October 15th, 2019

I've known about The UnSlut Project for a couple of years now and only recently decided to share my story. I guess I had to come to terms with it personally before I felt confident enough to let others know about my experiences with slut shaming and bullying. I do want to remain anonymous, though. My reputation in the eighth grade was that I was a pretentious, unlikable girl when really I was just shy and struggling with serious social anxiety and depression. When I got my first "real" boyfriend that year, I started to come out of my shell. While I did have a lot of friends, there was an equal number of girls who just didn't like me for one reason or another. I kept dating this boy on and off throughout the first couple years of high school, and during my sophomore year I got pregnant and my life snowballed. The day I found out I was pregnant, I decided to tell a couple of my friends in confidence about the news. I wasn't prepared to tell my parents yet. I was only sixteen - I could barely understand it myself, let alone know how to tell such devastating news to my mother. I never got the chance to tell her myself. I went to school the next day and rumors started swirling, which I quickly denied. I went to my boyfriend's house after school ended and on the drive home, my mother called me. Four girls, one of which I considered a good friend, had put a note on my porch that said "your slut daughter is preggo!" My mom asked me if it was true, I broke down and told her, and she walked away from me. Our relationship was in shambles for five months, at least until I found out that the baby I decided to keep was a girl. I found out I was pregnant in March of 2008, with only several months left of my sophomore year. That time period was a nightmare. Nearly all of my friends abandoned me because they simply couldn't understand what I was going through and how much I needed their support. The girls who didn't like me were even worse. They screamed "slut!" at me in the hallways, spread rumors that I got pregnant on purpose, and some even 'joked' that they would push me down a flight of stairs. I was the school pariah, the "dumb slut." My boyfriend, who attended a different high school at this point, faced no social repercussions, whereas my little sister was constantly asked what it was like to have a slutty knocked-up sister. The shame and torment I faced was so overwhelming that I completed my junior year via online schooling. Removing myself from the environment was the best decision I could make for myself at the time, allowing me to continue furthering my education while being able to stay home with my daughter, Addison, who was born in November of 2008. I went back to school for senior year and most of the bullying had subsided, but I was still known as "that girl with the baby." In retrospect, I don't regret anything. I made the right decision for me. I am now 22, a single mom, and a full-time student. The years following the birth of my daughter were filled with support from my family and I have made lifelong friends who accept me. But the awful, undeserved torment I received is unforgivable. I still have trouble trusting people and face the same social stigma of being a young mom. I hope that my daughter never has to feel the way I felt when I was a teenager - that having sex (and possibly facing an unplanned pregnancy) makes you a whore. There is no such thing.