Slut shaming and historical feminism

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I can recall that in the 70s, many single young women in my age group or slightly older seemed to present the attitude that they were more than ready to have sex with any guy they found genuinely attractive, without the need for "courtship" and without any presumption of exclusivity. Typically they used birth control pills on a year-in-year-out basis unlike what I would consider the usual practice nowadays which would be to start taking birth control after entering a relationship.

At least this is how I remember it. I won't claim that most young women that age were like this, just that it was typical and that these young women considered themselves feminists, if not Susan Brownmiller/Ti-Grace Atkinson style radical feminists.

My point about this is that this choice of lifestyle was seen as acceptable if not admirable from a feminist point-of-view, meaning that the woman chose to have sex, or not to have sex, with whomever she wished and not care how (male-dominated) society felt about it. These women did not consider themselves "sluts". To suggest otherwise would have been deemed misogynist.

Whereas nowadays we have slut-shaming, which I have no need to explain.

What changed, exactly? Or do I not accurately remember those days? I could try to support this claim with personal experiences I remember, but I prefer to avoid TL;DR.

Hasn't the slut shaming always been there, but social acceptance of female sexuality is what's less common? I guess viewpoints will always cycle because each generation must encounter and understand them in their own way.

I have similar memories MaxE (late '70s early '80s) and I'm not inclined to see the past through rose-tinted glasses.

I'm not sure what changed and don't really feel inclined to speculate, but I've also noticed a shift of attitude towards shaming women for taking charge of their sexuality, mostly done by other women (disclaimer: opinion based my own experience)

@HighLlama and @BenderRodriguez: it seems to me there may be less social acceptance of heterosexual female sexuality (as you have inferred). There seems, in fact, to be much greater social acceptance of lesbian sexuality. Of course I don't have a horse in that race so my observation may be off-target.

thats first world problems BECAUSE
women who complain about that word are not really the ones who sleep with random men.

This decade is comparatively reactionary. Once something new happens, it's perceived as a threat to civilization, because it changes traditionalist values. What's traditional is "always good", and novelty is always a threat. It's simple fear.
It reminds me of a similar thread on another forums which did exactly the same, except that it didn't talk about sexual liberation, it talked about video games. Video games were considered as a threat to moral values of the civilization, contrary to books, basically because books are old and video games are new. I think in the end, it's the same reactionary attitude as seeing more and more misogyny recently, and wanting women to be submissive to men in daily life and in bed. "Good old times", when everything was wonderful and perfect, and threatened by "modern moral decadence".
I agree with Bender, it seems like women do that much more often to each other. And it's often older women inside families who tell younger women that this or that isn't lady-like or moral.

The government created AIDS is what happened, no more free love

i 'd very much respect a women who quotes me and says:
"people call me a slut because i sleep around a lot, and i hate that!"


that's not going to happen. so the problem we have here is not that word.


women who complain about the word slut are not sluts. no one calls them anything. they only hate that they don't get enough attention from men.

only beautiful women who get all the attention/special treatment. that's why you rarely find a beautiful feminist xD

Last summer I was friends with someone who slept around a lot but she did not perceive herself as a slut or perceive that she was doing anything wrong but when someone would call her a slut she would get very angry because she did not want to be perceived as one. I think once she cried about it.

It's just not nice to call someone a slut.

It's none of anybody's business what a woman does in her free time. If she wants to have sex with many men, then that's her choice (if she's an adult).

would you be proud when your daughter sleeps with random men in her free time?

no parents in the world would love that. everyone wants to be proud of their sons/daughters and want them to be better than themselves.

In my first year of university I enjoyed one night stand, no strings attached sex. It was sexually liberating and taught me a lot about myself.

My female friend warned me that if i continued i would become a 'slut'. It may be just a word but it hurts, you just don't want people to think of you in that way. I enjoyed sex and felt like I was being told it was wrong for me to want it.

It didnt help that my friend (male) who also had autism had slept with over 30 women and had never been called a slut.

Exploring your sexually is normal and helped me understand myself and my needs. Now I'm in a long term relationship

Where did you get the idea that I would ENJOY it if my daughter slept around?

If she's an adult, I can only strongly advise her against this sort of behavior. And I would, too.

But I can't force her not to indulge in this behavior. And I certainly wouldn't call my daughter a SLUT.

yes yes i see, good. and older people should advise/not encourage younger people to do that etc etc



on a side note:

men themselves who sleep around a lot, who usually tend to be "scum of the earth" treat women they sleep with badly and don't respect them.
also the STD's thing. it's a scary world.

We're supposed to be "better than that". Whatever that means. I like sex too so I guess that means I'm a terrible woman as well. Let's start a club!

Two more points I wanted to make after posting my OP (and I typically do my posting on weekends).

1.) Regarding the sexually "liberated" young women I can recall from my youth, they often had high standards meaning that if not satisfied with their partner's "performance" they didn't hesitate to let him know. So in this regard, it wasn't necessarily a paradise for single men.
2.) All the casual sex I can recall from that era was consensual. It was understood that both people wanted it and 50% of the time the woman initiated. Rape existed but was practiced by actual rapists, you didn't have the big discussion about whether adequate consent had been requested. Of course, actual physical coercion would be considered rape but simply failing to ask for consent to perform a sex act was not (so far as I can remember). Also there wasn't what we hear of today regarding "hookup culture" whereby young women have sex solely due to social pressure or perform a "lesser" sex act on the guy as a way to get out of an uncomfortable situation. Young people of both genders had sex because they wanted to. At least that's how I remember it.