The first time I was called a slut, I was in sixth grade. I wasn't sexually active at the time, so it didn't bother me. But then I started to come into my sexuality in 10th grade and lost my virginity to Dave*, an older boy who went to my school. It was very impromptu — he wasn't my boyfriend or even someone I knew well. We were hanging out, and I was curious. The idea just popped into my head, I'm ready. I want to have sex. We did, and it was fun. I really enjoyed it.

Afterward, I called my friend and told her what happened. She asked, "Are you OK?" and sounded concerned. I was like, "I feel great!" I was happy — I wanted to celebrate! "I want to hear you say that Monday morning," she replied, insinuating that at school it would be a totally different situation — and she was right.

It was the topic of conversation at school on Monday morning. I walked into the cafeteria, and a senior who was sitting at a table of other senior guys yelled from across the room, "Hey, Winnie. You're walking kind of funny." It was a like a frickin' John Hughes movie. I shouted, "Fuck you!" I'm not one to run to the bathroom and cry, but it was humiliating. Dave must have told people we slept together. I never confronted him. I didn't understand why it was such a big deal to everyone else. People hooked up all the time at my school — you start texting on the weekends, as if you're dating, then you hook up, and on Monday, you don't even make eye contact. All my friends did it. I didn't feel bad or "used." I thought Dave was using me the same way I was using him. I didn't have feelings for him. He didn't even speak to me in school.

But then I started hooking up with his friend Sean* — and really liked him. We saw each other every weekend but never said we were dating. Our school had more of a hookup culture, but our relationship wasn't a one-off thing either. Sean told Dave about us, out of guilt, and then things got crazy. I'd be at these parties where senior guys would come up to me, and say, "You're a whore. How could you do that to Dave? How dare you!" I was like, "Are you kidding? Is this real?"

It wasn't just parties. A friend texted one day, "Don't go on Facebook." I was supposed to be writing an essay for school, but instead went on Facebook and saw a photo of Sean standing in front of a chalkboard that said, "I hit it first." The caption was, "But did you?" Someone commented, "Is this Kim Kardashian or Winnie?" It got 60 likes. I started shaking as I scrolled through the list of likers — I didn't know anyone. It was horrible. I was like, 'Who are these people?' I was so upset. I couldn't wrap my head around it, and I certainly couldn't write an essay after that.

Sean never brought it up, which felt like a huge betrayal. And I did not ask him about it. He was older, and I was a little intimidated. Plus, we had a really dysfunctional relationship. We continued to hang out every weekend, but still didn't say we were "together." I really liked him, but I think he was ashamed that I had a bad reputation. It sucked, because I knew that his girl friends would talk about me in front of him. He told me they did — but he never responded, which was hurtful. He never stood up for me publicly — except once. It was early on in our relationship, and an older boy said, "Don't even talk to this whore. Dave's your friend." Sean knocked him out literally right in front of me. I appreciated that.

I was an underclassman, and the older girls were the most hurtful. The only reason my friends and I even got invited to parties was because guys wanted to hook up with us — and the older girls hated that. This one group of senior girls ran the Women's Forum Club at my school and hosted talks on feminism, but then would call me a whore at parties. I was confident, but not to the point of, "I'm fine — you're just stupid." It was painful and started to really eat away at me, and my grades really suffered that year as a result.

A lot of it was my own paranoia — it felt like people were talking about me all the time. And then there were those instances where I'd be washing my hands in the bathroom, and a girl would stare at me with her arms crossed, not saying anything. Or, the groups of older girls would blatantly ignore me when I showed up at parties. I felt this awkward tension everywhere and started having anxiety. I also lost my work ethic. I go to a very good private school and my teachers expect me to do well, so they were perplexed when I stopped turning in assignments. A few gave me extra chances — one even let me turn in a major assignment late, but I just could not sit down and do the work. I was a mess. That year, I failed history and Spanish.

My mom saw I was struggling. She's a strong feminist. I finally confided in her about what was happening. She said, "If you went into having sex feeling confident, there's no reason why you should change your perspective now." That really helped me — at least I had that understanding within myself: I wasn't ashamed of having sex with Dave, or Sean for that matter. I didn't do anything wrong. I never felt that internal turmoil. She was like, "It's your life. It's your body. It's your sexuality." My mom has always been there in that way — and helped me own my feelings.

I'm in a theater group called The Arts Effect that also really helped me understand my feelings. Sex is so stigmatized at my high school — everyone is doing it, but no one talks about it in a real way. I never had a chance to really break down how I was feeling about losing my virginity or being slut-shamed until we started to work on a play about slut culture. Katie Cappiello and Meg McInerny started The Arts Effect specifically to work with young girls about issues like these that affect them. We create scripts based on topics that teen girls relate to, and then develop them into plays by discussing and debating these ideas.

