English

‘Women are whores and men are pigs’

21 Apr 2017

Groningen student Milou Deelen uploaded a video to Facebook to draw attention to 'slut shaming' at student association Vindicat. Does the same thing happen in Nijmegen? Are female members of associations here also referred to as 'whores' and 'sluts'?

All three have long hair and big, happy eyes. All three are members of the same sorority and can regularly be found at the buildings of the Argus or Carolus Magnus student associations. And yes, they have been called ‘whore’ and ‘slut’ before by groups of men, the insults sometimes hurled at them directly. And they’re not afraid to talk about it. “I was dancing at Carolus when suddenly five guys came and stood around me,” says Anne, age twenty and the oldest of the three. “They started chanting: ‘Whore!’ ‘Whore!’ ‘Whore!'”

After the initial shock, Anne approached the instigator. She looked him dead in the eye and asked him why he would do that. But he ignored her and kept shouting, “Whore, whore, whore!” So she turned and walked away.

During the hazing process, male and female members are pitted against each other

Drinks
It usually happens late in the evening, after the drinks have been flowing for a while and the mood is loose and lively. It’s more common at Carolus Magnus than at Argus and tends to require one important condition: backup from other fraternity members. During the hazing process, male and female members are pitted against each other. Men are ‘pigs’ and women are ‘whores’. Pitting the sexes against each other creates solidarity, according to the trio.

Personal
But those words also get tossed around over the course of the year, at get-togethers and in bars. This despite the fact that very few female members refer to the men as pigs. Milou Deelen, a student in Groningen, was humiliated after being called ‘whore’ and ‘slut’ by members of her student association. So she decided to express herself on Facebook. “My sexuality belongs to me; it’s not material for your jokes.” Deelen’s video quickly made its way into the sorority app. While the three students find it incredibly sad that Deelen received negative feedback on social media, they don’t share her indignation for ‘slut shaming’. “The thing you have to understand,” says Sophie, “is that they don’t mean it like that. They don’t really mean what they’re shouting.” Evelien sees the humour in it. “I don’t take it personally if someone calls me a whore. If someone were to say that on the street, I’d be a bit shocked, but at a get-together like that it’s not meant to be taken seriously.”

There was one time when they stood up to this ‘slut shaming’. A first-year student from another sorority was celebrating a special occasion when members of a fraternity sang ‘whore’ instead of ‘hooray’. The woman in question was very upset.

The fraternity was held accountable a few days later and issued a sincere apology: they never intended to hurt her feelings. According to the three students, this is the only time a female sorority member took comments like these so seriously. Anne was upset when the five men stood in a circle around her and called her a whore, and she’s avoided the instigator ever since. But the incident doesn’t keep her up at night. Evelien’s advice is to just let it go. “It’s such a minor thing. It pales in comparison to the relationships you build in a student association, including with the guys who say things like this.”

Schoenen

Drunk
Macho behaviour is real, according to Robert, a member of Carolus Magnus. Although it does differ per fraternity. “In a fraternity, you talk about who’s hot and who’s not, but that’s normal. Exploring your sexuality is part of being a student.” According to him, members of study associations sleep with each other as well. “Although I do think it’s more common at social associations like these, where people tend to throw more parties and get drunk more often. As a result, you’re more likely to push your boundaries.”

He agrees that fraternity members do refer to women as ‘whores’ at fraternity events. “But it’s more like: we’re cool guys and you’re whores. It’s a running gag at the association to refer to women as whores.”

‘You always find out who’s slept with who’

According to Robert, it has nothing to do with sexuality. Incidentally, women who sleep around aren’t called ‘whores’, but ‘sluts’, says Robert, and that’s a hard secret to keep. “You always find out who’s slept with who.” The three members of the female sorority agree. “Everyone knows everyone here, so you can’t just sleep with anybody,” says Evelien. She does, however, suspect that fraternity and sorority members are more sexually active than the average student. “We go out a lot, meet a lot of people and drink quite a lot of alcohol.”

When Anne heard, through the grapevine, that she was ‘easy’, the comment bothered her. Once you’re labelled as ‘easy’ – or worse, as ‘slut’ – the stigma is almost impossible to get rid of. “I also think women who sleep around a lot are slutty. I think it’s something that’s deeply engrained in our culture. Men who have a lot of one-night stands are called players or womanisers, but women are called dirty, cheap and easy.”

The students’ names have been changed for privacy reasons.

[kader-xl] “Men who call women whores are just trying to assert their masculinity.”

