You're A Slag
- Carla Crivaro
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
‘Merry Christmas, people in the village will be calling you a slag.’
Were more or less the words that came out of someone’s mouth this week to me. Not in this exact sentence - but it was the overall conversation. I live in a small village. Most people know each other. And they definitely like to talk! It's come from my appearances in the national press talking about my own personal journey and sexual awakening.
And so when this person said it, what happened? How did I feel? In that moment I checked in with my body - how am I feeling right now with being called ‘a slag’. There was nothing. No reaction at all. No tightness or contraction. No heaviness or weight. Nothing.
In fact, if anything I was feeling slight amusement. And so, for my non-UK followers, here’s the definition of ‘slag’ courtesy of ChatGPT:
In UK English, “slag” is a strong insult.
Primary meaning: a derogatory term for a woman, implying she’s sexually promiscuous.
Tone: offensive, shaming, and outdated.
Verb form (“to slag someone off”): to criticise or bad-mouth someone harshly. This usage is common and less gendered.
Context matters, but as a noun for a person, it’s generally considered unacceptable.
And then I asked, what does promiscuous mean…
Promiscuous means having many sexual partners, often casually and without emotional commitment.
It’s usually used judgementally, especially towards women.
Over the last year, for what it’s worth things have been ‘dry’ on the partnered front, this is through choice as I unravel from the anxiety and dysregulation from a past relationship that wasn’t emotionally safe for me. Before the dry spell I was in a monogamous relationship. And then before that I spent the final 2 years of my marriage non-monogamous.
And during my time of non-monogamy, was I having many sexual partners casually? Approximately 10 in 2 years - I’d say that’s a ‘yes’ but I think these things can be quite subjective.
So… there is truth to the statement! I have been promiscuous.
Here’s the thing right, we only allow people to offend us if we choose. I have done so much inner-work that I am in the position to RECLAIM my promiscuity. Because here’s what I know to be true from my own personal journey and from working with men and women around sexuality.
When a woman is consciously connected to her sexuality and fully reclaims it, she is unfuckwithable. Because, quite frankly, she doesn’t give a shit anymore. Once a woman is connected to her healthy sexual expression - however that looks for her - she has released the shame. And it’s the shaming of a woman’s sexuality where she is controlled.
Modern biology and anthropology is finding that it was women’s promiscuity before the agricultural revolution that ensured the brain development of humans, that enable social cohesion and cooperation. It was BECAUSE of a woman’s promiscuity that humans have the brain size they do, the attachment system and the social structures. (Further reading around this - Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means For Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, and Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About WOmen And Lust And Infidelit is Untrue by Wednesday Martin)
What happened? The agricultural revolution was the first step in breaking down the original way of doing things. The need to know who was the heir to the land meant restricting a woman’s sexuality could determine who was in the blood line to receive property.
When religion came along it was a perfect way to control women - shame them. A sexual woman is by many religion’s standards is considered a dangerous woman. And of course she is.
Because a woman who doesn’t give others permission to shame her, cannot be controlled. And power in the last millennia comes from the ability to be able to control people - not empower them.
And so the labelling, the ostracising served to diminish and control women. To keep them compliant.
It worked.
Until now.
I have many women who are coming to me, particularly in their perimenopause phase of life who are experiencing a ‘sexual awakening’. They are realising that lying their passively being done to, not speaking up for their desires and not asking for what they want is no longer serving them. They want to experience pleasure. They want to feel worthy of asking for what they want in the bedroom (and even out of it!) And they don’t want to accept shit sex for fear of hurting their partner’s ego.
And so this is why women become ‘dangerous’ - because they speak up for themselves and they increase their standards.
Now I want to be clear that I haven’t always been ‘promiscuous’. In fact, in my late teens and 20s I was very careful in only sleeping with boyfriends. I greatly feared the ‘slag’ label. I feared not bagging myself a husband (because that’s where my worth as a woman was). So I played by the rules. The result? Sexual repression and a strong judgment of women who didn’t comply with this ‘rule’.
Why the judgement? Because doing shadow work and learning about the human psyche and parts work taking myself through it and guiding others, I have learnt that our judgements of others actually reflect a part of ourselves that we are in denial of or where we are not meeting a part of ourselves in a way we would like but not owning it.
As I did my healing work around my sexuality, I reclaimed my inner-slut, my ‘slag’. Because once she’s is claimed - she can’t be used against you. And so the women who throw judgment at other women for being too sexy, too wealthy, too visible, too….
What they are doing is actually not meeting a part of themselves that they secretly want to (even though they might not be aware of it yet, hence it being called shadow work because it lives in the shadows of the psyche).
So if you’re a woman who is judging other women for expressing their sexual selves - these women are a mirror. Where are you not meeting your full capacity for sexual expression?
And now the men… this is where it gets interesting! I work with men individually around their sexual ‘performance’, their dating and relationships. I have spoken to countless men too around sex, sexual performance and relating.
Those men who care about a woman’s sexual ‘experience’ (hate the word body count - sounds like an assassination!) are those who are most insecure. These are the men who choose to date attractive women only - their self-esteem is so low that they are very much impacted by how others perceive them. So they choose women who on the surface level, improve their apparent status - like a fancy car, to make themselves feel better.
