Are you a slut?

A new weekly column about sex of all stripes.

Rachel Kramer Bussel
Anya Garrett

Define slut. Go ahead. Is it a woman who's slept with 10 people? 20? 100? One who has one-night stands? One who flirts with everyone in the room and flashes her panties, or maybe isn't wearing any?

Whatever your definition, it's probably not positive. Though it may seem easy to brush the insult aside, slut-shaming runs deeper than a word problem; it's a philosophy. When Rush Limbaugh called law student Sandra Fluke a slut for speaking out about birth control, he implied that there's something inherently wrong with wanting to enjoy sex for pleasure. Let's be clear: You can be a virgin and still get slut-shamed, as college student Paige Rawl was for having been born HIV-positive. It's a too-easy weapon wielded by those who want women to know their place. We need look no further than Monica Lewinsky for an example of how slut-shaming can stay with a woman for years.

For teenagers like Audrie Pott, Felicia Garcia and Rehtaeh Parsons, slut-shaming went hand in hand with the intense bullying that led them to take their lives. Thankfully, women who've survived similar treatment are sending the message that there are other options.

One of them is Emily Lindin (her pseudonym), the founder of The UnSlut Project. What started as a way for her to share her middle school diaries about being the "school slut" has morphed into an online community for sharing others' stories and resources. I caught up with Lindin at a preview screening of her Kickstarter-backed documentary, Slut, a film that brought tears to my eyes. Lindin started her website after the 2013 suicide of 17-year-old Parsons (whose parents and best friend are interviewed in the film) following an alleged gang rape.

Lindin wants people to come up with their own meanings of slut, via a fundraising T-shirt with "Define 'Slut'" printed on the front. She's discovered that wearing it in public invites people to grapple with the term. It's also her comeback when she overhears people calling a woman a slut; she pushes back, asking exactly how the user knows for sure the woman qualifies. She's found that once questioned, the supposedly easy definitions start to unravel.

She doesn't have a definition of slut "except it's just a catchall insult for women." Lindin's right; all women can find "slut" wielded against them if they transgress someone else's imaginary boundaries for appropriate sexual behavior.

Only a few years ago she used "slut" casually. "My friends and I would say, 'Hey slut,' but not in a derogatory way. In the same conversation though, if a guy we were hooking up with found another girl, we had confidence that we could say, 'What a stupid slut. She doesn't deserve him. I've seen pictures of her on Facebook and she looks like a slut.'"

While not as damning as saying it to someone's face, "over time it conditions your behavior," she says. She's stopped using the word as an epithet and wants others to think about whom they might be hurting.

My personal relationship with "slut" is more complicated. Am I a slut? Sometimes — and that's perfectly fine. At various moments, I've wanted to be "slutty," whether that meant intentionally promiscuous, or asking to be called a "slut" as part of role-playing with a partner. But I've also felt ashamed of myself when I've been told by potential dates that my sluttiness is what turned them off. I should have pretended to be harder to get, to like spanking and blowjobs a little less, to be flirty rather than forthright.

When we tell women (including ourselves) they shouldn't dress too provocatively, have sex too soon or sleep with "too many" partners, we participate in slut-shaming culture. We've got to stand up for the right to be promiscuous (if we want to be) while ridding "slut" of its power to sting.

To read more by Rachel Kramer Bussel go here.