Is having a hoe phase the life experience you didn't know you needed?

When are women going to stop being embarrassed for having sexual needs?

Eavesdrop conversations of groups of men at bars and it’s quite likely that you’ll hear their “scores” (number of people they’ve slept with), thumping each other‘s backs in celebration. The chances of walking into the same conversation even in a women’s washroom is rare. It will be viewed as a slutty phase a woman is going through. Or her “hoe phase”. 

A term added to Urban Dictionary in 2012, it is defined as “a phase in your life that occurs frequently when you are fine with exploring promiscuous activities and connecting with random people… Some may think this is shallow, but knowing yourself is a learning process.” It acknowledges the judgment. And a deadline which spells the message: Don’t be a “hoe”.  But nowhere does it make the term exclusive to women. 

Yet when Aaliya, like most of us, first heard the phrase in college, it was used to describe a female classmate who was sleeping around with different people. “The word ‘hoe’ has been used to put down women for decades, even though ‘hoe phase’ came about as a means of women reclaiming their own sexuality,” says the 22-year-old Mumbai resident. 

A lack of agency

Shame is ingrained in the root of the phrase, which comes from the term “hoe”  used in the 1960s in the United States as a “whore”. A hoe “phase” is a time in a woman’s life denoting a window when exploring sex (and her sexuality) is an option for her. 

In most parts of India, a woman having sex is acceptable only with the opposite sex, of the same religion and caste, post marriage, observes Leeza Mangaldas, sex educator and content creator. “Even then, she’s supposed to have babies, not orgasms. It’s not about her pleasure but wifely duties to sire an heir,” says Mangaldas. Women are supposed to speak and behave a certain way, taking away from the normalcy of being a person. “When women don’t live up to that definition of being a virgin, people judge them,” says Aanya Nisha, 27, a Goa-based “sugarbaby”. 

Globally, there is a dichotomy: a man will be lauded as a “player” but a woman will be shamed for having sex with multiple people. In fact, men are shamed if they don’t have enough sex and women are lauded for not having sex. “Both are problematic. Slut-shaming is just one more tool to ensure a woman’s autonomy and agency remains constrained,” observes Mangaldas. Women also have to pick between being respected and being sexy, unlike men. “Women can’t be sexual and in a position of power, whether it’s being a politician or a professor,” she adds. 

However, it’s not like men don't get any flak. Men get branded as “f**kboys” who are “on the prowl” while women get called a slut that’s shamed. “F**kboys even sounds like some new-age hero, complete with a cape and a huge F on their chest. Men rarely judge other men, and sometimes it’s even seen as competitive, [something] to be bragged about.” says Bharat, 27, a New Delhi-based musician, adding that the judgment comes from another gender. Mansij Asthana, 33, a publicist, who had his “hoe phase” a while ago says that even if you aren’t sleeping around but just going on dates where nothing physical is happening, people do assume that you are “being a hoe”. “People judge you, making you feel like you’re doing something wrong,” says Asthana who heard terms like “man-slut”, and “laundiyabaazi karta rehta hai” aplenty. Someone even implied that he thought of “women as objects”.

Meanwhile, the whole locker-room vibe still exists; if you’re a guy who is dating many different people/sleeping with a lot of women, men will ask you “how you’re doing it” in a tone of awe, says Asthana. “But if a woman is sleeping around, everything from her clothes to upbringing and her character will be judged…It will be other women too who will be a part of this slut-shaming of women,” he adds, stating that he has also seen men slut-shame a woman if she rejects him.

No end to shaming

A topless picture of a man isn’t a big deal—it will become a meme or will be ignored. But a woman will be shamed for just having a body. At time, the shaming can get so bad that even in a case of molestation, a girl will be blamed if she has a “reputation”, opines Shriya, 32, a New Delhi-based content writer and educator, who was called “easy”, “slut”, and was told she “gets around town”, when she was seeing multiple people in college. 

Goa-based filmmaker Siddhi, 33, was shunned by her entire neighbourhood when she was in class 11 because of rumours that she was gay. Her only friend was another girl who was also shunned because she had dated a few people consecutively. “Being a hoe becomes your personality for people,” says Siddhi, whose partner was bullied by Siddhi’s friends in school, taunted with “homo”. 

Even within the queer community, there’s slut-shaming if you’re a femme lesbian. Sayantika Majumder, 33, a content creator and copywriter from Bengaluru, who identifies as one, had people interrupt her dates with comments like, “she sleeps around” and “you’re just her Wednesday night.” Her current partner’s friends even placed bets that they wouldn’t last. “Just because someone is exploring their sexuality doesn’t mean they are promiscuous. And just because people are not in a committed relationship doesn’t mean they don’t want to be in one,” she says. Meanwhile, men don’t see butch women as women but reduce them to just “competition”, says Siddhi. 

