Slut. Is she?

Psychological abuse is considered also as an emotional abuse which includes being verbally exposed to shaming, intimidation or manipulation and it can involve a current partner, ex-partner or a stranger. In Italy 26% of women have been psychologically abused by a current partner and 46,2% by an ex-partner (data taken from Istat, 2014). Indeed, it happens every day that women are sexualized in many different ways: they are called «whore» or «slut» without expecting consequences, just because someone got angry with them or is jealous. It is clear that it is also a matter of language and how people use it. This behaviour has been shown with many of my male friends, they would call girls a «whore» because they were dressed up for the disco or because they have had sex with different guys just for fun. Instead, if one of them had the opportunity to sleep with a girl just for fun, the others would greet him respectfully the day after. I came to the conclusion that if a guy has sex with different girls, this is named «cool», but if a girl sleeps with different guys, she is a «whore». I don’t agree with this behaviour, so I wanted to know more about it and I brought up this issue by making interviews with both, strangers in the city center in Verona and some acquaintances of mine. The results confirmed some points of my thesis and confuted some others — which is very interesting.