of interested and I know obviously it is inherent people are learning it from their own parents and then there's school dress codes and stuff but it is interesting because I feel like you kind of have the two things on tiny scales you end up with little pick me girls

on one end which is completely inevitable like of course you know I actually don't And, yeah, that I don't know how people can not be picked me girls as children. That I'm not like other girls, girls, yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's, I've been really trying to work this out in my head because I think it's really good that we're all unlearning it as adults, but I feel like it's such an inevitability as a little girl, particularly girls with brothers. Because I feel like, or even girls were sisters, but I had a brother and I,

and I always had to prove what girls could do, and I had to be interesting to my. It was so hard. I always had to be interesting to my brother. Like, he was my first, like, man whose approval I needed. It was so annoying. I'd always pretend if I liked being goalkeeper because I wanted a friend I wanted a friend

I said yeah I like football and I think anyway and I always think about that I think it's quite interesting but you've got you end up with like girls being pick me kids because they just are but then kids being pick me girls

but then boys like slot shaming in little boys is so prevalent or like teenage boys but then they want so much from the girls and I find that really interesting did you explore that or like see anything of that

when he's searching a book definitely So there's a whole chapter on like the double standards of gender and how it just slut-shaming manifests completely differently for boys versus girls. Obviously we have to talk in binaries here because all of the research is just obviously not inclusive of non-binary or trans people.

So everything's very men and women. Yeah, it's school. So the way that the researchers put it that I spoke to in my book was that it all comes back to gender roles, which all comes back to capitalism. we have our gender roles kind of assigned to us in our cultural scripts for what boys do and what girls do. But some of the researchers that I spoke to kind of said that it comes a lot earlier than secondary school, which we do tend to think of as the first like sort of slut-shaming minefield that we navigate.

But the rules for that are set much, much, much earlier. And it's like actually sort of set in the playground. So the way that boys are just a loud abundance and greed and to get dirty, like boys, boys. are allowed to roll around in the mud, be boisterous with one another, get filthy, be greedy, girls aren't allowed to do that. We then get these other gender roles assigned to us in our toys that tell us what our roles are, boys seem to genuinely play, whereas girls seem to just do work, because they've got dolls that are babies.

And little kitchens. And little kitchens. It's really stressing me out, because I know, there's a kitchen at Arlo's gymnastics place, like, and when we're in the waiting minute, there's a kitchen, and she fucking loves it. You're like, no, football. She's worked in the microwave, like, she's always carrying the eggs around. So I've got, I know, I know.

She might be a baker. I really want to get her one. I know. I was going to get her one because I got one for Lolly and she really loves it. So I'm going to get her one. Anyway, anyway, anyway, carrying her a gender role. No, she just, she might be a chef. When you have a boy, you can buy one for her.

Well, he'll have that too. Okay. Yeah, because she loves it. And I'm like, oh my God, I've made a housewife. I've got a house baby. Treadwife and cover. Yeah. It's so, honestly, I want to thrive and I'm like, oh no, it's nothing.

No, she genuinely loves it, she loves it. It's forcing it down their throats when they don't want to play with it, which is a mad thing, which also happens with boys and football. I know so many boys are just coaxed into football when they'd probably rather be playing with something else. And then as gross as this sounds because we're talking about kids in playgrounds, one of the researchers I spoke to is named Michael Yates from the Havelock Clinic. He's so, so intelligent, especially in this area. That translates to sex because sex is how adults play.

So our play rules from when we're kids establish... It's so gross, isn't it? It establishes the rule book for when we play as adults. So you can apply that to things like drinking culture and stuff as different rules in bars for men and women and things that we get shamed for that men don't. But it also applies to sex. So men, they learn young that they're allowed to be gross.

They're allowed to be dirty. they're allowed to be they're allowed to seek abundance they're allowed to have everything and women need to be small soft sensitive fragile so yeah it's an uncomfortable thought to reckon with but it's such tiny cultural gendered things like that that creep into the bedroom and then set the basis for slut shaming you do want you want to allow your daughter to be messy and yeah Or you teach your boy not to be greedy. I don't know what, or both.

