ABSTRACT
This chapter explores girls' experiences with sexual forms of drama, which involves a constellation of behaviors including sexualized rumor spreading and gossip, slut-shaming, homophobic labeling, and targeted avoidance tactics. It finds that the volume of sexual rumor spreading, reputational slander and avoidance of girls perceived as doing sexuality "wrong" was markedly less in participants' accounts of college as compared to high school. The chapter examines that sexual drama is an institutionally linked phenomenon. Nearly all of the young women narrate a significant change in there and others' engagement with this kind of conflict at college. Rumor spreading is the most common form of bullying between girls. Between 2006 and 2016, the US media covered the suicides of 24 adolescent girls who were the subjects of sexual rumors or labeled "sluts," "whores," or "lesbians" in the months prior to their deaths. Sexuality plays a significant role in many teens' experiences with bullying.
