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Women's Fiction
Slut!: Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation

Slut!: Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation

List Price: $23.95
Your Price: $16.29
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Provocative
Review: a truely original provocative feminist expos

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Thoughtful, provocative, important book
Review: An excellent book that deserves the attention it's been getting and more; it's something you would hope every teenager (and their parents) would read. Too many books about gender and sexuality degenerate into empty poltical posturing, but Leora is able to deftly connect her broader arguments with the very specific stories she tells, including her own. I came away from this book with a much greater understanding of sexual politics and outsiderhood in high school today -- and with a better understanding of my own experience as something of an outsider in high school as well. A very smart and very unsettling work.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sexual Double Standard Still Alive and Well
Review: As an unusually tall and bookish girl growing up in the suburbs, I was called a slut in junior high school despite my relative lack of experience with boys.I thought this was an anomolous event, but reading Leora Tanenbaum's expose opened my eyes. Slutbashing is a widespread trend in our country, permeating regional and class boundaries. Every school in every city, in every town, in every suburb has one. Sometimes these girls are sexually active -- and why shouldn't they be? More often they're just girls who defy the feminine stereotype -- are "different" in some indefinable way. Busty girls, of whom I was also one, get it really bad, and in these cases there is a shocking degree of teacher complicity. (Of course, adolescents don't tend to tolerate very much individuation, and unusual boys get picked on too. But as Tanenbaum points out, for girls the insults become sexualized.) Then there are the really heartbreaking cases: the girls who get raped and then shamed sexually.

Tanenbaum's book is a truly engaging collection of anecdote. It explains things going on all around us that most of us have never thought about. And, in this age of sexual evangelists, when t.v. nostalgists preach abstinence and virginity, Tanenbaum revives the idea that openness, education, and sexual tolerance are important for your young people. Her final section gives an invaluable list of resources for girls undergoing this unacceptable and humiliating form of verbal abuse. I wish such a list had been available when I was growing up. Bravo, Ms. Tanenbaum.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Enlightening!
Review: Has anyone ever stopped to think about the origin of the word "slut"? What is a "slut"? The word really has nothing to do with sex. The author's own story as well as other women's stories in this book had nothing to do with sex. This label that people put on women is really just an insult out of jealousy because of developing early, an outcast, or someone who is confidant in their sexuality. Really it is put on another person out of jealousy. This book is definitly recommended to anyone who has ever been called a slut or just to get more of an idea about the double standards between males and females.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: How People That Are Not Sluts They SomeTimes Act That Way
Review: I can not see how some people act that way knowing people is going to think they are and then tell them. Then they get mad i dont know why they act that way.Then they would be ready to fight the person and when they fight she say the person started it and tha is not right at all.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A topic that needs exploration but in a more objective manne
Review: I enjoyed reading Slut when a preview copy found its way into the office where I worked at the time. The personal stories were very touching and I feel that this is a topic - the labeling of women or girls who do not fit within traditional roles - definitely needs more exploration. But my main problem with the book was that the author, while admitting that the sample from which she worked was far from random, still extrapolates from it, making claims such as girls who were designated sluts seem to become more successful or driven or whatever. What about those she interviewed who didn't fit that mold? It left me wondering if she chose the stories that she did because they fit within her hypothesis. I was disappointed that, despite her own claim of subjectivity, she made conclusions that she extended to a larger group.

On the flip side, it's an interesting book to read, to learn of the personal experiences of girls who've been tormented by the label and how they have overcome it or moved on. If the author could have refrained from her generalizations, I think the stories would have been powerful enough to stand on their own.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A subject that needs discussing
Review: I found the book to be very interesting and she backed up the narratives with studies. The saddest thing is such a double standard exists.I especailly though the refences in the index were very helpful and would empower and assist other girls that are tormented by false rumors and violence.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a riveting read - close to heart
Review: I have recommended this book to everyone I know, and I hope that I will be able to pass it onto my daughters. Or rather, I hope my daughters will not be in a society that encourages the sexual double standard and punishes young women for natural feelings.

The book is non-fiction, and the author interviewed many women and girls about their experiences. Some of the book is quite academic, quoting from various studies and going over the history of this kind of behaviour. Other parts are retellings of people's experiences, and analyses of those.

Reading this book brought back many memories and emotions. I realized that my experience as a teenager was not unique. I had already done my own thinking, but it was great to read that someone else had come to the same conclusions. That there still is a sexual double standard, despite the sexual revolution, and that women are punished by both men and women for having sexual urges.

One redeeming factor was that she definitely doesn't place all the blame for the harassment on teenage boys. She talks a lot about competitiveness between girls and how the girls are usually worse to each other. Kinda like the person who seems most homophobic is the gay one? Yeah, like that. And also about how often the adults don't report it, or stop it, or ignore complaints because they see it as correct behaviour that keeps girls in line even as it is damaging their self-esteem forever.

It's amazing, the more people I talk to about it, the more people bring up their own experiences. Everyone knows someone who experienced the phenomena, or they went through it themselves. Even so-called "good girls" will be able to relate to the book in that the ways in which they constrained themselves.

It's about time someone wrote a book about this.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a riveting read - close to heart
Review: I have recommended this book to everyone I know, and I hope that I will be able to pass it onto my daughters. Or rather, I hope my daughters will not be in a society that encourages the sexual double standard and punishes young women for natural feelings.

The book is non-fiction, and the author interviewed many women and girls about their experiences. Some of the book is quite academic, quoting from various studies and going over the history of this kind of behaviour. Other parts are retellings of people's experiences, and analyses of those.

Reading this book brought back many memories and emotions. I realized that my experience as a teenager was not unique. I had already done my own thinking, but it was great to read that someone else had come to the same conclusions. That there still is a sexual double standard, despite the sexual revolution, and that women are punished by both men and women for having sexual urges.

One redeeming factor was that she definitely doesn't place all the blame for the harassment on teenage boys. She talks a lot about competitiveness between girls and how the girls are usually worse to each other. Kinda like the person who seems most homophobic is the gay one? Yeah, like that. And also about how often the adults don't report it, or stop it, or ignore complaints because they see it as correct behaviour that keeps girls in line even as it is damaging their self-esteem forever.

It's amazing, the more people I talk to about it, the more people bring up their own experiences. Everyone knows someone who experienced the phenomena, or they went through it themselves. Even so-called "good girls" will be able to relate to the book in that the ways in which they constrained themselves.

It's about time someone wrote a book about this.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: As a guy...
Review: I thought this book was great. It looks at the double standard that is the slut label in America. A good read for women as well as men.


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