Men Love Sluts: How the Fear of Bigger Penises Fuels Slut-Shaming
By: Elisabeth Ovesen
Tags: Feminism, Mental Health, Life Lessons, Advice, Relationships

Photo: Lil’ Kim from the album Hardcore (1996)

In 1996 I was eighteen years old and had been a stripper for two years already. I hung out with a group of drug dealers, pimps, professional athletes, and a crew of four other strippers I booked for private dances with some of my rich and famous friends, who I met in the private gentlemen’s club where I worked daily double shifts. I’d been living on my own since I was sixteen years old and pulling in no less than a thousand dollars a day. I was a troubled teenage dropout, a runaway, and one hell of a hustler.

Around that time, many young women, like myself, were becoming brazenly unapologetic about their sexuality. In my peer group, we railed against society for its judgment of sexually autonomous women and refused to be judged and shamed by patriarchal conformists. Back then, we just called it not giving a fuck, and we had no idea how brave we were. Those were the days of our Lord and Savior, Lil’ Kim, when her piercing lyrics reminded us that our bodies were our own, that we could do with them what we wished, and say fuck anybody who tried to make us feel differently.

‘Big Momma Thang’ from the album Hard Core (1996)

In her lyrics, Kim defiantly made anal sex a viable consideration for young black women with the admittance that she could, “Take it in the butt, yes, yes, what.”

Kim assured us sex wasn’t scary or shameful by bragging about her own prowess with, “I used to be scared of the dick, now I throw lips to the shit; handle it like a real bitch.”

She asserted both financial and sexual dominance, demanding to be satisfied as she proclaimed, “Baby, it’s a Big Momma thing. Can’t tell by the diamonds in my rings? That’s how many times I wanna cum, twenty-one, and another one, and another one.”

Lil’ Kim’s rhetoric was sexual napalm, and the fact that it was oozing out of the pretty mouth of a little Black girl from Brooklyn, was shocking to much of the world but to me, Kim was invigorating. Under the guidance of The Notorious B.I.G., she was the maestro of my life’s soundtrack, telling tales of sexual agency that weren’t much different from mine. Even as a teen, I knew the societal rules and bounds that only applied to women were bullshit.

I was already a young feminist.

A decade later, I’d come far from where I started. Approaching on my thirtieth birthday, I was a married mother of one, a stepmother to another, living in a million-dollar house I bought with the money I made as a New York Times bestselling author — an honor I earned by writing stories about my wild life and times. If Lil’ Kim’s music were to manifest into a book, it would read a lot like my first one, Confessions of a Video Vixen, published under my pen name (and alter ego) Karrine Steffans, in 2005.

In 2006, I began studying female psychology, the roots of sexual shame, and male ego fragility. As a regular on the university lecture circuit, and with my first book being taught in university Gender and Hip-Hop Studies classes around the country, I was given access to some of the most influential professors on these topics, as well as students trying to understand the resurgence of Black female sexual dominance in art, literature, and music. I learned more than I taught, and it was that on-the-job education, as well as my life experiences, studies, and the teachings of professor Kimberly “Lil’ Kim” Jones that forged the way for my career as an author, keynote speaker, teacher, and coach.

It was around 2007 that I developed a concept that seemed obvious to me, although most men and women would deny it’s validity — men love sluts. The problem is, just as our patriarchal society has made women feel self-conscious about their sex and sexuality, it has made men feel equally as self-conscious about loving and being with sexually autonomous women. In this and many regards, patriarchy hurts men, too.