When Shaheen Shariff asked a group of under-18-year-olds whether a teenage girl has the right to object to her boyfriend sharing a nude photo of her with his friends without her consent, she was shocked by the responses.
“Forty-six per cent of the students said the girl deserved to be harassed and demeaned because she behaved like a ‘slut,’ ” says Shariff, a professor of integrated studies in education at McGill. The students believed that her right to privacy was destroyed when she sent it to her boyfriend in the first place, even though she had intended it to be seen only by him. This is consistent with a large body of literature on “slut-shaming” that Shariff references in her new book Sexting and Cyberbullying: Defining the Lines for Digitally Empowered Kids.
“As long as girls express their sexuality within the accepted norms of their peers, without standing out too much, they are accepted,” Shariff says. “However, when they are seen as crossing the line to assert their sexuality in ways that may create jealousy and envy, they are labeled ‘sluts’ who deserve to be humiliated publicly and put back in their place. And it’s interesting to try to figure out, what is that line?”
- Date Published:03/27/2015
- Original Publication:McGillReporter