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My sophomore year, conversations around sex were really prevalent in my theater group — cast members and friends had experienced sexual violence. It was very real, and SLUT: The Play started with these conversations and grew into a play about a girl called Joey who is raped by two friends in the back of a cab on her way to a party, and the fallout from that. I was cast as Joey. I had never been sexually assaulted, but I'd certainly felt betrayed and violated. I'd also been uncomfortable while hooking up with certain guys. I didn't say no, but was like, When is this going to be over? This is awful. Sometimes I'd even pretend to fall asleep if I didn't want to hook up anymore. I thought it was easier than saying, "Can you stop? I'm going to leave now." It would always be late at night, at some party — and 9 out of 10 times the guy would say, "Winnie? Winnie?" and then continue doing whatever he was doing. I remember thinking like, 'Oh my god! He doesn't even care that I'm not into it!'

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This never happened with Sean though — I really liked hooking up with him and always felt really respected when we were together that way. But I had hooked up with enough boys to realize that my experience with him was unique. My experience with Dave was not unique — it's part of the slut-shaming world we live in, and working on the play helped me see this. Joey feels used, disempowered, violated, and misunderstood. Even though I was never sexually assaulted, I connected to Joey's emotions rather than her specific experiences. So many girls have told me they feel the same way. It validates their experiences in a way that society won't.

The process of talking about what happened to Joey and breaking it apart with the group, like "Wow, why does this suck so much? I really wanted to have sex, and now I really feel shitty about it. Why?" helped me deal with what people were saying about me at school. I started to feel confident in my right and ability to take ownership of my decisions and not feel badly about them. It also helped me become dismissive of the people that hurt my feelings.

The first performance of Slut was that summer, right before I started junior year. I was nervous. It's 86 pages of text, and I'm onstage throughout the entire hour-and-a-half production. I was still feeling really jittery about what had happened at school and suddenly there were these posters of my face with the word "slut" over my mouth. I was so humiliated by the whole experience that I did not share the posters on Facebook or Instagram even though were were supposed to help promote the play. But I was like, I'm not posting pictures on my personal Facebook of my face with the word "slut" over my mouth and giving Susan Smith* another reason to write messages like, "Wow, how ironic." As it was, I knew people were already saying things like, "Winnie's in a play called Slut. Classic." People really didn't understand what it was about, so I spent a lot of time explaining, "Actually, it's about a sexual assault. So stop."

I was also embarrassed about my friends coming to see it that first time, which was weird. But they all loved it. Some have seen it six times! Sean came — and he loved it too. He even cried. I think seeing me in the play helped him understand what happened to me — and how it made me feel. We continued to see each other, and he was more open with people about our relationship, which was great. He's in college now but we still talk and see one another when he comes home.

I've done the play a dozen times now. The girls who come see the play identify with it — but the boys are truly shocked and transformed the first time they see it. Boys don't get slut-shamed or sexually assaulted — at least not at my school. So when they see it happening up on the stage, they understand what it's really like for girls living in a slut-shaming culture. After seeing it for the first time, my guy friends were really uncomfortable with me. They didn't really know what to say. When I asked one what he thought, he said, "I feel really, like … I feel like I've fucked up." He really connected to it — and I realized that even though he's a pretty good guy, he saw for the first time how hard it is for girls. A lot of kids from my school came to see it — they know me, and my reputation. I think I gained a lot of respect as a result of this play.

The play empowered me. It gave me a voice — the best counterattack to slut-shaming. Slut-shaming is part of rape culture — it's all connected. When we call girls sluts or whores, we disempower them. It promotes the idea that you can do anything to a slut without consequence, because she does not matter. I did not understand why the word "slut" was hurtful to me before this play. I did not get it — I liked having sex. Why was that bad? But then I learned that it is a way to disempower women. Once I understood that, being called a slut hurt and meant a lot less. That's not about me — that's on whoever is calling me a slut. That's their problem, not mine.

I don't know if the way people at school treat me has changed that much, but my response to it has. I was sitting at my lunch table junior year and a group of senior girls were sitting 10 feet away, commenting about an Instagram photo of me. I went over and said, "What are you doing? It's not funny." I never would have done that before.

It's not our fault that girls get pinned against each other. It's the culture we live in. We all need to rise above it and to be empowered — and that means training yourself. I don't use the word "slut" and I'm appalled when people do. Even if I want to call a girl a slut, I will literally stop myself and say things like, "Maybe she's just experimenting. That's totally cool." I'll say it and say it until I believe it. The more we get comfortable in embracing and uplifting other girls, the greater chance it becomes a trend.

Winnie will be starring in a special production of SLUT: The Play, on May 19, 2015 at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C., which is being presented by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) among many others, specifically to raise awareness — and impact legislation — about the cost of slut-shaming and rape culture on teen girls.

*Names have been changed.

From: Seventeen

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2884310&forum_id=2#27922416)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2884310&forum_id=2#27922422)

http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Emma_Sulkowicz

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2884310&forum_id=2#27922499)

http://i.imgur.com/VPLSHZl.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2884310&forum_id=2#27922665)

Would pretend to be liberal for

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2884310&forum_id=2#27923067)