High-School Slut-Shaming Reaches a New Low

I have been to Piedmont, California. Hell, I was born near Piedmont, California. And I am currently thanking god my parents moved before I had the chance to attend Piedmont High School.

Why, you may wonder? It’s very pretty there: clean, sunny, tree-filled and typical of California laid-back affluence. In fact, it’s pretty typical of clean, affluent U.S. suburbs in general. Except for, you know, the whole high-school fantasy slut league thing.

Apparently, varsity athletes at Piedmont High have been receiving “score points” for sexual acts they perform with various of their fellow female students; sorry, I mean whores. This has been going on for the past five years, if not more, but was only officially addressed by the school a few days ago. Apparently, the league constituted “a part of bonding” for the teams during their sports seasons, according to Piedmont High’s principal.

To be fair, this is probably not Piedmont’s fault. It’s probably the fault of our whole freaking country, our whole freaking culture. This “slut league” is pretty much the apotheosis of every youth-of-the-nation/screenal zomboid generation fear we’ve been collectively nursing for the past decade—plus a healthy dose of good-old American misogynist/callous/abusive machismo. Basically it’s this plus this equals a whole lot of adolescent, testosterone-and-sexism fueled horror.

Because it’s not just that these boys are enthusiastically turning every woman in their life into a sex object; high school boys have been doing that for as long as there have been high school boys. No, the issue here is one of imagined exploitation vs. real, active misogyny, and the blurry line between the two that seems only to get blurrier the more sexploitation, objectification and slut-shaming become somehow acceptable practices in our society. When the unbridled competition and near-violent fervor of a fake quarterback draft is so apparently seamlessly applied to the sexist judgement and blatant exploitation of human beings, something is awry in our collective conception of acceptable real-world behavior. When boys are congratulating themselves on sexual conquest, equating that conquest with physical prowess and athletic achievement, and then shaming the girls they “conquer,” who have themselves been conditioned by years of social slut/virgin dichotomies—well, that pretty much sums every disgusting sex/power dynamic our society has to offer.

Here’s hoping someone in that community has the wherewithal to attempt a conversation far-reaching enough to target the social roots of these hideous attitudes. Because when this kind of awfulness goes down, we are all to blame.