Gender studies researcher Marijke Naezer thinks it was brave of Milou Deelen to call attention to the ‘slut shaming’ problem in the Groningen student association. “There’s a lot of pressure on women to just ‘get over it’ and keep things fun. The fact that slut shaming isn’t fun at all for a specific group of people is simply overlooked. That makes it incredibly hard to address misunderstandings, especially when they happen in a social context that also has a lot of positive connotations, like a student association. It’s a very human thing to just ignore the bad things.”

 

Naezer researched sexual standards among Dutch youths and was surprised at just how many words men used to denigrate women. She was also surprised that women are still condemned for being sexually active. Her conclusion: “Women aren’t free to do what they want with their sexuality.”

 

Social geographer Valerie de Craene from the University of Leuven recognises this assertion. She is conducting research on gender and sexuality in student nightlife in Flanders. Each year, a group of forty of her students goes out to collect information using in-depth interviews, group discussions and participatory observations. De Craene sees a clear gap between men and women when it comes to nightlife. She found that the later it gets, the more dramatic the strategies become to impress the opposite sex, which De Craene refers to as “very heterogeneous”. Alcohol naturally plays an important role. “The more students drink, the more they dare to express their sexuality. Alcohol can be used as an excuse for abnormal behaviour; as a way to excuse uncharacteristically slutty or macho actions.”

 

According to De Craene, men refer to women as ‘whores’ to showcase their masculinity. “They are sexually objectifying women in order to enhance their own masculinity. While it’s certainly no excuse, we should keep in mind how influential peer pressure is.” De Craene also understands why women don’t stand up for themselves when they’re called ‘whore’ or ‘slut’. “Not only are they constantly being told that this is all in good fun and that they shouldn’t take it so seriously, they won’t win any popularity contests by constantly pointing out how insulting comments like these are.” Nevertheless, she’s convinced that these comments do indeed affect women. “Our research found that many women adapt their behaviour to prevent unwanted comments like these; for example, by being less open to sexual contact or by not drinking too much in order to stay in control. All out of fear of being ostracised.” [/kader-xl]

This article was published in Dutch in Vox #8

4 comments

  1. Me wrote on 18 augustus 2018 at 08:14

    Those poor women were the victims of not only those men but of their own sex. Those guys or idiots if you prefer assume those women were whore because they had probably had women that age have sex with them. Young women especially after a few drinks will almost always pick the loud mouth prick to have sex with than the normal guy even if the loud mouth is uglier than a baboon’s ass.

  2. Erb wrote on 30 augustus 2018 at 22:38

    Wow!! Why are we still crying about this shit? Could somebody please put a steaming pile of shit in some dudes locker and write stinky slut on it!! Please….if a guys calls you this shit, you have to play fire with fire. This is an age old problem. Instead of sitting on you’re ass crying because someone called you a name. Do something about it! Make your own freaking hot list. Stop trying to be nice, please!! And make sure you put smallest to even smallerest dicks on your list please. Stand up and stop crying about this, please. Do something about it!! You can’t keep expecting different results if you keep doing the same thing. Since when did a guy give a shit about you crying or hurting your feelings. That was the point of them calling woman this anyway, to hurt you! Or Controle you. Also, woman who call other woman this, you are hypocrites! And a huge part of the problem! You can’t have a shit load of dumb excuses for why this girl is a slut and this girl isn’t. Just fuking stop!!

  3. Joyce E Franks wrote on 22 juli 2019 at 05:39

    hi:) man!what a crock of shit. when I was a teenager in the late 1960’s, boy’s would go ape-shit to screw anybody on their dates. knowing that many of them believed in the asinine theory to fuck, but not marry, a “whore” – “a woman like that”, I tried to communicate that they would be using this person only for sex. they were filled w/rage about her and so – I wondered: why would he be w/someone he “wouldn’t marry”? if someone used a man for, let’s say, a few drinks and then blamed him for being a “sucker”, that makes that person evil (period). double standards are very un-cool and “woe to ye hypocrites” is from the bible. I’d be terrified of retaliation from this “unique” woman for the rest of my life!! a woman knows when she’s being used just for sex and – what if:a Catholic woman, from poverty and child abuse (everywhere she was – not just from “dear old dad” )and constantly blamed and attacked from evil little psychos, thought:let them all know that (after “fast” sex) that they’re jolly-well fucked and she may return for “a little visit” w/them whenever it strikes her fancy to “collect” her payback? mister shit-for-brains wouldn’t be too quick to pull his shit, once he’s “wide awake”. may God have mercy on them;she doesn’t (rightly so…)

  4. Anonymous wrote on 29 november 2019 at 14:47

    The very severely mentally retarded women are everywhere now, and very extremely dangerous as well. Run Forrest Run.

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