Just don't gender it, I guess. Like, it's not about, like, banning certain activities or anything. It's just kind of, I guess, going back to the kitchen thing, we'd be talking about kitchens a lot. As we show, as women. You could get that for your daughter. But also get it with your son. Yeah.

Unless both of them in sports. Let both of them get money. tell both of them to be sensitive and fragile and talk about their feelings and use their words to describe those emotions and stuff yeah it is so interesting sorry I remember the boys they're going to the boys at schools too because they must be learning it from home from to then to turn that into slut shaming so young and so it's so interesting that you just because you it kind of feels like from being tiny tiny that little boys know that they've got the upper hand like they know And my brother, who is a really lovely man now, a bit of terror of a boy, but he's always been, he's a Pisces too. He's always been really sweet and really gentle. But I've always had to prove that girls could, like, do it.

And he's not a particularly, like, girls' smell type. But it's weird that you get, you pick this up so early that there's, like, this kind of competition and this massive difference between boys and girls so young. And it does, like, I guess obviously sex is just this sort of shared interest as you get older because primary school boys are interested in one thing and girls kind of in the other and it's like they come together

for the one purpose of sex but then within that it's like you've been apart for so long and then you come together and there's all these rules and if I think about I remember this boy I'm not going to say his full name although I'm tempted when I went to school and he was like 12

and I remember him telling like the whole stairwell that he masturbated which was foul and then he was talking about how, like, how gross it was if girls did it? Yeah. And it was like, where have you learned this? Because who are you chatting with?

Is your dad telling you? Like, who's telling you that? And it's really weird. Like, it was before phones, really. Like, I don't know where he learned that. Yeah. I think it comes from our cultural coding. So, like, you kind of hit the nail on the head, though,

and you say that boys know they have the upper hand from, like, day one. When we're raised under capitalistic gender roles, boys know from a really, really horrifyingly young age that they've got the upper hand, it's not something that's conscious. I don't think little boys are walking around like, fuck girls, and thinking that they're, like, actually better than them. But they've just witnessed through all of the experiences they've had so far and witnessing the differences in the way they're treated versus their sisters

or just other girls that they know, that they have the upper hand. But when you get to your, like, sexual coming of age, which is younger than people think, because that doesn't necessarily mean when you first have sex, it just means when sex first enters your kind of consciousness. It's about year seven. Yeah. That's when things become like sex aware, like culturally, for most kids.

That's, you know, 11 is the age that a lot of researchers and academics think that sex education should be like getting in there or younger in preparation for year seven. That's when those kind of cultural scripts about I have the up-eastern. hand just become about sex and I think it's reinforced by the internet by porn which has a lot of slut-shaming titles in it by celebrity culture because we watch celebrities get slut shamed all the time and just look at like sex tapes and stuff like Pam and Tommy the way that she was treated versus Tommy that he spoke in an interview about how much he loved having that tape released of him because it made him a king and she was devastated and traumatized

like we grow up with all of that but like you say it's not to blame specifically those things are just strands it's cultural because even before phones like when you're in school and nobody's like on social media yet it's still happening because it's innate

it's because really slut shaming isn't actually about sex like it feels like it is and on the surface it might be it might be what invites someone in to slut shame you, something to do with your sexual expression or your perceived sexual expression because a lot of the time you're slut shamed for things you haven't even done, like people

are just making assumptions about you or they've heard rumors. It's so often not about sex at all. It's about reinforcing power structures in society. So a lot of the time slut shaming is actually racism, sexism, classism. I've had super class of slut shaming in my life. And so has my mom, like growing up on a council estate, her being a teen mom. She got a lot of those kind of slut-shame and comments aimed at her, and so did I. Like, when I was a kid, someone suggested to me that my, like, dad wasn't around because he couldn't afford an abortion to have me, which is so mad because abortions are free in this country.

