Slut-Shaming or Guilt-Tripping

Reputation counts. It counts for men and it counts for women.

Yet, a woman’s reputation is more closely connected to her sexual behavior. As the terms ae commonly used, a woman’s honor is not the same as a man’s honor. A woman’s honor involves her sexual behavior far more than a man’s does.

The derogatory term promiscuity almost always refers to women. When a man has a large number of sexual partners, his “number” will be considered a sign of achievement, not a sign of weak character.

When a woman garners a reputation for being promiscuous she will be more likely to lose friends and suffer social isolation. Other women will shun her and men will not want to get involved in a relationship with her. Even women whose reputations are less than sterling avoid women who are thought to be promiscuous.

Today’s young people say that they are comfortable with promiscuous behaviors, but they still tend to choose their personal friends by more traditional, even judgmental criteria.

The data supporting these observations were gathered by Cornell University graduate student Zhana Vrangalova and colleagues. Susan Walsh offers a comprehensive analysis of Vrangalova’s findings on Hooking Up Smart.

Walsh quotes Vrangalova’s conclusions:

Sexual permissiveness can be defined as attitudes or behaviors that are more liberal or extensive than what is normative in a social group. It can include actual or desired frequent, premarital, casual, group, or extradyadic sex, sex with many partners, early sexual debut, or even nonverbal cues signalizing availability (e.g., provocative clothing).

There are evolutionary and sociocultural reasons for the undesirability of permissiveness across interpersonal contexts, including same-sex friendships. Permissive people are more likely to be sexually unfaithful to a mate (Bailey, Kirk, Zhu, Dunne, & Martin, 2000) and to poach someone else’s mate (Schmitt, 2004). This is costly for both sexes: It threatens paternity certainty for men, and continued provision of partner resources for women (Buss & Schmitt, 1993)

This renders permissive individuals undesirable as partners as well as close same-sex friends, and distancing oneself from permissive friends could be an effective mate guarding strategy (Bleske & Shackelford, 2001). 

Evolutionary psychology explains these choices. Young women reject women who might “poach” their men.

But since we are also known by the company we keep, a woman will surely choose friends whose good character reflects well on her own.

Vrangalova suggests that since promiscuity is stigmatized, a woman might want to avoid associating with anyone who bears it. Most people do not advertise promiscuity, so a woman who wants to assert her good character will choose friends who have good reputations.  

The data is clear and intelligible. Yet, Vrangalova takes it a step further when she concludes that the women who ostracize their promiscuous cohorts are being judgmental and are engaging in slut-shaming.

Science Daily summarizes the argument:

The findings suggest that though cultural and societal attitudes about casual sex have loosened in recent decades, women still face a double standard that shames "slutty" women and celebrates "studly" men, said lead author Zhana Vrangalova, a Cornell graduate student in the field of human development. The study, titled "Birds of a Feather? Not When it Comes to Sexual Permissiveness" and published in the early online edition of theJournal of Social and Personal Relationships, reports that such social isolation may place promiscuous women at greater risk for poor psychological and physical health outcomes.

"For sexually permissive women, they are ostracized for being 'easy,' whereas men with a high number of sexual partners are viewed with a sense of accomplishment," Vrangalova said. "What surprised us in this study is how unaccepting promiscuous women were of other promiscuous women when it came to friendships -- these are the very people one would think they could turn to for support."

Vrangalova might have concluded, as Susan Walsh does, that women who know that they will be ostracized for being promiscuous will rethink their behavior and regain their good reputations.  

She doesn’t. She prefers to provoke sympathy and empathy for the promiscuous women who are being shunned by their friends. If promiscuous women suffer emotionally for their behavior, the fault  must lie in those who are “slut-shaming” them.

It’s important to understand the strategy here. It’s a psy-ops in the culture wars. Vrangalova did not invent it; she is simply passing it along.

If a woman chooses her friends by the “content of their character,” she will be responsible for the negative psychological effects that their promiscuous sisters suffer.

Any woman who exercises her judgment of character in choosing her friends is engaging in slut-shaming. Vrangalova is thus trying to guilt-trip her out of her freely exercised judgment.

Women who judge the character of their friends are being condemned for being judgmental and are being told that they are responsible for the emotional anguish suffered by promiscuous women.

Obviously, this suggests that the only real problem with promiscuity is that the culture thinks ill of such women. In the world that culture warriors are trying to create, behaving promiscuously is perfectly acceptable. Slut-shaming is abhorrent. Guilt-tripping the slut-shamers then becomes virtuous.

If you were wondering how the hookup culture gained a foothold on American college campuses, credit the psy-ops of cultural warriors.

It’s a blow against freedom. The guilt-trippers are telling you that you do not have the right to choose your friends  according to the criteria that make sense to you. The culture warriors are telling you that you are not allowed to judge anyone’s character because you will hurt that person’s feelings.

Yet, if judging a person’s character makes perfectly good sense according to evolutionary psychology, perhaps promiscuity is damaging to body and soul.

Shunning such women is the only way that women have left to try to encourage their promiscuous friends to mend their ways.