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Comment: Why this ‘sarcastic’ slut shaming viral video is dangerous

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When you logged onto Facebook this morning, you were probably met with the usual slew of holiday photos, LadBible memes and news videos of whatever tricks Trump is pulling at the moment. 

Nestled among the conveyer belt of videos that beat the algorithm to end up on my feed this morning was a video entitled 'She's a Slut.'

Initially, I assumed that this satirical video by singer Chloe Adams would have some kind of edgy but ultimately empowering message about reclaiming the term, but alas, I was wrong. 

The song, which describes the social dismissal of a woman due to her sexual history, is expressed with a bubbly veneer. 

The issue with the sickly sweet, smiling, hair flipping manner in which this song is performed is that it disguises the horrible words that are being sung with a veil of pop princess acceptability. 

If this song had been sang by a man, the outrage brigade would have been on the scene immediately, sirens blaring. 

As a person that some would consider a member of the feminist outrage brigade, here I am. 

Just because the singer is a woman, making a 'joke' about the sexual experience of her ex-boyfriend's new partner doesn't mean she should be able to get away with using these words to deprecate others. 

Chloe Adams is clearly a musical talent, but no matter how hard she tries to shield this song under a safety net of banter and sarcasm, the truth is that the song is problematic. 

It reinforces tired old stereotypes of women hating one another due to the diverting affections of men, and worst of all, it shows that in some cases, years of progress made in the area of the acceptance of female sexuality are not as concrete as one would hope. Slut shaming 101.

Men and women alike are free to explore their sexuality with as many or as few sexual partners as they choose, and belittling and dehumanising a person to the long standing and often unshakeable label of 'slut' stems from the judgemental rhetoric which sees women shunned from society due to promiscuity. 

We all remember that girl in secondary school, who kissed the wrong boy at a disco or went further than the socially accepted standard of sexuality, and was the school slut for the rest of eternity.

We've all seen 13 Reasons Why, and know exactly what that label can do the a person's sense of self worth. 

While slut and whore are not gendered terms, men can be marked with the label too, they are most often used to degrade female-identifying individuals.

The Facebook post tagline even encouraged people to associate their local slut with the video: 'Tag A Friend If This Reminds You Of Anyone!' 

'I saw her on social media – In a skirt way above the knee,' the singer chimes, reinforcing the untrue belief that what a woman wears is essentially the measure of her promiscuity. 

Objectifying any woman is fundamentally wrong, but to hear it from another woman is disastrously damaging, as it gives others a form of permission to have those kinds of thoughts themselves. 

While Chloe herself has taken to the comments to insist that this song is a joke, the majority of the commenters on the video, which has now been viewed over 186,000 times, are tagging friends saying things like 'I can think of someone like this,' proving that while Chloe's intentions might have been for it to be a joke, en mass slut shaming is the result. 

Frankly, how much longer can the juvenile 'banter' excuse continue to mask reoccurring issues surrounding the perception of women in society, and in this case, by other women?

Feature image: Facebook screenshot / Chloe Adams

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