Leora Tanenbaum

Leora Tanenbaum is an American feminist author. Her books include the 1999 work Slut! Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation, Catfight: Rivalries Among Women—From Diets to Dating, from the Boardroom to the Delivery Room (2002), Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up For Religious Equality (2009), Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them (2010), and I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet (2015).

Leora Tanenbaum graduated from Brown University in 1991. Tanenbaum first came up with the term "slut-bashing" in 1999, which Time Magazine has written is the predecessor concept to the modern term "slut-shaming". Tanenbaum has also been a contributor to publications including NPR.

Slut! Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation

In 1999, Tanenbaum published the book Slut: Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation, which “documented the pervasive slut-bashing of teenage girls” according to Cosmopolitan Magazine. The book interviewed fifty women of varying ages to discuss how being slut-shamed had affected their life, and their stories of how to overcome this harassment, in a variety of environments, including secondary schools. In 2010, it was named by Ecosalon as one of the twenty most important books for women in print.

Catfight

In 2002, Tanenbaum wrote the work Catfight: Rivalries Among Women—From Diets to Dating, from the Boardroom to the Delivery Room. Publishers Weekly wrote of the book that, “Although Tanenbaum provides the latest in academic research, she also includes an entertaining mix of examples from pop culture, newspaper and magazine articles and original fieldwork... Although many women feel no choice but to endure constant pressure and self-doubt, Tanenbaum counters that competition is a learned behavior, not human nature, and the consequences are rarely worth the meager rewards.”

Taking Back God

In 2009, she published the book Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up For Religious Equality, which according to the Jerusalem Report, “focuses on five communities of American women struggling for women's religious advancement: Catholics, evangelical Protestants, "mainline" (non-evangelical) Protestants, Muslims and Orthodox Jews.” In the book are 95 testimonials, and focuses on both advances in women’s religious stature and eliminating religious stereotypes.

Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them

In 2010, Tanenbaum published the book Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them, in which she advocates for healthier women’s footwear and footwear selection behavior. The book was inspired by a visit the author had to a podiatrist, after which she began researching how badly modern shoes are affecting the health of the women who wear them.

I Am Not a Slut

In 2015 she published the book I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet, in which she discusses the possible results of reclaiming negative shaming words used against women. Tanenbaum claims that "slut" specifically, would not contribute constructively to the elimination of sexual oppression. Instead, she calls for wider and more comprehensive sex education, and the insertion of agency into women’s sexual identity. The book is based upon interviews done with 55 different young women between the ages of 14 and 22.

Leora Tanenbaum is the senior writer and editor for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.