Emily Lindin’s View of Sexual Behavior and Criticism as Illustrated in Her Documentary, Unslut

Slut Shaming

In UnSlut: A Documentary Film, Emily Lindin uses her own experience with sexual abuse and slut shaming to start a campaign called UnSlut and uses this documentary to broadcast the issue. The UnSlut campaign creates a space for women and girls who have dealt with sexual assault and then have been labeled as a slut to speak out, be heard and start the healing process. This topic has a lot of negative stigmas derived from the pervasive issue of sexual assault and slut shaming in our culture.

Slut shaming is not a recent development in our society. The way that women are being responded to once they have been sexually assaulted has been the same for many, many years. However, our society has had an influx of problems and it is believed to be caused by the internet and its high usage. The internet has changed what is means to label someone as a slut. The internet creates a harsher environment and platform that is readily available to anyone and their opinions. The internet is also more permanent way of broadcasting these opinions. Although you can delete things off of the internet, millions of people could have already seen it and taken a screenshot of it or saved it in some other way. This makes healing for victims exponentially harder. The internet also includes social media, which as a large role in our society. There is a lot of pressure on women and girls to display their bodies on the internet, and social media is a perfect outlet for this. The social norm accepted is that girls are to be seen as sexy, and to be sexy you must show your body, but in doing this you can be labeled as a slut. This puts young women in a compromising situation, of whether they should hold their integrity or earn their womanhood, no matter the consequences.

Due to this output of sexual pictures on social media and these expectations on young women, we have become more of a sexual society. This has led to the wide assumption that since everyone is involved in this sexual society, then everyone knows everything about sex and this is not true. Our sexual education program in school are limited to chastity and birth control. Not enough is taught to our students who are growing up to be engaged in sexual activity in our society.

This miseducation leads to people believing what social media, the internet and advertisements tell them. People can look at the way women are broadcasted and identify what being a “slut” encompasses. This leads to people viewing women who are wearing a certain type of outfit, having a drink at a bar or even talking to men a certain way as slutty behavior. All of these factors begin to become the justification for sexual assault. When a woman has been sexually assaulted, our society makes it easy to say that it is because of what she was wearing, or what she was doing or how she was talking. This puts men and women in a box. Women are degraded because of it making it seem like we can not wear certain clothes, do certain things, or talk a certain way without being seen as too promiscuous and that is not fair. This puts the women who have been sexually abused at fault when they are the least to blame. Men are also being harmed in this situation. Making women the fault of their sexual assault because of their appearance, leads to a description of men as uncontrollable beings who only act on hormones. Men are capable of so much more than just being labeled as sex machines. Women are capable of so much more than being labeled as sluts. Women should be have the opportunity to be proud of who they are and what they look like without being ridiculed, and in turn men should have the opportunity to take responsibility for their reaction to this.

Religion is another medium that has seemed to put down women due to their sexuality. In the documentary, Dr. Ebony Utley says “Religion puts women in two boxes: the madonna or the whore.” This is very evident in many religious cultures present in our society. Women are praised for practicing abstinence and scolded for engaging in sexual activity. This makes it very hard for religious women to have a free space to accept, embrace and learn about their sexuality.

With slut shaming coming from peers, the internet and religious circles, there aren't a lot of places for young women who have dealt with sexual assault to turn to. We have to fix this problem in our society. Our attitudes and views on this issue, individually and as a society, must change in order to make a difference in the lives of these women and men. The first step is evaluating ourself and altering our flaws. If we deconstruct our idea of sexual assault and fix our posture on empathy, we can take positive steps towards helping victims. We also have to recognize that men and women are being hurt in these situations. Once we realize and accept that this is not a male issue or a female issue, but a human issue we can start to join together as a whole to fix it. This will lead to the humanization of our peers and the regaining of their voices in our society. The UnSlut project is an example of an organization that has stepped up to combat this prevalent problem we are facing today. This project opens up a space for people to use their voice to be heard. Once we start using our voices, it will catapult a chain reaction for others to use their voice and that is what gives us power over our fear and judgement.