While checking out a friend's Flickr uploads, I came across a photo that instantly took me back almost 9 years.  It was the smiling face of a girl who had once looked down her nose at me for being such a slut.  She was a technical virgin back in those days, bouncing from guy to guy faster than I did, doing everything except letting them put their penises in her vagina.  A holier-than-thou cocktease.

If you're like me, you will always remember the teen girls who were catty bitches to you, even if they've grown up, perhaps matured, and through some holy-shit-it's-a-small-world twist, gone on to become friends with someone you know.

This is one of many examples of why I'll never, ever get the "sisterhood" bullshit espoused by feminism.  Most of my experiences with women prior to sex work were them picking on me - for being a tomboy, for being the chubby girl, for being a slut.  The feminists would like to dismiss this sort of bad behavior by saying it's all just because of the evil patriarchy conspiracy, but I happen to know first-hand that women are capable of doling out plenty of oppression and emotional violence all by themselves.  When people refuse to acknowledge that, it makes me assume they must have grown up skinny, popular, chaste, and otherwise entirely conforming to the unwritten laws of the tribe of teengirldom.

Seeing the photo today made me think of a segment from Fast Girls by Emily White, a book I recommend.  The author interviews different women who were labeled sluts in high school.

She was out on the town in Seattle, at a new martini bar.  "Me and my friend Meg were out with these guys from a really cool band.  We were dressed to the nines, so people were looking at us and we felt totally hot.  All of a sudden this girl comes up and she is being real nice, probably 'cuz she wants to get with the guys in the band, and she is like, 'You're Madeline, right?  Remember me?  We went to high school together.'  I was drunk but then all of a sudden I remember who she was, this really popular girl who was one of the worst offenders.  Telling lies about me all the time.  Yelling names at me from her car when she was driving away from school."

The popular girl came up to Madeline that night in the bar offering an apology for the crimes of the past.  According to Madeline, the girl said, "I am really sorry.  I think the reason we did it has something to do with how, when something is beautiful, you want to destroy it."  Madeline rolls her eyes when she tells me that the girl went on and on, an alcohol-fueled confession, a monologue.

Madeline didn't buy it.  The forgiveness this girl was asking for seemed to puny, so late.  Madeline stared at the girl for a moment.  Then she punched her in the face.

[Edited to add: As an addendum- I pestered my friend about the girl in his social circle, and he told me he's gotten in arguments with her for being anti- sex worker. Ah, I guess some mean teenage girls never grow up- they just re-channel their sexual insecurities at new targets.]