The men who felt ‘not good enough’ in the bedroom and were getting support around their erections, premature ejaculation and bedroom skills felt the most worried about how many sexual partners a woman had - because she had something to compare to. It highlighted to him where he might be lacking. Women have this idea that all men are confident in the bedroom. Most men, are in fact NOT confident in the bedroom. They have a certain ‘power’ from you not knowing that he can’t get you to orgasm. If you think your body is the problem he came blame you rather than learn what you might like and then get good at it. And many are not vulnerable enough to say, ‘hey, I don’t feel confident’. And so what they do is project their insecurity onto you and make it about you being ‘a slag’.
The men who were’t getting any at home were also the ones more likely to be slut-shaming. The reason being the lack of connection, intimacy, feeling seen wasn’t there for them. Sex for most men isn’t ACTUALLY about sex, it’s been conditioned in them that it’s the only way to express any intimacy - sad I know, so when the sex goes, they have lost that connection. They don’t know any other way of connecting - unless of course they do the inner-work to undo the social conditioning of what it means to be a man.
There are men who have a very much Madonna-Whore complex about women and their sexuality. So women are either the Madonna (Mother Mary of Jesus, who was a virgin). Or they see women as a whore. So… because of this black/white positioning they can only see their own wife as a Madonna, and have limited and ‘vanilla’ sex. This can come from religious trauma and also an unhealed wound with their own mother (see article here). These are the men in my village who fear that if their partners spend time with me they will want to sleep around with other men and want non-monogamy. This is quite simply a fear of rejection or abandonment that they aren’t aware of. An inner-child part of themselves worried that if their partner becomes a sexual woman that she might leave and not want them. These men are surviving in their relationship because of the status quo - neither them or their partner are living their relationship to its full capacity. Because… when I have worked with couples (and women) to support the woman in becoming her full expression - in fact the first place she wants to explore that with his her partner. Unfortunately, a lot of men then struggle to keep up with her desires and needs and then need to process a lot of their own emotions around self-worth and ‘enoughness’ to be able to meet her there. They either need to heal those parts of themselves and meet her where she’s at, or then the relationship can crumble.
Another thing I hear which is an attempt to devalue women who are promiscuous is that ‘it’s easier for women to get sex than it is for men’. Yes, women are the gatekeepers to sex - and they don’t want to be. Although this might be the case, just because a woman CAN sleep with ‘anyone’, it doesn’t mean she WANTS to sleep with everyone. This is a misconception that people have had of me and why I get really creepy and inappropriate messages on my social media.
‘If she talks about sex, shares her own sexual experiences it means she’s easy and I can have sex with her’.
Erm, no buddy, it doesn’t. At the few sex parties I have been to, I said way more ‘nos’ than I did ‘yeses’. As a woman you have to be super strong. Saying ‘no’ to a man is difficult because their unreliability of how they will react - often angry, insistent, manipulative, sorrowful to gain empathy… There is a sense of entitlement, especially in certain situations, that if I am there, for some reason my body autonomy should be abandoned to meet the expectations of a man. This is why I ONLY go to sober and conscious events - because we heavily practice the saying and receiving of the word ‘no’. (Read about my experience of entitlement here and about leaky energy here.)
This is why I encourage women to go to sober and conscious events too - to feel empowered and not say ‘yes’ to make a man feel better about himself. It’s exactly what I teach my women about the dating apps, even for sexual encounters - get clear on what you want, video call, don’t give your number until you’ve spoken and you can change your mind at any time - you are not leading anyone on.
We as women can be both promiscuous and choosy - I know I was. My online dating system on Feeld (a dating app for the sexually adventurous) was a smooth process that cleared a lot of the crap so I could meet men who were respectful and thoughtful lovers.
One of the reasons many women fear being able to express their sexual selves is often because of the stigma surrounding it. However, I do see a deep desire in so many women to unlock that part of themselves. The problem is the world is set up to victim blame women, just a couple of instances where women have had their underwear choices be a factor in whether or not they were ‘asking for it’ is an attempt at using a woman’s relationship to her body, her clothing and sexuality as a means of victim blaming and objectification of women, one incident in Ireland and one in Scotland - and many more that won't have been reported. (And before we go on the ‘falsely accused’ bandwagon for men - a man is more likely to be sexually assaulted himself than be falsely accused of rape).
Women can fear being sexually authentic because of how society might react to that.
And so… it’s for all of the above that I am visible and potent in what I talk about, what I share and how I show up. It’s why I put myself out there on the internet, on stages, in rooms to talk about my personal journey. Because change happens by being the change we want to see.
When I share a post, when a journalist asks me about my personal journey or asks for expert commentary I will always lead from the women’s sexual empowerment. I will always speak openly and honestly. Not everyone is able to or ready to work with me in my courses or 1-1 - but the more people I can impact and show that there is nothing to be ashamed of, the more women who celebrate my posts, do their own sexual healing work and go out there as liberated women, the more we can change the world. The more we break away the stigma. We get to have conversations about sex. We get to feel comfortable with our children talking about sex from a pleasure based perspective rather than a fear one. Rather than sniggering, giggling and name calling like a primary school playground - we get to as adults have conversations with each other and share our own struggles and feel seen.
The more we get to live in a world where we can ask for what we want, how we want it and…. Feel comfortable saying and hearing a ‘no’.
Now wouldn’t that be a wonderful world to live in?
And so, if all of that makes me a ‘slag’ then yes, I suppose I am, I’ll take that title too.
Carla Crivaro is a trauma-informed and certified Sex, Love & Relationship Coach, she works with men and women internationally to reach their goals in delicious sex, profound love and authentic relationships. Carla helps men and women understand themselves and each other, sexually and relationally, in and out of the bedroom. You can reach her at hello@carlacrivaro.com.
Other resources which are supportive around this topic are:
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