You'd have to be so broke to not afford free. And, you know, that was clearly a attempt to put me in my place as a poor kid. and that happens in every single area under the discrimination umbrella like slot shaming is usually about just upholding those power structures and putting people in their place sex is just like the lens that's done through if that makes sense yeah and it is the easy you know we've we've talked so much about this like the easiest way to destroy a woman is with her reputation

or through her reputation and there's no easier way to do that than sexualise it like yeah it's such a and that's like I feel I suppose Christianity

has a lot of the kind of roots big time of that yeah yeah big time purity culture has a lot to answer for so ultimately this does come

down to capitalism because it comes down to the patriarchy which was literally invented with capitalism but religion doesn't help purity culture I think

I think people a lot when they hear purity culture which if an explanation is needed it's an evangelical concept comes from the US from evangelical Christian groups and it's this idea that people need to be pure in order to get into heaven and that's about sexual behaviour

it's about not having sex until marriage so that you'll be let into heaven but I think when people hear about it they think that they're distanced from it a lot of people point at America or they point at religious communities and they're like crazy like puritans it's everywhere yeah we're in it too whether we like it or not um it leaks out of those evangelical groups and into our sex education lessons in the book i run through loads of like different sex education materials and how a lot of

them are pulled right out of evangelical books rebranded and put into sex education books um a lot of the myths that we have like and even the language we use and people talk about losing virginity when they first have sex, you haven't lost anything. Virginity is not real. You've actually gained something. You've gained a sexual experience. You just had hopefully a great shag. Maybe not, because it was your first time.

Probably not. But, you know, it should be fun. You shouldn't be feeling like you've lost anything. You shouldn't be feeling like you've broken anything. And it also leaks into our, like, sexual health. Because of purity culture, we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about the female, like, sexual anatomy. That's a real fact.

This random planet, like, billions of miles away. Why do we even need to know? Mind our business. I've always thought that I was safe. I know, I know. Stay away. It's nothing to do with me.

No, literally do not include me in this. Same with the sea. Nothing to do with me. Absolutely, big fat, agree. It's not where I belong. If I did, I have things. Yeah. Anyone talks to me about either.

I'll stop you right there. Yeah. Nothing to do with me. Yeah. you must have me mistaken with someone else but yeah so that that is all you know down to purity culture and it's not American it was and it's not religious it was but it is derived from that and it's all over us I don't even think you would be able to get the tube without walking past some kind of advert that has a purity culture message in it because it's

everywhere it's in our dating apps the the marketing around them have everywhere it's horrifying we have to wrap up but I think one thing before we do is that I find interesting just if you could give us like a summation on that just to kind of see us out because we really have one out of time but um the in cell culture the rise of in cell culture and so much of this feels like there's there's this real hatred for women's sexual liberation yeah where does sluttiness fit into that where does sluts fit into in cell culture Oh, God. It really comes into that a lot. So Andrew Tate, sorry. Sorry that we have to talk about Andrew Tate. He has had a lot to say about Sluts. He's had some pretty dark quotes that are very slut-shaming specific. And I think he uses that to lift up his misogyny because he identifies as a misogynist himself quite proudly, doesn't he? Which is like, okay. Great. He, he, he, so one of his big quotes that I do focus on in the book is he claimed that 90% of the world's problems would be removed if all women had to walk around with their body count on their head.

All problems. All of them. Famine. Earthquake. Cynarmy. Yeah. Natural disaster. Modern slavery.

Stupid. Horrocon. Yeah. Thunderstorms. Like if nothing else. If nothing else, it's just stupid. Diarrhea. Absolutely

Love diary of being on palms Seenheims It's just one of the large problems Yeah, IBS Yeah Endometriosis For God's sake Yeah

This is a nightmare Yeah It would all be solved If body counts We're on our heads Homelessness It's ridiculous It's stressed

me out Don't worry about it Easy Corruption Write your body count on your head Done Yeah Yeah

World Hunger Solved In that case Can someone Get me a pen Yeah If that's a all we need to do, then I'm willing.

