Tom Spender

A trend known as ‘slut-shaming’ has emerged on the internet in recent years. Posting on social networking sites such as Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter, teenage girls – and sometimes boys – humiliate girls for the way they dress or look, which they say is ‘sluttish’. VoR’s Tom Spender hosts a heated debate.

Sometimes these posts are accompanied by photos of the girl being targeted and attract scores of harsh comments, causing serious distress to the girl in question and leading to accusations of cyber-bullying. There are cases in which slut-shaming is said to have led to suicide.

So is slut-shaming an understandable reaction against the excessive sexualisation of young girls in Western culture, or is it a disturbing occurrence of girls propping up an age-old sexist order that seeks to control female sexuality?

VoR’s Tom Spender discusses with Julie Bindel, a freelance journalist and co-founder of the group Justice For Women; Rhiannon Cosslett, co-founder and editor of Vagenda magazine; the anti-feminist blogger Judgy Bitch; and Soraya Chemaly, a feminist writer and media critic.

This is by far the best discussion programme I’ve hosted so far and is well worth a listen.

In which: Judgy Bitch applauds slutshaming and says teenage peers are stepping in to do the job their parents are failing to do, which is to tell young girls that dressing provocatively is asking for trouble; Soraya Chemaly argues that teenage ‘slutshamers’ are perpetuating sexist attitudes in a bid to do what they think sexist adult society expects of them; Julie Bindel agrees with Chemaly and says the word slut is never appropriate; and Rhiannon Cosslett also weighs in against Judgy Bitch.