Just Because We're In Our Slut Era Doesn't Mean We Fuck

Open up Twitter. Scroll past the political rants and analysis of staged Hollywood drama. What do you see? A cacophony of tweets about our slut era.

“Slut era” I say, as I lie on the couch and rewatch Pride and Prejudice (2005) for the thousandth time.”. 

“In my slut era (getting high and staying up all night reading erotic fanfiction)”. 

“Thlut era” i whisper, as I pop my retainers in for the night.” 

It doesn’t seem very, uh, slutty does it? Keep up! That’s not the point. Being a slut is now a school of thought, an ideology, and perhaps (this is a stretch) a religion. 

Or, simply put: “slut era! (in theory but not in practice)”. 

Hear me out. #SlutTok has a chill 10.5m views. We’re obsessed with graphic fem rap. Wet Ass Pussies are on our radios and at the top of our charts, breaking the record as the longest running number one song by a female hiphop artist in Australian history. Fetishwear has moved from red-lit clubs to the red carpet, paraded by Dua Lipa and Julia Fox alike. Lingerie has stopped being merely innerwear and has become outerwear, too. Fashion is more about negative space than material. Skin is the plat du jour, promiscuity is served up in abundance. Our favourite It Girl, Chloe Cherry, is a porn star. Sex is the pulsing through-line of the zeitgeist. 

Welcome to our slut era. 

But here’s the gag: the aesthetics of sex seem to be a lot more appealing than the actual act itself. According to numerous sources, Gen Z is in a sex recession, with The Australia Talks survey reporting that Gen Z Australians are about as sexually active as people aged 75 and over (wtf), with only 37% saying they have sex at least once a month. It is easy to conflate the idea that in a more sex positive society, people would be fucking more – but as they say, theoretics doth not equal rooting. 

Not to be all “this can be traced to the pandemic,” but: this can be traced to the pandemic. 

With a physical distance from society at large, the humble thirst trap was one of the only government-approved acts of sexual expression. Nudes, once only discussed with whispered horror on the playground, became a perfectly normal thing to post to Instagram. Wearing a dissociative pout, crotches tastefully cut off just below curly crowns of pubic hair, pillowy breasts half covered by angles of obscurity, the nude became an artform. 

The “slut” has gone through a few iterations to land where she is today. The word was first used in 1402 by Thomas Hoccleve in the Letter of Cupid, to describe someone who was slovenly or dirty. In 1664, Samuel Pepys (a naval administrator who chronicled his life with the feverish self involvement of a teenage girl) refers to his servant as an “admirable slut”, a playful and endearing term. Its newer definition, a “bold or impudent girl or hussy” was first seen in the late 15th Century, but failed to gain notoriety in the lexicon, until Charles Dickens used it in – perhaps his least memorable novel – Nicholas Nickleby. 

There is this interview I think about quite a lot: Jesse Lee Peterson, American conservative broadcaster and pastor, is filming at a SlutWalk, a movement started in retaliation to a charming Toronto police officer who, in a stroke of genius, said that women should “avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised”. The interviewee, Samirah Raheem, resplendent in a sequined butterfly top, a barbed tongue and pigtails swinging like nunchucks, steamrolls his questioning. 

“What makes you a slut?”

“Because I own my body, my body is not a political playground, it’s not a place for legislation. It’s mine and it’s my future.”

“So you sleep around with a lot of men.” 

“No, actually I'm a virgin.”

“Yeah so you’re not a slut.”

“Yes, you can be a slut – because a slut is not what you made it, Jesse, a slut is what I made it. A boss, getting money, taking the mic, turning life around, taking over Hollywood.”

The new slut era is all about self objectification: the knowledge and the power that you hold in knowing that you are hot. You’re a slut because of the way you posture yourself; because of the way you dress yourself; because of the way you interact with others. The power of self objectification is owning the light in which you are seen, rather than having another’s gaze imprinted on you. It’s redefining sex as a public expression, rather than a private act. 

So, post the nude, flirt with your barista like your life depends on it, root a hottie - or don’t, it doesn’t matter.