I think there was a research recently. I can't remember the statistics off the top of my head, but I'm assuming you guys have seen it that like a third or something, maybe 35% of men agree with Andrew Tate's views. Did you see that? Nope. Okay, it's in the independent if you wanted to look

it up. A third of men in the UK under a certain age, I think it's under 40, agree with Andrew Tate in his views. He is considered one of the most influential men in the entire world. He was the most Googled man in America. He was the most Googled man in America last year like the stats are statting and they are fucking horrifying

like he has so much power so for him to say something like that no matter how frivolous and he's also said lots of other slut shaming comments he said that you know if a girl is acting like a slut and she gets raped she needs to bear some of the responsibility that's not a direct quote it's a paraphrase but it was along

those lines and I could go on but I won't this is the kind of thing that he says on its podcasts on its TikTok on other people's podcasts and that I think has birthed a new kind of slut-shaming specifically on TikTok because I am seeing body count discourse all the time

I don't know if it's come up on you guys' feeds yet but there is like a trend where guys will just walk up to you in the street you know the knobbed TikTokers have their little mics and they come and annoy you and ask you what you're listening to and stuff I've said this many times that's my biggest fear in life genuinely submarines and that

coming up to me on a mini microphone on the street and asking you a question if you write your body count on your head they might leave you alone. Oh, never mind. She's got them ever. There are men like this, these street interviewers

with their tiny mics who are asking people for their body counts and then shaming them in public, on camera. And this is now a huge trend. It's got millions, like hundreds of millions of views

on the TikTok tag for body counts. And this feels to me very naughtys. Do you remember the early naughtys where Slotshaming was just everywhere. they used to be like a slut of the year award that I think the Daily Mail gave out and it was like a nasty award and there was also a male one that was positive and Russell Brand won it yeah thank you the son sorry the male it wasn't you for once yeah I mean you earned the reputation there not going to be too sorry but um yeah they

Nicktop shagger of the year yeah that was it that's it that's it there's slut of the year and shagger of the year and Russell brand won it and the female one was a negative thing That's so interesting, isn't it? It feels very reminiscent of that culture. I feel like we've gone back. Like, when was that? 24 years ago. We are on a cycle, right? And you think that's his influence?

Andrew Tate's influence. Not by himself, but I think he's a big reinforcer of it. I think it's ultimately that we had all these, like, kind of feminist movements and stuff, but they weren't quite enough because we didn't dismantle capitalism because that's a big job. And we didn't really address the sex stuff. Not enough. There was a sex problem. movement but it got co-opted by capitalism it became like sex toy like sales movement

and that's not what but it's not yeah I'm very happy that most women in the UK now own a sex toy but that's not yeah good for them really don't have stats oh I love that then I'm all horny I don't have anything I can't even add two numbers together 69 six and nine yeah there's one I enjoyed it. Thank you. You and your mum jokes era. Yeah. Yes, I am. My slottie mum era. I love that. I love it. I love you being in your slottie mum era.

Thank you. I nearly wear my top without my bra earlier and then I got scared. Oh, God. Wouldn't that have been cool? No, this would have been cool. I thought you were just going to remove your talk about. Wouldn't it be cool? This seems like the right podcast to be naked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I really thought, well, yeah, we just interviewed the magic white guy before. So I've, I've learned tips. Yeah. I can take my top off. There's no sexy way to remove a dungarees, I'm afraid.

Right. I wear dungarees every day. And if, like, we ever initiate sex at home, I'm always like, I'm so sorry. Don't look at me. Just do it. Don't look directly at me. That's a very good point. Well, I feel very unsexy now.

Same. Usually do. Sorry. That's fun of the podcast. We could, there is so much more to talk about, but we have run out of time. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you for having me. And there's more to learn. For anybody who is interested, Beth's book is out on the 9th of May.

We will leave the link for it in our show notes. And they can find you on social media at Beth Ashley Writer. Nice. At Beth Ashley Writer. We'll leave all her links in the show notes. So you can go and find her left. Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun.

Thank you. Should I delete that is part of the ACAS creator network.