Perpetuating self-questioning 

It’s by shaming from a young age that society recruits women to perpetuate their own oppression via self-policing. “You internalise the judgment, even when you’re trying to not give a damn or reclaim your sexuality,” says Sayantika. 

A 2019 study titled Understanding Sexual Pleasure and Health: A Study of Urban Middle-Class Women’s Narratives in New Delhi, by Solana Chertow from SIT Study Abroad found that middle-class women deemed their own sexual pleasure as inappropriate, un-lady-like or sinful. 

It’s in the little things: the first question a gynaecologist still asks a patient is if she’s married. A woman will feel awkward buying condoms at the chemist. “Shame builds if both people agree. When you reject and dismantle your own shame, people may question their own judgment,” says Mangaldas, admitting it would have been harder to do the work she does had her folks frowned upon her talking about sex, or why a woman needs to experience pleasure. 

For Shriya, 33, the separation of shame from the term “hoe phase” is still a work in progress, and comes by shedding notions about how things are supposed to unfold in life, traditionally: date, get married, have kids. 

Aaliya felt the shame fade when she/they found her college group, out of which five were queer women, all having different outlooks in life. “Different people live out their sexuality differently. That’s how you figure out what works for you,” says Aaliya, who has only now started masturbating regularly. A friend’s mother had ingrained in Aaliya when she was in class 10 that masturbating is “disgusting and bad”. “For the longest time, every time I came I felt ashamed,” says Aaliya, who has bought a vibrator for her/their mother now.

A learning process

There is so much you can learn from your “hoe phase”. Siddhi admits it was only in 2018 when she dated four people within a few months that she started figuring her pleasure. With it, came the confidence to speak up about it. There’s a reason lesbians get asked “how do you do it?”, besides the fact that the idea that two women are experiencing pleasure without a man in the mix is unfathomable, says Sayantika, whose married friend neither knew about her clitoris nor had had an orgasm at 33. So, Sayantika’s partner made her a Powerpoint presentation for the friend’s husband on how to go down on a woman! 

Sayantika had a learning curve the first time she wanted to be with a woman, right after college. She had to ask a friend, “Kya karna hai?”. “I didn’t know how to have sex with a woman,” she shares, who also had a conversation with her mother about the clitoris, but stopped when she realised her mother may have never had an orgasm. 

Globally, the last decade has seen more significant conversations happening around a woman’s agency, sexual violence, and the right on the sexual autonomy of women. The #MeToo movement, the Nirbhaya rape case in Delhi, and repealing of Section 377 have given people a reality check on people’s sexual rights, observes Mangaldas. Television shows like Sex Education, and vibrators being sold online (even though they are called “massagers”), is making the idea of pleasure being a part of a woman’s health and wellness. It’s no longer discarded like some sleazy, dirty thing.  

Many women in India are only exploring their sexuality in their late 20s and 30s because they have never had the opportunity to casually be with people as they were staying with their parents. Additionally, there’s scope for women to get out of bad relationships and marriages today, as well as letting go of the shame of dating at a later stage in life. “This then makes concepts like age difference and calling a woman a cougar or gold digger less frequent today,” points out Shriya. Women are realising that their pleasure matters—a topic Sayantika admits she hadn’t touched upon even with her school girl-gang she’s known for 28 years. 

Shedding the so-called taboo

“Today, the first reaction isn’t ‘hawww’,” says Mangaldas, whose brand Leezu’s still has to ensure the packaging of the sex toys people have ordered online is discreet. The perception remains that a sex toy is a gag gift at a bachelorette bash. “At worst, it shows you’re a slut. Many women wouldn’t post a picture of themselves with a vibrator on social media,” she says. 

The taboo isn't as obvious as five years ago, when Sayantika had women running away from her in Bengaluru, screeching in disgust when she was organising a video vox pop, giving free vibrators to single women. A girl asked her to not use her video byte as her father had gotten to know and was scared her participation would tarnish the family’s reputation.

Gen Z, however, is changing things. For them, the “hoe phase” isn’t derogatory in the same way. You don’t get judged for sleeping around but for not being emotionally mature, explains Aaliya. “It’s also to do with having a personality. You’ve got to be smart—you cannot let your sex life define you,” adds Aaliya. 

People still judge women as much as they have been doing all along. Only now they use the “correct words”. Women in India still get killed for not bleeding on their wedding night. And people would do well to stop value judgment based on the amount of sex a person is having—gender no bar, please.

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