COMMENT: Called a ‘slut’ at age 9… and I questioned myself, not him

When I was nine, I was called a ‘slut’ by a boy about a year older than me.

I was making my way past him and his equally gormless friend when he said it.

“Sluh”, he hissed.

I remember pausing momentarily and looking at him in bewilderment before abruptly continuing towards the playing field at the side of the school.

I didn’t tell anyone – for no other reason than I didn’t deem it interesting enough – but I did mull it over for a few days.

And another 20 years.

I remember wondering what it was that made him say it to me.

Did he know what it meant?

Did I even know what it meant?

Who was he repeating and wasn’t he scared he’d get in trouble if a teacher heard him?

At the age of nine, I had – unsurprisingly – no experience of boys except in a platonic sense, so eventually I came to the conclusion that his decision to utter that particular word came down to one of two things.

It was either what I was wearing – a pair of navy Umbro shorts and a vest top.

Or how I was walking – I had recently heard Geri Halliwell use the word ‘strut’ so I was attempting – and no doubt failing – to embody my ginger idol.

I spent the rest of the day pulling at the hem of my shorts and berating myself for not choosing longer ones that morning.

At the age of nine and coming to the end of third class, my understanding of the word slut was unsurprisingly limited.

What I had gleaned, however, was that it worked as a way to describe girls who strayed outside the lines.

If we're talking colouring books, these ladies were total Mavericks.

I had, further to this, established that certain clothes were off-limits to me and particular behaviour was off-limits to girls in general.

So, with the benefits of third class Maths and less than a decade on this planet, I put two and two together, and came to the conclusion that I had overstepped the mark in one of these two ways.

Hand-me-downs from girls my age or older – which often found their way into our home in a black bin liner which signalled more excitement than Christmas morning –  were often scrutinised,  and regularly deemed ‘unsuitable’ for me.

Too short. Too grown-up. Too strappy.

And there were things that the boys in my family could do which simply weren’t an option for us girls.

The summer before, I had spent a fortnight abroad with my family, and inspired by both the sickening heat and the boys I was playing with, I decided to bite the bullet and ditch my top.

Positioning my elbows into the hem of my Snoopy T-shirt, I hoisted it upwards only to be told that ‘little girls keep their tops on with their shorts’.

Oh, it’s grand for the boys, but the girls were going to have to spontaneously combust before they could get away with it.

In the grand scheme of things, I was treated the same as my brother and male classmates, but I was aware – on some level – that there was an onus on girls, from a very young age, to consider how they were perceived by the outside world.

Certain clothes and behaviour were indicative of how you might come across to others, but from what I could see – and here is the important part – this only applied if you were female.

I have no memory of my brother’s wardrobe being the subject of debate in my family home, nor do I ever recall him being prevented from doing something because it wasn’t gentlemanly.

He was a young lad, he didn’t need to be gentlemanly; he was just having the craic, sure.

But have too much craic as a girl, and you teeter perilously close to the realm of the unladylike.

At nine, I knew the word ‘slut’ wasn’t a good thing.

I knew it was used as an insult, and I knew there wasn’t a hope of that boy getting the Friday Taz bar if I bothered pulling on a jacket sleeve and spilling all to a teacher.

And yet, despite knowing all of this, I questioned myself instead of questioning him.

My thought process focussed far too much on my culpability and far too little on his.

What had I done to trigger that remark instead of what had he been taught of girls to consider it acceptable.

What had I been thinking opting for those shorts instead of what had he been thinking singling me out to road-test a word reserved solely for girls.

Why had I thought it was OK to ‘spice girl strut’ instead of why had he thought it was OK to single me out?

But sure look, what did I know?

I was nine-years-old with more than a passing resemblance to Meg from Family Guy, and very little life experience from which to mould my perspective.

It was 20 years ago, I was a primary school student, and thankfully we've all moved on so much since then.

Oh, wait.